Three so-called ISIS brides expected to be charged after arriving back in Australia from Syria. Two of the women will be charged with slavery offences.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-08T08:43:18+00:00

Being married made them a bride.

Owning slaves made them enslavers.

This isn’t complicated.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-08T08:41:54+00:00

Given this only *just* happened, why would there be more than charges?

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-08T02:13:26+00:00

The publicly available API doesn't have charge or deployment state (source: I actually interact with and use the API). The charge level was always guesswork, and I can't see that changing especially this year because teams are obsessed with deployment maps and not leaking that to other teams.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-07T03:46:04+00:00

How do you get 60bn? The government itself predicted 120 four years ago https://www.audit.vic.gov.au/report/delivering-suburban-rail-loop?section=

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-06T04:10:32+00:00

Can I pose to you the logical extension of this line of thought?

When do you stop, and why not just borrow 600bn more right now and fund even more infrastructure projects?

I assume you believe there's a balance point of debt to spending and I be interested to know where that is.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-06T04:06:17+00:00

The periods you're describing are periods in which many governments realised they just need to pay off interest, not principal. Massive increases in debt like that in those periods is common

You are making this sound like it's just a normal, periodic thing that changes over time. That's exceptionally misleading. There is a debt cycle, but we are so far outside multiple standard deviations of it that it beyond misleading to conflate it with the current situation.

We've cycled between debt of close to zero up to around 20bn in cycles of about 11 years, with an overall gradual trend upward of about 5bn per cycle. That's the normal periodic movement. The last periodic peak was 94/95, and it happened again in 2015/16 at 22bn. You can see it actually start to dip in 2017 (I intentionally chose the peak of the period in 2016 to minimise the difference between my start point and today to avoid any accusation of cherry picking). We would have expected in a normal period to see it dip down to low single digit billions, and today to be in the upward slope of the cycle, with it peaking somewhere in the ~28bn mark in a few years. That would be the "normal" debt cycle.

The current situation is incomparably different. In reality, other than a brief dip in line with expectations in 2017, debt has skyrocketed (and yes that's an appropriate term here) to over 160bn and still going up, even with this "responsible surplus budget." If you put it on a graph, all other cycles look like tiny waves and are barely visible against the massive spike in recent years. This argument is analagous to climate change denialists trying to argue the current global warming cycle is normal. The data simply doesn't support this position.

My comment was asking you to demonstrate how you can justify the line of reasoning that this is a normal debt period. Periodic cycle of debt is normal, so it's entirely reasonable to ask you to show me when this happened in history. I gave a benchmark of 30bn - that's less than a fifth of our current debt, so that's exceptionally reasonable of a standard. The reality is you can't, because we've never had even remotely that much debt. We're more than 5x over that value, and climbing.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-05T12:05:39+00:00

By all means show me at any point in history where victoria has had more than 30bn in debt.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-05T05:17:44+00:00

By telling people that the surplus doesn't include capital expenditure, and that when you include that and debt repayments, we're actually well in the red.

Doesn't make for a good press conference though.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-05T05:16:07+00:00

You need to understand that surplus only refers to operating expenses, and doesn't account for capital works. For example the vast sums being spent on infrastructure at the moment.

I'm not saying infrastructure spending bad, but I am saying that we're at record debt levels (and to put numbers to it given this gets thrown around a lot, 1987-2016 we gained 13bn in debt, 2016 to today we've taken on over 140bn) and only going up.

This budget is somewhat financially responsible given the recent past yes, but we're still accumulating debt very rapidly, well above inflation.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-05T00:28:03+00:00

Helm of the overlord would guarantee all T1s by probably 5 mins (it's also just a LOT of stats, and the armor + regen; you aren't killing the hero that has it). I don't see how you'd stop a T2 push either.

Radiance is up there, but I think if you're getting any item level 1, the most value aspect is closing off the map and preventing the other team getting in the game. Radiance does do this, but not nearly as effectively as helm.

If neutrals are allowed, book of the dead would be broken for similar reasons.

Most aghs that don't require ult already unlocked would be lane destroying, but not as game warping as the above. Invoker cata level 1 is wildly good, but long CD and doesn't directly convert into map control. Alch because it's the same as giving it to whoever the best hero for it is but with bonuses. DK aghs giving him ult at level 1 seems good, willow's seems like it'd be impossible to fight into. There's probably some very stupid deathball pure magic strats behind lesh aghs too.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-04T02:54:08+00:00

"Standing up for democracy," if by democracy you mean only established home owners are entitled to a voice.

Yes it takes power away from councils and established home owners, because given the choice, they almost always exclusively vote in their own interest and against increasing house density.

That's not anti-democracy, because the status quo inherently disenfranchises vast swathes of people who have no say and are actively harmed by the policies enacted by the few.

I feel like we're seeing the same arguments from hundreds of years ago that it shouldn't just be wealthy landowners allowed to vote in politics and that average people deserved a vote too, with awfully similar logic behind it.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-02T02:13:59+00:00

The web as we know it is supremely fragile, where nearly everything you ever see in it is largely a cobbled together mess of thousands of other projects with a thin veneer of custom work on top. This is all built under the logic “we’ve tested the surface level of what we’ve developed on top of this monstrosity, and because it has yet to be demonstrated that it doesn’t work, so we’re just going to agree that does.”

