Nath
@Nath@aussie.zone
- Comment on How Australia is Responding to a Second Trump Term 4 days ago:
Aren’t we responding with ‘Enough about the bloody US election, already’? I was sick of the whole circus several weeks ago. Now, it’s supposedly over and we’re still getting articles about the whole stupid thing. I stay out of /All because it’s full of US politics.
This much noise about any other election, even our own, would be thought of as weird. But the Internet goes on and on and on about the US one. Yes, there are some ramifications for the rest of the world on how they vote. No, I’d have no problem with a few articles discussing it. But this wall-to-wall saturation for six months has left me feeling utterly sick of the whole thing.
As to AUKUS, I don’t even know what it gives us that our alliances of the past half-century already provide. It’s not like those relationships are in danger, no matter who sits in the White House/No. 10 Downing/Canberra.
- Comment on Upgrade incoming 5 days ago:
Edit:
Maybe not: No major difference on our Federation Health with lemmy.world. - Comment on Upgrade incoming 5 days ago:
It doesn’t appear to need lemmy.world to upgrade! aussie.zone/post/15206144/13130297
There’s a lemmy.world user commenting in a current local thread. I am very happy!
- Comment on The 50 best Australian songs of the 90s 6 days ago:
I gave them a pass for artists they included, even if I’d have selected different songs from that artist. For Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, I’d have selected Into my Arms. But yeah, the Kylie collaboration was a bigger song than either of the Nick Cave/Kylie tracks they did select.
- Comment on The 50 best Australian songs of the 90s 6 days ago:
Yes! We’re going to end up with a definitive 90s Aussie music play list, and I’m all on board with it!
- Comment on The 50 best Australian songs of the 90s 6 days ago:
I’m all about showcasing local talent. I love most of the bands in the list. But don’t call it the “best Australian songs of the 90s” if you’re going to leave out so many of the best songs of the 90s.
I loved Ratcat, but I’d have selected That ain’t bad. Frente’s Accidentally Kelly Street and Custard with Funky again to really introduce a new generation to their music (because Dave’s voice is really recognisable to the kids in this track).
- Comment on Housing affordability, lifestyle key reasons people are increasingly opting for remote Australia 6 days ago:
It’s possible to find a 4x2 house in Tasmania for under $300,000. I can see why people are moving there.
- Comment on The 50 best Australian songs of the 90s 6 days ago:
Some classics in this list. Such a list can’t exist without people pointing out who was missed, though. This reads like a top 50 of what JJJ had on high rotation. It’s missing several acts that were bigger than most of the names on this list. Off the top of my head (and only in the order I think of them), there’s:
- Madison Avenue - Don’t Call Me Baby
- Taxiride - Get Set / Everywhere you Go
- Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply / Affirmation / To the Moon & Back / I Knew I loved you
- John Farnham - Chain Reaction / That’s Freedom / Every Time You Cry - Plus his duets with Barnsy. Speaking of…
- Jimmy Barnes - When Something is Wrong with my Baby (with Farnsy) / Stone Cold
- Kate Cebrano - Pash (Can’t count the Jesus Christ Superstar album, unfortunately)
- Tina Arena - Chains
- Wendy Matthews - The Day You Went Away / Friday’s Child
- Black Sorrows - Harley and Rose / Ain’t Love the Strangest Thing / The Chosen Ones / Hold On To Me
- Icehouse - Miss Divine
- Hunters & Collectors - Holy Grail (Yes, the AFL flogged it to death, but it was still huge)
- Human Nature - Tellin’ Everbody / Got It Goin’ On / Wishes
- Merril Bainbridge - Mouth / Under the Water
How some of these names were left off the list is beyond me. Savage Garden are one of the only Australian Bands who have managed more than a single hit in the US charts. Farnsy and Barnsy are Australian staples. Even with some of the acts they did get right, I’d have picked different songs.
In the making of this list, I learned that Torn by Natalie Imbruglia and The Horses by Daryl Braithwaite are covers and don’t count. Also, an honorable mention to The Waifs and John Butler Trio who were pretty popular around the Perth pub scene of the 90s, but didn’t really crack the national consciousness until 2000 or later. This shocked me, I’m normally behind the trends, but I liked these bands before they were charting. Does that make me a hipster?
- Comment on Upgrade incoming 1 week ago:
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
Immigration and asylum seekers have been politicized my whole life. When I was little, it was “wogs” - though which nationality that referred to was confusing. It was originally Italians and Greeks after World war 2, but later evolved to Lebanese. Then it was the Vietnamese/Asians. Then it was Middle Eastern / Arab nations. I think we’re still hearing about Sudanese gangs yeah?
It’s an unending cycle that has showed no signs of going away. Ned Kelly resorted to crime because of being discriminated against for being Irish. Yes, Mr. Howard absolutely tapped into that cycle with the Tampa incident, but he didn’t start the fire. It was always burning like the world’s been turning.
