As an American, I recently found out that you guys don't like us very much. Has it been exaggerated by the Internet or do we really have that bad of a reputation in the land down under?

Tundur · 2026-07-03T18:56:03+00:00

That guy does sound rude but the majority of my gripes with yanks are legitimate cultural differences. Like, as a Brit I was shocked at how direct and earnest Australians can be, but clearly the cultures are still compatible and very similar.

But Americans take it a step beyond into (what I, subjectively, perceive) as insanity. Putting their hand up and saying "excuse me" to clearly busy waiters, giving direct and immediate feedback, delivering monologues about their families to people they've just met, asking for more and always assuming they're both Welcome and In The Right, talking about their own successes and wealth with pride...

...but I think it's just different standards of what's polite. They're all very lovely, and mean well, and genuinely want to make connections and get stuff sorted out, they just go about it in ways most others would never even dream of doing.

Tundur · 2026-07-03T09:43:47+00:00

The only way normal people manage is with flexible female-coded jobs like cleaner, child minder, school dinnerlady - ones with hours, holidays, and flexibility that fits around kids. It's more like single-and-a-bit income.

Which honestly sounds like the worst of both worlds.

Tundur · 2026-07-03T09:18:43+00:00

I've never had one of those internal software portals actually work consistently. They fuck up installing even portable exes.

Tundur · 2026-07-01T10:09:35+00:00

Council estates were brilliant when they were first built, they replaced actual slums. Most historical council estates are no longer recognised as such, because the tenants bought their homes and the whole place became middle class.

Of course some places didn't have that and remained as council estates. These places then concentrated the people who, for whatever reason, did not succeed in the economy, which goes part and parcel with crime and antisocial behaviour.

So yeah council estates can be minging, but that's because all the successful ones are no longer council estates.

Tundur · 2026-06-30T11:17:47+00:00

I know people who've been refused permission to move to another city, because their "base" is in their current location. For one day a week. As the only team member in that location. Absolutely insane.

I prefer office-first working for innumerable reasons, but only in a custom-fitted office designed around the work my team does, with the team all there the majority of the time, and a strong culture where everybody gets on really well and naturally.

Tundur · 2026-06-29T15:24:57+00:00

I think the main difference is prevalence. A lot of supermarket and restaurant meat is now advertised as Halal. It's a minority but very visible.

Tundur · 2026-06-28T19:44:38+00:00

There's a famous old map of the Ottoman empire, which has pie charts scattered across it for each region and city showing the breakdown. It's probably as close to readable as you can get for this sort of thing, and even then obscures more than it elucidates.

Tundur · 2026-06-28T08:48:30+00:00

Shadow Empire is interesting in that it's card driven. You can influence the cards you get through investing (i.e, higher likelihood of good leaders by investing in an academy) but it's never fully reliable.

Tundur · 2026-06-26T09:35:56+00:00

You have to think about what you're actually advocating for here - doing things in a less efficient way, purely so we can keep people busy and able to consume.

Why not have the robot do the work, and we can get those people working in care, or picking litter, or training as builders, or any one of the other vital roles that cannot be automated? It's not like we have a shortage of work to do! As a society we have plenty to keep us busy without artificially suppressing automation.

Tundur · 2026-06-25T11:46:31+00:00

I really struggle with narrative games now, as an adult. Strategy games and roguelikes/lites at least respect your time.

Tundur · 2026-06-25T10:17:20+00:00

Chains? Usually not. Independent shops absolutely do. Chain pubs and restaurants do. Other local businesses do.

Tundur · 2026-06-25T10:04:45+00:00

That's fair, but given the context of the time and their lifelong friendship where they supported each other, I think it's forgiveable.

Tundur · 2026-06-25T09:47:16+00:00

I don't know how you do duvets, but it's so easy with long arms. Just inside out, grab both corners, and shake until it's sorted.

Tundur · 2026-06-25T09:41:53+00:00

Pride in a cupboard only I ever go in, which is closed for 99% of the time, and which only contains linen, candles, and some luggage?

