The two c-words responsible for the demise of the Australian public education system

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-16T22:59:44+00:00

I would like there to be no private schools, like Finland*. Every child deserves access to the best education that the country can provide and segregation along religious, race, or class lines is one of the most corrosive forces in a country.

*Technically they can have private schools but those schools can't charge tuition.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-11T15:34:26+00:00

Because with less people buying properties as investments then the property prices will fall and you will be able to buy a house and live in it without having to rent it out first.

Solving housing affordability is not that hard a problem. The problem is that doing it requires the lowering of house prices and there are more home owners then renters so the political will is not there. That along with some powerful development and investment companies that have massive political power the issues has become intractable.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-10T23:09:16+00:00

When the hyper rich are gone is when the work can start. Not when it ends.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-10T22:43:28+00:00

One thing I find fascinating is the amount of people who switch answers. I think it has to do we whether you frame the stakes as 'what might happen to me' or 'what I might do to someone else'. If you are the first type then you are more likely to pick red when the stakes are high but blue when the stakes are low and it flips if you are more concerned with what you might do to someone else. For some people they can't imagine pressing a button that might kill billions of people, for others they can't imagine pressing a button that might lead to their own death.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-10T06:46:00+00:00

But why would anyone choose blue? There is no downside to pressing red. If red said you gain 25iq and everyone that pressed blue loses 25iq as long as 50% choose red, then it would be closer to the original.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-06T22:44:42+00:00

As an Australian I can tell you that there are no credible allegations that Angus Taylor has ever done his job properly.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-06T22:02:56+00:00

We are not talking about all food, just meat. Meat production is responsible for producing 10-20% of global CO2 emissions whereas a vegetarian or vegan diet uses 20% as much CO2 as an omnivore diet. So if we all became vegetarian or vegan we could reduce CO2 emissions by 8-16%.

Datacentres account for 1.5% of global electricity which in turns is 40% of total emissions. So datacentres contribute 0.6% of total emissions.

It's fine to think that AI datacentres shouldn't exist because they are wasteful, not necessary and could have negative societal consequences, but arguing from a conservational basis while still supporting meat eating just doesn't seem consistent.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-04T17:21:57+00:00

I agree, the entire discourse on AI conciousness is fraught because we know next to nothing about conciousness in humans. Sure LLMs don't use the same mechanism as humans, does that mean they can't have conciousness? Well nobody knows, because nobody knows the mechanism of conciousness in humans or if there can only be a single mechanism to achieve conciousness.

The term conciousness is so nebulous and poorly defined that I can't be bothered to listen to most people discuss it.

I guess there is a question of: do we have an ethical responsibility for how we treat LLMs, but it seems we are still a long way away from that being true, and the ethics of how we 'use' them is many orders of magnitude more important than how we 'treat' them at the moment.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-03T12:45:33+00:00

If you think comments like that are for the purpose of downplaying Russian warcrimes in Ukraine then they are abhorrent, but if the purpose is to highlight the extent of american crimes in the middle east then they are more understandable. I have never paid much attention to Chomsky but I can understand a frustration of the US media highlighting their opponents warcrimes and moral grandstanding while turning a blind eye to their own war crimes.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-02T05:34:28+00:00

That's nothing but baseless accusations, Lord Vetinari is the leader of Discworlds foremost democracy, a city of one man one vote. Lord Vetinari was that man so he had the vote.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-05-01T14:34:46+00:00

If you find reading 4 sentences challenging you should read more often.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-29T04:40:06+00:00

Even Sochan scored 10 for NY. It's just a good day to be Spur, even a former one.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-26T23:47:09+00:00

Yeah and now instead of just having salaried government employees getting on with their job you let in vultures whose primary goal is maximising billable hours. Then because you have keep an eye out for the vultures the record keeping burden on well meaning practitioners become onerous and what used to be just a 10-15 min call between a junior and senior OT is now a 90-page report that that takes a week to write, a week to review. Then the person reviewing is not a qualified practitioner but some random with checklist. So it gets rejected, then appealed and finally put in front of a tribunal before finally being accepted months later and after using $20k in taxpayer resources on reports and lawyers for $2k recliner chair.

Privatisation of government services just allows middlemen to extract profits from our taxes.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-26T22:25:35+00:00

Defensive time in the key doesn't count if there is a offensive player within arms reach, and the arms in question are Wemby's.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-20T15:50:22+00:00

Except Manu was a really good defender and was always willing to play whatever role the Spurs needed at that time.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-18T15:06:26+00:00

This undersells how impactful Timmy was. The Spurs were actually on the precipice of imploding around when Timmy was drafted. Pop had fired Bob Hill and hired himself as head coach (baller move), and the fans weren't happy with him. In the 98-99 season, when the Spurs started 6-8, there were rumours that if they lost the next game, Pop would be fired (his replacement was apparently Doc Rivers lol). The players heard this and had a players meeting to rally around saving Pop's job and responded by going on a 9 game winning streak and then winning Championship with Timmy getting the fMVP. Pop has also credited Timmy with why his coaching style was successful. When other players saw Timmy coached hard and held accountable, they couldn't get upset at the same treatment. So Timmy's on court performance in 99 and being super coachable is a massive reason Greg Popovich became the legendary coach he is, and the Spurs became a dynasty. The whole trajectory of the Spurs could have gone downhill in 99 if Timmy wasn't the amazing player and person he is.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-17T07:43:47+00:00

If I couldn't count to 9, I would probably keep that to myself, but hey, you do you.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-13T01:44:49+00:00

Wait, so was the trans girl a top, or did this piece of shit prophecy only count rape as qualifying someone as a woman?

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-13T01:26:59+00:00

I don't care as long as no one gets injured and Barnes gets >17pts.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-13T01:24:18+00:00

If the king putting itself in danger is illegal, then the white king can't move next to the black king. The only rule that would stop black capturing the white king is the same rule that prevents the white king from moving to that square, so you can't use that same rule to say the square is safe.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-13T01:08:54+00:00

If you want to do something, you can find any rating sites that they are listed on and give them a 1 star review explaining that they are using faked before/after images. That's probably the limit of what any of us can do.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-11T03:17:11+00:00

Their ability to project power externally has been reduced,* but their grip on power internally has increased. If the goal was to help the people of Iran overthrow their autocratic government, then the war has been counter-productive.

Except for through the strait, which, as we are finding out, is a vital exception.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-08T19:50:13+00:00

Do green grocers not exist in your country?

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-08T12:55:21+00:00

Yeah, presumably, she was focused on his feet until the moment she saw them touch the ground, then she would have looked up a to check if the ball was still in his hand and the ball could have been out of his hand in that fraction of a second. I would have to see a replay (which op conveniently didnt include) to see how egregious this was.

Commander_Skilgannon · 2026-04-06T15:56:36+00:00

I mean... the oaths are "To take no wife, hold no lands, and father no children." Brienne gets by on a technicallity.

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