spiffmeister
@spiffmeister@aussie.zone
- Comment on The peer review system no longer works to guarantee academic rigour - a different approach is needed 1 day ago:
Honestly, reducing the teaching + publish-or-perish + the constant need to apply for grants would go a long way towards fixing the review process. Academics have to spend a lot of time doing a lot of non-academic work that peer reviewing properly sometimes gets pushed down the list of priorities.
- Comment on David Crisafulli vows to repeal ban on developer donations and ditch ‘corrupt’ full preferential voting system 5 weeks ago:
Fair call. It would be nice if QLD had an upper house to hopefully block proposals like this.
- Comment on David Crisafulli vows to repeal ban on developer donations and ditch ‘corrupt’ full preferential voting system 5 weeks ago:
It’s not clear to me that moving to optional is what he means:
“Preferences should not be a thing in Queensland elections, and it won’t be if government changes,” he said.
This quote suggests to me he wants to get rid of preferences all together.
- Comment on David Crisafulli vows to repeal ban on developer donations and ditch ‘corrupt’ full preferential voting system 5 weeks ago:
Definitely not something a corrupt person would say.
- Comment on ANU asks staff to give up agreed pay rise to help reach $250m cost cuts 5 weeks ago:
Even with a 10% pay cut the VC will be remunerated over $1,000,000 per year, even despite the university’s poor financial performance.
Afaik the ANU VC earns about $650k (here). Not that this isn’t probably 6-8x what most others in the university earn.
Pretty much agree with everything you say though. I’m about to graduate from ANU and I’m glad to be leaving tbh.
I would just add that, while the unis are managed poorly, the cuts to the sector by successive governments can’t be excused.
- Comment on Academic publishing - pfft 5 weeks ago:
Because if no one reviews the articles then anyone could publish junk. In highly technical fields the only people qualified to tell if something is BS science are the experts in the field, so they review and make sure the article has some merit.
That’s not to say the reviewing process is perfect, but it does at least help to filter some amount of bs.
- Comment on Someone got woken up on Sunday morning 🤣 2 months ago:
There’s an android app called URLCheck that can strip unwanted bits off the end of urls and then open them as well.
- Comment on PM warns of 'consequences' as thousands of CFMEU workers march across Australia 2 months ago:
The house might look good in a sort of greeny-teal shade
- Comment on What moment from a video game made you cry? 11 months ago:
I convinced my partner to play it recently and the way I knew she’d finished it was that I could hear sniffling from the desk behind me.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is betting that Australia is too weak to protect its elections 11 months ago:
American politics infects Australian politics in many ways sadly.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is betting that Australia is too weak to protect its elections 11 months ago:
This changes the effect of negative campaigning (people still show up in Aus vs the US), but the idea is to dissuade people from voting for someone, rather than encourage them to vote for you. This might have a positive effect on votes for the party doing the negative campaigning, but I think it’s a poor definition of convincing someone to vote for you.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is betting that Australia is too weak to protect its elections 11 months ago:
I don’t think this is a useful definition of voting for
which implicitly gets them to vote for you. Seems to only be true if you think of there being only 2 parties, which is why I don’t think the definition is good.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X is betting that Australia is too weak to protect its elections 11 months ago:
Compulsory voting means any campaign has to be focused on actually getting people to vote for you
I don’t think this is necessarily true, did you miss the massive amounts of negative campaigning that happens every election?
- Comment on Labor to reconsider mandatory data retention laws for companies in light of major hacks 11 months ago:
Yeah but how are the cops supposed to access our data without a warrant or any form of notice?
- Comment on internet points 1 year ago:
While its true that there are open-access journals and conferences without such costs
To publish open access normally costs upwards of $3k USD as well. There’s practically no point in the publishing chain where academics aren’t getting screwed.
Let’s also not forget that you have to review other people’s papers for the journal for free.
- Comment on Hopefully this means it will be a full trial with an outcome unbiased by media 1 year ago:
Well as people worried about victims I’d just be worried it might seem a tad disingenuous quote from a vast minority of cases and not provide any quotes from victims that never see justice you know?
- Comment on Hopefully this means it will be a full trial with an outcome unbiased by media 1 year ago:
What happens to people who have been raped and weren’t believed or were falsely accused of faking it? Just wondering if they have similar experiences with mental health?
- Comment on Hopefully this means it will be a full trial with an outcome unbiased by media 1 year ago:
The rate of false accusations of rape is really hard to determine but is generally regarded as being pretty low (Vicpol puts it at ~5% based on studies). It’s also extremely hard to get a good number though, since false does not mean unfounded.
I don’t think it’s justified drawing an equivalence between rape and rape accusations given the evidence we have on the rates, it makes it seem like false accusations are happening way more than they actually are.
Also given who this probably is, this is likely not the only accusation of rape also, which decreases the likelihood the accusations are false I would suggest.
- Comment on Seven Peter Dutton lies on Voice to Parliament corrected - Uluru Statement from the Heart 1 year ago:
The no campaign is run by pretty seasoned wreckers.
Just now you haven’t answered the queries he had repeatedly made, you’ve shot them down.
The same line used by climate change deniers for ages, while they disingenuously repeated the same arguments that had been debunked or were nonsense.
- Comment on “Lies and fantasies:” Bowen puts $387 billion price tag on Dutton’s nuclear plans 1 year ago:
$387 billion cost
You could get a whole new fleet of nuclear subs for that!
- Comment on Some Australians seem more outraged by accusations of racism than by racism itself 1 year ago:
The conservatives have been getting worse over the past say, 10 years, Trump kind of accelerated things and that style of “who cares what the truth is” was exported from the US.
The right wing in general was always going to end up being like this though.
- Comment on Nuclear energy remains weapon of choice for climate deniers and coal lobby 1 year ago:
Cost is often factored in when it comes to optimising fusion power plant design so potentially, plus other benefits of fusion. Either way, barring a breakthrough the closest power barring breakthroughs is probably at best 2040 imo. Even with all the new startups.
- Comment on Australians have one week to enrol for Voice to Parliament referendum, as postal votes open 1 year ago:
I think of it less as a question and more of an admission
- Comment on Australians have one week to enrol for Voice to Parliament referendum, as postal votes open 1 year ago:
They could have avoided a chunk of this by passing Zali stegalls bill on truth in advertising, but I guess abandoning your cornerstone policy on reconciliation is a small price to pay for being able to lie at the next election.
- Comment on Greens agree to support Labor’s $10bn housing fund, breaking months-long impasse 1 year ago:
I guess the greens decided they couldn’t get anything more out of Labor.
- Comment on These graphs show the stark difference between generations when it comes to the Voice 1 year ago:
Yes but a contained nightmare.
- Comment on Victorian Aboriginal truth-telling inquiry calls for major overhaul of justice systems 1 year ago:
The article doesn’t refer to violent offenders? Is this in the actual report from the truth telling commission?
- Comment on Victorian Aboriginal truth-telling inquiry calls for major overhaul of justice systems 1 year ago:
What’s your point here? The article you linked relates to a murder in Qld and seems to have nothing to do with the report from truth telling commission.
- Comment on Families distressed after 'highly misleading' video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral 1 year ago:
That’s just it though, they know it’s divisive, that’s the point. They don’t care if they’re lying they just hope their lies spread to enough people.
Indigenous issues are pretty complex imo, so writing people off who are getting confused by the flood of BS seems like a good way of losing the referendum.
- Comment on Families distressed after 'highly misleading' video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral 1 year ago:
Whichever horde is in fashion