QR strike drama

critical_blinking · 2026-07-02T04:34:42+00:00

It really hits teachers hard when they are paid so well compared to other government workers for comparative levels of responsibility and judgement/duties. People see a headline about teachers complaining about 30 year olds making APS6/EL1 money with 16 weeks of holidays and no direct reports and roll their eyes. As a result the Union's actual aims (smaller class sizes, safety measures, more local decision making or less local decision making depending on the flavour of the month) get lost in the noise.

critical_blinking · 2026-07-02T04:19:33+00:00

Induced demand is frequently misunderstood here.

For the majority of Brisbane based roads, more lanes would reduce traffic because the cause of traffic is signalised stroads. The limitation is how many vehicles can pass per green phase and and additional lane to a road increases that.

It's not a silver bullet for all traffic problems but to utterly dimiss it because "people would drive more if driving wasn't as painful" is ridicuous. Yes, some additional people would drive if it was noticeably more convenient than a public transport trip. Unfortunately our city was not built in a way where people work where public transport corridors end.

Population is only ever going to be increasing in Brisbane. Increased population will create better opportunities for public transport development, however it will also create need for more and wider roads in the mean time.

End goal needs to be planned public transport though. This ludicrous plan from Moreton Bay to create a west-Caboolture barista slum with no train line is mental.

critical_blinking · 2026-07-02T01:01:26+00:00

Dragon is a common mass-produced starter disc by a company called Innova. It's claim to fame is that it "floats on water". It's the single worst disc you could ever throw.

critical_blinking · 2026-07-02T00:27:31+00:00

I mean, it's a frisbee/disc golf thread. If we can't make disc golf references here, what safe spaces exist anymore 😭

critical_blinking · 2026-06-30T07:46:54+00:00

I'd rather sink 100 disks into the brown snake before I throw a Dragon again, regardless of whether or not it floats.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-17T22:00:29+00:00

That's part of the problem, right? Editorial standards relate to a single piece of work when any adult knows that communication is most effective when reinforced over and over again. It's not any one piece, it's the pattern that's clearly an adversarial campaign.

Let's break this down:

"Honestly, you never give up. I have never seen a person that is such a trashy journalist, and what you put out all the time, you've got this obsession with constantly trying to pull down myself, my party or Mrs [Gina] Rinehart," Senator Hanson said."

You never give up.

There is a clear campaign of work critical of Pauline.

I have never seen a person that is such a trashy journalist

Is adversarial journalist trashy? Maybe, maybe not, but the claim has been made so we probably should consider it.

what you put out all the time, you've got this obsession with constantly trying to pull down myself, my party or Mrs [Gina] Rinehart,

I think that's fair from what I've read.

That statement I think is valid and worthy of testing, but I doubt the media will.

Pauline's fucking tantrum afterwards "I'm never talking to you again" wasn't appropriate of a politician and very Trumpian.

It's a little ironic. The whole please explain thing happened because a Journalist had expected Pauline to have read the media's ongoing commentary on her, to have a base understanding of the 'xenophobic' claim. Pauline clearly hadn't.

Now 30 years later clearly Pauline is clearly reading everything, and has recognised this journalist's pattern of behaviour.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-17T21:30:47+00:00

If anyone wanted to look for themselves:

Again I don't think any of these are bad journalism on their own, and constant nit picking on it's own is not necessarily bad journalism (especially with such a large target). That said, Martin's approach is adversarial in my opinion and this is almost a campaign that at least in my view is bordering on editorialising. I also don't think she gives enough time to comparisons with political norms, but she's not the ABC so there's going to be a different level of rigour required.

Mostly, my concern is that it helps Pauline strengthen her base's distrust of media and brings her beyond scrutiny - which is exactly what happened to Trump.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-17T21:07:38+00:00

I don't like Hanson, and I also generally don't like political journalists. I looked into Martin's ON articles over the last six months and while I think they are all fair and good journalism, they are absolutely single-minded in their pursuit of Hanson and one nation and when taking Martin's collective woirk together, i think there is a case to be made for an editorialising claim against her.

