It's not Australian construction, it would seem to to be a Western country issue, or one potentially affecting any nuclear construction.

See Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity"). It was started in 2007, and was estimated to be completed in 2012, but it's still not completed. It's currently scheduled to begin operating in 2024.

Oma powerplant in Japan was started in 2010, and is currently scheduled to be completed in 2026. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant

South Korea's new Hanul reactors look like they've taken about 10 years each. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanul_Nuclear_Power_Plant (The table in section "Reactors" might be interesting, as it shows the pre-2000 reactors taking only about 5 years to complete)

Are you able to link the source document?

However, as an example of why nuclear is seen as risky, time-consuming and subject to massive cost blowout and time delays, see Flamanville 3 ( https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx Under "new nuclear capacity")

It's gone from being a project started in 2004 to build a 1650MWe plant costing 4.2 billion euros (in 2020 euros), to an estimated completion date of 2024, at 13.2 billion euros.

And this is France, a country that is very familiar and well-versed with building nuclear reactors.

Without the source document, this may well be the example you use from your 2nd bullet point. But I wouldn't have called this a startup.

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?

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 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)

Yeah, reading through the ADL reasoning, one of the articles they use to justify its accusation that Mondoweiss is antisemitic is actually discussing how ultra rightwing and ultra religious some of the recently elected candidates are, and to whom Netanyahu was trying to work closely with.

"Another story, Yes ‘Jewish Power’ party is fascistic, but its rise was inevitable is also very negative toward Israeli Jews."

So an article discussing the election of 6 problematically hard right, ultra religios, Israeli Zionists, and their histories, beliefs and background, in ADL's eyes is a negative anti-semitic article on all Israelis Jews?

That's a very long bow to stretch.

Not excusing it, but I'd say it's very easy to feel disconnected from others when you're in a privileged position of power.

Everyone else becomes "them", and you lose track of what "normal" or "average" experiences are like, because you tend to live within a very different space to others, and tend only associate with people with similar privilege levels.

I remember visiting my country's Parliament building, and within about 15 minutes having this weird sense of disconnection due to the incredibly different beautiful and privileged environment. Everywhere were massive pieces of art, beautiful marble inlays, everything was clean and well ordered, great big wide open spaces, beautifully carved wooden chairs in dining areas etc.

I remember thinking no wonder politicians tend to be labelled disconnected and removed from the concerns of the average citizen. If I was working in that building 8-12 hours a day, 4-6 days a week, 40+ weeks a year, I'd find it hard to remain grounded and to also remind myself that what I was experiencing was something less than 5% of the population might experience, rather than being the "norm" or standard for the majority of the population.

The confusion definitely wasn't helped by the large amounts of deliberate misinformation being put out there about the intention of the Voice, and requests for specificity.

And then the apparently contradictory arguments (often by the very same person, within the same argument) that it was too much, and therefore privileged indigenous Australians over other Australians, and yet also not enough, and would therefore achieve nothing at all. Or that more information needed to be provided, or more often, that specifics needed to be pre-decided and included within the wording (overlooking that those specifics would then be enshrined in the constitution and largely unchangeable ever again)

An argument to paralyse everyone along the decision spectrum who wasn't already in the yes camp or no camps.

To answer your question, the voice was essentially a yes or no to creating a constitutionally recognised body of indigenous Australians, that could lobby Government and Parliament of behalf of indigenous Australians on issues concerning indigenous Australians.

To use an extended analogy:

It would be similar to a board meeting of a large company asking their shareholders to agree to a proposal to create a position within the company of "Disabilities, Diversity, and Equity Officer", and have that position enshrined within the company's charter, to enable a dedicated representative to make representions on behalf of those that fall under those categories, as they all tend to be in minority groups whose needs or ideas don't tend to be (on average) reflected or engaged with by existing company processes or mainstream society. And that the position be held by someone within one of those minority groups.

Sure, an individual employee could take an issue to their supervisor (i.e. the Government/parliament), but that supervisor rightly has a need to observe the needs of the company (its voters) and the majority of employees (the average Australian), and the thought that a policy might not actually be effective for person Y would likely not even occur to the supervisor, as it seems to work for the majority of employees anyway, and they're not raising any issues. The supervisor is unlikely to go proactivelly asking employee Y's opinion on implementing X policy when they feel they already understand what employee a, b, c and d etc. want out of the policy.

Even if employee Y brings up an issue directly with the supervisor, the supervisor is structurally unlikely to take it on board or give it much weight, as it's a single employee vs the multitude of other employees who are fine with the policy as is. And listening involves extra work, let alone actually changing anything as a result.

Having a specific Disability/Diversity/Equity officer not only allows employee Y an alternative chain of communication to feel like they're being seen, and their concerns heard (which has important implications for their sense of self worth, participation, and mutual respect in the company), but the fact that it's a specified company position within the company's charter means the supervisor is much more likely to give that communication from that position much more weight, and consider it more carefully, than if that random, singular enployee Y had just tried to tell the supervisor directly.

The Disability/Diversity/Equity officer doesn't have the power to change rules, or implement anything by fiat. He can only make representations to the company and give suggestions for how things could be better. The supervisor and company still retain complete control of decision making and implementation, but the representations from the DDE officer could help the company and supervisor create or tweak policy and practices that work for an extra 10-15% of employees, and therefore a total of 85% of the company's employees, instead of the previous 70%.

Now, would you expect that the company provide the shareholders with exact details of: what hours the DDE officer will have, how much they'll be paid, what room of what building they'll operate on, how they'll be allowed or expected to communicate with others in the organisation, etc? With the expectation that all this additional information will be entered into the company charter on acceptance, unchangeable except at very rare full General Meetings of all shareholders held every 2 or 3 decades?

No. They just ask the shareholders if they're on board with creating a specific position of Disability/Diversity/Equity officer, and that its existence be noted and enshrined in the company charter so the position can't be cut during an economic downturn, or easily made redundant and dismissed if an ideologically driven CEO just didn't like the idea of having a specific Disability/Equity officer position in the company.

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

Yeah, after I unknowingly opened

Plot/quest spoiler

The bottle from the chest being transported to Zarya

in the colony and all the myconids did was cast haste on each other and run around uselessly but cutely, I didn't have the heart to ever want to attack them.

Was very much this meme when Glut said what he said.

(Keeping things vague as I don't know if this spoiler tag will actually work)

After chatting to a few gen z, if I was to assume a characteristic of this generation, it's that most seem to have completely given up, or not even started, the fight against the deterioration of online privacy, exposure to ads, and companies "rights" and/or ability to harvest personal data from them no matter what they want. It's just part of life to them.

It's just accepted, and whenever I've raised the issue with them, they'll generally just reply with defeatist/pessimist/'pragmatic': "well, the alternative X, y and z apps/websites you've suggested likely all have hardware backdoors forcibly installed anyway"

So I think the willingness to fight, and picture a different way of having things, really is focused on those within millennial and gen-x age bands.

Edit: the point being, gen z therefore appear less likely to move away from existing structures, like Snapchat and Reddit, over increased ad promulgation, personal data harvesting, or bad company behaviour.

The alternatives, for those interested.

For those who don't want to maintain a natural lawn, Professor Howden suggests planting ground covers and shrubs, or growing a cottage garden.

And if native grass and shrubs won't work for your backyard, you could always lay down some bark or wood chip.

"You can just have bark chips like mulch over your earth, and that doesn't heat up as much as artificial turf and does keep the ground healthy," Assistant Professor Ting said.