eureka
@eureka@aussie.zone
- Comment on Should police have the power to arrest demosnag dealers who don't accept EFTPOS? 15 hours ago:
It’s a monopoly conspiracy! Big Sausage won’t get away with this.
- Comment on Got plans for May Day tomorrow? 19 hours ago:
We still celebrate it every year in March.
What happened in March? I don’t know as much about other states’ Labour Day history.
I’d be in favour of us changing the date to one that relates to our accomplishment as well.
I think that’s missing the point of International Workers’ Day - it’s not just about our national accomplishments like Labour Day. Our labour movement has had effects on other countries (e.g. our pioneering contribution to the eight-hour day struggle, green bans, the Dalfram dispute re: Imperial Japan, black bans of the Dutch Black Armada trying to colonise Indonesia, wharfies in general), and other countries on our struggles (again, maritime work in general is an example, where worker unions and members from different countries regularly interact and interrelate. An interesting specific example was the solidarity actions with Australian waterside workers in 1998, including parliamentary and harbour actions in Spain, anti-scab actions in New Zealand, and the picketing of Australian embassies in the Phillipines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the USA^[1]^.
We live in a global capitalist economy, our work often relies on the products and demand from other countries, and therefore an international perspective of labour is useful for any of us who want the best outcomes for our worker class. And so, while it’s obviously not the most important thing in the world, I believe celebrating an explicitly international labour day is constructive and beneficial even from a local perspective.
- Comment on Got plans for May Day tomorrow? 2 days ago:
Will do! Have a great time on Monday :)
[just fyi] - The Labour Day public holiday isn’t today in any state (AFAIK), this is for May Day/International Workers’ Day.
- Comment on Got plans for May Day tomorrow? 2 days ago:
Yes. If this is pointing out a contradiction, I can’t see it.
If you want to bring back 21 April for commemorating Australian/Victorian workers too, I will gladly join you. They deserve it. I’m saying that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also partake in May Day (May 1), which is an international day like the Christmas holiday. Christmas still celebrates an international religious event even if the day it’s usually celebrated on was chosen by Romans.
- Comment on Got plans for May Day tomorrow? 3 days ago:
- Submitted 3 days ago to australia@aussie.zone | 12 comments
- Comment on A minority Labor government could be truly progressive – and the conservatives know it | Lenore Taylor 4 days ago:
Of course! I’ve definitely got Labor above Liberal above ON. But Labor are around the halfway mark on my ballots, my electorate is blessed with better options.
- Comment on A minority Labor government could be truly progressive – and the conservatives know it | Lenore Taylor 1 week ago:
If the end result is no legislation being passed then surely you agree that its not a win.
Yes, and if we’re looking at the here-and-now then objectively less housing was built and people suffered. You’re absolutely right about that.
However, my experience and perspective is that Labor are the problem in that situation, and that’s not just some blame game or complaint, it’s part of a bigger picture that Labor are a conservative force who will never do enough by choice. They’ve long abandoned their labour roots and having talked with many current and former Labor rank-and-file, there’s pretty strong signs of corruption and elitism dominating the party. So unless there is material pressure on them, enough to dominate their own interests and those of their backers, they will simply just sit comfortably as “better than the Coalition”, similarly to the US Democratic Party in their two-party system - they ended up being the moderate billionaires’ party, hijacking progressive symbolism to cover for their selling-out. And we saw the inevitable result: a steady ratcheting shift towards oligarchy.
The point of that quick rant is that, the solution - not just small wins but the solution - can’t be to just work with Labor. They will appease people with little short term gains, but rarely-if-ever enough to solve these problems. They’re just not positioned to, even if most of their members want them to, because they’re beholden to their bigger backers. If we want to actually solve these problems, the worker class needs to build collective political power and force the government’s hand away from the business-owning class and towards us. The union movement is being repressed harder and harder even under Labor, so in lieu of reliable union power, the next best option is to replace Labor with the Greens, who have at least shown some level of integrity and independence from the ruling class and have shown backbone in demanding the necessary dedication towards solving the housing crisis. Yes, their resistance resulted in a real loss, but if enough people see that Labor refuses to do enough and saw what Greens were struggling for, and that ends up giving the Greens more support and more power, perhaps enough to force through legislation in a few years, then that will be a profound long-term win. I know that may sound like a gamble, but the growth of the smaller parties is consistent and given the track record of Labor over the last century, getting rid of them will be worth the unfortunate and real losses that come from when when Labor stubbornly refuse to help this country.
