Even basic recycling of things like plastics is not done well.

Government using contractors as part of the system is fine, but not having a system at all seems to be the problem. Government should at the very least be setting up effective frameworks for management, recycling and disposal of all types of waste. Instead they set up a few guidelines and leave it to “market forces” and wonder why we end up with dodgy systems geared towards profit for company owners at the expense of the health and safety of the general public and the workers involved in the industry.

In the past decade or so in Victoria alone there have been: warehouses full of soft plastic being stockpiled, warehouses full of contaminated “mixed recycling” being stockpiled, warehouses full of toxic chemicals stockpiled and being stored incorrectly, a massive property being used as an illegal dump for huge volumes of toxic waste being secretly buried, an old landfill site leaking dangerous levels of methane into houses in a nearby housing estate

These are just the ones that were big enough to be in the media that I can remember off the top of my head. This is what “market forces” and weak regulations get us

I have about three possums per square metre where I am. I hear them carousing across the roof nightly, one lives (and raises baby possums) in the blocked off chimney in the bedroom, and I regualrly hear them disputing territory in the back yard. I recently lost a staring competition with a possum sitting on the fence outside my kitchen window. I’ve also had a possum come inside the house on three separate occasions.

I like possums in general, but I’d be very happy to have a few less of them around, I’m completely outnumbered and the garden suffers from their nibbling as well.

I did the GardenSafe one earlier this year. It also gives you a report on the composition of your soil, which confirmed my own soil analysis I did in the gardening course I am doing which was nice. Also confirmed no contaminants to be concerned about which is nice to know.

They way the Pharmacy Guild presented their case was pretty disgusting. I would have had a lot of sympathy about the issue of reducing income for pharmacies, and supported changes to make sure there are equitable outcomes for them. But the whole thing about shortages etc. and just trying to block any change was just rotten. They could have focused on making it a win/win situation - asking for an increase to their payments to make sure they are not losing money would be fair, and the changes would give more time to both customers and pharmacists. Instead of stressing about not forcing people in to their stores frequently so they can upsell them on the other dodgy shit they sell they could have focused on using that extra time to improve health outcomes, which they are constantly saying they are so vital for. If they want to keep their special privileges they get as medical professionals they should act like medical professionals and not shop owners who dispense medicine as a sideline.

I found this article’s headline focus on an afternoon nap as the “solution” to coping with high heat a bit disapointing. That was really one minor aspect of multiple things suggested. The necessity to build climate appropriate housing is a major factor, and it is not having a nap that protects against heat, it is not working an being active during the hottest part of the day - something that would require workplaces as well as individuals to make changes to social practices to allow. It’s not like you can have a 30 minute nap on your lunch break and power through work for the rest of the afternoon.

The part I found particularly interesting is the benefits of acclimatising to temperatures, although I suspect this is actually more important in seasonal Temperate areas than in Darwin which they are talking about. It’s not something individuals can always control when they work in climate controlled shops and offices, but I have found that making a conscious decision to get used to changing temperatures in both summer and winter rather than going straight for heating/cooling both saves energy and increases overall comfort levels over time.

You are in the process of putting a diagonal line through the centre of our flag. That feels pretty disrespectful to me. No one was touching your rainbow until you started to extend it to cross out the flag.

Change is a messy process, we are never going to get to a stage where we just line everything up and make some clean synchronised switch. Changing gas appliances at the end of their life with electric appliances is the most cost effective and least wasteful way of making change, and it is a change that will take years/decades. Just like the change to bring more renewable power into the grid will. If we don’t start changing appliances that are using gas then people will be arguing there is no point in generating more renewable power because people have using gas will be incurring extra financial and environmental costs to replace appliances that have not reached the end of their useful life.

Induction stoves are great to cook with, I’d say they are better than gas for almost everything. Probably a wok is the only one most people will have an issue with, and having been stuck with an old electric coil stove in the past and managing to make decent stir-frys I really don’t think that moving to a flat bottomed wok on an induction stove should be a deal breaker.

Just for personal interest. It really ties in well with my planning for my own future, but also covers wider issues, communication, science etc. I’m really enjoying it, and am considering doing a degree with a Sustainability major with UTAS when I finish. That won’t be free though, so I’ll have to work out if I can/should actually spend that much on it.

I am doing the Diploma now, and can definitely recommend it. Fully online, no text books to buy and flexible about when you study.

I’m guessing it was a technique they perfected nagging their parents for lollies and they have just never learned any better ways of engaging with society.

Reducing how much is used in the first place should always have been the priority. But businesses hate the idea of any message to use less of something. So they lobby for things like recycling to be pushed instead, because that both focuses the attention on the behaviour of individuals instead of them, and allows them to keep selling more. And people in general seem to be more than happy to believe that recycling magically fixes the waste problem so that they can keep buying their convenient single use products and not have to do arduous things like remember their own shopping bags.

There was interest in the Melbourne group for something along those lines too. Would a joint ADHD/ASD group work, and if there is enough volume they could be split later?

It is not my local feed that concerns me, it is the fact that we will become part of theirs. It will be like when a post is popular enough to make it onto the front page of Reddit - suddenly a post that was crafted for a local community, with users that have a shared culture and background, becomes exposed to a random audience including trolls and bullies who take 2 seconds to judge it and have no barrier to putting on their own comment and starting a pile on.

I feel that the large number of users is a problem, not an asset. What makes a platform good is the engagement level of the users, not the volume. A user who does not want to engage enough to create an account is not likely to be engaged enough to add significant value.

I moved away from Reddit because I don’t want to be part of one monolithic site, I want to be engaged with a smaller group that has more creative energy. There is no exclusivity clause that prevents people from using both sites and accessing all the content, but having them federated will lead to homogonisation and ultimately destroy what makes this site different. To extend the milk metaphor, we are the cream, mixing us in with the milk will make it richer, but destroy us.

That’s probably what they are gambling on 🤣