Companies wonder why people use adblockers; this is my experience trying to read this article on mobile without an adblocker:

Picture of the outside of the building.

Three paragraphs, each composed of a single sentence.

Ad.

Two paragraphs, each composed of a single sentence.

Ad.

A teaser block trying to get me read another article on their site.

Ad.

A stock photo of a public bathroom with mirrors.

A teaser trying to get me to follow them on Google News.

A single sentence with eight words.

Ad.

Another sentence, which is a quote from a school admin.

Ad.

Two paragraphs, each consisting of one sentence each.

Teaser block trying to get me to read more articles on their site.

A stock photo of some social media platform logos.

A trending block with links to more articles on their garbage site.

Two more paragraphs, each consisting of one sentence each.

A distracting carrousel of images that are links to more articles on their site.

Two more paragraphs, one of which actually has two sentences!

Links to their social media.

Is that the end of the article? I think so, but I’ve missed things before, so better keep scrolling a bit just in case.

Related articles section.

Ad.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Link to another article.

Ad.

Comments section.

Editors pick section of articles.

Ad.

Ad.

Okay, pretty sure I’ve read the entire article now, but let’s keep scrolling to see how far this bullshit goes.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Link to another article.

And then the following pattern SIX times:

Ad.

Link to another article.

Link to another article.

Link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

FINALLY a whole bunch of links to other articles, some of which are promoted by Taboola, whatever the fuck that is.

And the entire time there was a red popup for “breaking news” taking up 1/5 of the screen.

For those keeping track at home, the article was a total of fourteen sentences, one photo of the school, and two stock photos. And no photo of a bathroom without mirrors.

It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

Baffled I tell you.

It’s a fantastic idea on paper; you, and another family, want to go on vacation but want to be more comfortable than in a hotel while renting your homes out while you’re gone so someone one else gets the same comfort and you get to make a little of money to help pay for the vacation. And everyone saves a little on their vacation accomodations to boot. Everyone wins! And then capitalism and greed happened and people turned the rentals into a business and ruined it.

I’m not informed enough on the specifics of why those two countries are/were against Sweden joining, so I can’t speak to that, but every member of the alliance has to approve new members, which is why anyone gives a shit what they think or want. Of course, a healthy alliance isn’t one that ignores its members, so even if their approval wasn’t required, it would probably still be best to get it.

What may not be as clear as it could be in this thread is that the referendum was for whether or not Catalonia should secede from Spain. I doubt that there is any country that would be okay with one of its states (in the most generic sense of that word) voting to secede. In fact, I know of one country that fought a bloody war over it.

Giving indigenous people a voice is apartheid? That’s some racist fearmongering if I’ve ever heard it. You say that every time you try to have a conversation about the issue you get called racist? Have you considered that maybe it’s because you are racist? No, of course not; that would require a level of introspection that you are too cowardly to reach for, whether you admit it or not.

I sincerely hope that you some day find the courage to confront your prejudices and grow as a person, but I’m not interested in waiting for that day.

Name calling is unnecessary.

Indigenous people definitely were NOT part of the formation of the Australian government and in order to participate they have had to conform in order to get votes from people outside their group, right?

And to reiterate, it’s called the Voice because that’s what it will give them. That’s it. Just a way to have some formal input (that can still be ignored) without having to pander to people that do not understand their way of life. Is it enough? No, but it’s a start at least.

I, for one, know that if I was just living my life and an outside group of people came and told me that they were taking over and I had to do things their way instead if I had any hope of having a say in my future, I would be pretty pissed. I would also be pretty pissed that those same outsiders would presume to deny me a voice for reasons that they can’t coherently articulate without resorting to name calling.

So your argument boils down to, “I don’t want to change the constitution?” If a purely advisory body was created by an act of parliament then you’d be okay with it?

What I meant by standing apart is that there is this group of people that were living their best lives for 60k years and then another group of people came and said, “This place is ours now and we are going to run it like we want and we don’t give a shit about your customs, so either start doing things our way or fuck off.” They are standing apart because they weren’t included.

As other commenters have pointed out, anything coming out of the Voice is non-binding, so it’s powers have been already decided and it will be effectively powerless. There are legitimate arguments that have been made for and against, but I don’t think yours is one of them.

Moreover, I think you are looking at it the wrong way. It’s not so much that it is giving a specific racial group a special government body as it’s giving a group of people that stand apart from the Australian government a voice. If this group of people were not a single racial group, but otherwise everything was exactly the same, would you still vote no?

Land of the free.*

*Terms and conditions apply.

Also, is he even in the union?