• 49 Posts
  • 689 Comments
Joined 2 年前
Cake day: 2024年7月24日
  • eureka@aussie.zoneOPMtoOverseas News@aussie.zone•[META] Overseas News - Proposal for increased enforcement of Rule 1English
    1·
    3 天前

    This is what you get when your community is called “worldnews”.

    Very true. If the comm users decide we do want to narrow our scope, then I’m open to the idea of archiving this community and recreating it as “overseasnews” - it wouldn’t take much effort and migrating to a new comm is easier done sooner than later when it’s grown more.

    I’m also considering adding an attention-grabbing Australian emoji to the comm title (“Overseas News 🦘”, "Overseas News 🇦🇺 ", “Overseas News 🪃”) in the hopes it will make visitors finding it from other instances pause and notice that we’re Australian.

  • eureka@aussie.zoneOPMtoOverseas News@aussie.zone•[META] Overseas News - Proposal for increased enforcement of Rule 1English
    3·
    3 天前

    Thanks for the examples, and I think it’s great that you chose to relate some of them to Australia in their post body (e.g. “You reckon the same for us?”) to start a discussion, even if it didn’t get the expected conversation.

    The reality is that Lemmy is 99% American and almost all content/news that is American gets the engagement

    I’d assume it’s lower, but yes. On the other hand, I assume the majority of users active on aussie.zone are Australian, including users registered on other instances but subscribing to our communities, and that people choosing to use aussie.zone want to see more locally-relevant posts, with the option of using communities on other instances for the international content that all the American users promote to the top. Which is a big part of why I assumed this community should provide a counterpoint, being a place where (e.g.) Australia-Fiji relations have a chance at hitting the front page, which would have no chance in a regular World News comm.

    But on the other hand, I do think there’s value in having the kinds of posts you’ve listed to draw comparisons and start locally-relevant discussions. And since this comm isn’t very busy, there isn’t much risk of US-centric content dominating any regional-specific posts.

  • eureka@aussie.zoneOPMtoOverseas News@aussie.zone•[META] Overseas News - Proposal for increased enforcement of Rule 1English
    2·
    3 天前

    I think there’s value in sharing articles that address global events from an Australian perspective, and discussing those events from an Australian perspective.

    I completely agree. What I’m on the fence about is whether that article needs to be explicit in that Australian perspective, even if our community can discuss any global event from our perspective. A part of me thinks that the ABC reporting that a powerful world leader on the other side of the globe has died is obviously relevant globally and therefore to Australians, but that a generic ABC article which just announces the event might just lead to generic comments, while an article which explicitly discusses Australia’s relationship with that leader, or Australian reactions to that leader, would provide that Australian perspective.

    I’d also say from a more practical. community averages less than a post a day. [snip]

    That’s a good point. I may be too enthusiastic with the gavel and risk chilling the community over me being pedantic. And that’s obviously not a good thing.

  • eureka@aussie.zoneMtoOverseas News@aussie.zone•Pete Hegseth says soldiers over age 30 to be screened for testosterone deficiencyEnglish
    4·
    3 天前

    fascist-leaning (small f) ideology has an obsession about their own unique concept of masculinity, including plenty of pseudo-science. One of the most striking cases is in food, where on the more extreme levels, infamous grifters (who are clearly lie about their own diet) pitch a cure-all “carnivore diet”, or soy avoidance (supposedly increases estrogen; it doesn’t), or raw milk drinking (I’ve heard a report that the NSN partake in this, along with other unlisted diet restriction). But on a lesser level, this filters down into a pseudo-scientific misinterpretation of proteins in fitness communities which has entered into our mainstream shopping experience.

    Why Don’t Fascists Eat Vegetables? is a very insightful watch. (The downside is the whole deep-dive is 6 hours long, but even watching sections is insightful)

    I also wouldn’t be too surprised if this is just posturing to the public, who may be concerned about of reports about the loosening fitness standards under previous regimes in a desperate attempt to try and boost falling military recruitment. But it’s also obviously related to fascistic ideas of traditional gender, and the scapegoating of not just trans people, but also cis people who just aren’t ‘masculine’ enough (yes, we know, they’re hypocrites, it’s obvious).

  • eureka@aussie.zonetoAustralia@aussie.zone•As One Nation surges in the polls, why are the Greens being left behind?English
    3·
    7 天前

    Thanks for explaining, sorry that I was rude, I just assumed it was a comment replying to a headline.

    And you’re absolutely right that most of the news stations are promoting ONP. They also manufacture outrage events like “Pauline talks to [controversial person] in a podcast”. There is institutional media bias and the article barely even mentioned it: “The review pointed to “minimal media oxygen” and a fragmented audience as barriers to getting their message across.”, that’s the only time they even glanced at the mass media situation.

    What can people do to counter this? It seems to me like the most effective approach is to bring people away from Murdoch/Silicon Valley/etc. mass media, or at least to inoculate them against the ads and bleaching that ultraweathy-owned media will push. It might be easier for centrists with progressive interests (e.g. queer folk might be interested in queer publications, environmentalists might be interested in pro-environmental media outlets) but for the bulk of people, it seems ABC and The Guardian might be the most acceptable mainstream publications.

