@fixatedpersonsunit recalls parliament to introduce hate speech, and also to introduce gun laws. 🤔

@vtrlx
I hadn't heard about the middle click thing. That's good news to me. I've always found the feature weird and confusing; and somewhat unsettling when I accidentally paste something that I definitely did not clip and I really wish I hadn't pasted...

I will appreciate being able to turn it off, one day, in the distant future.

Also, I liked this:

> Claims don’t even need to feel true let alone be true to gain traction—they just need to be rage-inducing to those angry toward that which they feel has wronged them.

Cathy Wilcox was calling out the obvious politicisation that looked very much like it was being orchestrated from overseas.
I stand by Cathy Wilcox, the Age however has caved in.
#auspol

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/wilcox-cartoon-was-divisive-and-we-apologise-for-the-hurt-it-has-caused-20260111-p5nt6b.html

@alice that alt-text though :bunneawwheart:

@ozeng I'm not entirely sure what you're saying though. The 96 million was spent, right? And it was related to the website, was it not? Or are you talking about some totally unrelated 'data gathering'?

@ozeng As I understand it, 96 million dollars were spent on the deployment of that website. That includes its design, creation, testing, etc. At that magnitude of money, it is quite clearly a rort. I don't think it much matters which specific line items were most inflated, except possibly as forensic evidence in a corruption investigation.

Yesterday I wrote to the Adelaide Festival Board to withdraw my participation from Adelaide Writers Week.

Their decision to intervene in Writers Week programming and cancel the participation of author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is completely unacceptable.

As Chair of the Australian Society of Authors, I stand for writers’ rights to participate freely in public discourse, to be engaged fairly and to work under fair conditions.

The Board’s decision is one that undermines all those rights.

I got a bit of a scare from the new (96 million dollar) BOM website. It was telling me that the 40℃+ temps would continue well past 10PM!

But apparently that's because if you leave the page open, the time labels for each block update but the temperatures do not. Pressing refresh restores a more sane prediction.
#weather #BOM #australia

Elon Musk's X is currently mass-producing deepfake images of women and children.

The federal government — which says it's "committed to restricting access to nudify tools" — has no plans to stop its 7 figure X annual advertising spend or using it as a major comms platform
https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/01/09/australian-government-elon-musk-deepfake-porn-x/

EU is calling for comments on open source strategies. MAKE YOURSELF HEARD!

Even non-EU citizens have a voice here.

NOW is a time to stand up and stand out! YOU want to help the Fediverse? Here's just one way today that YOU can REALLY make a difference:

The European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy will set out:

• a strategic approach to the open source sector in the EU that addresses the importance of open source as a crucial contribution to EU technological sovereignty, security and competitiveness
• a strategic and operational framework to strengthen the use, development and reuse of open digital assets within the Commission, building on the results achieved under the 2020-2023 Commission Open Source Software Strategy.

ec.europa.eu/info/law/better...

#EU #open #foss #openSource #source #linux #activitypub #AP #fedi #fediverse

How a Small Group of Wealthy People Shapes What You Think.
Senate hearing exposes how mining billionaire Gina Rinehart's $4.5 million funded the IPA think tank, revealing Australia's billionaire propaganda network that shapes public opinion on climate, energy, and policy.

#auspol #mediawatch #billionairepower #thinktanks #politicalinfluence #propaganda #climatepolitics #energytransition #fossilfuels #corporatepower #democracy #publicinterest #ipa #mininglobby #wealthandpower

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yFKNtpBkv8

"Without even needing to argue about the problem of prejudgment — for example, by defining “antisemitism” as a causative element rather than engaging an open-minded inquiry into what actually might be learned from Bondi — surely it’s obvious that it will be utterly pointless to have a royal commission that can’t consider the specific event that is its sole reason for being established?

"That the media haven’t once mentioned this fatal problem is a testament to their laziness and stupidity. That no politician has mentioned it is equally damning. That it’s been ignored, roundly and completely, in the “debate” over a royal commission says everything about the world of performative ignorance we now inhabit."

#AusPol
https://www.crikey.com.au/2026/01/08/bondi-shooting-royal-commission-big-problem/

@reiayanami This morning (before it was super-hot), I saw someone walking a dog; and the dog was wearing something on its feet. At a glance it looked like it might just be a bit of cloth wrapping the feet in a neat way, but maybe they were custom-made dog-booties. Anyway, I thought that was interesting.

@timrichards That looks like too many °C for me. Can I skip those days?

This was the second time I'd won the game; and I'd expected it to be pretty quick because I was making use of several pages of maps I'd drawn decades earlier. But there were gaps in my old maps where apparently I'd managed to work some stuff out by luck and memory, and didn't bother to write it down. So even though I already had pages of existing maps, I ended up getting out more pen and paper this time too. Anyway, I think it's a interesting type of challenge that isn't seen in newer games.

Modern games tend never leave a player with any doubt about what they should be doing next; for fear that the player might get bored and quit. There are automaps, and quest markers, and often barriers put in place to ensure the player doesn't miss something before moving on. Older games weren't like that.

In Tanglewood, that idea is inverted. Instead, the game expect the player to systematically rule out the possibility of missing something. Essentially the game is about challenging the player to work out how to navigate a variety of confusing areas thoroughly enough to find what they need to solve some meta puzzles.

I just finished replaying Tanglewood (1987 puzzle-adventure game, not the unrelated more recent platformer with the same name). I really enjoyed it. But I also find it interesting how game design principles have changed over time. A large amount of the time I spent playing Tanglewood, I was actually hand-drawing maps; and I don't think anyone would ever win the game without doing that (aside from using a walkthrough). 🧵

#shareyourgames #retrogaming #gaming

@fancysandwiches
Worldless

A metroidvania / puzzle-platformer with a novel combat system. The style of the graphics and sound give a sense of serene exploration; punctuated by tense combat encounters that demand precision and reward great satisfaction.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898500/Worldless/

I did another quick Waymo count today, this time at Guerrero & 29th in #SanFrancisco

In 10 minutes:
• 46 driverless Waymos
• 85 human-driven vehicles

About a third of the traffic on my street is driverless cars.

Hard to confirm, but I never saw a passenger in any of these AVs.