Australian federal election today! We will probably (hopefully) have a change in Prime Minister - meaning we'll have had six in a five-year stretch. I love a stable democracy.

one tyime a jet lagged me and it didnt fgeel good at all

Result: surprisingly, the incumbent party still won. I'm disappointed, but hopefully they can at least govern effectively this time.
Ended up getting in an argument with a friend about the result - and for those who want to know what it was like: as much of a radical leftist uber-queer as I am, they put me to shame in all that.

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Anyway, we're having a Respectful Relationships day at school on Wednesday. It's amazing how many of the guys I know get upset at essentially being told 'a lot of men rape people, don't do it yourself'.

well your currency reacted well to the news. there was a sizable gap since market close on friday to when sidney opened at 7am your time.

im no fan of fucking evangelicals but the people want a healthy economy before anything else i guess

you got 5.25% unemployment or something?

anyway the spike clearly visible in the 5 day chart right now. things will change in the future ofc

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AUDUSD=X

A lot of the talking heads in the media (ignoring the fact that whatever they say is confirmation bias) have argued that climate policies and the economy were a major factor. The Coalition (ironic) basically argued that Labor's climate policy would lead to plenty of job losses, which may or may not be true (I plead ignorance).

I think the best hope is that a few of the crossbenchers are really big on that and will play hardball on any legislation. However, the tip is that they'll have a majority and thus be able to do whatever. But then again, our clusterfuck of a senate will 'fix' things.

yeah i’ve been catching up with the news since the surprise— the nyt and the economist already had writeups about it this morning. coal, queensland, pies in the sky, etc.

and apparently shorten is highly disliked as well?

TBH I don't know what that's about, I have no real opinion on him. I think it's probably just union politics and stuff, something that I'm clueless about

ah. when do you start voting? next year?

I turn 18 in February, so I will be able to vote from then. I could be on the electoral roll by now (let me tell you a really funny story from the same-sex marriage postal vote sometime later), but I'll need to be in the next twelve months.

Unfortunately, because state elections are every four years and we had one last year, and federal elections are every three-ish, I don't get to vote on anything until I'm 20

ah...

but if you’re a parliamentary system you could have snap elections yes?

the other think i’ve been mulling over (nobody really is talking about it right now but im just learning so i’d like to shoot the shit as a learning reinforcement) is that one of the big reasons for australia having no recession in 28 years is you’ve been feeding china’s growth with raw materials

and now with the risk of trade wars and a weakened chinese economy you run the risk of stalling right along with them.

probably not the best time for free money giveaways to the masses, i’m thinking...

We could, but it's unlikely.

The only way we're going to have Parliament cleared out is if we have a double dissolution, which is generally only done if we've got a completely deadlocked Senate (although once in 1975 there was a constitutional crisis). The 2016 election was one, which backfired completely.

This would make sense; we're geographically closer to China than any other Western nation (unless you count Russia :D) so it's best for us if we're able to make a mint from their economic growth. Not sure about how this'll turn out for us in the future though.

There were conspiracy theories Turnbull was soft on China because his daughter in law comes from over there XD

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Oh, and on Shorten: he's standing down as party leader, so now everyone else is jostling to be in the box seat

I have made my decision: Lee is my favourite SY member.

:D

Probably the worst opinion I've ever heard. Fact is that with Sonic Youth the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Take one member out and it doesn't work (snort)

counterpoint: i’d most like to have a beer with lee

eta: kim scares me
and steve prefers pepsi

thanks for that explanation

so it looks like your central bank might cut interest rates in june to stimulate what appears to be your momentarily weakening economy?

I agree with you on this one. His solo career is not the most spectacular one, however I've always enjoyed his tracks the most on SY albums (Skip Tracer, Mote, Eric's Trip, Rats,...)

So the respectful relationships thing we're doing at school is going okay. We've had a few interesting discussions about stuff, and I have massive respect for my old physics teacher.

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Unrelated comment: is it poor form to be texting a girl at the same time as you're writing a song about her?

Good lord:D :D :D Bless yer

Today's my 4th Twitter anniversary. I've spent almost a quarter of my life wasting it on that trashfire of a website

My friend has four exams in the first two days of the exam period :D

Having to get a decent wage for a decent days work shouldn't be so bloody hard. Swear the bosses at the top of anywhere lose sight of what it's like to be grafting.

the current issue of the economist is all about employment data in OECD countries. england, japan, germany, the u.s., all seeing similar trends... [and politicians du jour falsely taking credit for it]

super-interesting, and im in the middle of it today.

again offering some copypasta of some texts. but they offer some free articles.

lmao i should become a door to door salesman for this shit haaahaahaaa. i just really enjoy this magazine (“newspaper,” they call themselves).

anyway... tldr; things are currently looking up and it’s time to make yourself indispensable/secure some gains/up your skills before the next recession hits.

I love the city.

I lucked out - my Specialist Maths teacher wasn't here this morning so I was able to avoid a test.

Unfortunately I now have an English Language test...

Ya girl's getting herself a guitar! Hopefully it's worth the $200 I'll be spending on it (it's secondhand)

cool! Be nice to your parents and give them some earplugs :D
I don't know guitars at all, isn't $200 still expensive for a second hand? What is it?

current eur/aud rate is 1.609
~124 euros?
E
€

I'm probably going to try and learn with headphones - we've got an adaptor plug somewhere.

This is the photo from the guy who's selling it on Gumtree (Aussie eBay). According to my mate who's a musician, it's a pretty versatile rig so it'll be able to work (amp included). It's the same type as the school music rooms, which suggests something.


And a few of the others were getting into the 3-4 hundred range - this and another one were the cheapest there, and black is cooler than red. :D

My first guitar was cherry red.

Times have changed, old man. :D

cherry red is still better now and forever :p :D

Classics don’t change.

!@#$%! is always posting NYT articles for me to read; it's time I repay the favour.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/m...nonbinary.html

thanks! read about half of it (some nyt articles are new yorker long these days), will catch up with the rest later. and wow.... so much i didnt know.

Yeah. The bit that really affected me was hearing about how Salem used to just make fun of non-binary identities, because I did the same thing when I was fourteen or so.

Don't go getting too used to those earphones though. You gonna want some wicked amp vibrations to kick that yummy yummy feedback into high gear. And if you are talking about playing guitar on a Sonic Youth forum, and NOT talking feedback, then what the hell is wrong with you!?!? :)

And I agree. Black guitars are the king of the crop.

Haha, I'm waiting until I have some form of technique down before I can get some really nasty stuff going on. Can't wait to perform, and horrify my friends and relatives.

Just turn them knobs to MAX! Without headphones of course.