Notes for November 25th 2023

Song of the week:

• This has been a dark week to be a Dubliner. Everyone knows what happened by now. Some fuckbag violently attacked children and adults with a knife. Upon hearing that the man was not Irish, equivalent levels of fuckbag came out in numbers to riot on the streets. Loving Ireland, apparently, means having a deep xenophobic tone while causing more than €1m worth of damage to public property; paid for by taxes claimed from everyone who calls Ireland home.
  • I was in London when it happened which gave it a bit of a distance that was uncomfortable as a parent. Luckily it was a 1-night stay. But in that evening, when the news was coming out about the riot, I received a call from the head of security at work and I drafted comms to close our office down on Friday. Then, on Friday afternoon I had to send a compassionate note to the Dublin team to let them know they're welcome, belong and part of our city and culture. But if they feel nervous about commuting next week, they should WFH and provided facilities to seek assistance if required. Grim stuff to have to do.
  • The one silver lining here is that the heroes who stopped the attack being worse include two very much not Irish people; a Brazilian man & an American woman.
• I sold my Steam Deck to my brother to acquire the new OLED one. Solid idea, except I've now been a week without a Steam Deck, and I'm likely to still be a week without one because GLS are godawful at the basics of their role to distribute goods across borders. I have another package (dog stuff) in the exact same loop with GLS, coming from some centre in NL. How are they so consistently awful?!
• Continuing on the godawfulness of package delivery, UPS are just atrocious with goods. I had a small order from Teenage Engineering last month that was held hostage in a delivery centre for 2 weeks because of an issue they would not describe or answer to. It took over 3 hours of calls to get it rectified. And now, a few weeks later, I've ordered the Teenage Engineering EP-133, and am worried I won't see it in 2023 because of their bullshit.
• To get some sense of news this week in Dublin, I checked Reddit for the first time since they shut down third party apps. And their app is shite, with a total nonsense UX. The Irish reddits are way, way over-moderated. It’s boards all over again. And I say that as someone who was a mod on various boards.ie forums back when it was in it's hayday.