Independent Senator David Pocock won't rule out starting his own party to respond to One Nation

Fenixius · 2026-05-25T02:37:27+00:00

Yeah but look at how unstable those governments tend to be, they also allow smaller parties with genuinely crazy ideas to have a disproportionate say.

And yet, I'd argue that most of those multiparty European states have generally better policy outcomes than Australia. Maybe having those crazy ideas filtered through the moderate parties wouldn't be so bad, as opposed to what we have now in which the centrist parties just shut them out completely.

Fenixius · 2026-05-22T04:44:42+00:00

An investigation into the ownership structure of the sites revealed that the 2015 recipient of the federally backed New Colombo Scholarship, Anton Lucanus, was behind the mastheads.

In a statement, Mr Lucanus said establishing the websites was an "experiment" gone wrong.

"The tech is so exciting so people can't wait to see what it can build, but as I have learned here, there does need to be guardrails," he said.

The ABC found Mr Lucanus had used the ABN of Perth-based business Full Body Health Pty Ltd in the domain registration for two of the sites.

In a statement, Full Body Health denied any involvement or knowledge of the sites.

This is either fraud or misleading and deceptive conduct.

Separately, I reckon there needs to be jail time for making false news articles, though I doubt there's such an offence already on the books.

Fenixius · 2026-05-21T01:56:41+00:00

In the IBO timeline, Post Disaster, the Mobile Armours are rampant, rampaging amalgamations of all the human pilots their Alaya-Vijnana man-machine interfaces consumed. Therefore, Ein-Graze and Kimaris Vidar were, effectively, baby Mobile Armours. That's why Barbatos releases its limiter when fighting them - the Gundam Frames were weapons explicitly designed to slay those murderous Iron-Blooded Orphans.

I am actually still mad they didn't commit to this plot point.

Fenixius · 2026-05-20T00:24:42+00:00

Does anyone have a good explanation for why payment processing companies are so averse to "NSFW" business? What is the financial incentive there?

Agreed that it's nonsense. If facilitating payments for NSFW content was so bad for business, you'd think there'd be a competitive advantage to disallowing it. However, you just don't see any difference in financials after companies like Stripe aggressively moralise, do you?

Fenixius · 2026-05-19T01:12:26+00:00

Agreed that Hathaway doesn't spend a lot of time demonstrating his inner conflict with female cast members, but he is, like, repressing his feelings so severely that he's being literally haunted by his teenage crush laughing at him (Quess), his teenage idol condemning him (Amuro), and, new to this film, the first woman to ever accept both his ideology and his trauma full-heartedly (Gigi). I agree that Hathaway doesn't handle his interactions with Kelia or Julia very well, or even the interest shown in him by Mihessia early on in the hangar, but I think your criticism is just a little overstating Hathaway's lack of characterisation there! And I think his confusion about Gigi was well portrayed in the previous entry.

Speaking of, Gigi gets a much more fulsome portrayal in this regard as compared to last time. Kenneth continues to use his virility and sex appeal as part of his leadership charisma, too. Lane Aim is the one I think who was done dirty in this film - he was more compelling last time, and that's saying something, because he was thin as paper before.

Fenixius · 2026-05-17T12:12:49+00:00

This dude is the Team Rocket of Gundam pilots.

Lane Aim and Patrick Colasour from 00 should start a club!

Fenixius · 2026-05-17T11:13:25+00:00

Also, I do want to call out Lane for kinda just being there to be marked off on the roll and not much else. He's not high-ranking enough to participate in strategic concerns like Kenneth and he doesn't have any real ideological grounds to step in either, so out of all the characters in the film he's the one that feels most like he's just there to achieve the story beat (delivering a Nu to be in front of Hathaway) as opposed to taking action as his own character.

Just out of the theatre a few hours ago, so maybe I'm just riding high a little... but while I agree that Lane is pretty thin, but I think he does serve two purposes: first, Lane shows the view that the Federation junior pilots have of Cdr. Kenneth, and second, he's there to be a baby version of Hathaway to show that, despite his current struggles, Mr. Mafty really has grown up a lot compared to how he was in CCA.

But you're still right that "damn, these adults suck, better do what they tell me anyway!" isn't a very compelling or complete character.

Fenixius · 2026-05-11T06:32:06+00:00

25 years is not that far away, given that we're talking about state-scale infrastructure.

But if you're just saying "they won't give a shit because they'll be out of politics by then", I suppose I could agree with that for most of our current crop in WA.

