Yes and no, if you scambait hard enough your number can eventually be added to a blacklist for larger scam organisations that bought your data for use in multiple scam attempts.

In my experience that has really cut down on the calls.

In 2020 the department of human services accidentally posted my personal phone number on a list of support services for people experiencing housing or food insecurity. This number was then circulated by every major news source in my state. I couldn’t change my number at the time because I had no legal ID (still don’t… Can’t figure out how to get ID without ID, but I have a new number now at least) at first I didn’t really notice the ratio of spam calls to genuine calls for the wrong number (ie, people calling my number because they needed housing/food) . I just remember getting 40+ calls a day at many stages.

But as the actual number for the food relief service was circulated, I eventually stopped getting genuine calls and I was getting 3-5 scam calls every single day.

After a year of scam baiting, I was getting 2 a week.

Now, I’ll do something online that requires sharing my current number, within a few hours I get a scam call because my data has been sold, but I bait the heck out of that first call and I usually don’t receive any further calls which suggest my number was blacklisted by a larger scam organisation, and I won’t be hassled until my data is sold again as a new item.

It’s hard to avoid getting your number on scam lists when the largest health insurance company, and the second largest telecommunications company in my country both had major data breaches where millions of customers identifying information was accessed and sold to scammers…

Having had a defecography this is very similar to the encouragement the radiologist gave me…

I’m hard of hearing and terrified of standing in the wrong place at an airport and missing the visual cues to board the flight. Once boarding starts and people start queueing up, I usually get in line because it’s helpful to see what everyone in front of me is doing - the order that they hand over paperwork or get carry on double checked. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to hear the attendant if they ask me questions at the gate because it’s so noisy, so I like to at least feel like I’m prepared.

One time I was flying with crutches and qualified for early pre-boarding because I needed the plane wheelchair (skychair). I sat right next to the gate desk and waited, then I started seeing people queue up so I quickly joined the line, wondering how pre-boarding works when the whole plane of passengers are already vying to be at the front of the line.

I get to the front, the attendant looks at my ticket then after some awkward back and forward eventually I realised they were telling me I’ll have to wait till everyone has boarded to get the sky-chair on. I should have come to the desk when pre boarding was announced. I pointed that I was sitting right in front of them… Apparently they were called my name 3 times over the loudspeaker.

Apparently airports can only comprehend one disability at a time (if that!) they knew I was hard of hearing (it’s on my ticket) but still thought calling me over the PA was the best way to get the attention of the deaf person sitting 80cm from their desk.

So I sat back down and waited for the line to clear, then I got back up when there were 2 people in line, and after another back and forward I learned that they had tried calling my name again about halfway through boarding because they only had one skychair and it was now or never because the chair had told fly with the other passenger because their arrival airport didn’t have a chair, or something, I dunno, anyway I kind of had to crawl down the ailse to get to my chair because in the past I’ve just used the backs of chairs to swing myself along, but the plane was full so I couldn’t do that.

Oh definitely, he knows, but I also know and understand his perspective. For him, masking and unmasking when texting his boss then texting his family is exhausting and incredibly emotionally taxing. While I don’t meet the clinical criteria for an autism diagnosis, I do struggle with a few of the same things my brother and dad struggle with, particularly around processing, emotional regulation, and burn out, so I’ve been in his shoes where I know I’m doing something the hard way, or I know we’d all be happier with another method, but changing the task or changing the routine or process is even harder, even though the process I’d be changing to would be easier and better, initiating that change feels like an insurmountable climb.

Besides, my dad had to try and put up with my hyperlexia when I was growing up - before I had the emotional maturity to understand my dad’s needs, I can’t even imagine how much he suffered from my frustrating communication style being imposed on him. Now he’s older, it’s my turn to suffer 😂 (that is, it’s my turn to let him explore the ways he wants to communicate, even if it’s not what I want.)

My dad now uses AI to write all his texts to me.

He’s autistic and dyslexic and texting was always a massive struggle for him, so he’d leave voice messages, or just call me, and they’d be rambling and non linear, but it was my dad and his voice, his personality.

