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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Not crazy, just sad.

    Middle of the day, sitting at our desks working. This middle aged guy who was usually happy as Larry gets up and leaves the office leaving his stuff behind. Not a word said. I just assumed he was getting a coffee or something.

    End of the day rolls around, stuff still there. Same thing the next day. Still there the next week.

    People start asking what happened to him, but the agency he was working through kept telling us he’s coming back soon.

    Over a month later, someone packs up his stuff and puts it in the bin. The guy was never coming back, turns out he went left and ended his own life the day he walked out. Never made it home.

    The agency apparently only found out he was dead a few weeks after the incident, then strung us along so they could find a replacement. We terminated their contract and offered the handful of other employees jobs.

    ———

    Another job, we had a new guy start. Very conventionally attractive and he seemed normal enough.

    A few weeks later one of the women complained to HR that someone was stalking her. She was getting ‘flattering’ letters, emails, notes etc and they often contained information and photos in/about/around her work. Flattering, but not something she was comfortable with

    Few weeks later, we’re told new guy won’t be coming back due to inappropriate behaviour.

    Woman had to get a restraining order against the guy. In a twist of irony, she said that if the guy had just talked to her, she would have gone on a date with him in a heartbeat.


  • Imo, the term “buy” for all goods should pass some sort of litmus test. Eg:

    does the product being sold have the same properties as a brick?

    • can the product be resold privately?
    • can the product be lent to another user temporarily?
    • would the product still perform its function when the manufacturer stops supporting it?
    • would the product still perform its function if the manufacturer ceased to exist.

    if the product does not pass all these tests, the customer is not buying. Consider using terms such as ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ or ‘subscription’


  • Explain what you want. It’s that easy.

    I did many years of “I want something simple that I can maintain easily, and will still look ok when I drag my ass out of bed at 10am, an hour late for work. Anything but a buzz cut”

    Eventually I found something that I can touch up at home myself, and can explain to even the shittiest of barbers.

    It’s hair. Nobody really gives a shit. You’ll get some shit ones, some good ones, a buzz cut you explicitly didn’t want. Nobody got hurt, and it grows back.








  • Why would it result in zero women playing? I’m not suggesting you merge the women’s teams with the open team.

    But have it so your women’s teams performance counts just as much as the men’s.

    Two teams (men’s and women’s), each playing against their own gender, scoring points in one league.

    No point paying your dudes millions per season to get the best players if your women’s team sucks and loses every game.

    Get teams and fans an incentive to invest and in both genders by playing for the same trophy.


  • Why does nobody watch the women’s leagues? Is it because nobody else does? can’t have all the social aspects of sports if nobody else is doing it.

    Imo, they need to stop the segregation. Ditch the women’s leagues, but keep the games and teams. Have both teams play in one league, and contribute to the overall score of the team.

    It’ll add new strategy to the seasons. Spend all of your budget on the dudes and hope they keep winning despite the ladies; build a strong women’s team to carry your b-tier men’s team; or something in between.



  • The problem occurs when house prices tumble from an influx of sales, and the 32% (In NZ) of your population that are paying their mortgage off on their primary residence are potentially plunged into negative equity on rising interest rates.

    Once you’re there, you’re kind of fucked. You can sell, but you’ll still owe the bank money, so you can’t buy/downsize. You can’t even change banks. You’re a risky customer, so you get higher interest rates. All you can do is hope the market rebounds or declare bankruptcy.

    So you’re risking fucking over 30% of your nation (and arguably the most productive segment of your country as they’re earning money to pay that mortgage), to appease a fraction of (as not every renter can/wants to buy. Eg, students, temporary immigrant workers etc) the 30% of renters that are being fucked over by high house prices.

    Not to mention, all the renters you’ve displaced into an even more competitive rental market.

    But that’s not to say the solution is to shrug your shoulders and let the landlord class continue to punch down.

    It would be expensive, but you could guarantee (current) mortgages for primary residences in cases of financial hardship. Buy mortgagees out and turn the houses into state housing, renting them back to the previous owners at fair prices.





  • If you’ve ever flown into New Zealand, you will know there are numerous signs and warnings that bringing any organic produce into the country is illegal and will be met with fines.

    If you declare it, they’ll just take it off you and let you go. Don’t declare it, you get a fine.

    It’s not hard. Unsure? Declare it.

    [edit] But also, Quantas are in the wrong here. They’re an Australian airline, and Australia has similar biosecurity laws. The fact they served their customers fruit, and didn’t inform them is poor form.




  • Yale’s Assure SL doesn’t have a key, but you can power it externally with a 9v battery. (And, keys are just another failure point). They also make some keyed variants.

    It out of the box doesn’t have any network capability. You can plug in a zigbee or Wifi module to give it connectivity.

    Zigbee support is pretty primitive. Basic functionality works fine. Lock, unlock etc. afaik, you can do whatever the unit can do through zigbee commands but I’ve not seen (nor really looked) for a usable interface to it.

    [edit] realised I mixed up zwave and zigbee.