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zero_gravitasto Overseas News•US condemns Australia's joint sanctions on Israeli ministersEnglish262·2 days agoFinally our government has done something which technically constitutes action. I’m amazed!
zero_gravitasto On the Telly•ABC set to axe long-running current affairs talk show Q+AEnglish5·3 days agoYeah, I’m pretty much the same. I think the show became a bit of an institution, and so politicians started being way more briefed and on-message and it lost the attraction for me as a viewer.
zero_gravitasOPto Overseas News•9News US Correspondent Lauren Tomasi hit by rubber bullet during Los Angeles protestsEnglish2·3 days agoYeah, when I posted this the extended longer video appeared at the top of the page on load. They’ve since added more videos, so now the footage of the reporter being shot with a rubber bullet is video 3 (or there’s just the YouTube link in the post body which is better quality anyway).
zero_gravitasOPto Overseas News•Israeli army 'boards' Freedom Flotilla Coalition's Gaza-bound ship, group saysEnglish6·4 days agoUpdates can be found via…
‘Free Gaza Australia’, which is member organisation of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition
https://www.instagram.com/freegazaaustralia/Freedom Flotilla Coalition
https://www.instagram.com/gazafreedomflotilla/Al Jazeera live blog (and probably on their live TV stream intermittently)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/6/4/madleen-gaza-flotilla-live-greta-thunberg-activists-to-arrive-on-june-7
I assume it’s on by default and some people don’t know or care to turn it off.
zero_gravitasto Melbourne•You can now donate to at least one food bank via Colesworth order (ASRC Foodbank)English5·5 days agoBut if the drop off part of things is a challenge at least there’s the option to use this.
You can also just donate money (https://donate.asrc.org.au/donate). I don’t know the pros and cons compared to a Coles delivery.
zero_gravitasOPto Australian News•HMAS Canberra accidentally blocks wireless internet and radio services in New ZealandEnglish1·6 days agoWell, how is it untypical?
zero_gravitasOPto Australian Politics•Brisbane hotel workers walk off the job to protest over Zionist-booked eventEnglish5·7 days agoBoth have been used as alternative names for Brisbane, I couldn’t tell you if one is better than the other, seems like it’s disputed:
Part of the Brisbane conurbation is located on traditional indigenous land known also as Meanjin, Meaanjin, Maganjin or Magandjin amongst other spellings.[32] There is a difference of opinion between local traditional owners over the spelling, provenance and pronunciation of indigenous names for Brisbane.[33] Tom Petrie in 1901 stated that the name Meeannjin referred to the area that Brisbane CBD now straddles. Some sources state that the name means ‘place shaped as a spike’ or ‘the spearhead’ referencing the shape of the Brisbane River along the area of the Brisbane CBD.[34][35][36][37] A contemporary Turrbal organisation has also suggested it means ‘the place of the blue water lilies’.[38] Local Elder Gaja Kerry Charlton posits that Meanjin is based on a European understanding of ‘spike’, and that the phonetically similar Yagara name Magandjin — after the native tulipwood trees (magan) at Gardens Point — is a more accurate and appropriate Aboriginal name for Brisbane.[39]
zero_gravitasOPto Australian Politics•Brisbane hotel workers walk off the job to protest over Zionist-booked eventEnglish13·7 days ago$2,000 was the goal, yeah
Updates (1)
4 June 2025
by Ari Russell, Organiser
Thank you to everyone who has chipped in to support the workers at The Wickham who took bold action against their employer Aus Venue Co and the State Zionist Council of QLD. Our goal of $2,000 has now been reached and their missed wages have been covered!
zero_gravitasOPto Australia•Cockatoos start sipping from Sydney’s drinking fountains after mastering series of complex movesEnglish9·8 days agoBut birds are AI!
zero_gravitasto Australia•[Satire] Beef Wellington sues Death Cap Mushrooms for defamationEnglish6·8 days agoHave you read a local paper lately? They fired all the sub-editors to cut costs, so this is pretty accurate 😆
I often downvote Hotznplozn’s posts because those posts are exclusively warmongering propaganda. That is literally the only posts they make here, so I’m usually downvoting them whenever they appear here. Other users have reported them, and their previous aliases, in the Overseas News comm so I’m not alone in thinking this.
