In Australia Google maps has issues with routing cyclists on 80km busy truck transit roads that have no bike lanes, footpaths or shoulders. You’ll regularly get stuck behind lost uber eats cyclists whose map took them through a motor vehicle only underpass.

The other day google maps decided to reroute me from a quiet, wide street with no bike lane that was otherwise perfectly safe, and tried to send me through a nightsoil alley, down a heritage stock run that was paved with cobblestones and crossed over a storm drain 4 times in a zig zag.

Yeah, “safer” because there’s no cars I guess, but not suitable for bikes at all.

Accessibility.

We will never get rid of the analogue clocks from our school, we’re an adult education and alternative model highschool qualifications centre.

We primarily teach adults with no to low English, adults and teens with disabilities, and adults and teens refered via corrections services.

There is a significant level of illiteracy within numeracy, and for some of our students, it’s not a failing of the education system, it’s just a fact of life given their specific circumstances (eg, acquired brain injuries are common among our students)

Some students can learn to tell time on an analogue clock even if they didn’t know before.

But even my students who will never in their life be able to fully and independently remember and recall their numbers can tell the time with an analogue clock.

I tell my students “we will take lunch at 12pm, so if you look at the clock and the arms look like this /imitates a clock/ we will go to lunch”

And now I avoid 40 questions of “when’s lunch?” because you don’t need to tell time to see time with an analogue clock, they can physically watch the hands move, getting closer to the shape they recognise as lunch time.

And my other students can just read the time, from the clock, and not feel infantalised by having a disability friendly task clock like they’ve done at other centres I work at - they’ve had a digital clock for students who can tell time, and a task clock as the accessible clock. But a well designed face on an analogue clock can do both.

I myself have time blindness due to a neurological/CRD issue, so analogue clocks, and analogue timers are an accessibility tool for me as well, as the teacher.

Yeah, boomers will just brute force their way through repeated “wrong password” attempts and inevitably make a new account every time and their take away from the experience is that “new fangled technology is so convoluted and never works”

Meanwhile the millennial experience is to have zero issues actually using the product because we’re technologically competent, we’re just going to complain the whole time that’s it’s taking unnecessary data, or find weird ad hoc ways to make burner accounts.

I will lecture my dad for having 14 different email accounts and he will retort with “you also have more than 10!”

Yes old man, and I use all 10 and know exactly how they differ and what each is used for. You think you have one account when you actually have 14, they all share one password which Is probably my name written backwards, and you’re sending mail to your old account address then getting mad when you can’t find it in the inbox of your new account, and you still refer to all mail platforms as “Windows mail” even though you’ve exclusively accessed your yahoo mail via the browser for the last 5 years, and have owned a Mac for 10 years… We are not the same.

That’s alright, there will only be a handful of gen alpha even eligible to vote in a 2029 election, since they were born 2010-not even born yet

Generally millennials born after 1989 would fall into the “younger millennial” catagory.

The difference between old millennial and young millennial is how much of the 90s you actually remember because you were old enough to form memories, and not just the kind of made up memories you invent from looking back on old photos and trying to imagine the stories your parents told you about your childhood.

I never really understood at what point a language evolves enough to be an entirely new language.

Old English feels so far removed from even middle English, let alone modern English.

We have “new” and “old” to differentiate them, but with how many Latin words alone entered English between Old English and Modern English, It’s something I’ve never found a comprehensive answer to.

I guess, what is it about proto-indo European that we acknowledge as a distinct language from the hundreds of thousands of languages that evolved from it, other than time scale and global impact.

Three words. Edward scissors hands.

Exactly! I have a genetic illness that caused congenital deformities and injuries and disability later in life, starting around my teens thanks to puberty.

From an early age my relationship with work was distorted because I found myself trapped in the gap between two pathways. I was obviously capable of work, with the right treatment and support I had a lot of potential. But I was disabled, and I required expensive supports and medical intervention, and under the public healthcare system there reaches a point of disability and limitations in capacity that you are written off by the system. Shoved in a residential group home, given a pension below the poverty line, and expected not to try. (genuinely, we’re expected not to try, if someone on a disability pension works a job, they can loose their pension, which is many cases is also tied to housing and access to medical services)

I’d flip between the two systems, I’d have a great few months with regular access to treatment, I’d get a job plan from the dole office, I’d sit through work readiness courses, I’d be getting healthier and looking forward to working and being a good little contributor to society. Then I’d hit a waiting list for my medical care, my health would slip, I’d be re-assessed by the welfare department and deemed too disabled to work, my job plan would be shredded and I’d get a pension support plan. Then I’d get to the top of the wait list, resume treatment, and get back to getting to work.

I didn’t start a “real job” until I was 24, it was a call centre gig and I near killed myself trying to do it.

It wasn’t even hard. It was a true 9-5 (no overtime, no bullshit) and you mentally didn’t need to bring any of it home with you. It was easy for me, but my body decided it was too much. My health suffered and it took years to fully recover, with me barely pulling myself together here and there for gig work in between being bounced on and off the disability pension system.

