Should right to disconnect laws be scrapped because of lazy workers?
15 July 2024
Melbourne based Workplace Relations lawyer Paul O’Halloran, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, on Australian “right to disconnect” workplace laws that come into effect on Monday 26 August 2024:
Well, laziness is an increasing trend in the cases I defend for employers. Putting aside pandemic lockdowns where all sorts of things other than work were going on in people’s homes during virtual business hours, more recently I have been involved in matters where employees were surreptitiously sleeping on the job; forging time sheets with fabricated work hours; using fake medical certificates to take sickies; or watching Netflix while claiming to be working from home.
There’s still this perception that people working from home are bludging. Doing stuff-all. Watching Netflix all day (or some of the day). No doubt “all sorts of things other than work” take place in a work from home environment, child care duties among them. But is productivity not measured by, you know, productivity? If the required work is being turned in, why begrudge a busy parent for doing a load of washing in the gaps in-between workplace duties? It’s called work-life balance for a reason.
The solution though to this apparent reluctance to work at home, is to get everyone back into the workplace, where an eye can kept on them to ensure they do their “full eight-hour” day. The problem with the full eight-hour day though, is that it doesn’t exist. An American study found workers putting in an eight-hour day, actually did closer to three hours actual work a day.
Three hours? Say what? Much of the eight hour day is lost to web browsing and social media, making food and snacks, calling family, cigarette/vape breaks, and, last but by no means least: looking for another job. All under the watchful eye of workplace handlers. It seems to me then, if you’re putting in a minimum of three hours work, you’re doing well. Bonus points if it’s so-called deep work.
Certainly, there are lazy workers. Those being paid to do eight (would-be) hours work, but sitting in the break-room all day. Or “meetings”. But they’re in the minority, and are eventually weeded out. But leave the work-from-home people alone. Leave them to get on with their work. If it’s at least three hours per day, then there’s nothing to complain about.
If you’ve noticed posting here as slowed down at tad lately, it’s because work (from home) has been flat out. No Netflix and chill here (during work hours). I’m freelance, so the disconnect laws may not quite apply to me (but I do have do-not-disturb). Nonetheless, I am looking forward to some disconnect, and doing a little bit more here soon.
RELATED CONTENT
Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, return for Devil Wears Prada sequel
12 July 2024
Well, this will be something. A sequel is in the works for The Devil Wears Prada. By the time it is released, assuming production starts sooner rather than later, the follow-up will pick-up almost twenty-years after events of the original film. That’s a long time in the fashion world.
So far, Meryl Streep — as Miranda Priestly — and Emily Blunt — as Emily Charlton — have indicated interest in reprising their roles, but Anne Hathaway remains unsure about returning as Andy Sachs. An early outline of the storyline suggests Priestly will face off against a now successful Charlton.
We can only wait to see how Sachs fits into that dynamic, should Hathaway decide to be involved.
RELATED CONTENT
Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, entertainment, film, Meryl Streep
Spellcheck, autocorrect: the end of Notepad as a simple text editor
11 July 2024
Let’s go back in time. Way back in time.
To about this time in 2000. I had, or was just about, to start my first job as a web designer, at an exciting, multidisciplinary design studio, on Sydney’s trendy urban fringe. Ok: Surry Hills. I’m pleased to say I was headhunted into the role, thanks largely to the then inception of disassociated.
My job title was “coder/designer”, and I still have a copy of my business card somewhere. I was given a large box of them at the time, and asked by one of the directors to distribute them at will. At parties, at the pub, on the bus. Everywhere. To spread word of the studio, of course.
When I went into a meeting to discuss the role, I said I wanted to work to web standards with the HTML I would be coding/marking-up. One of the people sitting in on the meeting, who worked in the development arm of the agency, and whom I’d meet previously through local web design/personal website circles, shook his head at me.
