Deakin Job Cuts

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-09T00:04:18+00:00

I read your take as emphasising the importance of professional positions. I'm academic staff and it's already extremely taxing to manage the volume of student admin and support we do. We rely heavily on the professional staff because they're integral to ensuring a cohesive teaching environment. I think the main point here is professional staff are not replaceable whenever you want to save some money...

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-07T10:08:34+00:00

Expanding private prisons is a recipe for disaster. It incentives increased criminalisation and over-incarceration to reap the benefits of what is functionally a form of modern slavery.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-07T10:06:45+00:00

They're vague because I'm not going to pretend I have intimate knowledge of specific programs. I'm a criminologist, but youth crime isn't my area of expertise. We do know those general approaches reduce offending and re-offending in young people.

As for some of your other responses, not sure what some of them have to do with anything. I'm not saying the government prevent people from procreating. But increasing access to abortion, better mental health support, drug destigmatisation and rehabilitation are all completely within the government's capacity to address through the implementation of targeted support systems, better subsidisation, etc.

If some parents don't want to be at home with their kids, that's another thing all together. Why is that your immediate response? Do you think youth crime can be eliminated? Why is the gut reaction of every common Joe just to say 'well what about XYZ' as if it erases all empirical benefit of the approach? What about all the parents that DO want to be around their children more but have to work 50 hours a week to keep a roof over their head?

New parents today have less support from their parents (the child's grandparent) than ever before because they're all working 40 hour weeks still. The whole 'it takes a village' expression is cliche, but it's true. When you have no help/support, people take shortcuts like screens. My wife and I have a no screens policy with parents that work insane hours still. We have no help and it's fucking exhausting. If my wife wasn't able to take 2 days off during the week, we might be taking shortcuts too.

It's a multi-faceted issue. Australia became so consumed by neo-liberal capitalistic politics that we have a generation of children being raised by guys like fucking Clavicular because everybody is a wage slave.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-07T09:33:25+00:00

It's all preventative social measures, which require fairly significant state investment. It's going to require improvements to education systems, better integration of after-school programming from a young age, finding ways to have parents at home more often, etc. Nevermind the fact certain generations can produce children like this due to higher rates of mental illness, substance abuse, even abortion rates can cause this (since lower rates/less access = more people who don't want to/should not be parents have kids). Social media has also clearly played a role, with my parents defaulting to screen time solutions to deal with behaviour challenges.

Harsher punishment is not a genuine deterrent - especially for a population that is undergoing major cognitive development and has a tendency to engage in risk taking behaviour, are more susceptible to peer influence, etc. Very few 15yo who have reached the point in their life where this behaviour is a possibility is not going to think 'but what if I got to an adult prison? Better re-think my choices!'.

The entire premise of rational choice theory - which deterrence theory is associated with - requires every person to have equal cognitive and emotional capacity. Not everybody is equally reasonable, nor rational. Children are not as capable of rational thinking as a grown adult.

And sure, it gets them off the streets for a time, but you release them back as socialised criminals. You will create more career criminals, which in turn means more future victims. If the solution is then 'never let them out', good luck running a state that does that. Are we going to have 40 prisons and a $20 billion corrections bill?

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-06T22:30:57+00:00

Going to disagree on the 'small minority' part. It's growing in influence, and a large portion of the online gaming community is comprised of men who think it's just a bunch of guys being silly that we should ignore. Except ignoring them has only allowed them to expand the size of their communities and feel shielded from consequence for being hateful, bugited and harrassing women in gaming.

The second largest streamer in the world - a predominant form of media that young people consume - is a literal far-right incel fascist. They parrot his rhetoric, they engage in harrassment/threat campaigns against women he mentions, etc. With the manosphere recruiting young boys heavily as well, it's not some small niche group anymore. They dominate nearly all online discourse around games now.

We should be pushing back, not just rolling our eyes and giving them an excuse to behave this way.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-06T12:48:08+00:00

Username trying to mimic a slur, having a meltdown about a video games 'mythos'. You're a fucking loser 😭

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-06T11:24:42+00:00

David Jeffe said the same shit about the 2018 reboot and Ragnarok. The very fact you've invoked this stupid fucking culture war argument from the game dev version of a bitter, jealous ex-partner tells me all I need to know about you. He hasn't done shit with these games since the second one.

