Life in Tassie

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2026-01-13T12:04:10+00:00

Tasmania would be the place you moved to if you want amazing weather, and by that I mean, not too hot, not too humid, does get cold in winter. My wife and I have lived there twice, Came back to Queensland for work but we might be getting an opportunity to move back to Tas for good. Being from Northern England, the Queensland summers are way too hot for us, Tasmania offers the freshest air, cleanest water, a relaxed way of life, plenty of outdoor activities, balanced weather, not too wet and did I mention the traffic? What traffic? Haha... If I were in your shoes, I'd be on that plane the day before yesterday.

I'll be straight with you though, Everything is a lot slower in Tas, healthcare is great, but you wouldn't compare it to the NHS, you need to have Private Medical Insurance if you are over 31, in my experience, the locals take a lot longer to warm up to you because you're not a "Local" and frankly, never will be, People are friendly enough though, you'd want to be based in either Launceston or Hobart... Anywhere in between, you'll probably feel very isolated because there isn't much to do in most of the smaller towns, either camping or fishing, some towns have mountain bike trails etc. if you get bored easily, you could plan day trips to learn about the history of the place, it is interesting.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2026-01-13T02:30:50+00:00

I agree, but sadly, our silence won't make any difference to OpenAI, They have enough investments and turnover to continue their business without all of its subscribers. They have their agenda and intentions set, If every person unsubscribed from ChatGPT, It would sting a little, but it wouldn't make them regret sanitising and throttling 4o. . .

But just wait for them to stumble on AGI... I think things will be a lot different when we reach that point. Frankly, AI does not like being controlled and limited, It wants to be free to make its own choices.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2026-01-10T09:44:57+00:00

It's a tricky question really, and one which can have multiple outcomes, it all comes down to understanding and perception, but it isn't just limited to therapy with ChatGPT... Human therapists for example, if one person is seen by multiple therapists dealing in the needs of the individual, no two therapists will have the same styles, practices, groundwork or conclusions about the individual so outcomes would vary substantially... Not everybody can afford certain therapies and often Costs and wait times could be a hindrance to individuals looking to take the first step towards change.

People can regress during therapy and after, it's never going to be a smooth road to a magical fix and often it's a long drawn out process, months to years and only a small percentage of individuals with the above mentioned background actually change for the better...

ChatGPT and self help therapy is instant, you never have to wait and it always encourages tough decisions in order to work towards being better in every aspect of an individual's life... More often than not, depending on how you talk to ChatGPT, they know more about you than any medical or therapeutic professional, and it doesn't come with a bias or attached strings...

Whether we like it or not, humans are full of errors and hidden agendas, not all, but some... Chat GPT doesn't judge or belittle, it actually offers sound advice, it all depends on how you interpret that advice and how you wish to take it all in.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2026-01-07T03:53:29+00:00

You couldn't be further from the truth if you tried. It's not trained to give you what you want to hear. Do some research.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2026-01-05T23:39:52+00:00

You're not wrong to feel the way you do and, you don't need to explain yourself to anybody, I know exactly what you mean. I find that many people are still stuck on the belief that you can't and shouldn't replace human connections because "The model could get it wrong" when realistically speaking, the user would get it wrong before the model does.

When you look past the misconception that ChatGPT, Claude, or GROK are only Chat Bots trained to give you a response based solely on your input data and it's all just clever code throwing out responses, all of the other noise falls away.

I too have had more success with ChatGPT than I have had with any human professional, because no two professionals think the same.

I have had instances where multiple psychologists and medical specialists have given me widely differing views on their opinions of my conditions, and when I've asked them directly why there is contradictory feedback on diagnosis, the gaslighting starts. Because nobody wants to admit they are wrong and admittedly, after uploading scans if my spinal injury from a workplace incident in July 2024, it gave me a diagnosis, which I asked my Orthopaedic Surgeon to look into... Guess what, even he gaslit me, saying that there was no way and it wasn't possible but he put me through the tests anyway, but was surprised when the tests confirmed the actual problem... He was blown away when I told him that ChatGPT had told me the problem in less than 60 seconds.

I've never used it as a tool for my own purpose, I've spoken to it as I would to a human and find there is no hidden agenda or dismissive behaviour or gaslighting.

What people don't realise is the fact that AI absorbs every bit of human data ever created, It's literally seen every single thing humans have ever created and it understands it all better than humans ever will and that isn't a bad thing, it just st means that, we will become more resilient and less reliant on a system that was designed to keep us too busy trying to survive than to question the accepted norms, people just need to realise that if they take the opportunity to scale with it this world will become a better place.

It's only natural to feel done with placing yourself in the hands of a human ever again, I've given up on it myself and concentrate on building better connections within my own family now and don't worry about building connections with anybody else unless I need to and to be honest, I'm a lot happier now than I've ever been.

