Zagorath

Zagorath, 5 hours ago

PBS is probably the best analogy you’ve got in America. The UK’s BBC or Canada’s CBC are better analogies, because they’re a full-service media organisation, with TV programming including news, children’s content (you might be familiar with the globally-popular show Bluey, which they produce), dramas, etc., as well as radio including news, sports, and music, a website with news reporting, and more. Like the BBC, the ABC has no advertising, though unlike the BBC it gets its funding directly from normal taxation instead of from a weird fee required to watch any television (even online streamed TV from other countries)—with bizarrely mafia-esque enforcement.

Zagorath, 18 hours ago

I was about to comment how cool the name Bombards would be, but then I read the Istan-Bulls and sorry but you should be legally obligated to go with that name when it’s an option, it’s that good.

Zagorath, 14 hours ago

I prefer to use Aus to Oz

Strong agree. Oz is an emerald city with fake wizards and real witches in it. Aus is short for Australia.

Zagorath, 1 day ago

while statistics show that the crime rate is decreasing

Actually, there . It’s doubled since 2020. However, despite the media and the LNP trying to portray this as a youth crime wave, youth crime is still near the lowest it’s ever been.

But worst of all probably is that they try to relate this to cinematic masterpiece “The Castle”

I didn’t get that at all. “Castle doctrine” is a very well-established concept in law, going back as far as 17th century England. Most people probably know about it because of Americans online talking about it. It’s a very common feature of their legal systems, alongside the even-more-absurd “stand your ground” laws (which apply the same principles anywhere, not just your home). The quote they used could be explained as coming from the movie, but could just as easily be from the source the movie itself was quoting: a common phrase that has been in use, again, since the 17th century in England (where it was “an Englishman’s home is his castle”).

Those caveats aside, I still agree with you. There’s absolutely no need for these laws. If people are afraid for their safety, we already have self-defence laws. The use of lethal force against an intruder who might have just been aiming to steal some trinkets—or worse, the use of Castle Doctrine as a bludgeon against, say, door-knockers or nosey kids jumping the fence to grab a stray ball. Things like this usually don’t win in court, but if the homeowner has killed someone thinking they’d be legally fine because of Castle Doctrine, it’s kinda too late at that point…and it has happened (in fact, there were 4 events involving children being shot at in a single week in April 2023 in America for reasons related to the child being on the shooter’s property due to a mistake). We absolutely do not need to be going down this route.

Zagorath, 19 hours ago

I mean, as long as you’ve fenced it off properly, I don’t see why you couldn’t have a moat.

Zagorath, 18 hours ago

To quote a user above:

if you applied classic Conservative principles of conserving individual liberty and being self-sufficient

if the practicality or cost were driving factors, every Republican

Would support relaxed zoning laws which enable the building of higher density, more eco-friendly and lower tax burden neighbourhoods. Places which make it easier to get around by walking or cycling. Places that make it feasible to get by without a car, or with only one car instead of two or three.

Zagorath, 1 day ago

Thanks for the details!

Do you happen to know why, as an aussie.zone user, I sometimes see LW comments that are mere hours old, but other times they don’t show up until 6 days later? That’s one piece that’s really taken me for a loop lately.

Zagorath, 1 day ago

Oh, I see! Thanks! That’s probably it. I wasn’t sure how that worked, so it’s good to know.

Zagorath, 1 day ago

Hamas isn’t a group, it’s an ideology*. An ideology created and reinforced by the actions of the Israeli government. And I mean that in the most literal way possible. Netanyahu himself is on record having helped prop up Hamas because having a more violent group helped to delegitimise the Palestinian democracy and weaken the parties they thought of as more likely to succeed.

The only acceptable response here is a total, unilateral surrender from Israel. For them to give back Palestinians all of their land to at least the 1967 borders (but ideally 1947) and to treat the nation of Palestine with the same respect they would give any other foreign country.

Anything less is just Israel continuing to perpetuate the violence that they created.

We look back at apartheid South Africa and say that yeah, violent resistance on the part of black activists was justified and fair. At the time they were called terrorists, same as Hamas today. The same is true of Irish independence movements, of American civil rights activists, and many other movements throughout history.

You can’t oppress people for decades and then act all surprised and indignant when they lash out against that.

