The US has never had a single ally, maybe except Israel. Only vassals.

Okay, I’ll bite.

In what ways has Australia been, and does Australia continue to be, a vassal of the USA? From our perspective, the USA has always been an ally for a long time (both militarily and economically), but the G.W. Bush and Trump presidencies, as well as the shambles of the AUKUS deal, have tested the resolve of the Australian public.

Generally speaking, Australian politicians - including governments - have never acted towards the USA as being a governing force over our vassal-like nature, nor outside the realms of an ally, so I’m wondering where your supposition comes from in our context.

Both is a great idea. Both should be the suggestion for every reasonable person.

1/3 of the country will either blindly support Trump or the broader Republican Party. Because of a confluence of a lack of mandatory voting; first past the post voting; and the electoral college, 1/3 of eligible voters often decide the outcome of elections. This isn’t so much Trump being DEMOLISHED and EVISCERATED as it is a warning to the rest of the country: show up and vote or they’ll still win, even when Trump is this unpopular. Show up again in 2028. Show up to the primaries.

If your vote literally was meaningless, billionaires wouldn’t spend crazy amounts of money on elections; they’d consider that wasted money which is anathema to their existence.

You can fairly reliably tell whether or not such a post/comment is made genuinely (albeit perhaps astroturfically) or sardonically by merit of the instance from which the commenter posts.

Here - I can be your spell/grammar check for you:

First panel: Watching old movies is weird. Like, imagine if something like Fight Club came out today.

Second panel: Fight Club in 1999: We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need; we are the middle children of history.

Third panel: Fight Club in 2026: We work jobs we hate but still can’t afford basic needs, while people born to wealth call us lazy.

Fourth panel: Our forefathers were told that if they work hard they could become rock stars or millionaires.

Fifth panel: We were told that if we work hard then maybe we will be able to afford rent and groceries.

Might be worth putting your text into a spell/grammar checker before adding it to an image if English isn’t your first language or you struggle with grammar, as I’ve made around 20 fixes to your text of less than 100 words.

For reference, I’ve also spell/grammar checked this comment I’m replying to:

The software I was using made it extremely hard to edit text. I had figured it out by the end but at that point it was too late; I had already merged all the vector layers.

8 changes to a comment of 35 words.

Haven’t they invested like $100 billion or so in LLM companies though? I thought they were a big player in the Enron-esque cyclical investment scam they’re all running. Will be tough for them if they can’t recoup any of that.

Nice

Is it really? That’s really interesting, and would cause a lot of confusion in metric-English countries where ‘mil’ is pejoratively used in speech to either mean ‘millimetre’ or ‘millilitre’ depending on context.

This is just disgusting behaviour. No one should ever be calling for genocide, regardless of any circumstances. Also, why are all Jewish people being conflated with the Israeli government? Jews outside Israel have no power over its government, and even Israelis had to go through some five hung elections to get Netanyahu back in power, indicating that he clearly has less than 50% of the country’s support.

Now if they had been shouting “fuck Bibi” or “end the occupation” or “no more genocide against Palestine” I’d be right there with them. These idiots have no fucking clue how to garner support, so all they’re doing is giving Israel more moral high-ground. Goddamn Nazis need to learn some physical consequences.

So it looks like the frogs mentioned in this meme are microhylids, and for some further info:

Crocraft & Hambler (1989) noted that the frog seemed to benefit from living in proximity to the spider by eating the small invertebrates that were attracted to prey remains left by the spider. The frog presumably also benefits by receiving protection: small frogs like this are preyed on by snakes and large arthropods, yet on this occasion we have a frog that receives a sort of ‘protection’ from a large, formidable spider bodyguard. Hunt (1980) suggested that the spider might gain benefit from the presence of the frog: microhylids specialise on eating ants, and ants are one of the major predators of spider eggs. By eating ants, the microhylids might help protect the spider’s eggs.

This is also super cute behaviour:

Young spiders have sometimes been observed to grab the frogs, examine them with their mouthparts, and then release them unharmed.