He was on the same page: he too wanted to work with standards, but many projects of the day precluded their use. “Ok,” I said, “In that case, I only want to use Notepad for the code/markup I’ll be writing.” I said that because I didn’t want a bar of the bloated, ineffectual, WYSIWYG web design editors that were then available. Fun fact: I still don’t; I never have.
To that, they agreed. Notepad is one of the few Microsoft (MS) products I really like, and will miss on Linux. It has come bundled with Windows Operating Systems since 1983, and has remained little changed. I coded my first websites in Notepad, and built the WordPress theme you’re looking at now, in Notepad. That’s because Notepad is (was) a simple text editor. Notepad gave it to you as it was.
It doesn’t (didn’t) attempt to autocorrect or spellcheck your work. Imagine trying to markup a webpage, and have the app tell you the <IMG> tag was spelt incorrectly? Notepad left you to decide what was right and wrong. Why does any of this matter? Because I saw code/markup as a craft. I didn’t want some WYSIWYG web design app interfering with my work. If you wanted a text editor with spellcheck and autocorrect functions, there were other options.
Word among them. But now MS has decided to change the script. Autocorrect and spellcheck are coming to Notepad soon. Why, I have no idea, given the features are completely unnecessary. But MS will be MS. I’m surprised they’re not introducing the feature to WordPad, a surely (slightly) more robust word processor than Notepad.
Ironically, I read the news on Daring Fireball, a website with a distinct Apple bent. John Gruber, publisher of Daring Fireball, seems to be all in favour of the move, declaring it overdue:
Better late than never, but it’s kind of wild that Notepad is 41 years old and only getting these features now.
The whole thing is though, it’s not wild at all. The absence of these features is precisely what made Notepad so appealing in the first place. No doubt there are simple text editor alternatives for Windows. I’ve found one for Linux. Maybe the autocorrect or spellcheck functions will be a feature of Notepad only on Windows 11, which I won’t see.
Perhaps there will be a way to disable the operation of autocorrect or spellcheck in Notepad. Who knows? Of course, it’s moot point as far as I am concerned. But it is a tad sad to see so profound a change coming to an app that turned out to be quite the life changer for me all those years ago.
RELATED CONTENT
COVID-19: third most lethal cause of death in Australia
10 July 2024
From The Daily Aus. Aside from being linked to a slight decrease in life expectancy, COVID-19 was the third highest cause of death in Australia in 2022, claiming almost ten-thousand lives:
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Australia in 2022, according to AIHW. It was the first time in more than 50 years that an infectious disease has appeared in the top five causes of death.
COVID deaths were four times higher in 2022, compared to 2021. As a comparison, three-hundred-and-eight “influenza-associated” deaths were reported between 1 January and 9 October 2022.
Heart disease and dementia, respectively, were the top two causes of death in 2022. COVID may not dominate the conversation, as it did two or three years ago, but that has not diminished its severity in the least.
RELATED CONTENT
Is climate change increasing the strength of Australian red wine?
9 July 2024
Apparently red wines made in Australia — and quite possibly elsewhere, I imagine — have been increasing in alcoholic strength over recent decades. This seems like a mystery of the times, because the go-to culprit, global warming, may not be responsible. Rather, the way grapes are grown, and changes in fermenting methods — which apparently includes a slight decrease in the amount of water going into the mix — may be playing a part.
In the past, water was most commonly “added” to wine in the form of ice-blocks, in the times before refrigeration. Small — quite small, I believe — quantities of water, were always included in the winemaking process, but that’s been cut back more recently as well. So there we have it, some red wines contain more alcohol, but no one seems one-hundred percent sure why. I’m not the biggest wine-drinker though, so I doubt I’ll be investigating this matter much more.
RELATED CONTENT
The physics of running and keeping fit on the Moon
8 July 2024
Rhett Allain, writing for Wired, looks at the physics of this important question.
If humanity is ever to establish bases on the Moon, ways of keeping occupants fit in the low lunar gravity need to be worked out. A wall of death sort of gizmo, that’s a little like a stationary hamster-wheel, but turned on its side, that emulates Earth-like levels of gravity, may be a solution. But there might be more effective alternatives.
