It was a big one for her yesterday, so we took leave from work and went to the Tea Cosy on The Rocks in Sydney to relax and have some scones. Her little blue Prince Cat joined us for the fun.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve known Clara for twelve years now, and been with her for almost ten. Not a day goes by when I’m not reminded how lucky I am. ♡
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s May Day Speech last month touched on the wider implications of the Ukraine invasion, especially for similarly smaller countries facing down much larger ones:
Russia’s attack on Ukraine has undermined the global order: the basic rules and norms for countries, big or small, to interact properly with one another. That means not invading somebody else, claiming to put right “historical errors and crazy decisions”, because that is a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter. It is bad for every country, but especially for small states like Singapore. Our security, our very existence, depend on the international rule of law. That is why Singapore has taken a strong stand, condemned the attack and imposed targeted sanctions against Russia.
Singapore is bigger than I think people realise. For a country a quarter the size of Long Island in New York, its population is higher than that of the Republic of Ireland or any two of the Baltic states combined, and about equivalent to Norway or Finland. Like these counties, it’s understandably concerned about the power imbalance represented by larger states.
Singapore was unique among Southeast Asian counties for its swift, staunch support for Ukraine, and for imposing sanctions against Russia for their illegal and unjustified invasion. I applauded their resolve, though I remember people being surprised at just how far they went.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad’s surreal comments yesterday may provide some context as to why:
But he then went on to say “We should demand not just that Pedra Branca, or Pulau Batu Puteh, be given back to us, we should demand Singapore as well as the Riau Islands, as they are Malay land.”
Applause from the audience interrupted him when he mentioned the return of Singapore, and he made a brief pause.
“However, there is no demand whatsoever of Singapore. Instead we show our appreciation to the leadership of this new country called Singapore,” Mahathir said.
It’s worth remembering Singapore was ejected from the Federation of Malaysia against their will, so these comments make even less sense. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of firing an employee for what you perceive to be acting out, then complaining they’re absent.
🌲 🌲 🌲
I was going to leave it at that, but I can’t shake a few other thoughts. Thanks for indulging me.
Something missing from the analysis of this talk is just how deep this perception probably runs. It’s fair to assume that if public comments like this are bubbling up, they’ve probably already been shared privately behind closed diplomatic doors. Mahathir has been Malaysian PM twice now, and certainly has a reputation for speaking his mind. Granted he may be sabre rattling now to garner attention, but perspectives like this don’t come out of nowhere. It’d also certainly explain Singapore’s strong response.
Malaysia and Singapore are tied at the hip geographically, economically, and culturally, and both were subject to British colonialism. But I think such comments are still irresponsible, especially given the current global situation.
This leads me to the final point that these political leaders, whether they’re in Malaysia, or Russia, or the PRC, or any number of other places, ignore at their own peril. Arrogance leads them to think they alone are responsible for choosing the point of time in which to rewind the tape. Like all irredentist viewpoints, it’s a look backwards (but not too far!), not forwards.
Regardless of whether you think such claims have merit, they’re self-defeating, and should be immediately dismissed on that ground alone. They:
Rob their target people of agency over their future, which human nature shows will only breed resentment, and eventual conflict and death among the people they claim to hold dear (see Russia’s butchering of their Slavic kin). Malaysia won’t take Singapore by force anytime soon, but can you blame Singaporeans for feeling uneasy when a former leader so openly talks about their country like that?
Hamper the opportunity for cooperation, respect, and peace; actions for which a remote community might eventually want to reciprocate in the form of a political union, or other arrangement at some point.
From families to nation states, if you want to drive people apart and keep it that way, violence and words like this are exactly how you do it. You’d think history repeating itself would be a reminder. Take it from someone coming from another former British colonial outpost.
This was food for thought in The Atlantic last week:
[…] the silly fantasy of machine sentience has once again been allowed to dominate the artificial-intelligence conversation when much stranger and richer, and more potentially dangerous and beautiful, developments are under way.
The fantasy of sentience through artificial intelligence is not just wrong; it’s boring. It’s the dream of innovation by way of received ideas, the future for people whose minds never escaped the spell of 1930s science-fiction serials. The questions forced on us by the latest AI technology are the most profound and the most simple; they are questions that, as ever, we are completely unprepared to face. I worry that human beings may simply not have the intelligence to deal with the fallout from artificial intelligence. The line between our language and the language of the machines is blurring, and our capacity to understand the distinction is dissolving inside the blur.
I couldn’t log into a site over the weekend. No matter how many times I refreshed the page, or logged in from another browser, the promised two-factor code never arrived. Can you spot the issue?
The code never arrived because I didn’t press Send code. Once I did, the Send code button was disabled, and the Verify button below worked.
I wondered why such a simple UI perplexed me. Maybe I thought Send code meant “sending the code I just typed to the server”. But I think it’s even simpler than that.
Web forms have trained us to recognise text boxes on the left, and submit buttons on the right. The text box comes first because you have to type something before you can submit it. This is also consistent with the direction English speakers read text (as opposed to Hebrew, for example). Placing these fields in reverse order broke my mental model for how this works, and I was stuck refreshing the page like a schmuck… and not the better kind.
The modern web is replete with such examples, where convention is discarded for stylistic reasons, or through insufficient user testing. We wouldn’t fault someone for being confused by a screwdriver with a bit on the same end as the handle, yet such inaccessible design passes muster on the web.
Clara and I have been diving headfirst into Paul’s discography of late, and now I learn the chap just hit the big 80 yesterday.