Apparently the spiders’ protectiveness can also be pretty overt:

Karunarathna & Amarasinghe (2009) reported how several Poecilotheria were seen attacking individuals of Hemidactylus depressus (a gecko) after the latter tried eating the eggs of the frogs the spiders were sharing their tree holes with.

And some ideas on why this might be an example of mutualistic behaviour rather than commensalism:

…the spider seems to benefit in that the frogs eat the ants that might ordinarily attack the spider’s eggs. Due to their small size, ants are presumably difficult for the spiders to deal with, and they might be effectively helpless against them.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/tetrapod-zoology/tiny-frogs-and-giant-spiders-best-of-friends/

Cat owner and avid environmentalist here: totally agree. I’ve always kept my cats inside for the obvious environmental reasons, but ask any vet and they’ll tell you that indoor cats lead much longer, healthier lives.

We need to start treating dogs and cats the same way - if there’s a cat around without it’s owner and it’s not leashed, it goes to the pound. $250 fee to retrieve your cat to pay for boarding and also donate to the pound that receives them. If people had to pay $250 and drive all the way to the pound to pick up their cat every time they let them out, I can tell you that outdoor cat owners will go one of two ways: they’ll either stop owning cats (big win) or they’ll keep them inside (also big win).

It’s often advantageous to prevent catastrophe before it occurs rather than clean up the mess once it happens.

We (Australia) need to withhold all forms of support from Israel until a thorough investigation takes place. If we stopped funding UNRWA because of allegations from Israel (that have turned out to be specious at best) that UNRWA staff were involved in October 7, then we can stop funding the Israeli government over this. I welcome the relatively strong words from Albo here, but he should have stated that Australia is demanding a ceasefire, not just renewing calls for one. Another war crime has been committed, and we can’t keep using flowery language around this.

Sorry in advance for the rant, but it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine when someone asks a question and gets an answer for a completely different question. They specifically asked for salads made by decent companies and you’ve told them to go and buy the ingredients at a market. They basically asked what wattage of lightbulb would be best for their lamp and you’ve recommended a great candlemaker.

I get that in a perfect world we’d all only eat locally-grown produce from small farms and suppliers or grow our own food, but we don’t all have that luxury. Because of economic and social pressures, we often have to make choices we wouldn’t like to make.

Maybe this person doesn’t have the time and energy to travel to a market just to buy lettuce or to make their own salad; maybe that’s cost-prohibitive for them; maybe they live in a food desert; maybe the local grocer is 5 minutes away while their nearest market is an hour’s drive; or maybe they’re looking for a type of lettuce that isn’t grown locally so that they can make dishes that are culturally appropriate for them.

It’s easy to have sympathy for Palestine; it’s very difficult to have sympathy for Hamas.

Anyone cheering on Hamas is promoting crimes against humanity which is objectively abhorrent. Anyone who cares for the Palestinian people caught up in the conflict just has functioning empathy.

Honestly, while Booking.com acted shittily here, I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who buys a home and does short-term rentals. Every investment vehicle has risks, and this woman copped the short end of the stick when it came to the risk associated with her investment choice. She chose to purchase a basic human need and try to maximise her profit from it at the expense of the average person trying to buy or rent a house and, if she didn’t want the risk of this happening, she should’ve chosen a less risky investment like bonds or a term deposit.

Landlords are bad; fuckwits who own short-stay rentals are far worse. The market distortion they create hurts so many people in so many ways. Frankly, I hope she takes this as a sign she should just sell the property and move on to something else.

Fuck. I’m sad. I’m sorry to be Australian right now.

At press time, sources added that the stupid lemon meringue pie Busby was filming herself baking had a shelf life of three days at best, compared to the several years she could get by salting and drying cod.

Absolutely savage.

It’s really sad to me that Americans get put in the awful position of choosing between tipping, which supports the low wages, and taking responsibility for ensuring another human being has a living wage. It’s just such a terrible position for a consumer to be placed in, having to make ethical and moral choices about how much money to pay for goods and services.