I Had A Random Thought...

[Professor Video Games]

There's that weird zone where people are slightly too far away to make holding the door open reasonable but they are close enough that you don't want to let it go and have it shut in their face, so you have to hold it and it's all very annoying. But then they feel obligated to do this awkward little jog so that you aren't standing there forever and honestly a small part of me relishes making people have to run like that.

[Merus]

Australian politics decided to just go off the deep end again. This is over climate change, so a primer on Australian politics and how climate change has increased the chaos to almost farcical proportions:

 

Back in 2007 new liberal leader Kevin Rudd announced that climate change was the greatest moral issue of our time, and crafted legislation to introduce an ETS (emissions trading scheme with a cap-and-trade element). The then conservative opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, announced that his party would support the legislation, which his party decided was the last straw and they moved to oust him. He was replaced by climate change denier Tony Abbott, winning by a single vote. The ETS didn't make it out of the upper house (killed by, of all people, the Greens). Copenhagen didn't go well either, and Rudd abandoned the ETS. Voters, in turn, abandoned Rudd, as this and other visible backpedals exposed him as a man who talked a big game but couldn't actually get things done, and his party took the extraordinary step of ousting him as leader and installing his deputy as leader, Julia Gillard.

 

They got hammered in the next election for this (and also because Rudd leaked tons of damaging documents to the press during the election). Gillard had convinced Rudd to drop the ETS in the first place, and her own proposal was to put together a citizen's committee to decide if Australia should care, but her government wouldn't introduce a carbon tax or anything. This was obviously bullshit, but Abbott (nicknamed the Mad Monk) was describing climate change as 'crap' and was running on policies that just didn't matter to people. So they both lost: neither party got enough seats to form government as a majority, and they'd have to form government by convincing independent members of parliament to pass their budget bills. The liberal party could realistically get three members onside, but one was the Greens' first lower house member.

 

Guess what he wanted in return.

 

If you said 'actual carbon change legislation', you'd be right.

 

So Gillard was forced into reviving the ETS, except with a guaranteed minimum price. They also introduced a raft of measures to ensure this'd work out - an independent body that would advise the government on climate change, a cut to income tax and extra payments for people on benefits, a renewable energy target, and a VC fund for clean energy. Abbott went on the warpath, calling her Juliar and making out that her statement that she wouldn't introduce a carbon tax was a solemn vow and not something over which she lost the election. There are photos of him behind banners saying 'ditch the witch' at rallies that he didn't organise but was happy to endorse, and he made a huge deal about people's power bills being enormous because of the climate tax (nevermind that the power companies were encouraged to spend the government's money on over-engineering their infrastructure, the maintenance of which they passed onto customers). Gillard continued to be unpopular because she was seen as having her hands dirty over the disposal of an elected leader, and she didn't prove to be an adept enough politician to sell her good policies, or notice the bad ones before they built budgets around them. This was the period where she gave the famous misogyny speech in parliament, which is an uncharacteristically good speech from her.

 

The election loomed, and Abbott's relentless negative attacks had taken their toll. They were heading towards a wipeout at the polls, and so the party leadership went to their plan B folder: they ousted her and put Kevin Rudd back in. And then panicked when the first thing he did was introduce new party rules that meant the party leadership had to be voted on by the entire member base (how this was not already a rule I have no idea) and then started making up ridiculous new policies on the campaign trail. Kevin Rudd turned out to be as insane as his party members had secretly thought he might be; it took him three years to alienate the rest of his party with his constant sabotaging of their work, until they eventually got rid of him, but he was so charismatic that the voters didn't twig.

 

So the Greens are rubbing their hands with glee because they'll finally get their chance in the sun, but that's when billionaire coal magnate Clive Palmer announces he's starting a political party, and they're running in every electorate of Australia. This is the guy who decided he'd build the Titanic II, and a dinosaur park. People joked that instead of Jurassic Park he'd been watching The West Wing and decided that looked like fun. He's calling his party the Palmer United Party, and guess what he thinks about climate change! (Hint: he's a billionaire coal magnate.)

 

So the liberal party loses and Prime Minister Abbott (who is, hilariously, also the Minister for Women and Indigenous Australians, and by 'hilariously' I mean 'distressingly') immediately starts dismantling climate change bodies in the name of fiscal responsibility. There is no Minister for Science for the first time in decades. Apparently climate change is real and he's always said that, except that he's also left climate change off the G20 agenda and has been buddying up to Stephen Harper. Instead of an actually effective and revenue-neutral cap-and-trade system, Abbott wants a "Direct Action" scheme, which apparently involves a reverse auction where companies bid for funding to reduce their emissions, which basically no-one thinks will work and will cost tons of money when the conservative party have been freaking out about the budget deficit. In the upper house, the Greens lose a couple of seats, and suddenly the Palmer United Party gets the balance of power: if the conservatives want something, and the liberals and Greens don't, the numbers fall out so that Clive Palmer gets to decide whether or not it passes. The senators are just about to take their seats (and the Greens have been voting down any climate change bills in the meantime - it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that the Greens' voting patterns are significantly influenced by spite).

