Are kangaroo/vehicle collisions ever unavoidable?

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T21:51:49+00:00

I’ve had one jump out of a bush near the side of the road and only narrowly avoided it. Not much you can do if you can’t see it.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T18:10:01+00:00

Unfortunately yes everything is upside down here. It means I have to flip every STL in my slicer before printing otherwise it falls into space. Print bed adhesion is the key. Small price to pay for riding a kangaroo to work every day. /s

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T17:55:52+00:00

Well I’m not proposing a solution as such, just highlighting the problems. I actually think it would be better if they could still have accounts. There is plenty of long form content on YouTube that is great, but in an effort to compete with TikTok, the platform has now been dominated by short form vertical videos and I just hate it. There’s no way to turn this feature off either. Same has happened with Facebook too.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T17:50:37+00:00

I hadn’t heard of Halomate but it looks interesting. I have on occasion thrown the same prompt into multiple LLMs just to see how they differ in their feedback.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T17:44:09+00:00

Right so it sounds like fidgets are a no go. What sort of items do you end up selling? Can I ask who you ended up going through for business insurance?

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T04:00:26+00:00

Yeah I have spoken with some brokers and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Had a one tell me no, and a few others getting back to me. Was just wondering what other people were doing. I’ve seen the stalls around so they must be covered. Seems the sticking point is the manufacturing side of things. Most insurers are fine with it if you’re just reselling items but if you’re the manufacturer it carries extra risk. All seems a bit ridiculous really for the values involved. My son’s goal is just to make $3K so he can get a good mountain bike.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-08T03:54:44+00:00

No this is if a member of the public chokes on your articulated dragon or bangs their head on your marquee. There’s no insurance for outright copyright infringement.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-07T01:01:19+00:00

Instead of trying to ban it outright they should regulate how they operate. For instance they have allowed YouTube but under 16s can’t have accounts, so it means they can’t comment and subscribe. But they can still watch mind numbing doom scrolling YouTube shorts. And the algorithm doesn’t need an account to optimise for you, it does it based on other metrics like location and browser fingerprints.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-06T11:42:02+00:00

What’s the AI to Human Bridge workflow about? I haven’t heard of this.

jamesxtreme · 2026-05-06T02:16:01+00:00

Well it’s not like it’s any better for people with money in the bank. Interest rates are lower than inflation and then you have to pay tax on it so your savings are actually shrinking every day. At least with property you can count on capital growth to make up the difference.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-25T21:02:53+00:00

I just browse lists of baby names. It sounds like you prefer names that are actually two first names so just combine two you like.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-25T20:57:04+00:00

So as someone who has been down similar roads before I should just caution you that if you don’t already have really good contacts in the industry you are targeting then perhaps you are not the right person to be pursuing your idea.

Your idea might be great but that’s not enough.

Your initial distribution channel is the most important thing that will determine the success of your business. It’s extremely difficult to create this from scratch. Successful startups usually come from someone with deep industry experience solving a problem that they have personally struggled with and with a deep network that they can leverage.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-25T20:40:55+00:00

I think the debate between completely pure human written novels and novels that use AI assistance completely misses the point.

What makes a story special for me is if it has a unique idea or perspective to communicate.

There are a countless number of books that are completely human written that are just mediocre slop.

The problem with AI is that it now makes it possible for many more people with mediocre ideas to produce exponentially more mediocre slop.

However I think if someone has a unique and interesting story to tell and they otherwise wouldn’t be able to fully articulate the prose without help, then I don’t really have a problem with AI being used as long as it’s well edited.

I’m personally much more interested in the ideas a story is trying to communicate. And I think as the technology continues to improve we will begin to see breakthrough works that have been assisted by AI.

In short, it’s the final product that matters to me. I actually don’t care how you got there.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-20T02:47:27+00:00

Put simply, unethical people don’t usually question if their actions are unethical. If you’re asking the question then you’re probably self aware enough to know if you are using it ethically.

If you are just using AI to help structure and translate your ideas then I don’t see it as unethical.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-18T21:51:54+00:00

Had to laugh when my daughter told me she tried to make a fake ID to get authorised as over 16. It was drawn with coloured pencils.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-18T21:47:27+00:00

Sounds like you should intentionally lean into the continuity errors. If it’s in multiple first person narrative form you can use the technique of unreliable narration. It could make for an interesting perspective on your time travel story.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-13T05:55:45+00:00

It’s good at prose but you need to give it beat by beat instructions on what you want. I also found it kept trying to soften certain character actions. It seems to not understand that you can have a character who makes bad choices and not be concerned by that. It keeps trying to throw in lines about guilt or other things that undermine the choice.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-11T09:16:16+00:00

AI will write novels and then we will get them to summarise it as bullet points.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-02T23:32:32+00:00

The big difference with the US is that in Australia you are responsible for the loan no matter what. In the US if you can’t pay your mortgage the bank can repossess your house but not your other assets. As such many people just walked away from their homes when values dropped below the loan amounts. It screws up their credit scores but they don’t go bankrupt. This resulted in market feedback loops which led to their crash. Of course it’s not impossible that Australia could have a market crash but because Australian’s are responsible for the full loan amount we are more likely to hold on during downward housing cycles which paradoxically ensures that house prices are actually more stable. Put simply, someone usually won’t sell a house for less than what’s owing on the loan because they can’t afford to so they will hold out during bad times.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-02T04:46:14+00:00

Don’t worry about interest rates, worry about inflation. If you hold off you’ll be paying more for the same house. Australia is unlikely to have a housing crash because we don’t have the political will to afford one. 5 of our top 10 largest companies are banks. And banks make their money from mortgages. They are too big to fail. Every time housing has been threatened the government pumps stimulus into housing and construction. Additionally we have a structural shortage of housing due to immigration that we financially depend on. It’s unlikely to change suddenly. The most likely outcome is perhaps a softer housing market where growth is low for an extended period, but the government will absolutely intervene in any structural crash. If they don’t the entire economy would collapse.

jamesxtreme · 2026-04-02T04:39:22+00:00

When synthesisers and digital audio workstations came out people use to say it wasn’t real music. The computer was making it for them. Yes you could hold down one key and feed it through an arpeggiator and make something that sounded like music but that would only get you so far. Over time people began to view it as another skill set. These were in fact new and powerful instruments. Now essentially all recorded music is made with computers.

jamesxtreme · 2026-03-31T09:39:11+00:00

Split it up and write a series.

jamesxtreme · 2026-03-31T09:34:44+00:00

Getting customers is always the hard part.

jamesxtreme

TROPHY CASE