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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Non-murican - strongly feel preference should be given to genuine refugees fleeing war, famine etc where they have absolutely no ability to influence their fate other than escape. The US is a failed democracy but the people there have barely begun to challenge their government compared to what we have seen elsewhere in the world. And there is still refuge available in blue states. US citizens need to stand up and fight. Then if they fail, only then do they get to go in the queue with the genuine humanitarian refugees. I don’t like queue jumpers. Sorry but impingement on your civil liberties doesn’t compare with families in war torn parts of the world living in fear fear of having their limbs blown off every night.

    Ofcourse business around the world would like to cherry pick talent for in demand jobs. They prefer not to invest in developing local people when they can import experienced talent for less. So people with in demand skills will get in that way, not as refugees.








  • It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.

    It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.

    A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because they put ideology and theoretical bullshit ahead of morality, empathy and the survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow of scams, mass-surveillance and brain washing. Still a big proponent of free software and agree with a lot of stuff from the EFF but the oligarchs ruined it. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.





  • 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.

    I have left multiple platforms that don’t offer parental controls, family sharing etc. 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 commercial social media in my house and around my family. Unfortunately they are still having a devastating impact on society.




  • Just did a rewatch with daughter. She wanted to watch after seeing the musical episode. Still stands up in my opinion even though we know Joss and some of the cast weren’t perfect.

    The Season 6 rapey tech bros were still a very hard watch and skipped an episode or two in that season but hard not to see it as a bit prescient - it was before Gamergate and the right wing radicalisation of young men online. Should have paid more attention. It went a bit over my head first time.

    Working through Angel now. Will see how that holds up. Has been a long time between watches. I kind of started House again though so …

    Wife can watch unlimited Supernatural and I think she might hold a record for rewatches of Voyager.

    Ensemble comedies like UK Ghosts and Community seem popular for rewatching with family. I think that is probably a general theme along with animations. Less serious shows tend to do better I think. Psych and Monk are probably more likely to get a rewatch than a serious procedural.





  • As much as I dislike the iconography of hate I don’t know if such laws are effective. They get media attention and their followers think they are martyrs and it feels like virtue signalling and easy options. Also I think the mandatory part was pushed by the conservatives whose leader seeks to benefit from the votes of these people so that tells you what you need to know about the likely effectiveness.

    We need to have a serious adult public discussion about fascism, why people want it and what the consequences are because it tends to be catastrophic for everyone, not least the people who gave it power. Our lives aren’t perfect but they are way too good to euthanase our society in pursuit of hideous intolerance.

    The leader of the opposition’s mask keeps slipping and the media refuses to examine the issue seriously. The party of Bob Menzies always represented a set of values in opposition to the progress of the Australian working class but they were still generally committed to a democratic and moderately liberal Australia which provided a voice for the many self-employed, small business owner types and others who shared their values. They were never generally more or less bigotted than the ALP or Australian public of the time to my knowledge. In the old days the ALP strongly supported White Australia as a form of labour protectionism and they still have a strongly religious conservative branch. It was never a cartoonish dichotomy between the sides.

    While I would say I am generally center left now I have voted for Liberal and National parties in specific elections based on local issues or representation. Choice is good and once we lose our commitment to the rule of law and pluralistic democratic values we lose that choice and people will need to fight to get it back at great cost.

    The import of Trumpism and the bigotted dogwhistling pushing the boundaries from the leader of a major party needs to be discussed seriously and unfortunately it won’t be in our current media and tech environment and that concerns me greatly. I helped bring 3 great kids into this world in a bountiful and mostly united country full of hope and opportunity. There were big challenges ahead in the form of climate change but I thought we would have made some headway on those by now and there was progress on other issues. Western democracy turning to the fascism which our forebeears helped defeat wasn’t on my bingo card.