Like with the Witness K/Collaery cases where some of the trials happened in secret, and the appeals court found that the national security concern was basically bullshit, at least in Collaery’s case:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/06/witness-ks-lawyer-wins-transparency-ruling-as-court-cites-need-to-deter-political-prosecutions

I’m glad something good came of that but it shows how easily the national security angle can be abused. We just started normalising government secrecy after WWII and it’s only gotten worse since. Nobody would’ve accepted “national security” as an excuse for this sort of flagrant abuse prior to that.

I’m noticing this tactic a lot of people shitting on activism by handwringing about “Oh I’m totally one of you and I totally agree with your goals but your tactics are just going too far!”

MLK decried this exact thing in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

“…that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ ”

There’s the reputational damage for sure, plus people who live here can see what a shitty government we have, and the more this kind of shit happens, the more people start to want to smash things.

Like, back when the right wing Liberal government last got back into power, they sent the federal police on an illegal raid of our national broadcaster’s journalism offices, and they stole a bunch of evidence of things they were investigating. You know, straight fascist shit. Turns out that raid revealed the identity of David McBride who blew the whistle on Australian special forces’ war crimes in Afghanistan. Now we’ve got a “Labor” government, and guess who just went to prison for that whistleblowing? David McBride. Guess how many people doing actual war crimes went to prison. It was none. Our supposedly for the people left wing government did nothing to intervene, even though they could.

Also the conservative government did a robodebt scheme that coldly calculated debts and slapped the most vulnerable welfare recipients with thousands of dollars of debt based on technicalities. A lot of people committed suicide as a result. The debts were pretty much all bullshit, and there was illegal information sharing between departments to make this scheme happen. Guess who’s being prosecuted for this scheme now under our “Labor” government? If you guessed the whistleblower that exposed the illegal behaviour, you’d be right. His name is Richard Boyle.

At a certain point people start to realise that the state just isn’t on our side and we need to do something about it, and that something isn’t elections, because nobody is coming to help us regardless of who we elect.

You went straight from justifying it according to the good it supposedly does for society into “not my job; not my problem”. But that’s been explained to you, and you weasel-worded your way out of it.

Also:

First of all, thanks for coming in with an actual arguement - not typical of many of my comments here.

That’s a massive red flag on two levels. Firstly I find people who make a big song and dance about how much they love being so reasonable and calm and civil about everything are actually very likely to immediately transition into spouting off some bullshit. Secondly… well you straight up said you don’t usually get reasonable answers, which you seem to think reflects badly on everyone else but actually just reflects badly on you. If it smells like shit everywhere you go, check your shoe. I was telling you that your value system is monstrous. I did it politely but please don’t take that as respect for what you said.

Like, I was trying to tell you that being able to soberly assess the grim reality of what borders actually do, and then use that as justification for those horrific actions, actually makes you a monster. Then you immediately took a completely un-self-aware journey through an autobiographical account of The Banality of Evil. When everyone just accepts their position in society and acts like a cog in the machine completely devoid of any agency or ability for judgment, then those who hold the levers of society can steer that machine straight into fascism. “When good people fail to act, evil prevails.” That’s you. You’re the person who would rather let evil win than rock the boat, and it makes you a coward. You don’t have to be a coward, but as long as you continue to act in the way you have said that you do, that’s what you are.

Also, if you pay attention to actual game theory, being good to people as a default position always gives better results. The Australian government was incredibly shitty to these people with absolutely no provocation from them. The agents who betray others tend to get fucked over in the long run, because everyone else stops feeling like they owe them anything. That’s one of the big reasons why this policy is self-defeating. If the cogs that make the machine run start to believe the machine is evil, they will stop letting it run.

I asked this question ages ago and it was pointed out that “sub” isn’t a reddit specific term. It’s been short for “subforum” since the first BBSes, so it’s basically a ubiquitous internet term.

“Sub” works because everybody already knows what you mean and it’s the word you intuitively reach for.

You can call them “communities” if you want, but it’s longer and can’t easily be shortened.

I just call them subs now.

I think your assessment of what immigration does is accurate, but the conclusion I come to from that fact isn’t, “actually this is fine” but “actually fuck borders”.

