Zagorath
@Zagorath@aussie.zone
- Comment on D-d-d-d-drop the base! 2 hours ago:
Qu’est-ce que c’est le problème ?
- Comment on D-d-d-d-drop the base! 15 hours ago:
This reporter tracked down the original creator and had a brief interview with them.
- Submitted 16 hours ago to ausmemes@aussie.zone | 9 comments
- Comment on Grattan on Friday: believe it or not, there would be a case for more federal politicians 3 days ago:
IMO we should switch from IRV to MMP, and do it by doubling the House of Representatives, keeping the same number of actual electorates but adding the top-up seats for a proportional end result.
- Comment on Daylight savings starts this weekend 6 days ago:
I like to call it “government-encouraged death time”, considering its main impact is an increase in traffic crashes, heart attacks, and suicides.
- Comment on Daylight savings starts this weekend 6 days ago:
My experience, talking online, has been that Europeans and North Americans largely agree with you, getting rid of DST would be a sensible thing to do.
Unfortunately in Australia, I see that viewpoint a lot less often. My only guess about the reason: it’s become a semi-politicised issue here. The states of Queensland and Western Australia don’t use it, while the more populous states of New South Wales and Victoria do use it. And there’s a strong cultural sense in those states of “looking down” on Qld & WA; if they do something this way, it must be the wrong way to do it. The joke is, “what’s the time difference between Sydney and Brisbane? About 1 hour and 30 years.” Whereas in Europe it’s universal, and in America it’s almost universal on the mainland, apart from a fraction of one state. So there isn’t as much of that comparison.
Which is all really frustrating, because all the data is so clear that it’s a bad thing. Car crashes, heart attacks, suicides, all go up because of it.
- Comment on Daylight savings starts this weekend 6 days ago:
It’s like the money in my bank account being called savings
I think that’s how most people think of it, so that’s why so many people get the name wrong.
But actually, it’s more like daylight-saving time. It’s (named as if it’s) the time for saving daylight.
- Comment on NSW government loses music festival strip search case as woman awarded $93,000 in damages 1 week ago:
The article mentions that the police have not apologised, and it’s a little vague on whether strip searches are still employed as a NSW police tactic (but seems to kinda imply the answer is yes). It’s completely silent on the matter of what happened to the specific officers involved in Meredith’s case, if anything.
- Comment on NSW government loses music festival strip search case as woman awarded $93,000 in damages 1 week ago:
More to the point, what was she being strip-searched for?[^1] I can’t see any case in which even a non-invasive search for drugs at a music festival is appropriate. If there was suspicion of someone carrying a gun or a knife, maybe some searches would be appropriate. But drugs should be supported with safe and private pill testing, not with aggressive police action.
[^1]: rhetorical. The answer is drugs.
- How the government is tightening its grip on reporting [by banning third-party comment on embargos] | Media Watchwww.youtube.com ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
Nothing about my definitions is subjective.
You know what is subjective? Relying on how parties choose to self-identify, regardless of the truth of their actual policies.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
You’re illustrating my point - that assertions about how Labor is really a conservative party, are subjective and unhelpful
I don’t know how, after everything I’ve said, that can possibly be anyone’s takeaway.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
Right, that’s why the term regressive. It’s the opposite side of conservative from progressive. For changes, but ones that make things worse. I accept that it’s not a term anyone would use to self describe and it’s not an accepted part of neutral political discourse, but it’s nonetheless a useful term.
Strictly showing, regressive should mean specifically undoing earlier progress. Which captures a lot of Trump’s actions. Rolling back rights on abortion, undoing advancements in LGBTQ+ rights, going back to a very 19th century style of treating non-white people.
But in other aspects, I’d say he’s being straight-up authoritarian, in a way that doesn’t really sit anywhere on this spectrum. Passing all these tariffs could be described as regressing to pre-WW2 economics, but going about it by ignoring the law—which actually requires congress to set tariffs—is not progressive, conservative, or regressive. That’s just authoritarian. Openly threatening companies & countries to extort them for bribes (see: Apple’s gold watch, Qatar’s jet) is just corrupt authoritarian behaviour.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
Umm, no? That’s what the words mean. Conservatives conserve the status quo. Progressives want society to progress.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
It’s a spectrum, but not an arbitrary one. They’re arranged relative to how much change. If the amount of change is close to zero, that’s conservative. It doesn’t matter where other parties sit, or how popular they are. Labor, under Albanese, is a very conservative party, because it has been highly resistant to change. Maybe you think that’s a good thing, and everything about Australia’s society and governance is exactly as it should be, so conservatism is the right approach. I’d disagree with you, but that would at least be intellectually honest. But if you do think we need to improve: to do a better job of providing housing, healthcare, and education etc. to vulnerable populations, to take serious action to reduce the impact of climate change, or to oppose genocides committed by countries we call our allies, then you are by definition, progressive, and Labor is not adequately representing those beliefs.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 3 weeks ago:
Pretty much by definition, the centre is between our two major parties
I strongly disagree with this relativism. I’m going to evaluate parties based on how their policies actually play out. Conservatism wants to keep things how they are, or advance only very, very carefully. Actual progressive parties advance progressive ideas.
