SovietMen

Albanese backs down on decision to exclude LGBT question from next census after Labor MPs revolt

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says a new question on sexuality will be tested for the next census, overturning a decision earlier this week not to add a question to include LGBT Australians in the national survey.

Mr Albanese told ABC Radio Melbourne it was a “commonsense position” to put a question.

“We’ve been talking with the Australian Bureau of Statistics and they are going to test for a new question, one on sexuality,” he said.

“There will [be a question] as long as the testing goes well.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Thursday said the government did not want to add a question out of fear it would become “divisive”.

The decision prompted an internal Labor revolt, including criticism from assistant minister Ged Kearney.

Six Labor MPs spoke out against the decision to the ABC, saying including a question told the LGBT community “you count and you matter”, and not doing so could be a human rights issue.

No one in the MSM media will admit why it’s easier to skip the question, so allow me: these days there are families from every culture on Earth living in Australia. This question will cause ructions and maybe stabbings. One day the homosexualists have to learn to let sleeping dogs lie.

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Australian Defence Force question about menstrual cycle in application labelled ‘problematic’

After more than a decade in commercial photography, Jen Dainer felt it was time to “give back” and apply for the Army Reserve. 

The 45-year-old spent years documenting defence contractors and industrial clients in action and hoped to lend her skills as a part-time photographer. 

But the medical questionnaire, required as part of the screening process, left her in a state of disbelief…

“You get to the point where one of the questions is, ‘when was the date of your last period?’,” Ms Dainer said. 

Questions relating to menstrual health have been included since 2001…

Because they started letting in more girls

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Airline becomes world’s first to let women choose not to sit next to men

An airline is the first in the world to offer women the option choose not to sit next to men on the plane, when they check-in for their flight.

This is disgusting and I oppose it.

India’s largest Indian low-cost airline is allowing female passengers to chose where they on a flight when they check-in online by showing pink coloured seats to indicate where other women are seated

This policy is reasonable and I support it completely.

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The following is about Canada but may soon be relevant in many countries:

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The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator

Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others. By David Frum

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally…

Fascism feasts on violence. 

It goes on like that. HT Founding Questions.

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Lucy Letby: killer or coincidence? Why some experts question the evidence

Outside court, however, there has been a growing chorus of voices raising questions about some of the key evidence presented in the trial.

There was no forensic evidence to prove her guilt and no one saw Letby – who continues to maintain her innocence – causing harm…

Prominent statisticians have described as fallacious a shift table shown to the jury implicating Letby because she was the “one constant presence” when babies died or collapsed.

If you’re new to Lucy Trutherism, please browse the Law, Health and Technology Newsletter.

Cologne prosecutors charge Twitter user for the crime of assembling a list of Covid-era insults that politicians and celebrities directed against the unvaccinated

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John Forge: The grim ‘agreement’ philosophy professor signed with a sex worker before he was found dead at Cataract Gorge, Launceston, after a knock on the door from Tasmania Police

An esteemed multi-millionaire philosophy professor who died while facing sexual assault allegations struck a $20,000-a-month agreement with a sex worker which required her to call him ‘Daddy’. 

Dr John Forge, 77, plunged to his death at Cataract Gorge, Launceston, on May 2 this year – just hours after being visited by a detective over allegations he sexually assaulted a vulnerable woman, aged in her 30s, between 2019 and 2022. 

The Oxford University alumnus’ death has sent shockwaves through Australia’s academia circles, where Dr Forge – an honorary professor at the University of Sydney – was a respected researcher who dedicated his life to studying human morality and ethics.  

Take the Moral Philosopher Not Be a Degenerate Creep Challenge. Difficulty level: impossible.

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Japan to abolish rules that still require submission of floppy disks: digital minister

The move, announced at a news conference following a Cabinet meeting the same day, is part of a government drive to update older technologies, led by Japan’s Digital Agency. The minister had pledged to abolish the use of “analog” technologies including floppy disks in administrative procedures soon after assuming his position in August 2022. The issue has gained attention overseas, with Britain’s BBC reporting, “Japan is notorious for clinging to outmoded technology through its office culture.”