The whole endeavour was far more expensive to tax payers than a system like UBI. Processing my case 70 times because the disability support, and employment support eligibility requirements are so strict and the lines between streams so black and white took a lot of administrative resources.

I’ve been in my current industry for 10 years this November. I work part time, 12-20 hours a week depending on my health. I’m highly successful in my field because I’m working within my body and mind’s means and playing to my strengths. I’m a whole person with a life outside work and I bring that range of experiences to my job, enriching what I bring to my organisation - which is good, because my job is a mutual exchange between me and my employer, it’s not exploitive towards me the worker, which further prevents burn out for me.

But we exist within the capitalist system of funding and our wages are set by the department of health and human services. I make $34,000AUD a year and it’s not enough to survive.

But if I work any harder my body will not survive.

I’m asking to do what I can do for my community, while living a safe existence… Not being forced to choose between litteraly breaking my back working for someone else’s greedy profit, or starving in a tent (though realistically, a lot of people are doing both)

Okay, you do you.

In Australia, most larger chemist’s sell peri bottles in the antenatal section, near the breast pumps and maternity pads.

They also sometimes sell cheaper, less pink, peri bottles in the OT/home aid section, or in the ailse with the laxatives and enemas.

You can definitely get them on Amazon. I also find them occasionally in the toiletries section of Muslim grocery stores, and occasionally Asian stores, near the buckets, stools, and tabo cups.

I don’t have any fancy suggestions, because much like you, I often went DIY. Because of my skin condition I’ve always needed a bidet, so convenience and utility was my draw, the fact I had to carry it with me everywhere my whole life since adolescence.

Pretty sure when I was first taught to do it by my chronic care nurse I was just using hospital peri-bottles. For a while I just carried a 50ml syringe in my bag and a bottle to draw water from.

But at some point (probably around 12 when I joined Scouts) I found these “bidet bottlecaps” at hiking stores, and I remember a time when I just had these bottle caps everywhere and would have plastic bottles with hair ties on them in random purses (I’d put a hair tie around the bottle to remind me it was not drinking water anymore) the brand name I’m seeing pop up is CuloClean, but I mostly see cheap screw on no-brand ones near the register at camping stores.

Now days I mostly DIY them with a lighter, a q tip and a pin.

Just take any plastic bottle lid, heat it up with the lighter to soften the plastic, use the q-tip to push the soft plastic to make a “nipple”, you’re basically trying to make the bottle lid resemble a baby bottle. Then take the pin and make a ~1-2mm hole in the side of the nipple. It’s a good idea to sit down and hold the bottle and see how you’re planning to aim the stream so you can plan where you want to angle the hole you’re making in the lid.

I’m glad I found this method, because I like the little 250ml bottles of Quench Juice, they squeeze easy, hold just the right amount of water, and fit really neatly in all my purses (and the juice is nice too, lol). But the lid was never compatible with the bidet bottle caps, so now I DIY the existing cap of whatever bottle I prefer.

But in either case, you need to have a second, unaltered bottle cap to swap out after use, so the bottle is water tight for storage again. (though, you can always leave it empty and just refill immediately before use, then empty it completely afterwards)

Buy physical media from independent production companies. Pirate whatever Disney, Netflix and Amazon are cranking out.

I think we just need tiny sinks in stalls, or rather, all public stalls should be designed as semi-ambulant stalls.

Growing up as a crutches user (hip deformity) I didn’t fully comprehend that the standard stalls don’t have sinks in them. I kind of knew they didn’t all have sinks, but I didn’t think too hard about it, I sort of assumed the reason most people flushed then came to the main public sink was to use the mirror or dryer.

I got to used to filling my personal bidet at the sink, using it, and washing it at the sink, all behind the privacy of a closed bathroom door.

When I had my hip surgery and no longer needed semi ambulant stalls, or disability access stalls, and it was just so inconvenient to fill and rinse a bidet bottle in a regular public bathroom I stopped using it.

Then a few months later started using the semi ambulant stalls again so I can use my bidet, because it turns out my lichen sclerosis doesn’t like public toilet paper and I was getting really bad infections.

But yeah, personal bidet bottles are great, but they require a tap near the toilet.

Some public sinks are easy to fill a bidet bottle, but a lot aren’t, you physically can’t fit a bottle under the taps and because bidet bottles aren’t common it can feel embarrassing to fill it at the public sinks. Disability stalls almost always have a proper tap and sink for washing toilet aid devices.

Do this with a regular onion, especially if you’ve already got one in the pantry trying to sprout. As it grows you’ll get onion greens that work just like scallions in any recipe. Let it go to seed, now you have infinite onions, but depending on your local climate and luck, leave your original onion bulb to winter, and shoot again, and it has probably split into new bulbs, so you’ll probably get 2 new onions from the plant, plus onion greens, plus seeds. Eat one bulb, and leave the other bulb to grow more onion greens.

