what are those?

'discussing serious topics while dressing inappropriately' is basically your whole thing

hard, but I thought the ratio of effort to marks available wasn't too far off and it made me put more thought into what I was writing and probably made me write a better essay. Maybe not AI proof but I think it probably encourages students to actually do the work rather than cheat

Something that's become a bit more common in the courses I've taken, in part as a response to AI I think, is 'scaffolding' of big assignments. In one course this year I had to submit a 3 minute video explaining an argument I was going to include in my essay. Wasn't worth a whole lot and wasn't....

Essays and the like give you a chance to show how you can really apply the knowledge and develop ideas that just can't be done in an oral assessment.

That said, I do really appreciate a range of (appropriate weighted) assessments and I reckon there's a place for this.

As a student I think I like the idea but I'd worry about any kind of oral assessment being worth too much. I think there's an extent to which something like this can show proper understanding in a way written assessments don't but I also think answers will be inherently limited by the format.

them off at stupid times several days early, it's the fireworks themselves that are objectionable. I think it's difficult to make the case for them and I hope they'll be something future generations look back on and wonder why we ever allowed people to have them.

There's something to be said for accepting extra noise in cities and there are many things which are ruined by the least considerate, but I don't think fireworks are one of those things. They're one of the most obnoxious things we let people get their hands on and it's not just the people setting...

this was only meant to be a post about chopping boards, but this also applies to traffic lanes

Do they all have actors that appeared in something else specific perhaps? Nowhere near close figuring out what that thing is but the guesses seem to be heading in that direction.

"final" hahaha, 8k blank votes in 2025, 4.7k in 2022, not reported on wikipedia for the earlier elections, so it's hardly consistent. Does that jump in blank votes mean anything? No idea.

very minor final note: the 52.8% number appears to exclude blank and informal votes while the percentages on wikipedia for past elections include them. Wayne got 51.4% if you include them.

Though population growth since 2013 means that ~350k votes was 35% turnout then and is 28% turnout now.

Interestingly, 2010 and 2025 are the big outliers, the 4 elections in between had turnout between 34 and 38%. 2010 had 50% turnout.

None of the winning candidates in the other 5 mayoral elections have quite made it over 50%, but with higher turnout each time they've all managed to get more votes than Wayne did this time except for Len Brown in 2013, who got 48% with very similar total turnout meaning he got 164k to Wayne's 180k.

I still dial about half the phone numbers I call from memory just because it's faster than looking them in my phone.

I spent the entire time I was 18/19 as a full time student and I didn't move out permanently until I was 23, but the security of govt support is what made living independently viable. If I'd been relying on work for income I think I'd have to have stayed with family for much longer.

I'll admit I'm not exactly itching to move back to the North Shore and there's a long way to go before local trips are as good as the inner west but if every NX1 and NX2 had bike racks living on the North Shore and bike commuting would be a lot more viable.

Sounds like the changes are generally a good thing though. I'm just sceptical about saving money.