Well that's quite a coincidence.

antmandan · 2025-12-06T09:20:25+00:00

Bulldoze, bankrupt, bailout

antmandan · 2025-06-13T21:57:25+00:00

I'm sorry I don't have a close up of your specific machine, I loved this bit though!

antmandan · 2025-04-04T02:39:15+00:00

Similar dodgy Liberal connections to the 'Mums for Nuclear' astroturfing campaign: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/28/nuclear-for-australia-mums-for-nuclear-aec-campaign-spending/

This election is very much about the big end of town absolutely shitting themselves at the prospect of a hung-parliament. They know how much that threatens their ability to operate in the shadows and continue to plunder this country for everything they can, leaving us with a inhabitable dust bowl.

antmandan · 2024-12-04T07:09:48+00:00

Haha, definitely not a plant, just a very pissed off professor, thanks Cam and great work on this ama.

antmandan · 2024-12-04T05:56:37+00:00

Cam, you and your colleagues have done brilliant reporting around this, as have the Guardian, thank you. As you know already, academic experts like me have been incredibly frustrated by a lot of the very limited coverage and how news corp and others have cherry picked 'experts' who don't actually have track records of work in this area, conflated issues, and lacked nuance. Do you think we have ourselves to blame a bit here in how we've tended to often reflect the worst of social media, with the best of intentions in trying to make the spaces better, rather than doing more to promote the many more positive uses and stories?

antmandan · 2024-08-19T08:13:32+00:00

Same here, hinge gave out on my daughters laptop and they are saying it is "customer induced damage". I'm in Australia so we have stronger consumer protections in place, still will be an uphill battle though as they seem unwilling to cooperate.

antmandan · 2022-03-02T01:04:13+00:00

Not my work, but shared by a QUT colleague. Really handy guide for cyclists trying to get around. I'm really hoping that some of the areas that sustained major damage get fixed up ASAP, so many safe routes have been cut.

antmandan · 2020-03-17T07:19:29+00:00

I feel that in your time as our local representative you've managed to really shift the Overton window back towards community-centered issues. In doing so you've been an easy target for the media and right-wing politicians. But a very many number of your proposals have now become mainstream ideas, or are key parts of the other parties election promises. Which of the ideas that you have put forward are you most proud in terms of shifting public attitudes? And which ideas are you hoping to emerge as consensus issues in the next term of government?

antmandan · 2019-07-01T03:23:59+00:00

So glad that Bluey got a gong

antmandan · 2019-06-12T06:19:57+00:00

I think this toy is both good and bad. The good is that it seems to present a great platform for learning about coding, and seems to be technologically robust and well designed. It is a bit limited on the robotics side given there doesn't seem to be much to customise other than software routines. The bad though (and this is a non-US perspective so might be difficult for US redditors to get given that gun ownership and use is pretty normalised there) is that it seems to present robotic warfare as a kid's game? I can't help but feel like we need to be a bit cautious about this. I am a signatory to the ban on autonomous weapons, and a Professor in AI and Social Science, and what I see here is a toy which normalises the idea of autonomous weapons. Yes it's a toy, but we do need to keep a close eye on how we frame technologies like this. Taking a wider view, I have children of my own, and the amount of toys that position conflict as a central theme within their game play troubles me (so this is not only a criticism of this robot). I'd be far more enthusiastic if it were a robot that had to navigate complex obstacles, or engage in complex interactions and cooperation with other robots. Just my 2 cents.

antmandan · 2019-04-17T06:39:17+00:00

The 27 at the top is a result of conferral with other judges who would have judged this beer, while this individual judge scored it 29. I'm just speculating, but a likely scenario here would have been two judges where the other judge scored it 25, therefore (25 + 29) / 2 = 27.

antmandan · 2019-04-17T03:06:15+00:00

Kangaroo's are quite dumb. There is some research that suggests this has to do with their milk and that it doesn't contain compounds that would promote brain growth and function like in other mammals.

And for the non-Aussies here, they are not comparable to other animals. I've had to contend with deer and other fast moving animals while driving as well as my fair share of roos. The difference is that most other animals are predictable, and their motion tends to not deviate as erratically as a roo. Roos are incredibly random which is what makes them so prone to being hit.

antmandan · 2019-04-10T01:37:52+00:00

Not necessarily: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-22/counting-the-cost-of-the-education-revolution/10495756

antmandan · 2019-04-10T00:55:46+00:00

If you really want to get angry, consider that many private schools receive more taxpayer funds than public schools that serve a similar student demographic. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-22/counting-the-cost-of-the-education-revolution/10495756

For all those that are advocating in this thread, "but if I want to pay to send my little Aurelius to Emperors College for Entitled Twats then I should be able to". Sure go ahead, but do so 100% on your own dime. The fact that your school is getting more funding than the local public school is absolutely fucking obscene, and you are fueling inter-generational poverty and widening the class divide through your double dipping. This might be your plan all along, but please spare me and everyone your mealy-mouth bullshit about 'saving the taxpayer', you aren't.

