by Jo Nova
Who would have guessed that giant protected monopolies would devolve into wallowing workplaces where sad-sack un-productive workers accumulate?
“Hazard Harrington” writes from the inside of Big Tech about the terminal decline, the dark moods, despondency and lack of productivity. When the most exulted culture at work are the most victimized, the miserable workers share their misery and nobody gets anything done.
Wokeness is that dead end where everyone can blame everyone else, and no one, apart from white men, can be sacked. So the people who can’t compete collect in a kind of Sargasso sea of civilization.
h/t Bill in AZ
UPDATE: Hazard Harrington’s account is now gone. Archive copy
@HazardHarringto from Inside Big Tech
… COVID/WFH [Working From Home] has totally broken people. They are fundamentally weak, often with no social support outside of work. They’re the people with no children, no spouse. Only a dog or cat for emotional support.
There’s constant talk, even now, about how hard things are for everyone. Often meetings start with going around the room to ask “How is everyone feeling?” Literally everyone else went on sad rants about their lives. “I’m so MAD a white supremacist shot 3 black men in Kenosha!”
It’s bad to feel good:
It’s toxic. When it got to me, I said “Good.” and then a (((lady engineer))) literally proposed that we should not be allowed to answer the question positively. I shit you not. I think it hurt her that I wasn’t as miserable as her.
Thus The Big Tech empires have become Soviet style microcosms — because they are protected by Big-Government and able to swallow up competition in a predatory easy way, they lost the hard edge of competition and gained the luxury of supporting and fostering every cultural soft whimsy, debilitating ideology, and self-defeating dark habit.
The Great Resignation is real. Many employees are leaving for better jobs. Remote work has (so far) resulted in more job opportunities for those working in Big Tech, especially outside of Silicon Valley. And so we backfill those positions, or hire new people, all remote.
We now have employees who have nearly 2 years of tenure who have never met another employee in person, and lives alone in some city away from where the office was.
The churn in good workers leaves the last decent employees training everyone new. They can’t get anything done, but the new employees, probably remote, don’t get enough support to thrive either.
We’re running on the code written in years past. No major new product initatives are being launched.
Bosses have become left-wing therapists
We know Big Tech management will sack people with conservative or outspoken male views, or who just says “toughen up sunshine” because they are not paying enough deference to the Wokish totems. So it follows that the vacuum of realism was filled with red carpet support for anyone as long as they’re “sufficiently left” or a minority. They “can agitate, complain, do no work, and continue employment.” That in turn became the self-reinforcing spiral. The sensible left cajoled each other into becoming militant progressives and there was no one there to put the brakes on.
Management has become “understanding” to the extreme. Anyone who has had a bad sleep can be excused for the day.
“Bring your whole self to work” was the Big Tech mantra. Tell people about your cool hobbies, share your politics (if you’re far left only), share your sex life. This plus the feeling of distance an online-only presence creates has made people braver in speaking their thoughts.
You used to have to have the balls to knock on the CEOs office door, or schedule a meeting. Now you can fire off a nasty Slack message straight to her. People will openly write threads and comments throughout Slack bad-mouthing the higher ups at the company. And they do nothing.
Productivity is essentially zero, or less:
We had a woman who worked for us who was just awful at her job. Could not understand instructions at all. Could not do the job. Barely spoke English. She wasn’t just not productive, she actually dragged the team down. I worked with my Director to finally get her fired after…
…failing her Performance Improvement Program (PIP). HR told us they can’t fire her because she’s Asian and female and in California, that it’s just simply too hard. This was over 5 years ago.
And I’m not productive either. I’m constantly bombarded with anti-white, anti-male, woke propaganda. We’ve even had explicit discussions of assigning less work to URMs (under-represented minorities), because “life is really hard for them right now.” This suggestion was from a lesbian white woman with cats.
As productive as one person can be, you can’t add value when constantly thwarted.
I worry about this apathy spreading to companies that matter. Ones that write software for utilities.
The Great Monopolies have become socialist corporations like the USSR, eaten from within, but running on momentum.
We are going to win this cultural war. Whereas conflict is the air we breathe, the delicate snowflakes of converged Corporate America can’t even handle reading the news headlines. Whereas our morale is antifragile, and we become more determined with every deplatforming, discrediting, and demonetization, their morale is breaking under the weight of their loneliness.
Big Tech leads the way, but the commenters below this extraordinary thread find similar themes in their own workplaces, in academia and “much of American society in general”.
America needs a mass emigration from Big Tech to Free Tech, and Big Tech is working towards that, banning their own most popular commentators. The more they ban the better. But here’s thing, Hazard Harrington is writing about the flaws of Big Tech from his Twitter account. He’s gone from 0 to 17,000 followers in just two months.
If you visit @HazardHarringto — tell him to make his exit plan now to take his readership with him. We all need an escape plan.
Dark Hall Photo by Foundry
Get Woke Go Broke.
https://hallsofmacadamia.blogspot.com/2022/01/get-woke-go-broke.html
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My engineering/design career spanned 45 years. I retired one year ago. When I started there were certain skills one HAD to have mastered. Trigonometry, Geometry, Descriptive Geometry, Math (spelling not so much). Design was done on a drafting table with drafting machines, triangles, pencils. A major leap forward was the handheld calculator that actually did trig. WOW. No more log or trig tables. There were no personal computers. We were EXPECTED to perform, all day, every day. If you didn’t, you were gone.
When I retired all the young engineers could sure drive a computer but couldn’t perform. What was done in days or hours years ago now takes months. You could not find someone to make a decision. “What does the group think?” People that didn’t know UNC from UNF were hired to design complex machines. Weeks of agonizing work to decide what size bolt to use. And many projects, when completed after extended periods, could not be used as they could not be built (no knowledge of machining or fabrication). The big excuse for not getting something done was, “We don’t have the software for that!” I was told a few years before I retired, by my boss, “It is more important what your fellow workers think of you than the job you do!”
This article does not begin to define the issue.
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I remember the transition from calculations, multiplication and division, done on paper, to the modern, speedy slide rule.
Unbelievable.
Now fifty five years on and we have passenger aircraft falling from the sky and large road bridges collapsing in Europe because;
The software did it.
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Amen, and Amen!!!
In a former life, I did a lot of small, light-twin (recip) Air Taxi (often called in lay terminology, a ‘charter’). I do not fly any more, but I still watch a lot of videos produced by someone who uses the handle of “Flight Channel”, where he (or she?) computer animates the reconstruction of an accident. In some cases, the producer is able to use actual recorded conversations between Air Traffic Control and the accident aircraft and flight crew.
Over and over and over, the increasingly common denominator in 21st-Century is the automation, and the lack of basic, “stick-and-rudder” flying skills. My light twins had an autopilot, and, set up correctly, could even do an approach, though the vast majority of the time, I hand-flew the approach, even if it was to minimums.
