We were taught a similar trick in physics - point your right-hand thumb in the direction that current (or electrons, same same) is travelling and the curling of your fingers shows the direction of the resultant magnetic field that the current creates.

I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

And their venom HURTS. They’re not particularly deadly or anything but their venom will land you in the hospital or at least laid up in bed for a while. My stepmother grew up out in the bush in NSW the ‘70s and received one of the few recorded platypus envenomations and she described it as the most painful experience of her life. She said childbirth was a breeze compared to the platypus sting!

For reference here in Australia my wife has been asking to get mammograms for years now (in her 30s) and she keeps getting told she’s too young because she doesn’t have a familial history. That issue is a bit pervasive in countries other than the US.

I had one of those myself! Free full-text PDF for anyone who was registered for the course. That’s the way that a true academic who loves the dissemination of their research operates. He was so engaging and invigorating too; he exemplified the archetype of the ‘I don’t care if you don’t care; I’m gonna make you care’ professor.

When I had a class where the text that was written by the professor was mandatory reading and they demanded buying the newest version (she made a new version every year to keep sales up) I specifically pirated her book to just barely pass the class and move on from it. Fuck anyone who hides their knowledge from those who want to learn.

Thanks for the advice - I’ll definitely take that into account! To be clear (without doxxing myself) my emails came from a ‘.nsw.gov.au’ address so I hope that wouldn’t steer many academics away from sharing their findings, especially those whose research was conducted in other Anglophonic countries (specifically the US and Canada). I can understand the hint of hesitation though. I always assumed using my .gov.au email would have evaded spam filters, but perhaps my regular email address might have more luck.

I should also state that the research I’ve been trying to access is predominately psychological or social work academia (I’m a child protection caseworker), and I’m not sure if the same “share it if you got it” mantra applies in those fields.

Honestly I’ve heard this and seen it written very many times, but any time I’ve ever reached out to a lead author to request access to their paper I’ve been met with zero reply. Like, nothing, from at least six different attempts (that I can remember right now). And I’m a government employee emailing from a government domain, usually with a very well written plea for information. Maybe I’m the unlucky one?

While I loved PropertyCity while I lived there, my early years in RuralTown showed that’s where the real Country really is. We had a herd of FarmAnimals and would always go down to the WaterBody on the weekends where the LargeMammals roamed free and wild!

Many people with vaginas have a lot of sex that makes no babies

Such an interesting perspective, thanks for your contribution! I guess our ‘shopping centres’ are essentially the first condition you’ve described that also have grocery stores attached, and it’s likely the grocery store (in Australia this basically means one of 3-4 companies) that are keeping these structures going in the modern age. Our shopping centres tend to be built ‘up’ rather than ‘out’, with 3-5 storey shopping centres (with up to 7 storey parking lots) being fairly common within city limits that are closely accessible to more than 50% of the population.

That being said though, I live fairly equidistant between two of the largest shopping centres in Sydney and still choose to go to my local, smaller, single-storey shopping centre which is very small by Australian standards (<40 stores) which feels much more like a ‘mall’.

Do you guys have a lot of standalone grocery stores that you can drive right up to, park, shop and leave? Because that’s definitely the minority here!

That’s really interesting! In the Australian content, we would only ever call a strip of shops a ‘mall’ if they weren’t connected by some interior structure. In fact, our ‘malls’ are almost all outdoor connections of shops. So interesting how our vocabularies vary!

Out of curiosity; where are your grocery stores, pharmacies and post offices? Because here in Australia, most of them are in shopping centres (Aussie for ‘mall’). The vast majority of us go to do our weekly shop, grab medication, send back returns from our online shopping etc. so they’re still very much alive and well.

I dunno, if I suddenly grew a vagina I might want to use it.

Speaking from an outside perspective; malls (what we call shopping centres) in Australia didn’t die anywhere near what has happened in the US. We have a very different geographic landscape (hyper-concentration of population in city centres) and definitely don’t have the same level of penetration that companies like Amazon do, but we have shared a lot of the same economic headwinds that the US has. From my armchair perspective, this would generally suggest that it’s less to do with economic position and more to do with idiosyncrasies of the US, but I have absolutely no data to back that up.

And it’s also only banned on work devices. There’s no ban on government employees having TikTok on their personal phones, although I personally don’t.

Cubicle is the noun (mini office); cubical is the adjective (having cube-like properties). :)

Blood and Wine was honestly amazing. I haven’t enjoyed a DLC or xpac that much since Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. I think maybe the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’s expansion Bloodmoon was a great contender as well, but Blood and Wine just took Witcher 3 to a new level. It truly deserved its spot at the top of the heap.

Like I said mate, fair call. If he’s your ally, then so be it.

Fair call mate, he might be your ally but sadly he’s not mine. I’m not sure if you’re LGBTQIA+, but if you’ve spent time in the community you’ll know that not even all of those who identify as queer or non-cis support one another. To the best of my knowledge May doesn’t openly identify as queer himself, and thinking that he’s an ally just because he’s been friends with gay and/or bi men isn’t necessarily the best indicator that he’s an ally to all peoples. Personally, I feel like that argument is pretty similar to “I can’t be racist because I have a ____ friend”.

Probed on whether Queen would be able to win a BRIT gong in 2021, he was reported to have responded:

“We would be forced to have people of different colours and different sexes and we would have to have a trans [person]. You know life doesn’t have to be like that. We can be separate and different.”

Apparently he was ‘ambushed’ and ‘stitched up’ and his words were ‘subtly twisted’ but he never stated what his original words were, if they were different from the quote. I’m not usually a fan of people who use terms like “a trans” or who lament “cancel culture” because gendered categories are removed from awards ceremonies.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/11/28/queen-brian-may-brit-awards-twisted-trans/