Had a very friendly day. Went walking with friends who invited a couple more friends who told me places to find their other friends.

A little bit of time to organise goes a long way. Pretty sure I doubled my storage space with just a day of planning.

NewsPlentyFlaw doesn’t have the same ring…

edit: sleepy me misread ADF as AFP

Preferential voting is a huge step further than most other Western countries. Huge. To the point where states using FPTP should seriously hesitate in calling themselves democratic at all.

[Senator Hanson’s comments] that she felt “unsafe” and not welcomed in the area.

After the decades of garbage Hanson’s said about Muslims, continuing to this day, the fact that they’re welcoming Hanson to break bread is outstanding.

Yes, but you might be shocked at how many people discuss the equivalent kind of thing on Facebook, Whatsapp, and other US corporate-owned platforms (note: PRISM, and 5EYES, along with the basic class interests of such companies)

disagreeing with what is considered art is fascist

Fascism certainly is a nebulous concept, but this is just diluting it. Censorship is not fascism, even if fascists support censorship.

It’s pretty silly to pretend it’s strange that people would react differently. Being offensive is obviously not the point of these posters.

These places still exist, although admittedly they’re further from the spotlight and many were sapped by mainstream general-purpose platforms. But there are thousands of them around for those who care to look. I don’t even think it’s a stretch to say we’re on one, community hosted by Aussies for Aussies.

Another prime example of this is the false equivalence media often draws between fascism and antifascism, simplifying it down to “both of them sometimes use violence”. (anyone who cares enough to look will notice that violence is a rare, and never preferred, antifascism tactic)

Luckily there are a few semi-mainstream and occasionally mainstream outlets who don’t fall for this nonsense.

I completely agree. In fact, some of the best work I see are from tiny volunteer groups like Food Not Bombs, who literally won’t accept money (I’ve tried - my schedule doesn’t align with volutneering).

The Epstein saga was one more case of it becoming clearer and clearer that the status quo, normal, is unacceptable.

There are hundreds more problems where profitable industries, everything from non-renewable energy companies to car companies to dairy to lawn care to plastics to drugs to gambling and so many more use their weight to fund ways to downplay change. And this works because mainstream news sources (generally speaking) are complicit. Every time they pick a think tank prop as the ‘expert’, this is direct propaganda.

Yes, Channels 7, 9 and 10 can be bought out. They are for-profit broadcasters, and quite frankly it’s shameful to be watch any of them now that there’s such a rich, freely-available and accessible world of alternatives. Obviously other broadcasters have their own inherent biases, but a channel owned my major stock owners and paid for by advertisers has direct anti-social results.

and the violent riot at Sydney Town Hall.

Yep, that part of their statement tell us enough.

For most of the complex, I’m struggling to see the significance worth preserving. I’m sure it’s sentimental to some people, especially those with military history, but to me the bulk of it seems little more than unused military housing and a heap of non-functional turf next to a huge existing park. When people in the city are struggling to afford housing, this lack of use is stark.

crossposted from comments

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Currently playing is Perfect Arrangement (4 February- 7 March 2026)

PRESENTED AS PART OF MARDI GRAS+

“If I stay, it’s giving up the belief that things should be better”

It’s 1950s America, and a new colour has been added to the Red Scare: lavender. The Lavender Scare saw LGBTQ+ people interrogated, outed, and dismissed from government service in a sweeping campaign of fear and moral panic.

Enter Bob and Norma, two U.S. State Department employees tasked with identifying and reporting “sexual deviants” within their ranks. There’s just one problem: both Bob and Norma are gay, and are married to each other’s partners as a carefully constructed ruse.

Inspired by the early stirrings of the American gay rights movement, this madcap, classic-sitcom setup gradually gives way to sharp, provocative drama, as two “All-American” couples find themselves staring down the closet door — and the cost of keeping it shut.

Topher Payne explores themes of fear and the weaponisation of identity – themes that feel just as relevant today.

“Usually, a playwright has to choose between writing a laugh-out-loud comedy and a very serious drama. Topher Payne has written both with Perfect Arrangement.” Theatre Mania

The list of ways they can actually help are endless, they just don’t want to actually do any of them - they just want you to think they want to help.

This part is absolutely correct. A social billionaire is a direct contradiction.

The idea of billionaires self-regulating is utopian - if they were willing to do this without external coercion, they would already be doing it. At least something like a tax can be enforced, but even then, like you said, politicians who make laws are in the pockets of the owning class. We’d need a radical overhaul of the whole rotten system to be able to enforce any seriously important financial law on them.

That said, creating charities and aid isn’t a bad idea, it would be far better for them to support ones which already exist and are struggling. And it’s particularly difficult to trust billionaire claims of being charitable when so many already perform investment and other financial activity under the guise of philanthropism. Supporting grassroots aid efforts rather than building charities from scratch would demonstrate legitimacy. And like you said, there is no legitimacy in these claims.

Exactly

Something like this happened in Australia, with the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism being Jillian Segal, whose husband is a major donor to a right-wing think tank.

Gillian called out every little thing anti-Zionist thing they could imagine about pro-Palestine protests, while consistently ignoring white supremacists and even self-declared neo-Nazis, including the time they gave explicitly anti-Jewish speeches in public in front of NSW Parliament, holding up a banner saying “Abolish the Jewish Lobby”.

https://theklaxon.com.au/jillian-segal-misleads-senate-over-neo-nazis/