Obviously track closures aren't helping, but I've noticed a major decrease in reliability with Brisbane's bus network recently. Seems like every few days a bus just doesn't show on me and almost every service is delayed. Not good!

An ABC News notification which reads: "BREAKING: Social media screening and a plan to deport people who breach Australian values are part of the Coalition's new immigration policy"

I love opening my notifications and seeing that the Coalition has announced some new shit like the "What If We Became A Surveillance State For Immigrants" policy

A photo looking down a long flight of stairs in a park. A road is visible below

I know they're an accessibility nightmare but I cannot help but love an urban staircase

Melbourne appears (to someone who doesn't live there) to be gradually working in stop consolidation alongside accessibility upgrades which is a great way to do it IMO - very smart way to modernise the network

I was spending like $150/week on groceries last year but that's Australian food prices which are completely unhinged

A guy on r/Queensland posted this recently, this is the state of a lot of roads in the state. The road is a fast, busy 2-lane road (keeping in mind that ebikes cut out at 25km/hr), and the "footpath" in the image has a maximum speed so slow I can outpace them at a jog!

I am quoting my own org here, but it's genuinely so insane that the state gov wants to make ebikes/escooters completely useless for the average Queensland student (by making them be over 16 and licensed!) and adult (since there are so few bike paths, and good luck on the road at 25km/h!)

It's so odd that this is framed as a fast rail project. Yes it'll speed things up slightly, but capacity is the main improvement and I think they're setting themselves up for failure by emphasising the speed when it's only a few minutes difference

A photo showing a ferry travelling towards the camera. The photo is captioned as follows: "Policy Day 2026 - Save the Date Sunday, April 19th"

A graphic captioned as follows: "Join us as we identify key policies to advocate for this year, informing a redraft of our Policy Platform! When: Sunday, April 19th. 10am - 5:30pm Where: Kenmore Library Everyone is welcome to attend, but you must be a member to vote on proposals Have a brilliant suggestion? Swipe to get it heard!"

A graphic captioned as follows: "How to propose a policy: To make a policy proposal, simply create a post (or reply to an existing one!) on the BTQ forum under the 2026 Policy Proposals topic. Prior to the meeting, an indicative online survey will be released to rate each submission item in isolation on a five-point scale from strong-support to strong-oppose."

Please join us for our upcoming Policy Workshop, on Sunday April 19th 2026!

The meeting will be held at Kenmore Library. We have the room booked from 9am til 6pm - we expect to start at 10, and finish by 5:30.

1/5

From what the article suggests, even sharing this image separated from the ABC article might be illegal? Absolutely insane if true

"the $3.6B figure includes a lot more signalling upgrades that have been either added or moved from other projects"

Alt text for 3rd image, cont.

"I really doubt (with absolutely no qualification to do so) that ETCS & QR RIS has somehow blown out from $1.3B to $3.6B in 5 years. Especially given the announcements of more sections of the network being upgraded to ETCS, I suspect this is scope creep and that" 1/2

Alt text for first image, cont.

"“What has been talked about is whether you include those other numbers on top of the cost of the rail budget line item and say that that is the total cost of delivering Cross River Rail, or when you treat them as discrete online items,” Mr Newton said."

A quote from the Courier Mail, which reads: Mr Newton is now facing cross examination. He has been asked to explain how the CRR project costs blew out from $5.4bn to its current $19bn price tag. Here is the entire explanation: “The $5.4 billion number back in 2017-18, when that budget was announced, the accounting standards didn’t require a declaration of the private financing component,” Mr Newton said. “In the subsequent year, in 2019-20, that private financing of roughly one $1.5bn or one $1.499bn was incorporated, so hence the budget was, then, I suppose, recorded as being $6.88bn.” “In the 2023-24 budget, it was adjusted to that same number, the comparative number $6.88bn was adjusted to $7.85bn and in that window was a range of things, stuff that’s been talked about here, but also Covid. “Then the most recent adjustment is in the current budget, which is in the 2025-26 budget, which is $9.83bn OK, so that if you were to do an apples with apples comparison, the $6.88bn has been adjusted to $9.83bn. “So then going to the question around the $19bn… it’s more than just that core scope of Cross River Rail. “If you add $2.6bn – which is the service payments, which is the 25 year concession period where the state pays back that, that creates a number of $12.4bn. “And there’s a further $6.6bn of other work that we’re delivering … there’s complimentary work, so stabling yards, station upgrades, bridges and some conventional signaling in the rail corridor. And on top of that is the ETCS signaling and also upgrades to the new generation rolling stock fleet, so that is ETCS capable. “And then there’s some integration funding… then there’s other costs, such as alternative transport… and also some additional costs for Queensland Rail for their operation once that goes in.” Keeping up? CRR build cost = $12.43bn ($9.83bn for project + $2.6bn for service payments) Other related works = $6.6bn [Continued in replies]