I am NOT kidding when I tell you I watch the videos this person has produced, and fail to understand how the flight crew cannot discern the nature of the ‘accident-chain-of-events’ unfolding before them. I gawk, slack-jawed, at the dependence upon “the computer” without any thought of verifying what the computer is doing. It is almost as if the crew have been told that the ‘computer is infallible’, whereas the organic crew is prone to incessant errors.
Those two B-737MAX incidents were particularly telling. Mechanically, there was nothing wrong with the two aircraft. A pre-license Student Pilot could have flown and landed either of those aircraft.
One (old) guy’s thoughts; I welcome yours,
With all Regards,
Vlad
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Amen Vlad…so correct, particularly when talking about aviation.
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Agreed Vlad.
What is lacking today is a deep understanding of how things work with little or know ability to recognise or diagnose a problem.
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Hence the frustration of teaching apprentices who insist they ‘don’t need to know all that stuff’, as they can look it up on their hand held misinformation devices a.k.a. ‘smart’ phones.
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Agreed Gary. Without their information devices, they’d be lost.
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Sadly, their phones now appear to be smarter than they are.
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One stage in my career I was in a course series on radiation.
Exam rules were that calculators were allowed – EXCEPT IN THE DOSIMETERY COURSES.
Reason being that, one day, you might find yourself in a situation that required instant recognition of what the counter was telling you
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*no.
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“as if the crew have been told that the ‘computer is infallible’, whereas the organic crew is prone to incessant errors.”
Humans are fallible..
Thing is.. Humans wrote the computer code..
.. and there is no guarantee the person doing the code writing had anywhere near as much knowledge of flying as a seasoned veteran (meaning, time behind the stick, not age 😉
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I ask my grandsons a question, they ask their phone. I ask them how they would go about solving a particular problem, they say they would hire someone to do it. I am mean to them because I won’t spook feed them. The oldest quit a job and said, “Oh well, it was minimum wage.” And then I talk the only child down the street (18) and I know life will go on just fine. And two of my six grandsons join the Air Force. There is hope.
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I worked as an Engineer for Rolls Royce Aero Engines. When Aircraft used hydraulics instead of wires, electronics and computers things worked a hell of a lot better…………
And I grew up with slide rules and logarithms as well.
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but I still watch a lot of videos produced by someone who uses the handle of “Flight Channel”, where he (or she?) computer animates the reconstruction of an accident
Vlad thanks for that, Fight Channel passed onto No2 Grandson in Melnourne who has just started his Aviation Training in Year 11
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I had a lockdown project – an e-scooter. I bought the steel and motor and wheels and fabricated it all except for the front forks and handlebars.
Mate of mine who specializes in EMR hardening said Id done more engineering building my scooter than most young engineers do these days ( I’m an Electrical Eng btw ).
I think hands on for most engineering is important. First job out of uni was working in a proper manufacturing plant, got to see where the GTHOs were built. We had to clamber over machinery, dodge moving car bodies, troubleshoot plcs but you had to rely on and respect the tradies who knew the place backward. Spent many long hours diagnosing stuff with the sparkies help…..
Software? What software…..
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OS, well said. Worked with a hydraulics (water) engineer from Switzerland, Centrifugal Pump designer. After graduating you had to apprentice for 5 years before you became a licensed engineer. And he was good…without computers. Computers allow the less skilled to compete with the more skilled and provide a readymade excuse…in the engineering field anyway.
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Just wait till Tesla get their version of automatic driving released onto the roads1!!! Same issue of a lack of training and understanding combined with the natural human tendency to complacency and accidents will be occurring as the human that was meant to be monitoring the system isn’t.
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Still have my slide rule from when I was at school. I left at the end of year 11 in November 1977 to start work.
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They are ornamental now. Cool to have one in you house on a shelf. Ask them if they can use it…No.
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Unfortunately, starting off as a surveyor in the 60’s we couldn’t use slide rules because they weren’t accurate enough. It was Chambers 7 figure log tables and Shortredes trig tables that we had to use to get the accuracy we needed. The transition to calculators was a huge jump in productivity and another big jump into the computer age.
It amazes me with this woke generation that the emphasis doesn’t seem to be taking pride in your work. As a tunnel surveyor we were either right or wrong and a bad break-through would instantly end you career. You designed your work to be self checking or you repeated your surveys until the error ellipse was so small you knew it was right.
Reliance on computers today has seemingly taken away the requirement to think ahead about how you will manage the problems you will probably encounter on a job, which used to be called “experience”.
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Yallourn Tech in 1966 the book list included Turners 4 figure tables. Kept it for years as an oddity. But with my newspaper round I bought a calculator that could do square roots. I’m not sure where my slide rule went but I recall thinking it was a bit like reading a Vernier caliper or micrometer measuring to thousandths of an inch. Now most measuring instruments are digital, (hated those verniers).
Got an apprenticeship in Instrumentation & Control.
Funny thing – A few yrs ago a friend said, you know you can do square root trig and other operations on your phone calculator. My puzzled look amused him greatly. Just turn it 90 degrees. Doh
Feel free to respond if you’ve just tried this.
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… I can still lay my hands on both my Hemmi 255D slide rule and it’s instruction booklet (hmm the booklet is starting to look a bit faded). I know exactly where my Sharp EL514 Scientific Calculator and its instruction booklet both are: I can see them.
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…self checking… Exactly! Every good engineer has a little voice in their head always saying, “Where is your mistake, you know you made one, now find it!”
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Today, if the cash register in a shop breaks down or there is a power failure, the cashier is incapable of calculating the correct change.
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I laugh my head off when I buy some items at a local store and the Assistant is trying to add the items up. I stand there and say $9.64…………..The Assistant then looks at me and says, “How to you know that?”…………I then say that I added the items up in my head. Mental Arithmetic……….The Assistant is astounded when she finishes with the Calculator and gets the same amount…………Doooooooh !!!!!!!
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It’s both cruel and fun 😀
The real fun begins when the truly innumerate get wrong answers on their calculator(s). I had to make one SYT do it four times before the answer was correct.
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In Aldi the registers do not calculate change. The ability to do basic mental arithmetic is part of candidate screening.
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I found my old circular slide rule in a drawer the other day! I do wish I could remember how to use it! Maybe if I Google it ………
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Do some simple multiplication and divisions, that’ll bring it all back.
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Get Woke Go Broke has its equivalent in retail. I called it SASSAP – Solve A Situation Start A Problem. We had a couple of instances of someone bin diving in our industrial waste bins parked in our dock area one week. Management made the decision on the Friday afternoon that in future bins were not to be put outside over-night and instead dock staff would put them out when the dock opened at 7:30am. Mid-morning Monday and dock staff got concerned bins hadn’t been emptied and the mornings rubbish was already causing issues on the dock – loose bags and shopping trolleys of rubbish creating obstructions. Call to garbage contractor confirms they did their usual run at 6:30am and as no bins on show kept going with next pickup due Wednesday as per contract. A lot of energy wasted setting up area for excess rubbish then time spent packing bins to maximise amount of waste each got packed with. Took the whole week to catch up to normal.
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That’s like when the cat gets into the dairy and everyone moves out all the milk and cheese, instead of just moving the cat.
