The New South Wales supreme court has struck down a law that had given police expanded powers to prevent protests near places of worship.

Josh Lees, on behalf of the Palestine Action Group, had challenged the law on the basis that it was unconstitutional.

Justice Anna Mitchelmore ruled on Thursday that the police powers impermissibly burdened the freedom of political communication implied in Australia’s constitution.

The challenge came after the NSW government in February made changes aimed at curbing antisemitism. This included a law which gave police the power to move on protesters who were “in or near” a place of worship.

[...]

The court heard the catalyst for the places of worship bill was a protest outside the Great Synagogue where a member of the Israel Defense Forces was speaking.

“[It] was not a religious event,” PAG’s barrister, Felicity Graham, had told the court.

Lees told reporters after the judgment was delivered: “The Palestinian group has not organised a single protest targeting a place of worship.

“These laws were about targeting anyone who protested near a place of worship, even if it had nothing to do with that place of worship.”

Doppler wind screenshots from https://theweatherchaser.com/radar/bom/melbourne/doppler-wind-velocity?m=480

Similar situation to Melbourne & surrounds, I suspect.

[...]
Open fires were found to be the most harmful way to heat a home. The health impacts of extra air pollution breathed in each house with a fire led to an annual cost of around NZ$53,400 (£23,000) to the New Zealand healthcare system and economy. This assumes a household of two adults and two children who are exposed to air pollution indoors from their open fire.

Even modern stoves created indoor air pollution. The researchers estimated a health and economy cost of NZ$1,800 annually from air pollution breathed in by each household that used one of these appliances. And indoor pollution from gas cooking exerted an annual cost of NZ$9,200 from each household.
[...]
Wood burning also adds to outdoor air pollution, which affects the local community. This extra health cost was NZ$3,200 (£1,400) annually for each modern wood stove and as much as NZ$26,800 (£11,500) for each open fire.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/28991736

Indoor air pollution from New Zealand’s 523,000 wood burners was estimated to account for 446 hospital admissions for heart and lung problems, and 101 early deaths annually, in a country with a population of just over 5 million people. Breathing fumes from gas cooking indoors created more than 1,000 hospital admissions, 208 early deaths and more than 3,000 new cases of childhood asthma each year.

This shit has been going on for many decades in the horticulture industry here, and already came to a head years ago: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-14/australias-farm-industry-seasonal-workers-exploited-labour-short/100687182

Further context for those not familiar with Australia: "every worker on every farm is entitled to take home the minimum casual rate of pay, currently [in 2021] $25.41 per hour."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36940611

[Derek] When Watts dug deeper, he realized that the network structure did matter. In the more clustered networks, people were more likely
30:27 to copy each other. So if by chance someone started out cooperating, then everyone would cooperate.
30:34 But it was equally likely that someone would start out by defecting, in which case everyone else would defect.
30:40 And over all the games they played, these two effects canceled each other out, which is why it seemed like
30:46 the network structure didn't matter. - [Duncan] It's sort of on a knife edge, right? Where like one person does something selfish
30:54 and everything goes south. In another world, everybody kind of holds it together
31:00 and everything goes well. It's crazy that the world could be like on a knife edge like that, you know,
31:06 could tip one way or the other, kind of just depends on how someone gets out of bed that day.
31:11 But then Watts realized something. See, in real life, you can choose who you hang out with.
31:17 So he reran the experiment allowing players to change who they were playing with. And this time he used the prisoner's dilemma
31:23 so that players could easily identify the defectors. - [Derek] And the finding was clear, the more you allowed players
31:30 to choose who they were playing with, the more likely they were to cooperate

Arbitrary freeze frame for thumbnail purposes:.

[Derek] When Watts dug deeper, he realized that the network structure did matter. In the more clustered networks, people were more likely
30:27 to copy each other. So if by chance someone started out cooperating, then everyone would cooperate.
30:34 But it was equally likely that someone would start out by defecting, in which case everyone else would defect.
30:40 And over all the games they played, these two effects canceled each other out, which is why it seemed like
30:46 the network structure didn't matter. - [Duncan] It's sort of on a knife edge, right? Where like one person does something selfish
30:54 and everything goes south. In another world, everybody kind of holds it together
31:00 and everything goes well. It's crazy that the world could be like on a knife edge like that, you know,
31:06 could tip one way or the other, kind of just depends on how someone gets out of bed that day.
31:11 But then Watts realized something. See, in real life, you can choose who you hang out with.
31:17 So he reran the experiment allowing players to change who they were playing with. And this time he used the prisoner's dilemma
31:23 so that players could easily identify the defectors. - [Derek] And the finding was clear, the more you allowed players
31:30 to choose who they were playing with, the more likely they were to cooperate

Arbitrary freeze frame for thumbnail purposes:.

cross-posted from: https://peertube.wtf/videos/watch/a1245600-2f08-43f9-b51b-155b1efc12e5

Excellent run down by Tom Tanuki about the "march for australia" nazi rallies around australia on 31/Aug/2025. Plenty of collated footage. > > There's a followup video more about the attack on the [Indigenous] Camp Sovereignty which followed: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwdxdvzHVCY > > Video mirrored from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLRoFdeI_5Y > Uploaded here since the youtube page is currently showing this message: > "Video unavailable - This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Shayne Wicker" > If you watch an important video, ARCHIVE IT

And all service providers/hosts around the world are expected to comply.

Here's one summary of the looming access control measures.

Reading and understanding all this (and the linked sources) feels so.. difficult, obtuse, complex.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/35909566

SMH @ activists using techno-fascist platforms for communications during an operation subject to state-actor level interference. I thought we recognised and acknowledged this problem 15-20 years ago already.

https://xcancel.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1965431513320927706