For our son, it’s the daycare pushing us repeatedly to get the autism diagnosis.

We have seen an occupational therapist who cost $280 for a 1 hour zoom call without my son present and advised it would be around $350 each time she did a visit. Medicare covers $48 that, or our top tier extras cover covers $50.

Or NDIS provides 6 totally free sessions per year. So of course I have started the process of trying to get him on NDIS. I’d be silly not to.

I’m an almost life long QLDer and ‘a port’ to me would mean a fortified wine…

Or where the boats come in

I found this a long but very interesting read. Particularly the repeated idea throughout it that US foreign policy has long had the goal of suppressing other powers and maintaining dominance, but that their actions this year are actually having the opposite effect.

Very long but interesting interview

Yeh I think a lot of people don’t seem to get this. My husband and I have an “investment property” (super rural, was sub $200k, all we could afford for a first house, not much more than a shed) that my parents live in now after we moved to a city for work. They pay a tiny amount of rent which only covers a portion of the mortgage repayments, so the place is negatively geared.

But the money we’re spending on keeping my parents housed is not free money we get back in full at tax time. Some of it just comes off our taxable income, so we get a very slight tax break. I cbf doing the full maths right now but if we spend $4000 on rates and water and interest for that house we might get something like $1000 off our owed tax. Still down $3000. Plus down the principal mortgage repayments not covered by rent (~$4000), because they can’t be claimed.

Which is fine. I’m grateful to be in a position to be able to support my parents, and I know it’s not a typical landlord situation.

I’m also certainly not saying negative gearing is totally fine and should never be questioned. There are definitely too many consessions that parasites with huge portfolios of properties take advantage of. And I’m sure there are people that game the system to their full advantage.

I just, yeah, for me negative gearing just very slightly reduces how much it costs to not charge my parents much rent. It’s not a golden goose or anything.

257 dance moves?? That’s incredible

Also “smart” devices all through everyone’s homes. And phones, routers, other telecommunication devices. Solar inverters.

You could write a crazy story if you started thinking about how many things could be a back door for nation states.

There’s a sports scientist, I’ve forgotten her name but she wrote a book called Women are Not Small Men. In her book she says that long distance swimming is one sport that women actually outperform men in.

Edit: her name is Stacy Sims

I like those too, and kilts!

I love ‘Alex’. I’ve seen them present a few times, such a great speaker.

An app where men protect each other from women who are emotionally and physically unsafe? I don’t see the problem.