Please don't spread this rubbish misinformation.

Water fluoridation is so thoroughly established as safe and the physiological effects are so well understood that it is hard to find recent reputable papers even commenting on it.

I will donate $1000 to a charity of your choice if you can provide a peer reviewed article in a reputable journal that suggests it is suspected to be unsafe at recommended levels.

Criteria: must be a full research or systematic review paper (not an editorial or opinion), published in a recognized scientific journal, and include a DOI. I’ll verify the paper and post the donation receipt publicly.

It is absurd the Medicare doesn't cover dental. I see a patient once or twice a month delaying dental care because of cost.

I kind of understand the government being cautious about controversial reforms but the libs had literally nothing to say about the recent GP bulk billing changes as it's just popular. Medicare covering dental care and increasing school funding to meet Gonski targets are almost opposition proof.

Incidentally I am a doctor and I don't have insurance. I don't wear glasses, I don't play sports that ruin my joints and I'm not getting pregnant. There is literally no benefit. On top of which, when I was a junior doctor it wasn't uncommon for us to have a private patient transferred to the public system when the private physician realised they were actually sick and not just a pay day, the public system treats sick patients, the private system has nice carpet and nurses that smile. We need to remove Medicare payments to private providers and invest properly into public healthcare.

Sorry for the tangentially related rant.

“Our social security system is designed to be there for Australians when they fall on hard times, which is why it’s important debt recovery processes must be fair and transparent,” Plibersek said.

Anyone who has actually had to rely on centrelink knows this to be untrue. The intent may be to help those who need it but the structural design assumes everyone is a welfare cheat until proven otherwise. If you do manage to prove that you're not a bludger you can get below poverty level amounts of money and if centrelink makes a mistake you're on the hook.

This is a small positive step but remember the context.

We all know that we don't have rabies in Australia, but Australian bat lyssavirus is rabies(almost), the symptoms, transmission, treatment and prevention are all identical to rabies.

On top of this bats carry Hendra, Murray valley encephalitis, coronavirus and god knows what else.

Just stay away from bats everyone, especially in northern Aus.

Murdoch is way off here. Even if we accept that the majority of protesters aren't motivated by racism - I don't accept that, but for the sake of argument - these protests drag the discourse to the right and make the fascists(I tried to type racists but autocorrect got it right this time) seem more reasonable.

TBH I think the pattern is more that he can move quickly when Murdoch agrees work him.

Just putting this here as several commentors seem to have misread my intention posting this here

Most responses here seem to assume that I'm opposed to medical marijuana, I'm not. I am in fact in favor of it's use, appropriately, in select patients, as with any medication.

I also want to caution against conflating recreational use(which may be problematic but is usually fine) with medicinal use(which should be held to the highest standards of evidence as any medicine should).

Now, regarding the evidence to date, efficacy is well established for refractory epilepsy and spasticity in MS. It is quite well established to have a role in pain control. Evidence that it is superior to other treatments for anxiety is pretty scant, we hold antidepressants to a pretty low standard and cannabis fails to even be that good in the published studies.

In terms of safety we frequently see acute intoxication from prescribed cannabis and worsening of co-morbid mental health conditions is really common. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, and abdominal pains are all fairly frequent and I have seen one case of psychosis from prescribed marijuana. What's more, we see these more commonly in emergency departments, psych wards and GP clinics now that it is easily available from unscrupulous corporate owned clinics.

The article isn't claiming that medical marijuana is inherently dangerous or that it doesn't have a role in medicine. It states, correctly, that the TGA has never actually assessed the safety of the vast majority of products on the market. This is concerning for anyone who might want to prescribe these with confidence.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]

A few months ago John Quiggin posted this and I find his argument pretty compelling

Are pronatalists living on the same planet?

But even in this extreme case, world population in 2100 only falls to 6 billion, the same as in 2000. I was around at the time, and did not feel as if there were too few people about.

What about the need for workers? One unsatisfactory feature of long-running projections like this is the use of outdated statistical concepts such as the “dependency ratio”, that is, the ratio of people aged 15-64 to everyone else. That made sense 50 years ago, when this range represented the period between leaving school and retiring in most industrial societies. But these days (and it will be even more so in 2100) education continues well past 20 and retirement is often deferred to 70 or more. A look at the age group 25-69 shows that it is going to remain more or less stable in absolute numbers declining only marginally relative to the growing population

Also followed up with this

A billion people would be plenty to sustain civilisation …

I read the first book and I think it is the first time in decades that I have encountered actual sci-fi concepts that weren't a reworking of ideas that have been around for decades.

It's not a character driven novel but the characters are fine, mostly they're not that likeable - which in my opinion is not a reason to dislike a story - and I think they probably lose something in translation. When I was a teenager I devoured Asimov, Phillip K Dick, Heinlein etc for the concepts, compared to them the characters in 3 Body are masterfully written.

I haven't yet read the second book as I found the first few chapters a bit of a slog but I plan to pick it up again once I've finished rereading some Ursula K LeGuin

Dr Monterosso said it was difficult to find statistics to show whether this method of proactive policing reduced crime.

In order for it to be plausible that it would reduce crime the police would need to be open about the fact that they are using this tactic. The only reason more than a handful of people actually know about this is the sound journalism by Mya Kordic

It may be legal but it is thoroughly immoral and one suspects if it was a white kid with wealthy parents it would've been chucked out.

Whenever I've used an LLM to edit anything it goes right ahead and removes my voice from the text, even more advanced models and even when I repeatedly clarify that that's not what I want. I don't think it's up to the task.

Give me a reference to the 'International Online Journal of Who Gives A Fuck' and I'll take look.

I just can't stand this "My uncle heard some guy on talk back radio say..." bullshit.

Yeah, the headline should've been "1/3 of Australians don't understand what corruption is"

Any ideology that proposes deliberately making peoples lives worse is not worth discussing.

If I'm playing devils avocado I guess rapid technological and economic growth gives us more value to appropriate in the name of the proletariat?

This is the answer, plastic recycling has always been a scam. Waxed paper, cardboard, glass, anything else.

Idealistic teachers don't last because they aren't treated like professionals with judgement and autonomy. In my opinion this is a bigger problem than pay, although better pay would help and be the morally correct thing to do for such a vital profession.

Private schools add literally no value to society. Study after study have shown absolutely no correlation between private schooling and eventual income/self reported happiness/career satisfaction/tertiary education success (after controlling for parental income and education level).

What private schools do is reduce social cohesion by segregating children by income and religion. Funny how conservatives are always in favoir of social cohesion when they are using it as a racist dog whistle but not where it actually matters.

I don't know if I'd go so far as banning private schools(some Montessori or Bush Schools etc may actually add value) but I certainly don't think these class exclusionary bohemoths should be getting any public grants or tax concessions.

This comes up periodically and is absolutely true, judged as a liberal economy Australia is generally quite efficiently run with below average taxes and above average services. Which is no excuse for not trying to do better and indeed think outside the liberal box.

More interesting is that the graph "Breakdown of total tax raised in Australia since WWII" under "Other taxes" there is a spike in 1951. It seems to correlate with the USA stockpiling wool as part of their strategic reserve and a subsequent speculative bubble.

https://www.winton.com/news/australias-lesser-known-commodities-booms

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/185564703

I know this has come about independently from Aukus but it's hard not to see this through that lens. In the context of all troubles and uncertainty of Aukus this pops up and leaves us all wondering not just are the Aukus subs worth the cost but will they have any tactical value at all in 25y time