Instigate

I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

And their venom HURTS. They’re not particularly deadly or anything but their venom will land you in the hospital or at least laid up in bed for a while. My stepmother grew up out in the bush in NSW the ‘70s and received one of the few recorded platypus envenomations and she described it as the most painful experience of her life. She said childbirth was a breeze compared to the platypus sting!

For reference here in Australia my wife has been asking to get mammograms for years now (in her 30s) and she keeps getting told she’s too young because she doesn’t have a familial history. That issue is a bit pervasive in countries other than the US.

Thanks for the advice - I’ll definitely take that into account! To be clear (without doxxing myself) my emails came from a ‘.nsw.gov.au’ address so I hope that wouldn’t steer many academics away from sharing their findings, especially those whose research was conducted in other Anglophonic countries (specifically the US and Canada). I can understand the hint of hesitation though. I always assumed using my .gov.au email would have evaded spam filters, but perhaps my regular email address might have more luck.

I should also state that the research I’ve been trying to access is predominately psychological or social work academia (I’m a child protection caseworker), and I’m not sure if the same “share it if you got it” mantra applies in those fields.

Honestly I’ve heard this and seen it written very many times, but any time I’ve ever reached out to a lead author to request access to their paper I’ve been met with zero reply. Like, nothing, from at least six different attempts (that I can remember right now). And I’m a government employee emailing from a government domain, usually with a very well written plea for information. Maybe I’m the unlucky one?

While I loved PropertyCity while I lived there, my early years in RuralTown showed that’s where the real Country really is. We had a herd of FarmAnimals and would always go down to the WaterBody on the weekends where the LargeMammals roamed free and wild!

I had a little chuckle-up myself

Many people with vaginas have a lot of sex that makes no babies

I dunno, if I suddenly grew a vagina I might want to use it.

If this Biden feeling ‘jacked up’, I shudder to think what he’s like when he’s not. He’s not doing a great job of spruiking his own achievements and his answers are devoid of stats or figures - likely because they weren’t able to bring notes in. He’s sadly making trump look more coherent and lively by comparison.

Cubicle is the noun (mini office); cubical is the adjective (having cube-like properties). :)

Blood and Wine was honestly amazing. I haven’t enjoyed a DLC or xpac that much since Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. I think maybe the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’s expansion Bloodmoon was a great contender as well, but Blood and Wine just took Witcher 3 to a new level. It truly deserved its spot at the top of the heap.

Same boat mate - Aussie govt employee myself who has access to flex. Personally I felt it was better when I was working for an NGO and they always gave me the choice between being paid overtime or banking it to flex later. It was nice to get the extra cash when I needed it and extra leave when the time came too. That should be the standard the employee should have the choice between OT or extra leave.

I think a good way of calculating their sentence should be in lost Franc-years. That is, calculate all of the lost wages they didn’t pay and force them to serve as many years as that amount would make in minimum wage. If they paid one staff member 1/12 of the minimum wage for one year, then that’s 11 months of gaol. If they paid 10 staff members 1/12 of the minimum wage for one year, that’s 9 years gaol. Take from them (in time) what was stolen from their workers. That’s the only way they’ll understand what they’ve stolen, because they have no value of a dollar, rupee, euro or franc.

I’m with you here, mate. My workplace went 100% remote during COVID and has only gone back to mandating five days per month back in the office and honestly? I think we’d do better with a mandated two days in the office and three days at home per week, mandating days where our team can all work together. I’m a social worker in an intake/assessment/referral position, and I desperately miss being able to look over my shoulder and debrief my case or gain some peer consultation on how best to manage the case I’m on. The one day I’m in I’m almost alone and gain barely any benefit from being in the office.

We have a fair few physically disabled colleagues, for whom I’d recommend a no-limits flexibility working arrangement that works for them, but for those of us who are physically able I think a 2/3 split would work far better. Our attrition rates have gone right up since COVID despite previously having some of the highest retention rates in our Department, and I can’t help but think that some of that is due to us being isolated while needing to rely on one another from time to time.

It’s really sad these days that “my algorithmic feed didn’t show me an article about this thing” has become equated with “no one is talking about this thing”. So many of us live in our little bubbles but still think that it’s fifty years ago and we all read the same three newspapers. We get fed different content based on what we consume; that’s a fact of modern media. If you want to know what’s out there, you need to search for it.

Like I said mate, fair call. If he’s your ally, then so be it.

Fair call mate, he might be your ally but sadly he’s not mine. I’m not sure if you’re LGBTQIA+, but if you’ve spent time in the community you’ll know that not even all of those who identify as queer or non-cis support one another. To the best of my knowledge May doesn’t openly identify as queer himself, and thinking that he’s an ally just because he’s been friends with gay and/or bi men isn’t necessarily the best indicator that he’s an ally to all peoples. Personally, I feel like that argument is pretty similar to “I can’t be racist because I have a ____ friend”.

Probed on whether Queen would be able to win a BRIT gong in 2021, he was reported to have responded:

“We would be forced to have people of different colours and different sexes and we would have to have a trans [person]. You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different.”

Apparently he was ‘ambushed’ and ‘stitched up’ and his words were ‘subtly twisted’ but he never stated what his original words were, if they were different from the quote. I’m not usually a fan of people who use terms like “a trans” or who lament “cancel culture” because gendered categories are removed from awards ceremonies.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/11/28/queen-brian-may-brit-awards-twisted-trans/

If Bethesda created a paid mod market where creators could charge for access and Bethesda only took a super nominal amount of those payments to cover transaction fees (say, 2-3%) I would so be in favour of that. I love the idea of passionate creators being rewarded for their work, and frankly it could (and should) create a new employee pipeline for them.

Sadly though, then Bethesda might make 0.01875% less profit this quarter than they did last quarter, which these days is the death knell of the capitalistic venture.