Australia

The work is scholarly, but the straight-talking Australian can also be direct, such as when setting out how a global collapse could be avoided. “Don’t be a dick” is one of the solutions proposed,

Well, we do keep electing those that would make it worse, so perhaps we're as "guilty" as they are ?

The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25479430

She moved to Moscow from Miami in 2019 — before Mr Putin's new scheme was introduced — seeking to escape racism in the United States.

Earlier this month, the Black woman took to social media with a bloodied face, saying she'd been attacked by bigoted neighbours

In a video uploaded on Instagram this month, Ms Villa says her neighbours changed the locks to her apartment and cut off her electricity.

A 2021 report by Amnesty International said "violent racism" was "out of control" in Russia.

It said attacks, including killings, were reported with "shocking regularity" and that "anyone who does not look typically Russian" was at risk.

Also talks of the Texas family posted elsewhere in here. Still alive ... Apparently.

It looks like they chose August 1st as a date to disable access to the old interface. I'm very sad, I really don't like the new one:

• Padding everywhere (touchscreen-shique, even for things you can't tap on like paragraphs)
• Bigger text on narrower text columns (a LOT more scrolling)
• News articles arranged left-right as well as up-down (not as nice to navigate as a single list).
• News articles summaries/blurbs often just one sentence, far too little. I have to click on a lot more articles now to even find out what they're about. (I worry this is an engagement metric that makes them think the new interface is working better).
• Defaults to only showing you articles for your state. This makes me really uncomfortable (is the average person only expected to care about what happens in their state?).

/vent

A newly discovered stick insect which weighs slightly less than a golf ball may be the heaviest insect in Australia, scientists say.

The 40cm-long new species, named Acrophylla alta, was found in the high altitudes of the Atherton tablelands in north Queensland – and scientists said the habitat could be part of the reason for its large size.

The reforms will deliver:

• a one-off 20% reduction in HELP and student loan balances, effective from 1 June 2025. Someone with the average Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debt of $27,600 will see around $5,520 wiped from their outstanding student loan.

• Lower repayment amounts, under a new marginal repayment system making it easier to manage living expenses.

• Higher income thresholds, increasing how much people can earn before repayments are required, allowing graduates to keep more of their earnings. The new repayment threshold will change from $54,435 to $67,000.

Signal president Meredith Whittaker is prepared to withdraw the privacy-focused messaging app from Australia — saying she hopes it doesn’t become a “gangrenous foot” by poisoning its entire platform by forcing it to hand over its users’ encrypted data to authorities.

Ms Whittaker says Signal would take the “drastic step” of leaving any market where a government compelled it to create a “backdoor” to access its data, saying it would create a vulnerability that hackers and authoritative regimes could exploit, undermining Signals’ “reason for existing”.

Pressure has been mounting on Signal and other secure messaging platforms. ASIO director general Mike Burgess has urged tech companies to unlock encrypted messages to assist terrorism and national security investigations, saying offshore extremists use such platforms to communicate.

archive.today

Labor is dead.

“Earning a humanities degree was not only life changing, in terms of opening up a world of knowledge otherwise beyond my reach, it also turns out to have been enormously productive – for me and many, many people around me,” said Tim Winton this week. “My little arts degree has created jobs and cultural value for over 40 years.”

Winton is one of more than 100 high-profile Australians with Bachelor of Arts degrees who have signed an open letter by the Australian Historical Association (AHA). It urges Anthony Albanese to abolish the Morrison government’s widely condemned Job-Ready Graduates package and establish an equitable university fee system that “does not punish students who choose to study the humanities and social sciences”.

...

In the lead-up to the 2022 election, Labor promised a review of the scheme. Two years and two federal elections later, it remains in place. “The idea that a Labor government would do nothing at all to right this wrong is utterly mystifying,” said Winton.

cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/31141099

The couple took Alex's faeces, blended it with saline, passed it through a sieve, put the slurry into an enema bottle and "then head down, bum up, squeeze it in"

Woman meets frog, frog leads woman to man, man and woman fall in love," she says.

"Man cures woman's incurable illness with his magic poo, thus breaking the curse.

I volunteered to donante my poop to my parter... Different outcome :(