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I tried to read Twilight on a dare once. I dare anyone to suggest JK’s writing is worse than Stephenie Meyer. A lot of popular fantasy and YA isn’t much better than fan fiction. Hunger Games feels even more derivative in many ways but I don’t know if that hurts it.

I agree HP isn’t great art. I read the books once when they came out and that was enough for me. It was a genuine cultural phenomenon though. In the late 90s. early 2000s, before iPhone, Facebook, Youtube it was just some pop culture that filled in the many hours of analog leisure time. It brought joy to a lot of people and relieved some boredom for others. The series had good and bad. The good was the accessibility and interest it generated in reading for a relatively wide audience. Given JK’s current reputation as a person I think it is too easy to dwell on the bad and completely ignore the rest. It is reasonable to cease supporting the HP franchise though. Whatever its merits it had run its course a long time ago.

I am an old man so I don’t read much kid’s/YA fiction and I wasn’t ever a huge HP fan. I tried to watch a tv adaption of WW with my daughter and we didn’t get past the first episode for some reason. We do like a lot of other witchy fiction though. I am hoping the Witchhat Atelier anime is high quality and doesn’t have creepy fan service. That had a really interesting magic system.

JKs works are full of tropes as is most fiction and it clearly isn’t great literature but I am not persuaded by accusations of plagiarism. Every Tarantino movie rips off other movies. The Dollars trilogy was clearly a retelling of Kurosawa samurai movies.

I don’t want to praise JK given her open hostility to the community here but the cross over appeal of her works was a cultural phenomenal at the time. I understand why many people are motivated to rip her work and legacy to shreds. She has very much earned peoples disrespect. As someone who is not targeted by her hateful views I feel detached enough to reject JK as a person without completely dismissing her works and cultural impact. Yeah, that’s some privilege at work but we are who we are. I am never going to have the same awareness or sensitivity about lack of representation, stereotypes etc in her writing.

I am no literature snob but I thought the first few books were good at the time for YA fiction. I still have the full set on my shelves and would be overjoyed if my kids read any novels, even imperfect ones.

People have nit picked JKs works to death and yes, there are problems. Half the stuff I was reading and watching as a kid was far, far worse. Like I was reading stuff that on reflection was clearly written by very far right authors, pedos etc as well as stuff that went way in other directions. I get why people boycott shit like that but I think its probably good to be exposed to some other points of view, even ones you vehemently reject.

People should be supporting new authors and new stories and stop throwing money at tired old corporate franchises. And that goes for the lazy Disney shit as well and all the Hollywood remakes. Unfortunately we have all been squeezed economically so there is fuck all money left to buy media and we are being squeezed for attention so nobody is taking time to read novels or listen to albums. The culture wars are certainly very significant (as a straight white male I know I have blind spots here), particularly for minorities with a lot at stake. But I feel the real enemy is the death of individual economic freedom and free time. Do we really need another big streaming series that brings nothing new to our lives and exists only to enhance shareholder value?

An additional benefit is DaVinci Resolve is Aussie owned (Blackmagic Design from Melbourne Australia) which is great for people outside the US looking to decrease their dependence on US owned products and services.

I am more than happy with kdenlive for my video editing needs but I don’t edit video professionally.

It’s fucking childish. Like a spoiled toddler who doesn’t get their way so throws a tantrum and lies on the ground screaming.

The seppos fought a war to preserve slavery. The politics gets dragged to the right because on the whole they are an abhorrent, damaged, immoral society. They have massive incarceration, capital punishment, don’t act to prevent mass shootings, let people die of preventable causes, don’t have fair wages. They are ignorant about everything including socialism. Their media is fucking awful.

Yet it is the fault of their center-right political party for following the votes? They are where they need to be to get half the votes and no further. There are some shit people in the US Dems for sure. But its a reflection of a shit society. There aren’t millions on the streets demanding a shift to the left and they aren’t voting in primaries or trying to reform the political system.