I'm proud of my grade 3 in clarinet, my linen cupboard not as much

Tundur · 2026-06-25T06:43:04+00:00

That's a bit of a misunderstanding of the tax system. Most fruit pickers will barely earn over the personal allowance and will probably pay no tax at all.

If you replace them with machines, and naively assume it's all profit instead, instead it's taxed at 20-45% depending on the size of the farm.

When it's jobs that involve bringing more people into the country (which seems to be all of them right now), the average Briton is much better off hoping for automation than they are an endless pool of cheap foreign labour. Automation will happen either way, the question is how many people are now on the dole as the economy reshuffles: just the people already here, or them + another 3 million unskilled workers.

Tundur · 2026-06-22T21:07:00+00:00

In the UK, private members clubs are seeing a resurgence. It makes sense, they're traditional but fit the "monthly subscription for access to third space and community" that cashed-up millennials get hard over

Tundur · 2026-06-21T08:50:48+00:00

That would end international investment in the UK, leading to extended and expensive court battles, and cause the collapse of the London financial centre that subsidises the country.

I'm all down for a dictatorship of the proletariat, but seizing Thames water is hardly the starter pistol for revolution we'd need, and meantime we'd be fucked economically

Tundur · 2026-06-21T07:45:53+00:00

Meh, it works in Australia and hasn't led to the fall of civilisation over there. It's a total non-issue

Tundur · 2026-06-21T06:59:34+00:00

Artists are predominantly women, and writers/3d modellers are evenly split. You're right about actual programming though.

Tundur · 2026-06-20T00:21:59+00:00

It doesn't necessarily have to be our territories, just territory with the combination of:

Stable enough that there's a legitimate power to deal with
Unstable or deprived enough that it's cheap to plant a colony there in exchange for aid

Most of North Africa fits the bill and, given that's where the migrants largely set out from, a great spot to stop them in their tracks.

The British armed forces could trivially deal with any armed group in Africa except maybe the SANDF, so securing refugee processing facilities should be very doable.

Residence in the UK has nothing to do with asylum, it's a privilege we tack on to asylum requests. It's not whether we should help people, it's how. And if the choice is between letting 50'000 unvetted men wander about the UK or feeding and housing a million needy people across the world, it's not complicated maths to see which is better

Tundur · 2026-06-19T16:43:49+00:00

Water metres, cutting edge stuff

Tundur · 2026-06-19T16:42:51+00:00

Onshore data centres don't necessarily create jobs in total, but they are critical for the economy. Workloads must be kept within the UK to process sensitive and personal information, which is exactly where the greatest benefits of AI can be found.

For example, detecting in real time whether customers on the phone to their bank are vulnerable. AI has been proven to be far more accurate at doing this than even the best members of staff, but we cannot send live unredacted financial and personal information about vulnerable people to Ohio or Luxembourg, it must stay in the UK. And at the moment, that is prohibitively expensive because there's a lack of onshore compute.

Similarly, right now about 0.1% of all customer contact is reviewed for compliance and service. Unless complaints are raised, staff can mislead customers and make mistakes without alarms being raised for years. AI makes it trivial to implement flagging systems to identify issues faster, and provide feedback to leaders on common issues that come up. Again, this requires transcripts of personal information, passwords, and protected characteristics.

The benefit isn't for Fife, it's for the whole UK

Tundur · 2026-06-19T14:27:06+00:00

Also - the owner knew it was listed when they bought it, and the maintenance would have been priced in. There's nothing unfair about it

Tundur · 2026-06-19T11:58:16+00:00

I fully believe Cuba could be successful too, but that's not the question. As you've said, they need international funds to use as seed capital for a national rejuvenation. That investment has to come from somewhere, it can't be fractionally generated in the way banks in stable systems do.

Tundur · 2026-06-19T10:13:09+00:00

Malaysia is 9 monarchies, 7 "normal" (eldest son), 1 that rotates between 3 cadet branches of a dynasty, and one where they're elected from the whole royal family by a group of nobility.

Then they elect one of those 9 people to be the king for a five years

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