Off To A Flying Start

This reminds me of the time I pulled the screens out of my windows and left the doors wide open to keep thieves out of my house. Ottawa paid nearly $670,000 for KPMG’s advice on cutting consultant costs

Apologies to any thieves reading this for the comparison.

The federal government hired KPMG consultants at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars for advice on how to save money on consultants, documents show.

New spending details tabled in Parliament show the department of Natural Resources, led by minister Jonathan Wilkinson, approved $669,650 for KPMG, a global professional services company, to provide managing consulting advice.

The department said this work involved developing “recommendations that could be considered as options to ensure that Canadians’ tax dollars are being used efficiently and being invested in the priorities that matter most to them.”

Treasury Board President Anita Anand is currently leading a federal effort to save about $15-billion over five years from existing spending plans. She has promised to release the first wave of details this month. The Natural Resources contract work was part of that department’s contribution to the spending reduction effort.

It may not surprise you (especially if you voted based on the promise of election reform back in 2015) to hear that since the Liberals pledged in that same year to cut back on things like consultants and outsourcing, that the amount spent on those things has gone up, like, a lot.

Recently tabled figures for the 2022-23 fiscal year show federal spending on outsourcing has continued its upward trend. Ottawa spent $15.7-billion on professional and special services that year, a broad category that includes outsourcing spending in areas such as IT services and management consultants.

That is a nearly 88-per-cent increase over outsourcing levels in 2015-16, when Ottawa spent $8.35-billion. The Liberal Party promised in the 2015 federal election campaign to cut back on the use of external consultants.

To add insult to insult, part of the reason we’re getting this information is that the government operations committee is holding hearings into why the ArriveCan app cost so damn much. How much? How about more than $54 million? If you’ve seen that thing in action, it’s hard to believe that they spent $54 on it, let alone that and a pile of zeros.

Will You Act Now And Rush A Click To This Post?

IF I EMAILED MY PARENTS LIKE DEMOCRATS EMAIL ME
I got a chuckle out of this. Yes, it says Democrats, but you can definitely substitute that for your party/advocacy group of choice, or at least that’s been my experience. I imagine the Republican ones are much crazier now, but I’ve been lucky enough not to see them.

SUBJECT: Match my contribution to Dua Lipa tickets???
LIMITED TIME ONLY! DONATIONS 2X IMPACTFUL
For the FIRST TIME in months, I am offering a 100% MATCH to any parent who chips in up to $150 for tickets to see Dua Lipa at Madison Square Garden.
Heroes like Dua Lipa fight to slay and be iconic for our democracy every day.
But the big banks are trying to BLOCK her impact by placing a hold on my savings account.
They claim it’s because I’ve “severely overdrafted.” Show them they underestimate us at their own peril by Venmoing me whenever you get a second in between surgeries.
And don’t forget, no matter what the media tries to tell you: you are not invited to the concert.

Good Morning, Everyone. You’re All Doing A Terrible Job

If the head of Zoom telling his employees that they have to go back to the office because it’s hard to get anything done over Zoom isn’t the height of irony, I’m pretty sure it’s high enough up there that it can tap the real height of irony on the shoulder and ask it for a meeting.

Insider first reported on the recording in which Yuan told employees within 50 miles of an office that they must report to the office a minimum of two days a week. The announcement came at a companywide meeting on August 3, during which Yuan said that it’s difficult for Zoomies—the pet name the company gives to employees—to build trust with each other on a computer screen. Yuan also reportedly added that it’s difficult to have innovative conversations and debates on the company’s own platform because it makes people too friendly.

“Over the past several years, we’ve hired so many new ‘Zoomies’ that it’s really hard to build trust,” Yuan said in the audio. “We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call.”

Not sure that anyone needs the opinion of a guy who has spent the last 20 years writing a blog from various bedrooms an living rooms, but honestly, it’s been pretty great to see that employees are pushing back on these forced office returns. If you want to go back, great. Have at it. Carin has started going to her office most days, as she’s mentioned here. But what I like about her company is that, so far at least, it’s taken the you guys do what works for you approach. Each day, everyone who isn’t absolutely required in there can decide how they want to work based on what life has thrown at them. that kind of flexibility should be seen as a feature, not a bug. It should also be standard operating procedure for any company that truly gives a damn about its people.

How Does This Work? Do I Get 20% Off?

At the best of times, the entire concept of tipping is nearly 100% bullshit. But business, as it so often does, has found a way to not only hit 100% bullshit on that scale, but also to redefine what maximum bullshit percentages even are.

That’s right, they’re asking for tips at self-checkouts now.

The Wall Street Journal reports that tipping at self-checkout has come to airports, stadiums, cookie shops, and cafes, with some prompts requesting a firm 20% tip. Self-checkout kiosks have famously negated the need for a face-to-face human interaction, so the prompt to tip seemingly nobody has left some consumers confused and frustrated.

“Just the prompt in general is a bit of emotional blackmail,” said 26-year-old Garrett Bemiller to the Journal.
According to the outlet, Bemiller was purchasing a bottle of water at Newark International Liberty Airport in Newark, New Jersey. Choosing the self-checkout line allowed Bemiller to ignore the hullaballoo of dealing with another person within the stress-inducing confines of an airport. However, Bemiller was gobsmacked to see tip amounts amended to the already lofty price of an airport water bottle. In a similar case, 28-year-old Corey Gary was prompted to leave a tip at a self-service beer fridge in San Diego’s Petco Park. Gary told the Journal that he wasn’t clear where the money was going, but left 20% anyway.

