We’re back. Or at least, one of us is for real, but the other one is fake, thanks to an Artificial Intelligence app.

This week I fed two articles from the Flat Chat website into an AI app called Jellypod. I chose the one about NSW Premier Chris Minns’ visit to the Netstrata offices and the other about the NSW Fair Trading minister’s announcement that the Productivity Commissioner has been tasked with discovering what would happen if insurance commissions were cancelled.

I asked the app to create a conversation between myself and co-podder Sue Williams based on the article and anything else it could find on the topics on the internet. I also gave it samples of our voices so it could create an audio file, and a short guide to our characters and different approaches to strata issues.

The result was frankly terrifying. Now, the cloned voices aren’t terribly close to ours, so that’s good, but the content of the conversation was scarily on point. It is mostly factually correct and reads, as text, in a similar style to the way we speak and write.

It was also strongly opinionated but completely fabricated an anecdote that neither of us can remember having ever said or written. It also had a problem saying “NSW” and “strata” which came out as “straaaaaata”. Have a listen and see what you think.

Meanwhile, where have we been, you ask? Our recent travels through Europe not only made podcasting hard, it left a mountain of work waiting for us when we returned so it was impossible to sit down and do the podcast for a few weeks.

We are a hand-knitted pod and the fact that it can be a logisitical and technical challenge was reconfirmed when I sat down to record this and my software made me sound like a Dalek with a heavy cold. It’s all good now, I hope, and we’ll be back in your podcast feed just as soon as we have something new to talk about.

And rest assured, it really will be us – promise!

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

It’s a problem with any bureaucracy, anywhere in the world – and it’s also the reason strong figures in politics prevail – doing the right thing the “right way” takes a lot longer than just getting stuff done when it’s most needed.

The principle of “it’s easier to apologise than it is to get permission” gets things moving but it also leaves the door wide open for knee-jerk, half-baked solutions.

Somewhere in the middle are logical, sensible decisions that can be made quickly and seen through efficiently.

One project that slipped through that net was the plan to turn a former Wesley Mission hostel for the indigent elderly into affordable homes for essential workers.

How that all fell apart, despite a $3m city grant, and why it’s now being sold for commercial development, is our main topic in this week’s podcast.

Meanwhile we leave Poland with fond memories of some fantastic buildings and arrive in Prague disappointed that the only freely accessible paternoster elevator left in the city (the one shown in this video) is out of action for repairs.

And finally, Jimmy has a brilliant plan to solve special levy stress. That’sall in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.

Don’t be put off by a tinkle or two of classical music at the start of this week’s podcast. It’s just a small acknowledgement of the fact that we are in Warsaw, where Polish-born piano master composer Frederic Chopin was raised.

What do Warsaw and Gdansk have to do with apartments? Heaps as it turns out. Having been flattened by the Nazis during the Warsaw uprising of 1944, the city was completely restored to its former glory by Soviet overlords after WWII.

And you can take a guess at what the reward was for outstanding contributions to the project, whether it was as an architect or a bricklayer.

A couple of hours north in Gdansk, the shipyards made famous by union leader and eventually president Lech Walesa are mostly silent now. But there are still cranes sweeping the skyline – only now they are building apartments rather than boats.

Oh, and in out mini-rant about how to keep electric bikes and scooters under control, we should have said they have similar system in Hobart.

Closer to home we examine the result of wayward strata manager Whitney Wang’s appeal against having his licence cancelled.

And we look at the pile of money it took to by Australia’s most expensive property -almost as high as the building in which it sits.

That’s all in this weeks’ Flat Chat Wrap (although Jimmy can’t believe he didn’t describe Warsaw as a Chopin centre). Enjoy.

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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
Find us on Facebook and Twitter and the Flat Chat website.
Send comments and questions to mail@flatchat.com.au.
Register to ask and answer questions about apartment living anonymously on the website.
Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.