[–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

I'm not taking any moderation action right now, but I would point out that the rules of the !worldnews@aussie.zone community are that it be about news from overseas with a specific focus on Australia. Generally speaking, if it's from an Australian news outlet, we let that qualify automatically, for now. If it's not from an Australian source, a significant focus of the article should be on Australia or Australians. This article is written by a former British Prime Minister, for the British edition of the Guardian, and makes only a very fleeting mention of Australia.

I don't want you to do anything different right now, but if you're submitting to the Overseas News community, consider finding articles that come from Australian sources like the ABC or SBS, or finding an article that talks more directly about Australia in particular, or that approaches it through an angle that concerns Australian geopolitical concerns more specifically than the concerns an American or European-focused article would.

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    Joey Haeck joins Daði and Magnús to talk about the Wizards of the Coast Union, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, AI, and the industry as a whole!

    Sign the UWOTC petition and help make our games better: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcpetition/

    ▼ INDEX ▼
    00:00 Introductions
    02:51 Waterdeep Dragon Heist
    08:23 Joining Wizards
    14:53 The Broadsheets
    17:38 GenCon Announcements
    19:09 United WOTC
    54:36 How to Help

    [–] 3 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I'm counting three stories there, not two 😅

    On the one hand, they are the biggest economy in the world and what they do makes a huge difference to us, and they have an election tomorrow.

    On the other hand, it's hard to see how the price of coffee is a headline story even with that context. The "Trump could overturn midterm results", sure. "Trump voters switching sides" maybe. But coffee?

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    cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/vampires/p/1284557/i-just-saw-dracula-on-stage

    Put on by Shake & Stir Theatre Company in Brisbane, Australia.

    I saw them 10 years ago, last time they put on Dracula. And since then this has remained the benchmark by which I measure all adaptations of Stoker's novel. The performances, the atmosphere, the set design were all top notch.

    I saw the 6:00 pm showing, but especially for Halloween they had another one starting at 10:00 pm.

    Last time I saw it, I very nearly didn't. Honestly, the posters did not make it look enticing. I thought it would be an attempt at a hip modern adaptation, taking aesthetic cues from later Anne Rice or Vampire Diaries type stories. I decided to take a chance and bought tickets to the last possible show, and it was almost sold out already.

    Cast photo of Dracula wearing a leather suit

    But I couldn't have been more wrong. Aesthetically it is a perfect adaptation. It felt very authentically like how I picture the novel in my head. Dracula does wear a leather jacket after he turns young, but with the fog and lighting and the distance to the stage, it doesn't actually feel like doing a modern hip take, and instead just felt like a practical way to show how Dracula has gotten younger and stronger upon departing Transylvania.

    Tonally, it worked great. Some of the abridgements detracted a bit from some of the themes. There was some lip service to theme of modernity vs ancient superstition, but it really gets de-emphasised compared to the novel. But it also played up to a greater extent are the sexual themes, making the vampire's bite and possession come across as deeply sexually-charged. Not a unique take by any means, but it helps reinforce what's there in the novel about sex and sexuality.

    Unfortunately, they wrote out Quincy Morris entirely, and Arthur Holmwood is mentioned but never seen. But instead of coming across kinda naive as Lucy in the book does to modern audiences, the play leaned into the idea of her as sexually promiscuous, reinforcing the difference between her and Mina. Instead of being long-time friends with the future Lord Godalming, in this play, Lucy is portrayed as having been all-but-engaged with Dr Seward, before she suddenly meets Arthur and then gets engaged quite quickly. A change that bothers me from an "I want the adaptation to hue as close to the original as possible" perspective, but which on deeper inspection I actually rather like, because in the original novel it's a bit of a stretch to read her as promiscuous, and with other cuts made for time and casting reasons (with just 6 actors, the cast was already doubling roles—both of the women double as Dracula's brides, and van Helsing is also Renfield, who is only ever seen through a cell window—the lack of Quincy and Arthur really makes sense), this change really helps.

    Dr Seward takes the place of Quincy as the character who dies in the final encounter, which prompted some comments afterwards from someone in the row in front of me. "Jack took Quincy's death.[...] What did they do to my boy Quincy!?"

    Last time I saw it, I had not yet read the novel. I knew the story only through cultural osmosis plus from sitting in the pit of my high school production of Frank Wildhorn's Dracula: The Musical. And in the pit you get only the vaguest idea of what's actually going on on stage (I still have absolutely no idea wtf Oklahoma was about). Now I've read the book twice and seen multiple film adaptations, and I can confidently say that this play remains my favourite. If you happen to be in or near Brisbane and tickets are still available, or if you happen to be able to get to Brisbane in 2036 or thereabouts when I assume they'll be putting this on again, I highly recommend it. 9/10.

    [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago

    The "jurors kept in the same hotel as witnesses" could be an area the HCA wants to make a precedent on, the same reason leave to appeal was granted by the VCA. Even though it seemed unlikely that the way it played out could have resulted in a tainted jury (which is why the VCA rightly dismissed the appeal after granting leave), I could see a desire to set some boundaries to stop it happening again.