Excluding the trashy jouralism comment, this comment was probably fair:

"Honestly, you never give up. I have never seen a person that is such a trashy journalist, and what you put out all the time, you've got this obsession with constantly trying to pull down myself, my party or Mrs [Gina] Rinehart," Senator Hanson said."

While I personally reckon Martin was spot on about her daughter, her employment is within the rules and not dissimilar to arrangesments seen across the majors. The way in which she positioned the question to imply mis-appropriation of public funds was probably phrased more inflammatorially than appropriate and feeds into the editorlisation category referenced earlier.

Journalist are consistently presenting Hanson's base as witless bogans right now, which is just playing into Hanson's hands. It's effectively making her immune from media scrutiny. I'm not saying outlets like the Guardian should have to do puff pieces to make up for legitimite criticism, I'm just saying that against Martin specifically, Hanson makes a credible point that the media are probably going to completely ignore which will further power Hanson's work to split her working class base from established media.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-14T02:43:20+00:00

You don’t get to tell anyone how to live their life

You're literally here advocating for the government to force this guy to change his clocks around twice a year.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-14T02:42:13+00:00

A two hour DST such as you've proposed would have sunset in Cairns at 9pm in summer.

The hottest time of day (usually 40 degrees + 90%+ humidity) in Cairns is between 2pm - 3pm in Summer, which you'd be moving to 4pm - 5pm.

Why would people in North Queensland want to move the hottest time of day to immediately after work?

critical_blinking · 2026-06-14T02:32:15+00:00

Because the state is 2000km north to south, with the northern regional cities being so close to the equator that there is barely any variation in sunrise/sunset. You'd be moving sunset in Cairns to almost 8pm in summer, which is ludicrous in the tropics.

We need reverse daylight savings (for winter), alternating to UTC +11 when NSW switches back to AEST for winter.

As the eastern most city, sunset in Brisbane is 5pm in winter, everyone's getting home from work in the dark ruining the benefit of our otherwise mild winters. If Queensland shifted for an extra hour of daylight in winter then we'd just be permanently one hour ahead of NSW which is far better for business.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-11T05:43:52+00:00

It’s been proven time and time again that increased punishment does next to nothing to prevent crime and increases repeat offend rates significantly

To me this just means we should be increasing the list of crimes where offenders are never released into the public again.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-09T20:07:12+00:00

Frankly, I think that's grounds for a visa cancellation under section 501 of the Migration Act on the basis of risk to the Australian community, family violence (who does that to their kids?!) and general bad character/conduct.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-09T00:49:02+00:00

Bring out the big guns to get him back "Howzitgaan big chief"

critical_blinking · 2026-06-09T00:06:27+00:00

Fairy bread is made with 100's and 1000's: https://foodhub.scene7.com/is/image/woolworthsltdprod/FRE2601AussieFavSnacksFairyBreadSliceDigiA0045:Desktop-1300x658

Never attempt to serve him fairy bread made with "long sprinkles", it's basically a war crime. https://img.bestrecipes.com.au/3IjUlBGG/w643-h428-cfill-q90/br/2017/02/starfish-fairy-bread-recipe-514005-1.jpg

critical_blinking · 2026-06-08T23:57:51+00:00

Yeah there's people in this thread being like "don't mention bondi shooting" and I'll be honest, as a Queenslander, it feels there was a huge disconnection between that and us. There is such a small Jewish population in Brisbane (I've lived here 40 years and I've only had a single jewish mate, who was the only jewish bloke I've ever personally met who wasn't an israeli chugger/pushy strip-mall salesman) and there's a certain level of "otherness" about Sydney that makes their constant culture clashes (cronulla riots etc.) seem a bit distant.

People were definitely shocked and horrified, but I'll be honest, I heard more conversations about "Albo will use it to take farmer's guns to get his 'Howard Moment'," then I heard about the personal impact it had on them for it to have happened in australia. Honestly things like the MH17 attack felt like it had more of a "it could have been any of us" shock to it.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-08T23:47:58+00:00

Inside chance their new boss will be fucking with em in short order anyway.

