shirro
@shirro@aussie.zone
- Comment on Pauline Hanson censured over remarks there are no 'good Muslims' 2 weeks ago:
The nation is a federation of states used for convict transport and one colonized by free settlers. And although it is a blind spot for the Poms, then and now, there were people here before they arrived.
The convict states are mostluy proud of their heritage. Highly recommend a visit to Port Arthur… A lot of the convicts were victims of prejudice and poverty., The people who come off worst in Australia’s history by far are the English who sent their poor and the Irish here to use as forced labour, committed genocide on the native people, nuked service people and traditional owners, and sent our young to die in Gallipoli.
Everything this country has done and continues to do to redress the shit legacy of the british empire reflects well on us.
- Comment on Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments 3 weeks ago:
I think it’s more a symptom of where right wing politics has gotten us.
What gets me is right wingers had their chance to turn out and vote for Dutton. He is a far more effective politician than Hanson and could have actually formed government instead of just stoke social division and annoy people. He had the nod from Gina and News Corp. Instead everyone seemed to vote for Labor or Teals. What am I missing?
In several states the Liberal party can barely win a seat let alone government. For a country marching to the right doesn’t it seem really odd? Our historically dominant, long governing, conservative party which drew most of the talent on that side of politics struggles. But supposedly we are going to jump right past them to our reject shop version of AfD. How does that work exactly?
Like I feel someone is fucking with us here. I haven’t see skin heads marching down the main street in rural Australia which is as conservative as it gets. No pogroms. No racist graffiti. I would expect ON to do better here than anywhere in my state and in the 2025 federal election they were level with the Greens. Some stuff has changed in a year but not that much. Most shit is basically the same. Cost of living didn’t reverse but it definately stabilized. Have there been riots and the streets burning somewhere else?
- Comment on Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments 3 weeks ago:
Are they though? Like organically pissed off and not doom scrolling cooker pissed off?
SA Labor are very much a populist centrist party and pretty much the natural party of government in SA and I will be shocked if they don’t win by a huge margin. Unless the Libs can bring Playford back from the dead to re-nationalise our electricity. Take my vote. Antic and the like have been pushing the Libs to the right and out of contention for years and are doing the same to the federal party.
Not sure about NSW but I get the impression Minns is a populist Labor Right centrist along the lines of Malinauskas. These guys are holding the center of the chess board. They don’t really look threatened.
The only thing controversial about Albo is his ability to avoid controversy. He won by a landslide accompanied by almost the almost complete destruction of the LNP.
And if I was pissed off why would I vote for Hanson. She has been a joke for her entire political career. What changed apart from Gina’s money?
- Comment on Guardian Essential poll: more than half of Australians open to voting for One Nation despite Hanson’s Muslim comments 3 weeks ago:
Australians are humans and do human shit. We aren’t actually blessed or geniuses. Just kind of lucky and generally chill. Both can easily change.
Unfortunately reverse our good fortune by increasing wealth inequality and undoing the progress of working Australians pushes people to the angry camp. And the angry camp can spread like a bushfire with influencers, social media companies and old media pouring fuel on it.
It’s not that a peoples party is a bad idea. We had one once called the Australian Labor Party. Born under a tree in Queensland by and for the benefit of hard working Australians. Thanks Queensland. Now they give us Pauline and she is something else entirely. It makes me sad.
I think we should be better. But we are the same as everyone else aren’t we. Muslims, Americans, Chinese. We are all capable of doing bad shit to each other for insane reasons. It has just been our luck that unless your had the misfortune to be born indigenous most us us had it so good we thought we were above a lot of that shit or at least getting better. Hopefully One Nation will self sabotage as they do tend to attract a log of incompetent people. But I thought the same about both Trump administrations.
- Comment on Pauline Hanson issues partial apology for suggesting there are no 'good' Muslims 4 weeks ago:
They say the outrageous shit, walk it back a little, say even more outrageous shit. They know what they are doing. We know it. It isn’t something new. I don’t know why we pretend and give this piece of shit airtime.