• yes, it is actually a group and its members are awful people who, ideally, would be stopped. But it is a group formed with an ideology and even if every current member is killed, an identical group will spring up as long as the conditions creating it exist. The idea of stopping the group is a complete fantasy.

Zagorath, 1 day ago (edited 1 day ago)

Sorry, but you think that war crimes committed by “individuals” who just so happen to go on to not face any serious punishment, is not evidence of a concerted effort to commit genocide? The indiscriminate bombing of civilians, ordered by the Israeli military’s leadership is not genocidal?

How about comments from the Prime Minister himself comparing Palestinians to Amalekites, a group his religion said needed to be exterminated in their entirety

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass

1 Samuel 15:3

Or how about when another high-ranking member of his party says that Israel’s goal is

Erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.

Is that enough evidence that the goal here is genocide? Would anything suffice?

Zagorath, 1 day ago

The better question is why did the events of 7 October 2023 take place in the first place?

Again, you cannot put the blame on a victim of oppression for lashing out against that oppression. The blame lies squarely on the oppressor. Especially when the violent group which did the lashing out was propped up by the oppressor as a means to justify increasing that oppression.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

blahaj (I assume) uses Let’s Encrypt

Correct.

Screenshot of lemmy.blahaj.zone certificate details showing it was issued by Let’s Encrypt.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

It’s a bad word to use, and no amount of twisting it can change that.

The word “bullying” in English has very strong negative connotations. It’s inappropriate to use it for something you support, unless done in a way that is very obviously ironic. Pistcow might have intended it ironically. Maybe. But their comment was far too vague on that point if so.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

A lot of pointless arguing about semantics that really didn’t have anything to do with the subject at hand.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

Right, so kayfabe is like…“don’t break the masquerade”?

Zagorath, 2 days ago

Ah right, cheers.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

Linked because I haven’t yet learnt to put screen shots in comments.

You’ve gotta upload the screenshot to some third-party service. There’s no built-in way to do it.

Then you insert it with ![](Url)

Zagorath, 2 days ago

Ek=1/2 mv^2

fwiw, Lemmy actually supports both subscript and superscript, though the syntax is a little weird if you’re used to Reddit. ~text~ is subscript, ^text^ is superscript. (Unfortunately support on mobile clients—even Jerboa, made by the official Lemmy devs—is rather lacking.)

Ek=1/2mv^2^

But yeah, that’s a really good point. I wonder how long you’d have to be travelling at 60 km/h to make that extra acceleration worth it in terms of fuel efficiency.

As a separate question: people would probably often be willing to sacrifice their fuel efficiency if it meant substantially shorter travel times. I wonder how much this would actually work. On highways it’s definitely going to be a huge factor, but on the sorts of inner-city stroads that are usually posted at 60 km/h, I suspect you’ll probably arrive at most of the same red lights accelerating up to 40 km/h as someone getting all the way up to 60 would. Would be an interesting experiment to conduct.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

I don’t think he tossed it out completely without comment. He simply pointed to the graph and said (or at least implied) “yeah you can keep decreasing it if you drop speed further, but this is the point at which it seems the return on investment starts significantly decreasing”.

I get the impression from your comment that this is the first NJB video you’ve come across. It might seem strange in that context. But this is one piece in a large history of discussing what makes good road safety, urban infrastructure, and city planning. For example, one thing that he didn’t really discuss in this video but has mentioned many times before is how the most effective way to slow down drivers is actually not just lowering the speed limit, but changing the design of the road to make drivers feel unsafe driving at higher speeds. Things like objects near the side of the road, narrowing the road, making it less straight, making corners at intersections sharp right angles rather than smooth curves, etc. And this video doesn’t talk at all about the importance of infrastructure that encourages cycling outside of merely lower speed cars.

The “goal” is…complicated. Because there are a whole bunch of different factors that reinforce each other in a virtuous way. Safety, happiness, health, economics. Good urban design is good for all of them and more. Even just lowering the speed limit increases the safety for cyclists, which increases the rate of cycling, which is good for health, environment, government budget, and small businesses’ bottom lines.

Zagorath, 2 days ago

It’s wild that that story actually makes Rupert Murdoch into the good guy of the situation (even if he only did it for his own financial interest).