Whitlam was progressive. Hawke slightly less so. Gillard less again. By the time we got around to Albanese, Labor has lost all its progressive credentials, chasing the LNP to the right, as the LNP transitions from a centre-right conservative party to a far-right regressive one and Labor follows to fill up that conservative gap.
also a shame that it cost so much capital
The evidence is that it didn’t actually cost all that much capital, in the long run. That people opposed it, but that they seem to have respected Albanese’s guts for trying, and don’t hold it politically against him or Labor in the broader sense. The mistake the LNP made at the last election was assuming that you were right and it did cost Labor a lot of political capital. The LNP’s only strategy was “double down on our anti-Voice tactics which worked so well.” And look how that paid off for them. It was natural for them to be wary of doing anything else big in their last term after the failure of the Voice, but after their overwhelming success (in seats gained, at least) at the last election, I think we can comfortably put that aside.
- Comment on St Michael's Grammar School apologises for 'unacceptable' physical descriptions in musical cast list 4 weeks ago:
Does anyone know if the actual descriptions for each role were shared anywhere online?
- Comment on Anyone need a space to do handstands? 4 weeks ago:
Sorry, but it’s not zoned for any of those. You’ll have to lodge a Change of Use application with Melbourne City Council.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 4 weeks ago:
The HAFF was passed unamended
Oh ok, so we’re just making up lies now? Geez, I get that you’re a Labor fanboy, but this is getting ridiculous. Sometimes, Labor just objectively did the wrong thing. And their slow reaction to the Greens’ quite sensible improvements to the HAFF is one of those times.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 4 weeks ago:
The HAFF happened in the previous Senate, so it’s not directly relevant. But it…got passed? In fact, it got passed after being greatly improved. That’s a good thing. And that’s exactly what I mean by saying that the Senate is friendly if Labor is trying to be progressive. If Labor is trying to pass the exact kinds of lazy milquetoast bs this article is talking about, then yes, the Senate will be less friendly.
I think recognizing Palestine took up far more political capital than you think
I don’t. The average person has been strongly on Palestine’s side for a long time now, regardless of what the media might say.
Speaking of being ambitious and progressive though…recognising Palestine is great, but it’s a largely symbolic move. What we actually need to do is (1) stop the arms trade with them, and (2) put the same kinds of sanctions on them that we have for Russia. At least as long as there are Ministers in their Government who have loudly and proudly stated genocidal intentions, they should be treated as a total pariah state.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 4 weeks ago:
So you didn’t actually read the article, then?
Its criticism is of Albo not going far enough in the progressive direction.
- Comment on If Albanese’s lost his bottle, he should retire 4 weeks ago:
Sometimes I think that Sussan Ley and the Liberals’ big problem is that Labor has stolen their clothes.
The very first sentence of the article is an absolute banger. The problem with Labor under Albanese is that it completely lacks any ambition. It’s a conservative party afraid to actually do anything, lest the regressive party use it as a cudgel against them. After the 2022 election, you could make an argument that this was necessary. They had a slim majority, a complex Senate to work with, and they spent their political capital on the Voice referendum, which sadly failed. But after the last election with a massive lower house majority and an extremely friendly Senate—if they’re trying to get progressive policies passed—Albanese has no excuse.
It’s a shame this article continues the old lie about Gillard’s carbon “tax” (that was actually an emissions trading scheme)
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 24 comments
- Comment on The Austrian flag, according to Fairphone 4 weeks ago:
How are you getting that? I tried and get the correct Austrian flag.
- Comment on It turns out there is a Lemmy alternative with categories - anyone got stories about it? 5 weeks ago:
afaict Blorp is a Lemmy client. You know how on your phone, you can get to Lemmy through a web browser, but also through an app like Voyager or Jerboa? Well those apps, and the front-end of the website, are all called clients. And it’s also possible to have alternative web URLs that access the same server.
So there’s ttrpg.network, which is the name of the instance and also where the default lemmy-ui is hosted. But there’s also old.ttrpg.network, which accesses the same instance backend, but has an alternative client designed to look like old reddit, called Mlmym.
To me, Blorp looks like another alternative front end to Lemmy.
- Comment on It turns out there is a Lemmy alternative with categories - anyone got stories about it? 5 weeks ago:
I made an account on quokk.au, though I haven’t used it much. If I were joining the threadiverse today, I’d probably look for Piefed rather than Lemmy.
- Comment on Khawaja's proposed Israel sports ban would violate 'equal rights', Olympic body says 5 weeks ago:
Well done to Khawaja for speaking out so bravely. Shame on the IOC and other international bodies for their cowardice. Did they learn nothing from their slow (but eventually highly successful) responses to Apartheid South Africa?
- Khawaja's proposed Israel sports ban would violate 'equal rights', Olympic body sayswww.sbs.com.au ↗Submitted 5 weeks ago to news@aussie.zone | 2 comments
- Comment on We finally expelled the ambassador 1 month ago:
Genocide?
Personal attacks against our Prime Minister for his most token of actions to express disagreement with said genocide.
- Comment on 'No doubt the media are going to make fun of that': Bruce Lehrmann finds new ways to suffer in court 1 month ago:
That’s the thing, you don’t have to disown him. He disowned the entire country.
As for selling out for personal gain… Doesn’t sound very Australian to me. Might not be uncommon in practice, but goes pretty strongly against the national self identity of things like mateship.
