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I got my eyes tested a couple of years back at one of the big chains, the kind with a name you’d recognise from a shopping strip anywhere in the country. Decent enough experience, except the bit at the end where the optometrist pivoted, almost mid-sentence, into asking if I’d considered a second pair for “screen use.” I hadn’t. I still don’t own one. But I remember thinking, at the …

Saw a post the other day: bloke messages his telco to cancel, walks away with a $45 a month discount for six months. Comments section immediately splits into two camps. One camp says nice work, keep doing that every six months forever. The other camp says why are you still with Optus, and lists, in forensic detail, every way that company has ruined their week, their credit rating, or their faith in humanity.

Saw a video this week of a soft robot from Keio University, basically a helium blimp shaped like a friendly whale, that follows you around, nudges you awake, reminds you about things. People online are calling them “air whales” and honestly, that’s the correct name and I won’t hear another. My first reaction was pure delight. My second reaction, about four seconds later, was: where does the …

There’s a maths problem they used to give kids in primary school. A ship’s ladder hangs 2 metres above the water. The tide rises 3 metres. How far is the ladder from the water now? The answer is still 2 metres, because the ship floats. Saw someone use that exact analogy in a thread about falling house prices this week and it’s been rattling around my head since. Because it’s the whole …

Someone on a forum this week was agonising over a Ninja Luxe coffee machine deal at The Good Guys. Sixty bucks off, some store credit scheme, a gift card discount stacked on top. The question underneath it all was simple: is this a good deal, or is there something better out there. I read the whole thread with more interest than it probably deserved, because I’ve been circling this exact decision myself for …

Someone on the internet posted two photos of bowls in a dishwasher and asked which arrangement was correct. Four thousand comments later, a grown adult had been told they’d be “difficult to marry” over the placement of some Corelle. I’ve been thinking about this for three days, which is embarrassing, but here we are. The original question was reasonable enough. Roommates disagreed on loading …

There’s a specific kind of local excitement that only happens over construction hoarding. Not roadworks, not the endless scaffolding on some apartment tower nobody asked for. I mean the good kind, where someone spots a logo through the plywood and an entire subreddit loses its mind. That’s where we’re at with Books Kinokuniya, Level 2, Melbourne Central. Branding’s up. The council’s own …

Mexico is reportedly looking at social media and AI regulations aimed at protecting kids online. Age verification, possibly biometric, possibly tied to a digital ID. I read through a Reddit thread on it this morning with my second coffee, and the whole time I had this nagging sense of déjà vu. We’ve been here. Australia passed its under-16 social media ban last year. The UK has its Online Safety Act. The EU is …

Someone on a forum this week described trying to remove a former employee’s Adobe licence and getting stuck talking to a chatbot that typed “working on it” and then just… stopped. No confirmation, no human, no end. He sat there wondering if the thing was broken or whether that was the point. I read that and felt something click into place, because I’ve had versions of that exact moment. …

Saw a post the other day about a bloke who moved in with his girlfriend and solved his home server problem with a €35 IKEA coffee table. Gillersberg, apparently. Shelf underneath for the gear, flat top for the plants. Comments section immediately split into two camps: people impressed by the cable management, and people pointing out that water and electronics have never once gotten along in the history of the …