- Comment on [Video] Australian police violently beat up protester with his hands up at demonstration against Israeli president Isaac Herzog visiting. 5 weeks ago:
People with no self control shouldn’t hold responsible positions. If your having a bad day you shouldn’t be in a uniform dealing with people. Goes for any job, not just cops. Imagine if nurses behaved like this, punching every patient who pissed them off. Yet they get paid less than police for some reason.
I am not anti-police at all. Strongly disagree with the ACAB bullshit in Australia. Some cops are bastards for sure. I think they have a tough job and an important one even if their recruitment and discipline sucks. I feel particularly sorry for the ones who get shot dealing with cookers and some of the stuff they have to see and deal with.
If the police service can’t self discipline and weed out the trigger happy snowflakes then the public lose faith in them. They need to put cops like this on suspension and retraining. They might not have the right personality for this sort of work. It makes them look week. If your an agitator and want to start a riot it is so easy to bait people like this.
- Comment on Where would you put yourself today? 1 month ago:
I was thinking the same about it only going up to 40C. It’s forecast for 48C here tomorrow.
- Comment on Discussion Thread ⏰ Thursday 4 December 2025 3 months ago:
I love Lego but the kids don’t like Star Wars. There’s also a monopoly thing somewhere I think but it’s hard to get excited over boomer IP even for an old bloke. But thanks for the suggestion.
- Comment on Discussion Thread ⏰ Thursday 4 December 2025 3 months ago:
Thanks. ACMI is already on the list. Might do the markets depending on time but have a lot of things already. Have done the usuals in the past like scienceworks, NGV, museum, aquarium. All great but not this time.
- Comment on Discussion Thread ⏰ Thursday 4 December 2025 3 months ago:
Is there any reasonably cheap and fun family stuff (around tween age) to do around Melbourne CBD over the weekend that might not show up on searches? Visiting from the sticks so the bar isn’t all that high for something to be interesting. Any franchise/activity I can do in Adelaide is automatically disqualified.
- Comment on Discussion Thread ⏰ Thursday 4 December 2025 3 months ago:
Micron just announced they are dumping their Crucial retail brand to focus on supplying the AI circular financing bubble financial disaster. It is crazy. I hope our super funds aren’t tied up in this crap. We will end up poorer than North Korea.
- Comment on As of December 10th, You need to be sixteen to use Aussie.Zone 3 months ago:
This account will be visiting from another geolocation which isn’t subject to Australian laws and will henceforth identify as a foreign bot trying to disrupt Australian society and promote disunity. I request to be labelled as a foreign asset, not subject to age authorisation. In small print add “works for gambling industry, owns coal mine, makes political donations, VIP, mates with Albo and the Pope”
- Comment on Right faction stages walkout at Labor conference over CFMEU motion 3 months ago:
They should raise a motion to investigate the SDA and put them into administration.
- Comment on When your most obnoxious coworker starts up with their bullshit again 3 months ago:
Some.peiple hate her but others vote for her. Nasty little old ladies who call them selves Christians and proud Australians sit in coffee shops saying “i’im not a racist but…that Pauline makes so much sense”. They don’t give a shit about anyone other than themselves. Nasty little people full of hate.
- Comment on Ministerial Direction – Treatment of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents with hormone therapy [is banned again, already. Still with no consultation] 4 months ago:
Queensland and New Zealand. Two paradises on earth with shitty unicameral parliaments where a bunch of fuckwits can get voted in and destroy the place with no oversight.
- Comment on Bitter fruit: the dark underside of the booming NSW blueberry industry 5 months ago:
It is probably the whole country and the whole agricultural industry. Can’t really go anywhere in a rural town without seeing bus loads of islander labour everywhere. I don’t know what their pay and conditions are like. The stories you heard when the industry relied on backpackers weren’t great so I am not hopeful. I guess Robert Towns was way ahead of his time. You would think with all the underpayments it would be reflected in Colesworths prices.