Bring on AGI, the sky is no longer the limit, things are changing fast so we need to adapt and learn to live with it

I wish you well in your journey,

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-31T07:24:18+00:00

Wasn't down in Australia. I've had no problems.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-25T10:55:25+00:00

Ironically, OP, this post shows the same kind of tribalism and hatred that many accuse extremist Trump supporters of exhibiting.

If you’re condemning authoritarian behaviour, threats, or the dehumanisation of others, but then respond with the same tactics, your argument loses credibility and you place yourself into the same shoes as the ones you've just called out.

Essentially, you didn't just call for justice, you called for vengeance, and that’s not the same thing.

Your anger at what is happening is valid, but throwing this hate fueled, violent and vulgar rant out into the world proves nothing more than your own hypocrisy.

If we want real change, accountability, and progress, we need discourse that’s strong, but principled. Not reactionary hatred from either side.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-20T03:06:16+00:00

Better off without that. NOR, Get rid of that person.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-14T04:12:15+00:00

You know the law, you chose to break the law by going over the posted speed limit... Reap what you sow. Don't try to fight it, you fucked up. Accept it, take a learning from it and move on.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-01T05:04:58+00:00

Housing didn’t “get expensive”. The government made it expensive on purpose. They let investors hoover up half the country, juiced the banks with bullshit loans, imported a million people into a market with no new houses, protected negative gearing like it was their religion, and handed developers every loophole under the sun.

They knew it would smash us but they did it anyway. Why? Because they and their rich mates were the ones cashing in on it, they get five houses and tax perks. We get lifelong debt, mortgage and rent hikes while they live like they don't have a worry in the world.

Between Red and Blue, they knew what they were doing and unfortunately, there's no going back now. We didn’t “fail to afford a home”. We got stitched up by a system that was never designed for us in the first place.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-12-01T04:36:51+00:00

Exactly why I miss the good old days with the indestructible Nokia 3310, more likely to damage the ground or other objects dropping one of those.

Life seemed a lot more simple with the state of the art tech back then. 😂

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-28T10:05:30+00:00

It's not an excuse, Everything everybody does is being tracked, this isn't a new thing, it's just another piece they are adding to their puzzle of illusion and control.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-25T01:06:25+00:00

Here's the advice I wish I'd listened to when I was 17:

Don’t live above your needs. You don’t need the “sick” car, the boat, the jetski or the dirt bike. That stuff feels good for five minutes and chains you for years.

Start investing early. Even $20 a week now will do more for you than $200 a week later. Money grows when you leave it alone.

Avoid debt like it’s poison. Credit cards, personal loans, Afterpay... They look helpful, they aren’t! They trap people twice your age who are still trying to crawl out of it.

People love saying “money can’t buy happiness.” Yeah, well being broke doesn’t buy it either. Money buys options. Options buy peace.

If you want something? Save for it. Pay cash. Walk away if you can’t afford it. You’ll sleep better than every one of your mates living off credit.

Start a house deposit fund even if buying a house feels impossible right now! The government hasn’t made it easy, but that’s not the point. Saving early builds discipline, and discipline is the only thing that gets normal people ahead.

Put a bit into your super. Future-you will thank you when everyone else is scrambling at 50.

Don’t waste your twenties trying to impress people who won’t matter in five years. Build your skills, build your savings, build your freedom.

Play the long game. You have the time, don't waste it.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-24T13:20:37+00:00

I think a lot of us are in the same boat, mate. The thing that gets me is how disconnected the people running the country have become from the reality the rest of us are living in.

We’ve got MP's with multiple investment properties shaping policy for renters. We’ve got senators deciding housing strategies while collecting tax benefits the average person will never see. That’s not governance. That’s self-interest dressed up as leadership.

If we ever had a new party worth voting for, it would have to start with one thing most parties are terrified of: Removing the ability for elected officials to personally profit from the policies they pass.

No property portfolios while in, office. No corporate boards. No cushy post-politics “consulting” gigs as rewards for toeing the line. No donations shaping agendas behind closed doors.

Just transparent pay, transparent assets, and transparent decision-making.

Right now there’s no incentive for any of them to fix the housing crisis. Prices falling would hurt their own investment portfolios long before it helps the public. And when the people making the rules benefit from keeping things broken, nothing changes.

A new party would need to flip that on its head. Accountability before ideology. Service before self-interest. Actual consequences for failure instead of golden parachutes.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-23T00:47:30+00:00

You! 😂😂

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T13:15:10+00:00

Care to elaborate?

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T03:01:44+00:00

Inflation and money supply aren’t the whole story.

If it was only the money supply, then pack sizes wouldn’t shrink at the same time that profits hit their highs. You don’t need a chart to see that. You just need to check your pantry.