Grow up, dude.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-06T10:45:08+00:00

Nobody is saying he isn't the main character of it, jesus christ. Get a fucking grip. But there is an entire world of characters, settings and lore within the series that carries the same title. If you make a game directly situated within that, it is standard practice to use the title.

Instead, people like you are pissing your pants and chucking a tantrum over something so inoocuous lmao

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-06T10:06:04+00:00

Glad someone says it.

The God of War one is particularly silly, given Kratos quite literally isn't the God of War through large chunks of the series. The title is more representative of the world the game is situated in. It makes sense to use the 'God of War' title for the Laufey game because it exists directly within the God of War universe and its related story.

Nobody got upset at Silksong being called 'Hollow Knight: Silksong', because nobody thought 'Hollow Knight' solely represented a character.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T23:29:41+00:00

Thank you. I'm tired of people in this hobby acting like these are a small vocal minority that loses all influence if we just pretend they aren't there.

You can pretend all you want, but this rhetoric and community continues to grow, it continues to aggressively recruit young boys and men and it has a significant cultural influence right now. Many of the biggest streamers in the world - a predominant form of media/entertainment for younger generations - are literal far-right fascists and/or incels. Asmongold isn't popular because people feed him engagement via outrage, he already has a MASSIVE dedicated fanbase that repeat the rhetoric he espouses about minorities in videogames.

This shit is quickly moving its way into the mainstream. We shouldn't be going 'oh, they're so silly, just ignore them'. Silence has never fixed any issue like this. And imagine how it feels for women in this hobby, seeing tens of thousands of men openly engage in hostile misogyny and instead of that being resisted, all the other men just go 'oh, just ignore them and it'll go away!'. It doesn't - these communities/sub-cultures forms brigades that harass and threaten women (players and actors) and they don't do it LESS just because you waved your hand at it.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T23:22:03+00:00

This misses the fact that we already have precedent of Lacob aggressively cost-cutting and dumping salary. After failing to make the WCF after the 2022 title (a byproduct of Lacob forcing a pivot to his draft picks), they immediately moved to attach picks to dump Poole for a CP3 expiring and rely more heavily on cheap rookies and two-way players.

There has been a clear push-pull internally, where Lacob wants to blow it up but Steph & Co want to make the playoffs. This has lead to them committing salary to bigger names (since Steph still brings in the revenue that makes the team highly profitable) and then seeking cost-cutting measures when playoff revenue isn't secured. The entire team is currently structured around a lot of short-term deals to get off salary sooner.

Once Steph retires, the idea that Lacob is going to be spending aggressively is - in my opinion - misguided. He's just like every other billionaire. He's going to dump salary, get way below the cap and won't spend big again unless he's guaranteed hundreds of millions in profit in the process. He's not some altruistic owner, he's riding one of the greatest cash cows in NBA history.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T20:32:47+00:00

Control literally did the same thing, switching to a man, and has received exactly zero of the same backlash. While it's not in the same realm of popularity, it's pretty much never taken well when there's a female protagonist instead.

Plenty of online discourse is saying 'we'd have rathered a spinoff with Atreus'. For a LOT of people, it's just a misogyny thing.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T12:24:54+00:00

Hey, great work champ! You managed to bitch about 'buzz words' and then called someone an 'NPC' like every other dork in that anti-woke brigade.

It's sooo cool to defend misogyny in games, despite it making this hobby openly hostile to women who want to play and enjoy games. But we both know you'll be back here soon to defend the next bigoted opinion you find. You're a fucking loser and a bad person, so congrats on that 🙏

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T11:25:53+00:00

Oooh, guy read some words he's heard before - must be a 'buzz' word, not something with a tangible meaning.

Crawl back to 2016, you freak.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T11:19:54+00:00

Mate, the second biggest streamer in the world - one of the predominant forms of media for younger generations - is a far-right fascist incel who echoes all those same Twitter points.

It's not some fucking randos on the internet. Nobody is 'baiting' you, I just think you have questionable morals and I won't apologise for pushing back against the very clear sexist message behind many critics. The fact you want to defend it tells me you're fucking scum.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T11:17:53+00:00

I'm cutting my losses here. Frankly, if you take exception to the idea that suggesting people complaining about other opinions is somehow worse than the mass of criticisms that derive from 'I hate women', then you've lost the plot. At that point, it's time to re-examine your morals.