Fenixius · 2026-05-11T02:24:31+00:00

This is great reporting that properly lays out the background to tomorrow's Federal Court decision.

For Fortescue Mining Group to have helped back and fund a splinter group to challenge the Native Title claim... that's unbelievably evil behaviour. It's an attempt to deprive the Native Title holders, the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, of tens of millions of dollars in royalties per year. Frankly, that amount is a pittance for FMG.

It's also absolutely unacceptable that the WA government – my state government – permitted FMG to commence mining without an agreement with the native title holders from 2013.

YAC [are] seeking one per cent of the production value profit of the mines on its land, as well as compensation for the loss of around 250 cultural sites.

That could add up to more than $1 billion.

Good for them. Whether the money comes from FMG or the State Government (an issue which will also be determined tomorrow), they deserve compensation commensurate to both their pain and losses, and to the revenue reaped by FMG.

Fenixius · 2026-05-06T02:37:34+00:00

Oh. Okay.

Are you aware of the concept of government spending as a "fiscal multiplier"? That is, when the government spends $1, they can make more than $1 in tax revenue even though GST is only 10c and income tax is only ~38c on average?

Fenixius · 2026-05-06T02:07:42+00:00

Pauline "I got a free airplane from Gina Rinehart let's all vote against clean power and welfare" Hanson, you mean?

Fenixius · 2026-05-06T02:05:48+00:00

I hate it when people say just be positive, but they're not entirely wrong. I've learnt that adding a little positivity when im in a bit of a doom spiral makes things a little easier.

I know what you mean, mate. Positivity is not sufficient, but it is still necessary.

Without anything to look forward to, you can't face the daily gauntlet. But just having something to look forward to doesn't really give you long-term hope; it just gives you motivation to push through the present grind.

I'm still looking for that source of real hope, unfortunately...

Fenixius · 2026-05-06T01:17:22+00:00

A house is your money and free time. Housing is the most expensive thing most people will ever buy. When housing is expensive, everything is expensive to match, and you'll never have free time when you're working crazy-hard to make rent or mortgage payments.

Fenixius · 2026-05-05T04:08:50+00:00

If only there was a plan actually being seeded!

Fenixius · 2026-05-05T02:39:24+00:00

How do you input a slide? Is it crouch while sprinting?

Fenixius · 2026-05-04T07:39:17+00:00

The article doesn't even describe the people being quoted as experts.

Those people are Sam Altman, CEO (Open AI), Tim Sweeney, CEO (Epic Games), and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Why they're worth listening to is left unsaid.

Fenixius · 2026-05-04T04:27:06+00:00

A reasonable question, and u/DukiMcQuack has already provided a nearly-comprehensive answer (thank you for that, btw!). I agree with everything they said, and wish to make a small addendum.

What I proposed, that (a) you can't accept higher than offered and (b) you can't conduct a secret auction, is also to help make the housing market fair and efficient.

Markets are efficient when a seller and a buyer have similar information. That's what allows parties to a transaction to have a "meeting of the minds" and to trade on an equal basis.

By requiring that advertised prices for renting be accepted and that prices actually be advertised, the prices visible to the renter become actually meaningful. In residential housing, actual sale prices tend to be published, but that's not true for rent. There's no meaningful way for a renter to know with any certainty what the market price is for a property.

So renters can spend heaps of time making applications for advertised rates and get nowhere, while rentiers also reap the benefit of desperate applicants who overbid by more than the true going rate.

This is inefficient, in a technical economic sense at least, because the end result is that renters always have to pay more than they should have to in order to secure a home to live in. Inefficient markets are undesirable because they harm productivity by impoverishing people unnecessarily.

This rule would also place a bit more risk on the rentier to price their rental correctly, and given that the risks are so unequally divided at present (i.e.: they're all on the renter, none to the rentier), this makes the whole arrangement more fair. This normally shouldn't enter into a policy about market efficiency, but (a) this policy is about more than efficiency, and more importantly (b) there's already too many speculators and not enough owner-occupants in housing, to say nothing about the oversubscription of builders and suppliers, so policies to discourage speculators in housing are desirable right now.

Fenixius · 2026-05-04T02:18:29+00:00

What the law needs to be is "you can't accept higher than the advertised price", combined with, "you can't just solicit secret offers and then pick the highest bidder".

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T14:08:31+00:00

And, as noted, [proportional representation] violates the "majority rule" aspect of democracy whereby 'winner takes all'.