I’ve never bothered using the seeds, I just keep a bulb or two in the pot. Been 5 years. I still buy onions if I want something like onion jam or French onion soup, where I need like 1kg of onions. But Ive never had to buy scallions, and I’ve got onion flavour all year long through onion greens (you can dehydrate them, and freeze them really easily too, to store them when you have more than you can use)

I also highly recommend throwing peas into a large tray of soil. Litteraly just grab a bunch of aluminium foil disposable oven pans if you need to, stab some holes in them with a knife, an inch or two of soil, some dried whole peas or fresh garden peas, a sprinkle of more soil or just a wet sheet of kitchen roll/paper towel on top.

You probably won’t get peas, but you’ll have tons of pea tendrils for salads. On my balcony it’s the only “salad green” I’ve had any luck growing. I have a pretty black thumb. I can’t even manage to sprout chia seeds without them moulding, and I’ve never been able to grow mint despite broad casting mint seeds directly into my garden, urging the gardening gods to spite me with weedy mint but no dice.

When I buy peas, 4/5ths go in the fridge to eat, the other 5th gets planted, and I’ll get ~10 dishes from the tendrils vs 1 dish from the peas. Nutritionally the peas have more protein, but lentils are cheap, salad is expensive, so this works for my budget.

I keep having this glitch where I’m stuck in the opening scene with the jojo cubicle. I’m supposed to get a letter telling me I’ve inherited a farm but that hasn’t happened yet, anyone else got this bug?

Food I cook is starting to taste more and more like my mother’s cooking. Moving out of home I always assumed my mums poor cooking was down to technique, boiling the brussel sprouts, steaming the peas until they were grey, water frying everything. As soon as I learned to cook properly it was amazing how much flavour everything had. Letting things brown fully, using oil, not overcooking everything.

But recently, no amount of skill can save the sad veggies sold in store.

It makes the hyperprocessed foods even more appealing when there’s nothing you can affordably do to improve the simple produce and staples. When potatos cost the same as Pringle’s, calorie for calorie (and they do, ) it’s easy to see why “just eat beans, rice, and in season produce” isn’t helpful advice - yes it’s frugal, but it’s depressing, and not as easy as it used to be. Why waste money on already rotting food that tastes bland when the same money can buy me a more nutrient dense food that lasts longer and tastes better?

I’ve got a few things growing on the 2m concrete slab my landlord calls a back yard, it helps having home grown spring onion, parsley and pea shoots to dress up a dish.

I’m a terrible gardener, I can’t even get mint to take. “grow your own” is thrown around too readily when people complain about produce quality. It’s not always an option, there is a physical skill, a cognitive skill, and resource requirements.

Having had a defecography this is very similar to the encouragement the radiologist gave me…

I’m hard of hearing and terrified of standing in the wrong place at an airport and missing the visual cues to board the flight. Once boarding starts and people start queueing up, I usually get in line because it’s helpful to see what everyone in front of me is doing - the order that they hand over paperwork or get carry on double checked. I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to hear the attendant if they ask me questions at the gate because it’s so noisy, so I like to at least feel like I’m prepared.

One time I was flying with crutches and qualified for early pre-boarding because I needed the plane wheelchair (skychair). I sat right next to the gate desk and waited, then I started seeing people queue up so I quickly joined the line, wondering how pre-boarding works when the whole plane of passengers are already vying to be at the front of the line.

I get to the front, the attendant looks at my ticket then after some awkward back and forward eventually I realised they were telling me I’ll have to wait till everyone has boarded to get the sky-chair on. I should have come to the desk when pre boarding was announced. I pointed that I was sitting right in front of them… Apparently they were called my name 3 times over the loudspeaker.

Apparently airports can only comprehend one disability at a time (if that!) they knew I was hard of hearing (it’s on my ticket) but still thought calling me over the PA was the best way to get the attention of the deaf person sitting 80cm from their desk.

So I sat back down and waited for the line to clear, then I got back up when there were 2 people in line, and after another back and forward I learned that they had tried calling my name again about halfway through boarding because they only had one skychair and it was now or never because the chair had told fly with the other passenger because their arrival airport didn’t have a chair, or something, I dunno, anyway I kind of had to crawl down the ailse to get to my chair because in the past I’ve just used the backs of chairs to swing myself along, but the plane was full so I couldn’t do that.

This is why they are also tell you the license plate number.

I don’t need to know what a Honda Whatever looks like to know that if the licence plate and my app both say “ABC123”, that’s my uber.

My uber is a white Toyota camry? So helpful, there definitely aren’t 7 of them parked outside the club each waiting for their uber rider and or kidnap victim.

I’m certain you understand, you are intoxicated, departing from the entertainment establishment before it closes, and you are responsible so you take it’s upon yourself to secure safe, sober transport home. The application you use to order the ride informs you that your designated driver will arrive in a “Kia Chevy Juke”. Despite being absolutely incapable of clear thought, you, or another member of your party is trying very hard to ensure you all enter the correct vehicle to avoid potential danger from nefarious individuals. Also, you have chosen to partake in this activity in a cold time of year, and as it is 4 o’clock in the morning, you are all quite cold.