I have a lot of memories tied up with Beatles music, and especially Paul’s and George’s. There’s were the soundtrack to my childhood, though their creative output was so vast I’m still learning about albums I never heard before.
Right now his self-titled albums are on regular rotation on our linear tracking, quartz locked, direct drive turntable, and his Ram and Memory Almost Full albums are piped through our Sony Discman to the amplifier. It’s become the highlight of our day choosing which to listen to, and sing along with smiles as we dig in our shared Minecraft world.
I’m realising as I get older how valuable it is to have things in your life that make you happy, and to thank the creators responsible for imparting that joy. Paul will unlikely ever read this, but on the off chance, thank you :) ♡.
My dad made a similar recipe to this, only he blitzed the greens further and dipped bread into the mixture instead, like a savoury French toast. He called it a Freeman’s Reach breakfast after the outer suburb of Sydney we lived in at the time.
I don’t eat breakfast anymore, but this would make a cracking weekend brunch. There’s something about greens with egg, a bit of salt, and classic red Tabasco that’s simply sublime. I might need to try Claire’s twist on this, though I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have a cute, sentient hot sauce bottle. Merchandise idea, perhaps?
I haven’t ever read this put so well:
One of the things that sucks about retro hardware collecting is when you get in over your head on something - you’ve wanted it from a distance for ages, you finally get it, and find out you aren’t capable or dedicated enough to make it go.
I’ve felt that for a few pieces of kit lately. I keep it around in the hopes that one day I’ll skill up enough to work on them.
This has worked out in a few cases. I was ready to throw away a tape drive years ago, then I learned about belts and how to replace them. A set of DIMMs in my Pentium 1 tower suddenly worked when I learned about timings and voltages. Heck, I even learned recently that a beloved childhood toy has a glorified Z80 in it, which gets me a step closer to figuring out how to bring it back to life one day.
(It can also work out for other people too. I bought a full height Gateway 2000 machine to use as a NAS chassis, then cleaned it up and accidentally got it working. The person I sold it to in Brisbane said it was his childhood machine, and he was over the moon that someone had preserved one. I’m still riding a bit of that high as we speak).
But it can also feel demoralising at times. You think you understand something, or that you should understand it, but it’s just out of your grasp. Worse, you want to figure it out yourself. It weirdly feels like you’re letting your childhood self down. As with anything, I guess it just takes a step at a time.
Cryptocurrencies continue their precipitous free fall, assuming they were even worth something in the first place. The bandits and whales are long out, and the marks have switched from arguing about utility to claiming that w-well everything else is a Ponzi scheme too in a desperate attempt to shore up their positions and retain what little credibility they can.
I see some people revelling in the crumbling of this smoke-belching edifice, citing how nauseating some of the conduct of these crypto bros have been. “Have fun being poor” is the quote most often thrown back at them.
I’ll admit there’s a sliver of schadenfreude felt towards some of the worst people in their community. I’ve copped my fair share of abuse from them. But otherwise, all I see is waste. Wasted pension funds, wasted lives, wasted power, wasted time, wasted potential.
I don’t rub my hands with glee at the person who ignored warnings and got hurt; I want them to stand up and get angry at the person who hurt them. Direct that ire into something productive, or at least ensure that this nonsense doesn’t happen again. They have a choice to be a pawn, or to stand up for themselves.
That’s the opportunity I see here. So much engineering, hardware, and mental space was spent on this pointless tech. Let’s start fixing problems again, and relegate scammers to, as conservative Australian MP Michelle Landry so eloquently put it, the anals of history.
Last year I wrote about how weird it is to realise that our perceptions of temperature depend on context (though for some reason I can’t find the link right now).
It also applies to coffee shops. I’ve been sitting here for the better part of an hour, and while I’ve crossed my legs perhaps a bit tighter than I may otherwise, I’m still writing out here with my scarf, hat, and puffy jacket.
If I were at home with this chilly breeze and temperatures, I’d be shivering and whinging loudly enough to Clara that she’d probably put on headphones or head to the library across the street. But out here it’s all good. Okay, mostly good.
Maybe it’s to do with the novelty, or the fact I’ve volunteered for this ridiculous arrangement, or it’s the promise of a caffeinated reward. The neural pathways wired to transmit enjoyment of a hot beverage are more established than the rational, and arguably more important temperature sensors that are telling me to leave this place and sit next to a campfire somewhere. Those primal instincts are also what feed my permanent fight-or-flight anxiety though, so they can take a hike!
I’m sure I have readers among you who also think shivering with 12 degree weather to be cute, given you probably shovel snow off moose antlers (not a nice thing to call your inlaws, but I won’t judge). But for someone who grew up thinking 28 degree humid heat in the evening was a wonderful reprieve from 32, I may as well be camped out on an icy tundra somewhere, complaining about the lack of Wi-Fi reception to a seal that’s had the misfortune of popping up right where I am.
I suppose it’s no different than thinking a mug of coffee is lukewarm in your hand, but would feel hot if poured on your skin.
I’ve written about this before, but I hope the recent Australian elections have demonstrated that people do, in fact, vote for the leader of the country in elections.
Predictable political pedants of parliamentary process and procedure point out the public only place their preferences for local MPs, and parties then nominate leaders. This is true, as much as saying a pie to the face is probably preferable to a hammer.
People vote for MPs who are (often) a part of a party. You won’t vote for someone you otherwise like if you distrust their party leadership. It’s exactly what happened with the current crossbench of independents.
I see where these commentators are coming from; global press treating a parliamentary election like a presidential campaign ignores a lot of important context. But claiming people “don’t vote for leaders” conflates the electoral mechanism with voter intent, which contributes nothing to discussions.
