@mattcropp @tbeckett

As someone with no FB account, the assumptions of social death often leave me a bit bemused.

I made an early fairly private choice that I didn't like the nature of FB. It wasn't a particularly technical or privacy related choice, but a kind of hunch-y ethical one. Something about the way MZ talked about it alerted me to something.

Absolutely nothing bad has happened to me as a result. I'm socially connected and totally OK.

#wordfromtheoutside

So my youngest daughter gave me a miniature rose for Christmas. She bought it early. It lived under her bed through several hot days. By Christmas morning it was all but a pot of dead twigs.

It's been my holiday project, to revive it with hard pruning, compost and worm juice.

And here it is, a week later, ablaze with life.

Grace and growth to all of us in 2018. Let's not underestimate the will to survive.
https://mastodon.social/media/OBKJ4GTUoq0oeC3P6Nw

@allan

Thank you! It's simple, and smart: choose what to read, don't leave it to the algorithmic simulation of chance.

"By choosing to be a reader of websites whose voices and ideas you're fundamentally interested in and care about, you're taking control.

And by doing that, you'll chip away at the incentive publishers have to create headlines and stories weaponized for the purpose of sharing on social media."

Research shows that 85% of retail and fast food service workers have experienced some form of abuse at work.

My daughter the supermarket worker is surprised at my surprise. "Of course," she says, "that's how it is."

She tells me today's 85% story: the newly hired checkout operator just learning how to scan things, the computer that has the pricing code wrong, the shopper whose Christmas spirit snuffed out right at that moment.

Let's be kinder to each other.

#smallstories

Yesterday I was driving on a familiar old country road to visit family. Suddenly we were diverted to a fast new multi-lane section, sliced through fields and woods, 3 years in the making and finally open. "This is great," we said as we flew along. "It'll take, oh, maybe ten minutes off the trip."
But I found myself looking over my shoulder at the remnants of the abandoned road, inconvenient, slow, curling, hedged with old trees.
#smallstories

Where I live is similar in its beach-day-out relationship to the west of Sydney, but there's been a startling spike in real estate values driven by central Sydneysiders who can't afford to live in Sydney. So now all the little stores sell cushions and homewares and the cafes that used to sell milkshakes have espresso machines and baristas, and the local supermarkets have sourdough and organic toothpaste.

Local kids will never grow up to buy a house here.

@gamehawk @mahabali

This is something @mahabali and I are thinking about together -- the social and cultural interface between Muslim and non-Muslim and how it might change in these times. At the moment we are both planning international travel in 2017, and I am continually aware that I have far fewer barriers to prepare for, both in law and in how people may react.

I didn't know that about Jersey Shore.

@gamehawk

Yesterday at our beach in a summer heatwave, I saw the mothers and grandmothers of a Muslim family fully scarved and covered, playing happily with their kids.

Remembered that terrible moment when French police enforced the ban on religious covering at a beach, and appreciated our community that we all get to be there as we are, in law and practice.

#smallstories

@gamehawk

So now I'm cranky, because if people withdraw from the economy like employers have withdrawn from the obligations they used to have towards workers, then the entire economy is not-awesomed.

Except for those 8 men who are worth more than 50% of the rest of us. They seem to be doing OK.

#grumpy

Gave a talk on the future of work, thinking: the issue here is that work is broken but higher ed can't find the words for this so instead we say "everything is awesome".

The gig economy, work on demand, uberisation, everything is awesome.

And the thing is, it's really not, not if you get sick or you want to raise kids or you have a tiny hope of owning a home or you want to pay off college debt.

None of these ways of working are awesome, except for the people who profit from your work.