They’ve managed to make gadgets out of these

hankfully I never needed insulin shots and hopefully never will. Today I asked if anyone related to me (relatives) needed such shots, as I found an “Insulin Refrigerator” (the one shown above) for just 3 pounds.. for the whole kit. It’s over 100 pounds in eBay, probably a lot more at shops.

At first I was so baffled; I thought, why would a portable fridge that size have a physical capacity so low?

They seem to have made them more like gadgets with digital displays and maybe an operating system. It does not get connected to a network, though, so I assume this is safe. Unlike “smart” fridges.

Liverpool used to be very lucrative

oday (right now) we speak to my in-law about the match set to start this afternoon in Liverpool. He worked in Liverpool for a bit back in the 1970s (he’ll soon be 80).

Liverpool has deteriorated as a football club. It’s like ManUtd, except this is the second drought it has (not so long a drought).

When my father in-law was in Liverpool the local team Liverpool FC was very dominant and the Beatles were still a thing.

Liverpool is a shrinking city; many travel from Liverpool to Manchester for work. Today many City fans will travel to Liverpool for the first match in nearly 3 weeks.

Well put

he Cyber Show has just responded to something I published about WHO and mental health. Knowing the text there is transient (the front page) or volatile, I wanted to reproduce it below, then comment at the end:

Bad work places turn you ugly inside

Roy at Techrights posted this reminder: “Saturday 10 October has been designated world mental
health day. The WHO defines that: Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables
people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn well and work well,
and contribute to their community. It has intrinsic and instrumental value and is integral
to our well-being.

On mental health, Frank Zappa had some very important and insightful things to say:

The biggest problem in the world today is mental health. If
everybody had good mental health then all the other problems would
be solved. In order to take care of practical problems you have to
have good mental health. If people have motives that are not
worthwhile those motives are always going to creep into their
activities, and you see that every day from the way the political
people behave. – Frank Zappa

“There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what’s better would really be better. I resent it when
other people try to inflict their ideas of betterness on me. I doqn’t think they know. And I can’t
see any authority on the horizon that’s got any answers that seem worthwhile. Most of the things
that are suggested are probably detrimental to your mental health.” – Frank Zappa

All work that requires collaboration and disputation is demanding. Interpersonal relations
need working at but that should bring joy and connection to life.
That sounds like a fair definition of any group or community with clear social goals,
not run by “professional managers” or primarily for making money.

The best of Free Open Source people that I’ve encountered take each other seriously
as actual people. So let’s remind volunteer
developers out there who struggle to make sense of the
madness and pressure in tech right now – that you are loved and appreciated. Please
try to remember to only work for the
right intrinsic motivations of self-growth and never to supplicate the power structures
and ambitions that arise around the mission.

The WHO website also includes a section on mental health at work and
a list of causes of misery which include:

• under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work
• excessive workloads or work pace, under-staffing
• lack of control over job design or workload
• organisational culture that enables negative behaviours
• limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision
• violence, harassment or bullying
• discrimination and exclusion
• unclear job role
• under- or over-promotion
• job insecurity, inadequate pay, or poor investment in career development
• conflicting home/work demands

This is literally the blueprint and the aims of every crappy university
I ever worked in, all of which were bad places for mental health, for staff and
students. They may well provide a place for smart people to work, they also
stifle and frustrate intellectual growth and creative innovation. They
may educate a nation but also poison it with what Zappa would call bad
attitudes and ideas.

I previously commented, even in lengthy articles, about the deterioration of universities and academia.

To give one example, they’d give very mechanical, pointless tasks to people who are better off doing research and teaching.

It seems like the point of some of these tasks was to demoralise the staff.

And I’m just passing time with our animals until then

ast night the young birds stayed until it was rather dark. I think their biological clock or instincts are maladjusted. They eventually both flew away – at the exact same time – after 6:40PM.

Today it’s a sunny day, well suited for a round of feeding in the park (in the late afternoon) and I urgently need to find a heating body for my fish tank, otherwise the tetras will need to move to Rianne’s tank, which can be warmed up.

I’ll have a good look this morning at the Sunday Market.

The nights are getting cold and sometimes the days too (with gusty winds that make it chilly). We are, after all, just weeks away from Halloween.

We are now 4 weeks away from Techrights@20 (anniversary), so we need to give a thought to plans. It needs not be anything expensive or extravagant, just special.

In a way it’s hard to believe 20 years have passed since I began writing in Techrights. 20 years is two decades or about half my lifetime!

I’ll need to liaise with other Techrights people and figure out how we can collectively mark the milestone.

Maybe Techrights can introduce some major new feature?

Too often they’re not

oday I’m reading that, according to the official site of the Court of Appeal: “The Civil Procedure Rules and their related practice directions govern the procedure for the initiation and progress of civil claims before the County Court, High Court and Court of Appeal (Civil Division) in England and Wales.”

It’s nice that they have Civil Procedure Rules, but in my experience law firms do not obey these rules. When facing a Litigant in Person like me, they vainly assume they’d never get caught or reported for it. Worse yet, they intentionally lie all the time because they get paid for to do so – even if that means they are in contempt of court. Again, they assume they’re above the law and nobody will ever hold them accountable for it.

I wrote about this yesterday.

It should be noted that law firms cannot assert their breaches are accidental, involuntary etc. They went to school to learn these rules.

No matter “whose side” they were on (many felt conned/misled/cheated)

HE COVID-19 pandemic made people sceptical of pandemics and vaccines. I cannot blame them. 7 years ago COVID-19 broke out and it was mishandled by media, governments, medical professionals, and corporations that only saw “dollar signs”. People were meant to comply and agree with almost anything told to them, except the “bad things”.

Right now there’s media “chatter” regarding illnesses and deaths in Russia. Some people rush to compare that to 2019, asserting there’s some biological warfare in the mix. Whose? Russia’s? Against Russia? Evidence related to this is thin, but uncritical media rushes to exploit the uncertainty or drama, clicks, Putin bashing etc.

I don’t miss anything about the pandemic. It did, however, give me more “computer time”. I still wear a mask in crowded places.

But to who?

am a fairly normal individual, even if my views on technology (that area in particular) diverge somewhat from “the average” (or “norm”) because I am opinionated about Software Freedom. Nothing wrong with diverse perspectives in the planet.

If that sort of divergence is because it is my professional area, then it’s somewhat expected that my views will differ from “unwashed (bombarded by commercial propaganda) masses”.

Last October I spoke to a judge who later said I was courteous. I cannot recall saying anything rude or impolite. I didn’t shout, didn’t curse. I didn’t make “funny faces”.

This was the first time and the last time I saw someone who had sued me. He would no longer show up, even when he was just around the corner (from the courtroom).

Absent an explanation, I’m left to deduce he’s just afraid of facing me or seeing me. That was never my intention.