I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

And their venom HURTS. They’re not particularly deadly or anything but their venom will land you in the hospital or at least laid up in bed for a while. My stepmother grew up out in the bush in NSW the ‘70s and received one of the few recorded platypus envenomations and she described it as the most painful experience of her life. She said childbirth was a breeze compared to the platypus sting!

It’s the political extremism ouroboros - any political ideology that is based upon hate inevitably ends up eating itself as they need to keep inventing things to hate and eventually turn inwards. I love to see it.

You guys can use €0.50 coins?! Over here in Australia it’s either a $1 or $2 coin. I wish I could chuck a 50¢ piece in the trolley.

And that edit can be as minute as changing a single bit of data that is imperceptible to the human ear. As long as a human being has put input into it, they’ve edited it, and there’s copyright that can be protected.

It’s really sad to me that Americans get put in the awful position of choosing between tipping, which supports the low wages, and taking responsibility for ensuring another human being has a living wage. It’s just such a terrible position for a consumer to be placed in, having to make ethical and moral choices about how much money to pay for goods and services.

They’ve been doing that for a long time - ever heard of Apple Pay?

https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/apple-pay-costs-for-australian-banks-revealed-20221209-p5c527

The NRLW in Australia is an awesome comp and is growing rapidly in viewership too! It’s a great game to watch and young female athletes are finally getting some serious role models they can aspire to as well. I’m not much into rugby union being a New South Welshman but the league games are intense.

Once upon a time, professional athletes weren’t even allowed to compete in the Olympics. While I think that rule was a bit silly, it underscores how it’s always been up to individual nations to fund their athletes; the IOC just provides a stage once every four years. In ages gone by, professional athletes would have second jobs or would work during the off seasons because of a lack of pay. I’m not sure how this is a modern or a new problem.

With enough time

A week is enough time? Nah.

it’s gonna turn green and start pitting

Neither of those have happened - it’s tarnished brown and chipped but not green nor pitted.

It’s called bronze rot.

This isn’t bronze rot. This is poor quality plating that’s being stripped by bodily oils in less than a week. I’ve bought bronze-plated cheap Chinese jewellery that’s lasted for years under strenuous conditions before greening or pitting.

Honestly, most conservatives are just directing their rage toward whatever conservative politicians and talking heads tell them to direct it at. Conservatism lives and thrives on hate, requiring in-groups and out-groups that must be pitted against one another. The new fad is to care about a person’s genitals.

You see, conservatives don’t believe in gender equality, so someone who isn’t a cis woman will always perform better than cis women, because they believe that women are inherently weak and men are inherently strong, failing to believe that any other form of gender identity even exists.

For reference here in Australia my wife has been asking to get mammograms for years now (in her 30s) and she keeps getting told she’s too young because she doesn’t have a familial history. That issue is a bit pervasive in countries other than the US.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=796VtspzH0I

I had one of those myself! Free full-text PDF for anyone who was registered for the course. That’s the way that a true academic who loves the dissemination of their research operates. He was so engaging and invigorating too; he exemplified the archetype of the ‘I don’t care if you don’t care; I’m gonna make you care’ professor.

When I had a class where the text that was written by the professor was mandatory reading and they demanded buying the newest version (she made a new version every year to keep sales up) I specifically pirated her book to just barely pass the class and move on from it. Fuck anyone who hides their knowledge from those who want to learn.

Thanks for the advice - I’ll definitely take that into account! To be clear (without doxxing myself) my emails came from a ‘.nsw.gov.au’ address so I hope that wouldn’t steer many academics away from sharing their findings, especially those whose research was conducted in other Anglophonic countries (specifically the US and Canada). I can understand the hint of hesitation though. I always assumed using my .gov.au email would have evaded spam filters, but perhaps my regular email address might have more luck.

I should also state that the research I’ve been trying to access is predominately psychological or social work academia (I’m a child protection caseworker), and I’m not sure if the same “share it if you got it” mantra applies in those fields.

We got a small taste of that during the Obama years… just imagine what happens when you multiply African-American with South Asian and female! I think we’ll see those whose masks have been slowly cracking through the ‘45’ years go absolutely balls-to-the-wall mask off. It will be an interesting four years to say the least!

Honestly, a part of me wants the Dump to be completely disqualified from running; Biden to step aside; and Nikki Haley to come back from the grave so that there’s a contest between two South Asian women for president. The voting public’s mind would EXPLODE.

Agreed, but rather than take it to the tip (and therefore have to pay fees to dump anyway) just don’t put your name on the box. Be the anonymous hero that the council needs, but very much does not deserve.

So glad to hear their fundraising outstripped the fines! If council won’t reward them (as they so obviously should have), I’m glad that the people rallied to do so.

You’re totally right, but I wish we lived in a world where leaving your name on that box would lead to a reward rather than a punishment. I can’t understand a council wanting to not only fail to incentivise, but actively disincentivise works of public good, except that it gave them an opportunity to extract more revenue. It’s a really, really sad state of affairs.

Honestly I’ve heard this and seen it written very many times, but any time I’ve ever reached out to a lead author to request access to their paper I’ve been met with zero reply. Like, nothing, from at least six different attempts (that I can remember right now). And I’m a government employee emailing from a government domain, usually with a very well written plea for information. Maybe I’m the unlucky one?

While I loved PropertyCity while I lived there, my early years in RuralTown showed that’s where the real Country really is. We had a herd of FarmAnimals and would always go down to the WaterBody on the weekends where the LargeMammals roamed free and wild!