There were no interesting big protests when I was in uni. Huge protests the year before I started against some corruption in the student union rep elections, and obviously plenty of times people were angry at one thing or another, but nothing like the full on camping-out protests we’ve got going on right now.
Not again! BoM issues Flood warning for Qld and NSW.
"A major rain event will engulf most of eastern Australia during the next 48 hours, prompting the Bureau of Meteorology to issue flood watches from southern Queensland to the NSW South Coast.
"Greater Sydney could be soaked by up to 200mm from late Thursday to early Saturday, potentially leading to major flooding along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, while Brisbane and Canberra also face the prospect of heavy rain."
I dunno about down south, but here in Brisbane it’s at least felt pretty similar. We’ve had weeks of on and off miserable rainy weather.
Personally I don’t feel too worried, because where I live the biggest concern is the Brisbane River flooding, not creeks or overland flow. And with the Wivenhoe Dam at just 80% (100% only means maximum usable for drinking water, it can store over 200% during flood events), it’ll take a lot more before flooding is likely here.
The really odd thing is that we’re supposed to be in an El Niño phase, which should mean South America gets a lot of rainfall, but that it’s very dry here in the western Pacific. Instead we’ve ended up with a year just as wet as during the last La Niña event.
The thing with Brisbane is that we get a big variety of different kinds of flooding, with very different characteristics. Overland flow and creek flooding can occur and be very problematic, especially in the more outer suburbs and some higher areas.
But the most destructive kind is when the Brisbane River floods. And that happens for reasons that are impossible for someone purely looking at local conditions in Brisbane to predict. It’s a big river with a massive catchment area all the way up to Toowoomba, going south and north to the Gold and Sunshine Coast hinterlands.
And while 2022’s floods were preceded by a lot of local rain and local conditions were extremely moist (which meant we got a lot of creek flooding and overland flow in addition to the river flooding), the 2011 flood occurred on a much drier day in Brisbane itself, thanks to the upstream weather being much worse.
Conditions here at least seem to be drying up a lot, and I don’t think there’s much cause for concern, but back on Thursday, it’s the above facts that meant I was still a little worried even despite what it was like here.
BCC has been repeatedly removing ghost bikes from a site on Nudgee Rd after a cyclist died at the location last year, despite years of warning from cycling advocates that improved infrastructure was needed in the area. To stop them from removing the ghost bikes, highlighting the blood on BCC's hands, and highlighting the absurdity of how storing private property on public land is completely ok if it's a car, someone installed this ghost trailer. @brisbane
Hey there are some funky things going on here with the federation. Looking at the user’s Mastodon, there are replies to @_cnt0 and @jonne. I can see those replies on their respective instances, too. But I don’t see the replies from aussie.zone.
Also, when looking at jonne’s instance, I don’t see any replies other than OP’s and jonne’s.
edit: wait, that’s simple. infosec.pub defederated sh.itjust.works. I kinda get it, they had a bit of a rep early on IIRC. Though they also defederate feddit.nl, which seems odd. Isn’t that a fairly innocuous instance?
Still not sure why I can’t see OP’s replies from aussie.zone though. @lodion, any thoughts?
it’s not actually a bike lane. It’s the road shoulder. There are 🚲 symbols on the road there, but in Qld law that doesn’t actually constitute a bike lane (it has to have a 🚲 symbol & the word “lane” to be that), instead, it’s solely a reminder to drivers “hey, cyclists might be here so look out”. There are many, many cars parked in the shoulder near this; 1 more trailer is not adding risk that didn’t already exist. But it is doing some incredibly Good by bringing attention to the issue.
I get what you mean. He certainly had the skills to be a pretty good leader, and even his political ideology was not too bad.
But he never could have been a good Prime Minister, because he simply did not have the personality for it. His failure was in his desire to cling on to power at all costs and his complete willingness to sacrifice all his personal beliefs to that end. He couldn’t be a good Prime Minister, because those qualities were core to who he is.
Thanks for sharing this though. He does speak very well on this subject.
What can you get to within a 15-minute walk of your house?
A recent YouGov survey asked Americans what they think they should be able to get to within a 15-minute walk of their house.
Of these choices, I can currently walk to all of them from my apartment, aside from a university (no biggie, I'm not currently studying, although there is a Tafe within walking distance), a hospital, and a sports arena.
How many can you get to with a 15 minute walk from your house?
Honestly 15 minutes is way too much for a bus stop. If it’s more than 10 minutes walk away it might as well not exist, and the target should always be under 5 minutes.
Yeah 400 m is the goal here in my city of Brisbane, Australia, too. That’s where I was aiming when I said 5 minutes, since a walking pace of about 10 minutes/kilometre is pretty reasonable and 5 minutes gives you a little bit of buffer on that.
I’ve seen some very interesting arguments from legal practitioners that the US’s highly political constitution is a significant part of the reason their courts are so political, and that this is a good reason to have a much less political constitution like Australia does.
The US constitution says “you have the right to have weapons” and also “you have the right to freedom of speech”, among many other things. Australia’s constitution is almost entirely dedicated to stuff like “the Commonwealth has the power to make laws about trade between states” and “politicians must be Australian citizens exclusively”.
So in America you get the unelected Supreme Court making very politicised decisions like inventing a “right to privacy” based on the right against self-incrimination (and other express rights), and then taking that right to privacy that was invented by unelected judges, and using that as the basis for inventing a right to abortion. Now, like me, you might think having a right to abortion is a good thing, but in this case the way it was enshrined is obviously bad, because it was invented by unelected judges, and decades later was removed by future unelected judges, rather than the actual elected representatives of the people enshrining it in law.
Yes, I think we should have a bill of rights that explicitly enshrines a number of important civil liberties, including free speech. But I’m not sure that a conditional amendment is the best way to do that.
Driving 8 hours round trip today to pick up one person, and I'll never understand why Americans think this is more convenient than my colleague taking a train.
Holy shit 8 hours is terrible. When I pick someone up from the airport is a 1 hour round trip. There’s a reasonably conveniently-located train option, except that its inconveniently infrequent off-peak, costs $20 per person, and takes an hour. All of which unfortunately makes driving kind of a no-brainer. The ridiculous cost is one thing that could be easily fixed and frequency wouldn’t be too much of a problem given the political will, but travel time is a little trickier. It sucks that under current conditions, driving is so much more convenient.