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
This thread is a product of our collective ages. Billy McMahon is pretty universally thought of as the worst PM ever, but we’re too young to remember him first-hand. A rich guy, I think he still holds the record for longest time in parliament. He was probably gay, but persecuted LGBT+ people.
Laurie Oakes: [he was] “devious, nasty, dishonest - he lied all the time and stole things”. He tells a story where McMahon tried to steal (clearly labelled) radio station gear after an interview, claiming to own it.
Robert Menzies: “the most characterless man who was ever prime minister of Australia – a dreadful little man”
John McEwan almost succeeded in keeping McMahon out of the PM spot, by absolutely refusing to work with him. McMahon couldn’t get party leadership until after McEwan retired. Gough Witlam reportedly called him a “notorious homosexual” and a “cunt” in a story told by McMahon - who complained that he “couldn’t be both”.
Challenge for anyone here: Google him and see if you can find anyone with something nice to say about him. The quotes you’ll find about him are honestly hysterical. 😃
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
I had several disagreements with Mr Howard, but I believe that despite those differences, he really was trying to do the right thing for the country.
I liked Mr Turnbull. In an alternate universe where he was permitted to actually lead the nation and wasn’t held down by his party, I think he could have been one of the great PMs.
I didn’t have a lot of time for either Mr Abbott nor Mr Morrison. Both were bad for the country. I honestly can’t recall a redeeming thing to say about either of them.
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
Mr Fraser privatised Medibank (the original Medicare). Universal healthcare was the dream-child of the preceding government. The Liberal Party hated it and tried to block it. One of the first things they did was kill it. I fully recognise that my views of Mr Fraser were the product of my childhood - where my political views mostly boiled down to “Liberals are evil and Labor are the good guys” thanks to my parental influences.
It turns out that universal healthcare is pretty popular, though. It was the main issue that kept the Libs in the wilderness for over a decade. They had to promise not to kill Medicare to ever get another shot at government.
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
The thing about legislation is: The new government can make/change/remove it. Unless you enshrine it in the Constitution - and we have a pretty poor track record of changing that.
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
The problem with a “Future Fund” is that our politics isn’t geared up to handle it. Imagine a kitty of $50 Billion sitting just there and a new party gets in. They’ll spend it, of course. So even if you get a fiscally responsible PM who establishes such a fund, the other party would get in three years later, spend that money immediately on [PROJECT] and then claim all the credit for it.
- Comment on Who was our worst Prime Minister and why? Any notable state leaders we need to add? 1 week ago:
WA still owns its power grid. My power bills in WA are far cheaper than they were in Victoria. These two facts are probably related.
Also, the WA government reserves a stash of gas for local reservation before companies are allowed to sell the rest “at market rate”. That gas belongs to everyone, not just the company that extracts it. This policy also helps to keep energy prices in WA reasonable.
- Comment on Customers suddenly find their new phones can't make calls or send texts 1 week ago:
How do the telcos get more money? A few phone sales are not going to do anything to their profits. They own the 3G infrastructure, it’s theirs. They could have legally turned it off years ago and there’s nothing anyone (including the government) could have done about it. Forcing them to sell a service is no different to forcing Woolies to sell your favourite brand of peanut butter. You can argue that the Government of the day should never have sold 100+ years of infrastructure investment and only privatised the retail side of Telstra - and would 100% agree with you. But that horse bolted 30 years ago. The simple truth is that all our phones rely on three companies and with few exceptions, there are no guarantees the service will work. As that Optus outage a year ago demonstrated.
I’m all about bashing on the telcos when they deserve it. But they’ve handled this about as nicely as was possible. They’ve been warning everyone for over a year. They’ve been individually messaging affected phones for months. Nobody can really say they didn’t get warning.
I don’t really agree with blocking IMEIs of phones they didn’t sell because they’re not sure they’ll work without 3G. But I see the reasoning for it. They can’t make a regular call today, but they can make an emergency call. They are forcing that pain now, while the phone can still call in an emergency instead of it dropping totally off the network at a future date when it can’t make any sort of call. I’d have gone the other direction to give those customers more time. I recognise though that some people simply would not have done anything until they were forced to - no matter how much time they were given.
- Comment on We should defederate lemmy.ml 1 week ago:
Feeling a bit conscious of the fact that I’m at work right now, and too busy to give this the diplomatic response it deserves. The short answer to this question is that we don’t generally defederate anyone for anything they say/do inside their own instance. We do however happily support you in blocking them for yourself. Click on your username in the top-right, go to Settings and then Blocks. Under the Instance section, search for lemmy.ml and make sure you click on their name in the drop-down like this:
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Do this and you will no longer see lemmy.ml content.Disclosure: I subscribe to that community - and while I’m aware that the locals of lemmy.ml have quirky political leanings, that particular community is frequented by a lot of non-local members. Also, that post was always going to attract hardliners from all sides, wherever that question was asked.
- Comment on Customers suddenly find their new phones can't make calls or send texts 1 week ago:
It’s pretty similar to the analogue tv signal shutdown in 2010. The difference though was you could buy a digital tuner and plug it into your tv and keep using it.