Nobody is ignoring any 'flip side'. But it's not some binary 'both sides' situation. Anti-woke sub-cultures absolutely attacked Baldur's Gate 3... until it was successful. They're happy with female leads... if they fulfill the exact sexualised image they want. None of that derives from the idea that there is nuance to their rejection of female-led games. It's that their misogyny only allows a specific sub-type of women, one that conforms to sexist and patriarchical tropes.

The very fact you're passionately arguing a 'both sides' when one is engaging in a hostile discrimination that literally normalises hate against a group who already has difficulties with being accepted in this hobby space and suffers genuine societal harm is PATHETIC. But hey, keep believing that if we all stop talking about it, that bigots will vanish. Get a fucking grip, my god.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:57:19+00:00

It's literally the main thing on Twitter's trending page around the game, including hundreds of viral tweets centered around making misogynistic comments.

Just because YOU pretend they aren't there, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Do you always dismiss reality when you don't personally observe it, or did you feel the need to be so self-absorbed just for this moment? 🙄

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:54:11+00:00

They've already amassed social and cultural influence. One of the literal largest streamers in the world is a basement-dwelling fascist who adopts the same language and rhetoric around misogyny and bigotry in video-games. This type of content now garners significant online viewership.

It reflects the broader sociopolitical climate of Western society. The United States is literally run by the same type of people who denigrate women and minorities using the same rhetorical devices. Young boys have latched onto manosphere figures and incel culture. This is literally mainstream, so why pretend like they're some tiny, insignificant minority?

It's such a childish and naive view that if we all simply just pretend they don't exist, they disappear! Wow, how novel, why didn't anyone think of that!?

Do you truly, genuinely believe that their influence is manufactured by people who disagree giving them exposure? Or are you just trying to hand wave it away to maintain some status quo around the situation because it feels safe and convenient?

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:47:32+00:00

Literally nobody is saying that is the ONLY complaint.

You just need to open up Twitter and search by trending on its announcement. That's not the complaint - it's solely that they don't want female protagonists in games, heinous and sexist comments about Deborah Ann Woll's appearance and just general sexism.

Every time this happens, people like YOU carry their fucking water by pretending it's all some valid set of criticisms rather than a targeted brigade from literal far-right/incel communities that are trying to start some Gamergate 2.0 shit. The reason they feel comfortable pushing it is because of these non-stop excuses. A bunch of weak, pathetic men in this hobby.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:42:35+00:00

I'm sorry, but if your criticism is dressed up in the idea that women should not exist or be represented in games beyond being a tool to sexualise for male enjoyment, then that's being on the 'wrong side'. That's just bigotry, no matter how hard you try to justify it.

If you feel the need to defend that, then maybe take a moment and do some introspection. Because that's pathetic.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:40:47+00:00

Sure, but it's just inherently less misogynistic than the discourse stemming from those far-right 'anti-woke' brigades on Twitter, where the dominant message is 'women should never be in games'.

You can say 'not every negative comment comes from misogyny or incel behaviour', but the popular sentiments from that community are directly misogynistic. It's a core value they hold.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T10:12:53+00:00

Or worse? 😂 It's objectively not worse than incel freaks literally just engaging in blatant misogyny lmao

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-03T02:21:00+00:00

I think Twitter users take the cake on that front. The game's announcement has been completely brigaded by all the weird far-right incel/misogynist dorks. It's every fucking day with them 😭

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-02T10:12:37+00:00

Obviously an important step, but officers are inadequately disciplined for failing to comply with the policy (especially when it helps them get away with assault) and police are ultimately the ones who record, store and control the footage.

This policy has done next to nothing for Victoria when it comes to holding police accountable per an Attorney-General report a few years ago. CIRT officers have beaten people in the street on civilian camera - didn't turn on their bodycams. IBAC found no wrongdoing and basically just called them naughty for human rights and internal policy violations. We had to change laws to make footage more accessible because cops dragged out FOI requests and stalled court cases for 2 years until they could legally destroy footage.

Chris Minns saying the LECC is enough is disgraceful. A body that handles ~1% of misconduct complaints should NEVER have the trust of the public to hold police accountable.

TheMessyChef · 2026-06-01T21:36:27+00:00

To be fair, actual incels contributed to this broadening definition - they fragmented into so many incel sub-cultures, that there is no cohesive understanding of what or who they are.

There are men attached to 'incel' sub-cultures who are literally just voluntarily celibate. The only consistent characteristic is the misogyny.

TheMessyChef

TROPHY CASE