CalamityJoe

Yep.

The best we got was that he likely won't rewarded for it.

"On Friday, a new pay determination that could seek to strip secretaries of their entitlements if they breach the public service code of conduct was signed off by the Remuneration Tribunal. "

The Guardian had a better way of explaining it.

"On Friday, the government’s salary umpire, the Remuneration Tribunal, quietly made a ruling revoking a requirement that secretaries and agency heads receive a payout if they’re sacked for breaching the rules."

Imagine that.

Before Friday last week, a Department Secretary purposely and flagrantly breaking the rules could expect a payout for doing so.

I'm sure they get to keep the money they received while on paid leave pending any inquiry, which makes the arguments for penalties and fines even stronger.

It's simply less value for money these days. And government economic policy over the last 30 years has made it very clear they believe universities are more a personal empowerment vehicle, rather than a national benefit (through having a higher proportion of the population university educated).

On one hand, it's become common knowledge having a degree doesn't automatically get you a decent job, let alone a decent job, like many millennials and gen y were socialised to believe.

On the other hand, the quality of teaching has gone down, while the user-pays cost, even if it's via HECS, has gone up substantially, at the same time that people know it's going to be extremely hard to save up to buy a home these days, even with access to the bank of Mum and Dad.

Many younger people have given up on the feasibility of owning their own home till mum or dad dies, so there's less push for those people to spend money and time on increasing their earning power. That dream of earning your own home on your own effort is very much dying.

Additionally, those that are still inclined to earn enough to afford their own home, are having to judge whether the larger HECS loans, and mandatory repayments, will affect their ability to take out and pay off the larger loans now needed to buy a home.

Our university system has Americanised to a much more user-pays system, where students are expected to take on larger loans (even if it's HECS), as the government has continually withdrawn or starved funding for the sector over 30 odd years, and universities have responded by casualising its workforce, and getting rid of tenure for academics, so that the standard of teaching has fallen badly.

Not to mention the implementation of a private company-style economic model for universities, so at the same time as being starved of funding, they're being encouraged to chase international students to make up that funding, which has affected academic integrity badly, and redirected funding from the quality of their teaching and academics, to more flashy but extremely expensive capital investments like new buildings and facilities. Which are nice if the money is available, but generally it's come from badly-needed areas elsewhere within the University.

Imagine if a new funding model was proposed for our hospitals, where government reduced overall funding, but hospitals could make up the shortfall by advertising and encouraging international patients to have treatment with them. Obviously the quality and availability of treatment for domestic patients would suffer to some degree, as focus would go towards attracting international patients to help pay for those domestic patients. But it would be very easy for hospitals to lose focus on the big picture, and instead begin to see attracting international patients as the end goal, rather than a means to make treatment for available to more domestic patients.

Many classes are taught by PhD candidates or recent graduates, who are on insecure semester to semester contracts, often signed only weeks before a semester begins, and there are reports many are expected to only allocate, (or at least, will only be paid for) 10 minutes or less per student essay, and 5 minutes or less for other assessments. What sort of valid individualised feedback and recommendations for improvement can you give within that timeframe?

I'm going to assume it's an autocorrect issue, but just for those not familiar with Australia's university student funding system and want to websearch it, it's HECS, not hex.

It's not government related at all, it's an industry-created body, formed by members of the alcohol and beverage industry, to self-regulate their advertising material.

And yes, extremely cushy. Like the article said, it's created a voluntary code with no fines or penalties on its members, and was only spurred to action by a viral story of outrage and complaints spreading on social media. Probably mostly consists of board members who attend a few days a year and one or two employees who just press yes/approve on whatever they're sent.

"Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code had given pre-approval for Hard Solo as an appropriate product." Only to backflip quickly under actual political and media scrutiny once it's release became public knowledge.

Even it's response to one complaint's suggestion that hard solo sounds like Han solo - and therefore potentially evoked associations with stars wars in the minds of some kids - was petty.

"the packaging doesn’t appeal to minors by having “a similar name to [a] Star Wars character”. How do they know that? I myself saw Han Solo at first glance, and thought of the fairly recent Han Solo movie -with black and yellow stencil font- before re-reading it as Hard Solo.

Given they didn't detect anything wrong with mimicking a soft drink before, I don't think they have any legitimacy to arbitrarily dismiss other potential associations, especially when the colours pretty much match exactly the title schema of the Han Solo and Star Wars movies.

Anyway (I got distracted sorry), the article itself has people stating this is why industry self-regulation doesn't work, and why an actual government body with a mandatory code and penalties should be in place.

But, its much cheaper for government not to, since then government would need to fund the new body and it's employees, and spend time drawing up and debating relevant legislation and regulatory powers, whereas ABAC is funded by its member companies.

Haha yeah, in 200 words summarising an 800 word article, it's managed to skirt around all the meat of the article, so we don't actually know what the issue was, just peripheral mentions that Centrepay is somehow involved, a fair amount of money and customers are possibly involved, and the company doesn't want to comment, essentially. None of which tells us what was going wrong. We get more of an idea from the original title!

Very bad bot!

That's the one.

"See, they are McDonald's, I'm McDowells... They got the golden arches, mine is the golden arcs.They got the Big Mac. I got the Big Mick... But they use a sesame seed bun. My buns have no seeds."

I definitely had the Enterprise/Faith of the Heart intro as the most discordant and off-putting combination I've been subjected too...