But check out the article’s artist impression of a suited up astronaut “jogging” on the surface of the Moon. Straight up running in this way is a fanciful keep fit option unfortunately, as simple as the idea may at first seem. It’s too bad though, because what a sight it would be to behold: Earth floating in the lunar sky, as you ran.
I doubt Earth would be quite as big as depicted in Nzoka John’s image, but it still be quite the spectacle. And on the subject of what Earth might look like from the surface of the Moon, a gallery of images by American illustrator and writer Ron Miller, depicting how other planets in the solar system would appear from Earth, if they were as close as the Moon.
RELATED CONTENT
art, astronomy, illustration, physics, science
Threads first birthday gift to users: advertising?
5 July 2024
Break out the coffee and the cake: a celebration is on the cards. Tomorrow, Threads, Meta’s answer — and much needed foil — to X/Twitter, notches up its first birthday. I was there as the platform began rolling out, and managed to score (just) a relatively low (five-figure) badge number. 98,522 for the record. These membership number badges were, for a time, displayed on a member’s corresponding Instagram (IG) page. Mark Zuckerberg’s IG page boasted the surely desirable number one badge.
But the badges have long since vanished, and Threads, after a few fits and starts, has taken its place — albeit if engagement is on the lower side — with the other micro-blogging style social media platforms, including Mastodon and Bluesky. And with one-hundred-and-seventy-five million active monthly users, it’s probably been a good first year for Threads.
In contrast, X/Twitter didn’t reach the same number of active monthly users until well into 2012, some six years after launching. But making these sorts of comparisons between Threads versus what was then Twitter, isn’t all that helpful. Twitter had to start from scratch. It was, just about, the first of its kind. I still recall some the discussions around X/Twitter, following its debut. A lot of people weren’t sure exactly what the platform was about, or what it was meant to achieve.
X/Twitter’s relatively slow uptake could be partly attributed to this bafflement that enveloped the platform. By the time Threads arrived though, we were all seasoned social media platform users. On top of that, it was a simple matter of clicking a button on your IG page, to become a Threads member. The boost IG and — to a lesser extent — Facebook, gave Threads, cannot be understated.
Aside though from posting what I call an online journal entry daily, I don’t really do much on Threads, or any of the social media platforms, for that matter. But I do get drawn into some of the conversations that appear, courtesy of the Threads algorithm, in my main feed. These posts are an intriguing combination of day to day happenings and situations. There are retellings of encounters with people nice, and not so nice. Of dating disasters, and weird goings-on at work.
In a sense, these posts from people I don’t follow, or even know of, are akin to the “suggested for you” content that litters many an IG feed. Somehow though, these Threads posts don’t seem quite as annoying, or intrusive, as the — and I won’t mince my words here — shit that features on IG. My big hope for Threads is that it doesn’t go the way of IG, which now borders on the unbearable. But Threads may become a little more IG-like in another way: the presence of ads.
While the prospect is apparently being considered, it may still be a year before ads begin making an appearance on the platform. To my mind, this is not so much a question of what happens, but rather, the way it happens. Threads needs to turn a profit. We, the users, cannot have this online playground to frolic on, without there being someway for Meta to pick up the tab.
Ads of some sort seem reasonable to me. As I say, it comes down to the way, rather than the what. Perhaps then there will be a measured approach to advertising. Or, worst case, perhaps not. The devil is very much going to be in the details here.
RELATED CONTENT
social media, social networks, Threads, trends
Potentially habitable Earth size planet forty light years away
4 July 2024
That’s the good news. Tory Shepherd, writing for The Guardian, says the recently discovered exoplanet, dubbed Gliese 12b, might be able to host liquid water. We all know what that means. If there’s water, there may be life. Gliese 12b is so named because it orbits a star called Gliese. Now for the bad news. Gliese is a red dwarf.
