"... if that's the only resource you've got - especially in Papua New Ginea, there's not a lot there - so if you've got oil, and gas, and coal, for godsake take it out of the ground and get the country going."
I occasionally get #spam to my work email from companies that want to sell their products and services to my employer. For some reason, the latest one thinks that I, as a developer, need their product to help me manage my purchase orders. #facepalm
I visited my doctor's office today. I was the only one masked. A woman saw me masking and decided she should mask--but she took it off once we weren't in the same room. I think the only reason she masked was that she was concerned I was masking because I was sick.
COVID is rising again. It feels like doctor's offices and medical facilities should be places people with risk factors and health issues can visit safely, don't you think?
@augieray here in Alberta you’re no longer allowed to tell people they have to wear a mask. Even in medical offices and hospitals. I believe that if they tried, our ding dong government (that cries freedom harder than William Wallace) would come down on them. #facepalm
So the few times I've been to the US - once to California (which admittedly is different, on vacation rather than work), once to Corpus Christi, once to Arkansas (near Memphis) - I found myself boggling at how much open asphalt there was between stores.
I wondered if it was just because they had the space to expand, so they just did. It didn't occur to me that there were minimum parking rules. It was always very easy to park. Everywhere looked sort of empty/unpopular.
@tldr@sarajw#FacePalm... Add Canada to your sources. The degree of car-centrality / car-addiction is almost as bad here. I'm sure it's a key factor in our societal overweight as well... I'm so fortunate to have been able to choose a cycling country as my home.
I'm going to stop you right there. When I look around Fediverse, I see people chatting with friends, making new ones, connecting with old ones, people sharing their fun, their fears, their anger, their sadness. I see people asking for help, offering to help, wondering if they need help. I see a microcosm of humanity.
I don't need to wait for Fedi to succeed, because, in my view. It. Already. Has.
@toolbear
> uncritical cargo-cult'ing of tools and systems that well are suited to Big Tech but not well suited for Fedi community building or sustainability
Again, this is somewhat true of Mastodon (Ruby-on-Rails in 2023, #FacePalm), but not of fediverse software in general. As @bob pointed out elsewhere in the thread, the "chattiness" of the protocol is not a problem for properly-engineered fedi server software like Epicyon.
WINZ is using MailChimp to send email. Email. A public service agency is paying a private company in the US to send email for it. Seriously? WTF.
I've been saying for ages that NZ Post ought to be pivoting into hosting email. Handling large-scale mailouts like this is a classic example of a service they could actually be making money out of, doing the digital equivalent of their traditional business.
Dear God, if you're going to saddle us with a National-led government, please give us Nicola Willis as PM and send Christopher Luxon back to the private sector where he knows what he's doing? I think that would be better for him and the country. Thanks.
Liberated from the intellectual contortionist act of having to reconcile Luxon's paradoxes (ParaLuxes?), Willis might be able to apply her talents more fruitfully.
"At least Nicola Willis can see the contradiction involved in Luxon offering voters even more of the bureaucratic make-work that National has been decrying for the past decade or more. To try and square that circle, Willis has said that much of it can be done by AI."
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