Zagorath

@Zagorath@aussie.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Black tells Minecraft Movie audience to stop throwing popcorn⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  If it was that, he should have said it was that. Instead, he used the opportunity to chastise his bandmate for the comments he made and made it very clear he was distancing himself from Gass.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You see "him" everywhere including on ancient coins⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the #1 reason Norway should join the EU.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US history memes intensifies⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  It is a joke about the Confederacy in the American civil war

  Oh, I thought it was about the '60s–'80s with regimes like Pinochet and Banzer and the series of military dictatorships in Brazil.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Black tells Minecraft Movie audience to stop throwing popcorn⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  or failing some purity test on his political opinions

  How about cancelling a tour and disappointing all the fans who had bought tickets to that tour, because he disagrees with a joke that one of his fellow bandmates made because of its political content? Because he cares more about his own personal brand image and tickets to his latest children’s movie than he does about his and bandmates and his biggest supporters. I think that’s a bit more than “failing some purity test”.

  I know he is a person with a good heart

  No, you don’t. You can’t. His detractors can’t claim to know he has an evil heart, either. None of you know him personally, and it’s a kinda gross degree of parasociality to think you do.

  (fwiw, I personally don’t hold what I’ve seen of his pro-Israel comments against him too much. I think he’s wrong, but I’m more inclined to agree with you that he doesn’t have an understanding of it, especially since the comment I saw him make was in the immediate aftermath of the October attacks in 2023. If he’s made pro-Israel comments since about January 2024, that starts becoming inexcusable in my eyes.)

• GetUp! CEO quietly departs as the group goes missing in action during election campaignwww.crikey.com.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨0⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's urgent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  As long as she has her orb to ponder.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any ongoing series you're watching currently that you're worried will be cancelled or quietly forgotten?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not familiar with Mindhunter so I don’t know its specifics, but “because COVID” is a pretty weak excuse in general, considering how many other shows took a short pause but came back. “Because COVID” was the excuse given by Netflix for cancelling The Society, too, and it’s obviously a lame excuse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any ongoing series you're watching currently that you're worried will be cancelled or quietly forgotten?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Society for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon notices lazy writing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh yeah, that makes sense. It’s quite a stretch, pronunciation-wise, but it fits the characterisation…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨nature is music⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  AI has been and continues to be used for these sorts of things. Generative AI like LLMs and image generators might be getting all the media attention and attract the techbros at the moment, but they are fundamentally inappropriate for this purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon notices lazy writing⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m trying to work out who Hellround is. The best I can come up with is Halbrand, from the Rings of Power TV show. But that’s not Tolkien…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you use your blinker in a car?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  No. Not when the road curves. Only when changing lanes, turning at an intersection, or pulling out from being parked.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guardian Australia had a dream run. Has it lost its edge?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll start by saying the sauce is questionable. I don’t think they’re asking an objective question here.

  I had a similar thought about this. It’s particularly odd that they never acknowledge that the “Fairfax” they reference as the one-time rival is what merged into the same masthead that wrote this piece.

  That said, I think these sorts of meta looks into the quality of biases of our news sources are so important, as long as we think critically about who’s writing them and with what biases. It’s kinda a shame that nobody ever does this about themselves, apart from the ABC. (And even the ABC, only in extremely limited forms.)

• Guardian Australia had a dream run. Has it lost its edge?www.brisbanetimes.com.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨news@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨3⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tigers 🐅 🐯⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Holy shit it’s that high? Red-green colourblindness is almost as common in men as left-handedness is?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Go Private?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I can think of a few downsides. Definitely not all equally weighted.

  • Poor discoverability. I doubt many people are finding us on Google, but any who do would be unable anymore.
  • Inability to send people links. This also hurts discoverability from being able to send people a link for them to check out.
  • Problems with linking federation. At the moment, there’s no way to link to a specific post or comment in a way that users of other instances can see it on their instance. So most of the time, the best option is to link it in your own instance, and they can view it read-only in your instance. T his would break that.
  • Problems for cross-posts with bodies. Related to the above, when using “cross-post” on a post with a text body, a link is provided to link back to the original. This link will be useless if the instance is private.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LW delay is growing again⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Praise the fedigods!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Live: Voters question leaders on 'Trump pandemic,' school funding as debate kicks off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Albanese’s turn to answer on education now.