- Comment on More sunscreens pulled from shelves over SPF concerns 5 months ago:
I saw a youtube video once with a person who had used Asian sunscreens wondering what was going on with the Australian ones which felt a lot worse and didn’t seem to perform as well. She put a variety on her back in squares and went in the sun. Not my usual watch but reasonably decent citizen science stuff. I don’t take health advice from youtubers but clearly basic sunscreen testing has trivial testing requirements that don’t require a lot of expensive lab equipment. That we took assurances from for profit companies that paid for profit foreign testing laboratories at their word instead of do the most basic testing to verify them is kind of crazy. I think this happens too often in this country.
Obviously you need to be careful going down this line of reasoning. People who become experts reading their conspiratorial social media feed and listening to their alternative health practitioner aren’t in a position to be influencing complicated public health matters. But sunscreen you can ab test on yourself and while you won’t be able to tell how much of the harmful spectrum a particular product blocks, which is still important, you can definitely throw out the one that gets you sunburnt much faster. It seems odd in a country that used to pride itself on innovation that nobody was doing this.
- Comment on If America descends into fascism, does Australia just grin and bear it? 6 months ago:
We put our balls firmly in their vice and they aren’t moving. If anything every Australian government, regardless of politics tries to tuck a bit more in every year with the standout concessions being digital sovereignty which is truly fucked and about to get much worse. It isn’t just the military/intelligence stuff. They have massive investment here and dominate financial and digital services. Probably the best we can hope for is to be neutral where we can along with a bit of malicious compliance.
- Comment on ABC Mediawatch: possible link between new social media online age requirements and appeasing the gambling industry 7 months ago:
This is the problem with any well meaning government legislation.
At it’s core I think regulating social media companies is fine as these foreign multinationals are effectively unregulated. Unregulated pursuit of profit can have harmful effects on individuals and the community and it is totally appropriate to legislate where there is a well demonstrated public interest.
As soon as you start down the path of regulation it presents an opportunity for everyone else to push their agenda. I suspect tech companies outside of social media see these laws as a chance to damage industry competitors if they can get their competitors products classified as social media. Tech vendors want a piece of age verification services. Media and advertising is looking to push their interests. It makes sense for the gambling industry to be throwing money and influence around as well.
Any support the legislation had from people hoping for the best will be buried the moment the gambling lobby is seen to be benefiting.
- Comment on Petition: Bring the Affinity Suite to Linux - #AffinityOnLinux 10 months ago:
An additional benefit is DaVinci Resolve is Aussie owned (Blackmagic Design from Melbourne Australia) which is great for people outside the US looking to decrease their dependence on US owned products and services.
I am more than happy with kdenlive for my video editing needs but I don’t edit video professionally.
- Comment on Petition: Bring the Affinity Suite to Linux - #AffinityOnLinux 10 months ago:
Yep. This is a waste of time. Canva are just another US VC backed SaaS company despite their Australian origins. An affinity suite port would have been interesting under the previous UK ownership.
- Comment on Rightwing lobby group Advance says it makes ‘no apology’ for support given to anti-Greens groups 11 months ago:
Just follow the money. Don’t even need to do that, its very obvious which industry group benefits from attacking the Greens. It is the same companies, majority foreign owned who aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.
It is hard to understand how anyone would fall for these corporate propaganda campaigns but then you think about the number of phone and internet scams and see all the fraud and weird cults around and I guess you just have to influence enough people to shift the goal posts. They must be spending a fortune per vote. Must be nice to have a licence to steal our countries wealth and not give anything back.
