Joshi

joined 1 year ago
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[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Despite their traitorous turn towards neiliberalism in the 80s the ALP remains a competent liberal party, whereas the Liberals are an incompetent boys club only interested in protecting the class interests of their corporate masters.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Okay, I've been happily ignoring your little idee fixee on LDL aside from one gentle comment but I feel the need to comment here again.

This article is utterly disingenuous and sets up a complete strawman to knock down. It sets out to disprove a notion of cholesterol that was last current decades ago. Right in the first paragraph and throughout the article LDL is referred to as “the” major cause of atherosclerosis which to my knowledge even the Framingham authors wouldn't have been comfortable with, it is however a significant contributing factor.

It is well known that some people with elevated LDL or total cholesterol are at low risk(this is the reason for weak or negative results in whole population studies), atherosclerosis is a complex disease with multifactorial causes, no practising doctor I know thinks it is “the” major cause, or even the most important contributing factor.

That being said it is thoroughly established that statin use in select patients reduces the risk of MI and CVA, especially in those with established atherosclerosis, but also those with other substantial risk factors (high BP, family history, smoking, diabetes etc.). This is totally uncontroversial and the pathogenic mechanisms, while complex, are increasingly well understood.

I have been a doctor for over a decade and I consider myself diligent in keeping up with research, and although the selection of patients for statin therapy is an ongoing and regularly changing area of research on which experts can disagree, the fact that select patients will have substantially lower risk of coronary events due to statin therapy is uncontroversial.

Here is an article written by people who payed attention in stats class and have bothered to make their case with evidence rather than knocking down strawmen

Efficacy and safety of long-term treatment with statins for coronary heart disease: A Bayesian network meta-analysis (2016)

Or for a more succinct and easy to read summary here is the Cochrane conclusion

"Of 1000 people treated with a statin for five years, 18 would avoid a major CVD event which compares well with other treatments used for preventing cardiovascular disease."

Statins for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Ugh, that one and the cook one of everything have been staring at me for years. Maybe I'll try for those on my current playthrough

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 8 points 2 months ago

In the recent WA state election we saw a pretty substantial shift towards greens and independents especially in rural seats away from nationals and libs. This is in part due seachangers and treechangers but interesting none the less.

 

Peter Dutton has vowed to cut overall government spending if elected to government, reiterating his plans to scale back the public service. 

Labor has called on the opposition leader to reveal the details of his plan, warning that fewer public servants would mean longer wait times to access services.

Mr Dutton said he would not detail exactly where the spending cuts would come from until after the federal election.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I keep seeing commentary saying that we shouldn't use the ADF for disaster relief.

We have an organisation full of people with exactly the skills and organisation required that we maintain at great expense and barely use. Can someone give me a sensible explanation why it's not a good idea to use them for disaster response.

On a second note I know for a fact that small scale politics and wasteful spending are endemic in volunteer emergency services. I'm not sure what reform is needed but something certainly is. I'm about to re-enter a volunteer fire brigade for the first time in years so I'm sure I'll be full of opinions in a few months.

 

Have you ever walked into an outlet like OPSM, Specsavers, Bailey Nelson, or Laubman & Pank for an eye test and left feeling like you’d been gently pressured into spending $500 on a pair of glasses?

...

[B]osses impose onto optometrists a variety of targets – whether its “converting” eye tests into sales or increasing rates of certain types of tests.

This type of pressure is reportedly causing many optometrists “significant moral distress” and some are starting to fight back.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Good work comrade, this is the way to live.

 

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is among many who are condemning the Coalition’s plan to slash 36,000 public service jobs if it wins the federal election. 

The ACTU said on February 25 the cuts would mean one in five public sector workers would be out of their job, badly affecting services from pensions and veterans’ payments, to the operation of regional weather stations.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The budget deficit has been reducing over time under the current government, the man promoting nuclear is Dutton the opposition leader, his plans for nuclear power are being criticized as expensive, he is being portrayed as stupid in promoting nuclear which would reverse the trend of reducing deficits.