  “We want to testing in year one, so if a child falls behind they can get the specialist one one tutoring, to make sure that they don’t fall behind.”

  “If you address that really early then every child can have the opportunity to fulfil their aspirations.”

• Live: Voters question leaders on 'Trump pandemic,' school funding as debate kicks offwww.abc.net.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨1⁩ ⁨comment⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon finds a hut⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Contextually, talk about “belief in aliens” almost universally means belief that said aliens have visited Earth, or at least communicated with us. Which is not a normal position.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virgin Physicists⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, it was this video. It came out shortly after I graduated high school, and though I was pretty good at maths, I struggled to really conceptualise the fundamental intuition behind trigonometric functions and the (polar) complex plane. Instead, I was relying on brute memorisation of the unit triangles. Learning about tau and how it relates just instantly caused everything to click with me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  they just didn’t ask questions outside the Overton window.

  Sure, but that’s a feature, not a bug, in this case. The ABC isn’t trying to create the One Political Compass To Place You For All Time. They’re trying to show you where you stand relative to the parties on the issues being discussed this election campaign. It may also be worth doing their optional step of weighting the questions by importance, to make it a little more useful.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in the very exciting seat of Ryan. 2022 was a close three-way race between LNP, Labor, and Greens, and ended up with a Greens win. This time around, I’ve had Greens supporters tell me they believe it’ll be more of a two-way race between them and LNP, but it looks like Labor is putting a lot of effort into it, too, so it could be another close three-way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Ooh, so looks like you actually have to make a choice between Greens and Labor, being pretty evenly split between the two.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But abstaining from this question appears to have affected my compass result. It appears to read it the same as “about the same”. Which isn’t what I said or meant. There are a few I abstained from and I think that by doing so, it has put me a lot closer to center than is probably accurate.

  Yeah I noticed that once or twice too. I would have thought saying “I don’t know” should have made it disregard that question, but it doesn’t seem to.

  I don’t know if that’s because they’re explicitly treating it like “about the same”, or if it’s just that the way it works is you start in the centre and each answer adds or subtracts a certain value from your score, which has the side effect of it being the same as “about the same”. A better system IMO would be a sort of weighted average of your non-idk answers, if that’s what they’re doing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re reading it as an upside down version of the normal Political Compass, which would make sense (though not sure why you’d flip it rather than just using the Political Compass as it is).

  But if you read the axes as they’re actually labelled by the ABC, the x-axis is labelled “social” and the y-axis is “economic”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Votes⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you ever needed evidence that Labor has abandoned its traditional position of being the party of the Union Movement:

  Screenshot showing party answers to the question “How much power should trade unions have in the workplace?” LNP and ONP say “Somewhat less”. Labor says “About the same as now”. Greens say “Much more”

  Also wow, absolutely fuck Labor for this one:

  Screenshot showing party answer to the statement “Boats carrying asylum seekers should be turned back.” LNP, ALP, and ONP all say “Strongly agree”. Greens say “Strongly disagree”.

  These are positions as self-reported by the parties.

  Here’s my result:

  Image

  Not sure why it puts me more economically conservative than the Greens but more socially left. I answered a stronger position than the Greens every time my position was different from theirs on an economic issue, including saying “much more” to wealthier people’s taxes and “much less” funding for private schools and private healthcare.

  I also found myself more moderate than the Greens on some social issues, like I said “somewhat agree” on “Political parties should commit to running at least as many women candidates as they do men”, where the Greens say “strongly agree”. My take is that anywhere from a 40–60% balance is reasonable, but that also it’s important to take into account other factors like racial background, sexuality, and occupation. It’s also important to consider where they’re running. It doesn’t matter if two thirds of your candidates are women, if the men are in all of the safest seats. Labor, at the last election, if they had taken that strategy, would have had 101 women candidates and 50 men, but would have ended up with 50 men in Parliament and only 27 women…

• Vote Compass Australia 2025 - Australia Voteswww.abc.net.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨18⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• AEC rules Abbie Chatfield does not need authorisation for podcast, but cross-posting rules unclearwww.abc.net.au ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨australianpolitics@aussie.zone⁩ | ⁨0⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Australian was denied US entry for bizarre reasons. He’s not alone⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Man, being refused entry because you transferred via Hong Kong, one of the region’s biggest air hubs, is fucking bizarre. What a joke of a country.