- Comment on A minority Labor government could be truly progressive – and the conservatives know it | Lenore Taylor 1 week ago:
“Joined forces” is a dodgy way for them to frame that. Libs and Greens both wanted different outcomes. The Greens weren’t being unreasonable and showed themselves to be open to compromise, during a housing crisis.
- Comment on A minority Labor government could be truly progressive – and the conservatives know it | Lenore Taylor 1 week ago:
It’s great to see that more and more people are voting away from the ALP and Coalition every election. The false dichotomy rhetoric of “they’re better than the other party” is just insufferable, and the US has shown us how the two-party duopoly plays out.
Investigate your candidates. Don’t assume all independents and minor parties are different, many are former members of the big parties. There are plenty of resources other lovely aussies have posted in the past couple of weeks so just ask around.
- Comment on A minority Labor government could be truly progressive – and the conservatives know it | Lenore Taylor 1 week ago:
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
Fuck ideals, I want progress.
But these aren’t ideals. Those are necessary material requirements for resolving the housing crisis. Shelter, one of the most basic requirements for people to be productive in a modern society. Idealism would be dropping the $56+ billion defense fund to zero and putting it all into housing until we can secure our own population.
Fuck the bare minimum, I want this problem solved before I die. History has shown that without real pressure from unions and “radicals”, Labor might not have even solved segregation (but they’d be making progress).
- Comment on Sydney woman who sold a cartoon cat T-shirt told to pay US$100,000 in Grumpy Cat copyright case | Australia news | The Guardian 1 week ago:
haha wow, “intellectual property” is a scam
- Comment on Friday essay: ‘War has made me a pacifist’. Why are we so reluctant to acknowledge Australia’s anti-war veterans? 1 week ago:
It was an act of resistance to decades of besiegement and massacres by settlers. The situation was not peaceful beforehand, we cannot isolate that event and pretend that battle was sudden and unexpected. It’s fine to be critical of how it fought, but it was certainly an act of desperate national self defense against colonial settlement.
- Comment on Friday essay: ‘War has made me a pacifist’. Why are we so reluctant to acknowledge Australia’s anti-war veterans? 1 week ago:
Out of the conflicts Australia has fought in, I can only think of one or two involving any threat to us.
- Comment on Pro-Palestine educators send teachers new classroom resource challenging ‘Anzac mythology’ 1 week ago:
I recommend reading the quotes of the two military historians in the second half, if nothing else.
- Comment on 'Not the laws of Australia': Sex discrimination chief reacts to UK ruling on definition of a woman 2 weeks ago:
For me, I’m studying cyber women.
- Comment on 'Not the laws of Australia': Sex discrimination chief reacts to UK ruling on definition of a woman 2 weeks ago:
I don’t get where do they see the accomplishment in defining “woman” as “biological woman”
It just seems like a mental-gymnastic pseudo-intellectual way of just saying “female”. It’s a weird coping mechanism to try and handle the idea that a feminine gender (woman) doesn’t have to match to a biological sex category (female). And yes, you’re right, biology is complex and doesn’t just have two neat sex categories.
- Comment on Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government 2 weeks ago:
Disagree as much as you want, but assuming you’re a user, will you keep using it? This isn’t a whoopsie, or unexpected. As you pointed out, it will happen again. And it was always the safe, profitable choice for them - they’re a for-profit business beholden to VC money, not a political organisation or community project like Mastodon/Pleroma/etc.
It’s far easier to make that decision before they gain critical mass like twitter and reddit did.
- Comment on Bluesky has started honoring takedown requests from Turkish government 2 weeks ago:
My naive guess is that if the Turkish government ban access to BlueSky for not complying, that cuts into user count and therefore profitability.
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
If a tenant isn’t home they will have the key with them, it won’t be in the box.
I was thinking about if a key was taken when it was there, then the attacker leaves to have a duplicate key cut, returns it (to prevent suspicion and the lock being replaced) and infiltrates with it whenever they want.
insurance
I don’t know how that kind of property insurance works, but surely there are limits to what is covered? Plus, as another motive, it might just be out of spite, rather than to devalue property.