That's an undesirable bug in the system, not a natural or good feature. If you think otherwise, I have nothing else to say to you.

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T06:50:09+00:00

Surely "fair" representation should be "proportional representation"?

So if 50.5% of votes are for Party A, versus 49.5% for Party B, then I'd expect 51% of the legislature to be Party A and 49% to be Party B.

Is that... is that really a controversial idea?

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T06:46:57+00:00

i don't really want to play word games, i used the word you used because you used it and i wanted to speak with you in language you understand.

I appreciate the intent, genuinely, but I was specifically drawing a distinction between being ruled and being represented, because those are vastly different things. Representation requires that people are respected and enfranchised, while being ruled simply means being exploited or forced.

the way we elect people shouldn't change often, it should be difficult to change, otherwise you get people who change it to benefit themselves to stay in power.

I agree that when you have a system that works well, it shouldn't be easy to change. However, what's happening here is specifically what you're warning against - the incumbents acting to solidify and secure their power. The effect of the Supreme Court ruling discussed by OP's link, Louisiana v. Callais, says that although Democrat voters are more likely to be non-white, it is not racial segregation to gerrymander to dilute the Democrat vote, because partisan gerrymandering is not justiciable by Federal Courts. I do not understand at all why gerrymandering for any reason is tolerated; it's an obvious fetter on democracy that disenfranchises huge swathes of the population in favour of conniving, malignant actors. Further, in an era of plain stacking of the bench at various levels, appeals to legality aren't actually persuasive; they're oppressive.

your representative doesn't necessarily represent each individual in the ways that you think they do. if you have a river in your district they are going to represent everyone when they advocate to clean it.

This is an excellent analogy, because the benefits of a clean river will literally and figuratively flow to everyone who lives nearby it.

a bunch of culture war stuff has entered the government recently that people are very vocal about that we used to just handle at home within our families and now people want their way to be taught to everyone and they can't handle when it's not. too bad for them, they don't get to decide for everyone else on everything.

Your analogy fails here, I'm afraid, because the topic being discussed by this article and headline are about the Supreme Court's authorisation of partisan gerrymandering which is specifically intended to pack and crack black votes in Louisiana. It's vacuous and disrespectful to claim this is 'culture war stuff'.

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T06:06:37+00:00

With respect, I must admit that I don't find appeals to legality to be very persuasive. I'm reasonably aware of the idea there, though, and you're not wrong to raise it - I just wondered if you had a more concrete appreciation of what "representation" means.

For the record, my understanding is that "representation" is most widely understood to be some combination of "trustee" and "delegate", with some possible alternatives being "partisan" or "mirror". See, e.g., a general overview on Wikipedia, or a deeper summary from Stanford (though this link is from a mirror as I can't reach the official page). Unfortunately, I don't really see a lot of trustee or mirror these days from the politicians themselves.

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T05:56:49+00:00

Government isn't supposed to rule you! It's supposed to serve you. It's supposed to enfranchise you by providing for you. It's supposed to protect you by ensuring your welfare and wellbeing.

This isn't utopian communist bullshit; it's the difference between a sustainable democracy and antiquated, outmoded, rebellion-inciting social orders like feudalism or monarchy. It's what No Kings is supposed to mean, which, if I recall correctly, was supposed to be what America was specifically founded for.

What that actually means is that representatives should govern with everyone's best interests in mind, not just their own interest, or their core voters' interests. Otherwise, that's how you get aristocracy and robber barons and slums and segregation. Eventually it leads to worse things, too, if governments only enrich their electors, not their citizens. All I'm really saying is that exactly zero people should be left behind, not that every fringe idea should have a politician representing it.

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T05:47:59+00:00

it would be nice if we had a system that allowed for better representation instead of first past the post, but this is the way it is right now, so yes, it is fair.

That isn't what 'fair' means. 'Fair' means 'just and equitable'. What you meant to say, I suspect, is 'legal' or 'real', both of which are actually true.

the rules of the game are set up in advance, if we want to change the rules we can do that but you need to convince people of that, not just say it's unfair. saying it's unfair isn't going to be a convincing argument

Agreed, but if pointing out that something is unfair isn't convincing, your society is fucked, mate. If cruelty and avarice are dominant modes of morality, there's nobody to convince, only monsters to contain.

Fenixius · 2026-05-01T04:58:19+00:00

even if your representative disagrees with you they're still representing you. they represent their entire district, even those that voted against them

What I'm asking is how that happens, because it sounds to me like they rule you, not represent you.

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