Sorry for posting a paywalled article

Here is a Wayback Machine URL for the same post: https://web.archive.org/web/20250912020115/https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-death-fascism-america-united-states-donald-trump-australia-don-farrell/ in case you want to update the post to use that URL.

via @faab64@freefree.ps:

Brave British police captured another dangerous terrorist today

https://freefree.ps/@faab64/115164525096428263

It takes continual effort to offset the Coriolis effect down under.

if they made their homes more energy efficient

Assertion misses the point: Most Australians whose homes need to be made more energy efficient, are renting and have no agency in doing anything like that to their homes.

Telling those people "you could save on your power bill by modifications to your home”, is just cruel. We know our homes are energy inefficient, we can’t make the changes required.

What’s needed is legislation that mandates the landlord must pay for those improvements, before they take any more money from the renter.

It dates back at least to the 1980s, during the Hawke era.

A Labor party that cast unemployed workers as “bludgers”. A Labor party that concocted a Neoliberal Accord with the ACTU to suppress the rights of workers, as a means to keep wages (and worker power to negotiate better conditions) down. A Labor party that devastated social support by making unemployment benefits far more difficult to obtain.

All this was an “unleashing” of the private sector the effects of which still rage around us today.

https://jacobin.com/2020/10/australia-labor-party-neoliberalism-accord

A good local baker, especially one that will make a decent sourdough, is a must wherever we live.

So their announcement seems to be saying they’ll follow what the national government officially calls the feature:

In an X post on Monday, Google said its Maps service would reflect the change once it is officially updated in the US Geographic Names System. The change will be visible to Google Maps users in the US, but it will remain listed as Gulf of Mexico for those accessing the platform from Mexico. Outside of the two countries, users will see both names.

And, yeah. What is the alternative policy from Google that we’re proposing? That Google should be sovereign in itself, declare they’ll name it whatever seems right to Google, and not defer to the government appointed names for things? Based on what, exactly?

I want Google subject to official government policy, and not to ignore it. I want Google Maps to follow the official name when, for example, Ayer’s Rock is now officially called Uluru.

This specific government policy (that the Gulf of Mexico be changed to the “Gulf of America”) is stupid and jingoistic. But is the answer to that, we want corporations empowered to ignore government policy?

If the government of the day orders that Uluru is now called “Aussie Stone”, and Google announces they’ll update maps to follow the change of official name? My objection is not that Google follows the official name; it’s that the government of the day is wrong and needs to be ousted.