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I work in the oil industry, for a large service company which, I think, at some point, was actually worth respecting in terms of personnel, and innovative product development. A handful of people in my office are responsible for multiple projects going massively over time, and over budget, yet, somehow, when the finished product is finally commercialised, they all celebrate, clap each other on the back, and say what a tough, but successful project it was. If they were developing something that no one else had ever built, I could understand, but they are not, they are assembling various off-the-shelf components, with about 10% customised hardware.
There is no penalty for bad decisions (they are blamed on people who have left the company), there is no penalty for terrible decision making, terrible communication, and terrible engineering. Poor design leading to premature failures are blamed on “improper maintenance”, or external parts suppliers whenever possible, only facing up to mistakes when there is no option. There is, as far as I can tell, no one able to solve this, and a few people have tried. Somehow the silver-tongued perpetrators of failure get away with it again, and again.
Everything now seems to be incredibly superficial, ticking boxes to satisfy managers, while accountability and responsibility have evaporated.
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“….ticking boxes to satisfy managers…”
a few years ago I was picking up my daughters little Ford Fiesta from the dealer after a small repair. As I tried to leave I heard a scraping noise and got out to have a look. A few components that had to be shifted t get to the work hadnt been bolted back on and were just dangling under the car.
I went back in and the service guy assured me all was well because he had a form and the boxes for work complete and checked by supervisor were both ticked. I presented him with reality and suggested his guys just ticked whatever boxes he wanted ticked and that had little to do with real work. He kept looking at his form and looking at the car and seemed totally confused.
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One of the important aspects of our new social order is the ability to dismiss any discussion of problems with an excess of media blabber which dilutes the content under examination.
T.V., radio and print media all use the tactic of Verbalism where barely relevant material is packed into a media release to give volume to the worker’s output and thus give the impression of relevance.
Truth and reality are now hidden from sight in case people begin to see that they are living a miserable lie.
There’s Never been a free lunch and anyone who says there is, is part of the new Wokeness that has torn the guts out of society.
Let’s get our feet back on the ground.
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Yes, please get your feet back on the ground.
I’ve never been to Australia, though I have a married child living there and would have visited by now had the pandemic not occurred. Woke is not a good look for anyplace and apologies in advance, as one might take offense, the following creation is from Zerohedge.
Do you come from a land down under
Where women hide and men knuckle under
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the covid thunder
You better run, you better take cover.
Buying a mask from a man in Brussels
He had an issue with his heart muscles
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vaccine sandwich
And he said:
I come from a land down under
Where pfizer flows and men knuckle under
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the covid thunder
You better run, you better take cover.
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Too true, alas!
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So true but what a change from 1982 when a rich but likable con-man beat the elitist New York Yacht Club both in the courtroom and on the water. Alan Bond started a yachting revolution with his winged keel resulting eventually in those magic CARBON FIBRE craft that fly over the water faster than the wind propelling them. If only the bird chompers could be so efficient.
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… we’re still working on those.
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Quite a few sailing craft can sail faster than wind speed. Has been that way for many moons.
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Yes, my son-in-law sails one his father designed. All to do with negative pressure on the leeward side of the sails augmenting the poisitive pressure on the windward side. Needs some clever sail trimming though but I have seen about thirteen knots in a 10 knot breeze.
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Now we get to the key distinction between Americans and Australians. This is the point where many Americans find it difficult to reconcile with the outlook of Australians. This is where the distinctions in democracy become very important to understand
Americans view any form of tyranny as bad. Americans, in the whole, view any effort to crush your freedom as a negative. Australians only view tyranny as bad if it is not applied equally. As long as everyone suffers the punishment of government equally, the pain is approved.
In Australia, government oppression is only bad if it is applied unequally.
If every Australian is forced to have their right hand removed to comply with government rules, then the removal of the hand is permitted. Everyone gets in line at the hand-chopper. However, if someone jumps out of the line and tries to escape, because they don’t want their hand removed, all the other people in line will chase him down, bring him back and hold him down while the government hand-chopper does the removal.
The American looks at this mindset with jaw agape and says, “F**k you, my hand isn’t getting removed, and neither should anyone else’s; and I will fight the government hand-chopper if it means stopping them, even if you are okay with your hand getting chopped.”
Generally speaking, the line of Americans to get their hands chopped will look scornfully as the two-handed rebel departs, but they accept his decision. (Although this outlook is changing in America – SEE HERE)
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Im australian but clearly should have been born in the USA.
I think you understand the USA better once you understand it was established to allow religious freedom, to escape european kings and tyranny.
The Americans also had to throw the British out and had a substantial Christian-focussed Constitution, its form of govt is focussed on Christianity being the core of society.
Gun ownership also allows the ability to defend itself inherently, and has a codefied Bill of Rights. Australia is still a penal colony, and weve seen that in Victoriastan very clearly.
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Australia is not a penal colony ferrgoodnesssake. But we are the luckiest country on Earth. We’ve never fought for our freedom on our own soil from a tyrannical ruler and it shows. We are complacent, asleep at the wheel. An easy target…
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Exactly, no more than the US is still a slave colony. Things have developed a bit of the last few hundred years.
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“But we are the luckiest country on Earth.”
Always gives me a laugh..
Lucky if you last the day without being bitten by a poisonous spider, some venomous snake, a fire ant or thousand, a crocodile or a drop bear.
Anyway, as you say, maybe if Aussies had fought for their freedom they would appreciate it more.
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As Clive James is reported to have said;
The problem with Australia is not that it was founded by convicts but by prison warders.
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I wouldn’t look to America for guidance.
Currently they are a mess and guns have not helped resolve the situation; there are gun deaths every day and they also feature heavily in crime.
Both the U.S. and Australia have been taken over using gun free tactics over fifty years??
Any society wanting a proper democracy needs to see the problem and act on it.
We Must bring all corrupt politicians and Public Serpents to trial and dispose of them to disincentivise unacceptable behaviour.
That’s what the guns were meant for in the USA but so far corruption reigns supreme.
Go CDC, FBI, Washington Swamp and state swamps.
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Yeah, but, Kalm, that’s not the whole of the scenario, if you understand what Yamamoto said when he did NOT want to invade the USA (in WW2) because of ‘a gun behind every bush and tree’. We presently have Chine on the world stage as an aggressor.
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Nobody would want to take over the U.S. in its present state.
It’s going to take a long time to fix this mess.
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Rubbish. And you know damn well it is.
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Change the analogy from chopped hands to stolen votes.
Last presidential election many US citizens had their votes dismissed/stolen.
What did they do about it? O’Biden is still “President”.
The corruption is so entrenched that no individual should be blamed for not being able to correct the problem.
The treachery and abuse of position has made it very hard to claw the way back to a working democracy; and that stands for both the U.S. and Australia.
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A report at American Thinker tells of a Danish newspaper that has apologised for not asking more questions and simply repeating the government’s daily chook feed on covid, like the case figures. Big Tech and most of the mainstream media are guilty of toeing the line on so many topics. Whether it is the tech people or the journalists or the “moderators” of our comments, the result is that genuine information often gets banned.