It's a bit convoluted and not particularly funny but it does make sense.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 3 points 2 months ago

Modern guns a extremely precisely engineered devices that are incredibly easy to use, for better or worse. I know modern sporting bows are also but it's no contest in my opinion.

I've shot both, bows as a complete amateur and relatively competent with a rifle. There is no question that a modern gun is way easier to pick up as an amateur and hit what you want to hit and I cannot possibly believe there are anything other than extremely niche uses where a bow is superior.

 

In fact, virtually all significant economic indicators except gross domestic product (GDP) growth show Australia’s economy is among the world’s best-performed.

  • record employment growth;
  • record employment to population ratio at 64.6%;
  • record job participation at 67.3%;
  • inflation in the lower half of the RBA’s optimum band;
  • wages growth above inflation for five straight quarters;
  • median wealth per adult as the second highest in the world;
  • ASX200 above 8,000 since last September;
  • poverty and homelessness reducing, according to the Productivity Commission;
  • emergency calls to the National Debt Helpline declining,
  • record high new car sales in 2024;
  • record sales of new private aircraft;
  • overseas trips in 2024 at a new record high of 11.6 million;
  • enrolments in fee-paying private schools at an all-time high;
  • record manufacturing gross profits last financial year (2023-24) at $47.4 billion;
  • record construction profits last year, at $31.1 billion;
  • record profits in several other sectors;
  • household spending at a record high.
[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

4 player map can be good to have segments of your farm for different uses. Although I've found it annoying as I found it hard to have a good flow to the morning.

 

The report’s central conclusions – rejected by the Coalition – are relatively unsurprising. It found nuclear power would be far more expensive than the projected path of shifting to mostly renewable energy. And delivering nuclear generation before the mid-2040s will be extremely challenging.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 3 points 3 months ago

Spoiler: The fact that the ALP is Neoliberal is kind of the point of the article.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 2 points 3 months ago

You've laid out the RBA position fairly enough.

Part of the subtext of this piece is an ongoing debate, historically through the second half of the 20th century and into the GFC it seems that countries that adopt excessively tight monetary and fiscal policy have a lower quality of life long term in a way that is difficult to reverse, whereas the long term consequences of a slower, or even labile, return to target levels of inflation is likely nothing.

This is something that professional economists disagree on and I abandoned economics the second I got my bachelor's but the historical evidence is compelling.

[–] Joshi@aussie.zone 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Because the interest rate has a direct impact on quality of life. Everything else being equal a lower interest rate is better.

 

The Reserve Bank’s behaviour last week can only be described as bizarre. It’s a sign that it’s lost its bearings and isn’t sure what’s happening in the economy or where it’s headed. What has caused its befuddlement? Our unexpected return to near full employment.

 

Trumpism, whether full-strength or in the watered-down form seen in Australia, is not an answer to the failure of neoliberalism. But until centre-left parties can escape the mental prison built by decades of soft neoliberalism, it is what we are likely to get.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26355302

Includes a variety of statistics on the size, time, and nature of massacres, as well as an interactive map

 

As usual, 26 January has been marked by protests, denunciations of those protests, and further iterations. Even apart from the fact that it marks an invasion, the foundation of a colony that later became one of Australia’s states isn’t much of a basis for a national day.

 

Albo supports shifting from a PM called election within a 3 year term to a 4 year term of fixed length.

"If you've got a three-year cycle, in practice, that often means that you really only have a shorter window of perhaps a couple of years to bring about substantial reform, by which time you're looking at the next election," he said.

Having a fixed term of parliament would remove the ability for prime ministers to call early elections, as well, which typically favour the incumbent government.

 

Australia’s economy has gone from close to the worst-managed in the OECD, according to data from the IMF, the UBS, the World Bank, the OECD, Trading Economics and elsewhere, to near the top today.

The ABC’s unawareness of these major shifts is an indictment of its inability to monitor critical data.

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