Tenderizer
@Tenderizer@aussie.zone
- Comment on New electric bike license scheme to be tested on school-aged riders 3 days ago:
Bicycle licensing systems are horrible. They discourage riding and push people to unhealthy and dangerous forms of transport like cars and they give kids bad interactions with police (or in America, gets them sent to El Salvador).
That said, e-bike licensing for under-18’s makes a lot of sense. If it applied to all bikes, or to all ages then I’d take issue with it. But under-18’s on e-bikes should probably be licensed.
- Comment on Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China 5 days ago:
Maybe to start with America can stop doing “economic coercion against democracies” itself.
- Comment on ‘Why the hell did we ever drop it?’: Labor should push for new carbon tax, ex-Treasury head says 1 week ago:
A carbon tax is political suicide now, thanks Bandt.
- Comment on Xi Jinping says Australia and China should ‘unswervingly’ work together despite global instability 1 week ago:
Maybe don’t run laps around Australia in warships then.
- Comment on Driving rules for elderly under scrutiny after Wantirna South crash kills woman, leaves man fighting for life 1 week ago:
We collectively need far fewer people to have driver’s licenses in this country. Being part of the minority that can’t drive is harder when that minority is smaller and so less resourced. Although in some ways, with fewer people who can’t drive competition for jobs that don’t need a driver’s license may be lighter.
- Comment on Human Rights Cannot Be Sidelined in Australia-China Meetings: "Xi Jinping’s Repression Renders Him an Unreliable Counterpart", Groups Says 1 week ago:
When we publicly criticize China for their human rights record, their tendency is to double-down. They consider it “domestic interference” and so will break further human rights laws just to prove they take orders from nobody.
- Comment on Powerful US lobby groups urge tariff retaliation against Australia’s ‘socialised medicine’ 2 weeks ago:
Even Trump’s allies don’t know what’s going on … does he even have allies? I think it’s just El Salvador, Israel, Hungary, and Vietnam. Israel is the only one who they seem to tell anything.
- Comment on South Australia Government considers requiring developers to build bigger garages. The cost will be paid by home buyers. Whether they have a car or not. 2 weeks ago:
Just take the Japanese approach, require proof that your garage is big enough before selling you the car.
- Comment on Erin Patterson found guilty of three counts of murder 2 weeks ago:
Last I checked they were ghoulishly waiting at the prison in the hopes of watching her be sent in.
The media is garbage. We did not need this many updates on the case, and they did not need to rub it in so much (I think she obviously did it, but on the off chance she didn’t they’re basically bullying her at this point).
- Comment on Australians will soon need their age checked to log into online search tools – here’s why 2 weeks ago:
Found it: “Partly owned by Axel Springer”
- Comment on Australians will soon need their age checked to log into online search tools – here’s why 3 weeks ago:
Just use Qwant. They won’t even LET you log in.
- Comment on NSW to ban people from appealing if working with children check denied 3 weeks ago:
This seems like a really stupid solution and I have no idea what the government’s thinking.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 3 weeks ago:
Can’t be bothered.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 3 weeks ago:
You can’t prove it, but you can evidence it. And in some cases you can prove it.
Although this whole “produce studies” approach is such BS. The “do your own research” slogan is what got us anti-vaxxers (plus, and I can’t stress this enough, I really can’t be bothered). Expert consensus is how we should approach it. The experts know how to read the studies.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 3 weeks ago:
Produce studies saying to say it’s not harmful, or be quiet. Social media is too new, and all the psychologists that know the implications are working for the social media companies to make it more addictive. We don’t know whether social media is harmful, but there is ample anecdotal evidence of the three issues I raised. I should not I haven’t actually looked for any evidence because who can be bothered using Google for a Lemmy (Reddit) argument.
In my experience, the type of engagement that social media encourages is not healthy in any way, and this is not on the level of books or movies (some video games fall into the same category though).
Or let’s just go with privacy laws. Any information on engagement with their platforms should be depersonalized before use in content recommendation and ads. Users should need to manually select the criteria of content they want to see, rather than TikTok deciding they’re autistic or something and doing that automatically. In practice though this’d probably just means there’d only be the trending page, but as long as it’s useless (and we’d need to rely on human recommendations) then all’s fine.
