Is anyone else just a bit sceptical about the latest British terrorism charges regarding the RAF base (hosting US bombers participating in the Iram war)?
Given "terrorism" has lost all meaning in the UK now they charge peaceful protestors with terrorism.
The individuals could very well be genuine terrorists, but the UK Govt can't charge protestors with terrorism and expect to be taken seriously anymore.
OpenAI has breached Australian Govt websites including Medicare.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD - our cyber spooks) is investigating.
This looks like it's still developing.
Fingers crossed for espionage charges, though doubt it (jurisdiction issues aside).
Another day, we discover rather unsurprisingly, another appalling thing Pauline Hanson said.
This time calling our First Nations people "the most primitive race on Earth".
Putting aside race being a social construct, she's woefully ignorant and it's really needless to say, utter racist nonsense.
This idea that our First Nations peoples are "primitive" was used by some of the worst eugenicists in our history as an argument for committing genocide against them.
This was Aus Gov policy until relatively recently, although many would argue it continues to this day. One example was the systematic forced removal of children from Indigenous parents to place them in non-Indigenous families ie "The Stolen Generation".
#AusPol #OneNation #Fascism #Racism #Eugenics
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-14/indigenous-leaders-condemn-pauline-hanson/107151108
Pauline Hanson has again made clear her party's "welfare only for the deserving poor" a.k.a. eugenics policies.
I mean it's pretty standard for fascist political parties.
She said the PM's dead mum, who was a single mother and was on the DSP (Disability Support Pension) and lived in public housing, which was a good thing that our government did that back then (btw, she would likely no longer qualify for).
Pauline said:
"I actually grew up in a street where we had housing commission houses there. It was a helping hand to those people, but they had jobs. And they worked,"
"Housing commission houses should not be there for people to live in them for 30, 40 – and he said his mother lived in the same one she was born in for 65 years."
Referencing it repeatedly as "pathetic".
The implication being, only working people deserve public housing because they, and ONLY THEM are the "deserving poor". And that disabled people don't deserve public housing UNLESS they can work. AND EVEN THEN, that public housing term is finite especially if you don't "CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY".
That's eugenics people.
Hey those in #Australia have you remembered your #Census?
Watching the gradual and inevitable spread of H5N1 in bird populations in Australia seems a bit like the movie/book "On The Beach" as the fallout from WWIII gradually spreads to Melbourne.
It's a good movie, with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and others.
If you're unfamiliar with wildfires/bushfires, please seek out information from local emergency services on what to do, if and when to leave and what to take.
Here's some info on preparation, albeit Victoria, Australia specific, but much of it can be generalised.
There's a printable pdf for planning.
In the most recent 2019-20 "black summer" bushfires, 33 people were directly killed and billions of wildlife estimated to be killed.
24 million hectares (240,000 sq km) were burnt.
The area of the UK is 244,000 sq km for comparison.
(If you're gonna try to fight fires yourselves, you really shouldn't unless you have the training and equipment. But if you do, don't do it in shorts and a t-shirt - they won't protect you from embers or radiant heat - radiant heat kills)
https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/before-and-during-a-fire/your-bushfire-plan
My friends have a whiteboard where they keep their home improvement todo list, so every time I visit I surreptitiously add a fake item.
- rotate furniture
- refinish doorstops
- ceiling fan torque dampers
- check attic ambient load distribution
- dishwasher vapor return manifold
- recalibrate subfloor tension dampers
- test GFCI harmonic inversion modes (+/- 0.5%)
- confirm plumbing flow alignment (clockwise only!)
Hot cassingles in your area.
Oh my god, these are real, actual slides from a SoftBank presentation. Pulitzer-worthy
Hey, Victorians (Australia), a reminder that if you paid car rego recently YOU could be eligible for a one off rebate. I think it's only gonna be available during June.
Apply via Services Victoria.