 

But before that, the conservative party has to pass the budget, and the reaction from the electorate could only be described as horror. A compulsory fee for doctor's visits. A six-month waiting period for unemployment welfare, and a six-month maximum before payments stop. Deregulation of universities, to make it a US style system. Retirement age of 70. Foreign aid slashed. Funding for schools slashed. The national broadcaster's funding slashed. Hospital funding slashed. But lots of funding for the military and for getting chaplains in schools! Reactions were somewhere from 'wow, that's an awful lot of cuts' to 'this is unAustralian'.

 

It's been a month and a half, the conservative government is still at around 30% approval rating, and if the Palmer United Party don't take their seats and start passing their budget measures soon, the Abbott government will collapse and everyone - lower and upper house - goes back to the voters. But while Clive Palmer isn't going to approve the changes to Medicare or to welfare, his party ran on repealing the carbon tax (as well as getting a fairer deal for all Australians or something) and he's maintained that he's still going to do that, and that he'd announce his party's opinions on the actual legislation they'll be voting on just before they take their seats in the upper house.

 

That announcement happened today, jointly announced by Al Gore. 

[clyde]

One time my a couple of friends and I decided that we weren't going to talk for a day. By noon, I was having amazing realizations by what 80% of typical speech is actually communicating. When someone asks "How are you doing?" or "Nice weather, huh?" they are actually just seeking acknowledgement. You know those movies where someone dies and they are finding out that they are a ghost? The way they often find out is that no one responds to them. This communicates that the character has stopped existing pretty effectively because so much of typical interaction is just people saying to each other "Are we cool? Are you still willing to talk to me."

Once. I saw it this way, I realized that I'm providing people with something they need through pleasantries. Saving the question of how are you for when you actually care to hear about what they thought in the shower is ignoring the actual meaning of the phrase in place of the literal one. No one cares about the literal question (though you can easily still find out how they are doing by pushing it a little more). It's like why there is a popular phrase "She wouldn't give you the time of day."

As for doors, I just hold them open for people who have their hands full or are walking backwards.

[Merus]

The punchline: he's still going to repeal the carbon tax, in favour of an emissions trading scheme with the price held at $0 until Australia's major trading partners, the US and China, also introduce emissions markets with links to Australia. However, in return he wants Abbott to introduce legislation that will guarantee a reduction in people's power bills in some unspecified fashion, which Abbott has been saying that repealing the carbon tax will do all along (remember that there's been a lot of rorting going on by the power companies). He will vote to save the independent climate change advisory, the VC fund for clean energy, and won't vote to scrap the renewable energy target with this government. And apparently he thinks climate change is real now, and credits Al Gore for setting him straight.

 

The conservatives have been outplayed; Abbott gets what he's been claiming he wants, but he'll have to guarantee that the carbon tax was exactly as bad for power bills as he'd always claimed, and still leave an ETS ready to be reactivated so he has to explain to the climate deniers that helped him into power why he's left the next government the ability to just turn on the carbon price again. The liberals and Greens have been outplayed; Australia will have no effective climate change legislation, but if they vote against it they'll kill the ancillary measures, particularly the VC fund which was seeing actual results, and Clive Palmer looks like a hero for bringing in an ETS, when the fixed carbon price was going to start floating in a couple of years anyway, and the liberals wanted to do it early.

 

Also Al Gore was there.

 

Fucking nuts.

[SecretAsianMan]

When someone asks "How are you doing?" or "Nice weather, huh?" they are actually just seeking acknowledgement. You know those movies where someone dies and they are finding out that they are a ghost? The way they often find out is that no one responds to them. This communicates that the character has stopped existing pretty effectively because so much of typical interaction is just people saying to each other "Are we cool? Are you still willing to talk to me."

Once. I saw it this way, I realized that I'm providing people with something they need through pleasantries. Saving the question of how are you for when you actually care to hear about what they thought in the shower is ignoring the actual meaning of the phrase in place of the literal one. No one cares about the literal question (though you can easily still find out how they are doing by pushing it a little more). It's like why there is a popular phrase "She wouldn't give you the time of day."

 

I completely understand that is the intent of such phrases, but I still dislike the form.  I get that what most people want is a simple acknowledgement, but I don't like it as an empty gesture.  Asking how someone is doing when you don't actually care means that asking how someone is doing when you actually DO care is less effective because it has the same form as a standard greeting.  But mostly I don't like asking (or being asked) a question in which the answer is irrelevant.

 

And Merus, I'm not completely ignoring your posts, I just have nothing constructive to add.

[Dewar]

Wow, a politics story where something actually happens. The US has been in a pointless deadlock for so long that I forgot what that looks like.

 

I guess this is a "better than nothing" type situation for everyone involved.

[SecretAsianMan]

Weird thing I learned today: Babymetal is coming to the US and they're going to open for Lady Gaga.

 

[Bjorn]

I would probably go see that if it was coming anywhere near me, just for spectacle of it all.

