Make good handling a desirable attribute again and it’ll naturally drive an uptake of lower and lighter cars. Things like raising speed limits to suit modern cars/tyres, actually repairing roads properly, and helping boost motorsport rather than actively discouraging the development of tracks would help.

I looked into volunteering for the local SES once (when I was looking for stuff to do with my life after uni) and they turned me down, so actually accepting people who are interested is something that might help with their numbers.

Not only at Christmas, but delicious soft cheeses are a more occasional food normally (as I work on avoiding both draining the bank account and having to buy larger pants).

Nice, my Christmas time Brie supply is secure again.

The gender pay gap is not about “equal pay for equal work”

Indeed, it seems to be primarily about making rage bait headlines.

Women work less hours on average, with considerably more working part time and those who work full time working less hours than men overall (so less overtime pay). What are you going to do to fix that gap, force women to work more? Between that and less women choosing to work in various higher paid and more physical/dangerous jobs (e.g. trades, mining) it’s no wonder there’s a difference.

I use my fingers like a normal person. The only problem I have with these is the occasional time when the tab shears off completely as you flip it up and you’re left contemplating whether to stab something into the groove or dig out the can opener…

Indeed, so now both the roads and cars are a lot safer I would be very happy to increase speed limits - particularly on highways and country roads. The idea that speed is the root of all evil however has been pushed enough that an unfortunate amount of people believe it, as can be seen by how this post has been dogpiled with downvotes despite the article presenting a quite sensible view. I even got several downvotes elsewhere in the thead for pointing out that cars are actually safer now than in the 70s, as if that was somehow a contentious point of view.

I could live with that tradeoff, but I’d have to see the regional speeds raised first because I don’t believe that would actually happen given how risk-averse our governments are. Instead regional roads keep getting their speed limits lowered and any suggestion of raising them raises cries of outrage - typically from people who aren’t even in the area and who get scared driving on roads without streetlights.

Sounds like there was quite a few people after the tickets given the article says all 990 tickets got snapped up in less than 24 hours, I’m impressed that that many people both knew it was happening and were enthusiastic enough to head out to see it (guessing the gardens sent out an email about it and social media posts etc).

Was the smell as powerful as these articles always say it is?

I didn’t realise the Botanic Gardens had one of these, wonder if now they know it’s viable they’ll put it in a more public area (given how much interest that one in Sydney gets each time it pops out).

Baby red bellies are indeed pretty cute, can confirm as I got to hold a live one in a jar once when I was a kid (some other kids caught it and were showing it off). Would definitely prefer they be cute somewhere that’s not my backyard though…

That is unfortunately true, for example I find it sadly impressive that one has a decent chance of getting classified info simply by starting an argument on the War Thunder forums…

I’m not familiar with them, though I did just have a quick browse of wikipedia and their privacy page. From that minimal impression I’d rate their online service as better than DeepSeek (they do claim your data is not used for training, stored in Sweden, encrypted, and deleted after 30 days) but ultimately it’s still got the same problem as other providers in that you have to just believe they’ll actually follow what they say they do. For use with your own personal info this might be an acceptable risk if the company seems reputable otherwise, on the other end of the scale for anything security classified it’d be way too much risk.

You’d have to be mad to put important information into any AI model unless you’re hosting it locally and know it isn’t sending info anywhere (the latter being the hard part to verify). All of the online AI services really should be blocked if departments/companies are taking security seriously.

Sounds like Coles has been eyeing off Aldi and wants to also get into narrowing the range down to products they have more direct control over (bet their prices don’t follow Aldi though).

We don’t do them anywhere near as much as America apparently does but since I believe you’re around Brisbane I can pretty much guarantee you’ve driven on concrete roads (it’d be a lot less likely if you lived in Woop Woop). Look for it on primary routes that get a lot of heavy vehicle traffic - for example head south on the Pacific Highway and you’ll find large sections of concrete.

My point was that if you’re writing an article talking about how much Australians spend on cycling/walking infrastructure you should at least mention that federal numbers are not the whole picture and that federal is not the level of government that is going to cover most of said infrastructure. Omitting this smacks of the author just looking for a low number to draw attention/outrage.

Why are they focussing on federal funding only? I would expect federal funding to go largely to the sorts of roads which are important on a broad scale but less desirable for cycling or walking - freeways, highways, major arterial roads, and so forth. State and local government are the levels I would expect to find the majority of cycling and walking investment, it seems odd that these are omitted.

Yes, it’s not the easiest space to find other uses for. I could see some options for it on Saturdays as a bookable space for displays or events that can come up and down quickly (e.g. it would make a nice space for a car club to show off their vehicles) but not much is coming to mind for weekday activities.

The properties in question can be found on the page labelled as 24 (page 26 overall) of this document if you’re curious - if you know anyone listed it would be a good idea to make sure they are aware of this issue.