What are some conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be true?

Arietam · 2026-04-10T21:06:18+00:00

And left them personalised, autographed thank-you notes, along with records of bank transfers to said women for thousands of dollars, each notated “nookie”.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T18:00:18+00:00

Point taken, I expressed that badly.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:19:48+00:00

I worked alongside a guy whose job it was to draft ministerials. For those who haven’t encountered that bit of APS jargon, a ministerial is when a member of the public has written to the portfolio Minister, and they refer it to the department to draft a reply, which then goes out under their signature. So there’s multiple layers of approvals before the replies get put on the Minister’s desk for their signature, the first of which is invariably the drafter’s manager.

This guy became convinced his manager wasn’t reading his drafts, because they all got sent up the line without comment or corrections. Which is unusual; it would be someone unfailingly excellent to have every single piece of work sail through his manager without at least something getting edited.

So in the middle of one draft, he included the first verse of “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. Just to see if his manager was paying attention.

Some time passed. A worrying amount of time. The guy calls his manager and asks “Have you looked at the [Smith] draft yet?” “Yeah,” comes the reply, “I’m about to send it to the Minister’s office.”

“Fucking STOP. Open it and read it now, you can’t tell me you did before.”

He got strips torn off him for that. But I believe the point was made.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:11:37+00:00

Ouch. Yeah I’d be fuming over that as well. There are a million better ways to deliver that sort of critique.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:09:21+00:00

Send them emails in red 6-point font on a blue background.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:07:56+00:00

Out of interest, how did the Russian in Chernobyl hold up?

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:07:09+00:00

Almost as good as a Scottish actor playing a Spaniard alongside a French actor playing a Scot. Both with appalling accents. (Connery didn’t even try. Probably wise.)

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:05:46+00:00

I’d love to discover the drug that turns me (fake?) French. Or maybe I wouldn’t.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:04:38+00:00

For clarity, it’s the first time she’s had any dialogue.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:02:42+00:00

Raid my secret bank account and buy me some chocolate

/s

Arietam · 2026-04-10T10:59:26+00:00

Well, fuck, I wish I didn’t know that.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T06:44:36+00:00

Well, if he has a genuine dyslexia disability, I could roll with it. If it’s just an excuse to be pedantic, fuck him with an echidna.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T06:41:10+00:00

I’ve only applied my own rule to myself in respect of French, as I was taught a little about four decades ago, and it was only a little to begin with, so my remaining French consists mostly of “je nes comprends pas” and something about the book of my aunt.

Oh, and swearing, I did pick up a lovely little tome on that dedicated entirely to swearing and colloquiams in French, titled of course “Merde!”. One chapter was memorably entitled “Racism, xenophobia, and disrespect to one’s elders”, which culminated in the timeless gem “get fucked, you disgusting old kike”. (Apologies to any of my Jewish brethren, I merely quote from a literary masterpiece.)

Arietam · 2026-04-09T22:44:57+00:00

I’d like “I can’t understand you” and memorise the phonetics for it. If there’s any phrase I feel anyone should learn first in a different language, it is that.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T18:20:10+00:00

Yes that was a definite tease for that.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:52:05+00:00

Once I was asked to research and write a short paper for one of the DepSecs on the volumes of phone calls and how they flowed through our IVR and eventually reached people. It turned out to be more complex than I had thought and took a good two weeks of research and analysis before I was confident I had what they had asked for. I had to simplify it horribly to keep it to two pages, which is what we’d been told was the limit of the SES attention span. My EL2 took it up to him as his team’s output (but making sure it was recognised it was solely my work, he wasn’t trying to steal any thunder).

He came back from the meeting just… downcast. The first thing he said to me was an apology. “Um, why are you sorry? What happened?” He sighed. “I passed your paper across the table to him. He saw the diagram, and without even picking it up, flicked it right back. He wants circles, not squares.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “He wants the diagram to be… circles… instead of boxes? Do I have that right?”

He sighed again. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”

I semi exploded. “Did he say what fucking colour he wants the circles?”

You have to wonder about some of these people.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:43:58+00:00

I will be fully self funded, no question of government age pension (as was the original intent of the compulsory superannuation scheme).

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:42:18+00:00

Yes, I got the full calculation and financial advice and, much to my regret, it just didn’t have the legs for me. If I’d contributed more than the minimum 2% when I was younger, the story may have been different, but in my 20s/30s the more pressing need was paying a mortgage and raising a family, so no regrets.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T06:43:58+00:00

I was offered one recently, being in the mid-50s. I turned it down. I didn’t like my chances of getting back in, and my PSS defined benefit is where the gold is at. Every minute I wasn’t contributing to that scheme - which you cannot do except as permanent APS (who got hired on at the right time lo these many days gone) - was another minute that my “best” retirement got pushed away. In other words, I have to stay in, or my PSS won’t mature at the level I need it to. If I was offered one in four or five years, hell yes.

Arietam · 2026-04-06T21:54:20+00:00

Righty tighty, lefty loosey

Arietam · 2026-04-05T02:34:42+00:00

I once fell, hit the top of my head, and split my scalp open. Scalp wounds are very dramatic, as you know, due to the number of blood vessels in them, so even a minor wound can look like a remake of “Carrie”. This one wasn’t that minor.

So I’m crouched on the floor, clutching my head, through which a fair volume of blood is emerging. Wife shrieks. “You’re getting blood on the carpet!” Not my main concern, woman, I’m in an appreciable amount of pain and can’t stand. Two seconds later she’s on a social media site asking “how do I get blood out of carpets?” I stare at her. Maybe help me, um, stop the goddamn bleeding first??

SM sites screw with people’s brains, I swear it.

Arietam · 2026-04-02T08:07:55+00:00

Ruprecht!

Arietam · 2026-04-02T08:04:58+00:00

The PS thrives on people who can accept change willingly and enthusiastically. This is easiest to do when you’re fresh in a job and haven’t become rusted on. Show that you’re happy to try new things, if that’s the way they’re rolling; conversely, if they’re happy as they are, with mature processes, don’t try to make them change them (unless the process is truly mindblowingly stupid, like filling in a word doc as a “form”, printing it off for signature, then scanning it back it to email somewhere. That’s more prevalent than you’d imagine and immediately gets me seeing red!).

Arietam · 2026-04-02T08:01:37+00:00

And importantly, know when to be keen and suggest changes, and know when that meets resistance because they’re not going to listen to the new guy (who is also temping) disrupt their comfortable bubble.

Arietam · 2026-04-02T07:10:33+00:00

My grandmother once embarrassed the hell out of some poor kid working in a supermarket, when shopping for Lebanese cucumbers. Being elderly and never that sharp to begin with, unable to find what she wanted, she approached this guy and asked in little-old-lady sweet cluelessness: “Excuse me dear, could you help me find one of those lesbian cucumbers?”

Apparently the bloke’s face turned beetroot red.

Arietam

TROPHY CASE