How do you see ICQ being different to something like Discord these days? I joined the internet at the tail end of ICQ just before things like MSN Messenger started becoming a mainstay for my immediate group, so am curious.
- Your immediate friends who you personally knew and exchanged ICQ numbers with to add each other. You couldn't just find them... you needed to know their numbers.
- Everyone else you "found" by searching / randomly connecting with when they / you set your status to "Free to Chat" as opposed to just "Online".
Features:
- Until the MSN Messenger / AOL IM years, ICQ was p2p - both parties needed to be online in order for conversations to take place. So, in a way there was a more skin in the game in order for it to work. Conversations meant more.
Community:
- It being the early days of the internet, it felt more special - ICQ, BBS, IRC, and web forums is how people found each other. There was no Reddit, even Digg came much later.
About me: I'm a full stack web developer with a background in product management and working in electronic hardware consultancies (mainly business roles), 15 YoE all up. I really enjoy working with hardware / companies doing embedded software, and sitting at the intersection between those two fields. While I haven't done any actual embedded development in a very long time, I have a good understanding of the field as a whole and the challenges it faces in relation to UI and UX, and really enjoy the people.
Recently I've been contracting to an AgTech startup providing geospatial SaaS products - and wearing practically every hat they throw at me. I'll have a go at anything to get what needs doing done, but my sweet spot is definitely full stack development, working closely with customers, and melding web tech UI and UX experiences to hardware platforms. Also recently helped another AgTech start up build a custom milk order and delivery system that had some custom requirements resulting in them not being able to use off the shelf eCommerce platforms.
I'm very comfortable fronting client / customer interactions and working through specification development, working out what customers actually want and need, doing mock ups, through to actual development. I really enjoy the challenge of balancing technical and business requirements into good fit-for-purpose solutions.
I am open to both contract and full-time roles, or just a coffee chat if you happen to be Christchurch.
Interesting. I use IMDB as a filter, for score and synopsis. I rarely find new movies there (find recommendations elsewhere), but I basically filter anything out that sits below a 7, or include anything 6+ if it's in a genre I happen to like. I suppose I could use rotten tomatoes for that too.
That's an interesting comment. I hadn't really ever considered that afforestation might be a bad thing - always just assumed "more trees = good". In what sort of examples would it be a bad thing? Trying to create forests in places that naturally weren't forests in the past?
Right. For instance, one story I read concerned disturbing grasslands in order to plant more trees — foolhardy because grasslands themselves are excellent carbon sinks and the trees would take a long time to be comparable. Others concerned trees being planted with little possibility of survival. I believe the first was in China and the second in Turkey if anyone wants to dig through news archives and try and find these stories again.
Obviously the problem here is people just setting “trees planted” as the metric because it’s easy to count and creating perverse incentives.
> Basically the DRM equivalent of 'Please disable your ad blocker'.
An interesting observation I've had in my own browsing behaviour is that the majority of sites I visit are time wasting visits. If any site presents the above message (or the equivalent - 'sign up to read' like Medium does), I find I just navigate away and do something else.
The bigger concern for me like you call out - major institutions like banks enforcing a separate company's requirements on me in order to interface with them.
I think it's fine to not dismiss something out of hand if you don't know anything about it (as you say that you know nothing of astrology), but if someone _does_ know something about it, I think it's fine for them to be dismissive of it if they choose to.
It's similar to saying "I know nothing of homeopathy, so won't dismiss it" (a fine position), but then you can't critique someone who _does_ know something about it, for being dismissive of it.
Of the people I've seen whole heartedly engage with astrology, it's never been as a tool for introspection (directly or sideways), but as a way to justify poor behaviour.
But are they dismissing it for the right reasons? Did those reasons happen to be the way they are because they expected this outcome from the beginning?
It feels in part that people like to have opinions, but also lack real information or insight to have a deep conversation about something - hence just breaking it down into basic blobs.