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Most of us know what’s causing the whole saga of the declining standards in reporting the truth and the facts. People who are still falling for the MSM and political talk are becoming more and more insulated from any dissenting thought, assuming they have any left in them. For a society to be well it must be able to question authority and get back serious answers. Instead people are in effect becoming more like drones. It’s part and parcel of the delusion resulting from mass formation psychosis. Some might snap out of it but who knows if others are being turned into fresh drones. The net proportion of the population and the trend who are drones are unclear. Some say more and more people are waking up but given the way people go about their lives in public, it’s hard to see how. It might take a long while before we can make a definitive conclusion as to whether we see things actually getting worse (eg, non vaxxers being targeted, abused, etc.) and we enter a really dark period, or better as we escape such a dark period.
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I would think carefully about accepting an apology. These woke reporters and woke people in general suffer a fundamental character flaw. It’s unlikely they can be reformed and quite likely they will return to their former ways or may not even be genuine in the first place
There are examples of reformed Leftists such as Thomas Sowell but they are rare. He studied under Milton Friedman while Thomas was still a Leftist but they were both open minded enough to accept the other’s opinion and eventually Thomas became a great conservative.
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My daughter, and her partner work in big tech in the USA, and a lot of what was said in this article is true. However, they enjoy their WFH, extra days off etc, and productivity has not been affected. Remember that in the USA 4 weeks annual leave is a rarity, and some of these measures address that.
One thing that is not mentioned in the article is the hiring process – this can extend to up to 40 hours of interviews, presentations of past work, and testing. I doubt anyone on this blog would have experienced that.
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My guess is that a lot of those 40 hours would be assessment by potential co-workers, I experienced some of that when applying to work for a very prestigious company, maybe one factor in promoting political mono cultures.
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I’ve had to do various exams as part of job interviews, not 40 hours though.
I’ve also had to sit in on some parts of the graduate (electronic/electrical/mechanical engineer) recruitment process for the company I work for. Assessment of technical aptitude and problem solving skills have been greatly reduced to make room for other matters, including a section on “diversity and inclusion”.
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Let me know how long moderation took. I have other things to do.
[Five minutes too long for you ?]AD
[Replied to your email Geoff! – Jo]
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[Five minutes too long for you ?]AD
Well he doesnt work for big woke tech, you know….
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It’s happening virtually everywhere, not just at the big tech companies. Now we have the COVID-19 alarmist propaganda to make matters worse causing a massive disruption not only to productivity but also the basic essentials, such as the supply chain. I wonder how long this has to go on for before our economy collapses. It might take many years but surely most people will wake up before then and do something to stop the rot starting at the top; or will they? Only time will tell.
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Great, great article! I especially liked; We are going to win this cultural war. The world is crying out for more positivity and a lot less wuflu chat!
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You can read this story in the form of a Novel by Ben Elton.
Elton comes from a Apocalyptic side of the argument in his novels, yet he appears to me to explore both the good side of human nature and the bad. A bit like a Green Activist version of Aynn Rand.
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A good read with many parallels to today’s situation.
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I worked in lIT for many years in large organisations. I often wonder what has become of the people who spent their time at meeting or wrote procedures. They thrived in the 3 large outsourcing companies where the “ Lets just fix it” attitude was Heresy. People who could delay projects were valued employees especially if a procedure had to developed.
In my experience the rot started around 25 years ago in the IT world due to outsourcing and their employees not caring.
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Office temping introduced the rising damp in the office world. Vividly remember arriving on holiday to Brisbane at Central railway station. Came out to street level and it was pouring with rain. Standing under cover of building surveying the wide open courtyard to the intersection and trying to judge traffic light sequence so could dash out and across the road. While waiting a 20something dashed out from the throng and ran to the street side letterbox into which she thrust a mass of letters before dashing back. As she came back a couple of them that had stuck in the opening fell on the ground and another spectator pointed this out to her. In a crisp English accent she responded “Not my problem, I’m only temping” and disappeared through the crowd.
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In a way she was right, it wasn’t her problem; it was the managers problem and the manager ought to suffer the consequences for taking on a temp with that sort of attitude.
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Another way to look at it is that she was 98% efficient. Not bad really.
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or use the 80/20 rule, which is certain situations, such as building of a plane is tantamount to a complete fail.
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My son in law works from home. I cannot imagine what would become of him if he did not have a wife and kids there when his shift is over and he comes out of his room.. I also cannot imagine him discussing his “feelings” and personal life with anyone. He had to pay for upgrading his modem, renting a bigger apartment with a dedicated work room and so on. He says he can tax deduct these expenses – WFH for some is a boondoggle to reduce expenses.
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I used to run my business from home for the same reasons. In the end, the home expense deductions didn’t amount to a hill of beans, they were more work than they were worth.
It was better financially and productively for me to rent a small office and work from there.
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Looks like Twitter has unpersoned @hazardhariingro page does not exist.
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@hazardharringto typo previous post
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Perhaps the ‘n’ was inadvertently left off the link.
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Coming from the article at the top I get a not found, typing (or copy/paste) @HazardHarringto at twitter worked for me.
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It does work….
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I remember first becoming aware of the concept of ‘equity’ after learning about the events at Evergreen college in 2017.
Silly me thought it was something I was gaining from my mortgage.
Imposed equality of outcomes rather than equal opportunity.
(I suspect a philosophical underpinning of vax mandates.)
I remember informing unaware friends about the events at Evergreen and being told, “oh, that’s just a fringe academic minority, nothing to worry about.”
It took three years for this contagion, that had infected nearly the whole of academia unnoticed by the general culture, to infect the world.
Now it is policy to my national and local government.
This is a disease, like covid, that governments and tech autocrats , and what ever is pulling their puppet strings, want desperately to institutionalize.
Wokeness is a highly infectious social contagion.
Possibly endemic.
I fear it will will do decades long damage to the organism.
Likely intended.
“Build back Better’ implicitly requires destruction.
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OMG, I just saw Mark McGowan with his Aboriginal interpreter. Words fail me.
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John, in the name of cultural heritage and all things woke, the Education Dept does not teach aboriginal children in the outback settlements English. When they choose to go to school these kids learn in their own language. They grow up speaking a mix of pigeon English and their native tongue. The consequences of this is that they are unemployable and cannot function in modern society. The Education Dept, says these people don’t want to leave the settlements, therefore there is no point teaching them English. They are effectively cut off and isolated from all the good things in western society.
We don’t need to talk about the others things that go on in these settlements, violence, alcoholism, child abuse, gambling. Our former Premier wanted to close these settlements down and transfer the residents to country towns where there were real schools, hospitals, jobs etc , however the caring compassionista class saw this as racist and howled him down.
Mark MacGowan’s interpreter was speaking to these people, and yes , it leaves you shocked and speechless.
210
Cut off save for forced injections?
100
“Our former Premier wanted to close these settlements down and transfer the residents to country towns… however the caring compassionista class saw this as racist and howled him down.”
