Three Years of Hemispheric Views Feedback
Three Years of Hemispheric Views Feedback:
040 I am furious Andrew doesn’t use “Grand Canion” as a username everywhere because that is so fucking good
Let’s face it, I probably should use that username everywhere.
This is just one of the many things I’ve rediscovered about myself and Hemispheric Views after reading this epic blog recap by @rknightuk. I am incredibly appreciative of the work Robb invested through his committed listening project of reviewing the entire back catalogue of our podcast.
I think Hemispheric Views is a special podcast and I’m glad others think that too.
The Value of Rest
This article was originally written for the September 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus.
Beck Tench is a person whom I follow online. Beck has produced a range of content pertinent to her areas of interest as an academic. One of the topics Beck has written about includes the power of rest and what makes a restorative environment. I’ve always found this interesting. I’m not an academic but I do have a brain that grabs onto new and interesting thoughts, philosophies and approaches.
Rest by definition is restorative. If the body and soul are not being restored in a period of rest - then what is the point? But in this modern world, what is rest?
I think mental rest is almost more important than physical rest for many of us. That is not to diminish physical rest - especially hours of sleep - but many of us as modern knowledge workers are not destroying our bides daily in the way the majority of the workforce once did.
We are, however, pressing our minds so much more, whether that be through higher-level thinking or information absorption. How many RSS feeds, podcasts, news articles, and social networks do you imbibe daily?
The point is, we need to give our brains a break. We need a chance to restore.
Recently I enjoyed a week away in Exmouth - a remote town of Western Australia. Exmouth has bad internet. You may have surmised this when I called into Episode 064: Nested Jackets. On this holiday I was able to step away from the daily hosepipe of information. I allowed my mind a rest from the the thoughts of others and gave it a chance to focus on the here and now, and my own thoughts.
In addition, I gave my body more activity and motion than it usually gets - but an amount that is more healthy than what I typically achieve. This may seem opposed to my thoughts about rest. But what it meant was that I went to bed hours earlier than usual and got more sleep each night.
This additional rest was restorative.
Another element of Beck Tench’s thesis (as best I can tell) is that water is restorative. I experienced this to be true on my holiday. Between pool swims, ocean splashing and reef snorkelling seeing coral fish and turtles, being in and around water was restorative.
What am I trying to say through this essay? Apart from corroborating what I’ve noticed Tench write about, it is an exhortation to myself to not lose touch of the value of stepping away; and to you, to encourage you to take a rest yourself.
The best podcast you’ve never listened to is 3 years old! Happy birthday @HemisphericViews
No Meta apps (Instagram, Threads) load when IPv6 is enabled. Vanguard website doesn’t load when IPv6 is disabled. Argh.
Even when I’m not on Hemispheric Views, I’m on it. Episode 089
Week One Done & Finished With a Flourish
Today I completed my first week at my new job. It’s been a whirlwind, but every day has been better than the previous one.
It’s been so many years since I started a new job that I wasn’t match fit in the process. I’d forgotten how to ‘start over’, so that in itself has been an experience.
Learning what is expected of me, and figuring out how to implement that without getting lost in the minutiae becomes the next challenge. I need to keep my head elevated and focus on the strategic objectives, without getting too deep into the weeds of daily tasks. An interesting juggling act to think about over the coming weeks.
Today, however, as part of NAIDOC Week, a bunch of the team got together to work on an indigenous-style artwork. We were provided with the starting template and then as a team we “completed the dots”. It was a great way to get to know everybody and bond while doing an activity that was quite meditative.
The team is a wonderful group. I haven’t done a team activity for such a long time, and this was a perfect way to end a first week at a new job.
I am also proud of the painting. I think it looks fantastic!
Browser-based Apps Just Aren't as Nice
I can’t believe that 40 years of computer software design has led us to a world where we are all reliant on a range of entirely bespoke browser-based apps. The tech world has really ended up in a basket-case of UI design.
I don’t mind server-based stuff, but I love a native front-end. It’s such a shame that market economics has resulted in us running complex apps in an app that was never designed for that purpose. It’s such a massive kludge, retrofitting entire platforms into a web browser.
Native code kits are sitting right there, and simply not being used.
It saddens me.
Half-way through the first day of a new job. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to go through the rigamarole of induction. 💼
I’m liking Tinylytics - a new project from @vincent. Giving me what I want to know, and nothing more, about site stats for my micro.blog site.
Binance ordered out of Nigeria
This could be a headline from The Onion. You know things are bad when Nigeria decides your business is too scammy to be allowed to operate in its country.
Binance ordered out of Nigeria:
Nigeria…has ordered Binance to “immediately stop soliciting Nigerian investors in any form whatsoever”.
I bet there are many Nigerian Princes happy to once again have a clear run at the market.
Thinking about Slack’s fall from grace. Acquired by Salesforce. 🤮 Squeezed on the business side by Teams with typical Microsoft embrace, extend, extinguish. Squeezed by Discord from the casual side. Slack will probably keep limping on as a sad brand, Yahoo!-style, for years.
Reddit is Enshittified
Social Media Deathwatch II - Mark writes:
When a site tells you they don’t want you using it, except by their captured clients, you should stop using it. All they want is to control you and put ads in your eyeballs, until you explode.
…
Reddit came out of Digg being fed into a woodchipper just because Kevin Rose wanted a little bit of money…
Don’t use closed networks owned by someone else.
The enshittification of Reddit is now complete.
Christian Selig, developer of the best Reddit client, Apollo, is shutting it down after he failed to comply with Reddit’s mafia-style multi-million dollar shakedown effort. Instead of paying the protection money, he is closing Apollo down.