- Comment on Tariffs on 'incredibly important' ally Australia branded 'insulting' in fiery US Senate hearing 11 months ago:
Need to seriously look at the taxes paid by companies with high foreign ownership, specifically American. News Corp. Tech companies. Mining companies. So much wealth being extracted from our country and so much foreign influence on our politics with fuck all to show for it for the people who live here.
- Comment on Trump hits pause on reciprocal tariffs 11 months ago:
I live in a civilized country under the rule of law so I won’t advocate violence here. But factually and historically countries have found popular solutions to problems like this in the past that involved mobs with sharp pointy things.
This is the furthest thing from responsible government I can imagine. Even the craziest authoritarian leaders usually commit to something then do it. Lets kill all the sparrows. Or lets shoot all the people wearing glasses. This is fucking crazy. It looks more like stock market manipulation than economic policy. The uncertainty alone has to be costing billions in productivity as businesses pause investments, orders, lay off employees etc.
- Comment on Microsoft has created an AI-generated version of Quake 11 months ago:
Using infinite energy to employ infinite monkeys to recreate the work of one Elizabethan playwright is not a business plan.
Stop using windows, office and azure and this company and their bullshit go away.
- Comment on What movies have you watched this week? 11 months ago:
a lot less CGI than I was expecting.
Less CGI is just invisible CGI Hollywood consistently lies about the amount of visual effects used. If it is done well, as it mostly is in a movie like this, it isn’t too distracting.
- Comment on Clothing retailer Jeanswest collapses, with 90 stores to close and hundreds of jobs lost 11 months ago:
Also there is a fair amount of ignorance. Australian unions have worked with the ALP for decades to ensure entitlements for Australian workers in these circumstances and Labor passed the FEG legislation.
We get it, the mining lobby and billionaires are a corrupting influence on democracy including the ALP. The ALP aren’t left enough, aren’t proactive enough, whatever. But also the ALP has passed a lot of legislation that benefits working Australians and unsurprisingly you hear fuck all about it from MSM or people pushing minor parties and independents.
When these companies can’t pay entitlements it isn’t the Liberal party, Greens or independents that legislated to ensure workers aren’t going to be completely fucked.
Credit where its due.
- Comment on Coalition will not support Labor’s budget tax cuts, Angus Taylor says 11 months ago:
Our voting system gives us the freedom to do that and it would be stupid not to take advantage of it. Voting for independent or minors is a good thing as long as you also preference the parties that will actually get elected sensibly. It is important to recognize that while the mining industry can buy just about anyone, there are plenty of important things for average people that the mining companies don’t give a shit about which can make a huge difference.
These industry groups are powerful, like drug cartels, the gambling industry or other organised crime. You get some idealistic independent voted in with a balance of power and these guys can make them an offer too good to ignore. You can be set for life with a post political job. They can give jobs to family. They can fund your campaign. And that is all the stuff in public. You look at some of the shit they do overseas and its clearly an ethics free zone.
- Comment on Coalition will not support Labor’s budget tax cuts, Angus Taylor says 11 months ago:
He is a good communicator. Much better presentation than West and much prefer his style to FJ.
Unfortunately with the scale of money and influence from these mostly foreign owned companies state Labor governments are as compromised as the Libs when it comes legislating on behalf of these companies, not just in WA. I think any political party is going to face the same problems and it really fucks with democracy. There are huge differences in policy between parties and voting should make a real difference. We have a pretty fair electoral system too. But its a joke if the industry can buy whoever is in government or kick them out. It is incredibly frustrating.
- Comment on Porn on Spotify Is Infiltrating the Platform’s Top Podcast Charts 11 months ago:
The tech sector has a massive diversity problem. Lots of young men raised with one hand on their dick watching porn while reading libertarian propaganda. I get why vulture capitalists want naive, manipulable children running their businesses but I wish real adults were in charge. Fortunately better alternatives exist to all these platforms.
As a older man and father I think these people are pathetic little children and I avoid shitty social media in my house and around my family. Unfortunately they are still having a devastating impact on society.