Quentin McDonald

I used to follow Hehir "for balance" on the other site but I soon found his obvious, unrelating, insecurity to be hard to take. He's a "like me or fight me" type of person. A sophist with the charm of a spotty six-form debate team captain (that was literally me once but I like to think I've grown)

What about the poll that orange guy runs and you get a nice sticker when you go to your local primary school to write your answer on a form?

Not bad surely. But would be better with sausages.

Having said that I did merge the original vstack() PR into my own fork of matplotlib and now my graphs are so fast it's like the final scenes of "2001". I am now one with the machine.

A useful starting point for the Soul Document would be "OSS project maintainers are God-like creatures who do a great service to the world and can end you in a nano-second if displeased"

I'm sorry to hear you now have to burn your bathroom to the ground. But hope the rebuild goes well.

Never sure about White Tails. Keep hearing "they aren't as bad as you think" and then some horror stories at about equal frequency.

About 10 years ago, at least in NZ, there was a genuine chance for queer rights to cease being a left/right faultline. Key voting for same-sex marriage, a few out National MPs etc.

The policy choices of the right the last 5/6 years have meant that the faultline v much remains. And that's on them.

It’s sign of how bad things must be if even treasury are suggesting more money. Near collapse.

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#nzpol

"I'm afraid I can't do that.... Mistress"

Has a nice ring to it.

Isn't this part of the magic of the place though? Quite literally unpredictable.

To call the government’s idea of an LNG terminal a stupid idea is an insult to actual real life stupid ideas. It makes zero economic sense now, and it will make even less economic sense every year hereafter

We don't have a tow-bar either (I do love the American term though, it sounds old-timey)

I've used www.cityhop.co.nz. Works as expected, pick up from Mitre10 and $23/hr.

and (foretelling working from home, not common when the book was written):

"Visual supervision is a joke for development workers. Visual supervision is for prisoners."

I left it too late in my career to read the (now old) "Peopleware" by Tom Demarco. I always remember his statement that: "You may be able to kick people to make them active, but not to make them creative, inventive, and thoughtful.”

It is weird but they do have a delegate relationship on local electorate committees which perhaps makes it hard to disengage.

Post a banger not in English

Works remarkably well, clever way to bring life to an old great.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPSo...

Post a banger not in English

Knew my high school French teacher was a fraud when he couldn't (or declined to) translate this for us.

youtu.be/ZI8mf1N9lrU?...

The moon is well known to be a protein-rich dairy environment suitable for sustaining self-growing human colonies.

All those nogoodniks at SpaceX who failed to tell the boss that the moon is closer than mars are likely looking for new jobs right now.

There’s also a lot of careless readers like me. I had to read that post three times to see the typo.

The worst ones are those that change the sense of one’s meaning. Leaving out a “not” for example. Deletion is the only option.

Ah yes. I remember now. Seemed a big innovation. But to be honest I’ve gone back to woollen blankets and feel I’ve never slept better.

I’m can remember my, rather proper Edwardian-era grandmother, referring to them as “ Continental Blankets” with some disapproval.

Also very much lots of "zero sum" thinking. So things can only get better for me if they get worse for somebody else. The "grow the pie" analysis is very, very prevalent despite having never worked over my whole adult lifetime.

I do get the feeling that often there's a distinct lack of hope and no belief we could have better. Lots of people are just picking off a menu, voting for what they see as the least worst option instead of imagining the way the world could be and trying to support a movement that would lead to it.

One thing to keep in mind about FB is it's very much the loudest voices. My neighbourhood FB group has over 4K members. I would say 30 people account for 80% of the comments.

Also often see blanket unsupported statements like "They will tax us to oblivion". If I post the GP tax calculator I've never had any response. There's a distinct lack of curiosity. They *know* what they think and that's all they need.

When I've interacted on FB I'm often disappointed by the shallowness of the analysis. "Lolz theys looks funny" is often the sort of comment you see on Green Party posts. Sure that might be a real sentiment but it's often just weird misogyny and racism.

I belong to a mens book group that is roughly divided on political lines. It's interesting and often productive but things like a weird obsession with Jacinda Ardern among men of my age are making it hard to have substantive discussions. Especially as time goes on and they aren't letting it go.

I don't disagree and have from time to time attempted to do this. Personally I think in-person contacts "across the divide" would be more useful but civil society doesn't seem to provide as many opportunities for that as it once did.

It will all be about platform and grandstanding. These people think they are heroes and need to be heard. I suspect the cell mates are not especially interested.

Luckily it’s two streets over so we aren’t directly affected. We are upstream of the water and sewage.