Mathew Packer

  • I’m hoping this rain forecast for today is wildly inaccurate! Eeek!

    Weather forecast for Newcastle, Australia on the 30th of November, 2024

    That’s approx. 2.5 inches for those in the USA.

  • Unsubscribed from another 45+ mailing lists, many of which I do not recall signing up to, a fair few from products I’m not remotely interested in, nor have ever purchased. Most respected the “unsub” but a few gave the “it can take 3 days for us to action this” response, which is a load of BS!

  • Flawed Decision Making

    None of this passes the sniff test…

    > Thursday’s inquiry into the new laws ran for just three hours, with Australians given only a day to lodge submissions.

    > The government has said it will rely on some form of age-verification technology to implement the restrictions but the details are vague and the technology has not been finalised.

    > The onus will be on social media companies to add age-verification tools themselves.

    > The ban involves the highest age limit set by any country, and does not include exemptions for those with parental consent.

    > There will be no penalties for parents or children who ignore the rules.

    I don’t understand why we are rushing this through?
    What is being hidden in the legislation?
    How will the age verification work?
    How can you determine that I am over the age of 16?
    Does this become a way to have a national ID system?

    Lots of questions, absolutely no answers!

    🔗 [Australia approves social media ban](https://www.news.com.au/technology/australias-senate-approves-worlds-strictest-social-media-ban-for-children-and-teens/news-story/db73e16094f683af8731e3ab0949ea9c)

  • All these Black Friday sales emails makes it easy to unsubscribe from all the various mailing lists you’ve ended up on over the last 12 months. The standard “sorry to see you go” message feels disingenuous though, along with the exit poll asking why you’ve unsubscribed.

  • 🔗 [Australia’s Actual Deadliest Animal](https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/animals/a-new-report-has-revealed-australias-deadliest-animal-and-it-is-not-what-you-would-expect/news-story/e2afd1ce4c176718a54c3971dfc50690)

    > NCIS found horses killed more people than any other animal in Australia and were responsible for more than 200 deaths over a two-decade period.

    So we can now stop all the demonising of sharks, snakes, spiders, stonefish, jellyfish, the blue ring octopus, and all our other little Australian creatures… shit, we have a fair amount of deadly critters here!

    PS. [Daryl Braithwaite](https://youtu.be/lnigc08J6FI?si=zRzmwKCICsGB9lgf) has got some explaining to do…

  • [New Lambton Eagles’](https://newlambtonfc.com) pre-season training is in full swing. Gotta love that sunset lighting too!

    A group of people are playing soccer during sunset.

  • Does anyone here have any experience with [glass.photo](http://glass.photo), particularly compared to Flickr, and to a lesser degree Instagram? I’m looking for an active photography community, Flickr’s has seemingly died, Instagram’s is ok but I’m anti-Meta, please help? 📸

  • ⚽️ Another solid result for Arsenal in the Champions League, keep ’em coming lads!

  • ⚽️ Love waking up to an Arsenal win!

  • Just because I like to do all the complex things at once. Not only am I in the process of moving my blog to micro.blog, I’m also de-Googling my life as much as I can. One of these 2 tasks is so much easier than the other…any guesses as to which one?