- 3 Posts
- 81 Comments
2·8 days agoI appreciate the write-up, friend. Thanks :)
Out of all the countries to take high-speed rail inspiration from, I would hold off until that US line is actually operating.
And I’m also surprised it was higher for 25-44 than 25-24, although it could simply be that vehicle accidents knocked it down a spot.
Bowel cancer is now the leading cause of death in people aged 25 to 44 in Australia.
This is surprising. It wasn’t even in the top 5 a couple of years ago, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (gov).
[edit: another article the day after says it’s “the deadliest cancer for Australians aged 25 to 44”, which I suspect may have been mistakenly transformed into “leading cause of death”]
The incident last week is not an isolated provocation, but part of a continued deterioration of security in the waters around us.
It’s in the northern hemisphere about 3000km away at closest. This article is using some underhanded rhetoric here.
Sandy Cay is unoccupied and is claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan (ROC), China (PRC) and the Philippines. The article says “The incident was well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone”, neglecting to point out that it’s also well within the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Taiwan and China. So while factually correct, it’s intentionally misleading to say “well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone” like that, because that’s one of many conflicting claims and it’s clearly not exclusive in practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_South_China_Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollongong
Yeah so that’s a coastal city south of Sydney, NSW, I don’t know much more about it beyond a few quick visits and their university. I had a look at their official website (https://www.wollongong.nsw.gov.au/) and I like that it’s got a separate homepage for tourists and residents, so that site will have some useful tips for him.
Australia has a reputation for the dangerous critters but it’s exaggerated a bit. It’s not like we have bears or wild dogs (apart from dingos), the venomous animals generally want to run away from us. The exception would be crocodiles, and crocs aren’t native to NSW.
I don’t think there’s anything too wild about our culture which would trick an internet-connected east coast fella, maybe that a fair bit of our (colonial) culture is closer to the UK than the US, so we might share things like understatement and a drier sense of humour. This page could also be fun to skim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English_vocabulary
I don’t know what the situation is in Wollongong, but in Sydney there’s plenty of opportunity to explore different cultures. Depending on where you are on your east coast, you might have had similar immigration waves (e.g. initial European colony states, Central/South European WWII immigration, Pacific conflicts and general Pacific regional interests (e.g. gold rushes), Middle Eastern conflicts immigration) so in cities there’s plenty of great cuisine from all around Asia, Lebanese/etc. food, Italian and Greek food, and plenty else around. Italians are sometimes credited with fueling a notable coffee culture in our cities. Wikipedia says Wollongong has Macedonians rank unexpectedly high up the demographics chart (~2%).
any tips? warnings?
For your kid? Or for you?
If you’re ok sharing it with us, it would help to know what city/area they’re moving from and moving to, or even if it’s city vs suburbs vs rural. Even something as simple as “footy” could mean three different types of football depending on what state they’re in (and none of them are gridiron).
If you’re not from somewhere with many spiders, might be good for your champ to quickly learn the most common ones here and whether to run from them or keep them around to eat annoying flies. Plenty are harmless to humans.
And if you’re not from somewhere with ocean beaches, learn basics (how to stay afloat, riptides, basic beach safety like swimming between flags) and sun safety (“slip, slop, slap”).
“Economics” isn’t a useful answer.
At least six food co-ops in Sydney appear to have died since 2018, which I suspect is partly due to COVID.
Yeah I assumed “high seas” just meant the waves were big, not “high” as in hundreds of kilometres upwards. Well we’d better be careful where we shine laser pointers if this all decides to happen.
Funnily enough, an actual Libertarian party has since popped up and the Liberals challenged their name with the AEC, which as I said is funny because the Electoral Commision correctly pointed out that if ANYBODY has an incorrect name, it’s the Liberals.
From a historical/polsci perspective, the Liberal Party is a conservative liberalist party, and the Libertarian Party is probably also a conservative liberalist party claiming to be a classical liberalist party (right-libertarian is also appropriate, as opposed to the original meaning of libertarian, which is now called libertarian socialism).
The US discourse using “liberal” to refer to “progressive liberalism” is more the source of confusion than the Liberal Party.
