zero_gravitas @ zero_gravitas @aussie.zone

Posts

111

Comments

306

Joined

2 yr. ago

I actually have no idea if government selective schools get more funding.

Was it better than a public school?

Well, if you want to go by HSC results (and many people would consider that the yardstick) then there's many private schools among the top schools, although there's also lots of government selective schools, including the very top 4.

See: https://bettereducation.com.au/results/hsc.aspx

The highest-ranked private schools are probably academically selective in some way too, though, so I wouldn't think we can attribute the results to just the teaching there. And even if they don't, kids of wealthy parents have an academic advantage throughout their education because of factors tied to their parents' wealth (aside from being able to afford private education).

I'd imagine, though, at least some of the vast amounts of cash these schools have must go towards attractive wages for good teachers and more of them (smaller class sizes), and both of those things make a difference.

This article doesn't mention the reported comments by John Lyon's (ABC global affairs editor), which are by far the most damning indictment of the ABC's reporting on Israel-Palestine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240128163454/https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/senior-journalist-lashes-abc-management-as-staff-vote-no-confidence-in-managing-director-20240122-p5ez4h.html

More than 100 ABC union staff have rebuked the organisation’s managing director, David Anderson, with one of the broadcaster’s most senior journalists, global affairs editor John Lyons, saying he was embarrassed by his employer, which he said had shown pro-Israel bias and was failing to protect staff against complaints.

Yeah, I should have said, I'm definitely not convinced of the narrative the article is selling. Like you say, as fibre is rolled out, people will come back to the NBN when they can get connections that are as fast (if not faster) and more reliable for cheaper. And the NBN is a government project, so they don't have to worry about cash flow in the meantime.

Archive link for people who hate Murdoch: https://web.archive.org/web/20240213083829/https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/abc-receives-over-3000-complaints-about-israelgaza-war-coverage-david-anderson-accused-of-hiding-away/news-story/2e1990f8f07f68a5a8fd043e5c0a25b6

There's a lot of places that are still on copper and you can't get 100 megabits (unless you want to spend $10,000+ to have fibre installed). Not out at Woop Woop either, suburbs of regional cities.

Yeah, I would struggle to think of one that was more confusing if I tried 😆 I assume what they're trying to get at is the level of willful ignorance and potential liability involved.

https://archive.is/https://www.heraldsun.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-victoria/caulfield-south-tobacco-shop-goes-up-in-flames/news-story/eefb071801e803964c3d57e86469ed2d

I was going to suggest Plasmo, but it turns out some mad lad has already upscaled it to 4K! Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2U98Joe6Hs

I assume you have got it by now? I certainly hope so! xD

Have you been enjoying it?

I'm considering buying a Shinobi - I'm inclined towards having dedicated function keys - so I'd love to know what you think about the Shura compared to the Shinobi.

Yeah, I agree, the language used by people could be more precise.

By not being specific, it gives the wrong impression that the video was doctored. Indeed that is what Antoinette Lattouf is implying this week.

I don't think Lattouf is being hugely misleading there, the accuracy of the captioning could reasonably come under the term 'authenticity'. But it might have been better if she used 'accuracy' there instead of 'authenticity', I guess. I think the point she is making, though, is that if there's an established inaccuracy in the captioning, that reasonably casts doubt on the honesty of other aspects about the videos that Lattouf and Wilson had called into question in their original article: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/12/13/viral-footage-gas-the-jews-police-factcheckers-unverified/

From that article:

Analysis of the AJA videos by verification experts at RMIT CrossCheck found a number of signs that suggest audio was edited. This review seen by Crikey notes that the audio is often out of sync with the video, that a section of audio was repeated during a clip, and that some audio was repeated while different clips were being shown. These suggest that additional editing was done beyond splicing different video clips together.

Wilson and Lattouf explore some of this in their article from after the police made their announcement: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/02/05/protest-video-gas-the-jews-investigation-sky-news-aja

That article includes:

NSW Police told the media that the AJA’s video “had not been doctored” but instead was edited into a compilation.

