macrocarpa

Story time.

During a conversation amongst friends the topic of male on female violence came up. there was recently a stabbing attack in Australia where a schizophrenic man stabbed and killed multiple women in a Sydney shopping centre.

A female friend raised the statistic that 26 women had been killed in the first 114 days of 2024. She made a point of saying Every 4.38 days a woman is violently killed

I asked - because I didn’t know - Is that like heaps more than last year?how many people would normally die in the same period?

She said "that’s a pretty misogynistic thing to say”

So I googled it and I can’t even find the homicide rate in Australia for 2024.

I am really fucking irritated about this. I assume she had assumed from my question that I was waving off the importance of gender in gendered violence but how that translates into misogyny is beyond me

I think it’s not feasible to stop or control it, for several reasons -

1. People are motivated to consume ai porn
2. There is no barrier to creating it
3. There is no cost to create it
4. There are multiple generations of people who have shared the source material needed to create it.

We joke about rule 34 right, if you can think of it there is porn of it. It’s now pretty straightforward to fulfil the second part of that, irrespective as to the thing you thought of. Those pics of your granddsd in his 20s in a navy uniform? Your high school yearbook picture? Six shots of your younger sister shared by an aunt on Facebook? Those are just as consumable by ai as tay tay is.

The fuck is wrong with feeding cows grass?

Cows eat grass, I’ve seen them do it

There’s grass everywhere, even in hawaii I think

I have been through a fair amount of the various timer solutions, to be honest, the simplest most reliable thing I’ve found is the old rotary dial tap timer…

The reason I use the WiFi version is I can control it remote if I’m away from home.

In australia there is a brand called Holman which does WiFi enabled smart valves. Starting at battery powered valves you attach to the tap all the way up to full solenoid valves which need a controller. There is then the Holman app which hooks into your home automation suite.

Not sure if it’s available in the US, and any mains powered unit would be on a different voltage. But the battery powered ones seem OK. Just chews through a lot of batteries apparently.

I have the Holman WX 8 controller paired with a bunch of online solenoid valves. It is a decent setup although quite expensive and took a long time and lot of effort to set up (running lines to solenoids, setting up water lines, dripper hoses etc) . It makes a huge difference in irrigation tho. Absolutely zero effort to get water exactly where the plants need it. Id say I broke even on effort the first summer. Cost wise longer term.

Yay, something I can talk to.

I’m a middle manager in tech delivery. Started in a different industry, moved into the saas world at the right time, became a dev, became a contractor, made lots of money, had a family, needed more regular hours so went the management route, less money, more stress. About a year ago I took on a new role which has me across approx 10 directs each who have their own squads of 6 to 10 people.

I don’t hate it but it is hard work. And yes it is objectively harder and more stressful than being a developer, simply because of the level of accountability that I personally take.

In terms of expertise. I know a deep amount about one platform, a moderate amount about three others and I have no fucking clue about the rest. Integration, for instance. Yet I’m accountable for delivery and eye watering budgets. I’m sure the devs have a similar opinion of me as to what’s posted elsewhere in the thread, that I don’t understand the specific technology hence shouldn’t be directing the work stream, but the thing is - thats not the role.

The role is to manage money and people. The array of brilliant technologists who i’ve seen step into leadership roles then slowly drown and fail is distressing. So when I’m looking for leads to bring into positions, a lot of the time I’m looking for people who naturally want to step forward and want to lead. Most of the time they do well even without the full depth of tech.

I think this is the link back to your question. Like, can you go back to being a dev? If your promotion to management was as a result of being the most experienced dev, then yes absolutely, you should fit back in fine. If you were promoted because you were the voice in the team that said why or how or what if or let’s do this, then I’m sorry. Leadership will seek you out once again.