@ajsadauskas@aus.social
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

ajsadauskas

@ajsadauskas@aus.social

Australian urban planning, public transport, politics, retrocomputing, and tech nerd. Recovering journo. Cat parent. Part-time miserable grump.

Cities for people, not cars! Tech for people, not investors!

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ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Voyajer @Faceman2K23 Just wait until the world learns about Lithuanian-style sushi. (And yep, it's a thing that actually exists. It's a slice of herring with beetroot, wrapped in mashed potatoes and sesame seeds.)

As for pizza — the modern variety was apparently developed by Italian-American migrants, and then introduced back to Italy: https://youtu.be/7uJ_996KlM0?si=RSq3X0TqsIkVNAr5

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@No1 @Zagorath Especially in inner-city areas, many of those deliveries are done by bike.

And because most suburbs lack proper Dutch-style protected bike lanes, those riders either have to try to avoid getting hit by cars if they cycle on the road, or dodge pedestrians on the footpath.

Fewer parking spots and more protected bike lanes would help, rather than hinder, many food deliveries.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Hypx @Baku @AllNewTypeFace @zurohki "The only people saying this are battery investors. They merely want to replace our dependency on fossil fuels with a dependency on their batteries. That is the real scam."

Citation needed.

"There is almost zero interest from the fossil fuel industry for hydrogen."

Citation needed.

And again.

Do you have anything to back up your core claims?

Link please.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Hypx @Baku @AllNewTypeFace @zurohki Still no link to back up your claim that: "The only people saying this are battery investors. They merely want to replace our dependency on fossil fuels with a dependency on their batteries. That is the real scam."

Still no link to back up your claim that: "There is almost zero interest from the fossil fuel industry for hydrogen."

More ad hominem attacks, no moreflections, still no links to any source to back up those two claims.

You do have some source to back up those two claims, right?

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Hypx @Baku @AllNewTypeFace @zurohki And still no link to back up your claim that: "There is almost zero interest from the fossil fuel industry for hydrogen."

Still no link to back up your claim that: "The only people saying this are battery investors. They merely want to replace our dependency on fossil fuels with a dependency on their batteries. That is the real scam."

I've cited multiple direct examples of why you claim that "there is almost zero interest from the fossil fuel industry for hydrogen" is false here: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/111475696158764155

And here: https://aus.social/@ajsadauskas/111476477510088172

All you have to do to move the conversation along is to provide a link to back up these two claims of yours.

I'm seeing lots of obfuscation, and no sources.

It should be simple to do.

So where's your link?

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Hypx @Baku @AllNewTypeFace @zurohki And yet again.

Here are your claims:

"There is almost zero interest from the fossil fuel industry for hydrogen."

"The only people saying this are battery investors. They merely want to replace our dependency on fossil fuels with a dependency on their batteries. That is the real scam."

Seriously, even a link to where "battery investors" are saying this will do.

Do you have a link to an article that supports these two claims?

Anything at all?

ajsadauskas, (edited ) to technology
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Are agile scrums an outdated idea?

Here's a video on YouTube making the case for why agile was an innovative methodology when it was first introduced 20 years ago.

However, he argues these days, daily scrums are a waste of time, and many organisations would be better off automating their reporting processes, giving teams more autonomy, and letting people get on with their work:

https://youtu.be/KJ5u_Kui1sU?si=M_VLET7v0wCP4gHq

A few of my thoughts.

First, it's worth noting that many organisations that claim to be "agile" aren't, and many that claim to use agile processes don't.

Just as a refresher, here's the key values and principles from the agile manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/

  1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
  3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  4. Responding to change over following a plan
  • Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
  • Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
  • Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
  • Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
  • Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
  • The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
  • Working software is the primary measure of progress.
  • Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
  • Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
  • Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
  • The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
  • At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Your workplace isn't agile if your team is micromanaged from above; if you have a kanban board filled with planning, documentation, and reporting tasks; if your organisation is driven by processes and procedures; if you don't have autonomous cross-functional teams.

Yet in many "agile" organisations, I've noticed that the basic principles of agile are ignored, and what you have is micromanagement through scrums and kanban boards.

