He leaves office to use his fortune to set up a charitable foundation leaving a JD Vance presidency

a chill person who knows how to find absurdity in a situation

I really like this definition. Being literally able to sense the humour in a situation

The criminal prosecution of the wrongdoers is one thing but denying the democratic rights of union members to choose their own leadership and firing effective organisers who had nothing to do with the corruption is a blatant attack on the rights of workers.

While those of us on the progressive side of politics have been disappointed by the rightward drift of the Labor party for decades the anti-CFMEU legislation represents a profound abandonment of its historic mission to stand with the working class and trade unions.

While I think that legalisation, or at least decriminalisation, for personal use is probably the right policy decision I agree with Elton to a degree.

Currently there is a fairly well established cultural belief at least in English speaking countries that marijuana is not addictive, not dangerous to health, and not problematic at all.

The belief that marijuana is largely harmless persists despite the fact that we all know people who smoke excessively to the point of making their lives worse and if they come to this realisation they find it incredibly difficult to stop.

Criminalisation of marijuana, especially combined with over policing of specific communities as occurred in the USA, is a disaster. But not recognising the very real harms that marijuana does to some peoples lives is also a disaster.

It’s an interesting idea, I honestly don’t think there is an easy solution here though. Balancing freedom of speech with controlling false and misleading information is a supremely difficult and as yet unsolved problem.

I’m sorry if I’m misunderstanding, I don’t feel that you’ve actually addressed the issue at hand.

Specifically the event where Murdoch papers took payment from the fossil fuel lobby and in return ran front page stories pushing specifically their line that increased natural gas is necessary. This was made technically legal by small print on the next page.

The longstanding convention is that when presented as such a story has been written by a journalist to create the content and not pursue promotion, ‘advertorials’, while problematic in themselves, have always had a note, often small print, directly adjacent to the story.

The event reported here was deliberate misdirection intended to escape the notice of the reader.

The issue isn’t the freedom of the fourth estate, it isn’t even advertising or opinion in the press, it is that it should be clear to the reader what is news, what is opinion and what is advertising. There already exist laws that protect this separation. The Murdoch papers have found a loophole and have deliberately exploited it to deliberately mislead their readers. It is difficult to interpret it any other way and it is this specifically which should be made illegal by clarifying existing laws to close this loophole.

I’m sincerely sorry if I sound angry. I was trying to be concise. I am genuinely interested in hearing why you think outlawing this kind of deception would not be appropriate. I am quite certain we would disagree but I am always interested in hearing opposing opinions.

Really, please expand on this, I will try to respond with kindness and understanding despite any disagreement.

The mechanisms aren’t really the focus of the study but the conclusion does have some mild speculation

HOUSEHOLD RESPONSES TO GUARANTEED INCOME: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM COMPTON, CALIFORNIA

This is deliberately misleading. I’m not sure why you think it can’t be outlawed, numerous laws exist regarding false and misleading advertising which is exactly what this is.

It is not reasonable to expect even a majority of people to pick up on this kind of deliberate deception.

Making this kind of deliberate deception illegal would not be limiting freedom of speech, opinion pieces and clearly labelled advertising are one thing, a front page story with no indication that it is not news is another.

Fake news

History will judge this government harshly for not taking a stance earlier.

Corporate banks can go suck an egg. There are multiple good member owned banks whose directors are accountable to you and not shareholders.

Shoutout to Tasmania though…

For crying out loud, never ever ever do this, god, if there is a crest then you can’t even see once you pull out. Don’t do it.

I have also driven extensively through mainly country WA and elsewhere and briefly worked as a truck driver in the NT, in my experience there is no consistency in understanding of these signals, as pointed out by the article, and I’m sceptical that it is consistently applied by truckies.

I do believe that there is an understanding among experienced truckies and some(a majority???) of other road users that there is a system but it is not universally understood by cara-fucking-van drivers, or apparently school bus drivers either.

As a car driver I have on at least 2 occasions had a truckie indicate it is safe for me to overtake(indicating L-L) in a situation that would have caused an accident. The only time it is safe to overtake is when you as the driver can be satisfied it is safe to do so. Relying on potentially ambiguous signals that are not universally understood is a literal accident waiting to happen.

I have been slightly obsessed with this since being quite outraged at a clear signal to pass being so dangerous and I’ve raised it with several truckies over the years, I think a small majority of truckies assume it’s universally understood but a large minority never indicate to pass as it is dangerous/raises liability concerns. A clearly non random sample and I may have been asking leading questions…

You make a good point that for the truckies safety there is a need to indicate that it is unsafe but if people are misunderstanding this then I don’t know what the solution is.

– several edits for clarity –

I think the debate on this issue is blown out of proportion.

First, giving a small amount of money to someone in need is a very direct and human act of compassion which makes it worthwhile, if you gift someone money it is their prerogative what they do with it and the idea that it is harmful is blown out of proportion.

Second, giving money to a local charity is also worthwhile, if you don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason.

The idea that one approach is good and the other is actively bad is at best a distraction and at worst an excuse to do nothing at all

The fact is that even in Australia, which by world standards has a not bad safety net, it is not possible for most people to get crisis housing and waiting lists for public housing are rarely less than 6 months, welfare payments can be cut off for trivial reasons and public mental health services are overwhelmed. These are the problems that successive governments have refused to tackle.

If you can make someone’s day with a small gift then please do.

I’m sad to say I have no advice for you but I feel for you, it must be a very hard time. Don’t be afraid to lean on those close to you for support.

They’re only willing to call out a generation defining genocide with subtle things like this rather than average making a statement that might make a difference.

I swear I’m tearing my hair out at this government, there are several people at a high level, including Albo himself, who seem to have good instincts and want to do good but are so terrified of being called socialist or radical that they end up doing nothing or pushing a conservative platform.

Again. I am answering in good faith assuming you will do the same.

I am perfectly willing to concede that I may have understated the size of the initial attacks and for the sake of argument I will concede your claim that there are 10s of thousands of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

The issue at stake here is that at least 180,000 civilians have been killed to say nothing of the injuries and other traumas. The IDF has deliberately targeted civilian populations who had nothing to do with the attacks.

Again, I may not be opposed to a proportionate response but to killing hundreds of thousands in response to what you claim was a crime of 6000 people is not proportionate, it is brutal and unnecessary and likely to be counterproductive to any hopes of reducing violence from either side in the future.

Do you have a position on this specially? Do you deny the death toll, or do you assume that all 180,000 killed were terrorists?

I am genuinely interested in your response.

Certainly there is a justification for a strong response against Hamas. What you need to grapple with is that the response has been against the entire Palestinian population and has caused an enormous death toll of civilian non-combatants.

If I may take your example of the Taliban, a clearly reprehensible organisation. It would not be appropriate for opponents of the Taliban to indiscriminately attack the civilian population of Afghanistan in much the same way that it is not appropriate for the IDF to target the civilian population of Palestine using the crimes of Hamas as justification. Indeed during the Afghanistan war the US and allies took precautions to target fighters and minimise civilian deaths and were rightly criticised when they failed.

Over 10 years of the War in Afghanistan the civilian death toll in Afghanistan was most years less than 4000, in Palestine the civilian death toll is 40 times that in 1 year.

There is no double standard here, no one is saying Israel shouldn’t have responded in a proportionate way to the initial Hamas attacks but what Israel is doing is targeting the civilian population in response to the (admittedly reprehensible) actions of, yes, a few dozen people.

I am genuinely interested in hearing your response here, please don’t take this as a personal attack but I hope you understand my perspective here.