That said for topics I do have some more in-depth understanding (and opinions on), I've started to find discussions around them to be... draining. People seem to want to argue or 'discuss' things heatedly, but that's it. It never leads anywhere or to any meaningful change in behaviours. Not that I'm trying to influence anyone, but it just feels like arguing for the sake of arguing. I'd rather just keep to myself at that point.
Agree that evidence is appropriate, but as someone that's not in the US (NZ), we do broadly see it that way. US politics is very pervasive internationally, and you guys definitely appear to be split way more into 'left' and 'right' (as one example).
Compared to NZ's politics... which is more like a blob of parties which sit pretty close the centre, and sometimes parts of the blobs move more left or more right.
But naturally the dichotomy comment doesn't hold true in all circumstances.
Multi-party systems generally tend to have less of a gap between parties. Especially if no single party is strong enough to hold majority power alone in a parliamentary system, decision-making requires collaboration between multiple parties.
A lot of the polarisation in US politics is probably due to the two-party system. I don't know whether or not that has anything to do with people thinking in false dichotomies in other contexts.
I've never understood why there is a dichotomy presented in relationships like that - sure, 10 years into your marriage you might not be going at it like rabbits as you were in the first year, but there isn't any reason why parents can't provide stable environments for children _and_ have strong romantic relationships still. It takes very little to carve off some time for one another, and that continued investment in bonding with another in and of itself long term provides the stability children need.
> It takes very little to carve off some time for one another, and that continued investment in bonding with another in and of itself long term provides the stability children need.
Why is romanticism the only way to "invest in bonding"?
There seems to be a large subset (maybe very large?) of the population where the only way to bond on some level is sex.
I guess you don't have kids yet, emphasis on plural. They chip away bit by bit everything that makes a relationship a good one, sand in the fine gears that made people fall for each other in the first place. By far the biggest stressor in marriages (unless somebody else is actually raising your kids, be it grandparents or nannies).
Sure, you can, and should, keep working on repairs and rebuilding, but that's additional work on top of all additional work on top of actual work of living in modern society. Not everybody, always, has energy for that, and you need 2 for that or it just doesn't work. Hence the difference of what looks nice on paper and how things should be, and how they actually are.
Interesting point, I wasn't aware of the distinction between economic migrant and refugee
> Refugee immigrants are unable or unwilling to return home for fear or threat of prosecution, and thus, must make a life in the country that gives them refuge. Economic immigrants, on the other hand, are free from this constraint and can return home whenever they so desire.[1]
But then further clarification of the term 'economic migrant' is also interesting:
> The term ‘economic migrant’ has no legal definition. It is not mentioned in any international instruments of migration law.
and
> The inaccurate dichotomy between ‘economic migrants’ and refugees creates two fixed categories and gives the misleading impression that only refugees have and deserve legal protection and rights at the international level.
> Yet, the reality is different and far more complex. Migratory movements are composed of various types of migrants who may have specific protection needs, even if they are not fleeing persecution or a conflict. These include accompanied or unaccompanied migrant children; victims of human trafficking; migrants attempting to reunite with their families; and migrants affected by natural disasters or environmental degradation, including as a consequence of climate change. [2]
A 'refugee' has a legal definition because this is a status that is created and governed by international treaties, which is what makes it interesting for migrants because in 'nice' countries like in Europe this means that they are protected from deportation while their claim to refugee status is processed, which can take a very long time. They are provided accomodation during that time.
All other migrants are simply people who migrate for whatever reason people move to other countries, which are mainly family and economic reasons. When people from poor countries want to move to rich countries the main reason is very obviously economic. All those migrants fall into normal national laws of the countries they move to, in general this means that if they enter without visas they face a form of arrest and deportation.
That's it. There is indeed in a clear dichotomy. The rest is purely a political/ideological point of view as to whether people have effectively a right to migrate vs. whether countries have a right to decide who to let in.