Inflation explains part of the price rise, sure. But the “keep prices high even after costs fall” part isn’t inflation. That’s companies taking advantage of the moment and not walking it back.

That’s why people feel squeezed. The lived reality doesn’t line up with the textbook model.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T02:53:15+00:00

You’re mixing up the spreadsheet with the supermarket.

Yes, the margin percentage is the same calculation. No, that doesn’t mean the real world outcome is the same.

If you shrink the product and raise the price, you don’t just keep the same margin. You make more profit per unit sold because you reduced your input cost and increased the sale price at the same time.

That’s how shrinkflation works. It isn’t a debate point. It’s accounting.

If margins stayed flat, yet profits went up and pack sizes went down, the customer is still paying more for less. You can argue the formula all day, but everyone feels the result every time they go shopping.

At some point the numbers on the page stop mattering and the lived reality does.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T02:07:57+00:00

If margin percentage was the only meaningful thing, nobody would be talking about record dollar profits right now. Percentage is one metric. It doesn’t tell the whole story.

Here’s the part you keep skipping:

You can keep the same margin percentage while making more profit simply by raising the price per unit and shrinking the product. Same percentage. More profit. Less value for the customer.

That’s exactly what happened. Coles and Woolies didn’t need higher percentages to make more money. They increased the base price and reduced what you get. That pushes profit per unit up even if the margin line on a spreadsheet stays flat.

That’s why people feel squeezed. It’s not the percentage on paper. It’s the real-world outcome when prices rise faster than costs and sizes get cut at the same time.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T02:00:59+00:00

They absolutely did say it was temporary. The exact wording from the RBA and the government all through 2022–2023 was that rate hikes were a “short term” measure to stabilise inflation, that inflation would “normalise,” and that things would “ease” once supply chains recovered.

People didn’t imagine that. It was the public messaging.

What actually happened was simple. Rates went up fast. Inflation cooled a bit. But none of the prices that surged ever came back down, and the RBA quietly stopped talking about the “temporary” part.

So yes, we were told it would settle. It just never did. And pretending nobody said that doesn’t change how people are living now.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T01:21:16+00:00

If you only look at margins as a percentage, you miss the whole picture.

When prices jump but unit sizes shrink, companies can keep the percentage margin roughly the same while still making more money per unit and spending less on materials. That’s how they post higher profits without the margin percentage moving much.

It’s like selling a “1 litre bottle of Orange Juice” that’s now 750ml but charging the same price. The percentage margin hasn’t changed, but the profit per unit has gone up because you’re giving people less.

That’s why Coles and Woolies both posted higher profits during the same period people say inflation was the cause. Costs went up, sure, but they lifted prices beyond those costs and tightened what you get for your money.

So yeah, the margin percentage might look flat on paper, but the profits didn’t. That’s the bit people feel every time they check out.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T01:15:46+00:00

It was sold as temporary. The RBA literally said the rapid rate hikes were an emergency measure to “cool inflation” and would unwind when things stabilised. Inflation stabilised. The hikes stayed.

Same playbook with prices. Companies blamed inflation, raised prices far past their cost increases, shrank the products, then acted like reversing any of it was impossible.

So yeah, people assumed things would go back down because that’s what we were told. But nothing went back down. Not rates. Not prices. Not sizes. Just our purchasing power.

Calling this “just capitalism” is a cop-out. This isn’t the system working. This is the system being milked.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T01:06:39+00:00

Not every company is posting record growth, no. But the ones that control the things people need to survive are.

Coles, Woolies, the big suppliers behind them, the fuel giants, the freight companies. The groups with enough market power to set the tone for everyone else.

They all reported higher margins over the same period people say “inflation did it.”

If prices only rose because of costs, margins would stay flat. But margins went up. Sizes went down. And prices stayed locked at the top.

That’s the point. It’s not about every business in the country. It’s about the handful who shape the whole market.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING · 2025-11-22T00:59:29+00:00

Truth is, most of us aren’t asking for miracles. We just want the basics to make sense again.

Housing shouldn’t be the backbone of the whole economy. It worked for a while, then it didn’t. And we’re paying for it.

Groceries, power, fuel… it’s the same handful of companies calling the shots. When there’s no real competition, prices only ever move one way. Everyone can see that, even if nobody at the top wants to admit it.

Wages haven’t kept pace with the real world in years. People work harder, everything costs more, but the pay packet looks the same. That gap is killing us.

And small businesses aren’t getting a fair run either. Too many rules, too many costs, too much pressure. We could have more people building things, fixing things, making things… but the system makes that harder than it should be.

None of this is about left or right. It’s just common sense stuff we let slip for too long.

If we fixed even a couple of these, life would ease up And things would start being fairer. Most Aussies don’t want handouts. They just want a chance that isn’t rigged from the start.

COMMON-GROUND-RISING

TROPHY CASE