Also, the idea that a disabled person will be a net negative to a country because of their “financial burden” is incredibly short sighted. There’s no consideration there that maybe kicking out a disabled two year old might have negative effects on the fabric of society.

The Australian state in particular has been on an anti-human rights kick of late. This is just more evidence of their complete indifference to humanity, and it is eroding their legitimacy.

“Ran” in this context is part of a dialect of English in certain parts of the US. It is spoken that way, on purpose, by native speakers, and is thus perfectly correct.

Saying that it “makes people think you share teeth” shows that you are in fact aware of this cultural distinction and your problem with the usage is not about grammar but about classism, which is also clearly on show with your bigoted description of poor southern US people.

Unfortunately you’re basically highlighting the reason that propaganda like this works: immediacy bias.

This story, and the idea of the video, of the woman being raped is immediately visible.

The historical context surrounding this story, and the political context of its dissemination, is not visible. All the stories that were neglected by the media that is cynically using this current story are not immediately in front of us.

It’s hard for people to step out of that immediate reaction because it feels like the story they just heard is happening in front of them. We’re not mentally built for a global news environment where news stories can be cherry picked for their desired impact.

It’s ironic that something called “immediacy bias” is being exploited by the media, when immediate literally means “without media”. Maybe in this case it should be called the immediacy illusion.

I honestly don’t know why anyone is strategising as if they’re on the same side as dems or any politician. I’m not even convinced we have a common enemy in Trump, because they don’t seem serious about beating him.

The question you should ask when voting is “Who is my preferred enemy?” Biden won’t abuse the carte blanche immunity from criminal prosecution? Great, sounds like he’s the weaker enemy, so vote for him. Force him to keep the position he clearly doesn’t want. Force him to disappoint his base for another four years.

While he’s doing that, get to work building alternatives that meet people’s needs from the bottom up and wean them off of this criminal system, to undermine it and prepare people to thrive as it crumbles.

The great thing about this political theory of change is that it’s the same regardless of who’s in power. It decouples you from the capricious, disempowering shifts of electoral politics.

A Dance of Fire and Ice is an incredible rhythm game that you buy once and that’s it. I think there’s an expansion pack but it’s a single purchase. Whether that’s your idea of “casual” really depends on what you like. You can always play chill low difficulty levels when you need to zone out, and high difficulty levels when you want a challenge. It can get stupidly hard.

You can try a demo online at that link. It told me webgl wasn’t supported on mobile, but it worked pretty well for me just now on firefox, even if it was a bit laggy. It should work fine on PC.

I pirated it on PC after my kids told me about it and ended up buying it three times on Steam and twice on mobile. It’s just that good. I’ve built a custom digital drum to play it and I’m now making a custom MIDI controller, so we’ll see if that does better when connected to the game.

The game works as well on mobile, if not better because the touchscreen is so responsive.

After checking out more options, I think forgejo looks like a good place to start.

Thanks, yes, I’d far rather stick with a familiar and ubiquitous system unless I see a reason to switch. Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll keep it in mind.

After looking at that list, I think forgejo or gitea are what I’m looking for. I would prefer to stick with software as open as possible, so forgejo looks like where I’ll start. I love that they’re involved in federation and have a collective governance structure.

Oh, yeah, I meant open-core, not closed-core, but I’m still leery of software where they close off portions to make you want to pay. It gives them an incentive to make the open part of it worse.

Okay, maybe it won’t be my first port of call then.

Okay, thanks for the heads up.

A quick search found this: https://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracKanbanBoardMacro

Looks like there are others too, I’ll play around and see what works for me.

Okay, I wasn’t able to review your links before so I just focussed on answering your question.

Trac looks the most promising of everything I’ve seen so far, I like that it’s minimal and also does basically everything I’m looking for in one place. I’ll give it a try first.

Thanks so much!

Okay, I’m looking into that, thanks. The open-core model is a little concerning for me - one of the things I hate about the proprietary stuff is all the gatekeeping you have to deal with, but if the other possibilities don’t pan out I’ll consider it.

Oh good question. I’m using it for personal software development, tracking new features, bugs and documenting my research.

I mostly use the kanban board view. I’ve wanted to add Confluence documentation pages but didn’t want to pay.

I’ll also be developing hardware soon.

Yup, no worries, i just appreciate the way he does things and wanted to share the info :)