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Yeah but... as an 80s kid my dream job was going to be one of those guys that ride around on the back of the truck. I remember my mum trying to talk me out of it because it would be hard work having to run to pick up the bins.

I also remember the day when the robotic arm truck showed up... I was genuinely disappointed.

It's a bit of a shit show in Australia.

Each city is responsible for it's own waste management. Mine has 3x channels: green waste for biodegradable anything, recyclables, and everything else.

The recyclables are a furphy though because, you can put anything plastic or paper in them, but ofc it's really only the PET plastic and the cardboard that actually gets recycled - the rest just goes to land fill.

We have a separate system for specific PET bottles vendors charge $0.10 per bottle, and you can return the bottles to a collection place to get that back.

We did have a separate system for soft plastics like plastic bags or whatever but that pretty much just wasn't viable.

Rant triggered: we've aparently stopped single use plastics like takeaway boxes, plastic bags, and plastic cuttlery, but IMO that's really just a fig leaf for companies that ship products in plastic packaging. It really shits me.

Additional rant: producers of plastic products like garbage bags have started this bullshit "ocean plastics" thing. They claim 50% or whatever of their bullshit bags are made from "ocean plastic" which they define as recycled plastic obtained from any community within 50km of the ocean (the vaaaast majority of Australians) which has no other plastic collection program. So basically... they charge city councils to disappear their plastic waste and then charge idiots to buy their "ocean plastic" garbage bags.

Actually I think they want to publish numbers about Australian Migrant Crime to stoke the same kind of divisive politics here in Australia.

I think this is true, but id add that most socialist societies we have seen have been awful. Lots of corruption and poverty. Turns out whichever system you have there will be evil scumbags seeking to self-enrich.

Thats not to say it couldn't work, but that there are no shining examples of success and lots of examples of failure.

Fair point.

Yes, but will any of Trump's supporters really care what may be in the original documents if a doctored set released by the administration provides cover?

I haven't understood the fight for the "release of the Epstein files" since the start.

What's to prevent them releasing fake documents?

As if this administration would ever release information detrimental to Trump or any other republican in favor.

The coming release will include nothing of substance about republicans.

Even if the kid doesn't get it now, I'm sure Mum will be in touch at some point in the future.

I suspect that there's 100s of stories like this one.

One wonders how the 11 year old feels about it.

This is a dramatic generalisation.

There are plenty of tourist destinations that people love because they are over-run with tourists - the very antithesis of your comment.

I'm not really sure how tourists are ruining the housing market on mount everest. As an aside, I suspect the locals are generally pretty happy with the tourism industry on and around mount everest.

Of course there are examples of tourism disaffecting locals, but these cases are really limited. In general, tourism is a great industry for regional centres.

I'm hard pressed to think of a place which has had it's character extracted.

Sure, tourism can change places, excessive tourism can harm the culture of a place, but in all but extreme cases I think that's a pretty hollow argument - culture is always transient. Conservatives always argue against change and external influences.

Whataboutism is to suggest that thing A isn't really a problem because thing B has other similar characteristics. However, an assertion that A through Z all share the same characteristics is to suggest that an argument against the existence of thing A on those grounds is absurd.

What's going on here?

Its this person controlling these devices from a laptop?

For what purpose? Clicks and likes?