- Comment on I worked at an escort agency. This is how it changed my attitude to sex 4 weeks ago:
I read that as less of a “belief” and more of an “assumption”. Most people don’t think about paraplegic sex at any point on their life, so her assumption went unquestioned until she was prompted to by sex work.
- Comment on Trial finds age assurance can be done, as social media ban deadline looms 4 weeks ago:
I think the harms are real. They’re not exclusive to children.
There are three categories of harm:
- Radicalization, as the algorithm deliberately feeds you bad takes from your political opponents and good takes from your political allies, to keep you engaged.
- Overstimulation, the YouTube Kids channel Cocomelon is way too addictive for kids. This isn’t exclusive to social media, and YouTube Kids apparently has an exemption.
- Addiction, social media eats into hours upon hours in kid’s days. Time they could spend with their family/friends or processing their emotions, instead they’re being numbed out on their phone.
I think we should ban algorithmic recommendations (or strictly limit them), ban the practices of Cocomelon, and … I’m not sure what we can do about the addiction thing (humans are super prone to addiction). I’d also ban smart-phones in schools, kids should only be allowed flip-phones/brick-phones.
- Comment on Australia’s environment minister Murray Watt, has lobbied Unesco in a bid to overturn a recommendation that ancient rock art should not receive world heritage listing 5 weeks ago:
That phrasing comes from a channel that calls the Teals “not-shit”. The imported narrative that “both sides are the same” gives license to the conservative working class to vote against their economic interests, but frankly speaking the Labor party is broadly made up of people who genuinely care but are faced with a corrupt system operating under American global dominance.
We have it quite good in Australia, for the most part. It could be SO much worse.
- Comment on Aukus will cost Australia $368bn. What if there was a better, cheaper defence strategy? 5 weeks ago:
If we’re so concerned about the South China Sea, we can give Taiwan or Japan diesel subs. It’s not like the nuclear subs would be of much use to us anyway if they’re on the other side of Indonesia.
Although I can’t imagine an Internal Combusion Engine sub being at all stealthy, so I’d hope there’s some kind of third option.
- Comment on Anthony Albanese says footage of Australian journalist being shot by LA police is ‘horrific’ 1 month ago:
They couped Whitlam and Rudd for trying to tax the mining corpos, can you imagine if Albanese tried to shut down Pine Gap.
- Comment on Leading tax expert calls out ‘confected outrage’ of wealthy Australians over Labor’s $3m super plan 1 month ago:
The accounting newsletter my uni made me sign up to had an article criticizing this from the SMSF association.
Their key complaint is “unrealized capital gains” which is … real estate basically. You can tax shares and they can just sell a few, “unrealized capital gains” only makes sense if you’re using your super fund to evade income tax as a property investor. These elites, even the obscure accounting newsletter elites, know full-well what they’re doing.
- Comment on We are seeing some vote manipulation 1 month ago:
Please don’t scare me with a title like that so soon after an election.
- Comment on Australian high-speed rail has barely left the station – some experts say a new US project shows a better way 1 month ago:
Sure, privatize the railroads. That going well is the norm, not the exception. /s
- Comment on my kid is movin to AU 1 month ago:
You’re not 100% wrong. Zero_gravitas answered my comment about the apsis with a comment about the seasons, and I called them wrong even though technically they were just referring to the wrong topic. I was right though, the perihelion occurs in January and the anhelion occurs in July, and that this means the sun is closer to earth during Australian summer than it is during American summer.
- Comment on my kid is movin to AU 1 month ago:
No, it’s not the angle. The sun’s orbit isn’t exactly symetrical, it’s a bit lopsided. In January the sun is about 5% closer to earth.
In the Northern hemisphere this is during winter, so it’s the best of both worlds. In Australia though it’s the reverse. We get extra dim winters and extra bright summers.
- Comment on my kid is movin to AU 1 month ago:
Be careful of the summer sun.
The sun isn’t always a fixed distance from earth. It’s closest in January, which is winter in America but in Australia that’s summer. So they should be ready for hot summers with a high risk of skin cancer.
There’s probably more to worry about in the tropics (invasive species like kane toads and fire ants especially) but I don’t live in the tropics so I’ll leave that to someone else.
- Comment on Voters, ‘left media’ to blame for Coalition wipeout: Rinehart 2 months ago:
Problem with that is that it would shift the overton window.