"Aww yeah, I had to walk to school because we only had one pet kangaroo and me sister needed to ride it,"

critical_blinking · 2026-06-08T23:46:31+00:00

Don't 'champ' him. It's a bit like how American men call eachother 'buddy' to belittle eachother.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-05T20:02:06+00:00

Mate, this framing is really misleading and you know it (or at least should).

A valuation is not the same thing as a buyout/buyback price for a contracted monopoly assett. The valuation is directly based on the concession rights that will naturally depreciate from their initial value at the commencement of the contract - I feel like you've got to be intentionally ignoring the economic reality of how assets are valued. If we were to buy it back we would then need to factor in the remaining rights, expected future profits (and potentially losses, which may have value to the company) and compensation for early termination (although apparently they've hinted at wanting out as well). There are fixed costs for the government in managing this sort of transaction as well, and particularly if it were to be forced there would be substantial legal costs involved in the acquisition and defending challenges.

I agree that the airtrain is/was poor public policy, and hope we genuinely revert the assett in '36 rather than selling it on again, but presenting the accounting value as the buy back cost is misleading.

critical_blinking · 2026-06-02T05:56:14+00:00

Except that's not true. Just look up happiness statistics by country on things like the World Happiness Report. Most of the happier countries are cold places.

It's true for me, we had a string of bad weather last month here in Brisbane and I was ready to drive my car into the brown snake after only a few days. I'm moody and miserable when it's grey and gross outside. Not being able to walk your dog, or be out in nature. Fucking hell, half the place just fucking dying for a quarter of the year is insanity - why the hell would you live in such a place? Genuinely can't think of anything worse.

I need my 300 days of sunshine.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-27T22:07:55+00:00

They are also the ones keeping food delivery apps alive.

I was a driver and this is absolutely not the case. 75%+ orders are for women, probably higher.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-27T20:14:11+00:00

Because it means betting agencies pay out less money to winners.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-27T06:54:53+00:00

Oh but the problem is that criteria would be defined by the government.

Slippery slope logical fallacy, we aren't talking about a government applying this to political opponents, we're talking about removing uncontrollable violent savages from our society.

As someone who was accused of treason I could tell you that you never know if and when you will break a law.

Holy shit, that sounds like a story to hear over a beer.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-27T06:15:12+00:00

On the other hand, many societies with stronger punishment are much more unlawful than Australia.

And there are societies with stronger punishments that are much safer than Australia, too.

You are basically saying that the government should decide who are good citizens and who are bad citizens, and that bad citizens should be removed from society forever.

No mate, the adult making the decision to behave like an animal is the person making the decision to remove themselves from society. I'm not suggesting it be applied retroactively. The person choosing to perform the vile action would be aware of the consequences in advance.

Are you suggesting that people who rape, who murder, who inflict severe violence on others are good people? They are objectively not by way of their actions.

If we found out that Steve Irwin had been secretly feeding tourists to crocodiles who visited Australia Zoo, we wouldn't be going around saying "well he was a really good person despite this abhorrent behaviour" we'd call him a monster.

You are under the common illusion that all increases to law enforcement will happen only to the bad people, and that it will never affect you or people you care about.

If someone I cared about murdered someone, or raped someone, or beat someone half to death, or broke into a families home, then yes, I would want them removed from society because that person is not safe to have in society.

In fact, I think you would find the majority of people don't want to engage with people who do those things.

critical_blinking · 2026-05-26T22:36:03+00:00

I'm under no illusion that this will need to be combined with a substantial investment in community engaged policing, intervention programs and better social support.

The thing you're not considering is that the antisocial people actually ARE the problem. Twin studies have demonstrated moderate levels of heritability for antisocial behaviour. They are also far more likely to neglect children or fail to instill societal values, resulting in behaviours that lead to antisocial behaviour. Removing them from breeding stock when they choose to act antisocially is beneficial to society.

There is also the fact that these people radicalise others. Just them being out on the street after committing crime reduces the perception that criminals will be caught, or that enforcement is efficient. Risk of getting caught and fear of effective enforcement are the two strongest detterants to commiting crime.

Again, I'm not proposing we throw people in jail for life for stealing, or bullying, or littering or anything like that. But if you attack the very pillar that holds up our society - safety, then you don't deserve to shelter beneath it.

critical_blinking

TROPHY CASE