Critical thought and awareness of how misinformation and algorithms target people seems to be falling off a cliff. Is this result not a demonstration of exactly that?
Of course I'm not suggesting people should vote for corporation backed parties, they're demonstrated that they'll always pander to donors. Surely there were actual candidates with strong and responsible policies.
Facebook is for sure the worst. The glimpses of the shit my olds are reading on there is the most toxic and dishonest slop.
What I can't understand is why it's so hard for people to double check the information they're considering, check the context a bit before locking in the point of view presented.
I confess to being surprised. Not about yesterday's result, though I would have been a few weeks ago. I was at a Fathers' day thingy last week and my Brother-in-law and my dad were essentially talking about One Nation as a viable choice. Dad has been a bolted-on Labor guy with every 80's stereotype those voters came with (battler, literal blue collar, lifetime CFMEU member, union shop steward - the whole works) for my entire life. Dad coloured my understanding of politics as a child (Fraser bad/Whitlam good).
So for him to be shit-talking Labor and talking about One Nation as something viable - yeah I was really taken aback. He doom-scrolls Facebook all the time, so I know where this has come from. If he can be shucked from Labor boat and turned, I bet loads of others can be as well.
They have been buy-able for a whilst, Libs and Labour just thought they had the upper handed monopoly and the candidates stopped 'looking' like they care in favor of the 'just rent and be glad you peasant'. This result is almost the same argument that is seen in USA and UK. Economics and class snobbery is hitting hard on the lower incomes, so social media is pushing the purchased self righteous, but useful idiots to make it even worse. Libs and Labour have helped create the mess, showing big money that they can buy public sway, the difference is that money is now sidestepping them playing dirty. They cant and wont object or offer resistance.
Labor need to pull their finger out and make some changes.
Spoiler, they won't :(
The only thing that will save us from this mess is a mass left-wing political movement to counter the rise of the right.
The Labor Party are not the party of workers, and haven't been for many, many decades. We can rely on them only to tinker, and to placate capital at the expense of the workers.
Luckily, preferential voting exists, so there's literally no downside to abandoning them in favour of parties that align with left-wing values.
I'm probably preaching to the choir, but please join your local Socialists branch, or the Greens if you're not yet convinced capitalism in unreformable. And get everyone and their dog involved.
Labor deserve it for running a Woodside candidate. Pity they voted for Gina's candidate instead of Greens, independents or even the Libs as lesser evils. Australian elections were never more buyable than they are today with targetted social media. You can't half arse this stuff and run a bullshit candidate unless you can back it up with undeclared money and foreign influence. Hanging on to seats is going to be fucking hard work from here on unless you have X and Meta on your side. Labor need to pull their finger out and make some changes.
Thumping defeat for Labor and Liberals.
I really want to know if Labor are going to take the lesson that an allegedly cocaine snorting, mafia connected candidate looks more appealing than the Woodside candidate who runs at the first sign of hard questions over gas.
Like it's ridiculous, it's not like her main opponent was a Greens candidate. The ON candidate is probably worse on corruption and fossil fuel support, in that situation why run the comparisons write themselves.
But in reality I think debate was really on things like red bins and a general discontent which she couldn't counter by being an engaging or exciting candidate on real issues.
So, question, is Labor going to learn that backroom staffers and lobbyists are far from the flavour of the day and they need to start finding real community candidates?
Oof, some of those candidate photos are truly awful.
If you're gona be the Woodside candidate up against the Hancock candidate just own it.
... I wonder if all the miners have a candidate running in Secret Harbour, there's enough candidates for them all.
I'll have to check this artist out next time i'm up Jurien Bay way
This project seems to have gone the way I suspect Prospera might go, but at a smaller scale.
Sometimes the wealthy are too senseless even for the size of their bank accounts to obfuscate.
South Lake residents wistfully look over the remaining pylons with Cr Phil Eva, wishing they still had their bridge. Photo by a waist-deep Steve Grant
Can't accuse Steve Grant of a lack of commitment.
You Sandgropers better tell them you don't want those options opened.
Are we living in cyberpunk yet when people have dazzle facial tattoos to defeat this tech?
I'm sure they'll get through this period, but you don't want to end up in a suburb that has no local shops. I was talking about Cannington with a friend the other day, apparently their local grocery shops are in Carousel. That would be such a drag trudging into that beast of a place just for the weekly shop.
βThis totally wasnβt stagedβ says the cop standing in front of a bank of crime-detecting, privacy-annihilating monitors as a woman is arrested on live tv in front of reporters forβ¦ not appearing in court.
I for one feel safer already.
I donβt even give it a week before these cameras will be set up at protests to collect biometric data on dissenters.
βThis is not about mass surveillance,β he said. βThis is about specifying those in the community who are wanted by police.
Uh huh... We'll see
Dystopia in our time.
Climbed it in 1979. Never been more scared. Not good with edges but I remember it vividly.
Youβre telling me that a group willing to make money off the work of a bigoted transphobe is doing something shitty?
Iβm shocked
Yeah, its interesting work. I've got a disused alleyway out the back of my house that i've been having daydreams about doing something of this nature in since this arvo. π Be a project and half though!
They were interesting reads.
I think it is on some of the old golf course. Going by the reporting a month or so ago, i think what set everybodies noses out of joint was the unnecessarily sneaky way the council put it put for 'public notice', then after all the negative feedback decided 'we've assessed our own actions and find them to be fine'.
Basically yet another example WA LGA's being made up of incomprehensible dolts. Its far from the most egregious example though, i think Nedlands or Port Hedland take that winners ribbon. But its a competitive field.
shoulda moved it to the golf course section.
Lot of cool details to notice on this map,