Tau

Public transport in this area is indeed less attractive if you have any other form of transport, particularly if you live on one side of the ACT/NSW border and commute to the other. Google reckons for example that it'd take me a bit over an hour to get to either of my usual work sites on a bus compared to the 15-20 minutes it takes me normally.

Not mentioned (like usual) is motorbikes as an alternative to cars. The space advantages when it comes to both on road and parking are obvious compared to the usual one person per car (and they use less resources to make, particularly when it comes to EVs) so you'd think anyone actually worried about congestion would do more to encourage their use.

I was wondering if this would happen after seeing Brisbane cancelled their contract, they've followed suit pretty quickly.

Yep, they ended up deciding it was sparked by various batteries that had ended up in one of the compactors. Whatever they had for fire protection mustn't have been enough to stop it once the fire was noticed - I assume the source was within a big pile of recycling so would have required a serious amount of water to put out. It ended up being a rather large fire (one of the local accident chasers has some decent photos) and took out the recycling capability for the whole area. The rubbish piles within ended up smouldering away for a few days after the main fire was put out.

For over a year and a half now I believe most if not all the ACTs recycling has had to be sent to Sydney due to this fire, so I can understand the new centre getting priority when it comes to the waste management budget.

I think the QLD and NSW options are actually decent, which is surprising for a modern flag redesign. Not sure about the Victorian one, could do with either making the symbol more regular (i.e. less finger paint style) or deleting the crown (too hard to keep details on) and making the stars loosely drawn too. WA seems a decent idea but could do with a cleaner swan rather than the ruffled feathers on the back. The SA idea looks pretty good but does have hints of invading Poland due to the ~~imperial eagle~~ magpie. Tasmania however is another one I could get behind.

Not a real fan of the current ACT/NT flags and I don't think changing to a wavy line helps them, and the idea for the Jervis Bay territory seems a bit too committee style bland for my liking (like most new flag designs I see mentioned).

Tree pollen season has already kicked off, I was sitting at the traffic lights on City Hill just the other day watching the wind blow visible clouds of pollen off the pine trees.

Not keen at all on how it increases picture sizes and makes certain articles more prominent at the expense of actual information.

Also, what pelican told them that video shorts should take up such a massive section of the page (and not at the bottom either)? One of my bugbears these days is how information that can be conveyed much faster as text keeps getting pushed as video so people can spend both more time and vastly more data to find it out.

I'm sure there will be someone found who doesn't like it, but did you look at the map of the area where the limit is changing? Hardly anyone lives within that perimeter or even in the immediate surrounds.

I wouldn't have too much sympathy for anyone moving into Civic and expecting it to be quiet anyway. It's like those who buy in Braddon around Lonsdale St and complain about evening noise and Summernats as if these things popped out of nowhere...

Seems a surprisingly sensible decision, I think it's a good move towards addressing the concerns people have about the new Garema Place hotel potentially affecting nearby live music with noise complaints.

Would get a bit hard trying to keep track of whose place all the patients are supposed to be turning up to, but that's a minor issue and I'm sure one could work around it...

Highlights IMO are an amusingly ironic bit of tram signage at 7:20 and a very well timed song at 29:40.

Disappointingly I only saw two clips from Canberra but luckily both involved roundabouts (or faux-abouts) so at least the reputation of the city is intact.

I can see why they didn't think to have measures specifically against something like this given it's a pretty low probability occurrence. You'd have to be unlucky enough to have both applied hand sanitiser just before touching the globe and then get a spark off the globe to ignite it, and I don't recall ever getting a spark off plasma globes when I've touched them before.

It'll be interesting to see if this getting into the news means companies/departments will scramble to get rid of alcohol based hand sanitiser in their buildings, ignition is after all technically possible with static shocks etc so there will be people worried about liability.

Includes a video with a selection of the latest examples of people not seeing the giant red thing that can be found in predictable locations...