Remember all those cool tips about adding reddit to the end of your search term to find real results? That’s probably not going to be reliable much longer, because I think this is the first—and last—step to Reddit becoming an unmoderated cess pool of spam, devoid of helpful humans contributing good content.
This is a cycle that any venture capital-backed firm seems unable to fight against. The interest of community and users is sacrificed at the altar of money; those high priests seemingly unable to see that it is the community being sacrificed that generates the potential to make money in the first place.
I’ve enjoyed Reddit. Maybe we need to reboot Usenet?
Keane on the RBA's Approach to Inflation
I’m happy to see pressure mounting on the RBA. Not so much even for the decision to lift rates, but on it’s myopic approach to analysis. The economy has changed; it has become more integrated, and duopolies and oligopolies rule the Australian markets. A fundamental lack of competition is allowing the growth of profits, and the RBA currently seems unwilling to accept this as a line of thinking.
Bernard Keane, writing for Crikey, knocks it out of the park on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s approach to inflation.
It’s hard to choose a few highlights from Keane’s article; the entire piece is worthy of reading.
The RBA wants to wish the entire profit-inflation debate away, seemingly enraged at the suggestion that gouging by firms with high levels of market power is a greater spur to inflation than the traditional villain: greedy workers demanding pay rises driving a wage-price spiral.
…
the OECD weighed into the debate, devoting a section of its latest global economic forecasts to the issue. Its data specifically on Australia shows unit profits massively outweighing unit labour costs as a source of inflation.
…
this bout of profit-driven inflation comes at the end of a near-decade of wage suppression, and a historic shift — especially since 2017 — from wages to profit share of income nationally. Merely preserving, let alone strengthening, profit margins in a period of high inflation perpetuates that shift from workers to business.
…
Neoliberals have a blind spot when it comes to market concentration: the core idea that unfettered markets work more efficiently than highly regulated markets means a relative antipathy to effective competition laws designed to protect the very mechanism by which markets work efficiently.
Monetising Latent Skills
Most people have a set of skills that aren’t monetised. These skills are often linked with hobbies or interests. Why don’t people make money from them?
Perhaps there is no discernible market for the particular skill. Maybe the joy is removed when a transactional element is added. For whatever the reason, humans are adept at many things, and we often only get paid for a small aspect of the overall talent inherent within us.
A large part of the economy is built around free labour in the form of volunteering (probably much to the disgust of neoliberals - unless they are receiving the fruits of the labour). Many volunteer in some capacity; whether it’s coaching their kid’s sports team, or sitting on the board of a not-for-profit organisation, or singing in their church choir. I’ve done volunteer work such as this, except singing in the choir. Nobody wants that.
What latent skills do I have that could be put to use for some small financial gain? And what are the associated downsides or limiting factors?
| Skill | Limiting Factor |
|---|---|
| Podcast editing & production | Niche |
| Personal finance training | Liability risk; licensed industry |
| Apple product know-how | Apple Store and search engines |
| Basketball | I’m not a coach |
| Personal productivity & efficiency | YouTube domination |
It’s a shame I’m not a handyperson. Physical labour continues to be one area that is clearly linked to a necessity—and a willingness—to pay.
However, if you see a skill of mine listed that you think could help you, let me know. I may be willing and able to help.
Oh, is that all we have to do? More gold from the guy earning in excess of $900,000 per year from his one job.
“People can cut back spending, and in some cases find additional hours of work that will put them back into a positive cash flow position.”
– RBA Governor Philip Lowe
Neoliberalism Gives Again
The “party” that is neoliberalism has been giving our society gift after gift.
We’ve had corruption and self-interest at the highest levels, as PwC executives had their snouts in the trough on both sides of the consulting equation, giving legislative design advice to government then flipping that information and advising their corporate customers on ways around said legislation.
We’ve had executive wages grow exponentially over recent years, irrespective of their performance, or that of the company they lead. (Hi, Alan Joyce of Qantas!) We see executives engaging more consultants and labour-hire at the expense of full-time wage earners.
We’ve had companies making extraordinary profits, helped by government supports such as JobKeeper (Harvey Norman excelled at this one.)
Yet workers have not benefited from the neoliberalism party. They’ve just had to buy the drinks then clean up the mess the next morning.
Workers have seen their share of the economic pie decrease over time. From ABC News in March 2019:
In the two years preceding 2019, Australian workers received the lowest share of total economic output since the 1950s - less than 47% of GDP. This is a decline of 11% since the 1970s. Corporate profits have increased 10% in that same time.
Wage stagnation—which is one of the design outcomes of the neoliberalist agenda—is another problem. The economy might have a high level of headline employment, but due to low levels of worker organisation (unionisation has been demonised for years) combined with individualised contracts and wages that are set for multiple years in advance, workers can’t leverage the high rates of employment to broker a better deal for themselves. The cards are stacked against them.
Today, we received another gift courtesy of the neoliberalism inherent in our economy. The Reserve Bank of Australia has determined that what our economy needs is yet another interest rate rise. Never mind that this generation of Australians are facing the highest home prices of all time, and that as a share of household income, mortgages are eating more than has historically been the case.
Canceling Netflix and not getting Uber Eats once a week is not going to make a dent in the additional mortgage repayments required of a household. Where is the extra money to be found? Surely we are nearing the point where the RBA is expecting people to find blood from a proverbial stone.
I predict a major economic calamity for Australia, and it’s not going to be pretty. My only hope is that it destroys whatever credibility neoliberalisms might have. At least then, something will have been gained from the misery.
So we are at the point where the feature update for macOS is… screensavers. Better for energy efficiency, and thus climate change, to simply have the screen turn off.