I am on aging PMG era copper with no upgrade on the horizon. I expect to die from old age before NBN offers better than 50Mbps VDSL. I will never forgive the cynical partisan politics that produced this shit show or the idiots who knew it was bullshit but went along with it due to tribalism. It was supposed to be a national network.
I think it is more about framing. The leading media frame the discussion in biased and emotive terms that then carries over unquestioning into other media, the pub, workplace and social media. Lidia isn’t the only person speaking up for indigenous rights or questioning the monarchy but the others rarely get coverage. Lidia seeks attention and the media uses it for their own purposes and they both get what they want.
The media tells us there is nothing more Australian than disrespect for authority when they are exploiting the ANZAC mythology. What could be more Aussie than a digger not saluting British officers? The media tells us implicitly who can protest and who can’t, who is deserving of a voice and who isn’t and which authorities can be questioned and which can not.
I suspect this shit originates with social media influencers representing companies selling flavoured salt. One company in particular likes to try and mythologize it. Many countries have seasoned salt since long before us. We mostly only put it on chips and people are split on whether they like it or not. I would prefer gravy and cheese or better still put the chips in an AB/HSP. I think it is hugely overrated. In actual cooking and other snacks we still use MSG and other sources of umami like fish sauce, soy, bouillon etc.
Nobody is putting chicken salt on their sushi, kebab or banh mi or the hundreds of other takeaway foods we eat that aren’t chips and actually taste good. Chicken salt is boring mainstream manufactured culture like the Bunnings sausage sizzle. People have been cooking and selling food for community fundraisers for generations but it took a hardware company to nudge it on social media to make it a talking point. Reddit/Facebook level shit.
It is historical. We have a reasonably stable political system as does the UK and so our government has evolved through consensus since the restoration of the British monarchy.
Australia slowly but steadily made all the necessary legal changes to become a fully independent sovereign nation but we retained an Australian monarch who follows the same rules of succession as the British monarch. I expect the people who worked to obtain our sovereign independence thought the monarchy would be dealt with next. There was an attempt and it got sunk by a nasty scaremongering campaign. Some of the misinformation still circulates today and it has become part of many people’s beliefs.
We need a massive campaign to educate the population so we can achieve the sort of constructive and sensible consensus that are the hallmark of our successful and stable democracy. Unfortunately both social and mainstream media will promote increasingly partisan and divisive misinformation for their own purposes. I am sure many advocates for reform don’t want to deal with the hyper-partisan negativity and army of cookers that will arise flying monarchist flags. Perhaps if the monarchy is left alone they will disappear up their own arses and make it easier.
Lidia is losing her attention seeking forced edginess. She needs to smear herself in shit while yelling sexist and racist comments or something. We still don’t care.
I don’t know why she gets attention for saying the least controversial thing which is mainstream popular opinion in Australia. Except ofcourse the media is controlled by out of touch regressive monarchist elites who want to lump the rest of us in the crazy bin for wanting a modern independent Australia.
Even Chuck understands he is in caretaker mode.
They cancelled one too many shows we liked a long time ago and we swore off Netflix for life. Never going back. If they ever make another good show I will wait awhile to see if they cancel it or ruin it before I go get it from somewhere else. They burned a lot of their old loyal customers that made them a success and now they have to acquire new customers faster than they lose them which isn’t sustainable.
The expense of tools, equipment and supplies can be a huge barrier to car maintenance but there is so much legitimately free software for computers (even ignoring the pirated stuff) that people never had so much opportunity.
If is like learning another language or a musical instrument, people have to be committed and practice to get good and few people can make the effort. Businesses have trained people to seek instant gratification from fast food, social media, tik tok, gambling, loot boxes, and consumerism in general because short lived and unfulfilling experiences produce an endless monetization opportunity. The rare people with the discipline and support to focus their efforts have massive advantages with access to information and tools which were very difficult in the past. There are some prodigies out there in a sea of mediocrity.