I personally don’t have a problem with red dwarf, or M-type, stars. They’re actually kind of cool. And common. Up to seventy-five percent of stars in the cosmos are thought to be red dwarfs. The star nearest to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is a red dwarf. And while most stars in the universe have relatively short lifespans — for instance the Sun, which is about half way through its ten billion year life — red dwarfs live for trillions of years.
The last stars — as we currently understand them, at least — shining in the universe, will be red dwarfs. Go the red dwarfs. But, the problem is any planets orbiting in a red dwarf’s habitable-zone, will be tidally locked. That is, only one side of the planet will face its host star. That half of the planet therefore, in this case Gliese 12b, will be overly warm, while the other, dark side, will be rather cold.
This may not be particularly conducive to life. But some scientists have suggested life on planets orbiting red dwarfs in the habitable-zone, may take hold near the day-night terminator. This is where it will be neither too hot, nor too cold. But this would be an extremely narrow corridor, somewhat limiting the chances of life, especially intelligent life, developing.
Then there’s the red dwarfs themselves. They’re prone to regularly emitting intense radiation flares, which could have the effect of sterilising the surface of nearby planets. This points to the likelihood of Gliese 12b not being all that habitable at all. I think we need to reserve our excitement for the discovery of habitable Earth size planets, for maybe when they’re found orbiting other types of stars.
RELATED CONTENT
Australian bookseller Booktopia in voluntary administration
3 July 2024
This is sad and concerning news.
The Melbourne based bookseller had become well ensconced in the Australian literary realm, since being founded about twenty-years ago. The company, which is also listed on the ASX (though trading of shares has been suspended), had been struggling financially in recent years though.
RELATED CONTENT
I like your old music better than your new music
3 July 2024
I might say that of U2, whose music I once really liked, especially the stuff they did in the nineties. Achtung Baby. Zooropa. Pop. Even 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. These albums mostly represented their electronic music phase. I’d have them on loop for days at a time.
I drew the ire of friends though who told me I needed to listen to their real work, their earlier stuff. From the eighties. Of course: the eighties. The only decade real music was made, apparently.
But back to U2. I tried to get into their really early stuff, but it wasn’t quite the same, as their… (then) newer stuff. Though I still spin (is that the word I’m meant to use?) New Year’s Day (nothing changes on New Year’s Day…), from time to time, usually in late December. Today though, in 2024 — not 1985, or whatever it was — U2’s more recent music, is worse than their older, nineties, stuff.
Since 2000, nothing by U2 has excited me. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, no. No Line on the Horizon, ditto. Songs of Innocence (remember the iTunes release?), forget it. Songs of Experience, nope. And if I hadn’t have looked it up, I wouldn’t have known U2 released a new album — albeit a re-working of earlier songs — called Songs of Surrender, in 2023.
In contrast, I pre-ordered All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and was outside the music shop before opening, on release day. The guy behind the counter, who (coincidentally) was Irish, and a U2 fan, told me this album was different from their previous three, and would take a few listens to enjoy.
And he was right. I did come to enjoy it. But that was over twenty-years ago. Today though, I barely listen to any U2 (except while writing this). None of it, however, fits into the category of being “gold”, as Nick Heer writes, compared to the new music being recorded by other artists in 2024. A lot of old music might be good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than contemporary work.
But the bashing of recordings made in 2024 goes on. It’s noise. It’s garbage. It’s getting worse. It’s too easy to make. Whoever said that has obviously never tried to record a song. In any era.
This is the reason I continue listening to Triple J, which predominately plays new and alternative music. It’s an Australian radio station, but I think anyone, anywhere, can stream it. The main point being, it is none of this “hits and memories” stuff. These are the good old days, not some past decade. They’re also more Billie Eilish than Taylor Swift, if that makes a difference.
But look, if you can’t stand today’s music, I suggest you lock yourself away with the songs of, say, the Mama’s and the Papa’s, a sixties act, and whose music is surely “golden age” enough for you. Please do so immediately, so the rest of us can go about enjoying today’s new stuff.
RELATED CONTENT