I’ve avoided mentioning them by name in my comments in this thread and elsewhere, but I agree on this.
Geez, putting me on blast a bit 😆
For the record, I only downvoted
twothree of the linked posts (once each!)
What, @eureka? ‘Eureka’ isn’t a right-wing dogwhistle, if that’s what you mean. @eureka is a good leftist - the red variant of the flag for their avatar is a bit of a giveaway.
Right-wingers and racists who uses the Eureka flag (any colour) can get fucked, it’s a union flag.
I just checked and I only downvoted
twothree of those posts.My reason would have been some combination of a) I thought the posts didn’t belong in the comm, b) I thought the news source was low quality, or c) for reasons covered in previous threads regarding “Objectification of our community":
I had noticed and was surprised by the significant downvotes on some of the posts mentioned in the OP. I figured either people were sick of it like I was, or the accounts were just under attack by accounts that serve the same function for the other side(s).
The 7% difference in insolation between perihelion and ahelion (a figure I’ve seen mentioned in multiple places) seems like it would be significant for sunburn and skin cancer, at least at the population level.
I found an ABC article that doesn’t specifically say the 7% figure, but mentions perihelion as a factor in 10% higher UV in Australia. It downplays the role that extra 10% plays in our melanoma rates, though, and I suppose that’s fair, I don’t think anyone’s getting caught out by burning 10% faster, because they would have gone inside 10% sooner if they had known, haha
Together, Professor Whiteman says, these factors mean Australia’s UV is “probably about 10 per cent higher on average” than the equivalent latitude in the Northern Hemisphere.
“That would mean for people living in Brisbane it is higher than for people living in Miami in the US, and for people in Melbourne, it’s higher than for people living in Athens, Greece.”
While a 10 per cent increase in UV is significant, and might account for that sting in our summer sun, reasons for Australia’s high melanoma rates are more lifestyle-related, he says.
zero_gravitasto Australian News•Australians are choosing foods that contribute to leading causes of disease. Why?English9·10 days agoCan you imagine if we let companies poor waste into a river and taxed you if you swam in it?
I get your point, but we can regulate against dumping waste into a river without anyone except the polluters cracking the shits about it.
What would the equivalent look like for junk food? Regulation where they set a maximum sugar level for every category of product? That could maybe work, but it’d be a big and contested undertaking, and I’m guessing some portion of the voting population would crack the shits about not being able to get exactly what they used to get, and how the limits in place are arbitrary and unfair in some way.
The UK tax on sugar content in soft drinks did result in manufacturers reformulating drinks to have less sugar (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11156274/), so that’s an example where a tax reduced the ‘dumping waste into the river’.
Or are you just suggesting banning advertising of junk food? I agree that seems totally viable and should be pursued.
Personally, I think the first priority should be fixing the Health Star Rating system. It was ruined by the liberals making it a relative rating within each category of product, not an absolute rating that actually helps people make healthier choices overall (e.g. it might encourage people to buy a healthier variety of biscuits, but it doesn’t encourage them to not buy biscuits at all). They should also make it mandatory.
I’m surprised this article doesn’t mention the Health Star Rating, actually. The first step for consumers making good choices is to give consumers good information. I get the article is trying to highlight economic and geographic factors, but still.
Ah, thank you for the clarification! I hadn’t realised that the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit made an appreciable difference, but apparently yeah, especially at the equator: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pclm.0000436
zero_gravitasOPto Australia•Australia’s bowel cancer rates are world’s highest for under-50s. Scientists wonder if the gut microbiome is to blameEnglish3·11 days agoI don’t think your interpretation is correct. I think that comparison was of data for the two cohorts when they were the same age.
The study, yet to be peer-reviewed, found 28,265 cases of early-onset bowel cancer over the 30 years studied. An estimated 4,347 additional cases were attributable to the rising rates of the disease.
Early-onset cases, however, are increasing by up to 8% per year, the study found.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy)