A Feathered Friend @SomeEgrets@awoo.space

I feel like when I'm building a thing, I have a bit of tendency toward building modules "just in case" I need to reuse it for something similar again.

Which is fine, but it does make simple things which I may never reuse a lot more complicated and slower to get working.

Oh my god now I have to compile things like this, I yearn for the sweet release of death

Wow, it turns out that when you turn off disk write buffering, using a modern computer feels a lot like the early 90s

I'm pretty sure there spraying fertiliser out at the farms we're downwind of.

Every time there's a smell outside, for some reason, the HVAC system seems to suck it directly into my office, which means it also smells like fertiliser in here now.

IMO? This is the Ford gov system working exactly as intended.

They get to set arbitrary requirements, like disallowing disruptive protest, without appearing to do so. Because each school has to draft their own policy, they take the heat for it instead of the Ontario gov.

During the Q&A, a lot of speakers were not pleased with prohibiting disruptive protest, and they're not wrong.

But that part of the policy is actually one of the provincial standards they have to meet, set by the Ontario provincial gov before word one was drafted.

As much as I may be critical of the Free Expression policy the university is drafting, I also realise they don't have a lot of choice in the matter - this is a mandate from the provincial gov, consulting with bad faith parties who have a vested interest in this.

Signals suck, I'm just doing the self pipe trick.

It's heated pad season

oh no, I saw the new batch of NITW shirts *WAY* too late to actually get in on them

It's heeeeere
Ready for spookyween now

T+1 day, lotta people walking around today smelling kinda funny, but I can't quite figure out why. It is a mystery.

Love how companies can just decide "we don't like these laws so they don't apply to us," write it into their pages-long TOS along with a clause that you automatically accept the terms, and this is somehow legal.

"The established literature fails to predict X, Y, Z and doesn't account for N. My new model takes this into account and provides better predictive power than the old one, please peer review my work" is a far cry from "I only believe in two genders" or whatever.

One good point raised was that despite what many claim, very little of this has any impact on academic rigour. Saying "prevailing research be damned, I believe in X" is not useful academic work and doesn't advance knowledge in ways they claim to care about so much.

"In the last decade, people have started to talk about safety in terms of safety from ideas ... universities are very physically safe spaces, which is the only measure that matters" 🖕(òvó)🖕

Student: (paraphrased) "we have to acknowledge that we are a colonial nation with a long history of suppressing marginalised voices such as indigenous peoples, trans or gender nonconforming people. How can I protect my vulnerable students from harm under this policy?"

This student is arguing for free speech absolutism and that this is "our roots as a country" - maybe ignorant that we have actual restrictions on that?

Or that as an institution, we're not obligated in any way to provide a platform for hate? They're free to say it elsewhere.

The teachers want an actionable policy document with practical, real world examples of how it should be applied in the classroom - most aren't lawyers and legalese doesn't help them, afraid without guidance, it could become a witch hunt if they try to uphold standards

I am encouraged that a lot of these speakers know, and are stating up front, this is a bullshit Ford admin policy informed by bigots, with political motivation to enable hateful speakers.