[–] 6 points 12 hours ago

I was peripherally a part of AWC as it was getting started - from the original Karakamia and Paruna sanctuaries around Perth into the new conservancy. I knew the founder, Martin Copley. I spent the first season setting up Mornington Station as AWC took it over in 2003.

It's a great organisation. Very lean on admin budgets, heavily invested in the actual conservative side. Even seeing how big it has gotten in the 20+ years since I was involved, I'm impressed by the 5% target.

The very fact that they're not that well-known even now is a plus as far as I'm concerned. It tells me that they're spending their donation money on conservation and not on advertising.

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  • [–] 17 points 12 hours ago

    I think this but of context is also important:

    His mother says he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and could become "fixated on certain things". He'd been living with her rent-free in a rural town west of Brisbane because he was depressed, withdrawn and "in debt up to his eyeballs".

    She believes he met a man online playing "live-action war games", who convinced him to fight for Russia as a solution to his problems.

    "He was just a desperate guy trying to get some money," she said.

    "They got him at the right time when he was weak and vulnerable. They said everything magical, and it worked."

    Coupled with how he was treated - getting injured in training and subsequently sent into the meat grinder while not being able to even run, tells a tale all by itself.

    His value was in propoganda - never as a soldier. He had served his usefulness before he reached the front lines.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago

    The stations selected under the scheme include Bassendean, Carlisle-Oats Street, Claisebrook, Cottesloe, Glendalough, Morley, Mosman Park and Swanbourne.

    Only three of these suburbs are "Western". Not that I'm against these buildings, I think they're a great idea if you can get them past the NIMBYs. Singling out Western suburbs feels like bait though.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    She is nothing so complicated. She's merely a relic of the old white, stupid and racist class that was fairly commonplace 50 years ago.

    She was screaming into the wind about "Asians" before the US president tried his thing as a Democrat 25 years ago (which nobody seems to talk about). She pre dates tea parties and Maga by decades.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    I'm happy to make it - you got a post ready to christen it? Go post in it so I can make you a mod.

    Happy to help you with setting it up, but it's pretty self explanatory.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago (2 children)

    It's the downside of the global economy. Facebook will be headquartered somewhere with low corporate tax.

    'Oh yes, we made a Billion dollars revenue in Australia, but after we pay all our licensing fees and stuff to our parent company, it turns out we didn't make any profits 🤷'

    Many companies so this. I'd love to see a study on how much tax revenue we lose to this practice, then compare that figure to the sorts of stuff we could buy with it like free universities etc.

    On interest rates, the government doesn't control that. The Reserve Bank is independent to the government. Rates are tied to inflation though - which the government can influence somewhat. It's a tangle, but as someone wanting house prices to come down, I'm not against the rate rises.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 days ago

    I think he cooperated and stuff. Also on the abuse scale he was just starting to dip his toes in/caught out at the start of his descent.

    It makes more sense for the police to sweep him up at this stage where has only a few incriminating files than to let him go deeper and potentially put kids in physical danger. He was a literal celebrity to kids and had access to them through school visits.

    But the trade off is a pretty weak prison sentence. He'll still be paying for this for life, though.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Huh. You are correct. BOM isn't backing me up. I'm left to fall-back on "Trust Me Bro", which is rather problematic. Especially because I checked back at the Yandicoogina camp (where I actually was) records and even they don't back me up! 😱

    I was only up there for three days one summer, but yes - it hit 50 two of those days - peaking at 53. However - it turns out that was not the official temperature. The proper BOM station is in a little enclosure out of the elements, measuring ambient temperatures. The thermometer outside the mess however was reflective of what we were living with - with heat radiating off the ground. I was assured that this was normal (50+) and to get used to it. Being a computer nerd from the city visiting for a few days, I had no reason to doubt this was typical. Nobody was complaining about the heat, though. Apparently, it's way worse in the pit - but I didn't need to experience that.

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  • [–] [M] 3 points 1 week ago* (2 children)

    The mod log is right there at the bottom of the page. Go ahead and read every single post I have removed in the history of Aussie.Zone. Point me to anything you believe has been removed ever that you believe should not have been.

    I dare you. I double-dare you.

    Nobody has ever questioned a removed post in the history of the site. And only one banned user decision was ever questioned (this was two years ago), and those questions were answered and agreed with publicly when I showed the comments that lead to the (non-permanent) ban. Whatever you have been told and whatever misguided impressions you have of Lemmy in general, they do not hold true at Aussie.Zone.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    I have no clue what the law is in WA, let alone NSW. I only know the tech side. This software works by essentially taking a clone of the files on your phone and then brute-forcing it offline. If your phone is off, its contents are all encrypted and can't be accessed. At least today.

    If you are the suspect of something big like murder etc, they'll keep your phone and probably will get into it eventually (like, years from now). And they'll persist that long. But, I doubt they'll commit those sorts of resources for a roadside stop.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    This software doesn't work if your phone is off.

    That isn't to say that there won't be a future version in a decade that can hack today's encrypted phones.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (3 children)

    You're clearly not a FIFO worker. The whole Pilbara and parts of northern SA get over 50° every summer. Sometimes for weeks at a time.

    I did say not in the cities. But also: most cities get above 40° every year. BOM will back that up. Look up Newman if you want a sample town.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    No idea what's going on in Victoria any more.

    The ASU’s attack on Labor relates to its long-running campaign to lift a cap on rates that councils can charge residents, which has constrained their ability to fund higher wages for staff.

    The left-aligned union claims it had a deal with Allan to lift the cap, which Carroll quickly scrapped after taking over the leadership, due to concerns it would increase cost of living pressures for non-council workers.

    Wait a minute. The unions' beef is that the State Government is refusing to allow Local Councils to raise rates enough on everyone, so that their workers in local government can get a pay rise? That's why they're upset with the Labor party?

    I'm struggling to feel sympathy for this cause. We're living in a bizarreo world where the unions are calling for higher tax rates? Council Rates are calculated based on the value of the property.

    The formula for calculating the rates for an individual property is the property valuation multiplied by the rate in the dollar set by the council.

    For example, if the Capital Improved Value of a property is $250,000 and the council rate in the dollar is set at 0.42 cents, the rate bill would be $1,050 ($250,000 x 0.0042).

    So in a real-world scenario where a property has a CIV of $1 Million, the rates are $4,200 for that property. This is already a major increase, since property values have skyrocketed in the last five years. And the Unions are calling for more?

    I'm so confused.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    As much as we want this to be an ecological response, it'll always boil down to a money thing.

    The trawling will stop when farming fish becomes more profitable than trawling the ocean for fish.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Pages 1-2 of The West Australian carried a similar message to this. 'We are the press and it is our job to criticise the government'.

    No. It is your job to inform people. Tell us what is going on. Tell us when there are other/better options than what the government is doing. But let us make up our own damn minds.

    The press has had a history over the last 15-20 years of trying to engage the audience, rather than informing it. And nothing engages us better than plucking the outrage. Make 'em mad and keep them coming back for more. So we see article after article criticising specific members of parliament and nothing about choices faced by the government.

    In the days of newspapers, you could get a decent impression of what most articles were about by the headlines. After all, the paper had already been sold - there was no requirement to get you to buy. Today, you need to click to get information. Headlines are all "pick me!" bait and not simply "This happened".

    So, after years of stirring up outrage, while providing limited information and zero solutions, we get journalists saying 'We are fire alarm; not the fuel'.

    Horseshit. You are absolutely a part of the problem, if not a major contributing factor to it.

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