Notices by iona 🐝 (iona@social.coop), page 47

@garbados @mmn @tomas Can you use some sort of 3G/4G hotspot? I'm not sure what is available there but they're pretty common here and provide wi-fi from a cellular signal.

@medusa Berlin's transport system is beautiful 🚋 ❤️

Went to the supermarket only to find that it had closed permanently while I've been on holiday.

The retail park now has just a B&Q and a Burger King, having lost PC World, Maplin and now Aldi.

And they say the economy is in great health.

@ghost_bird ~sings~ Start spreading the poooos...

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/7234989

(sorry)

@ghost_bird Maybe one that sings opera to you when you sit down*

*desperately trying to stay on topic

@ghost_bird I came back from holiday to find my loo seat mysteriously broken (!). I presume the heat in the closed-up house got to the plastic and when I sat on it, it went pop.

TIL B and Q do a whole line of "Novelty Toilet Seats".

The Bauer arrangement was "do unpaid shifts on our digital-only stations and when there's paid cover to be done on [the much more popular] Key 103 FM you'll be first in line." Needless to say, the cover never came.

It's the same in local radio too. Unless you're listening to one of the big guns like Global, chances are that at least part of the output you're listening to is being put together by unpaid people or people on min wage.

Bauer, operator of Kiss/Magic etc, had unpaid *presenters* on a *national* digital station out of Manchester for a long time.

I can't stand the dross that Heart/Capital churn out but at least they treat their employees reasonably well.

Related Twitter thread by an unpaid "employee" of the That's TV operation: https://twitter.com/ElleRudd_/status/1005044201921372160

I came across Dan Cass a few times in a previous life and he seemed slimy back then, too.

Something I missed while away - excellent article on the local TV stations of questionable quality that have popped up in the UK over the past few years: https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/revealed-how-britains-biggest-local-tv-company-has-gamed

Surprising no one, it turns out that these stations consisting of dodgy old films and endless hours of people talking about nothing in front of a wall are, in fact, a scam to hoover up public money.

@cathal At least it's on the 4th! There are no World Cup matches that day. I half-expected them to stick the vote on World Cup Final day to bury it.

Contrary to my previous post, Opera hasn't changed my default search engine to Bing. I searched for 'b and q', a chain store in the UK, and it interpreted the initial 'b ' as "please search Bing for 'and q'".

The fact that I feel like it randomly pulls this stuff and that was my initial assumption isn't great on Opera's part, though.

Gah! You have changed my search engine from DuckDuckGo to Bing *again*!

You also put a random bookmarks bar on the other day, with links to complete junk. Stop it!

@rowan Thank you! We lost our lovely rambling old book/art shop a while back but I am sure I can find some somewhere. :)

Where I live, online casinos, betting and gambling are one of the main sectors that tech workers find themselves involved with. People spend their days coming up with ways to trick punters into gambling more.

The people doing this on the whole aren't Bad People, they are just surviving in a crap system.

Sick of this "whoever implemented bad idea X needs to seriously reconsider their life choices" turn of phrase.

We're all in the same system together. For a lot of people, most people, working isn't a choice. Most of us don't have the luxury of not working for an unethical employer.

But the "life choices" wording puts the onus on the one without the power, rather than blaming the corporation and the wider capitalist system for what's been implemented on whatever website we all hate this week.

Sick of this "whoever implemented bad idea X needs to seriously reconsider their life choices" turn of phrase.

We're all in the same system together. For a lot of people, most people, working isn't a choice. Most of us don't have the luxury of not working for an unethical employer.

But the "life choices" wording puts the onus on the one without the power, rather than blaming the corporation and the wider capitalist system for what's been implemented on whatever website we all hate this week.

@ghost_bird I have been to Muck a few times, there are a few little cottages to rent there and they now have wi-fi which makes it a great place to go away and write. :)

@ghost_bird I really preferred NI to Ireland, where I was seemed to have far far too many Paddy O'Flaherty's Genuine Oirish Bar type places aimed at the Americans, it was like being in an Irelandland Theme Park*

*as opposed to Tayto Park which is actually a crisp based theme park

@ghost_bird I used to go to the Scottish islands a few times a year! But it started to get a bit overcrowded with the Lonely Planet / Game of Thrones effect, especially Skye, and the grey-hair-campervan brigade seemed to discover the islands around the same time.

NI has a couple of those places, the Giant's Causeway and anywhere on the GoT trail is worth avoiding, but there are so many quiet and lovely spots just a mile from a tourist thronged hell hole.