Impmk2

Voting is compulsory across all Australian states and territories. Last election we had the lowest turnout in a while (~89%) All candidates need to be ranked in the house where's there's generally only 5-10 candidates per seat (district). The senate (statewide) can have 100+ candidates, so while you can rank them all of them you don't have to (and people generally don't). The fines are trivial and are sporadically enforced. ETA: As Kal says this kind of system doesn't guarantee any kind of magical fix. Australia has elected pretty conservative pro-big business, anti-immigration governments for the majority of the past 30 years.

Without a doubt much? I mean if we're comparing to 2013/14 (the first year the LNP back was back in office) we had decisions that completely gutted the public service, a budget designed to actively redistribute money upwards and the repeal of the carbon tax. That's without even mentioning the later random stupidities (knighthoods, prince phillip), leadership turmoils, infighting over the energy transition (see leadership turmoils), or outright illegal schemes (ie robodebt). The current government is just extremely unambitious and status quo. Part of that is the economic circumstance, part of that is being scarred by making too big a target in 2019.

I'm sorry but the quoted just isn't true. Toyota has been proudly announcing solid state breakthoughs and mass production being just around the corner for years now, while utterly failing to hit their own commercialisation targets and actively lobbying against transitioning away from fossil fueled cars. It's a marketing strategy: Don't buy other people's EVs, they'll be obsolete. Hold off and buy ours. Meantime here's a nice hybrid we can sell you.

That isn't even remotely what the report says. If anyone had proof of that the debate would be over. This is what the report says (direct quote)

Closer, but still way off. You're in a vacuum and the only way to remove body heat is by radiating it. Essentially you're trapped in a giant thermos. Despite the freezing in seconds being a common scifi trope, overheating would more of an issue in the short term... Well ok, having a lung rupture or dying through asphyxiation is more of an issue in the short term. But it'd take a long long time to freeze in any case.

What freedom of speechiness? Twitter is complying with requests for censorship far more often under Musk than it's previous management.

So speaking from the smallest of the G8 unis (Adelaide), I haven't noticed any kind of financial strain, though I'm pretty far removed from the finance department. If anything it seems easier to get the necessary money for our research operations from my pov (infrastructure projects, routine maintance and equipment repairs) than it has been over the past decade. I think in general Australian unis did some big, big cuts during covid, but then came out far better than they thought they would, and now the overseas students have started to flood back. That's certainly the case here. Though we are still officially in a hiring freeze.

Not sure if anyone is interested, but I remember debating immune imprinting on this board a couple years back now. Here's a great paper that shows that imprinting isn't the be all and end all, and our immune system can learn and adapt to a mutating virus (even SARS-CoV-2) with a couple exposures. It's funny how basic principles of immunology (and millions of years of evolution to deal with viral threats) do hold up, and the patterns look to play out pretty similarly to other related coronaviruses. Anyway the practical implications from this is if you're going to boost make sure it's the most recent available (now the BA.4/BA.5 bivalent) and not with a booster with the OG strain in it.

That's really quite depressing. I was very much looking forward to this (as well as the PC TLoU port). Oh well. I guess I'll hold off until the end of year sales. Hopefully by that time it'll be sufficiently patched.

So looks like the preliminary report on the market swabs has been released. Haven't had time to read it properly, but from the abstract: That's also addressed in the report: EDIT: whoops, forgot to include a link: https://zenodo.org/record/7754299#.ZBkq7nZByUk

I've been holding off commenting on this as it looks to have come out as a leak after a WHO briefing by scientists with access to the data. The principle scientists involved aren't commenting yet and the data isn't available for public analysis, so imo the reporting is premature. But at most this will simply localize raccoon dogs and SARS-CoV-2 virus to the markets at the start of the pandemic, rather than anything more definitive (note that we already knew this with very high certainty). It's another data point, but isn't a smoking gun. Will be interested to read the publication, though I'm no expert in meta-genomics so a lot will go over my head. The CCP have been very keen to avoid any criticism / responsibility for the covid pandemic on any level. The 2003 SARS outbreak was strongly linked to the live animal trade and they were meant to have cracked down on it, so in many ways a repeat with none of the lessons learnt is worse than the alternatives.