3G is taking up a lot of spectrum space and they need to free it up for future data technology. It is also used by a very small (and shrinking) percentage of people, while costing too much to maintain.
It has to die. Telcos gave more than a year’s warning. Then an extended grace period. I don’t really know how they could have done this without annoying some people.
While I move in a bubble of nerds who tend to have decent gear, I don’t actually know anyone affected by this shutdown first-hand.
- Comment on BYD’s hybrid EV ute that could rival Australia’s bestselling vehicles goes on sale 2 weeks ago:
I was saying they’re not likely to axe those seats. Sorry. 😀
- Comment on BYD’s hybrid EV ute that could rival Australia’s bestselling vehicles goes on sale 2 weeks ago:
The back seats serve a purpose: You can buy a ute through your business as it is clearly a work vehicle. If you want your business to effectively pay for your family car, you make a ute that can drive your family around.
That’s why tradies buy these. They don’t need the dual cab for work, they need the tray to justify buying the family vehicle through their business and expensing/depreciating it.
- Comment on BYD’s hybrid EV ute that could rival Australia’s bestselling vehicles goes on sale 2 weeks ago:
Those first two videos are a bit extreme - I obviously wouldn’t have attempted either of those in the Outlander. I doubt I’d have attempted it in the Teslas, either. Those were big risks with minimal rewards in both examples. Thought the second was obviously a planned “Is this possible?” crossing.
I’m equal parts impressed and horrified. I know enough about electrics to be horrified at what water can do if it gets in your motor. Would the vehicle be covered under warranty if you inundated your motor doing this?
- Comment on Parents of malnourished girl were warned she could die, but father dismissed concerns as 'crazy', court told 2 weeks ago:
They didn’t. The kid is fine.
This case is interesting, as the kid was off the radar. She was homeschooled, and part of the reason it’s newsworthy is that the dance instructors didn’t really have a channel to report their concerns to Child Protection like a teacher would.
The case is still unfolding, as the parents are still in court and more details are released.
- Comment on BYD’s hybrid EV ute that could rival Australia’s bestselling vehicles goes on sale 2 weeks ago:
It’s not a dig at the Shark, specifically. It’s my lack of familiarity with electric vehicles in general. I’ve never seen an electric vehicle drive through water.
The depth of the water was about the height of the wheels. Which I’m guessing is past 400mm. I probably wouldn’t have taken the car along that road to that crossing if I’d known about it ahead of getting there. I was already calculating the odds of getting across and what I’d do if I got bogged down in the water etc.
- Comment on BYD’s hybrid EV ute that could rival Australia’s bestselling vehicles goes on sale 2 weeks ago:
On the other side, I gladly take my Outlander off the beaten track. I took it through a river crossing last month that I probably shouldn’t have. It handled it like a champion, though.
I don’t know whether I’d take one of these through that same crossing.
- Comment on Inquiry warns distrustful public wouldn’t accept COVID measures in future pandemic. 2 weeks ago:
The biggest problem we faced in 2020 was that the federal government of the day dropped the ball. One of the federal government’s primary duties is border control. The borders should have closed and national quarantine facilities engaged to control and protect repatriated citizens.
This ended up being left to the State Governments. And in fairness, the premiers stepped in and filled that void as best they could. It was heartening - party politics took a back seat to addressing issues that faced everyone. Internally, the states had a real mixed bag of responses - and their varying levels of success should be case studies on how to approach this in the future. Melbourne locked down, and while that was no fun for anyone, the death rates of Melbourne are a tiny fraction of any comparable city in the USA.
WA just shut the whole border. This had its challenges, but from within we cruised through 2020 and 2021 as though there was no pandemic. A couple of short, sharp semi-lockdowns in there when the odd minor outbreak threatened is all.
NSW dabbled a bit with locking down, but opened up again too quickly. We saw the effects that had on case numbers.
It isn’t that the public doesn’t trust the measures employed - it’s that they were a patchwork of different measures and they had varying degrees of success. Hopefully, the next time this happens, the federal government will learn from 2020 and step in with a nation-wide response that we can all get behind.
- Parents of malnourished girl were warned she could die, but father dismissed concerns as 'crazy', court toldwww.abc.net.au ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to australia@aussie.zone | 10 comments
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to australia@aussie.zone | 4 comments
- Comment on Pictures are broken 3 weeks ago:
You still need a change record, but it can be filled out retrospectively once the dust has settled and the service is restored.
- Comment on What happened to @unionagainstdhmo? 3 weeks ago:
There’s also purge. It’s a super-remove that will go through the database and delete every record the user ever existed. I use it sparingly, since the record of purging a user doesn’t even appear in the modlog (no instance admin would ever abuse this power, right?). Can’t log a purge because that user never existed. Even regular-level spam bots don’t get the purge treatment.
I can purge comments, also. I’ve even done it once for a mod. I forget the circumstances of how we reached that point, something about a ban not removing content properly? It was probably hate-related in some form.