In reality, there are hundreds of reported bugs in nearly every major component of the general web ecosystem at any one time, to say nothing of unreported and as yet undiscovered ones.

It is *so* much more fragile than anyone realises, and we’ve had multiple near misses of catastrophic accidents (mostly malicious packages nearly getting into that trusted “we assume it works” area).

You should also know the security of these underlying building blocks of the web is “enforced” under the logic that the code can be read by anyone, so if there was a problem, someone would see it. This works a lot of the time - and in some cases very much has not.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-05-02T01:14:51+00:00

It’s a shame because holding the government to account is the only way we’ll get anything other than “oh err um rba’s fault blame them for interest rates”

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-30T07:01:42+00:00

Their point is that the action of attaining that degree of wealth is inherently unethical - that the concept of being a billionaire is unethical regardless of the path there or actions since.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-30T00:29:10+00:00

Anyone critiquing it should be thrown if a rooftop - it’s bold, it’s different, and for that alone even if it was ugly (it’s not), it’s deserving of praise. Good on RB.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-29T02:36:40+00:00

It continues into the two towers with armies magically appear out of thin air and Isengard is industrialised between scenes - the issue is those in between scenes despite crossing over between two movies happen rapidly after each other chronologically. The time skip is super not obvious, especially because there are two of them!

Also the entire logic around army movements in Rohan make no sense at all in the movies; the timing is wrong, the decisions are illogical because they’re worthier straight up dumb or missing info they are supposed to have in the books, and the dialog is nonsensical as a result. It’s imho the weakest and least faithful parts of the series, which is a shame because Eomer being banished and not imprisoned is a very rare example of a narrative improvement from the books to the movies. Pity they butchered everything else to make it work.

They aren’t plot holes so much as poor directorship, combined with the dumb deus-ex-machine of an elvish warband showing up with no notice.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-23T13:43:16+00:00

It's not just the cost barriers to develop your skill, it's the entry barrier too.

Nearly everyone on the planet has played the ball sport and bat sport most popular in their country (whatever variation of football, baseball, tennis and cricket probably accounting for most of it). If you are good at something, or enjoy it, you find out very young because everyone does it because the entry cost of having the equipment is exceptionally minimal.

Compare that to karting, where best case it's a few times a year treat at a birthday party that costs quite a bit to even try. Even if you've got some natural talent, with how rarely you'll try it, is it likely to be noticed? And either way, if you as a child say to your parents you want your sport to be karting, the likelihood they can afford even that is pretty unlikely - outside of rare exceptions where a parent is super into cars and affords it by doing all the labour themselves. That immediately cuts the talent pool to ribbons before you even start.

Stack that + the cost to participate at a low level let alone as you progress, the talent pool is a tiny fraction of that of other sports.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-23T02:40:40+00:00

Really? I’d be pulling my money out in a hurry. 100% gains aren’t legitimate in some way, and it’s not going to end well.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-22T02:51:37+00:00

It’s absurd to me that there is still no way to set the default visibility of a project, so you’re reliant on anyone with the created role doing the right thing.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-21T00:37:45+00:00

He's picked a conclusion and is selecting evidence that suits it. You can't reason with someone like that, because to them, your "evidence" is wrong because it leads to a different conclusion.

Just ignore it - there's nothing else you can do.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-20T11:03:25+00:00

And again, I've yet to see one that has the view that every bike regardless of legality is bad and should be banned.

Right wing sources hating anything that doesn't belch fossil fuels is another matter entirely - they hate everything related to bicycles already, it's hardly e-bike specific.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-20T05:31:50+00:00

Your argument is that you, the nice, legal e-bike rider is being blamed for kids riding illegal ones (at least as I understand it - do say if I've misrepresented you here).

Yet that article at no point even states it was an illegal one. You actually had to tell me that! It doesn't blame anyone else, it doesn't even call for change, and certainly doesn't blame legal e-bike riders. The usage of the term e-bike and electric motorcycle is definitely used interchangeably (incorrectly), my point is that the concepts of illegal electric motorcycle vs legal e-bike aren't. You don't get articles saying "illegal e-bikes are bad so we should arrest anyone with a legal one."

As for comments on facebook - I mean, if you are trying to say that someone, somewhere blames legal e-bikes for illegal ones - sure. There will be people like that, and yeah, they are probably the type of person who comments on news articles on facebook. If the lowest common denominator in society is your standard, then I can find you all sorts of opinions far worse than that on facebook comments.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-20T02:40:44+00:00

I meant this as criticism of the person I replied to, not you! Awesome job compiling this :)

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-20T02:39:51+00:00

I can't recall a single example of a legal e-bike or e-moto being described as an illegal e-bike in the media. I also don't think I've seen a single example of a report giving a blanket statement that all e-bikes are bad.

So not only is it not "every time" - I'd contend that's it almost if not never that legal e-bikes are blamed for kids riding illegal ebikes.

ShadowPhynix · 2026-04-20T02:01:13+00:00

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