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Barnaby Walters

Arranging atoms and pressurising air in a variety of manners, such as:

Pronouns: they/he

  1. Hey Stockholm @Arlanda, why do your airport customer surveys have a “What is your gender? (Do not ask the participant, just note down)” question with only “Male/Female” options? I know you want to break results down by background variables, but having your staff just make assumptions about people’s gender, without asking them, providing non-binary options, the option not to say, or even TELLING THEM IT’S BEING COLLECTED is straight-up rude. Not only that, but the results of the survey will reflect your staff’s biases, as you’re requiring them to make assumptions. Doing a better job is easy. Just explicitly ask people, providing Female/Male/Other/Prefer Not To Say options at the very least.

  3. Successfully re-booked! A member of security staff asked to see my hurdy gurdy purely out of curiosity, which is a first for me. Usually they either don’t care or require a swab and search.

  4. Currently stranded at Stockholm airport following a delayed flight causing me to miss the connection to Istanbul. Airport bureaucracy knows no bounds! Talked to 6 (all very friendly and helpful) different people at 4 different desks, accumulated several additional sheets of paper, called people in three different countries, and now I might be able to rebook a later flight (crosses fingers).

  8. Self esteem tip: rather than searching the web for “how to [do xyz basic life skill you really should know by now]”, search for “optimal [xyz basic life skill] technique”.

  10. ↪ Barnaby Walters: Anyone got scifi recommendations (any media) specifically for narratives which at no point involve sentient individual creatures moving between rooms, using doors or anything similar.

    For example, I’d love to read something like Terry Bisson’s Meat, but where the narrators are repulsed by the fact that humans have to traverse 3D space, most often between artifically constructed bounded areas, in order to achieve their goals.

  11. Anyone got scifi recommendations (any media) specifically for narratives which at no point involve sentient individual creatures moving between rooms, using doors or anything similar?

  13. ↪ Evan Prodromou: Is there anything besides film, software or a rash that you "develop"? What a dumb verb.

    @evanpro in British English you can develop an idea, develop land, develop a technique or product, and now I’ve developed semantic satiation from thinking about the word “develop” too much :)

  14. ↪ Brian Suda: finds some closure on a few orphaned notebooks. They've been re-routed to the proper home. The new scholarship awardees will enjoy them now.

    @briansuda if these are the ones I think they are, props to Analog for handling them in such a human way

  19. Buying viola strings at justmusic.de in Berlin is a weird process. You choose the strings at the desk on the top floor, who give you a piece of paper and tell you to go to the ground floor. By the time you’ve got there, the strings have arrived in a little vacuum tube thing, and you pay for them.

    I’m not entirely sure how this works for the pianos and do not intend on buying one to find out, unless they have a vacuum-tube to Iceland as well.