Australis13

This is very true. Several people who are close to me have mentioned feeling exactly this - that they had some personality defect, when in reality they were neurodivergent.

I'm sorry to hear you're going through that. It sounds like you are suffering from Long COVID. Have you sought medical help? Are there any Long COVID support networks in your area? Also, the vaccine can sometimes reduce the severity of Long COVID, so if you're eligible for your next booster you could try that as well.

Unfortunately Long COVID (and particularly its intersection with neurodivergence) is poorly understood, but seems to be related to ME/CFS. An essential part of managing either of those is pacing yourself (this also applies to autistic burnout, which I am slowly climbing out of), which can be really challenging to implement. The basics such as sleep, nutrition and exercise (just don't overdo it! Pushing yourself will make it worse) are also important.

The full study for those interested: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354152560_The_Psychology_of_Online_Political_Hostility_A_Comprehensive_Cross-National_Test_of_the_Mismatch_Hypothesis

At least you could get away with using a chair cover and share the chair.

I ended up getting not only a second chair, but an elevated cat bed too so that both my cats had somewhere comfy to sit whilst I was at my desk!

No, Australia does not use first past the post. We use preferential voting for the house and proportional for the senate.

Labor (ALP) is centrist.

The Liberal-National Coalition (LNP) is the largest conservative group and was centre-right, although drifted more to the right after some of the more moderate liberals lost their seats to centrist independents in 2022.

Then there are a lot of smaller parties and independents that range from far left to far right.

It is likely that the ALP won this election due to (1) the LNP running an absolute shambles of a campaign (repeated back flips and changes, lack of details, etc.) and (2) the global backlash to Trumpian politics (which had a huge influence on Canada's recent election).

This. All the Christians that support a theocracy need to stop and realise that there's no guarantee that their particular denomination is going to be the one running said theocracy. The whole concept of freedom of religion depends on the separation of church and state.

Unfortunately over the past 8+ years reality itself has demonstrated that it's far too unbelievable to be a movie script.

Good to see sanity prevailing.

Next question is how the Trump administration will respond. My guess is that they're not going to do anything about everyone they've deported illegally at this point.

One of mine very quickly learnt to jump onto my desk and get in my face when he wanted attention. The other (the lap cat) recently realised how effective that was and has started doing it too.

It's just British or Australian English.

The article itself notes that the mothers were not given adequate time and given the complexity of having children who are legally US citizens, it can be readily argued that due process was denied in these cases:

One of the US children removed from the country has "a rare form of metastatic cancer" and was deported without medication or medical consultations, the ACLU said.

Gracie Willis of the National Immigration Project said the mothers weren't given a fair opportunity to decide whether they wanted the children to remain in the United States. Willis said the 4-year-old and the 7-year-old were deported to Honduras within a day of being arrested with their mother.

The cruelty is the point.

If this gets to the courts and they determine that this was done illegally (which as far as I can tell it was), then I expect the Trump administration to refuse to do anything about it, just like they're doing with Garcia.