The ALP is doing fine. Albo is still topping the prefered PM ranks , surprisingly considering how far into government the ALP is, and theres no real dissention in the ranks. Its the LNP, the torries, that have fallen to pieces. Brutally so.

However if they want to keep Hanson out, and we'd do well to remember that there are LESS constitutional and procedural safeguards in Australia (we may live to regret the lack of a bill of rights. "Trust us bro" only goes so far) than the yanks do.

We trained massive statistical models and hooked them up to chat bots, coding tools and some to drones and sentry guns. With no idea how it actually works and zero fucks given on what the consequences are.

"Move fast and break other peoples things" I think is the saying?

The Republicans absolutely need to be sat in the naughty-boy corner for a bunch of election cycles till they flush the whackos that have commandeered the party. But its not enough

Part of the problem is that the Democrats also need to think long and hard about who they serve. Trump should have been *impossible*. In a healthy country nobody would have voted for a raging whackadoodle like him.

But ever since the last financial crisis, theres been a malaise about the economy. Its part "vibes" and part people noticing that their pay isnt really going up, but the cost of everything sure as fuck is.

Theres two whole generations of adults, Gen. Y and Gen Z who can't afford to buy into the home owning dream. And no home ownership means no middle class. Cos "I own my house" and/or "This mortgage isnt crushing my life" are pretty much core attributes for any middle class person. Meanwhile the boomers that didnt luck into a life situation where they've built up a fortress of savings are now past their work lives and facing brutal medical costs , and theres a Gen X who feel stuck between the boomers owning all the stuff, and their kids thinking were part of the problem (and some of us are). And a burning sense that the world of financial stability has left the shores and moved to china.

Then you throw in a pandemic that utterly upended everyones lives and left the economy a lot more precarious, and an AI boom where insane fucking wall street and silicon valley assholes are running ads saying "FIRE YOUR STAFF AND REPLACE THEM WITH CLANKERS" and yeah. People are angry and feeling like that the status quo has utterly betrayed them. Every time people try and complain that shits not working out they get told "But the stock market is booming!". Well sure, great vibes for thee but bad times for me. Not conductive to happy campers

And its when there is so much burning unhappiness that the bad actors can win. Trump promised to fix the problems, he actually named the devils, cost of living, manufacturing moving offshore, the housing market being out of reach, etc. And people went "Fuck it, this guy is an asshole, but maybe he's OUR asshole".

Turns out he was also a liar and all those problems have now been turned up to 11. But we're talking here about how he got in, not what he did while in.

The Democrats NEED to address the STRUCTURAL roots of whats going on. Put muzzles and leashes on the fucking AI bros, pour serious money into whatever needs to be done to make the home ownership dream real again, go on an absolute crusade to root out corruption in government (and the supreme court), and actually start putting motherfuckers in jail for it. Then get some constitutional ammendments to ensure that the executive will never ever ever be capable of corrupting democracy, justice, the public service, and the rule of law ever again.

But most of all, the democrats need to chase the wall street backers out of the party with pitchforks. The Democrats have the potential to be the party of power for a generation to come, the kids will back that, and if real positive change is made, not promises, but hard work progress and ACTION, but this can never happen while they are being subverted by lobbyists and big money interests. It NEEDS to be a party OF the people FOR the people and BY the people. /rant

Eh... not at this level. Corruption usually only works in darkness and theres far too many eyeballs on this case and the biggest eyeballs are state governments with serious power. The supreme court is a whole different matter because washington is the goddamn twilight zone right now where corruption is happening in the open because theres no one to provide consequences. But outside the supreme court, yeah corruption is a thing, but its always secretive.

My concern about this is more to do with the more old fashioned "whoever had the most lawyers win" and skydance has ellison money and therefore infinite lawyers.

"Hell yeah, a credit card!" - people I don't get

The Z80 was a pretty easy to learn system. I picked it up as a child wanting to make games on my Amstrad computer, the memory addresing was, imho, easier for a young mind to grasp than the 6510 , though perhaps I'd see that as the other way around had I learned on a 6510 first.