Whistleblower alleges Japan city lowered exam scores of aspiring female employees

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A Theoretical “Case Against Education”

(…) But there’s a great survey of university students. Keeping in mind that this is a highly selected, extra-smart population, here are some data points:

• 85% know who wrote Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
• 56% know the biggest planet (Jupiter)
• 44% know who rode on horseback in 1775 to warn that the British were coming (Paul Revere)
• 33% know what organ produces insulin (pancreas)
• 31% know the capital of Russia (Moscow)
• 30% know who discovered the Theory of Relativity (Einstein)
• 19% know what mountain range contains Mt. Everest (Himalayas)
• 19% know who wrote 1984 (George Orwell)
• 16% know what word the raven says in Poe’s “The Raven” (“Nevermore!”)
• 10% know the captain’s name in Moby Dick (Ahab)
• 7% know who discovered, in 1543, that the Earth orbits the sun (Copernicus)
• 4% know what Chinese religion was founded by Lao Tse (Taoism)
• <1% know what city the general Hannibal was from (Carthage)

Remember, these are university students, so the average person’s performance is worse.

Most of these are the kinds of facts that I would expect school to teach people. Some of them (eg the branches of government) are the foundations of whole subjects, facts that I would expect to get reviewed and built upon many times during a student’s career. If most people don’t remember them, there seems to be little hope that they remember basically anything from school. So what’s school even doing?

Maybe school is why at least a majority of people know the very basics – like that the US won independence from Britain, or that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet? I’m not sure this is true. Here are some other questions that got approximately the same level of correct answers as “Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet”:

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Physically healthy Dutch woman Zoraya ter Beek, 29, dies by assisted suicide

Ter Beek lived with her boyfriend, Stein, an IT programmer 10 years her age, but her parents didn’t approve of the age difference. She had been estranged from her mother and three older sisters for six years, while her father died from cancer last year. 

Stein worried about Ter Beek and encouraged her to seek treatment, so she tried various things to treat her mental illness, including 33 rounds of electroconvulsive therapy, in which electric currents jolt the brain. But, after her last treatment in August 2020, her psychiatrist told her, “There’s nothing more we can do for you. It’s never going to get any better.”

“After we heard that, we all kind of knew what that meant,” Ter Beek had said, solidifying her decision to apply to the Netherlands’ Euthanasia Expertise Center in December 2020. “I was always very clear: if it doesn’t get better, I can’t do this.” 

German Interior Minister places responsibility for political violence with the AfD and a general “contempt for politics,” in the latest attempt to characterise free expression as somehow criminal

Last year, Thomas Haldenwang, whose spirit animal is a mole …

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Young people should welcome National Service

Paywalled for me now. If you can get around it, it’s a fun read.

Revealed: US university lecturer behind far-right Twitter account and publishing house

One of the account’s themes is an antipathy for racial justice protests, especially after the George Floyd protests in 2020.

Lomez also supported those who responded to protests with violence, posting at the end of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial: “Rittenhouse is a hero. He is a symbol, in word and deed, and in his baseless persecution, of what is good and decent and courageous and the forces arrayed against those qualities. May a million Kyle Rittenhouses bloom.”

Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments also have constituted a consistent theme on the account. In January 2020, he wrote he was “coming around to the idea that the most powerful and effective political argument against the left in 2020 is probably simple as: shut up fag.”

Journalists have also been a favorite target of the account. A post reads: “the press are in fact the enemy. They are mewling midwit scum. Sniveling liars and desperate status junkies. My abiding contempt for them is only ever confirmed.”

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Into the Heart of Darkness

“I am wanted by Interpol”, I thought to myself as I returned to the rental car to do some more loitering. “Why the fuck would Interpol want me?”, I asked myself. “If Interpol wants me, why wasn’t I arrested in the spot and transported to the nearest jail?” A million questions bombarded my brain as I tried to make sense out of this news. The problem was that nothing made sense. A red alert from the Croatian Police should be enough to get me arrested prior to that day as I am not very difficult to find. An Interpol red alert should find me in jail awaiting a court date. Nothing made sense.

Whistleblower Josh Dean of Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems has died

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