Earth Day on #WerewolfWednesday? Say no more

This is a pretty good depiction of how disabled Australians are feeling today…
#chronicillness #disability

#LaborValues
Everyone in so-called Australia will experience disability at some point in their life, either personally or in their family. We are a rich enough country to fund proper, equitable & humane support. Making disability an industry for profit is neoliberal bullshit. #auspol

it gives me no pleasure to say this—i don’t find masking as much as i must to be particularly thrilling—but our reality is stark. you cannot Act As If covid is gone and then be shocked when a nefarious actor makes the same claim. why wouldn’t they? your complacency has allowed it.

"Disability care before Drones" ... ?

"Support before Submarines" ... ?

Either way, Labor is killing disabled people for the sake of the greedy rich.

Voting won't fix this. Only mass strikes will - as that's what got us public healthcare in the first place.

#AusPol #Disability #HumanRights #NDIS

Ha! I'm blocked by Bluesky dev Why, too.

The funny thing is, I'm quite a fan of AI in general.

Like, my research in the '00s was what's referred to as "Good Old Fashioned AI" these days.

It's just that I'm not a fan of planet-trashing LLMs trained on stolen data and used for all the wrong things.

This is going to kill people. It's fucking evil.

Big, big fan of the 13th Columbo here. (Natasha Lyonne in her role in Poker Face. Highly recommend!)

Funnily enough, there's software to convert your singing voice into a vocaloid.

You can do that with Diffsinger, an open source equivalent to the commercial Synthesizer V software that's used now for Kasane Teto.

You just need a few hours of recordings labelled the right way for Diffsinger to use.

Yep. It's incredibly powerful tech.

And that's why they're now trying to limit what you can 3D print.

It's nominally to stop people from 3D printing guns.

But the real reason is a desperate attempt to keep control in a world where slave labour under capitalism is outcompeted by this tech.

Oh, yep, it's gotta be everywhere, all at once, for this to sink capitalism.

As if the capitalists can enslave any of us, the cycle will just keep going.

Hence, the minute I make anything in this direction - open sourced, on the net, everywhere I can manage to put it.

Fingers crossed! 🤞😊

100% agreed. Honestly, I think getting this tech out of the labs would *end* capitalism.

As if people can get needs met by tech buildable in a backyard?

It's way harder for the rich to force everyone to work for them by the threat of starvation.

(Hence why I'm trying to open source this tech.)

Honestly, I hadn't even thought of airships as something potentially constructable with the cutting edge of 3D printing tech.

But, it absolutely could be.

It's a brilliant idea, and - I hope! - soon to be yet another example of tech inspired by fiction.

(As created thirsty lesbians 😉😆)

This is all tech that exists. It's just locked up in laboratories, as it isn't profitable. Or it otherwise needs 3D printers that cost millions.

But, if we can make a 3D printer that can replicate itself? This all would become commonplace fast, from open source tech.

(I'd *make* this happen.)

Buoyancy controlled by a vacuum pump and an air ingress valve.

The gondola is catamaran-shaped, so it can rest on the ocean. Useful during the night, bad weather, and to fish for dinner.

And: 3D-printed graphene supercapacitor banks in the catamaran hulls for energy storage and stability.

* scratches designs notes furiously *

A vacuum airship with a solar PV thin film printed on the lifting body/envelope. A boron-carbide ceramic and aluminium alloy honeycomb made via laser sintering.

A carbon fibre gondola for passengers, with electric turbines for propulsion.

Doable!

Alice in Social Anxiety Land With illustration of alice standing below the tree branch upon which the cheshire cat lays Cheshire cat says we are all mad here Alice asks at me?

If you ever get mad at me, this is who you're mad at

Advocacy groups ask treasurer to scrap property tax breaks in next budget The country’s peak advocacy groups are asking the treasurer to scrap the tax breaks for property investors in this year’s May budget. It has been reported that the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is leaning toward scrapping the Howard-era capital gains tax discount and returning to the pre-1999 inflation indexation method. Every year, the federal government hands $20bn in tax breaks to property investors through negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. Everybody’s Home, Antipoverty Centre, Better Renting, Think Forward and Tomorrow Movement and House Youse said: The evidence is clear. These tax breaks inflate property prices, reward hoarding over housing, fuel inequality and drain public revenue that could fund the homes people actually need. Our organisations reject half-measures, including reducing the CGT discount, limiting negative gearing to one or two investment properties, or grandfathering changes so existing investors continue to unfairly benefit. These are not reforms. They maintain handouts to the wealthy few at the expense of the majority. We call on treasurer Jim Chalmers to use the 2026 budget to: – Scrap negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount entirely – Direct the $20 billion in annual savings towards funding public, high quality homes for the people who need them

"The evidence is clear. These tax breaks inflate property prices, reward hoarding over housing, fuel inequality and drain public revenue that could fund the homes people actually need."

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

What if we just gave people money? The economics of time and freedom The idea that there’s only so much money to go around makes a bastard kind of sense to the poor. If impossible decisions abound in their lives, it must be true of governments, too. Certainly, that’s h...

The Commonwealth spends $17 billion a year on income support for the 885,000 people on JobSeeker and then another $1.3 billion a year just on contracts to private companies to enforce the web of conditions attached to receiving that same income support. It’s inefficient even writing it out.

Fuck, JOBSEEKER needs to be minimum wage. DSP should be median income.

Paging @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social now that he has lost an excuse for betraying trans New Yorkers

Duolingo's a surprisingly effective teacher for chess.

I've always been pretty mediocre at it, but after pouring 40+ (heavily gamified) hours into it? I'm competitive against other humans now.

So, I think you'll get your wish.

I don't disagree. My thinking is that the economy that supports them all is mid-collapse.

With ICE locking up more and more of the productive workforce, tariff chaos, social programs and government spending gutted, and so on? That's beyond a handbrake on an economy, it's a recipe for annihilation.

I think it's interesting that even while what "juniors" learn in tech now is completely different from several decades ago, we still seem to think juniors can't learn and adapt and that there might be a different version of "junior developer" that we aren't quite anticipating yet.

yeah babe we know it's called Lancer

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating - NASA Science On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the

Voyager 1 has had another instrument shutdown. On Friday, the team at JPL sent the command to shut off of the low energy charged particle instrument. That means that there are now only two operational science instruments on the spacecraft.

science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyage...

Australian Government media release page titled “Free RSV vaccine for older Australians.” Banner includes a photo of Health Minister Mark Butler. Text states the government is introducing free RSV vaccinations for older Australians to protect against severe illness. Details show media event date and publication date: 19 April 2026. Media type: Media release. Audience: General public.

Free RSV vaccine for older Australians.

From 15 May, a $445.3 million investment will fund free Arexvy RSV vaccines for Australians aged 75+ and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 60+, with doses otherwise costing around $300 without NIP listing.

www.health.gov.au/ministers/th...

Hey I know you all think it's over but it's not. Please please wear a mask in public enclosed spaces and hand sanitiser. We need your beautiful undamaged brains for the revolution.