[N1njaSquirrel]

I thought Hatsune Miku was opening for Lady Gaga?

 

I am always surprised by how much Lady Gaga likes Japan. It feels like to me she's actually spent some time to understand and appreciate their culture instead of just being an idiot who thinks that ninjas are cool.

[feelthedarkness]

She should also bring BISKAIDAN. Way cooler!

[Ucantalas]

instead of just being an idiot who thinks that ninjas are cool.

But... but ninjas ARE cool...

 

[Gormongous]

I will never understand trolling, not as it is usually applied today. Look at this post from the anime fansub group UTW. The release guy got sick of being asked when a show was going to be done, so he located, screencapped, uploaded, and posted literally over a hundred shots of some girl from another show that's the supposed rival to the first one, in addition to several thousand words of text and lyrics. And then he pops up in the comments thread to the post over and over, laughing behind his hands at all the "jimmies" apparently being "rustled" when people ask why he spent hours making a massive, site-breaking post with absolutely zero informational content.

 

What does it even mean to troll someone these days? Is it the same thing as pranking, because that's what this is. It's a prank, except it's a prank the prankster plays on themselves and then calls an even bigger prank when other people react with confusion at how dumb they seem to be. It's like the time I shared a room with an asshole from my department for a conference and he "pranked" me by eating a ton of spicy food that made him horribly sick so that he could fart a bunch and stink up the room. Yeah man, you really trolled me there. I do hate other people's farts, maybe even more than you hate twelve hours of stomach cramps.

 

Also, UTW used to be one of the good groups, but I know now that every fansub group gets taken over by cowboys eventually and then dies a quiet death about a year later. Ah well.

[BadHat]

I gave up on trying to keep track of what constituted trolling when I got into a big ol' internet fight with someone who was convinced that he was being trolled because someone said something he didn't agree with. Intent didn't even enter into it, he just heard something he didn't like and went full Godwin mode on the word troll. It was one of those "why do I give a shit" epiphanies.

[Zeusthecat]

I want to know who this other asshole is on the internet that uses "Zeusthecat" as their username. I feel like at this point I should have seniority and they should be the ones being forced to put stupid X's around their name for all of their various user ID's. So far, Zeusthecat has been taken on Xbox Live, PSN, Origin, Uplay, Steam, and just about every other goddamn thing I have been forced to create an account for. At least I managed to snag it here.

[Ucantalas]

One of the very few upsides to having a username based on mashing the keyboard and then adding vowels so it can be pronounced.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I'm happily in control of my username on most sites, but I lost it on Youtube... to myself. When google took over Youtube they finnicked around some nonsense and weirdly merged accounts that meant I lost my old account and had to choose a new username.

 

I will never forgive Google.

[Gormongous]

I lost it on Youtube... to myself. When google took over Youtube they finnicked around some nonsense and weirdly merged accounts that meant I lost my old account and had to choose a new username.

 

I will never forgive Google.

 

This happened to me, too. It's abominable.

[SecretAsianMan]

The majority of my actual usernames in places is SecretAsianManz because it was the first variation that wasn't taken on Xbox Live and Steam and at this point I default to using it everywhere because I assume that normal version will be taken.  What really bugs me about Steam is that you can change your name without changing your actual ID.  In practice I like that because it means I don't have to jump through a million hoops if I want to be called something else, but it also means the other guy has my name and isn't even USING it.

[SuperBiasedMan]

The majority of my actual usernames in places is SecretAsianManz because it was the first variation that wasn't taken on Xbox Live and Steam and at this point I default to using it everywhere because I assume that normal version will be taken.  What really bugs me about Steam is that you can change your name without changing your actual ID.  In practice I like that because it means I don't have to jump through a million hoops if I want to be called something else, but it also means the other guy has my name and isn't even USING it.

 

Of course not, if he was using it then his identity wouldn't be so secret, would it?

[clyde]

I keep a list of potential handles on my phone. Here they are:

Slouch

Cognitive bias

Naps

Whimsy

Artsy

Amused

Conflator

BadBreath

Whimsi

PoorEverybody

Subliminal friend

Bousard

Broken machines

Flaws

Flawed

Flaw

Flod

Flaughes

Bad investment

Wooden doitagen

[JonCole]

Edit: I took Bjorn's advice and moved my discussion of the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision to the Feminism thread.

 
Side note: I got a parking ticket today, for parking in the same place in my front yard that I have been for upwards of two years. Today is the worst.

[Bjorn]

Jon, you might copy that over into the Feminist thread.  It's an interesting topic, and while health care and birth control matter for everyone, this is predominantly a fight that feminists end up taking on. 

[Twig]

I had a glass of milk earlier today because I WANTED TO OKAY and I had donuts and well donuts go with milk that's just obvious.

 

Anyway now I'm super smelly gassy. My cat jumped off my lap because I farted.

 

My life is over.

[tegan]

Happy Canada Day! 

[tegan]

The Little Mermaid is basically Faust.

 

Blew my mind.