Maybe re-read my comment

Incidentally I am fortunate to live in a small town with a farmers market, a convenience store, a dry goods store and a small supermarket all within walking distance and very few people don’t use all 4, which is more to my point that if the convenience is there people will use it.

Blaming individuals for systemic failures is almost always counterproductive.

I kind of think “whining” about systemic problems is really important.

It’s really not the consumer’s fault that we have so little competition, that is a regulatory failure. It’s not their fault that town planning places supermarkets far apart and difficult to travel between, that’s a planning failure.

Raising public awareness by “whining” is one of the few things we can do that might translate into change.

Whenever I’ve used an LLM to edit anything it goes right ahead and removes my voice from the text, even more advanced models and even when I repeatedly clarify that that’s not what I want. I don’t think it’s up to the task.

I am absolutely on the same page as you. I really don’t think the system we have in the liberal representative ‘democracies’ deserve the title democracy, nor can democracy exist meaningfully at that scale.

Local politics, local direct action, and volunteering are always a step towards a better future, but that isn’t enough without the structural changes you advocate.

I think that confederal municipalism is viable in the sense that, if set up correctly, it can work. Convincing more cetralised authorities to cede power is where it becomes difficult.

While I do agree that housing is such a much more important factor in cost of living than Colesworth gouging but it is a real issue and competition may improve it.

I think that a better solution would be to transition the big chains to some combination of worker/consumer ownership. But increasing competition is the only solution to this one inside the Overton.

Dammit, I did a quick literature search first too.

If I wanted I could say I meant Australian recommended levels which have never been more than 1mg/L but I didn’t specify. WHO recommendations are <=1.5mg/L.

Also I will stand by my point as

There were limited data and uncertainty in the dose-response association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ when fluoride exposure was estimated by drinking water alone at concentrations less than 1.5 mg/L.

The study is inconclusive and suggestive at those lower dose ranges and not relevant to Australia as our standards recommend even lower levels, but it does “suggest” which was my criteria. Possibly the WHO ought to adopt something closer to the western world standard of around 0.7mg/L

Probably this is what @Tenderizer is referencing and we all owe them an apology.

Name your charity @MHLoppy2

Give me a reference to the ‘International Online Journal of Who Gives A Fuck’ and I’ll take look.

I just can’t stand this “My uncle heard some guy on talk back radio say…” bullshit.

Please don’t spread this rubbish misinformation.

Water fluoridation is so thoroughly established as safe and the physiological effects are so well understood that it is hard to find recent reputable papers even commenting on it.

I will donate $1000 to a charity of your choice if you can provide a peer reviewed article in a reputable journal that suggests it is suspected to be unsafe at recommended levels.

Criteria: must be a full research or systematic review paper (not an editorial or opinion), published in a recognized scientific journal, and include a DOI. I’ll verify the paper and post the donation receipt publicly.

a curated portfolio of their child’s artwork

It’s a novel fundraiser and a couple of nutcase parents called channel nine.

Its been a while and I’m writing from memory so happy to have clarifications.

There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that the CIA encouraged John Kerr to dissolve parliament. The US govt definitely didn’t like Whitlam’s foreign policy and wanted him gone. John Kerr was definitely in touch with the CIA and the director of the CIA called him “our man Kerr”. It is also unprecedented before and since(unpostcidented?) for a governor general to dissolve parliament without advice from the PM nor did he seek advice from the queen. I believe, and I think it’s a not uncommon opinion among serious historians, that there was some nudging from the CIA hoping that Whitlam would be ousted before the crisis could resolve itself with Whitlam retaining leadership and that things might’ve been different had the CIA not been subtly pushing their agenda.

Gillard’s ousting I’m less familiar with and so I’m a bit lighter on the details. Again, the US definitely preferred her foreign policy stance and the party members who pushed for Rudd’s removal had ties with the US. Maybe there was some nudging going on. I don’t know enough to judge this one.

Both of these happened on a background of waning leadership of the leader and a viable, electable, alternative already in place. Ley is a joke, it would take more than a nudge from the CIA to get her in.

I’ll sign off now feeling that I’ve sufficiently annoyed both sides.

*Edit - I totally agree that it is completely inappropriate for the opposition leader to be putting her policy to a foreign government rather than putting it to the electorate. Treason? Probably not, but a breach of protocol, definitely.

