Pride in Protest has consistently campaigned for the exclusion of NSW Police from the parade citing a culture of homophobia within the force and an adversarial attitude towards unsolved gay hate deaths.

Far be it from me to have any say in this matter, but I don’t believe the cops who want to march are the same cops exhibiting homophobia and disdain for gay hate deaths. I would think that encouraging more engagement with the community would do more good than excluding people.

“It’s a bit hypocritical to ban them from marching if you’re going to rely on them, as everybody does for major events, for security.”

I think this is a fair point.

The speculation and response to this murder has been intriguing. I saw a comment online speculating that if rich people instead of kids start being targets of shootings, perhaps there will finally be movement on the question of gun control.

It’s a long-term issue for me that I’m not getting enough sleep. I usually average around 6 hours a night. This year, my average is 5:42, I haven’t managed a 6-hour average for any 4-week period this year. I need to work on this, 5 hours a night was ok when I was 20. But I haven’t been 20 for a long time.

I keep hearing about the Woolies strike, but I honestly haven’t noticed a difference in store so far. Maybe I will with tomorrow’s shop? Or maybe WA is immune to it.

Soda water here. I get the pleasure of the fizzy drink, but it is actually good for me. Occasionally I’ll put a little lemon juice in it for flavour.

As vices go, it’s cheaper than alcohol or cigarettes - and less likely to kill me. I wouldn’t call myself addicted to caffeine, but all evidence points to that declaration being suspect. I will say that I’ve had occasion to go without caffeine for a few days more than once and have never had the headaches people report from missing out on their coffee. Sadly, I also never get the ‘energy boost’ people are supposed to get from coffee.

This is just the cafe expenses (bank statement merchant filter).
Besides home coffee, this number also misses the occasional 7-Eleven coffee I’ve bought through the year; but there’d only be a dozen or so of those. If we went to total coffee expenditure, I expect the overall total would be probably 1.5x this amount. On top of beans purchased for home, I’m partial to the occasional iced coffee milk thingy. There’d easily be a 50+ of those to throw into the mix.

I’m sad that you’d call this a gift. My family would come out for free to help - this wouldn’t be considered a gift for us. 😔

I haven’t tried this unit, so can’t speak first hand on it. It has nearly 500 reviews though and people don’t seem to be complaining about lag. This dude says it’s good for whatever it’s worth.

The one I have used was at work with a meeting room screen and Teams. I didn’t notice any audio lag, but remote people talking over the Internet are a little janky anyway.

Except potatoes. Everyone loves those plants.

My kids would probably dig these, but they are not among the people I need inspiration for. They are sorted.

I have spent $964.60 on coffees this year. As they’ve crept up from $3 to $4 to $5.30 over the last decade or so, I haven’t noticed the difference it makes to overall finances.

If I had a club membership at the cafe where coffees were free, but annual membership cost $1k, I wouldn’t take that up. Yet, it amounts to the same thing.

At least two.

It counts audiobooks? That’s a bit inaccurate.

We share a single family streaming account, so these recaps never work for me. The kids pollute the data.
My son goes to sleep listening to music, so my top artist with 449 hours was a guy who just sits and plays piano.

Ha! I had the impression you didn’t think much of her after that chat. You’re in an exclusive club now of being one of the only Australians who knows who she is - though she was pretty big in Europe at the time. Now that the kids are both playing instruments, this sort of music is getting played a bit on our end, also.

I love how hardly anything in your top songs was released after your birth.

Well, that’s Catfish sorted for Christmas! 🤣

Ha! I’ve just made a comment admitting that I’m a bit out of touch with what’s popular these days. When I was a teen, Rage played literally anything. Has that changed?

The intent was as I said - simply to come up with a name that was about music from an Australian perspective. I remember tossing a few names around, and people agreed that Rage was a good choice. This would have been about July/August last year.

Completely understandable. I keep listening to new music and thinking to myself “this isn’t better than the 100,000 songs I already have in my library” and falling back on that stuff.

I have a playlist that’s literally called “new music that doesn’t suck”, and even that is 5+ years old. Not new at all according to the kids.

Off to Hammerbarn to get me a husband!

For reals though, I like this one. Assuming they don’t peel and fade by the end of summer when exposed to the elements.