2·1 month agoThat’s the problem, right? The people in power usually benefit from preserving the system that gives them power. Even the major Australian parties have been adding laws which make it harder for minor parties to receive as much funding.
Australia’s two-party system is consistently shrinking, possible in part due to the IRV ranked voting system removing the spoiler effect. They still get about a third each, so I don’t think you’re wrong that there’s a near-binary situation.
Im not a fan of Albanese due to him largely coasting on important issues; like housing but Im not aware of the broader population thinking he was a cunt.
For what it’s worth, I’d say many online communities (including Lemmy) are more progressivist than the average population, so a non-Australian could easily get that impression.
It’s preferential FPTP
This contradicts FPTP - Australia does not use FPTP.
They’re far from perfect, but the alternative was Donald Dutton
I get what you’re saying, but there were other viable alternatives (as unlikely as they were!) precisely because we aren’t in a two-party FPTP system.
It’s also an insult. We’re a nuanced people.
Y’all have first past the post / winner takes all, don’t you?
Nope. Instant-Runoff Vote, where we rank preferences. It’s much better.
-
ncase.me/ballot/ has a neat interactive visualisation of different voting methods.
Labor, coalition, independents, etc. what kinds of parties are these?
The Coalition is a coalition of allied parties, not just one party. Generally speaking, it’s the Liberal Party and the National Party. Now, if you’re used to American political media, you’ve probably learned an incorrect definition of ‘liberal’ - it doesn’t actually just mean ‘progressive’, liberalism is an ideology focusing on the ideal of liberty, and most parties in modern liberal-democratic countries are liberals, whether they’re classic liberals (think US Libertarians), progressive liberals (think a Green party) or conservative liberals. The Liberal Party of Australia are conservative liberals, and they’ve been mirroring some of Trump’s rhetoric and US Republican Party ideas like the DOGE, and rationalising new coal power plants. Australia apparently didn’t like that.
Labor were historically a social democrat party representing the labour movement and unions, but has drifted further away from that and is now considered either the centre or centre-left party.
The Greens are the third biggest, a populist progressive party, focusing on issues like environment and climate, social justice and housing.
Independent candidates are independent, they aren’t in a party. Some have left their old parties, some were never in one.
I thought Albanese was a “cunt” yet his party seems to have won again?
Since when has that stopped politicians from winning?
What’s going on?
The Liberal Party faceplanted, many of their voters swung to Labor. Others will have chosen smaller parties, but Labor and Coalition each had about 33% of the primary vote in the past few years with Greens and One Nation down somewhere around 10% so Labor was clearly the most likely to win this year.
Interestingly, unlike the House of Representatives which election coverage has focused on, there is still a crossbench in the Senate, it looks like Greens will still have around 11 members there, forcing Labor to appeal to them in order to pass bills in the Senate.
These are generalisations, there are some technicalities I’ve avoided.
It’s a monopoly conspiracy! Big Sausage won’t get away with this.
One of the important points is people sharing the uncensored message. This is a cut-and-dry example of unintentional promotion. For example, I tried looking up the initial news on /r/Melbourne and the mod team wisely said something like “The Guardian has chosen not to share the image in their article and we will do the same”, locking the thread so that no accounts, whether sincere curious people or Nazi astroturfers, can say " what did it say", “it said X, how fucked up”, “omg how can this happen?”. That’s an example of the no platform tactics , which given the nazis’ goals, is an effective tactic in the arsenal.
On the other hand, you’re right that Tanuki is raising awareness of the event. I think their perspective is, if they have a platform, it’s best to make crystal clear how pathetic these people are behind their anonymity. (And I’m not saying that as a blind claim, these people have had their own members embezzle them, get repeatedly infiltrated by current affairs shows, have major financial donors lose their jobs and half their members and promoters are headed to the camps one train after the socialists and Jewish). Their recruiting effort relies on trying to show they’re better than all those failed neo-Nazi groups like Patriot Front and Atomwaffen, so we if we must talk about them (ignorance doesn’t work), we should make sure to laugh at them too, show we have a community willing to fight these alienated tourist flash mobbers.
And I think you raise an excellent point about unnecessarily naming a specific group, pointing potential recruits towards them more easily and making it a more common name to hear. I would be guilty of that too.