There’s something oddly liberating about deciding to take control of your own grooming routine. Maybe it’s the dad in me, or perhaps it’s just reaching that age where practicality trumps vanity, but I’ve joined the ranks of blokes who’ve embraced the DIY haircut life. Every couple of months, out comes the clipper for a good buzz cut, and every fortnight or so, the facial hair gets trimmed back to respectable stubble.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Cathy Wilcox’s recent cartoon showing politicians stuck “down in the sensible centre” on climate policy, and the heated discussion it’s sparked online. The image perfectly captures something that’s been gnawing at me for months - this idea that somehow threading the needle between climate action and economic pragmatism is the mature, responsible position.

The thing is, I get it. I really do. Politics is messy, compromise is necessary, and bulldozing through unpopular policies is a great way to hand power back to people who’ll actively make things worse. But when I see Albanese approving new coal and gas projects while simultaneously talking about Australia’s renewable energy future, something doesn’t add up. It’s like watching someone put out a house fire with one hand while pouring petrol on it with the other.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately after stumbling across a discussion where someone asked working parents to be brutally honest about their daily cleaning routines. The responses were refreshingly real and made me realise just how much pressure we put on ourselves to maintain some impossible standard of domestic perfection.

The original poster laid out their reality: two full-time working parents, a three-year-old, a dog, and the crushing weight of trying to fit everything into 24 hours while still getting the sleep they need for their health. Sound familiar? By the time they’ve done the morning rush, worked eight hours, squeezed in essential exercise, and handled dinner and bedtime routines, the day is done. Cleaning gets pushed to weekends, where exhaustion battles with the desperate need for just a moment to breathe.

Sometimes the internet serves up stories that genuinely catch you off guard in the best possible way. This week, I found myself scrolling through a discussion about Snoop Dogg accepting an invitation from Warringa Park School in Werribee South to collaborate on a track with their students. Not just any school, mind you – this is a special needs school, and the whole thing has left me with some complicated feelings about celebrity, community, and second chances.

Nearly a million people have signed a petition against the UK’s proposed digital ID scheme, and frankly, I’m not surprised. What started as half a million signatures has exploded past the 800,000 mark and keeps climbing. When you see numbers like that, you know something has struck a nerve.

The whole thing reminds me of conversations I’ve had with mates here in Melbourne about the MyGov digital services rollout. Sure, it’s convenient when it works, but there’s always that nagging feeling that you’re handing over more control than you’re getting back in return. The UK situation feels like that, but dialled up to eleven.

The news that broke over the weekend about TikTok being tweaked to become “100% MAGA” has been rattling around in my head like a loose screw in an old MacBook. It’s one of those stories that makes you pause mid-sip of your morning latte and wonder if we’ve finally crossed some invisible line into full dystopian territory.

What strikes me most about this whole situation isn’t just the brazen nature of it – though that’s certainly something. It’s how perfectly it illustrates a pattern we’ve been watching unfold across the digital landscape for years now. The systematic capture of information infrastructure by those who understand that controlling the narrative is far more effective than winning hearts and minds through actual policy.

I’ve been following a fascinating discussion about a new open-source project called Home Information, and it’s got me thinking about something that’s been bothering me for years: why do we keep handing over control of our personal data to companies that don’t really have our best interests at heart?

The project itself is pretty clever - it’s essentially a visual home management system where you can click on different parts of your house and access all the relevant information: manuals, service records, warranty details, you name it. But what really caught my attention wasn’t the functionality (though that’s genuinely useful), it’s the philosophy behind it. The creator has built something that runs entirely on your own hardware, stores your data locally, and doesn’t require you to sign up for yet another monthly subscription service.

I’ve been following an interesting thread online where someone shared their journey of training a large language model from scratch - not at Google or OpenAI, but from their own setup, using just $500 in AWS credits. What struck me wasn’t just the technical achievement, but what it represents: we’re witnessing the democratization of AI development in real time.

The person behind this project trained a 960M parameter model using public domain data, releasing it under a Creative Commons license for anyone to use. They’re calling it the LibreModel Project, and while they admit the base model isn’t particularly useful yet (most 1B models “kind of suck” before post-training, as they put it), the fact that an individual can now do this at all feels significant.

I’ve been mulling over a discussion I stumbled across recently about workplace flexibility and whether certain groups get preferential treatment. It’s one of those topics that really gets under my skin because it touches on something fundamental about fairness in the workplace – and frankly, it’s a conversation that’s long overdue.

The situation described was painfully familiar: a company with a rigid five-day office mandate that offers “exemptions” for flexible work arrangements. But here’s the kicker – those exemptions seem to follow an unwritten hierarchy. Parents? Approved without question. Pet owners? Not a chance. Someone wanting flexible hours to pursue a master’s degree? “Can you postpone your plans?”

I stumbled across an interesting workplace dilemma online recently that really got me thinking. Someone had been offered a choice between 10 extra days of annual leave (that doesn’t expire and can be cashed out) or an ongoing 0.5% superannuation increase. They were earning around $180k and genuinely torn about which option to take.

The responses were fascinating and really highlighted how differently people value time versus money. The mathematical minds quickly jumped in with calculations - the leave being worth about $6,920 if cashed out versus the super contribution of $900 annually. On paper, it seems like a no-brainer, right? Take the leave, cash it out if needed, and you’re significantly ahead financially in the short term.