I'm not sure to what degree 'doctored' and 'edited into a compilation' are ambiguous here. Watching the video, it seems to me they've done more than put a number of raw video clips with their own audio into a single video sequentially. It seems very unambiguous to me that there's sections of the video where they're playing one continuous audio track but they cut between multiple different video sources - or at one point it looks like they skip forward in the same video source (while the audio track seems to remain continuous). I think it could definitely be misleading in terms of how widespread the anti-semitic chants were among the crowd, and the crowd's response to them. Both the Crikey articles I've linked above cite more than one expert who has done some real analysis, though, which is worth a lot more than my impression.

The expanded quote from the police, about 'had not been doctored', by the way, is:

“There is a compilation video, which has a number of audio and visual files, those audio and visual files have not been doctored, they are simply cuts from a more ‘parent file’.

“When examined, the parent file and the video compilation have the same audio and visual and from that the expert has been able to conclude they are the words that were used.”

(source: https://www.skynews.com.au/breaking-news/police-investigation-into-infamous-sydney-opera-house-palestine-protest-inconclusive/news-story/8f9fd959f7e65c54d38d6221d8c33e04

That full quote doesn't - on my reading anyway - explicitly contradict the idea that the compilation is something other than a simple sequential compilation of sections of video with their own synchronised audio. It doesn't really seem to say that all audio was in sync with the video played, just that all audio and video was from the same file. In fact, the way it phrases it as "audio and visual files" instead of, say, 'audiovisual files' if anything seems to suggest that the audio and video have indeed been spliced separately.

Anyway, probably ended up going too deep on that one, but I got interested.

I think the 'veracity' in question was that of the captioning.

Really? Which part of Australia?

It's been vandalised before. There's a gallery in the article with pictures from two prior incidents where it's been hit with paint.

https://12ft.io/https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-triple-zero-calls-left-waiting-despite-pass-for-agency-benchmarks-20240123-p5ezd6.html

Or

https://archive.is/https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-triple-zero-calls-left-waiting-despite-pass-for-agency-benchmarks-20240123-p5ezd6.html

Absolutely, but they'd be crucified if they went back on their election promise to keep the stage 3 cuts. They'd never hear the end of it.

I reckon they'll wait things out for this term while economic conditions keep the budget in surplus, then take a policy to the next election for some kind of specific levy - maybe an NDIS levy - to try to claw back some revenue as the budget balance is forecast to turn south.

They did say before the last election that they'd make multinational corporations pay their fair share in tax, so that's one area they could make changes to raise revenue, but anything they were going to do there they would have already done by now.

If you ask for cooking or cleaning advice and it hallucinates you’re still at square zero regardless.

Unless it tells you to mix bleach and ammonia 😆

The fact they are lawyers is neither here nor there.

Well, the lawyers involved think differently:

Nicky Stein

Needs to be done again today ... It is important ABC hears not just from individuals in the community but specifically lawyers so they feel there is an actual legal threat.

Nicky Stein

I have basically written to them and told them I expect a proper response, not a generic one, by COB today or I would look to engage a senior counsel. I know there is probably no actionable offence against ABC but I didn't say I would be taking one - just investigating one. I have said they they should be terminating her employment immediately.

Nicky Stein

Just got this back from Ita Buttrose in response to my email (which was a bit cheeky threatening legal action I know)

So I'd say that they're lawyers is relevant in that they thought it would help them apply pressure, and it seems to have. I don't think just anyone would be able to get a personal response from the ABC chairperson. What's more is that they knew their threats of legal action weren't well-founded.

They didn't "harass workers", did they? I think the ABC should also be able to withstand a letter-writing campaign and that "terrorising" is a bit of a stretch there.

Spurious threats of legal action might be of interest to professional bodies, though.

It seems to me like the issue here isn't that these lawyers wrote letters, but whether the ABC folded to pressure instead of following their own policies, and whether information was leaked from the ABC.