Sternhammer
@Sternhammer@aussie.zone
- Comment on The $85b Australians have saved by ditching the commute 1 month ago:
As soon as they’re on the wrong side of the free market they demand government intervention.
- Comment on Question about Australian towns 3 months ago:
I thought it was the Turkish they mostly celebrate for killing?
This phrase illustrates how profoundly you misinterpret these war memorials. These are not celebrations of killing, they are memorials to those who died, markers of grief not celebrations of conquest.
I live in a small village in Tasmania and I’m not aware of any war memorial however there is a grove of trees commemorating WW1 at the nearby Port Arthur Historic Site. I think this is interesting because Port Arthur is itself a memorial to a brutal, horrific past, a past that isn’t celebrated but remembered. The same site also contains a memorial garden that marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern Australian history, remembrance of a tragedy not a celebration of it.
What do you think? How should a community treat the memories of those who die in tragic events? Should they be forgotten or remembered? For that matter, do you think that wars should be forgotten or remembered?
“Those who ignore the lesson of the past, will be doomed to repeat it.”
George Santayana - Comment on Is everyone so depressed now partially because modern science has probably proven there is no god / afterlife? 3 months ago:
This is an insightful observation.
I was raised Catholic as well, stopped going to Mass when I left home in my early 20s, and just never missed it. As a child I think I believed but as an adult religious belief seems completely unnecessary.
My son, who was raised an atheist, is now deeply religious—he’s a Benedictine monk (no, we didn’t see that coming!)—but even when visiting him religion seems like a lot of nonsense to me. (He’s happy and we accept his choice despite not sharing his beliefs.) - Comment on animals you need to know 6 months ago:
I think the Easter Billy thing may have been a fund raiser for the Save the Bilby Fund, though I’m not sure. Did some work with them in Charleville some time back, as part of a student field trip looking at design concepts for what eventually became the Bilby Experience. Great people.
From what I can remember they’ve had good success in rebuilding the bilby population.
- Comment on The government ordered an investigation into last year's Optus outage. Now its findings are in 6 months ago:
Good luck getting Optus, a communications company, to promptly and accurately communicate with its customers.
- Comment on Inside the plan that could rein in vice chancellor salaries and overhaul uni boards 6 months ago:
I could see this degeneration happing about 5 years back when our vice chancellor started calling herself ‘president’. They gave up on it after a few years but it’s very clear where their priorities lie.
- Comment on What's inside the London Tower Bridge? 6 months ago:
Tower Bridge has its own website which has articles about what’s inside.
- Comment on I notice Indians speaking English tend to speak very fast. Are the Indian languages simply spoken faster? 8 months ago:
Re: dickie for car boot (what Americans would call the ‘trunk’); some old two-seater cars had a third seat in the boot, known as a ‘dickie-seat’, at least in the UK, so perhaps it’s an old term that still survives in Indian English.
- Comment on How can I learn to dance/glide like this guy? 8 months ago:
I wonder if doing the Moon Walk would get you burnt at the stake for witchcraft a few hundred years ago.
- Comment on My thoughts on the Australia Day date 9 months ago:
Some protestors I saw interviewed on TV wanted to abolish Australia Day entirely which doesn’t seem right to me. Many countries have a date that celebrates nationhood. Also, good luck convincing Australians to have one fewer public holidays.
How about we have a public holiday for ‘Arrival Day’ and another for ‘Survival Day’? Two public holidays are better than one.
- Comment on There’s something about Mary: the Australians going ‘absolutely mad’ over Denmark’s new queen [actual article] 9 months ago:
Yay, the first Australian head of state!
- Comment on People who order "a decaff coffee with an extra shot" - why? 9 months ago:
I’m not a coffee drinker but my partner is. She says she had two decent cups of coffee in Italy (two weeks in Rome, Bolzano, and Venice) but every day in Australia she has better. Australians are complete coffee snobs.
- Comment on Assuming a button that, every time you push it, your intelligence goes up. The obvious and sane thing to do is to push the button all day. Yes? No? Maybe? Is there something that I'm missing here? 11 months ago:
Nah, your just use your increased intellect to get other people to push the button for themselves, increasing the pool of intelligent potential friends available to you.
Actually this reminds me of a story I read last year where two people are in a race to massively increase their intelligence. Neither can tolerate the potential threat the existence of another hyper-intelligent person holds so it’s a struggle to the death. If I remember correctly they gain there ability to effectively read people’s minds by reading body language, micro expressions, etc., develop new systems of logic and hyper-efficient language to think in and have an entirely mental showdown at the end.
Unfortunately I’m too stupid to remember the title.
- Comment on What happened to the flat earthers who demonstrated that the earth is round in the netfilx documentary ? 11 months ago:
Well said.
I’d also point out that dehumanising a subgroup is a powerful technique used to manipulate people. Tell people who to hate and you can get them to go along with anything while they’re focused on the scapegoats. Popular scapegoats include:
- immigrants (taking our jobs while, paradoxically, being a welfare burden)
- religious groups (Jews, Muslims, etc.)
- welfare recipients (dole bludgers, a burden on society)
- criminals (war on drugs, tough on crime)
Any time someone is demonising a group theres a good chance they’re just trying to manipulate you.
- Comment on Melbourne Cup: most Australians have little or no interest in ‘race that stops the nation’, Essential poll finds 1 year ago:
Indeed. As always when it comes to identity there’s a difference between how we see ourselves and reality.
- Comment on Melbourne Cup: most Australians have little or no interest in ‘race that stops the nation’, Essential poll finds 1 year ago:
There are several aspects of the Australian identity that we look unflattering to modern eyes—gambling and drinking to excess come to mind. These things change slowly but they do change.
Incidentally I do think innovation is a valued aspect of the Australian identity.
- Comment on ‘Absolute dog act’: Queensland Labor pilloried for shock move to override state’s Human Rights Act 1 year ago:
It’s disgusting. It reminds me of how backwards Queensland was in the Joh years.
- Comment on Russell Coight is Promoting the Plug in Hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander 1 year ago:
Man, that thing is hideous.
- Comment on Are American tv shows stuck in Act 2 for their entire runtime between season 1 and final season? 1 year ago:
And yet it often leads to more satisfying narratives.
- Comment on Byron Bay data breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts 1 year ago:
How absurd. This kind of thing could happen to anyone.
I hope Adidas cops heaps of negative publicity over its pursuit of this hapless woman.
- Comment on Not seeing all comments, curious as to why 1 year ago:
I have 1Blocker. I’ve never turned that setting on but always assumed it would suppress comments sections from web pages that offer comments elbow articles.