And especially outside software development teams, agile tends to just be a hollow buzzword. (I once met a manager at a conference who talked up how agile his business was, and didn't believe me when I said agile was originally a software development methodology — one he revealed he wasn't following the principles of.)

@technology

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@airwhale @technology The issue is that often the core principles of agile fly in the face of how many big companies and organisations work.

Big orgs are often built around hierarchical command-and-control. They're built on monofunctional teams, processes, and procedures. They're built on KPIs and reports. They're built around getting stakeholder approvals ahead of waterfall projects.

So the bits of agile that tend to get picked up and implemented are the kanban boards and daily "scrum" meetings.

And the bits that tend to get left on the cutting room floor are the bits about products being the most important output, the autonomy, the cross-functional teams, the ongoing customer input, etc.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@bluGill @technology @jordanlund @pixxelkick @7u5k3n @Zaktor I guess the difference between your experiences and Zaktor's is the difference between an actual Agile standup, compared with faux-Agile.

ajsadauskas, (edited )
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@BarneyDellar @technology You're right, it should, in truly autonomous cross-functional teams that have a high degree of delegated decision-making.

But that's not what tends to happen in many larger, hierarchical organisations.

In those organisations, what can tend to happen is the daily scrum becomes where managers get to micromanage details and staff are expected to report back their progress.

(I'm thinking about one past job in particular, where it was explained to me that: "The scrum is important because it allows our manager to keep track of our progress and set priorities.")

ajsadauskas, (edited )
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@cosmicrookie @morry040 It's also telling how many of these same managers have never had any problems with outsourcing their manufacturing roles overseas.

Or outsourcing contact centres to India.

Or outsourcing business processes to Manila.

Or outsourcing IT work to a Silicon Valley cloud platform provider.

You can't get too much more remote than being in another country.

It's amazing just how little on-site collaboration matters to them when it leads to a substantial cut in the wages bill.

ajsadauskas, to delhi
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.

For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.

It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:

"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.

"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.

"Those travel delays have now blown out."

So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?

'Dude! Just one more lane!'

From the article:

"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.

"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/how-planners-got-rozelle-traffic-modelling-horribly-wrong-20231129-p5ensa.html

@fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@WaxedWookie @AvonVilla When the prime minister, the state premier, and the transport Minister all hype up an infrastructure project by promising less traffic to the city, many people will make transport decisions accordingly.

That's the big picture here.

Here's an example of the hype the federal and state governments were building for years around WestConnex and the Rozelle Interchange:

"Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the $16.8 billion project was cutting travel times and supporting thousands of families with work as Sydney and Australia were reopening from COVID lockdowns.

"“This breakthrough isn’t just for a tunnel, but it’s a breakthrough for getting people home sooner and safer and helping workers to move around,” the Prime Minister said.

"“As well as the 9,000 jobs this project has been delivering, the tunnel is going to make it easier for people across Sydney to pick up work and jobs that just wouldn’t have been possible before with traffic.

"“As we reopen Sydney and Australia, projects like this bypass and our record $110 billion infrastructure investment are going to give our economy even more of a boost.”

"New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said the third stage of WestConnex is now another step closer to forming a western bypass of the Sydney CBD.

"“This project will change the lives of thousands of people, bypassing dozens of sets of traffic lights and allowing an uninterrupted drive from the Blue Mountains to Rozelle,” the Premier said.

"“As part of the New South Wales Government’s record $108.5 billion investment pipeline, WestConnex is already easing congestion, creating jobs and connecting communities, right across our city.

"“Our Government has its eye to the future and this breakthrough will complete a ‘missing link’ between the new M4 Tunnels at Haberfield and the M8 at St Peters.”

"Federal Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts Paul Fletcher said the Commonwealth Government had co-funded WestConnex from the outset with a grant of $1.5 billion and a concessional loan of $2 billion.

"“This is a major milestone in what is one of the most significant road infrastructure projects in the country, which is already delivering major benefits for Sydney commuters by reducing travel times, easing congestion and improving safety,” Minister Fletcher said.