He outright claimed the 2017 attack was a conventional weapon attack. The UN body responsible for investigation of chemical weapon attacks later found it was a sarin attack which the Syrian government was responsible for. Anyway I'm not particularly interested in a debate about Hersh. Would only point out that he's made several controversial, anonymously sourced claims in the last decade, and tends to defend the actions of various regimes if they align themselves against the US. Would encourage anyone to have a read of his articles and interviews and make up their own mind. I personally would take his claims with respect to nord stream with a giant grain of salt.

Some context is needed here. He's also a massive Assad and Putin apologist these days, denies things like the Syrian chemical attacks, and offers no source or proof of the nordsteam claim. It's possible to have too much of an anti-american bias.

The latest polling on the issue should give Labor some comfort, with 2/3s of the public approving of the change. But yeah the hyperventilation on the issue just shows how impossible any kind of meaningful tax reform would be. Could you imagine how much the (murdoch) media would blow up if they did touch capital gains or negative gearing?? They just won't go there. Ghosts of 2019.

I don't really think there's much to add aside from I agree with Raja. The published genetic and epidemiological data is really quite convincing and the conclusion of a zoonosis is very strongly where the weight of the published research lies. If there's new evidence it really needs to be publicly released, but from the reporting it looks like just a rehash of the same crap from early 2020.

Oh jesus christ not ivermectin. I'm sure thats being suppressed by big pharma so they can push common generic drugs like dexamethasone for severe covid. What a fantastic conspiracy.

Rejoice! The radioactive capsule has been found.

Extreme heat bit isn't particularly applicable to the Australian Open this year. Has been a very mild (and wet) summer. The final would've been played in approx 20C (68F), or a little lower.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-13/jewish-community-reacts-to-dominic-perottet-nazi-uniform/101849560 Short version: NSW premier Dom Perrottet wore a Nazi costume to his 21st birthday 20 years ago. He revealed this after a call from the NSW transport minister who he's been having a disagreement with about gambling reform. Apparently rumours of a photograph have been circulating in the Liberal party for some weeks, but it's unclear who amongst his colleagues started it though he's pissed off a few of them recently (also unclear if any photographic evidence exists). NSW is a couple months out from a state election in March. So this is terrible timing for them.

The average person probably doesn't care enough for it to sink Perrottet. But wow the infighting aspect is a bad look for the NSW Libs as a whole. Labor mustn't be able to believe their luck.

The introduction of testing requirements from China is entirely populist and has precisely zero public health benefits. Chinese labs are still uploading sequences to GISAID so there's a decent grip on the circulating varients there. 388 sequences in the last month. For comparison there's been 47 from India (the next largest country). And I can't be bothered finding all the individual countries but a cursory glance looks like ~20 sequences all up from the entire African continent, and that's only due to South Africa still uploading. Yes China isn't doing widespread testing so the extent of the outbreak is anyone's guess. But you could say the same for literally any other country on the planet. And to top that because of the largely naive status of the population the drivers for the evolulation of an immunoevasive variant aren't there to the same extent as the rest of the world. So the risk per infection from China right now is less, and frankly if a nasty variant does arise (much like omicron) there's no stopping it getting out, travel testing requirements or no.

It's hard to say if Aust were chasing 134 rather than 34 it would've gone the same way. Smith and Khawaja at least were clearly just trying to attack the ball and get it over with fast rather than get themselves set, and South Africa had nothing to lose being as attacking as possible. Different mindset with a higher total. Still not a great look losing 4 wickets so quickly, Aus doing their best to make a game of it.

So much grass on it you can barely tell the wicket from the surrounding ground! Zondo trying to salvage some respectability here... wacking Cummins around. Entertaining to watch

South Africa 3 down for 5 runs. This might not even go to day 3.

Will be interesting how this plays out. The major objection doesn't seem to be the temporary price caps, more the code of conduct which gives the government power to override contracts and set domestic market supply share and pricing in perpetuity. The gas industry says it'll kill investment. Otoh the domestic market is comparatively small, and there's still plenty of $$ to be made at $12/gj - they're selling to Japan at $9.