    I forget the details of the mobile phone data evidence, but again, given the VCA decided to grant leave, it seems a potentially novel area of law that the HCA may want to set some rules around.

    Those would be the only reason I could see the HCA taking the case.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 week ago

    Worth remembering that her ex, the person many believe was the primary target of her murders, didn't come to lunch that day, despite her specifically urging that he be there. His comments seem to imply that he may already have been suspicious of her motives.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 week ago

    In short: Bela Lugosi, unsurprisingly. Makes it very similar to why pirates sound like they do in modern popular culture.

    But the more interesting part of this video is a bit of analysis of what the distinct features of his accent are.

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  • submitted 1 week ago* by [M] to c/rts@reddthat.com
     

    In this video we'll look at some of what I think are the most clever design choices in Age of Empires 2. Lots of these are mechanics I've explored and ended up being far deeper than I expected or are a bit unique to the franchise.

    0:24 Picking targets
    2:02 Smart siege
    2:46 Eagle armor
    4:15 Straggler trees
    5:25 Multiple builders
    6:02 Hill bonus
    6:53 Accuracy
    8:05 Markets
    10:03 Terrain
    10:33 Tech tree UI
    11:08 Trebuchet armor
    11:35 My favourite [team bonuses]

     

    PETITION: "Stand with Dungeons & Dragons and Magic Workers Forming a Union!" https://actionnetwork.org/forms/uwotcpetition/

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    Wargamer: "Wizards of the Coast rejects D&D union effort, says it's "not neutral" (Oct. 15, 2026): https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/mtg-union-not-recognized-by-wotc

    [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Build-to-rent developers is corporates getting into the rental game isn’t it?

    Yes. I believe it's actually the norm in some other countries, such as America. I'm ambivalent about it, to be honest. More big corporates getting involved could have upsides, like a greater degree of professionalism and potentially being more responsive to serious issues than bad individual landlords. Many individual landlords will blatantly break the law not out of malice, but just sheer incompetence. And because they're a relatively small target, the chances they face legal repercussions are minimal. A larger landlord with hundreds of tenants has a much larger legal risk if they do it on purpose (at least in theory—before regulatory capture sets in), and will have procedures in place to avoid it

    But it could have very serious downsides, like never being as good as a good individual landlord who chooses to allow something they don't actually have to, and creating a more oligopolistic market that gives the landlords more power in the wider market than they currently do. It also means they have more political power to change the laws than they currently do, in theory (there's an argument for precisely the reverse: that policies that help landlords are an easy sell to the voting public when the landlords are mum-and-pop shops as policies that help people's "retirement nest eggs", whereas when it's a corporation it's harder to convince the public)

    Ultimately, to me who owns the property matters much less than what the law says they can do with it. If it's impossible to evict a tenant who isn't causing damage without a really good reason (a legitimate need of serious repairs—which occurred for reasons that couldn't have been avoided by doing regular routine maintenance), the landlord or an immediate family member moving back in (with serious fines for not actually moving back in long-term after this reason is used), if the tenant is able to make minor reversible modifications like hanging up paintings or painting the walls, if they are required to be able to pay through reasonable convenient fee-less means, if they are protected from obscene rent hikes, and if retaliation against a tenant who tries to enforce their rights is penalised harshly, it doesn't matter much to me whether my landlord is Joe Blow or Apartments Incorporated.

    to the uncompromising domination of a rental-corp

    True, but for the reasons partly stated above this may not always make things worse. Plus, many if not most individual landlords go through a realtor anyway, who does most of the actual work. Does the rental-corp owning the building vs managing it on behalf of an individual actually make that difference? Maybe. Maybe not.

    Reducing this support will likely deflate house prices a little, so the timing of changes like this would need to be considered carefully

    I honestly reject the notion that policies that "deflate house prices a little" need to be "considered carefully". Deflating houseprices should be seen as a good in and of itself. That said, I think it should be done by way of reducing incentive to invest in housing, not reduce incentive for someone to own their own home. The end goal is making it more affordable for people to live. That means house prices and rent need to go down. For that, demand needs to be reduced without reducing the buying power of people who don't already own a home.

    But regardless, voters aren't going to look at the nitty-gritty details. They'll see this headline and see "the Liberals want to make it harder to own a home". That can never be a vote winner. Nor can continued climate denial. Their base already votes for them on that account, but the vast majority of Australians accept the reality of climate change. The Liberals just need to keep climate change as far away from being a political issue as possible if they want to avoid losing potential votes.

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    I’m about to show you a lot of footage from Dawn of War IV – and also share a lot of thoughts on it. And unlike previous videos, this has all been played and captured by me on my own computer. There’s going to be skirmish as all four factions, as my impressions from the tutorial as the Imperial Guard and Blood Ravens, and the first few missions of the first and second of the four total campaigns – which feature the Orks and Adeptus Mechanicus, respectively. I will do my absolute best to avoid key story details and spoilers, but if you want to be fully protected then maybe do yourself a favour and just alt tab and listen - or find this video and Spotify and pretend it’s a podcast.

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