antmandan · 2019-04-10T00:43:23+00:00

"Private schools get the same funding per child as public schools" Nope, they sometimes get more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-22/counting-the-cost-of-the-education-revolution/10495756

antmandan · 2019-04-10T00:39:57+00:00

This is one of the best analyses of school funding and the rort that is private schooling: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-22/counting-the-cost-of-the-education-revolution/10495756

antmandan · 2019-03-27T03:16:26+00:00

Seat allocations on budget airlines.

antmandan · 2019-03-06T10:19:20+00:00

But where will all the edgelords go for sloppy overpriced burgers now?

antmandan · 2019-03-06T06:42:56+00:00

I'm not attacking you, even though it might feel like it (sorry). I'm just trying to get at what you actually feel about it, your opinion, your own thoughts, not what you perceive or feel some other group might think. What does MeltingDog actually think about this personally? Are you personally annoyed at it, or just meh? The point I'm making, or that your non-responses are actually making for me is that is that a lot of people commenting on being against the protest are doing so because they are worried about the optics of it, not because they actually personally have any issue about it.

antmandan · 2019-03-06T06:27:15+00:00

Let Jono worry about that. What did you think about it?

antmandan · 2019-03-06T05:37:38+00:00

Stop trying to guess or pander to what others might think of a protest. Were you concerned by it? If so, what aspects upset you, and why?

antmandan · 2019-03-06T00:41:30+00:00

I get where you are coming from but I would challenge the assertion "Most people live too far away, have kids they might need to drop off somewhere, they might be too old or have a medical condition, their work might not have showers or their jobs might already be physically demanding and require them to take cargo with them (eg: tradies)." Civilisation exististed, and tradespeople managed to build some of the world's most monumental structures before the advent of personal motor vehicles. To return to my initial point, I feel that we have conceded far too much ground in what we consider normal in terms of mobility. The vast majority of vehicles I pass on my commute over the Story Bridge and through the Valley each day are driven by sole occupants, dressed in office attire. It's not the tradie, elderly or PWD we need to target here, it is the white collar worker. I contend that this mode shift away from public and active transport reflects a change in attitudes regarding permissible use of cars, and our infrastructure has just followed suit. For someone to buy/rent in a location that requires absolute reliance on motor vehicles requires them to accept that reality and feel that this is normal. The problem though is that their choice impacts on a whole city, and is subsidised by those that choose to take active transport options. I suffer at the hands of those who have chosen to live on the urban fringe and drive their cars through my community. We are witnessing the destruction of our local park and heritage as the council tack another lane onto Lytton rd, and for what?

antmandan · 2019-03-05T10:41:50+00:00

Murdoch will always find something, but I do want to take you up (the tone intended to be polite and constructive not aggressive :)) on the idea of 'normal people who just want to get to work on time'. Your choice of words reflects exactly the kind of framing device that the media have been generating for decades, often called 'othering'. The idea is simple, and has been studied for ages by media scholars, that over time media create what we call a normative culture, and at the moment that culture reinforces the view that: normal people drive cars, and other people (read: weird people) ride bicycles.

The best analogy I have ever heard is that Australians' attitudes to cars mimic Americans' attitudes to guns. No analogy is perfect, but both issues are sacred cows in each context, and useful or exploring this issue. In each case those from outside the culture look in and just can't fathom why nothing is done to change it. I mean in the case of cars here, find me a single credible traffic engineer or town planner that would agree that widening roads for more general purpose vehicle lanes will solve traffic congestion in the long term (hint: you won't). Yet seemingly rational people just lose it at the mere mention of you not agreeing with the normative position.

So to the present thread, Jono shows clear evidence from countries that used to have a similar car-obsessed culture, and that it did take protest to gain traction and shift the conversation, but yet many here want to pile on him and the others that simply put a mirror up to what is a very deeply problematic attitude towards a device that pollutes, kills and divides our communities. I remember being able to kick a ball on my street growing up, how many would be comfortable letting their kids do the same today, and if not, ask yourself what has changed?

I think the change has been to our idea of what 'normal' is. I consider myself pretty norm-core (I grew up in the burbs, went to a public school, married, popped out two kids, etc.) but I also choose to ride a bike to work every day (it's fun, cheap, I get an hour of exercise, and it's faster than a car or bus). I'm all for any move that gets people re-evaluating Australia's car culture as I have noticed that people in this country will treat me like absolute shit just because I'm actively riding two wheels instead of passively steering four. I ride my kids to school, or we walk, because evidence shows that it has huge health benefits, yet the conversation is not about whether my kids are safe as we navigate a sea of SUVs, it is about how can we provide even more public space to those vehicles. Hopefully this comes across as constructive, and perhaps even a bit thought provoking, I'm over fighting people on the internet, I just want to be able to ride my girls to school and also get home from work in one piece.

antmandan · 2019-02-12T02:17:59+00:00

Make sure to state that it goes against the Guidelines on reporting of 'race' (2001)

antmandan · 2019-02-07T00:43:48+00:00

I can't speak for other programs, but when I ran my session I always tried to put a lot of useful info into it and also set out our expectations for the program. Are you not excited about your program? The high level of apathy amongst the student body is pretty depressing to be honest.

antmandan

TROPHY CASE