Welcome to the Melbourne Community Daily Discussion Thread.

  • So some of you may remember my recent trials and tribulations with my toxic boss who wanted me to fire an employee for no valid reason. Well I have been looking for a new job and have a first round interview tomorrow for an amazing job with an amazing company and I just want people to pray for me. I’m afraid it won’t work out and I’m going to be stuck in my shitty hell hole job.

    Edit: Thank you for the kind words and encouragement everysmurf

  • Okay, been a little quiet for reasons.

    @Nath@aussie.zone

    I’ve been waiting for this to go live to get back about how you can help. This is one way. https://transjustice.org.au/

    Support the trans justice project. I suggest this as they seem really well organised and this project is happening now.

    You could also suggest the company you work for do inclusivity training, Transgender Victoria offer what I understand to the best of this. https://tgv.org.au/training

    Of course, there are many organisations you can donate to or volunteer with who support and or advocate for trans, gender diverse, non binary and intersex people. As well as the two above organisations, there is

    https://transcend.org.au/

    https://www.minus18.org.au/

    https://www.switchboard.org.au/

    All of these utilise skills from a huge range of fields so pretty much anything you can do they can use. There are more too, but these are the one’s I can vouch for. Unfortunately queer orgs are low on the list of many government support initiatives so many of these organisations really do need money and or volunteers to continue their work. I volunteer a couple of afternoons a week, the odd Saturday and then a little bit every day for my role. I suggest you support these organisations as working alone can be challenging and they know what they’re doing. Apart from that, keep up the anti-discriminatory language vibe here, it’s a big deal for me personally to feel supported and safe here. Mental health outcomes are poor for a lot of trans people and I have to actively work on mine by only living in safe spaces. We all ultimately have to advocate for ourselves too. Some people have a lot less capacity for that than I do though and this outlet here forms part of that capacity. <3

    Thanks Nath, Rusty and the whole DT family. Like, a whole lot!!! <3

    EDIT< A single tear just ran down my cheek and under my chin after I posted this. I’m ok!

    Oh yeah, see what I mean about the downvotes? ffs.

    lmao. it’s all my posts now. wow. someone is reading, well done, you have no idea about the level of persistence I’m capable of.

    • Have read this. I was particularly heartened by the statement on that TransJustice site:

      We have been totally overwhelmed by the number of responses to our survey on experiences of anti-trans hate in Australia. We will provide more information in time but wanted to thank everyone for the support this project has received.

      This backs up what I was saying: You are surrounded by people who support you.

      As to the downvoter: I did make an attempt at that. The database under the hood of Lemmy is overwhelming. Basically, it contains all the federated content. If a single aussie.zone user subscribes to a community on another instance, then that content is in the database. The example posted in the other thread doesn’t work for us: It shows who has upvoted/downvoted a single thread. But that’s not what we want to do in your case. I need to search comment tables for posts you have been in and then cross-reference the comment_like table for postid, userid and commentid.

      I’m not a Database admin by trade, I’m ok at database stuff, but this is some complicated bit of table join logic. It might be beyond me, but I haven’t given up, yet.

        • A fair question. And something that I have given thought to. It’ll depend on what is turned up. Downvoting a comment on its own is not against the rules. So, potentially nothing.

          Stalking a user across multiple communities, downvoting all their comments while otherwise not being engaged at all in those communities takes us into bullying territory. Reddit had a built-in defense against that activity. If you go to a user profile there and just downvote all the comments, they don’t actually take effect against the target. Lemmy doesn’t have that feature yet. From that point, we’ll see. I honestly don’t know if it’s even possible to do more than just see the vote records. If I delete a downvote, Lemmy may simply restore it through the next federation sync.

          Whatever it is, I’ll be transparent about it. I’m also conscious of the precedent this might set. Neither Lodion nor I are much interested in poking through the database and manually touching anything lightly.

  • On the way home tonight, I glanced at a bus stop that had one of the new gas ads - the “Australian Gas is keeping the country running” ones. Someone had added in black marker “away from its responsibilities” under the printed text.
    Nice to see that the BUGA UP impulse has not died out yet.

  • One of my friends started at my workplace. We work in an open office area and because of that I bought over ear earphones. It’s generally accepted that when someone is wearing them they’re trying to work.

