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ziltoid101

@ ziltoid101 @lemmy.world

Posts
15
Comments
51
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Locked

    ‘R-tarded’ is a slur, and I’m sick of otherwise “liberal” people going along with the right’s move to renormalize it

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  • I find it difficult to imagine a future in which humans aren't making fun of impaired cognition.

    I think the context is what's most important, if anyone actually directs such language (be it retarded, idiot, etc) towards people with genuine mental impairment, that constitutes a slur. But the word 'retarded' literally means 'slow', and is still regularly used (including by myself) in scientific and technical contexts (compared to racist or homophobic slurs, which are only ever really used in a 'slur' kind of way).

    I wouldn't really have a problem with calling people 'slow' in jest, and I don't think many would. Imo if not 'retarded', it'll be something else with the same meaning.

  • Tawny frogmouth named 2025 Australian bird of the year winner

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  • Well deserved, although I'm still going to soapbox that the Baudin's Cockatoo (which unfortunately didn't win) is under immediate threat by the proposed Alcoa mine in the southwest Jarrah forests! It's some of the last habitat they have left, and once it's gone, it's gone for good.

    I do love tawnies though. They're such characters.

  • Arhab Haque sprayed fart gas at restaurants for TikTok clout, court hears

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  • Why restaurants?? There are perfectly good mining company offices right there!

  • Hastie flags demotion or resignation should Liberals not abandon net zero

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  • Military background iirc

  • AI enters the grant game, picking winners

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  • Genuinely I think the world would have much better scientific outcomes if a decent portion of grants were just straight-up randomly allocated (from a pool that meets a minimum standard I guess). Everyone wants to fund 'almost complete' research but there's such little money for the early-stage 'high risk high reward' basic research, which is what basically all applied research is built upon.

  • Australia will pay Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals

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  • Vast nation with huge areas of uninhabited space to send foreign-born criminals to tiny island nation.

  • Is moderate drinking actually healthy? Scientists say the idea is outdated.

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  • 10 minutes of sun per day is typically less likely to give you cancer than 0 minutes. Vitamin D (and other compounds involved in the synthesis from cholesterol that you won't get in supplements) upregulate DNA repair polymerases that protect against carcinogens. Of course after a few minutes the costs of UV exposure outweight this benefit though.

  • What's everyone doing tonight?

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  • Watching the footy with my old man. Identifying frogs on iNaturalist. Listening to some Mastodon.

  • Removed

    TIL Amou Haji, known as the "world’s dirtiest man", avoided bathing for over 60 years due to a superstition. After villagers finally convinced him to wash, he died just weeks later at the age of 94.

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  • We needed a negative control, dammit!

  • Australian government backs US strikes on Iran but urges ‘peaceful settlement from here’

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  • "We show outright support for the escalation of this conflict, but can we have peace pls?"

  • PM breaks silence to back US military strikes on Iran

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  • At least when LNP are in power I don't get my hopes up for a sane response to anything... I was hoping the spinelessness of the ALP was enough to at least keep any statement neutral, pretty pathetic to see them outright supporting the US.

  • Cocky nibbling on a cashew

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  • Beautiful! I can almost hear the crunch.

  • Aboriginal community shaken by second death in Australian police custody

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  • It sounds like we agree - they're dying more in custody far more than non-indigenous because they are in custody far more than non-indigenous. Sorry if I misunderstood at any point.

    While acknowledging the gravity of the deaths and always respecting cultural sensitivities, a successful systemic review should be focused on reducing overrepresentation in custody, not specifically just deaths in custody.

  • Aboriginal community shaken by second death in Australian police custody

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  • As a bleeding heart leftist, this is a very sound argument. I'm a huge advocate for indigenous rights, and I get worried seeing articles that essentially imply police brutality (specifically towards indigenous people over non-indigenous) is the root cause of problems, when the evidence is that it is much deeper, systemic, and more complicated than that. Perhaps people want the problem to be police brutality because that would be a more tangible problem, something that can be fixed in a reasonable amount of time with the right review or changes to policing.

    I get it - it sucks even thinking about issues where there are no "good" solutions. It's a tragedy that indigenous people are overrepresented in custody, but it's ultimately poverty that leads to being in custody in the first place. I wish people directed more attention towards addressing indigenous poverty rather than band-aid fixes that won't really lead to long-term healing.

    With that said, any death in custody deserves proper review. There was no reason this arrest had to end this way.

  • Aboriginal community shaken by second death in Australian police custody

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  • Those middle paragraphs were kinda important though, tbf. It was explaining that as a whole they are more likely to die in custody because they are more likely to be in custody in the first place. When addressing hypotheses specifically about deaths in custody, the first statistic (where indigenous people are not overrepresented) is a lot more meaningful. If they're in custody, they're not more likely to die - that's not 'misleading', is it?

    We need to do a lot to improve the treatment of indigenous people, that goes without saying. It's important that we're barking up the right tree, but I appreciate that it's a sensitive topic and it's also important to not just cite cold stats. It's a big issue - why are they overrepresented in custody? I don't think there is some magical instant answer, but I think broader history shows that addressing poverty will simultaneously address a lot of these issues.

  • What went wrong for the Greens in the Australian election?

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  • I've seen a lot of analysis and discussion for a very small percentage change in a single election. If I were the Greens, I'd definitely be reviewing policy and protocol because the party should be steadily growing rather than stagnating. But as a single data point I probably wouldn't make any radical changes unless subsequent elections also produce disappointing results.

    A lot of their stagnating performance is probably quite superficial. I'm reasonably fond of the Greens, but I think Bandt (and MCM too tbh) were probably a bit grating to the general public - and I think a lot of us have realised that with Bandt's mediocre concession speech. I feel like a decade (or more) ago it was a lot 'cooler' to like the Greens, when they essentially branded themselves as "the science party". They still have a lot of these policies, but it feels like their image in 2025 is a lot more... I don't quite know how to put a finger on it... rage-baitey?

    Australian voters emphatically rejected Dutton's culture war bullshit, but Greens need to not be careful to get caught on the other side of the culture war battle and face similar rejection...

  • What went wrong for the Greens in the Australian election?

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  • There is definitely that perception of 'being too oppositional' unfortunately, even though the stats show they support Labor policy like over 90% of the time. Any reasonably politically engaged person will tell you that it's not the job of the senate crossbench to pass policy that isn't within their elected platform, although I empathise Labor is kinda between a rock and a hard place on that front (but that's the cost of being such a big tent catch-all centre party imo).

    A few years ago I had a bit of respect for Labor for their political civility (compared to the coalition) but in the last few years I must say I've seen way too many Labor MPs/influencers/rusted-ons spread disinformation (and not just debatable stuff, but stuff you could easily disprove quickly if you bothered to check - mostly about preferential voting and fear mongering about smaller parties). And also just repeating statements from the mining lobby?? Maybe that's just a WA thing!

  • Greens defector’s use of slur against fellow senator exposed in text leak

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  • Thorpe and now Cox... they really dropped the ball on vetting senators in 2022 it seems.

    This is tangential, but it feels kinda weird where the "R word" is atm, seems like we can't decide if it's genuinely offensive or not. I have some social circles where saying it would be almost like saying homophobic/racist slurs, but other social circles that throw it around as a synonym of "idiot/lunatic". I'm almost afraid to ask at this point what the correct answer is/should be, but I think humans will be joking around about mental cognition for many generations to come, R-word or not.

  • Coalition gets back together after week-long split

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  • Lose-lose situation for the Liberals. They'll pretty much never get a majority without the nats, but the concessions they've had to make here aren't going to help them win back any votes.