    Perhaps it could be useful to have some infographic resources to illustrate just how biased each of the right-leaning resources are. Not just some ‘biaschecker.com’ thing, but specific examples and statistics showing those advertisments. I wonder if the ABC Media Watch has done something like that…

  • eureka@aussie.zonetoAustralia@aussie.zone•As One Nation surges in the polls, why are the Greens being left behind?English
    41·
    7 天前

    Thorpe said exactly what I’ve thought and heard:

    The outspoken Victorian said while she was grateful for time with the party, she sometimes found the experience alienating, as she felt the messaging targeted educated, privileged voters.

    “They’re preaching to the converted, and they’ll always stay at that 10% because they just talk to themselves,” Thorpe said.

    I’ve seen barely any Greens interaction beyond flyers so I might be wrong on this, but the Greens seem to be mobilising people who are already aligned, like doorknocking in progressive areas, more than any kind of deep organising of communities. I think that’s something Chandler-Mather may have the intention and drive to change, but I don’t know if the Greens rank-and-file, at large, will be capable of it. Quite frankly, I think a couple of socialist groups near me have fallen into the same trap of primarily appealing to the stereotypical young tertiary-educated urban progressivist crowd who already agrees with 90% of their policies, rather than actually listening to the rest of their greater city, engaging with them and working to build a broader movement alongside them.

  • eureka@aussie.zoneMtoOverseas News@aussie.zone•It’s A Race Between Revolutionary Consciousness And The Implementation Of Police RobotsEnglish
    4·
    8 天前

    First up, killer robots are already here. Drones in Ukraine have already killed troops acting autonomously.

    And there’s a real difference between weapons being used in international warfare, and being normalised in local police forces. Police purchase weapons with intent for [potential] use against civilians of their own region, and history consistently shows weapons intended for (e.g.) hostage situations eventually making their way into regular use against the most basic resistance, like tear gas and riot control ammunition being used and abused in Australian protests. I mention ‘abused’, an example of this abuse would be using a round designed for long range hits to the chest being deployed at close range to the head.

    So when I see police forces doing PR on these robotic weapons, I am threatened. I fully expect these to be deployed against citizen protests, even if they don’t fire metal ammunition.

    [robots vs. masses]

    I’m getting an impression that you’re picturing an all-out human revolution against the billionaire oligarchs - a world in which the “revolutionary consciousness” Johnstone mentioned is already universal. But I don’t believe oligarchs need to directly suppress 10 billion people. They already have a position of dominance over much of our existing political state, through political donation and mass media influence and institutional pull of essential businesses and more, their power over the state is not just limited to the Liberal Party and One Nation. And that state includes the police force who are more-or-less governed by the laws our politicians enact.

    The biggest individual marches Australia has seen would be around 100,000 to 300,000 people, such as the 2025 March for Humanity, the 2003 anti-war protests and the Corroboree 2000 Walk for Reconciliation, all in Sydney. The March for Humanity had a helicopter and mounted units present, and there was at least one drone, although I’m not certain whether or not it was police-operated. But I don’t believe it’s the kind of event where robot weapons would be deployed for crowdwork.

    How about events where some people expect police to violently suppress… weapons exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney. To be clear, this is still not an event where metal ammunition would be expected, but crowd-control weapons and violence are expected, so you might get protesters with the education, preparation and will to disable a robotic weapon. We’re seeing numbers closer to “hundreds”, at best maybe “thousands” but most of that crowd will disperse at the first signs of coordinated police aggression. Even if we assume no guns on the robots, I wouldn’t even put this crowd at 1:1 odds in this scenario, unless they can very effectively use remote vulnerabilities (electronics jamming, paint bombing). I’d expect even a dozen robots deployed, alongside officers, would intimidate most of the crowd, and if you’re allowed to add rubber bullets and tear gas to them, then it’s a bloodbath.

    But maybe I’m pessimistic or thinking too short-term, where most people today are living lives where an uprising isn’t on the table. Let’s assume ten percent of the population is rapidly educated, organised and mobilised against the state after a Bloody Sunday-type incident.

    Firstly, I see no reason that such robots can’t be industrially mass-produced and therefore could be somewhat expendable. A protestor flips the bot over like a tortoise? The operator can just start controlling a reserve bot that was waiting nearby on standby. A bot flips a protestor on their back? That could be days or weeks in a hospital. So it really is asymmetric warfare, even if we could each win 1:1 in a battle.

    Another advantage of those robotic weapons is they can be remotely controlled - if an uprising occurs in Melbourne, teams of trained operators (e.g. some police and military) in all other cities could contribute to controlling the robot weapons. Depending on acceptable lag, they could even be controlled internationally, although maybe that’s not as feasible in Australia if the robots aren’t semi-autonomous. So to divide those resources, there would need to be widespread uprising to strain, or better yet, target the operators in many locations simultaneously.

    My point being, I don’t see a situation where 1,000 oligarchs would need to directly battle 10 billion people. They would need governments to turn against them first.

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