The former premier made the right decision to drop the idea. Virtually every country that has moved people to improved living conditions has eventually regretted it. Governments are in no position to successfully complete such a complex task. In the end, its better to let people find their own way.
11
It is no wonder that Aborigines find it hard to gain employment when they speak as they do. I remember when we first had children I objected to the clucking aunties who coo cooed the baby. I told them to speak English so the kid could learn it rather than a useless language. It seems some Aborigines speak a bastardised form of English when it would be far easier to speak ordinary English. I have the feeling they are happy to be different and unemployable. Of course there are plenty of white youths who after 13 years of “education” cannot string a sentence together but with assistance can apply for taxpayer funds at Centrelink; that being their only achievement. The same youths with a little extra assistance and various additional taxpayer funding can go to university where they will gain, if they are a minority of some sort, a degree in a humanity which could lead to a public service job or even into teaching the next generation of drones.
I am becoming a cynic but with justification.
192
Maybe we are all now aboriginals to the Globalists, forcing us into dependency, only to leave us alone when it suits them.
80
Yep, truly atrocious. Next he’ll have the Asian version of his speech. “Preese risson to Plemier. You get jab you no die.”
71
How can you have an aboriginal interpretor if there is no single aboriginal language? I thought the lack of single language was part of the culture like no written language, no wheel, no permanent dwellings in the halcyon days before the Euros landed.
50
Consider that the ‘participation trophy’ resulted in a generation of emotionally fragile workers who never experienced conflict and wokeness is a way to capture their hearts and minds by focusing on fake emotional conflict, rather than on real political conflict.
180
Less attention on outcomes, success and achievement because that implies a competitive streak, which is frequently frowned upon. Last year our daughter achieved Year 7 Dux at her school (a term the kids still use) yet her award officially stated “Most Outstanding Academic Commitment in Year 7″. At the ceremony, many woke awards were handed out based on a point-scoring ‘participation’ system.
70
In woke organisations it is very obvious who are the quota placements and who are in positions because of merit.
Of course, as time goes on, and we are just about at that point now, there are fewer and fewer merit placements and a vast majority of senior management is awarded according to quota. Of course, everyone knows someone was a quota placement and they even know it themselves but no one dares criticise or they’ll be cancelled.
It is typically characterised by incompetence, lack of deep (or any) knowledge or experience and taking credit for or stealing the work of others. In the scientific field I have seen quite young people (e.g. 30 yrs age) promoted to heads of department who have impossibly high publication records but because they were superb political operators and knew how to “work the system” managed to get their name attached to papers they had very little or nothing to do with but they were a manager of a particular area and demanded their name be on it.
Strangely, the quotas don’t seem to apply for hard, dirty, menial tasks like garbage collection or sewer cleaning. It’s OK for that to be strictly the domain of straight, white, working class males
200
Anyone else notice that diversity is not applicable in any female dominated sector or in any business owned by a woman?🤔
151
A previous version
“R.V. Jones in “Most Secret War”
Around about 1930
“T.C. Keeley was my tutor and in addition to physics he offered wisdom. He warned us that if another war broke out there would be s disastrous period for six months while those who had reached high positions on inadequate abilities in peacetime would have to be replaced”
00
Sounds like a start on the problem
“‘The days of state-run TV are over’: Nadine Dorries clobbers the BBC with a £2billion funding cut as she freezes the licence fee for two years, with a row over ‘Left-wing bias’ threatening to spill out into all-out war with the Corporation”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10406491/Nadine-Dorries-hits-BBC-2bn-funding-cut-freezes-annual-licence-fee-charge-2024.html
100
She is making a big mistake by only ‘freezing’ their assumed ‘rises’ in fees.
The media and everyone on the left will target her just as if she 100% defunded it, which is what she should have done.
Now she will take the brute attack as if she 100% defuned it, when in reality, she didn’t remove a single cent. All she did is stop giving them even more money!
100
The BBC Licence Fee should be got rid of and the BBC should raise their own funds from viewer subscriptions and advertising. Similar here. The ABC should have their Taxpayer funding stopped and to now get their own viewer subscriptions and advertising to survive. Not too sure about the SBS though……………………..
60
Get rid of all state run media. It always serves Big Government, not the people.
160
“The BBC Licence Fee should be got rid of”
But… what about Peppa Pig !!! (that’s what they threatened last time wasn’t it !)
30
Chiefio’s suggestion
“Rename the BBC (since “broadcasting” is just sooo 1950s) to BritFlix Corp. and have it do BBC stuff on a Netflix subscription model. If their stuff is Really all that good, ought to be no problem tapping into the global Empire and Former Colonies wallets… with ZERO tax support…”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/01/16/w-o-o-d-16-january-2022/#comment-153794
80
Bill Gates will make up the shortfall. He gives them a hefty cheque now .
70
A conservative commentator, I think it was Dennis Prager or Paul Joseph Watson said that what we see with many younger woke people is a consequence of the fact that they had working mothers and the children were mostly raised in child care centres. In such places the only way a child could attract attention of the carer was to scream the loudest and have the biggest tantrums. This today is reflected in the poor socialisation of young, woke people.
210
I can imagine that Rudd was one of those children attracting attention by screaming the loudest and having the biggest tantrum.
140
I know a couple of blokes that were at boarding school with him…
20
It’s amazing how the Left claim to love “diversity” but as with everything of the Left, the opposite is true.
Leftists want 100% conformity of opinion, culture and everything else. Anyone who is diverse enough to be different, is ruthlessly cancelled.
210
woke is thankfully self limiting.
Case in point, should current tensions in the Ukraine result in a global stoush where power goes off and cities disappear, those of us who “know stuff” and can aim straight and allow for drift, will survive.
Cant say the same for clueless snowflakes.
Although in some respects, its not thier fault – we have a history where normalicy was well, normal, but the wokists have grown up encouraged to be victims in a paralysed-with-stupidity world and working environment.
When I hear the most recent wokism on tv I start laughing, my 16 yo daughter who has been unfortunately exposed to wokism, scowls at me, which just makes me explain why its nonsense. Private school has limited the wokism a fair bit, but not enough.
You have to cut the cancer or wokism out, you can’t just pat it on the head and give it a participation certificate….
70
Sadly, we knew two people fitting this profile who took their own lives during lock-downs in NSW, both in their forties. Another (close friend) died of a stroke while cooped up in a London apartment.
130
Sargasso Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea
“The Sargasso Sea (/sɑːrˈɡæsoʊ/) is a region of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre.[1] Unlike all other regions called seas, it has no land boundaries.[2][3][4] It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Ocean by its characteristic brown Sargassum seaweed and often calm blue water.[1]
Owing to surface currents, the Sargasso accumulates a high concentration of non-biodegradable plastic waste.[26][27] The area contains the huge North Atlantic garbage patch.[28]”
70
Know this seems far from the thread topic but Russia’s posturing over the Ukraine will diminish the influence of globalists/multinationals/oligarths/China
Wokism is passé. Cannot squeeze blood from a stone
21
This should mess up nicely
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russias-other-european-invasion/
11
I couldn’t believe the final paragraph werein the author praises the Biden Administration for starting a conversation about how to respond to this Russian corruption of enlisting European elites. The Biden family are poster children of corrupt elites taking bribes from beyond the old iron and bamboo curtains.