A few years ago he’d use dictation to send texts, and it was pretty funny because he hadn’t no way of proof reading them and dictation is never great for people with accents or speech problems… but now he will just use the microphone to ask whatever AI assistant is built into his phone the same rambling question he would have previously just voice messaged me.

And Copilot re-writes his rambling question and spits out a message that sounds like some formal business email. So now there’s an extra level of misinterpretation, an extra level of being removed from communicating with the human being.

I’ve asked my dad if he finds AI easier than just leaving a voice message (because I personally think sending a voice memo is easier) and he says he likes it because it makes him feel like he’s “normal” and can do the things everyone else has always been able to do with ease, even though he knows its not perfect.

I can definitely see the value in AI as an accommodation tool, and it has helped my dad a lot in his professional life where previous accommodation tools haven’t been adequate to “keep up”.

But I do miss hearing my dad, or reading his personality come through in the poorly dictated texts. My brother has gotten really annoyed at dad for this because my brother it’s also autistic and it’s actually harder for him to communicate with dad with an AI middle man, they’ve lived together for almost 30 years and they basically have their own language, so the AI texts my brother gets from my dad drive him nuts, when he and my dad have never had issues communicating.

I’m also worried that it’s effecting the limited literacy skills he does have, he’s getting rusty because he no longer has to try at all most days.

If you’ve been using weed pretty heavily for a while, I’d give it a month T break.

For me the first week is insomnia, muscle pain and brain fog worse than when I’m actually stoned, the second week is depressive symptoms and feeling “dopamine withdrawal” (ie: nothing is fun, nothing is motivating, everything is empty), hyperemesis/diarrhoea, and hypersomia.

It’s not until the third or fourth week of a T break that I feel human and begin to think “this is fine, I don’t need weed, it’s nice, but so is having some time off to be sober”

Better than the system being used by the department of human services in Australia. If the servers and service centres are overloaded, you basically just get told “tough shit, try again later, hope you’re not desperately trying to get out of a DV situation or protect an elder from abuse, cause we’re not paying for more servers”

At least with a digital queue system there’s a sliver of hope that you might get through.

I literally like don’t even know what you’re like talking about. I literally can’t even.

(I’ve just read further down the various responses to this question, and I’m now seeing “literally” overused in literally every other comment, my generation will literally never escape!)

I heard rumours that the new Stanley cup everyone was obsessed with for a week contained lead (not in contact with the inside of the cup, but still, why is lead there at all in 2024)

Was that rumour ever substantiated?

I have a step through frame that you sit upright on. 20-25km/h is my average commuting speed for getting to work and going to the shops. I regularly have to push to 30km/h+ because of motor traffic trying to ride up my ass even though I’m in the designated bike lane. (cars in Australia like driving fast in the bike lanes to avoid the chicanes on the road designed to slow motor traffic for cyclist safety)

If ebikes are disproportionately represented in cycling accidents, then I would argue it’s not the speed, it’s the barrier to entry. People who have never ridden before, people who aren’t physically able to ride a standard bike, these groups make up a significant portion of ebike riders because ebikes are accessible.

Yes, speed will contribute to this, people with limited riding experience being able to ride fast, possibly without the physical fitness required to control a bike at high speed.

The issue then isn’t the speed itself, but rider education and training.

Not too far off, $1AUD (0.60 euros) would be a cheap can of beans (which is often mostly water, even if it’s a 400g can, once you drain the beans, your millage varies by brand) $3 a can is average for name brands that fill the can to the brim.

But when you can buy 500g of dried beans for $3.99, and that will make the equivalent of 8-10 cans of beans, as someone who doesn’t eat meat (and has allergies so can’t eat commercial “mock meats”), I eat at least 2 serves of legumes every single day. Buying cans adds up at that scale even though I’m just one person. So I always buy dry legumes when I can.

I definitely have some cans in the pantry for emergencies though, because they are very convenient.

But I also have some pre-cooked, unseasoned beans and chick peas in the freezer, when I cook up a big pot I always throw a few portions in the freezer. They defrost in less than a minute in the microwave, so I’ll use them before I crack open a can of beans.