Corey! Garrett! What are you even doing, ya jackasses!? I know you’re being part of the problem, but what else are you doing? Unless there is literally no escape from leaving a tip short of putting your items back and walking away, you’ve sent the exact wrong signal to these companies. Stop being babies. There is no emotional blackmail involved in telling a machine to get fucked. Yes, someone had to fill those fridges with water and beer. But you’re not doing wrong by those people by refusing to tip. Their bosses are the ones at fault for creating the sorts of labour conditions that force workers to rely on the generosity of randos to make ends meet. The baseball stadium is not a charity, much as it wants you to believe otherwise. Stop falling for this crap, everyone.

How About You Come Sleep Inside, My Man

I don’t drive, but I have driven with a lot of people. Sometimes those people get tired. Sometimes tired enough that them continuing to drive simply isn’t safe. So I understand why perhaps this fellow might have decided to get himself the heck off the road and take a little nap. I can also understand why, in spite of a whole lot of evidence suggesting otherwise, he thought that the police station parking lot would be a nice, safe place to take that nap. And you know what? I can maybe even understand how he wound up parking in one of the police station’s handicapped spots. I mean he’s tired, right? Mistakes happen. And heck. I’m sure the fact that the car he was in had been reported stolen was simply one of those unlucky cases where you’re able to unlock a vehicle similar to your own and drive off in it. And the drugs inside? Probably belong to whoever that other guy is. Indeed. surely there are innocent explanations for all of these things.

Or maybe our boy here just isn’t that bright. Who knows?

At around 3 a.m. Thursday, an SDPD sergeant saw a white sedan parked in a handicapped spot in front of the SDPD Traffic Division station on Aero Drive in Serra Mesa.

Inside the car was a man passed out behind the wheel, and the sergeant’s check of the license plate determined that the car was reported stolen.
After waking the man up, officers asked him why he was parked in front of the police station, and police said the man told officers that he was tired, and it seemed like a safe place to rest because there were other police cars present.

My New Favourite Tears For Fears Song Isn’t Even A Tears For Fears Song

I don’t know a whole lot about British television, so maybe bands randomly performing in the middle of children’s game shows is a thing that’s odd to no one but me. What I do know, though, is that this is quite the catchy little number.

Go on, tell me you’re not walking around humming that thing for the rest of the day.

The band in that clip is called Graduate, apparently so named because they used to open all of their shows by covering “Mrs. Robinson”, which of course is featured in the movie “The Graduate”.

Two members of the group, Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, would later go on to be much better known as Tears for Fears, although how they didn’t make all of the millions they could ever need off of this “Ever Met a Day” song is a mystery to me.

Sailor’s Song, By The Decemberists And ChatGPT

Colin Meloy of the Decemberists had an interesting idea earlier this year. What if I were to ask ChatGPT to write a song that Colin Meloy of the Decemberists might have written and then record whatever it spits out? And so he did, chords and all. I can’t embed it, but you can head over here to listen to the result.

It sounds almost like a Decemberists song, says me, a person who has heard just enough Decemberists songs to hear this and think yup, that might be those guys. But I also know just enough Decemberists songs to wonder if this is a demo they shelved when they were really young or if it was one of the first things that one of them wrote and maybe home recorded when they were even younger than that. Something that sounds pretty ok by most teenager writes a song standards, but that that teenager would go on to be a little embarrassed by when he got older and made something of himself.

As a technological feat, it’s pretty impressive, not gonna lie. But as a song that an actual veteran songwriter would come up with? Um, no. Not unless that songwriter was trying to write a bad one on purpose. It’s kind of wonky, empty and even a bit nonsensical. the chord changes are weird, the grammar is wrong and some of the rhymes kinda suck (Why are we rhyming “fears” with “dreams”?).

Here are the lyrics and chords, if you’d like to try to play it for some reason.

Verse 1:
C – G – Am – F
In a town by the sea, with a lighthouse tall
C – G – F – C
Where the ships do come, and the seagulls call
I met a man with a heart full of dreams
He told me stories of the sea and its schemes
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Verse 2:
C – G – Am – F
He sang of voyages, and battles at sea
C – G – F – C
Of sea shanties, and storms that rage wild and free
With melodies that echoes through the mist
And took me to a world, that I have missed
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Bridge:
Am – F – C – G
And I know that this man’s song will stay
Am – F – C – G
As a lighthouse’s beam, to guide me on my way
Am – F – C – G
For in his voice, I heard a longing heart
Am – F – C – G
And a tale that will start, a brand new part
Chorus:
G – Am – F – C
Of sailors brave, and adventures untold
G – Am – F – C
Of a life on the waves, and a heart grown old
G – Am – F – C
Of a world of discovery, waiting to be sought
G – Am – F – C
In a song that will live, when he is not
Outro:
C – G – Am – F
So let us sing, of this man’s sweet sound
C – G – F – C
And let our hearts and our feet hit the ground
C – G – Am – F
For in this place, we’re free from all our fears
C – G – F – C
And his song takes us, to our wildest dreams.

As long as we live in a world where music is more than whatever 12 songs the radio is beating to death this week, I don’t think songwriters need to worry about the rise of the machines just yet. To paraphrase Meloy in his conclusion, you can’t learn feeling and intuition from the internet.

But I think you’d agree that there’s something lacking, beyond the little obvious glitches — the missed or repeated rhymes, the grammatical mistakes, the overall banality of the content. Getting the song down, I had to fight every impulse to better the song, to make it resolve where it doesn’t otherwise, to massage out the weirdnesses. I wanted to stay as true to its creator’s vision as possible, and at the end, there’s just something missing. I want to say that ChatGPT lacks intuition. That’s one thing an AI can’t have, intuition. It has data, it has information, but it has no intuition. One thing I learned from this exercise: so much of songwriting, of writing writing, of creating, comes down to the creator’s intuition, the subtle changes that aren’t written as a rule anywhere — you just know it to be right, to be true. That’s one thing an AI can’t glean from the internet.