Every day, we publish a selection of your emails in our newsletter. We’d love to hear from you, you can email us at yoursay@theconversation.edu.au.
Monday September 21
“I found the article about good data centres, ‘What does a good data centre future look like? And how do we get there?’, to be a hopeful change to the commentary about water, land and energy use by other media. However, like most other sources I’ve read, this one didn’t comment about the need to ensure substantial taxes or royalties are actually paid by these companies. At this point it seems to me that our politicians are blindly – or irresponsibly – walking into another free gas debacle.”
Linda Black, Ferntree Gully VIC
“What makes housing 'affordable’? Is there a percentage of the income table? Who dictates affordability? Companies are being given incentives to build these homes but we don’t hear about the incomes of the people waiting for them. Are they for rent or to buy? We need a deeper conversation and understanding of what rights and expectations the community has about a safe place to live.”
Pamela Curr 
Tuesday September 22
“In reference to ‘Why Sydney Sweeney’s controversial advert goes beyond sexualising women’s sport’, it seems that society has not progressed when it comes to respect towards women. Online pornographic content that degrades women including practices such as strangulation promoted as eroticism is an outrage to women. I believe domestic violence has become a shameful epidemic and it’s appalling that women continue to be denigrated and sexualised in the media, adding fuel to the already violent firestorm that exists. It’s past time that men, who are clearly the beneficiaries in this subject matter, need to take a stand on behalf of the women of the world who are their mothers and daughters.”
Shan Coppard
“As the authors make clear in the article ‘What major tests like PISA and NAPLAN get wrong about Indigenous students’, these testing instruments are not best practice for Indigenous students. In my opinion, the other students are also poorly served by them. I believe standardised testing creates winners and losers.”
Kym Houghton
Wednesday September 23
“Your article about invasion novels raised some interesting points, but I would question the addition of Heather Rose’s novel 'Bruny’ to the list. This is a great novel, but is all about the corruption of governments and politicians making deals to the detriment of citizens. It isn’t an invasion novel in the sense that another country has taken over by force, but a seriously worrying comment on the way politicians make alliances and agreements without fully thinking through the consequences. The Hobart AFL stadium is a good example of this, with concerns about the way the agreement was made, the impact on government services and the cost of a roofed stadium that some people do not support, in a state with enormous debt and in a prime waterfront position. To me, this raises questions about political lobbying and decision-making similar to those explored in ‘Bruny’.”
Anne Watson
“When you take artificial intelligence and program it to perform the complexities of everyday life, you stand on the brink of complete destruction. With AI, what do we have to look forward to? Absolute chaos when the system collapses. People unable to use swipe cards to enter or exit their residences or places of work; all forms of transport and commerce grinding to a halt, along with medical support and any form of education. It makes me wonder, is AI the answer to human laziness, or the beginning of human destruction? We will reap what we sow.”
Sovina Olle
Thursday September 24
“The article ‘More than 2 million Indigenous people lived in Australia in 1788’, brought to mind an occasion from around 2009 when I was working as an educational advisor in Qatar. Being male, I was only allowed into boys’ schools. Many of the boys had friends and relatives in Palestine. During one of Israel’s ‘freedom’ pushes there was an international media blackout but the boys received cellphone photos from their friends. The art teacher suggested they use these images for drawings and paintings. It looks hauntingly similar to the picture in the article about the pre-European population of Australia showing ‘police’ work from 1897.”
Frank Gibson
“Thank you for your article ‘Australia is responding to domestic violence after the event, not preventing it from happening’. Financial stressors are often a huge factor in couples’ arguments and the financial crisis in many families definitely must have an impact on the increase of DV. With this in mind, I can only see more cases and no amount of DV prevention programs by the government will change the statistics unless inflation decreases, helping to ease financial stress. This is a serious situation for more and more people and needs to be dealt with, by action not words!”
Rosemary Wiggins
Friday September 25
“Michael FitzGerald’s article on banning AI in the classroom argued that one of the reasons AI should not be feared is that oral traditions were not predicated on literacy, and thus a post-literate society does not necessitate a degradation of intelligence. But I believe one of the other effects on the online generation is an undermining of memorisation skills, the very thing oral tradition relies upon. Many of my peers and students, growing up with ready access to Google, have not had to retain information for long periods – we can just ask Siri or Google it again. Increasingly, the result of such info requests is a meshing and mashing of other information, scooped up and served by AI. If young people cannot read and cannot remember what they are told, and have to blindly trust that the info produced by AI is correct as they do not have the skills or access to verify sources, how can we have hope that humanity is not indeed ‘dimming’?”
Jessica Joan Graham
“As a former guide on the Larapinta Trail for 10 years, I feel your article about personal locator beacons has wriggled around the main issue. Rule number one: Don’t walk alone! As mentioned in your article, the beacon is of no use if the walker is unconscious. Also, one of the unanswered questions I have long asked is: are beacons reliable from the bottom of a gorge? They rely on satellite connection which may be impeded by the terrain. And you can’t climb a hill for a signal with a broken leg.”
Charlie Carter, Alice Springs NT