110
Good grief yes! Hunter Biden on the board of Ukraine’s energy corporation!
That rubbish in the new atlanticist is the sort of stuff that will lead Europe to war with Russia, and as anyone with a clue points out, America won’t spend warm bodies to help them. (as usual)
Putin is saying the Yanks must not take Ukraine into NATO and must not put missiles in Ukraine.
America is saying Russia must compromise..
WTF!
20
Yep! So passé in fact that it’s now SOP.
Tony.
110
How will you respond to the twin threats of Russian intimidation and Chinese economic domination?
Wokism is a nicety
07
Ha ha ha!
I can’t believe you’ve got this this @r$e backwards.
The Chicomms and the Russians now see this is their big opportunity.
The now perceive us as so woke that we actually believe that they wouldn’t dare do anything that would upset the applecart.
And our Military are also at the point of now having to ask the wokeys if it’s okay that we do something to try and stop them.
And the wokeys response is that we all take a Bex and have a good lie down, and please, don’t do anything to upset them.
A shot won’t get fired in anger here, and woebetide anyone on our side who fires a shot, They’ll be up before The Hague quicker than you can say ….. whatever it is that the wokeys allow you to say now.
The attitude that Joanne has written about here is now so all pervasive, that it has ‘infected’ everyday life. (as you so evidently perspicaciously understand)
Tony.
260
Politics get in the way of things (see below). Wait to see what happens if Russian invades the Ukraine. Nothing and everything. We will not suffer the terror of the cold war again. Old people remember. There is no surrender. MAD is secure. Putin is fighting an old war that we learned is unwinnable. He is tilting at windmills. He wants to beat up on Ukraine? Yawn. He wants to dominate more countries? Yawn. He wants a new arms race? Yawn. He craves inclusion but will earn isolation
China is another story
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/matt-gurney-on-military-sidearms
16
Australian police forces went through the same BS in selecting firearms. Each making out they are special and different and going through protracted evaluations and individual purchases losing economies of scale. In VIC it (of course) was even stupider. Instead of buying the complete system, the made the pistol purchase and THEN started the process for belt/holster/mag carrier.
Keeps public servants in jobs.
70
And their AR-15;acquisition was an utter disaster and the Police Minister was incapable of explaining in Parliament how they managed to spend something l8ke $60,000 per rifle for something that was worth about $1500, even allowing a little extra for spare parts.
70
Available comparisons
From a cartoon in an email
“Dear Vaxxers
Let us know when the pandemic has got serious enough for Joe to close the southern border.
Until then (censored)”
I could mention Novak here
10
Convince a society to emulate your society, you have conquered that society without firing a shot.
Assimilation.
I think we’re here.
I’m just hoping there’s a Seven of Nine.
Then being Six of Nine might be tolerable.
80
I can’t imagine anything worse than working in a woke organisation with no diversity of opinion present or acceptable.
But all of Australia is now a gigantic woke organisation.
Just look at the hostility toward alternative points of view.
The groupthink is remarkable.
I used to wonder how evil organisations like the National Socialists got into power. Now thanks to my observation of groupthink in Australia and around the word, it is no mystery to me. Another word for it is mass formation psychosis, and just look how the Left are trying to delegitimise that concept.
190
Hippydom on it’s last legs
40
Our small little company does a lot of work with/for the big woke American companies. It is a minefield trying to communicate with them on technical matters as they so often suddenly twist a technical discussion into a woke/feelings discussion at random junctures. Those of us who do this interface work usually get away from it by reminding them that we are Australians and so “politics/weather/woke issue of the day” are different here and usually we can get the topic back on course. Sometimes we have to resort to talk about crocodiles and giant spiders which is about all of them know about Australia other than the fact that we all talk funny.
140
I was watching a CNN report about Australia, and it lasted around five minutes or so, and they actually wanted an Australian to speak on the matter, so good old woke CNN interviewed two or three Australians.
Every time an Australian came on to speak, CNN inserted ….. subtitles.
Tony.
140
I was doing a course and tour of Canada and the US, which included a tour of operating mines.
Pulled in to a servo to fill the rental and went to buy a packet of smokes. I found a brand “Bucks Lights” was closest to the Winnie gold’s and asked the lady for same, got Camel, tried again got Rothmans than Marlboro, I was pointing at the packet two
metersyards away from me. After a couple of minutes of banter a kind fellow patiently waiting behind me stepped forward to clarify the issue, apparently fluent in Australian. He spoke what I assume was American to the lady and I got a packet of Marlboro back, never liked Marlboro but it had a more pleasant after taste.The point. We point with an accent.
Tip 1. Never try and go behind the counter in any American business, ever!
But this was in Nevada which is the education centre before venturing into Texas.
60
going behind the counter could have resulted in a hole where your head used to be….
00
mmm its different product for a different market there in the US. We and most Brit related/invaded countries are tuned to straight Virginia coffin nails and the rest of the world to Blended which has a much smaller Virginia component.
20
Yes, you have an accent, but for what it is worth, at least this American can understand you. My wife and I watch a lot of Netflix, etc these days, including many foreign language films with sub titles. Neither of us speaks anything but Midwest Americanese.
A lot of the movies we watch are made in UK and Ireland. Sometimes we look at each other after unsuccessfully translating what they said and bemoan the fact that these supposed English speaking films don’t have subtitles.
I’ve also caught myself asking her to turn up the volume when it doesn’t matter a whit with only subtitles to understand.
10
You have to watch “Bondi Rescue” to learn the lingo proper.
00
They do that with the Jocks as well…………..LOL
30
reminds me of this clip –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0m4rcx0of4
20
The irony is they claim to desire diversity – as long as it fits into their narrative, which is the antithesis of diversity. In a nutshell they are sick and need help but we can’t say that as it will offend them. Reality bites.
30
“Workers at Big Woke Tech Monopolies are miserable”
Good!
140
Trouble is… that they want everyone else to be at least as miserable as they are. !
60
and to a certain extent they are succeeding thanks to the vaccine propaganda still being spread by the MSM, politicians, etc.. We need to be strong and hold fast to avoid being swept up by the mass formation psychosis. It’s not going to be as easy as most people think. For example, there will be a lot of peer pressure to confirm. Resist at all costs.
40
The problem with all companies can be defied in two words, Human Resources!
100
defined
20
neither Humane nor Resourceful
50
This is the result when you have to disenfranchise almost 90% of your workforce to appease the vocal, militant minority.
The war is over though – common sense was the first casualty and now most folks self-censor lest they be terminated. Orwell predicted this in Animal Farm…
“They had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”
60
This problem isn’t just about Woke, it’s about employing millenials.
I once attended a meeting with a small Sydney-based business that was 95% staffed by millenials. The offices were all potted plants, giant beanbags and ‘breakout areas’. I was attending as an advisor in business development and project management.
