drsmithy

@VeryInsig It's simply unnecessary. 1/2 acre block for every household in the country is equivalent to about 1/3rd of Tasmania.

One reason this idea resonates with many Australians is because we are tired of living in big cities populated by so many foreigners. That makes us feel like our own home no longer belongs to us. This idea evokes the possibility of living somewhere new among other Australians.

@ausstockchick You mean the CGT discount ? If so then yet another performative change with little real impact.

The rumour is that Albo plans to reduce CGT to 33% effective immediately (on budget night). #ausbiz #auspol

@disco___cat I have no trouble believing Trump & his cast of muppets did not understand this. I cannot believe anyone in Israel didn’t.

Oops. We completely fucked the world economy. Sorry about that.

@historyinmemes Half the adults in the country would probably fail this today, even without biased marking.

Literacy test given to African Americans as a prerequisite to being allowed to vote during the height of Jim Crow Segregation. The test was designed to be impossible to pass. (1960s)

@ATabarrok @LizHighleyman That’s not how employers work though. Higher productivity means fewer employees working the same hours, not the same employees working fewer hours.

@LizHighleyman Increase in productivity, same as it did in past creating massive increase in leisure, as discussed in the post.

Imagine I told you that AI was going to create a 40% unemployment rate. Sounds catastrophic. Now imagine I told you that AI was going to create a 3-day working week. Sounds wonderful. Yet to a first approximation these are the same thing. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

@brockpierson Yep. Paid for itself in less than a term.

Did you own a CD burner back in the day when they used to cost upwards of $300?

@FatBoyDontKnow1 @ReviewsPossum Judging by the way fertility interacts with modern civilisation it’s questionable this would ever be necessary anyway.

@ReviewsPossum County-sized O'Neill Cylinders in a single layer at a 1000km separation gives just under a million habs, call it 900k because we'll want some nature preserves. 36 Billion humans. Probably 45 billion including Earth, Luna and other bodies.

This is why the aliens don't visit us. By the time you're advanced enough to visit other stars, you've developed the ability to make full use of your local system's resources. There's no pragmatic reason to embark on a risky and expensive centuries-long journey to another star when you can support quadrillions of people indefinitely in a Dyson swarm of artificial habitats.

@MarkoMatvikov Personally don’t have a problem with at least a digital count & humans checking for, say, winning margins <5%. Text/image recognition is pretty good these days. Implementing it would be politically fraught, however, regardless of how transparently it was done.

@drsmithy Yep but surely we can do digital counting and human scrutinising?

The wisdom of crowds is real - but it’s a sad reality of compulsory voting that the ballot paper itself has a material impact on results.

@GregLucas07 @MarkoMatvikov Donkey vote generally accepted to be 1-2%

@MarkoMatvikov Any evidence for that comment or just a gut feel? Surely most voters have the capacity to find the person or party they want to vote for, regardless of ballot paper position.

@Andr3jH Nah. This

Explaining how these two images are connected should be part of the American citizenship exam.

@KaoticLeftist "We need the rich to pay their own way more." "No, not like that !"

If you want to means-test rich people we already have a way to do that. It is called taxation. You should provide universal programs and then tax rich people more on the backend. Means testing from the start just pisses people off and it erodes the programs as Adam eludes to.

@elormkdaniel I think it's important to highlight that "years" ago means ~25 years ago not 5 (or even 10) years ago. The last batteries you had to worry about "overcharging" disappeared in the mid-00s (& were very uncommon by then).

Years ago, the answer was usually yes. Older batteries could suffer from overcharging if they stayed plugged in for too long. But modern laptops are designed very differently. Today’s machines use Lithium‑ion battery technology along with intelligent power management systems built directly into the hardware and operating system. When your laptop reaches full charge, the charging circuit automatically stops sending power to the battery. Instead, the system begins drawing power directly from the adapter. In other words, once the battery is full, the laptop essentially runs off wall power while the battery just sits there at its maximum level. That’s why keeping your laptop plugged in most of the time won’t “overcharge” it. The charging controller prevents that from happening. However, there’s a small catch. Lithium-ion batteries don’t particularly enjoy sitting at 100% for extremely long periods, especially when combined with heat. Over months or years, constantly staying at full charge can slightly accelerate battery wear. This is why many modern systems include battery optimization features that intentionally keep the charge around 80–90% when the laptop is plugged in for long durations. Operating systems like Windows and macOS even learn your charging habits and slow down the final part of charging to reduce stress on the battery.

@MarkoMatvikov Sure, but nobody is suggesting banning everything. & unbanning nuclear power isn't going to provide generations of experience with it other countries have. Offshoring is almost always done in the search of larger profits.

@drsmithy No innovation will come from here if we ban or offshore everything.

This is the question a journalist should've asked Energy Minister Chris Bowen at yesterday's press conference: China is the world's largest polluter - emitting about 30 times what Australia does annually. They currently have an energy mix comprising about 60% coal-fired power – supplemented by hydro, nuclear, and gas. They’re rapidly expanding (not replacing) their energy capacity with a mix that includes 80% renewables – as well as coal and nuclear plants. They’ve committed to a net zero target of 2060 – a full decade later than Austalia. Why should Australia not pursue a similarly diverse energy mix and commit to the same net zero target as China?

@MarkoMatvikov No innovation in nuclear power - SMRs or otherwise - is going to come from Australia.

@drsmithy Agree - so it'd be nice if we could at least remove the ban and encourage innovation in nuclear tech.

@MarkoMatvikov Though I will caveat that with SMRs, should they ever actually deliver on the promises of low cost, mass-production, quick & easy deployment, fully lifecycled, etc. This is the only nuclear option Australia should ever consider.

@MarkoMatvikov But it makes little sense to build new coal (~10yrs) & even less nuclear (~20-30yrs), because by the time they were built renewables will have already filled any "gap". Which is one of the main reasons no private enterprise will/would do either.

@ShadowyZephyr I draw the line at animals farmed for meat consumption - so have standards (be they sufficient or not, a separate discussion) for quality, care, health, etc. This is not true in most (all?) cases when it comes to cats & dogs.

people posting this as a roast as if they aren't just proving PETA's point, that everyone draws the line in a different place, with no logic behind it. you can do this but then don't turn around and call cultures barbaric for eating cats and dogs (which many people do)!

@aukuschampion @MarkoMatvikov The western world "deindustrialised" for capitalism decades before net zero was anything more than a side note in climate science.

@MarkoMatvikov China engineered net zero. Very clever tbh. The entire western world now supports their manufacturing and also deindustrialised.