"“When opened to traffic in 2023, the M4-M4 Link Tunnels and Rozelle Interchange will complete the WestConnex project, providing improved links between key employment hubs and local communities.”

"NSW Minister for Transport and Roads Rob Stokes said 22 of the 33 kilometres of WestConnex would be underground, including the 7.5 kilometres that make up the M4-M5 Link Tunnels.

...

"“The M4-M5 Link Tunnels will remove tens of thousands of vehicles from surrounding streets, including Parramatta Road, and will help slash up to 40 minutes from an average peak journey between Parramatta and the Sydney Airport.”"

https://www.acciona.com.au/updates/news/westconnex-m4-m5-link-tunnels-the-final-breakthrough/?_adin=02021864894

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@WaxedWookie @MrLee I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I think traffic is likely to remain awful during peak hours on the Anzac Bridge and Victoria Rd. (It's likely to ease up temporarily over the Christmas break, but will worsen again after Australia Day.)

Even before WestConnex, the Anzac Bridge already wasn't exactly great during peak hour from all the traffic heading through Drummoyne along Victoria Road.

The new WestConnex motorways have made that worse.

If you're on the M4 extension, how do you get to the CBD? Either you take the Parramatta Rd turnoff at Ashfield, or you go through the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.

If you're heading from the airport on the new M8, how do you get to the CBD? You go through the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.

And if you're on the M5, how do you get to the CBD? Well, you can take Southern Cross Drive under the airport to the Eastern Distributor, or you take the M8 to the spaghetti intersection to the Anzac Bridge.

During the morning and evening peak, a lot of commuters want to travel to or from the city at the same time. And that traffic is being funnelled from the M4, M5 and M8 on to the Anzac Bridge, and then to the CBD offramps.

The claim was that these new WestConnex motorways were going to take traffic off other roads. So for example the M4 was going to take traffic off Parramatta Road.

What it's ended up doing is inducing more traffic demand, and that additional demand is being dumped on to the Anzac Bridge.

Parramatta Road is still terrible during peak hour, and there's now even more cars travelling along the M4.

People have also made housing and long-term travel decisions based on the claims that WestConnex would make car travel quicker to the CBD from western and southern Sydney.

Are there people driving slowly while they figure out which lane to take through the spaghetti intersection? Yes there are.

But. The bigger issue is that the new WestConnex motorways have induced additional traffic demand, and a lot of it is trying to cross the Anzac Bridge.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@WaxedWookie @AvonVilla I fundamentally disagree that induced demand isn't at play here.

That's because this spaghetti intersection isn't a standalone project. It's part of WestConnex.

For years before it opened, the state government promised that WestConnex would deliver faster travel times from Western Sydney to the CBD. They promised faster travel times from the southern suburbs to the city. This was going to end traffic congestion on Parramatta Road once and for all.

This is directly off the WestConnex website:

"The New M4, opened in July 2019. The WestConnex M4, including the 5.5km New M4 Tunnels, connects Haberfield to Parramatta and the M4. Motorists on this section of WestConnex are saving an average of 35 minutes on their westbound peak time journey compared to Parramatta Road.

"The M8, opened in July 2020. The 9km twin tunnels connects the M5 at Kingsgrove to a new interchange at St Peters, with 6ha of new open space, built on a remediated former landfill site. The tunnels cut up to 30 minutes off a trip between Liverpool and the southern CBD."

https://www.westconnex.com.au/explore-westconnex/about-westconnex/

Here's a direct quote from Gladys in 2018:

"If you're coming from Liverpool you'll save about half an hour, if you're coming from [Oatley area] you'll save about 15 minutes.

"When this project has finished, not only will you have less traffic on local roads, because traffic will be underground, but you're also going to be given open space you didn't have before."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/world-s-worst-park-westconnex-s-new-st-peters-spaghetti-junction-20180814-p4zxel.html

And people made decisions about where they would live and how they would travel based on WestConnex.

That instead of being stuck on Parramatta Road, they'd get a nice quick commute down the M4 to the city. Or that they'd be able to take the M5 through the new M8 motorway tunnel to the city.