The staff was lovely and I found it amusing how intrigued they were by this 60yo (at the time) in their midst. Subsequently, I was struck by how little they understood the project they were planning but also business in general – things like finance and marketing. They were genuinely interested in learning more and they showed great respect for my experience, but I left feeling pretty pessimistic about where they were headed.
Perhaps it goes without saying that the whole enterprise survived on government funding.
This was about seven years ago, before the Woke virus had infected such companies. I hope they made it.
90
My father wa a quantity surveyor which he started as a career after serving in the air force during the war. He always used a slide rule which was accurate enough for his work, but most of the time did his calculations by pen and paper and mental arithmetic (he never ever used a computer). My first calculator in Mining was a hand cranked machine and my first electronic calculator was a Texas instruments on which I programmed geophysical calcs. I also worked with a Swiss Engineer on a stability failure of a quay wall and he insisted on doing all the calcs by hand – as “I dont know what is in the program on the computer or who put it in so would not be able to stand up in court and verify that I was correct!”
Even today – if I have a calculation to do – I do it by approximation using mental arithmetic so that I know what range the answer should be in – then use the computer program. If you cant do any of that – then I dont want to approve your work. Cheers
140
Yes.
50
I started with a Facit
20
A Facit calculator?! I used one of those in dim far-distant days.
20
Then a Monroe and then started on an Elliot 803 computer, with perforated tape.
20
Remember how computers were supposed to speed things up and humans would be able to work a 3 day week. In fact it’s just made it easier to spread decision making so that the most trivial decision requires 3 meetings and a staff survey.
I also blame the notion of ISO standards, where people with no idea of the product or service you deliver interrupt your business to do audits that confirm that you follow procedures that they also don’t understand.
They have no idea whether you procedures are actually more likely to produce a quality product than just letting the smart girl in the corner get on with her job.
But it certainly keeps a lot of mediocre workers in employment.
Those that can, do
Those that can’t, teach
Those that can’t do or teach, audit others
50
I recall trying to obtain CE certification for one of the scientific instruments we produced, back around 2002. It was an epically-aggravating process, working with an inspector who saw danger in everything. I doubt he would have been comfortable granting approval for a sheet of paper. At one point, I was ‘discussing’ his problems with a sliding door that he thought posed a risk of trapping fingers. I offered several perfectly workable solutions but he was totally committed to removing the slightest trace of risk.
I the end, I lost it and asked how it was possible that a sliding door was a danger to skilled and highly-trained lab staff, when anybody with an IQ slightly above a cricket could bowl down to Bunnings and buy themselves a chainsaw. No training required.
We got the certification in the end, but not without a fight. That was when I started to think operating a manufacturing enterprise in Australia was just too bloody hard and started planning my exit.
70
From back when I was a fly on the wall.
I went to talk to the bloke that did the mechanicals that I didn’t do (rated by a lot as the best mechanic in town) and his son said
“He’s working on our quality assurance paperwork”
As they did the maintenance on the town fire engines.
Back when “Quality Assurance” was all the rage and required.
Dad had a short fuse with idiocy and I learned that there was an explosion and a pronouncement that
“30 years of repeat business is all the bloody QA we need”
And the tide went in and out a few times and the Fire Brigade got the notice to
“Take it to where the bloody thing will be fixed”.
By then the Mad Magazine complete the slogan had cut in –
“Quality Assurance doesn’t Assure Quality”
60
I once visited a client ( construction company) and they had signs on every door in the place: “Warning: this door may open unexpectedly.” They wouldn’t let me start my presentation until someone had taped my laptop’s power cord to the carpet.
20
Looking back, this has been a long march to wokism, the plot was lost in all industries when Admin separated into HR.
We lost the ability to sack the idiots and the useless , instead had to “relocate” them, which created two new departments we call, Training and Safety, these were literally built from the people who could not walk the walk.
I have watched these three departments expand into the self-sustaining entities, they literally book themselves into courses where they learn how to hinder progress, turn a 5 minute job into 2 hours. I am sure there are forests dedicated to paper for sustaining these three departments and the technicoloured paperwork they spew out. The Ark ink cartridge recycling is in existence because of these three.
We live in a copy paste society, no original thought, history repeating!
This was written on word and copy/pasted to here.
100
Agree… but you left out ‘Quality’, the department for those that aren’t.
70
Sorry, Can’t use the word Quality anywhere near those three.
40
😀
20
It’s a fair comment to say that anyone under 40 years of age is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from a whimp, a biggot, and an insufferable, butt-hurt, entitled whinger.
I despise them as a group, and look forward to seeing them sitting, destitute and helpless amid the ruins of a once-great civilisation that their wokeness destroyed.
84
Your failings as my son are my failings as your father.
100
Odd statement. I know quite few decent, diligent and competent 30 somethings. Too broad a brush methinks , just like “all Boomers” stuff that comes the other way.
60
Rick
I think you ought to have a “maybe” in there
We have raised three sons. At the eldest’s 21st party I said
“You’ve got a hell of a lot more responsibility at 21 than I ever had”
At that stage he was in charge of about 10,000 agistment cattle for a major.
He got to be manager of one of their stations for his 23rd birthday and of the head station by his 30th.
Second son scored an apprenticeship with a major in heavy equipment. Now runs his own HE business – have spanners, will fly.
Youngest started feeding logs into the local sawmill and there was considerable parental relief the afternoon he came home and announced that was NOT his ultimate destination in life. He’s just finished a building apprenticeship. Practicing before the next leg up in that game.
50
No such thing as a building apprenticeship
00
I just checked –
He says “call it carpentry until I look up the official title”
10
My recent ‘favourite’ is receiving emails from woke Sally, telling me that Sally should be referred to as She/Her.
I’m still wondering how to craft an email back to Sally in a way that I’d have to refer to her in the third person???
I feel like writing back saying “If you are a female it is likely that if the opportunity arises I will use she/her. However, if you are actually a guy, or look like a guy, there is a good chance I will not remember this email and may make a mistake. In this case, I apologise in advance if I use the wrong pronoun.”
110
It’s worse than that. we now have ‘gender fluid’ persons who identify as male one day, female the next. Next week, they identify as neither, or both. Essentially, you have to start and end every conversation with an apology.
Me? I identify as somebody who doesn’t give a …
130
Are they for real or throwing sand into the system?
My wife came up with this idea after her longest school friend, ahem, took advantage of indigenous handouts.
Identify as ‘gender fluid’ or ‘neither man nor woman’ in a job application and you’ll probably be successful. The system increasingly requires employers to satisfy ‘equality’ quotas and this makes it easier for them, especially if you’re a strong candidate.
80
Um…doesnt a high level of instability qualify as mentally illness?
Having watched someone rattle around our house clearly off thier rocker, Ive seen someone who arent the full quid up close….
30
It’s even worse than that. A gender fluid person argues that can be whatever gender they want, or multiple genders at once just because of how they feel at the time. It’s little different from a [particular race] man identifying as [a different color] because that person feels that way. Guess what! Some are doing exactly that. They are [one color] but because they hate [their own color “race”] they now claim to be [the other color]. I suppose next people will claim to be a tree, or a horse, or a house. I would not be surprised if some people have already done that too.