The thing is if working people consistently voted for the least shit option the parties would drift in the other direction or the right would be entirely wiped out. They don’t because they are brain washed and ignorant. Instead what has happened is all the culture wars, politics of hate and fear and weird cultish bullshit that has now made the GOP the party of the uneducated working class who now vote like suckers for billionaire authoritarians against working class interests. The US needs a true Labor Party that is focused on restoring wealth to working families. But until then adults should accept they need to always vote for the least shit option until they can reform their society and have real choices instead of merely damage control.

Not just the kids. The kids who were exposed to this stuff way back now have kids. It’s generational now.

Yep. This is a waste of time. Canva are just another US VC backed SaaS company despite their Australian origins. An affinity suite port would have been interesting under the previous UK ownership.

You fool. This is social media where the loudest ignorant voice wins. You should agree with the clowns and farm the upvotes like on Reddit.

Stupid seppo propaganda because they don’t know what the fuck democracy is. Dumb cunts. Enjoy your fascist dictatorship losers.

The spread of this brain cancer will kill universal healthcare, public education and all the worker entitlements and minimum wages the rest of us enjoy in real liberal democracies. Canada and Australia are voting and we don’t need shit takes from our idiot ex-allies right now. Every vote counts here. Save this shit for the next US election if you ever have one.

Have actually seen people post this bullshit in countries with proportional representation with lots of minor parties. It’s a fucking stupid oversimplified distortion even in its country of origin.

I live in Australia and the local winery is owned by a Californian company that sends all their output exclusively to the US domestic market. It would be such a shame if those US companies fucked off and profits went back into the local economy.

Independents are really good in theory. Particularly for local representation, if you get a good one. But without a party platform and well developed policies you often don’t know what you are getting. Parties aren’t always a bad thing.

Some of the independents are people who were too shitty even for Family First, PHON, Trump, Liberal Party so went solo. People need to do their research carefully.

We don’t talk about Taco Bell.

Time to kick these fuckers out of the Commonwealth. Make them our 7th state. Or slap a 150% tariff on maple syrup. Where the fuck is Albo on this?

It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.

It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.

A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because they put ideology and theoretical bullshit ahead of morality, empathy and the survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow of scams, mass-surveillance and brain washing. Still a big proponent of free software and agree with a lot of stuff from the EFF but the oligarchs ruined it. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.

Common sense. Border force should be investigated.

Just follow the money. Don’t even need to do that, its very obvious which industry group benefits from attacking the Greens. It is the same companies, majority foreign owned who aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.

It is hard to understand how anyone would fall for these corporate propaganda campaigns but then you think about the number of phone and internet scams and see all the fraud and weird cults around and I guess you just have to influence enough people to shift the goal posts. They must be spending a fortune per vote. Must be nice to have a licence to steal our countries wealth and not give anything back.

The idea in Australia is to place the responsibility on the social media companies.

The government isnt filtering traffic or enforcing behaviour. It is fining companies if they don’t implement a form of age verification that is compliant with privacy laws.

We can’t even make these companies pay tax and obey other laws so I am not very optimistic but at least it raises awareness of the problem.

A woman is absolutely a threat to another human. Any animal that size is. That you think women are harmlessly is ironically, misogyny.

Yes all people are potentially dangerous.

But the biomechanics in adults are very different and need to be recognised. Statistically the physical intimidation is mostly one way when you account for sexual dimorphism in height, weight, reach, muscle mass etc. There are always exceptions but women live in a very different threat environment. That isn’t misogyny.

If people tend to hate what they fear and mysogyny is literally hatred of women like what the fuck? Perhaps some men are terrified of emotional harm. I can understand that but perhaps they would be better off with some therapy or a bit of self awareness.

I don’t understand misogyny at all. What’s it all about? If you were homosexual and were raised in an ancient Macedonian army or something perhaps you wouldn’t see a mother, sisters, daughters, lovers, work colleagues, neighbors, friends but who lives like that? Boys who live in front of a screen and are too anxious and scared to go outside? Racism I can kind of understand if you only have superficial knowledge of other people and cultures.

Once that testosterone kicks in at puberty women aren’t generally a physical threat to men. I don’t really understand all the fear of them. Some women are really, really cool. Like serious friend material and lifelong partner stuff.