And a lot of that traffic is now heading straight to the Anzac Bridge:

"Before the Rozelle interchange opened, seven lanes merged into four on the Anzac Bridge. Now, 10 lanes are merged into four with the extra lanes from the spaghetti junction."

"“It is a forever problem because the system is funnelling too many people into a road that is too small. They assumed the Anzac Bridge could support more cars than was physically possible," [Sydney transport expert Mathew Hounsell] said.

"“Trying to shovel a motorway into the middle of a city was never going to work. The previous government and the roads department stuffed it up. They didn’t want to listen to anyone who would tell them it was not going to work.

"The former Coalition government stated repeatedly that traffic flows on Victoria Road would be reduced by 50 per cent when the interchange opened, a “claim that is laughable now” [Inner West Council mayor Darcy Byrne] said."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/it-s-a-forever-problem-experts-say-rozelle-hell-is-here-to-stay-20231130-p5eo2o.html

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@DeltaTangoLima @WaterWaiver Internode was quality when @NewtonMark was running the network...

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@naevaTheRat The author (Tim Richards) is a fairly regular Mastodon user. (Lemmy posts also appear on Mastodon.)

I thought I'd tag him in so he can see the discussion...

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@kowcop @naevaTheRat Heads up @timrichards, there's quite a discussion about your article over on Lemmy.

ajsadauskas, (edited )
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Zagorath @tess This is a very interesting discussion, so thanks for all the ramblings in the mentions 😊

Here's a couple of my ramblings. (And I'll preface them by acknowledging my own privilege.)

First, too often discussions about discrimination are framed in terms of individual moral virtue. An act of discrimination is framed as simply a personal vice of the racist or the misogynist. If only the bad people stopped choosing to behave badly, it would all be solved.

Enough Twitter pile-ons against enough bad people, and we solve it for good.

But we are not just individuals. We are citizens. We are part of a society. And discrimination is a problem with our society.

It's not just individual actions. It's the inequitable distribution of power and resources. The discrimination is embedded in the structures of social, political, economic, cultural, and institutional power.

For every individual bigot, there's whole social structures standing behind them.

Second, when it comes to privilege and discrimination, most of us are sitting somewhere in the middle.

Sure, there are some intergenerationally wealthy neurotypical cishet white men who are born with basically a guaranteed life in the top 1%, who have never experienced any discrimination of any form. Someone like Lachlan Murdoch is a great example.

At the other end, there are elderly working-class neurodiverse queer Black women with multiple chronic health conditions and disabilities, who society screws over at every turn.

The rest of us are, to varying degrees, somewhere in-between. Privileged in some ways, discriminated against in others.

(And yes, even if you're a neurotypical cishet white guy, if you're not in the 1%, you are still in that middle ground.)

So there's a simple choice for us to make: what kind of society we want to live in.

We can choose to align ourselves with the powerful, uphold the system as it stands, at the cost of continuing to experience the forms of discrimination we currently face.

We can choose to uphold the system, while only working to change the forms of discrimination we experience personally.

Or we can be empathetic, and seek to make our society equitable — including ending the forms of discrimination we don't personally experience.

Ultimately, it's our choice what kind of society we want to live in.

ajsadauskas, to auspol
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

Want to protect free speech in Australia?

Either advocate for a constitutional Bill of Rights, or STFU.

@australianpolitics

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Zagorath Interesting points.

If it were up to me — and this is purely hypothetical and would never happen — a constitutional Bill of Rights would contain:

  1. A list on restrictions on government power. (i.e. if a government does it, you can get it overturned in the High Court)

  2. A list of obligations that a government holds to it's citizens, including health care and public education. If a government winds these things back, it can be challenged in the High Court. If a government fails to provide these, it can be sued by citizens in a civil trial

  3. A clause that explicitly states that all government budgets must make provision for the items outlined in part two. Budget cuts can potentially be challenged in the High Court.

