I have a bachelors in psychology so was able to pick based on my understanding of approaches. I knew I didn’t want CBT, so went with an ACT psych instead. Mine is also a developmental psychologist so I knew they’d be more likely to understand neurodevelopmental disabilities than your average psychologist.

I’m Audhd and pretty much use my psychologist for all of this.

Earthquakes

We have a small population and mandatory voting means everyone gets a vote by default. We also have a different culture around voting because the majority of us have to do it. We have sausage sizzles and democracy dogs. I’ve personally worked at polls all over my state and there’s never been a line longer than 10 people. It takes most people like 5 mins max to vote. We make voting easy in Australia because everyone has to do it.

It’s worth noting that it’s not all that mandatory. It’s relatively easy to simply avoid enrolling to vote. You’re not automatically enrolled in other words. Also it’s really easy to just sign your name off at the poll and hand in a blank vote. The worst outcome of not voting is a fine that you can pretty easily get out of as well.

Human civilisation feels like it’s regressing.

Fuck yeah Germany!

This would likely mean my country’s (Australia) biggest trading partner going to war with our biggest ally (USA). We’re also close to this conflict geographically speaking so would likely play a key role in it. Honestly this conflict would really fuck our economy and make the entire region more unstable than it already is.

So I’d be quite concerned if this happened. It would destroy my country and be yet another reminder of how we are tied to the USA and will literally follow it to our own destruction.

Can we please just have a good ending with this one where the Germans protest the nazis out of town. The world kind of needs this right now. Please Germany, show us that anti-fascist resistance is possible and history is not doomed to repeat itself forever.

My PhD thesis

Nothing justifies bombing children. Noone’s ‘right to defend themselves’ should include this.

Australian here. We had one really bad mass shooting and then our government (who was also one of the most conservative governments in the last 50 years) banned guns. Haven’t had one since. Guns just aren’t a thing here and we kind of think you’re a weird country for being so obsessed with guns. I also personally think it’s weird that guns are like the symbol of your freedom, yet you don’t have universal healthcare. Universal healthcare offers so much more freedom than guns do.

In saying that a lot of countries have guns and don’t have the same problem with mass shootings. What the US has is a cultural problem in terms of your relationship with guns and violence. Unfortunately, doing a mass shooting is now a normalised way to deal with your problems. Not all of you, obviously. But enough of you that it’s gotten completely out of control. In Australia I don’t think it was just the banning of guns that has reduced mass shootings. We have a culture in Australia of ‘don’t be a dickhead’. I think when we had our mass shooting we all collectively just said yeah nah mass shootings are next level dickhead behaviour.

This seems like a really unevenly weighted war. Israel has nukes and is supported by most of the west. Vengeance and violence are also never a good mix so this will likely get ugly fast. It’ll be interesting to see where the line is, if it exists at all, on how much violence the West will publicly support.

Covid made me realise just how much we live in different versions of reality and how harmful that is during a crisis that requires everyone to be on the same page. At the beginning of the lockdowns I joked about how some people would rather die than comply with basic public health practices…and then it actually fucking happened in real life. Not only that but they took down other people with them. Not such a funny joke anymore.

I’m not even from the US and honestly it was a sobering moment for me as well. I realised how people like Hitler get into power. Before 2016 I knew it was possible like cognitively but Trump being elected made it feel real in a way it never had before.

We need to develop better ethical frameworks and regulation. Doesn’t matter what the tech is, it’s about how it’s used and for what aims.

As an autistic person this technology could actually allow me to access the community without being overwhelmed. This is revolutionary and would change my life.

Nah I see WA as Texas and QLD as Florida.

Sexual violence

You should look up our history of colonisation. The nazis took inspiration from it.

I agree with those people, don’t do it. Not unless you have a very specific reason for doing so like wanting to be an academic (you’d have about as much success with this as trying to be a professional athlete) or a phd level industry position.