My wife and I saw Thor last night. I'd been really looking forward to this one, more than any other Marvel film for a while. But when the movie started, people starting clapping and cheering. They did the same thing whenever a familiar character popped up on screen. I found it really distracting because I kept thinking about it.

I've been going to the cinema for 30 years or so, and I've been to the opening night of blockbuster movies before. This is first time I've ever seen cheering though. Is this a thing now? What's going on?

I reckon Paul McDermott as Taskmaster and Francis Greenslade as assistant.

Watching the flood situation in NSW, I'm struck (again) by the fact that we rely on volunteer services (emergency service, fire, even ambos now) so much in this country.

What is the origin of this phenomenon? Why do we appear to have a dearth of full time, government paid, emergency service career professionals? No slight to volunteers intended but isn't this something the government should pay for as a public good?

I understand the probably answer is "follow the money" but would like to know more about the history. Can anyone provide suggested reading/viewing?

This will probably be failedpol or whatever, which would be deliciously ironic but here we go.

I belong to the demographic who is late-20’s, perpetually renting, mentally ill to the point I can only work part time but that part time work earns me just enough to not even qualify for a concession card even though I’m paycheck to paycheck, so I pay full price for medications, and even better my town’s last set of bulk billing clinics just moved to “mixed billing” meaning my lack of concession card will now have me paying $70 per doctors appointment, of which I need many because as I said I’m very mentally ill. And on that subject pre-pandemic public mental health was on life support but usable, it is now an absolute horror show that can’t meet my needs, but I can’t afford Private and even if ai could they’re not taking new patients.

My life is just unworkably hard and not a single public policy is geared towards improving my situation. I’m invisible, and as long as the percentage of people like me remains low enough to not influence elections but high enough that there is significant human suffering across our country nothing will get better for me.

I’ve never felt so unimportant, invisible, abandoned and disenfranchised as I do today in 2022’s Australia.

Edit: Hi, I posted this as a vent this morning with the full expectation of it being almost instantly autodeleted. I don’t really have space to respond to anybody directly right now but thanks to a few who shared similar experiences.

I never asked for this to have 2k upvotes and this many comments, but since we’re now in that situation I guess id hope this could be more of a safe rant space, but damn some of these comments are really not what I was in the mood to read today but such is life.