Trebuchets aren't really a tool for defence. They have tremendous range and aren't exactly speedy to load, aim, and launch.

Unless you meant defence in the same way that a country's military operations are known as "defence forces" regardless of intent, in which case carry on.

I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear. The country's power needs are only going to keep growing, and I could see an argument for having multiple options for sourcing that power. It's a very expensive argument though, and one that's hard to swallow when all the experts are saying renewable is the way to go, and I haven't seen any projections that show that we'd necessarily need anything other than renewables in the foreseeable future.

The thing I'm strongly opposed to with regards to nuclear is rerouting funding away from renewables to pay for it. It's an expensive technology that won't be ready for decades, so I just don't see the need to pivot to it. If we'd started the transition to nuclear three decades ago things would be different, but the LNP was strongly opposed to the technology back then, funnily enough.

And it's absolutely absurd to then announce a cap on renewables spending as part of their plan to get to net zero by 2050.

The whole thing is a farce, and the LNP hasn't given any good reasons why nuclear is the way forward over renewables. They haven't said much of anything other than shout about it being the better option, but then that's been the LNP's go-to political strategy for as long as I've been old enough to vote so no surprise there.

Yeah, replying "Get fucked" to a response that brings up a lot of good counter-arguments to your original point will certainly make it look like you were bringing up immigration in good-faith.

At least here in Australia, we believe in the right for a select group of billionaires to make money off the land in the form of coal mining, and renewable energy threatens that right.

Now that the world is turning away from coal as much as possible, we're now pivoting to allow a select group of billionaires to make money off the land in the form of uranium mining, and renewable energy also threatens that.

Is that a slur? It has a racial component, sure, but I hardly think it is actually a racist comment, and definitely not a slur. And to label it as "racially motivated harassment" is laughable.

If this is actually what Kerr said, it's pretty indicative of the systemic issues that have been popping up in the UK for awhile now. They've been travelling further and further down the fascist highway since Brexit.

At least with Metallica, we could laugh at the irony of a band regularly releasing songs about anarchy crying about piracy.

The first tweet is almost satirical, so if it had stopped there I might have bought it being "taken out of context".

I'm curious to know what possible context would make those tweets okay.

Maybe orcs have always been "soft", but it's taken a cultural shift to get to a point where they're allowed to be themselves.

Editor: The article is great! All we need now is a quote from social media and we can publish.

Journalist: We haven't been able to find anything suitable, everyone thinks this story is satire.

Editor: Then just post one yourself and then quote that! But don't reference your name, that'll be a dead giveaway.

I appreciate where the author of this article is coming from, but I think they're being a bit too one-sided.

For example, they make the point that zoos don't contribute enough to conservation, donating only around 5% of their spending, as if the millions of dollars given doesn't justify their existence. But if zoos didn't exist, that's a big chunk of money that wouldn't be going towards conservation at all.

They also talk about the education aspect, that visitors don't necessarily read the information about the animals and instead go for the spectacle. But a child isn't going to read those plaques regardless, but seeing animals up close might ignite an interest in conservation later in life.

And one thing that the article doesn't really go into is the fact that humans are still actively hunting animals in the wild, and destroying habitats for profit. And while I think zoos are a bit of a band-aid fix when it comes to endangered species, I'd much rather see an animal in captivity surrounded by zookeepers that care about it rather than extinction.

In an ideal world, zoos wouldn't exist. In a slightly less ideal world, only open-plain zoos would exist. But we are a very long way from that, and I personally believe that reputable zoos are a positive in the world we currently live in.

But Microsoft is doing exactly the same thing, only instead of paying for exclusivity of one title, they're buying developers so not just their next title, but all future releases will be exclusive, up until MS decides they're not worth it and dumps them.

Sony absolutely participates in anti-consumer practices, but let's not pretend that MS is any better.

Microsoft are no longer interested in selling consoles necessarily, otherwise they'd be holding stuff back from PC as well. They're interested in getting people into their ecosystem through Game Pass.

And while I agree with you that Sony and Nintendo have used plenty of anti-consumer practices, Microsoft has also done so in the past and I think the only reason they've been more pro-consumer of late is because they've been the underdog for a long time now. I would be anticipating a change in their behaviour the more people they get to subscribe to Game Pass, and this Activision-Blizzard deal is a huge step towards that.