[* Snipped to comply with Section 18C. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone eh? – There is no free speech. – Jo]
50
Obviously not capable of making a business decision so superfluous to requirements
10
The complexity of large organisations like GOOGLE is the incentive to encourage people into the new world of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs). These go hand-in-hand with Decentralised Finance (DeFi) that are built on code and rely on the robustness of the internet.
The growth of crypto based world is spectacular. For example, the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs have experienced spectacular rise in value. The top Bored Ape NFT changed hands for USD2.3M:
https://www.nftsstreet.com/top-10-most-expensive-bored-ape-yacht-club-nfts/
The metaverse is moving in intriguing ways. Some schemes appear nothing short of spectacular ponzis but others offer utility and have inherent value. Some people are getting very wealthy understanding and working in this new world. Influence underpins the value.
It is hard to imagine a few lines of code that makes a particularly quirky looking image worth as much as the most expensive production automobile. Uniqueness comes with a hefty price tag.
30
Look on the bright side guys/gals: You don’t have to work for them. They can only survive where there are big barriers to entry so find a niche market [for them] and compete.
I competed with Coca Cola for years and made nice money buying their product on special and selling it at a discount to retail.
40
When it all “hits the fan” we won’t be back to square one, we will be well behind it.
I looked at windmills and water mills years ago, all still running and all many centuries old.
I boggled at how well engineered they were, at how carefully the wood used had been
aged and treated and how well the iron fittings had been made by the local blacksmith.
Such survival trades are almost extinct.
When the UK had to restore a building (? a royal home) they had to import masons from
Russia to do so as no one in the UK had the skills (and with the muslim expansion there.
no one ever will).
Somewhere we have a set of books and a magazine series on “How Things Work”.
None of the younger family are the slightest bit interested.
I had a failed notebook which I offered to one to “pull it apart and see how it works”:
not interested!
As a child, I pulled apart every failed clock, radio, TV, washing machine etc., just to see.
I do realize that the Romans complained about youth in their day and being an
obnoxious youth once, I can quite understand, but these new “kids” really scare me.
90
“Feminism is the last stage before collapse.” is something I read somewhere.
Generally speaking it makes sense.. as when women (who are sensitive to criticism) are put in with men – who though they value a job well done don’t want to offend the women even more, so instinctively refrain from speaking directly and start to pad words and soften their tone – until no one says anything of value but everyone feels safe and included.
Then one day the planes fall out of the sky.
Solution: a general but functional education for all then food/ textile duties + dance for girls, and manual arts + combat sports for boys. And a bit of farm work for all. And anyone who craves further study better demonstrate they’re capable of it.
Yes, segregation and exclusivity, based on an acknowledgement of general male and female differences. And those that are gender confused can pick a side and otherwise shut up.
102
Roman; I can only assume your comment is a joke. There are plenty of women who have made great contributions in the sciences (think of Madame Curie). There are also plenty of men who make contributions in cooking (chefs) textiles (dress designers). If serious you are suggesting going back 50+ years. What next, denying women the right to vote? Maybe you are thinking about the role of women in some middle eastern countries especially those which embrace Islam?
In my view there are some problems stemming from women’s lib, in particular the way the justifiable right of women to work morphed into the obligation of women to work while not at the same time changing the role of men.
Society noted the fact that most families were now 2 income families and adjusted wages and living standards so that 2 incomes became the requirement to survive with a reasonable standard of living. The result was enormous stress on families, especially those with children.
The solution however is NOT to go back to the earlier restrictive society that rejected the talents and abilities of half the population. We need a better solution.
32
The problem is gender equality has morphed into gender neutrality.
Yin Yang balance is FUBAR.
Advocation morphed into vocation, now the revolutionaries have planted the goal posts deep inside Clown World.
Kinda like attempting to eradicate a respiratory virus.
Or Fauci, whose personal identity depends on ‘pandemic’.
And his worshippers the same.
Dan and Gunner will be lost without it.
Put on a victim outfit and all the polite people will genuflect.
Or find a picture of your great, great grandparents in a victim outfit.
20
Women have the right to vote?
When did this happen, explains our situation though.
“There are also plenty of men who make contributions in cooking (chefs) textiles (dress designers).” Ok, Lets call them men.
10
“And __anyone__ who craves further study better demonstrate they’re capable of it.” – Is what I said. A barrier to entry into higher ed to stop the rot in universities. All Marie Curies are welcome to apply. But girls do need to be encouraged and supported in what only they can do – make babies.
10
There is that thread heading at Small Dead Animals that mentions
“If women ran the world we’d be still living in caves with nice curtains”
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We are all complaining about the world that evolved after women were given equality…
Did we do the right thing?
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Welcome to Wally World…
https://dilbert.com/strip/2022-01-09
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OT but this deserves to be highlighted.
The Victorian government is funding propaganda encouraging kids to get vaccinated if their parents oppose it.
https://www.yacvic.org.au/advocacy/2022-01-17-statement/
Here is the video produced by this initiative, the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYlD6RiAnVU/
https://www.tiktok.com/@yacvic/video/7051824412768685313?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1
From the video
H/t TheCovidWorld.com
https://thecovidworld.com/government-funded-youth-body-tells-teens-to-get-vaccinated-without-their-parents-permission/
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Novak Djokovic has been punished but still waiting for reporters to name or hold to account any government officials in NSW or VIC for the Ruby Princess, the Victorian nursing homes or the Victorian hotel quarantine debacles. All of these resulted in the deaths of Australian citizens yet the mainstream media has never followed up – this is a matter of significance and in the national interest.I hope that when the frenzy over a tennis player has abated, that the debacles mentioned above can be further scrutinized/investigated and those that are culpable, dealt with appropriately.
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Now that has been mentioned check this!
“Scott Morrison’s chief of staff”
“I know some readers have been curious about links between the Morrison government and Rio Tinto – thanks to reader Aleksandra Sanja Grubin who writes
John Kunkel Chief Of Staff to Scott Morrison was formerly chief advisor Government Relations for Rio Tinto”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2022/01/scott-morrisons-chief-of-staff.html
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And some reading
“Australian Government Deports Unvaccinated Tennis Player Novak Djokovic Citing His Threat to Social Cohesion
January 16, 2022 | Sundance | 551 Comments”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/01/16/australian-government-deports-unvaccinated-tennis-player-novak-djokovic-citing-his-threat-to-social-cohesion/
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Big Time!
“Report: Netflix Producing Doc on Novak Djokovic Australia Vaccine Fiasco”
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/01/16/report-netflix-producing-doc-on-novak-djokovic-australia-vaccine-fiasco/
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First player ever to go out of the open after only missing two shots!
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If you got their attention directed away from their ‘problems’ and towards their job their ‘problems’ would magically disappear. The way to do that is to have a hierarchical management structure – ie a boss for each work area – and a slim document (specs) driven approach so that everyone knows what to work to.
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