• 16 Posts
  • 45 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 18th, 2025

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  • “This wind farm alone will provide enough renewable energy to power 1.2 million homes – it’s a great example of why we need to press ahead with transmission infrastructure to distribute renewable energy across the state,” said Kat Lucas-Healey, Environment Victoria’s senior climate and energy advisor.

    “The two battery energy storage systems included as part of the project will ensure power keeps flowing even when winds are light – keeping the lights on in Western Victoria and across the state.”

    This is one reason why the LibNat coalition is deperate to block projects like this: They demonstrate the lies about reliability. It’s renewables plus battery that is far more reliable than coal-fired power, and the more of these come online the more obvious that will be.






  • Betteridge’s law of headlines applies here also: The answer is “no”.

    The LLMs and diffusion models (that are what that author clearly means by the vague “AI” marketing term) have no mind, have no intention, have no understanding of any part of reality, have no experience, have no sensations or suffering, and have no way of ever gaining any of those things.

    They are (unreliable) guessing machines, that never know anything or experience anything or intend anything or want anything.

    They are not moral agents, they have no capacity to ever become moral agents or any kind of life. Please, everyone in the media, learn to tell the difference between a marketing lie versus the reality of what these things are.

    Whatever the future holds for artificial minds or artificial life, these things are fundamentally not that, by design.



  • Having the Government run ~200 stores isn’t going to drastically cut prices to make things more affordable, not without underpaying staff or suppliers?

    As a government-run business, they have no need to pursue profit; they provide a service to people. The point of state-run grocery stores is to spend government money providing for people’s needs, there is no justification to underpay workers nor suppliers, nor to overcharge for the groceries.

    Pay the suppliers a fair rate for their goods; this might be above what the duopolists pay, and that’s no problem. Charge a retail price low enough that people can afford groceries. Pay the workers enough to decently remunerate their work; this might be above what other grocery workers are paid, and that’s no problem.

    The Australian government can always pay whatever Australian dollars are needed for this. By legislating they will pay the money they thereby create the money to pay for it. We should demand they pay for whatever is needed to provide what we need, without any condition on the business to return any profit.

    Perhaps that results in a business that returns no profit. Perhaps as a business even ends up spending more money than it brings in. This is fine, so long as it does what we need it to do for that money spent.

    (For those concerned with the risk of inflation by spending government money: that’s a valid concern! But paying decent prices to farmers for food, paying decent wages to workers in the grocery stores, is not what drives inflation. Let’s reduce inflation by taxing away the super-wealth of billionaires.)

    All of these valid goals are compatible simultaneously, because there is no need for the state-run grocery business to be profitable. Government is meant to provide for its people, it is irrelevant whether the business returns a profit.


  • So you say that Australians

    need to start taking the medicine

    yet when asked how that will improve the situation, you say

    I am not saying it will improve, i think its inevitable a lot of people will get hurt, those without likely.

    So, I’m not seeing why those without “need to start taking the medicine”. If it’s inevitable they will get hurt whether or not they “take the medicine”, I think they’d be right to say: no we don’t and bugger off for saying we need to.

    I think it’s not inevitable (as in: cannot be avoided) that a lot of disadvantaged people will get hurt. That can be avoided, because it will happen only by the choices the powerful make. It can be avoided, if we collectively choose to avoid it.