I followed the directions and it worked. No issues and no regret.
Bikes are only a small part of the picture. Infrastructure needs huge changes for bikes to be safe and we need to incentivise small vehicles like Kei cars and small cheap electric personal transport instead of going in the other direction. Not everyone is physically able to ride a bike and it can be challenging for those that can in some conditions such as heatwaves.
Virtue signalling hipsters on cargo bikes that cost more than a budget used car don’t necessarily have all the answers. Still need to pay rego and service that car you use to drive the kids in the heat and rain when the ABC aren’t watching.
The biggest similarity with Windows is that it isn’t a community run project. In my opinion they tried very hard to represent themselves as an open source community in the early days and downplay Canonical’s role. There is nothing wrong with Ubuntu as a first introduction to Linux but if people are looking for a project to join and make contributions there are many better options.
My current vehicle is mid 2000s, much older than 2015 and standard equipment includes a backup camera that engages in reverse on its perfectly usable 4:3 standard definition screen.
The climate controls are buttons with led indicators and rotary encoders that control a display so while it isn’t as distracting as a touch screen it can’t be operated fully haptically while eyes are on the road either. It makes sense though as the rear climate controls can be adjusted independently with a wireless remote and in that application it is almost impossible to do things with simple sliders and selector knobs. I am not an absolutist on these things but I appreciate designers putting some thought into the usability of controls instead of going with the cheapest/flashiest solution.
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I don’t want to drive a smart phone or have it drive me. Give me a car with a pre iPhone dash and Bluetooth and I am happy. I am hoping there will be a market for old people cars with real controls when the vehicles we drive now are no longer maintainable.
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Proton is a patched Wine with a translation layer from DirectX to Vulkan. Wine will run a lot of Windows cad software with varying success, particularly older versions and I am not sure how much general desktop applications benefit from the Valve sponsored improvements to gaming. It is a shame these CAD programs weren’t all built on game engines like Unity or Unreal instead of a bunch of Windows APIs with varied levels of implementation.
I have not heard a car for a few hours. Not even the rumble of traffic in the distance and I can see the night sky without light pollution. It is a very privileged experience in some ways and while it has its advantages we are measurably disadvantaged in most human development metrics: health, education, income etc compared to people living in urban areas of our own country. The disadvantage is real and pops up everywhere from cancer survivability to suicide rates. Equitable internet access is more important than many people appreciate. If we can improve services to everyone AND protect radio astronomy that is a worthy goal.
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I am curious who buys generative AI services? The consumers seem to be people making memes or questionable porn with free services. It can’t prepare food, unblock drains or tile a bathroom. You can’t use it for anything like medicine, law or engineering where you would be professionally liable if it fucks up. How is it sustainable?
Adelaide used to have a shit 1970s style football stadium in the burbs. It wasn’t serviced by rail because it was in one of our first huge lifeless US style suburban developments. Cheap reclaimed swamp land, car-centric, no mixed zoning, no character, no local services. The stadium only appeared to have a green surround because they were too cheap to seal the car park.
Special bus routes ran on game days but busses suck compared with trains for moving high volumes. I think most people drove. I went to a few games and concerts there. Crowds were notorious for leaving the football games in the middle of the last quarter because it took so long to get out of the car parks and surrounding roads. Crowds generally maxed out at 55k. Adelaide oval is only a couple of thousand less capacity and surrounded by parklands in the middle of the city, with a foot bridge to the train station across the river. I don’t know why that took decades to figure out.
In a country where a 10yo indigenous kid can be held fully responsible for their crimes we still can’t prosecute rich and powerful people who have full comprehension of their actions and know they will never face consequences. We can lower the age of criminal responsibility to sweep inconvenient social issues created by bad economic and social policy under the carpet. So why can’t we lower the bar for criminal responsibility in cases of maladministration, fraud and favoritism by public officials? Surely they should be held to higher standards than some ignorant kid.