Until I started trying to watch Britannia. You'd be watching ancient Roman soldiers talking or swording it out with Celtic Britons and scarified druids against backdrops of mud daubed huts, thick untouched forests, primitive villages etc, and suddenly...you'd be hearing this upbeat folksy 1960s Beatles-like The Hurdy Gurdy Man.

And then you'd go straight back to the ancient Roman soldiers, druids, swords and Celtic style clothing and background.

This is a good example of that discordant transition https://youtube.com/watch?v=GNG9EU8eZj0

I also noticed the article seemed a little vague regarding ideal goals of an FTA between Australia and EU.

Seems like the EU mostly wanted Australia to agree to their geographical indicator rules (e.g. not allowed to use feta, Prosecco etc names) and for Australia to agree to much more ambitious climate action and sustainability targets.

So that kind of explains why they aren't too fussed about reaching an agreement with Australia (plus Australia upset France by withdrawing from its submarine deal the way it did), whereas Australia had a lot more to gain.

• Reducing or eliminating the current excise levels (7-12%) across industrial goods,
• increasing or eliminating altogether the allowed currently very restrictive quotas of agricultural goods that can be exported to EU, and
• building towards mutual recognition of professional licensing and registration, so workers can more easily move between EU and Australia.

But the EU being almost half a billion people vs our 26 million, we were never going to have very effective leverage I think.

(This link had better details https://www.claytonutz.com/knowledge/2022/july/free-trade-agreement-between-australia-and-the-european-union-back-on-the-table-with-some-caveats)

Some of my favourites

Mixolydian - Gateless Gate - Mark Saul https://youtu.be/vn1cr_m1zF4?si=INWil7ZP7TXKzIbo

Avengers Theme - Snake Charmer https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=7uMoLkUDEio&si=0V_M0d3U--kKvjLh

Hellbound Train - Red Hot Chilli Pipers https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JkBaYdGHXlM&si=br_QbvCnmomnrPxI

Rolling with the Goblins - Celtica https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=IvXUEXSjtFc&si=9SMCihdsUlZKeEnw

Mixolydian - E minor - Mark Saul https://youtu.be/hsax6D_wJy8?si=wce3sgeyhnTJK7tu

And a bonus cover just because: Wake Me Up - Red Hot Chilli Piper's https://youtu.be/1jL-5tRQilo?si=NH-IM0PHqPsoYjZ3

I was thinking exactly the same! But couldn't remember the name of it, so my thoughts were along the lines of "Wasn't this a documentary? Wasn't this released earlier then 2023? Pretty sure the girls involved were from northern Europe?

Have a feeling that Hotel Coolgardie will actually be much more interesting viewing to many of the target audience of this new movie. So many uncomfortable and semi-surreal moments. Available on Prime in Australia, so possibly is also on US Prime, for those interested.

Not really that weird.

It's a common occurrence.

It's a passion project that someone or a team spend a lot of time and energy on, likely thinking that the advantages of implementation will be so obvious that it'll just be out into production based on its self-evident merits or improvement on existing practices.

Then it hits the concrete wall of reality, where there's actually lots of friction and barriers in the process of trying to get the project into production and implemented. Management just doesn't want to go ahead with it for whatever reason, and people don't seem to be as enthusiastic about it and clamoring for it as the dev/team thought they would be, despite it solving a number of common issues they have with a product/service.

So the dev/team can either go home and forget about it, starting a new project, or write a manifesto remembering and defending the project they've spent many hours on.

It almost reads like a PhD thesis defence. At least that PhD then gets recorded, filled and archived, and despite it potentially having no immediate real-world impact, possibly someone down the line might access the extensive work and research already done here, and use it to further their own project, and fingers crossed that project has more success in making a real-world change than this one.

TL;DR: I imagine his management don't want to go ahead with implementation for whatever reason, but because the research and any coding was done during his time at Google, he can't just go and create his own app or implementation, or approach another more willing company for implementation. But by providing the research and element summaries, and points for how a better system might work, he not only memorialized his hours of work on a "dead end" project, but allows others in a less captive situation the advantage of taking his summary and using it to actually try to get change happening elsewhere.

I think it's bringing up a couple of good points actually, that are worth considering when crafting public policy, and observing where our current society is heading.

1. Treating and thinking of our current public education system as "the great equaliser", such that children coming out of it operate at a roughly similar level once they leave, isn't actually a reality.

2. The outcomes of children, despite going through this "great equaliser" system, is actually still significantly affected by parents, meaning parents, and the way they interact with their children, still have a massive role in children's outcomes.

I think a lot of people, and teachers, have observed that parents appear to be increasingly farming out non-academic responsibilities onto the school system and teachers (e.g. discipline, life lessons, social expectations), let alone give time to help their child academically.

And I imagine a lot of this is due to themselves being overwhelmed, under financial stress, or simply having to work more hours less securely to cover rapidly rising living expenses.

All of this adds up to a picture that creating the conditions in our society where parents are under less pressure financially and mentally (presumably similar to conditions experienced by university educated and CEO parents) is likely to improve children's educational outcomes, and their future outlook and experience in life.

TLDR; it suggests easing life conditions for low socio-economic parents, such that it enables them to spend more time with their kids, would have more of an impact in improving their children's life outcomes, rather than focusing money and resources entirely on the education system to do the same. Admittedly some assumptions in there. But worth investigating.

And another reading could be that putting resources into making university more universally accessible, and something that is encouraged to be taken even by those pursuing careers not requiring university, and structured in a way to more easily and unobtrusively allow that, so that more parents had university experience, could be a better way of improving children's educational outcomes than putting the same resources purely into public schooling and children.