  4. A legally non-binding list of expectations on citizens.

  5. A Treaty with First Nations that grants some additional protections to Indigenous communities.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@RaymondPierreL3 @australianpolitics Yes, constitutional protections depend on governments and independent courts upholding the constitution.

And autocratic governments don't tend to be good at that. But then, they also don't tend to be good at upholding other parts of the constitution, such as free and fair elections.

So if your government has slid that far towards dictatorship, nothing in the constitution will help.

Where it can help is with overreach by governments in democratic countries. It provides a mechanism where people can go to the High Court (or its equivalent) to get the law overturned.

ajsadauskas, (edited )
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@Ilandar @vividspecter The short answer is yes. A lot of Australia's mutual obligation system was created by the Howard government, copying what Bill Clinton was doing in the US, and Tony Blair in the UK.

But it was also underpinned by the same neoliberal ideology as the US and the UK.

Basically, up until the late 1970s and early 1980s, Australia's official government policy was to have full employment. It was a minor scandal when unemployment skyrocketed to around 3% under Malcolm Fraser.

Especially after the oil shocks that followed the Suez Canal crisis, inflation was running quite high through the late '70s and early '80s.

To try to curb this high inflation, the US, UK, and Australia all adopted a range of neoliberal economic policies advocated by people like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

The idea was that if everyone had a job, when inflation rose, workers would demand higher wages, and those wages would put further pressure on inflation, creating a cycle.

So one of the main ways the Hawke Labor government sought to stop this inflation cycle was by stopping wage growth.

As part of this policy shift, The Australian government walked away from the idea of guaranteeing full employment.

As part of a set of policies called the Accord, Hawke and the unions basically agreed to wage increases below the rate of inflation, in exchange for the introduction of Medicare.

The Reserve Bank got an independent board that would raise Interest rates if inflation got above 2-3%.

Importantly, if unemployment rates ever fell too low, the Reserve Bank would see it as an inflationary risk, and have to raise interest rates to slow the economy (which increases unemployment) to stop inflation.

So instead of seeking full employment, the idea that there's a "natural rate of unemployment" (as economists call it) became part of our economic system.

But, instead of properly explaining to the public that there was inevitably going to be this natural rate of unemployment, governments from Hawke and Keating onwards instead blamed the victims and called them "dole bludgers".

In the early '90s, the Keating government followed this up by bringing in a limited form of work for the dole as part of his Working Nation policy.

Around this time, in the US, Bill Clinton, and in the UK, Tony Blair, brought in tough new welfare policies. They were built around mutual obligation.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, the Howard government followed in the footsteps of these crackdowns and made mutual obligation a core part of the Australian welfare system.

He also privatised a lot of the old Commonwealth Employment Service, outsourcing its training services to private "Jobs Network" providers. What was left over became Centrelink.

If you're interested, there's a lot more details about how mutual obligation came about under Howard here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/01/where-mutual-obligation-began-john-howards-paradigm-shift-on-welfare

And there's also in this government research paper from 1999: https://aifs.gov.au/research/family-matters/no-54/welfare-reform-britain-australia-and-united-states

luciedigitalni, to random
@luciedigitalni@aus.social avatar

I haven't been on an international flight in many years. Is the 100ml liquids nonsense still a thing?

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@luciedigitalni @twcau Earlier this year, I was flying to Europe via Hong Kong.

It was a long flight, so I wanted to take some toothpaste with me. But I accidentally packed one that was too large.

Australian Customs made me throw it out.

(They also made me throw out the unopened bottle of water I had with me. Then as soon as I cleared Customs, I noticed the Duty Free shop was selling identical bottles of water! Grrr!)

When I got to HK, I found the only chemist I could, and bought the only tube of Colgate they had, so I could brush my teeth.

When I landed in Europe, I learnt it was also too large. A stern Finnish border officer insisted I throw it out immediately.

So I ended up buying three tubes of toothpaste for one international flight.

Not. Impressed.

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@vividspecter Here's the key details from the article: "The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) today released financial modelling that shows Australia’s LNG projects did not generate value for shareholders.

