That's not really possible.

In a year in which there's a share market "adjustment" returns will be negative. Super fund staff still need to get paid.

Rightly or wrongly, it's up to members to ensure that their fund's fees are reasonable.

There's a few different things going on here but sadly, one of them is poor financial decisions on Elaine's part.

I'm not blaming her for that, lord knows I've made more than my share of poor decisions financial and otherwise, but while there are valid criticisms to be made of our superannuation system, Elaine's situation isn't really a useful prism through which to enumerate them.

One of the biggest problems is as always, privatisation. Some super funds are for profit, some are not for profit, and some are self managed. My point here is, because of the eyewatering amount of money in superannuation, and because it's not managed by the government exclusively, it has attracted an entire industry of bottom feeders leaching off the pool of money. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem in and of itself, but that industry spends a lot of time advocating for even more complex rules to ensure that it's not navigable by the lay-person.

I've also been through therapy for years, although not currently. IDK whether it's true or not but for me personally I feel as though therapy can deteriorate from a short, sharp, beneficial "intervention" (which is very helpful) into a malaise of relating ones problems to a friendly ear (which is unproductive) ... but I digress.

This sounds to me like one of those problems which is a symptom potentially caused by a myriad of different issues, and as such has no specific "cure". As you've said it's "accumulated stress", which is another way of saying the same thing. I feel like I run into this type of problem a lot: the solution is really easy, I just need to do better at life!

My one suggestion would be to look at therapies for anxiety, since anger and anxiety are commonly symptoms of the same problem. There's two common therapies for this.

Firstly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) - figuring out why your thoughts follow the patterns they do and as a result, learning how to change those patterns. This is hard work. It's a bit like going to a gym. You need to set aside time for several sessions a week of examining the parts of yourself you've been trying not to think about your entire life. The gold standard for DIY CBT is "When Panic Attacks" by David Burns, alternatively "feeling great" by the same author. He has a podcast also. I know the dirty dog feet was just an off hand example, but to continue that example you might discover that you have a deeply held belief that people who have dirty houses end up sad lonely and unloved, a potential solution might be to tell someone who you feel is happy and well loved how difficult it is to keep a clean house - inevitably they will agree with you and tell you how hard they find keeping up with their chores.

Secondly Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) - accepting that stressors will always be present, understand that they're harmless, fleeting thoughts, and committing to a course of action that is more meaningful than simply "avoiding stress". Author Steven Hayes is the gold standard here but personally I find his stuff too heavy. I quite like "DARE" by Barry McDonagh, basically ACT but more easily digested. This one is more readily applied "in the moment". It takes practice but there's no sitting and pondering one's soul so-to-speak. This is very difficult to explain in a sentence but you might acknowledge, in the moment, that dirty dog feet are infuriating, you feel that feeling, allow it to come. What you'll find (with anxiety at least) is that if you don't resist it but regard it with a welcoming curiosity, it will dissipate fairly quickly and leave you with a kind of energised readiness. "Well that was a thing!". If feeling frustrated is a natural response, and you fight with yourself not to feel that, it creates an incredible tension - you push the feelings away and they just push back harder. You kind of learn to let the frustration come feel the feelings in a healthy way.

Yeah. I feel like they really dropped the ball by not providing a "remove block for 48 hours" function.

The report explains why they didn't look at large scale nuclear in section 2.4.4. You can download it here, but basically there are two reasons why the CSIRO and Australian Markey Energy Operator felt that large scale nuclear is not appropriate for comparison. Firstly the nature of our network precludes large scale nuclear - state networks are small compared to overseas networks, and if a single reactor powers a significant portion of a network's base load then it's difficult to shut it down for maintenance. Secondly costing reported by other jurisdictions may be inaccurate given government investment, and that capital may have already been recovered.

As regards sequestration I didn't have a thorough look at the report but it does discuss carbon capture and storage. Charts list costs as "CCS".

Privatised employment services are a shining example of a privatised service that "runs better".

It feathers the nest of capitalists with premium, predictable, inexhaustible government money.

It discourages legitimate claimants from seeking social security.

It perpetuates the notion that being unemployed and poor is the fault of the incurable laziness of the unemployed and poor.

Of course, it doesn't actually reduce unemployment or lift people out of generational poverty, but the only way to do that is to create jobs.

The pitiful groans of a dying format. Shameless really.

Wife Approval Factor

Not from Victoria and not a lawyer but...

Yes I expect it's "up to $x and up to y years in prison".

I don't really think that there's a challenge to be made against the law itself. We don't have "constitutional free speech". I'm not certain but IIRC the right to criticise the government is enshrined in case law.

It's possible or likely that far right advocacy groups will dream up one or more "test cases". A bit like Rosa Parks where the set of the most favourable circumstances possible are manufactured and then the group puts their weight behind fighting the case in court.

With this strategy they can't really neuter the law but they could get the court to adopt a more generous interpretation of "ought to have known" than the law had intended.

Stremio ? Crazy high WAF here.

Does this mean that for people who don't pay they're going to make the ads twice as annoying?

Was this in the article before ? It's not now. maybe it was edited.

Summary bot has this bit:

Technology dogs, which are often Labradors, are trained to smell the chemical triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO) that is found on circuit boards, sim cards and hard drives.

Article doesn't say anything about dogs though. Weird,.

Oof. You're right. In west aus council elections aren't compulsory which I guess led to (but does not excuse) my confusion.

LOL. Jono's political career might be fairly brief I think. These policies are designed to get traction on social media but they're completely impractical.

Only rate payers vote in council elections and this guy's platform is... checks notes... punishing rate payers. How is he proposing to determine which homes are vacant?

The usual tired rhetoric about vacant homes and Short Term Rentals. The study he's referencing by Bond et al doesn't even support this type of punitive taxation.

I'm a bit peeved about the post title.

The article heading is:

Former prime ministers join to condemn Hamas, urge Israel to protect civilian lives

The post title is the first sentence, which gives a very different impression.

Yeah this sucks.

$100 would shut down vexatious claims.

The article says the Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association of WA (APLA) were advocating for the imposition of a fee. The only reason they could possibly want a fee imposed is to reduce the accessibility of this process.

If it truly was about funding the process then clearly, obviously, it's miners that should be paying that.