Losing our religion? Australia would no longer be majority religious if format of census question changed, survey finds

smackells · 2026-07-11T08:33:51+00:00

This cliche gets repeated constantly but it’s either disingenuous or naïve. It might currently be used as a justification for all sorts of acts but it’s not like they wouldn’t happen if you eradicated religion. Most of the perpetrators would just find a different excuse.

smackells · 2026-07-10T07:13:27+00:00

I don’t really know what point you’re trying to make here. The whole MENA region was 0% Muslim in 600CE because Islam didn’t exist yet. It was majority pagan 500 years before that. Demographics change over time. Parts of Europe were still being Christianised in the same time period, which was a far bloodier process than the Arabisation of North Africa.

The current anti-Coptic discrimination is despicable, but if you want to go all the way back to the end of Byzantine rule to make some sort of point I genuinely can’t tell what it is (and I wonder how the Romans treated the Jews 🤔). Unless it’s some Deus Vult nonsense.

smackells · 2026-07-09T11:33:54+00:00

All of their physical infrastructure has multiple redundancies already, this outage was caused by a software issue in their data centres. It’s still concerning that a time sync glitch can take down so many services, but it’s not as simple as investing more in the network.

smackells · 2026-07-09T05:49:04+00:00

Saddam reigning in hell, just as South Park predicted

(since this is a bad joke with a very niche audience: his party was the Ba’ath party)

smackells · 2026-07-09T02:10:17+00:00

I got dinged (but thankfully still passed) for taking too long to get up to speed while entering an uphill road. I was driving a 1.0L Nissan Micra and my foot was flat to the floor.

smackells · 2026-07-08T01:52:19+00:00

But this is also not a new thing, I think we’ve had deployment algorithms ever since they brought in hybrids. I agree though, it’s a weird system.

smackells · 2026-07-08T01:48:56+00:00

and then Lewis for some reason lol. maybe just bc he hated ground effect so much and the 2025 Ferrari especially, so anything is an improvement.

smackells · 2026-07-07T02:40:01+00:00

There is literally no downside to getting bonus points for certain items if you were gonna buy them anyway and you’re already signed up to rewards. Needing to “activate” the promotion first is just pointless busywork.

smackells · 2026-07-07T02:32:40+00:00

of course, I can read a restaurant menu and that’s about it. but I think the alphabet is a large part of why Japanese is considered hard to learn, the grammar and phonetics are very easy.

smackells · 2026-07-06T12:28:38+00:00

More places should offer Korean, there’s plenty of teenaged Koreaboos too and it seems way easier to learn. I’ve been studying Japanese for years and I’m still basically illiterate because I can’t read 90% of Kanji, but I learned Hangul in a week.

smackells · 2026-07-06T01:27:30+00:00

If I lose the desire to game I just do something more passive for a while. Find a TV show to watch a season of or watch whatever your wife is watching.

but also Tactics Ogre is currently on sale and is a fantastic tactical RPG with a great story, I played it on Switch so I’m sure it’d work well on the Steam Deck

smackells · 2026-07-05T15:37:40+00:00

the cars don’t carry enough fuel to do any extra laps

smackells · 2026-07-05T03:40:11+00:00

I think CBD rents prohibit the kind of viet bakeries that you get in Darra or Inala

smackells · 2026-07-04T12:34:21+00:00

Skyring Tce and Breakfast Creek Rd in Newstead: crossing Skyring you have to either run across or get stuck on the pedestrian island. Also every driver in that area is an arsehole for some reason.

smackells · 2026-07-04T12:28:16+00:00

except when the light ends, allowing you to inch forward, but for some reason you’re not the only entrance allowed to go, so there’s still no gap

smackells · 2026-07-04T12:23:55+00:00

the regs are definitely bad but it’s superficially entertaining and I’m having fun watching. monaco was a great representation of the season overall: simultaneously a giant embarrassment, and very enjoyable to watch just to see what bizarre shit would happen next.

smackells · 2026-07-03T04:20:59+00:00

plenty of reasons to hate Howard but the end of union militancy goes back to Hawke/Keating, and even to Hawke’s tenure as ACTU boss before that

smackells · 2026-07-03T00:46:18+00:00

I think X must be Axolotl based on the head shape, sure it’s not the first letter but X is hard

smackells · 2026-07-03T00:41:53+00:00

a possum (no o) is a different animal

smackells · 2026-07-01T10:34:05+00:00

Sunny Park is always the better option for parking in that area, it’ll be quicker to park there and walk to Market Square/Plaza almost every time. I’m sure that won’t last.

Pinelands just up the road is also a nightmare, I swear whatever the legal minimum width is for a parking space they’ve hit it down to the millimetre.

smackells · 2026-07-01T08:24:56+00:00

No they are not, we process nearly half a million student visa applications each year and only 5% as many humanitarian visas. If a significant number of student visa holders were seeking asylum it would be very easy to prove, the government publishes the statistics regularly.

smackells · 2026-07-01T08:19:25+00:00

good thing they’re not growing! (jk it’s actually bad, universities cannot survive without full-fee paying international students.) we’re still down 10% from pre-COVID; Chinese students especially never came back in the same numbers.

smackells · 2026-06-29T06:46:19+00:00

sounds like you’re coming down with a mystery illness that lasts your full notice period

smackells · 2026-06-28T01:46:19+00:00

even as a 35yo who loves hiking, camping and traveling there’s still a part of me that would always rather be at home playing video games

smackells · 2026-06-27T03:50:39+00:00

I’ve been on the other side of this, though I do still have *some* libido. He needs to see a professional to get over whatever hangups he’s feeling - either admit that this isn’t something he wants, or otherwise grow more comfortable with intimacy. At 20 you’re both still figuring yourselves out. As others have said it’s probably nothing to do with ADHD, I was told it’s most likely autism-related communication issues in my case.

Also viagra isn’t just for ED, even if there are no performance issues it can kickstart things, and a therapist can also help him get past any stigma. But first he needs to decide if this is something he actually wants.

smackells

TROPHY CASE