It is kind of sad in a way to see the Z80s pass into history, but lets face it, you'd feel constrained on a toaster controller with one, in 2026. Though thats probably due to modern coders being a lot less disciplined than the old school for whom 8 bit / 64k (or less!) was the simple reality of coding.

"President Clarkson, reports from NASA indicate you've already met the alien ambassador form Flembleblarx. What can you tell us about your first contact?"

"The aliens.......... well...... lets just say they fuck"

*wipes alien splooge off jacket*

"I mean they really get into it. Fists, spatulas, mesh probes. Antigrav. You name it.... Just..... frisky space boys"

These platforms are starting to let people bet on wildfire activity. What a fun way of incentivizing arsonists.

A poem;-
-------------
I once loved a clanker.
And you might think I'm sick.
But I loved my robot lover.
And its hydraulic jackhammer dick.
It could clean the carpets
And it could heal my soul.
Now all thats left is metal shards
Embedded in my hole.

Not written by AI.

There have been a few musicians that have been trying to redirect the kids away from cassette tape nostalgia to CD nostalgia. The reason is simple, in 2026 its cheaper to burn a CD than it is to manufacture a cassette tape. And CDs are vastly superior (the relative virtues of Vinyl and CD are a little more complicated, though on pure technicalities, CD still wins).

The thing with CDs is a DIY home musician can do the whole manufacturing chain at home. You buy one of those cheap laser screen printer engravers for about $1K. You pick up a CD bulk duplicator second hand off ebay for maybe $200. $100 will buy you more blank CDs than you'll ever sell. You bulk duplicate your album using the CD burner. You screen print the art onto the CDs. Get those cardboard CD sleeves and screen print the art (If you want better detail, grab a colour laser printer from Brother for about $500.)

Oh and that laser engraver screen printer setup will also make you the band shirts, just remember to grab one of those cheap chinese flash dryers to properly cure the ink on the shirt. Too many DIY shirt makers dont realise this.

Then you set up your bandcamp store, and maybe set up a merch desk at your gigs. Last gig I played we sold over $1K of merch.

Buy CDs. Play CDs. CDs are good. Especially CDs from local pub bands. Tapes are trash and sound like trash. VInyl is great but too expensive for a small band to produce at anything resembling a profit.

Eh... theres still a sting in the tail. I suspect these sorts of fines are more about "We want you to fix this" rather than "We want you to bleed for doing this". The thing is, $14 mil aint a drop of piss in the oceans of HPs money supply, but what IS important is that its a court order, and disobeying the court order can turn this from "insignificant financial mosquito bite" to "Oh shit, theres an interpol arrest warrant out for the CEO on criminal contempt charges".

Rule number #1 and #2 of any interaction with the law;- Do not anger the Judge. The second rule is "See rule #1"

Apple's macOS. Apple contributes code and employs some FreeBSD developers.

Its a little more complex. Apple does derive some of FreeBSDs userland and some services. However its a myth that the kernel is a modified FreeBS. Its a modified Mach microkernel, XNU (technically actually a hybrid, like most real world microkernels, that has a small amount of non core kernel in ring zero for performance reasons, that has some services that have FreeBSD derived code in it, namely the network stack, process model and IOKit.

Chinas single timezone is bonkers. If your in Beijing its great, but in those back end industrial cities, you've got the sun rising at 10am and setting at midnight. That would *massively* fuck with your sleep cycle and I half suspect that western regions probably got some of the highest rates of melatonin prescription..... and sleep disorders.... on the planet.

Its space. When it comes to radiation, an X-Ray machine is by far the least of their worries. Astronauts come back from space missions utterly glowing with radiation.

Admittedly the cancer rate amongst astronauts isnt THAT much higher (just under 1/3 of astronaut deaths compared to just over 1/5th of the general population), but this is also a cohort that have mostly been non smoking tea-totaller health conscious non-junk-eating people so its definitely a thing.

Like yeah, over exposure to medical X-Rays is totally a risk factor, but astronauts go into space knowing that space is actively trying to radiate them, freeze them, burn them, pop their lungs, boil their blood and suffocate them. Its a soldiers gambit really.

Grandmas stupid baby photo collection create more positive utility for humans than a petabyte of stupid slop images of crayfish aranged into a jesus face ever will.