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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: September 23rd, 2023

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  • I can’t say shit about my full set of motivations without breaking NDAs and doxxing myself unfortunately.

    But Australia is worse off environmentally than the public knows. And so many of us that worked in environmental analysis for big engineering firms, which are contracted by government, defence and so on, are gagged.

    When people try to blow the whistle, they are put into lengthy court battles which they never win.

    I worked on a project a few years ago around water theft, one of the other attached contractors had an analyst go to the media, blowing the lid off the scope of the issue. I have no idea what happened to her exactly, but I know they buried her in court.

    I’m moving to Canada, but more to be with friends, and spend the rest of my thirties and onwards enjoying my life. My twenties were brutal, I’m 35 and I’ve never had a holiday. I’ve been an activist for twenty years in Aus as well, this referendum and the result are painful.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-23/melbourne-water-supply-could-be-under-threat-within-a-decade/8735400

    This, for instance, is in actuality a much more pressing issue than this 2017 article portrays.







  • I remember when Vicforests hired a firm I worked for to measure canopy loss. We used drones and satilite data.

    Previously they just drove some analysts out to the most tree-covered areas and had them extrapolate from their position on the ground.

    After we delivered our result to them, they went back to the old method.

    They always play silly games like this. Then you end up with articles a decade later with headlines like “Australia’s deforestation worse than previously known.” With attached quotes like “we couldn’t have possibly known.”



  • Yeah, I’ve mentioned to some friends and family that my wife and I are moving overseas. I don’t use Facebook or anything, I’ve purposely not engaged in discussions with them about the Voice.

    And some of the hate and vitriol has been astounding. Full mask-off Aussie exceptionalism.

    The Voice was just the nail in the coffin for us. We’d been considering moving for a while. I wish Aussies really knew how fucked our work culture is. And how shit our pay is relative to the cost of living.

    They’re living in a fantastical version of Australia sold to them by a nationalist media.