If you wanted to sabotage surely a molotov through the window would be more effective.
Yes, but there’s surely a larger chance of getting on the federal shitlist for firebombing.
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
I suspect people mainly use the lockboxes only because other people do
I suspect it’s a cheap and easy hack, I don’t work with locks but I assume they don’t need to 𝙿̝̃𝙰̤͙̑̇𝚈̲̠̤̪͒̉͐͑ ̲͇̳̺͈̽͌̇̓̄ ̟̝̹̞̩͔̼̀͂̓͑͒ͦ̓𝙼̞̹̩͎̣̥͇̟̒̊͂̽̇͗̓͌͊ͅ𝙾͚̲͎̰͔̖̼̐͑͒̀́ͩ̚𝙽͇͍̖̖̙ͮ̓̎ͤ̿𝙴̪̺̜̱̅̋̆̊𝚈̯̘̇̚ to install a whole new locking system on the door itself, just change the lock cylinder and put the new key in a cheap box.
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
Even if someone picked the lock or cloned a key… all they can steal is some shitty ikea furniture and maybe make an instant coffee.
Well, they could also sabotage the AirBnB if they wanted to devalue the property, or they could steal from a tenant who isn’t home.
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
You can just cut them off (or knock them off the wall), and open them at your leisure.
When it comes down to it, there’s usually a brute-force way through most standard locks, say, bolt cutters, pin raking (or bumping), unscrewing the door hinges if they’re on the wrong side. But in populated areas, a loud break-in isn’t ideal, especially for squatters who plan on sleeping overnight. So for all intents and purposes, I’d assume the point of the lock is just to make it not worth a basic squatter or thief’s time and tempt them to search elsewhere for an easy win.
Everyone hides the keys instead now.
I’m curious - if you went to a new construction site, do you reckon you could find their key/s within an hour or two without already knowing where they were?
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
0/10, didn’t recommend an equally-weak lock at the end and call it “unbreakable, apparently, from what I’ve heard”
- Comment on Something's up with all those airbnb locks | Purplepingers 2 weeks ago:
Def consider telling them somehow, might be happening to other people too.
- Comment on AI in Australian workplaces: Michael used AI to write a work email. It ended up costing him $2000 3 weeks ago:
+1 for the Thunderbird alert.
- Comment on Record enrolment [98.2%] ahead of 2025 federal election | AEC 3 weeks ago:
Why would they suddenly not vote if it became optional? The problem isn’t that they’re voting, it’s that they don’t have the class consciousness to recognise and investigate their core interests in federal politics.
From Condorcet’s jury theorem, it’s clear that having a few million less voters won’t solve the problem, but improving the political literacy of voters can.
- Comment on Australia’s Upcoming Elections and the Trump Factor. 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on Australia’s Upcoming Elections and the Trump Factor. 3 weeks ago:
Voldamort might win for the same reasons trump won.
Which reasons?
It’s an important question - we have a very different political environment. That doesn’t mean abhorrent reactionaries like Voldy won’t take power, nor we won’t see similar trends like you mentioned, but, for example, there is high voter turn-out due to mandatory voting and less voter disenfranchisement (~90% vs. 64%), our closest analogues to Trump (Palmer, along with their party leaders) are uptight and lack the public speaking skills to inspire confidence, they sound like generic posh politicians reading scripts rather than casual and approachable, with their party polling under 2%, and with the Lib-Nat Coalition nosediving after the US inauguration (similarly to the conservatives in Canada).
- Comment on Australia’s Upcoming Elections and the Trump Factor. 3 weeks ago:
it’s an indication we need to spend more on education.
Or, rather, better education. I obviously can’t speak for everyone’s schooling experience but most people I’ve talked to all had a pretty sterile one, where the most political thing you’d hear is a teacher subtly saying Whitlam was great for arts and education. Yes, there’s a trip to Canberra and a bit about how the electoral system works, but that’s extremely neutral for obvious reasons.
Now, political and religious neutrality in schools has its benefits (look to some places in the US where some regions are biased so hard they’re outright lying) but at the same time, we don’t learn about important history. Honestly, as interesting as it is, substitute out ancient history for our country’s own history, including post-WWII history.
