It may sound insignificant, but quality-of-life issues like these feel incredibly frustrating, and build the feeling that your computer is working against you, rather than with you (or at the very least at cross purposes to you). Friction is a big deal. It doesn't feel like your tool when it keeps doing things you don't want it to do.
It was exactly this issue that made me finally dump Gnome.
I'm unsure about this. On the one hand, it does seem unfair to exclude people who aren't rich from particular kinds of investment. On the other, it might be a good protection for the overall system. The investments we're talking about here aren't your everyday shares and funds, they're the riskier stuff. It doesn't play well on TV to show a grandmother crying over the loss of her retirement savings and some smarmy banker saying "well, Ms Strawman clearly accepted the risks that were set out plain as day on page 2915 of Annex A7 to the disclosure bundle". Before you know it, media pressure leads to bad regulations that mean no one is allowed to make these risky investments.
As someone who has worked multiple elections for the Australian Electoral Commission, this is an incredibly rosy view of Australian elections.
You’re thinking of the preliminary count in a polling place. On election night, basically the only thing that’s being counted (estimated) is which of the two (expected) main parties in a seat has the lead. It’s the only thing scrutineers pay attention to - no one watches the preliminary Senate count. Declaration votes (out of area) and below the line Senate votes (complex preferences) aren’t counted /at all/ on election night. No one has ever stopped me from leaving the polling place during a count.
Once the preliminary count is done, the ballots are driven off by the Officer in Charge into the night in his or her personal car for the real count. It’s not hard to be an OIC - it was offered to me while I was still at uni. There’s no particular ethical or vetting requirements to be one, and they’re often older folk who don’t bother reading the rules and requirements, and I’ve seen them do things that are brazenly illegal. Entire boxes of votes have gone missing in the past. We have had to re-run an entire election recently because of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Australian_Senate_speci...
It’s one thing to be critical of shoddy election practises and I support your indignation, but let’s not fall into tired “America bad” tropes. Elections are hard. We muck ‘em up too.
> Really, they're nostalgic for an era when almost everybody else they ran into on the internet shared the background of being a white, male American geek
As someone who doesn’t fit into that pigeon hole, and whose friends mostly don’t either, it’s so disheartening to read essentialist assumptions like these. We liked the Internet better back then too!
You’re taking something that’s objectively good, and saying it’s associated with white people, and implying that’s bad. So not only do we collectively lose the objectively good thing (because it’s now guilty by association of racism - the greatest social crime of our day), but you’re also erasing non-white contributions to that good thing. It’s an own goal all round.
I'm fairly open-minded to a critical take on trans issues, so I gave the linked podcast a listen, and I just want to report back that it's pretty straight-up conspiracy theory thinking. For example, the author of the book notes that it was only two weeks between the SCOTUS gay marriage decision and Caitlyn Jenner's cover on Vanity Fair - saying it was "obviously coordinated". There's talk of "putting pieces together", etc. If you're not conspiracy theory inclined, you can save yourself the trouble.
It's worth noting how little debate there was (or is) on any of this here in Australia, by the by. The government decides this is happening, and the media cheer them on. Any critical voice is instantly branded anti-science, told they don't care about lives, etc. The opposition parties, if anything, want more of it (irrespective of whether they're left or right in a given state). We're a reasonably small country, so often the media and the politicians know one another rather well (revolving doors, small social circles, etc), but it honestly doesn't feel like we have a free and critical media or opposition at all right now.
I’m really interested in reading more of your story. Have you ever done a write up or a longer piece? Or is there one by someone else that you think is fairly on the mark?
Do you think there’s a way of mitigating the risk of being hurt / lowering the emotional price for sex work?
It's true that AZ isn't enough for herd immunity, but as I understand it neither is Pfizer or Moderna. It's also worth noting that AZ is extremely effective at preventing serious illness or death from the Delta variant (as are the other vaccines). Had we all gotten AZ months ago, we would be talking about the transmission of a virus that's been rendered much less menacing, which is a totally different risk-benefit calculus.
Funny you should say that, because that's definitely not the perception among my friends. I wouldn't overly generalise from one's own circles (or the circlejerk that is Aussie Twitter/Reddit) - I think there's genuine and good faith disagreement on the cost-benefit trade-off of lockdowns in the community.
It is definitely the perspective that's being pushed very hard by all the local media though, who are absolutely revelling in the circus of daily Premier's briefings.
It's also worth noting WHY we're so unvaccinated - the media frenzy over the minuscule risks associated with AstraZeneca, which we make locally and have mountains of, and the consequent switch to Pfizer, which we don't make locally and are short on.
It was exactly this issue that made me finally dump Gnome.