I’ve never been terribly anti-nuclear (insert several caveats here) but it just hasn’t made a lot of economic sense for some years now to invest in new plants. It’d be great if the next generation reactors are economically viable and I suppose it’s good(ish???) that the Chinese and Russians are keeping the figurative flame alive but nuclear plants just aren’t a big part of the picture for the next 20 years at least.

On a related note I’ve really stopped paying heaps of attention to the anti-solar, anti-wind, anti-EV crowd over the past couple of years as they’ve lost the argument, the economics have shifted away from their ideology. We ought be moving faster but once the invisible hand of the market decides that you’re wrong it’s only a matter of time.

I can’t help but feel you haven’t read the article posted or my comments. You’re not addressing any of the points raised and instead just seem to have a bee in bonnet about the referendum which is at best tangentially related.

I do understand the fatigue of this being an ongoing issue but that doesn’t really change the situation.

Thanks for the response.

I have to assume that you’re quite young since you seem to think that 30 or 50 years is enough time to erase the kind of trauma anglo-Australians put indigenous Australians through, this is living memory for many of us.

There really is no denying that coming from parents who have suffered trauma and economic disadvantage leaves the children at severe disadvantage themselves, ie the sins perpetrated on the grandparents of today’s young adults are a key reason for their disadvantage.

This kind of reasoning is often taken as ‘excusing’ bad behaviour, it shouldn’t be but it is explanation and we do bear some responsibility to alleviate that disadvantage while still holding people responsible for individual actions.

The final key point is that systemic racism remains rife. You would have to be willfully blind to not see that indigenous people are treated differently at the Centrelink office, the emergency department triage desk, at a job interview.

You correctly point out some big numbers involved in current support for indigenous focussed programmes, I suspect that much of this is providing services that they find difficult to access through the mainstream due to systemic racism which is kind of a bare minimum, regardless we have a long way to go.

The past isn’t gone, it isn’t even past. I hope you can appreciate that there is a but more subtlety to this issue than you seem to give it credit for.

I think there’s a subtlety to this argument that you’re missing.

The prosperity of all non-indigenous Australians is built on what was taken from the indigenous population with brutal force.

The single most important reason that there is such a large gap in quality of life between the indigenous and non-indigenous population is that for more than a century it was government policy to repress and deny opportunity to the indigenous population.

It is not unreasonable to think that we, as a population that has built a prosperous society on the ruins of theirs, that we could give them a hand to regain some benefit of our prosperity.

We hear a lot from conservative cranks that indigenous individuals should take responsibility for their actions, most progressives actually agree on that. I would argue that as a settler society we should take responsibility for our collective past actions.

The Liberal party becoming less and less electable by the minute

There’s no doubt Australia is strategically useful to the US(Pine gap, Exmouth, Garden Island), if the US continues its current course then the US ceases to be useful to Australia.

I can’t imagine that everyone in power doesn’t know this, maybe they’re all waiting to see if normality returns in 2028…

None of Poland, Qatar, or Ukraine make sense as Australian allies. The point is that all 3 are allegedly under the protection of the USA and all three have seen attacks that the USA has ignored… We cannot think that we can rely on the USA to defend us.

I know this has come about independently from Aukus but it’s hard not to see this through that lens. In the context of all troubles and uncertainty of Aukus this pops up and leaves us all wondering not just are the Aukus subs worth the cost but will they have any tactical value at all in 25y time

Just putting this here as several commentors seem to have misread my intention posting this here

Most responses here seem to assume that I’m opposed to medical marijuana, I’m not. I am in fact in favor of it’s use, appropriately, in select patients, as with any medication.

I also want to caution against conflating recreational use(which may be problematic but is usually fine) with medicinal use(which should be held to the highest standards of evidence as any medicine should).

Now, regarding the evidence to date, efficacy is well established for refractory epilepsy and spasticity in MS. It is quite well established to have a role in pain control. Evidence that it is superior to other treatments for anxiety is pretty scant, we hold antidepressants to a pretty low standard and cannabis fails to even be that good in the published studies.

In terms of safety we frequently see acute intoxication from prescribed cannabis and worsening of co-morbid mental health conditions is really common. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and abdominal pains are all fairly frequent and I have seen one case of psychosis from prescribed marijuana. What’s more, we see these more commonly in emergency departments, psych wards and GP clinics now that it is easily available from unscrupulous corporate owned clinics.

The article isn’t claiming that medical marijuana is inherently dangerous or that it doesn’t have a role in medicine. It states, correctly, that the TGA has never actually assessed the safety of the vast majority of products on the market. This is concerning for anyone who might want to prescribe these with confidence.

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