"The report, “Australia’s LNG growth wave – did it wash for shareholders?” analysed returns from Woodside’s Pluto project, Chevron’s Gorgon and Wheatstone projects, the three east coast LNG plants supplied by coal seam gas, Inpex’s Ichthys project and Shell’s Prelude.

"It found these projects collectively eroded $US19 billion of shareholder value by requiring extra investment for running 35 per cent over budget and behind schedule, according to data from Rystad."

https://reneweconomy.com.au/case-for-gas-as-transition-fuel-falling-apart-on-both-economic-and-environmental-costs/

luciedigitalni, to random
@luciedigitalni@aus.social avatar

At some point last year my phone just stopped working, as in wouldn't turn on. So I bought a new one.

I just found the allegedly broken one in a drawer, plugged it in and it's working perfectly.

As pleasing as this discovery is, I would have preferred to know it two weeks ago before I replaced the replacement which fell out of my pocket while riding my bike and smashed the screen.

It's just as well I don't buy expensive phones

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@luciedigitalni So frustrating! Something like that happened to me as well.

Basically, I accidentally dropped my phone in a sink.

I dried it out (including trying the trick where you place the phone in a bag with rice), but a small amount of water got into the screen.

You couldn't see anything on the part that was affected, and it wasn't sensitive to touch.

Over the space of about 24 hours, the water damage got worse, until almost the entire screen was affected.

Okay, so I got a new phone.

About a week later, I tried turning it on again, and it was working perfectly.

Qldaah, to auspol
@Qldaah@aus.social avatar

Wronged Peter Dutton demands apology and says his "life's passion is to make sure that women and kids are safe". https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/dutton-demands-apology-anika-wells-paedophile-protector/103171350

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@luciedigitalni @Qldaah **who don't challenge the patriarchy, or the social and economic status quo more broadly, and don't ask for any welfare support or social services.

augustusbrown, to random
@augustusbrown@aus.social avatar

It's curious how rural/regional areas tend to vote conservative, but in order for their towns to survive, they have to implement socialist practices.

We saw it happening in Lockington (northern Victoria) as part of my planning course. Most of the services in town are a co-op. Even the pub.

Profits from Council-owned IGA supermarket will be reinvested in the community, says Shire President.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-08/norseman-iga-posts-profit-in-first-month-of-council-ownership/103205982

#GeneralNews

ajsadauskas,
@ajsadauskas@aus.social avatar

@augustusbrown This is mostly just personal observation rather than hard research.

But in many rural and regional areas, there seems to be a divide between where people stand on economics, and social policy.

On economics, many people are likely to have at least some voluntarist/communitarian/agrarian socialist leanings — but they won't call them that explicitly.

So they'll sell their milk or produce to a farmers' co-op. They'll have a local credit union or Bendigo Bank community branch. They'll have a local store that's a consumer co-op. They'll have the local CWA, RSL, Rotary Club, and progress association. The local museum or historic railway will be run by volunteers as a nonprofit.

And they'll always be in favour of more government services and infrastructure. In fact, they'll often complain about how governments aren't doing enough.

At the same time, they'll be very conservative on social issues.

I'll get one of the big factors out of the way first: it's race.

New migrants often tend to move to the big cities first. That's where the economic opportunities are. That's where established communities are. As a result, many small towns can tend to be very white.

Likewise, Queer communities tend to gather in the cities, and many LGBTIQA+ people from small towns end up moving.

The big cities is where you tend to find upper- and upper-middle-class people who can afford to travel regularly, and bring home ideas from overseas.

The other part of it is that new ideas and cultural changes tend to happen in the big cities. That's where the universities are. That's where young people congregate. That's where the cultural institutions are — the galleries and theatres. That's where there's a critical mass of people to form artistic and cultural subcultures.

So the pace of social change is just a lot faster in the big cities than in rural communities.

Look at Melbourne or Sydney, and they've changed dramatically from 20 or 40 years ago.

Look at a small town, and main street is much the same as it was in the 1970s or the 1950s, and not that greatly different from how it was in the early 1900s.

And if people are still living in the 1950s or 1970s culturally, their social views will match.

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