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Pretty good with the election outcome on Saturday. I have mixed feelings on Labor, but they have a better track record on trans issues than the Liberals/Nationals - particularly in regards to not pushing us as a political punching bag. I would have preferred a much stronger Greens showing - they’re the only major party that is truly progressive in this and other regards - but we got a fine outcome.

I know this isn’t an author but a publisher, so please don’t crucify me, but have you checked out Tilted Axis Press? Their whole focus is on diverse translated fiction, particularly of stories or cultures that are less represented in the field. I’ve been a big fan of them for years.

I’ve been really concerned about this. I know their real power is in the senate but the Greens have done well to pull things to the left in both houses.

This isnt just a win for Labor, this is a historic landslide after the already historic landslide in 2022. The Liberals could hold as few as 40/150 seats in the house after today, and Labor as many as 90. This could be their greatest victory since the Second World War, and the Liberals (who, to clarify, are conservative) smallest representation since their formation. There was something like a 5% swing away from the Liberals. Likewise, this result appears to have elected the most independents to parliament in decades.

Fingers crossed they do🤞

To add, this is happening against a backdrop of a historic swing against primary votes for the two major parties. That means that, under our preferential voting system increasingly more people are voting third party/independent first, with the two major parties further down the ballot. Labor is still winning enough seats to form majority for now (due to preference flow), but it points to a population increasingly frustrated by the inaction of the legacy parties and increasing polarization.

Ok, first up the players: Labor is the major centre-left party led by Anthony Albanese, Liberals are the centre-right (think economically liberal) led by Peter Dutton, Nationals are right wing, Greens are left wing, and there are a handful of “teal” independents who are mostly politically centre women with an environmental focused. The Liberals and Nationals make up the Coalition and essentially act as one insane party with the Libs at the helm, so you can mostly treat them interchangably.

Labor won the last federal election in 2022 by a slim majority (2 seats), but the Coalition lost in one of the worst defeats in our history. The Liberals were hit the hardest, losing 19 seats, putting them at their lowest representation since their formation in 1944. They were in power since 2013 and lost for a lot of reasons, but a major one was that Prime Minister Scott Morrison was rightfully loathed.

Since the last election, the Coalition has been steadily growing in popularity due to the same reasons other non-incumbents have globally (ui.e., inflation, high energy prices, etc). Add to that a (mostly true) perception that the government was doing too little to fix problems like our crumbling healthcare system wasn’t helping.

Finally the election is announced in late March (our elections aren’t fixed) and the parties start campaigning. Dutton, the Liberal leader, looks like he is going to win a majority at this early point. The following things happen:

• Labor announces and immediately implements a universal tax cut, Dutton announces he will repeal it and replace it with a cut on fuel prices.
• Labors announces a major initiative to improve bulk billed healthcare (bulk billed = free to the patient), which Dutton immediately matches. Labor runs a major attack campaign claiming that he cannot be trusted, since last time his party was in power they tried to destroy bulk billing among other things.
• Dutton announces a cut of 41,000 jobs to the public service, a substantial portion. He faces significant backlash as people worry it will result in degraded frontline services, remembering the issues with veterans affairs and Medicare last time they were in. The 41,000 he wants to cut is how much the public service had grown since 2022, so this seems like a reasonable worry. He “clarifies” that no frontline workers will be cut. He also adds that the cuts will be through attrition, not firing. Following continued backlash, he “clarifies” that he always meant the cuts were to come from Canberra, the capital. This is a mathematical impossibility, as he would have to gut the upper ranks of every department and probably defense to achieve that number.
• He announced an end to work from home for all public servants. This is bad for the Liberals, because they’ve had massive problems with women in the past (including a woman allegedly raped in a ministers office and subsequently an alleged cover up), and people quickly pointed out that the policy would disproportionately affects women, who are unfortunately still expected to bear most of the burden of childcare. Banning working from home prevents them from holding down many jobs. Dutton responds, typically out of touch, that women can job share. He then “clarifies” he only meant it to apply to Canberra, then changes his mind about the policy completely.
• He rejected Labor’s renewable energy transition and instead proposes a transition to Nuclear. No industry group except the one they hired thinks this is realistic, a good option, or feasible. Unrealistically short time-frames, bad assumptions, etc are used to make it look good on paper. Finally someone points out that the places they plan to put the plants don’t have enough water.
• Just yesterday, on the eve of the election, they announced their budget they intend to introduce if they win shows a budget deficit worse than Labor’s during the next term, but magically improving after that. This exact tactic worked in 2013 but isn’t now.
• Other minor things. They keep crashing campaign trucks into polling locations. Dutton has zero charisma and looks creepy, and was a Queensland cop (that’s really bad, they’re as corrupt as the worst American cop).
• Also a Liberal Senate candidate for this election personally tried to induct me into a culty MLM a few years back so fuck them specifically.

This has resulted in polls gradually sliding for the Coalition to the point that it now looks like they will lose even more seats this election and Labor might even gain one. Dutton may lose his own seat. It looks like the teals may pick up another member, with the Greens and fringe right wing parties staying about the same.

Technically both sides have almost identical policies in the upcoming election - only because the Liberals (who are conservative) copy pasted Labor’s policy in a pretty lame attempt to overcome their (rightfully earned) reputation as a threat to Medicare. That said, Labor introduced the rebate freeze back in 2013, so who knows.

The only party offering a real solution are the Greens, who (hopefully) might form a minority government with Labor like they did in 2010.

Fair use commentary generally requires as little of the actual original work to be used as possible. Summary may be ok, clips/recordings are ok, but they must be minimal. That commentary must also be substantive.

Reproducing a work in full (thus obviously limiting the commercial viability of the original work - another factor considered) with light commentary over the top probably wouldn’t hold up in court. The commentary just avoids automatic systems in the increasingly poorly moderated internet.

I think it would be great if more men read (or just read summaries of) basic feminist texts, especially Judith Butler and people of her ilk. Before I realised I wasn’t a man they helped me. I think the deconstruction of gender that feminism offers serve men just as much as women - it made masculinity feel like less of a prison (nevermind that I ultimately largely moved more feminine).

I remember reading authors like John Stoltenberg, the aforementioned Judith Butler, and some perspectives of feminism/masculinity in a working class context.

I don’t think Butler is going for “scare power”, she is simply trying to accurately describe institutional transphobia. I think it’s important to recognise and treat transphobia as an inherently a fascist ideology.

You’re right, it looks like they didn’t (at least for most things?). They do mention raytracing briefly, and that the sampling stage can “combine point samples from this algorithm with point samples from other algorithms that have capabilities such as ray tracing”, but it seems like they describe something like shadow mapping for shadows and regular raster shading techniques (“textures have also been used for refractions and shadows”)?

Maybe, what I said is admittedly mostly based on the experience I have with Blender’s Cycles renderer, which is definitely not real time.

I’m not a computer graphics expert (though have at least a little experience with video game dev), but considering Toy Story uses ray-traced lighting I would say it at least depends on whether you have a ray-tracing capable GPU. If you don’t, probably not. I would guess you could get something at least pretty close out of a modern day game engine otherwise.

Mr President, a second signal chat has hit the buildings

Oh shit

I’m assuming they’re using that term because it’s more accurate/inclusive than “gay”, since it includes bisexual men too

The Affinity suite is not an Adobe product.

I think supporters of Israels actions don’t see genocide itself as inherently wrong, but more that some of the people victimized by the Holocaust were wrongly targeted. This one is against the “right” people.