A post made by me on the BTQ forum in Dec 2025, which reads as follows A ministerial statement from Dec 2024 breaks it down into: $10.5B for construction + 25 years of maintenance $5B for trains (QTMP?), stabling, signalling, rail replacements during construction, maintenance facilities, and “integration works” (presumably other projects) $1.5B for “late running and contractor claims” Last cost estimate from the red team before departure was $6.3B spend, and that’s for construction only. The link Metro posted above (probably the most reliable of the bunch) isn’t entirely clear, but does include this chart [A detailed chart showing the funding of Cross River Rail over various financial years]

A continuation of the previous post by myself, which reads as follows: Looking further at pages 25 & 26, as far as I can tell $8.3B + $1.5B private funding for ‘core project’ (which, assuming everything grew in cost evenly from 2019 roughly breaks down into:) $6B for tunnels, stations, and development $1B for rail, integration, and systems $2.8B for land acquisition, contingencies, and other project costs $3.6B for associated project costs, seemingly all funded by QR & TMR (again, assuming even cost growth breaks into:) $1.8B for ETCS $1.8B for rail, integration, and systems $2.6B for 25 years of operations and maintenance $3B for ‘associated project costs’, which include “tunnel integration with the existing rail network, train stabling facilities, signalling systems, temporary bus services during construction, and maintenance equipment”. We also know from the media release above that this includes the new QTMP trains Some personal thoughts: Red team estimate of $6.3B from 2023 lines up perfectly with the state contribution to the CRR project at that time. I think if we want to do any meaningful comparison our cost for CRR is now $8.3B Blue team is counting the cost of the whole project including private funding and separate ETCS/RIS that QR is paying for, so that’s already a ‘blowout’ up to $13.4B without an additional cent being spent. I don’t think this is unreasonable per se (certainly the QR portion is also a state cost), but it’s odd to change costing half way through Blue team has additionally added 25 years of maintenance and ops to the cost (which we already knew about), as well as factored into what seems to be the entirety of the QTMP project, rail replacement buses, stabling, and god knows what else. I don’t really have any way to describe this other than dodgy to the point of lying to the public. Really disappointing [Continued in replies]

(Wall of text warning) Very funny to see that I was basically spot-on with deducing the actual cause of the Cross River Rail funding blowout. 1st image is from an interview with the CMFEU today, 2nd and 3rd are me attempting to answer the exact same question back in Dec 2025

The current state gov has a habit of referring to them as the LNP's permanent 50c fares, which is technically true but feels misleading

statements.qld.gov.au/statements/1...

Brisbane 🗣️

If you don't understand the difference between sex and gender go back to primary school

Yes, because Australia actually respects the rights of trans people instead of falling into alt-right culture war nonsense

I fail to see how the training dataset being bad is my fault lmao

Gen AI is fundamentally incapable of understanding anything and I think that fundamental limitation will always be an issue, but regardless the training set is full of bad code. Garbage in, garbage out.

...if you don't have the systemic understanding how will you know what to ask for?

In terms of the AI getting better, it's trained on random code from the internet which tends to be dubious quality, and now that training set includes its own slop.

Code that works and code that's maintainable are two very different things. You need a deeper, systematic understanding if you care about performance, future changes, or being bug-free. Getting it to work is the easy part, not screwing every person who touches it in the future is what matters

I am very confident anyone who's using an AI guide to learn to program has absolutely no idea what's actually going on in their code

A render showing a monstrously large and complex road interchange

Absolutely insane that we're still building stuff like this in the year of our lord 2026

In Australia you go to jail for 2 years for saying "from the river to the sea" in public, but get a slap on the wrist for repeatedly luring gay men into dark places and then filming yourself beating them unconscious while you shout slurs at them

I've been thinking about doing every SEQ station, but the prospect of doing the Gympie line with no car is bleak

This goes so incredibly hard

Luckily she seemed mostly okay, but she split her head open quite badly and ended up being taken to hospital by paramedics. This is a common, and entirely preventable injury for cyclists because roads aren't safe for them and the council is content to keep it that way

Had to call an ambulance yesterday for a middle-aged woman who came off her bike while moving from road to footpath here, because despite the width of the road (see image) and the constant flow of cyclists, BCC has decided not to install bike lanes and she didn't feel safe in rush hour traffic

Who up continvoucly morging they bugfixes