    My friend keeps coming over for a chat. Like not just a short one she fully sits down next to me.

    I’m on a deadline so I think I’ll just be straightforward and tell her that if my headphones are on I don’t want a chat. Seems reasonable but I hate having these kinds of conversations…

  • The employment trainer is showing a YT video explaining how to make a table in Word, including how to convert the data into rows and columns.

    This is very good for some people, but I want to rip my ears off, spoon out my eyes, and throw them at my monitor. My brains are melting out of my ears, I was privileged to learn how to do this in highschool in the 2000s.

    Edit: JUST USE EXCEL 😭😭😭

    Editedit: also not the trainers fault, Workforce gives them a curriculum to follow and cover.

      • Definitely the case, the trainer said as much and apologised to those of us who already know how to use those programs effectively. She didn’t have to apologise lol Workforce gives them the curriculum, they dont really get to choose which vids to show, etc.

    • It sucks that they won’t give you recognition for prior learning. When I was retrenched during GFC I had to go in there and learn how to turn a computer on, how to log in to windows, how to create folders and drag-and-drop files, how to write a resume, and they expected me to put all those “skills” on my resume.

      I pointed out that these are basic skills in every office job; should I also list knowledge of use of photocopier, how to change paper in photocopier, how to plug accessories into usb, how to operate hot water in tearoom? (They did concede that I was outside of their target audience and just gave me a pass for the whole course).

  • I used to HATE when people gatekeep parenting. Stories of mums or dads being like “Oh you don’t know what tired is you don’t have to have kids”. Swore I wasnt gonna do that. Who am I to say you arnt tired because you have a different experience to me? But I just had a friend try to tell me something about parenting, about the sacrifices you do or don’t have to make. And I just wanted to laugh in his face. He isn’t a dad. He would not have a clue the sacrifices required, or the decisions you face on the daily. I’m sure it came from the best of intentions, but it felt like a Call Of Duty player telling an Army Officer he was shooting wrong. In the end I decided to walk away, because “Bro you’re not a dad you are talking completely out of your ass and its condescending AF” is usually a friendship killer.

    So I think maybe we’re all best off just sticking to our own lanes a bit more. There’s no way for a parent to say “this is hard” in a way that isnt off-putting to non parents, and its hard for non-parents to offer advice that doesn’t sound like someone who read web MD trying to advise a surgeon.

    • When we brought our daughter home we were told to give her 3 hourly feeds because she was a little jaundice and in my head I’m thinking “when do I sleep?” but you do it. When I went back to my doctor I asked him if I should wake her for her feed he’s like “hell no”. Of course it makes sense not to but no one tells you that.

      BC (before child) you tend to but things off to another time because you can but when you’re a parent it doesn’t matter how tired you are if it’s for your kid you get it done.

    • Empathy and understanding, without offering advice or judgement, is apparently difficult for many of the humans in our lives. Everyone has it hard, parents especially, and a childfree telling a parent (or vice versa) how to live is egregious and ridiculous.

      You’re a better person than I for walking away tbh, I would have lost it.

      Thinking of you and your family, you’re absolutely smashing it man, you are fine and good and doing amazing!

      • Empathy and understanding, without offering advice or judgement, is apparently difficult for many of the humans in our lives.

        I think this really nails it. I honestly think that some people actually want to be genuinely supportive, but lack the skills to express it and it comes off poorly.

        Effective communication and thought expression are dying skills.

        • Because people have been browbeaten into thinking normal communication is a boundary violation or abuse. The narcissists took over the internets and elsewhere because we tried to be sensitive to their feelings or believed there bs. We were naïve.

    • I just can’t upvote this enough, hard-agree.

      I thought ** I ** was reasonably prepared and knew what to expect, and the reality of parenthood still kicked my arse. Still wouldn’t change it for the world :D

  • I went to Coles to exchange money for life and I put my card in and no prompts. So I tried it again and no prompts. So I proceeded to put my pin in and the cunt beeped at me. Of course there’s no attendant so I called over the top of a queue of people “scuse. Which way do I put my card in?”. I get told. I try it again and it works.

    I think I just confirmed to the 8 senior citz that were lining up that indeed technology does suck because they all turned to look at me.