It's actually kinda straight forward (if you already have a Services Victoria account).
https://service.vic.gov.au/find-services/transport-and-driving/registration/rego-rebate
"The rise in wealth alone could lift nearly one million people out of poverty in Australia."
https://www.oxfam.org.au/media-releases/australian-billionaires-wealth-grows-by-50000-per-minute/
Ok economists, can any of you explain how interest rate increases made by the Reserve Bank, intended to decrease demand supposed to affect increasing inflation, which has largely been caused by the external decreased supply (of multiple important and essential goods due to the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz) and not demand for anything?
I regret to inform that per an AP source both Trump and Vance are unharmed following a security incident at the White House Correspondents dinner.
So Mildura, VIC, Australia is forecast to reach 49°C (120°F) today. It's usually the hottest town in Victoria but today it's likely to tie with the hottest place on Earth. Please try to stay cool up there in #Mildura.
Trump says #AUKUS *nuclear powered* submarine deal is "full steam ahead".
One advantage of being a renter, when your address inevitably is among breached data, you do change it every few years.
I see that Hegseth wants to administratively separate service members who have medical waivers for shaving.
It's hard to imagine this as anything other than a targeted means of pushing Black people out of the military.
For those that don't know, the military has "personal grooming standards" that are enforced across the services; this includes a requirement to shave daily, if applicable. This is for a few reasons: to ensure a "uniform, military appearance", but also nominally to ensure a good seal with a gas mask.
However, so-called "no-shave chits" can be issued to service members for a variety of reasons, and these waivers exempt those people from this requirement.
For example, I once saw a guy who had one because a tree branch or something whacked him in the face during an exercise and gave him a gnarly slice that needed stitches. He couldn't reasonably shave _over_ the stitches, so medical gave him a no-shave chit while that was healing.
But the most common reason for issuing no-shave chits is for folks with "Pseudofolliculitis Barbae" (PFB), more commonly known as razor bumps, which are ingrown hair follicles on the face and neck.
Razor bumps are a real thing, and while I understand they are extremely painful, more concerning is that they can become infected, rendering a service member mission incapable.
But here's the thing: razor bumps affect Black folks more than others; up to 60% to 80% of adult Black men who shave regularly will experience them. The percentage among other demographics is much, much lower; like close to an order of magnitude lower. The military's own data, snapshotted in 2023, says that 63.5% of PFB cases since 2000 were among non-Hispanic Black service members (https://health.mil/News/Articles/2023/08/01/Pseudofolliculitis-barbae).
And let me be clear here: this is a real, known, diagnosable medical condition, studied and recognized by dermatologists. It's not like there's some kind of conspiracy to get out of shaving or something dumb like that. And from everyone I've ever known who's had it, they'd really, really, rather they didn't. I understand it sucks.
So separating service members who have medical shaving waivers will disproportionately affect Black service members. There's no way Hegseth et al don't know this.
"But wait a minute! What about the gas mask thing!?" I hear someone ask, "that sounds pretty legit." Ok, here's the deal: the waiver says you don' t have to shave down to the skin; it doesn't say you don't keep things trim and keep facial hare short. No one with a no-shave chit is running around with a full beard that's keeping them from putting on a gas mask.
But even if they were, what about all the SpecOps guys with their "operator beards"? And anyone who's been on a multiday mission outside the wire knows there are times when adherence to the grooming standards takes a backseat to operational necessities; most of us have gone a couple of days without a shave.
And if there were really a serious threat of chemical warfare and you absolutely needed to ensure you could get a seal with a gas mask, you'd shave regardless of the chit or you'd be in MOPP-4 anyway (with no exposed skin). Note that a gas mask really only covers the face and eyes; you'd be putting on a hood and other equipment to cover up the rest including, you guessed it, the area of the face and neck where the seal isn't perfect.
So yeah. I fail to see any way in which this effort is anything other than explicitly racist.
Australian governments will do anything to appear to do something to fix housing unaffordability than actually do anything to fix housing unaffordability.
not great, not terrible