Oh I assumed that was a cat for farming fur balls, not meat.

Not a bad haul, I might be biased as an Australian, but that looks like good value for money for food that’s balanced and easy to cook.

As a fellow non-meat eater, I am deeply disturbed by the lack of legumes in this photo, but if you’re not a fan of cooking from dried, then I get it, canned can get expensive for what you get out of it.

Some charred chickpeas with olive oil lightly smashed on that rosemary bread would end up being my breakfast for a week straight if this was my house.

That makes sense, we don’t have a proper bottle collection service in my area, everything goes in the mixed recycling bin, bagged up, it sits in a recycling landfill for a few months then if no one takes up the processing contract it gets scoop-diggered into the general landfill. (and the processing contracts rarely get picked up, we used to ship everything to China) During this process bags are ripped open and plastic debris gets everywhere, and heavy rains will wash it into the environment.

But isn’t the tether still too thin and fragile to remain connected forever?

If you drop a tethered cap on the beach, a few weeks in the sun, getting polished by sand, and that cap is seperating from the ring, and how does that fix the problem?

Meanwhile in our house, every pot needs to be precariously balanced in a stack in order to fit in the cupboard.

How precarious? This will blow your mind!

We have 3 pots/pans, A big one, a medium one, and a little one.

Now, and bear with me because I know this is an unorthodox way to stack things, but I think the little pan should go inside the medium pan, and those two should go inside the big pan. It’s crazy, but it just might work.

My partner has other ideas when he stacks them though.

When I was 23 I moved into a sharehouse that had a dishwasher, I lived there over a year before I saw it, it had a false cabinet so it blended in. I’d always just washed my dishes in the sink and I keep all my dishes, cutlery and pans separate in a tub in the pantry because I have allergies. I’d never used a dishwasher before.

I googled how to use a dishwasher because I didn’t want to be the 20 year old that can’t do basic chores. I read the user manual and looked for the filters and catchment drains. They were filthy so I cleaned them, then followed the stacking guide in the user manual and ran it with a full load of my housemates dishes.

I was very impressed with how clean they came out.

I mentioned it to a housemate who found it very amusing I’d only just discovered the dishwasher, he warned me that it was old and broken and not a very good dishwasher so the few housemates that use it were actually talking about splitting the cost of a replacement if I wanted to get in on it.

Why? When the dishwasher was working perfectly.

All 7 of my housemates flooded into the kitchen to assess the cleanliness of the dishes because no one believed me that the dishwasher worked.

Turns out in the 7 years the house had been used for student housing since the landlords son took over as head tenant, not a single one of the rotating cast of 8 housemates had ever cleaned the secondary catchment filter, and only rarely did someone remember to clean the main filter.

Turns out the dishwasher works great when you remove the months worth of old rotten corn building up in the filter, and drain off the 7 years of muck that’s blocking the greywater outlet flow.

My housemates will still say I stack the dishwasher like a sociopath, but I learned from the user manual so I don’t care, the dishes are clean.

If she loves organisation, “A Little to the Left” and “Unpacking” are cute.

Stardew Valley is being mentioned a lot and with good reason, there are a lot of elements to that game and you can choose which activities you like most - farming, mining, fighting monsters, foraging, interacting with villagers.

From there you can get a really good idea of what other games could be even better. For example if she loves the social side of Stardew Valley a Japanese Social Sim game might be fun too.

I’m using sync at the moment, I don’t dislike it but there is room for improvement. I have very low accessibility needs. I have palsies in my hands so for me it’s about having nice big icons to tap, because I don’t have the dexterity to push tiny text links or really cramped hit boxes.

My phone GUI is enlarged and sync is just the first third party app I found that scaled well with my phone, most third party apps work for me, it’s just the reddit official app that really, really doesn’t. It’s unreadable with my GUI settings.

Exactly, I didn’t have a tantrum. I used a third party app because of the accessibility features it offered that the official app doesn’t. I can’t use reddit now, so I don’t use reddit.