Horse racing is one of those things that in Australia has reduced itself, in my adult lifetime, from a well-understood and broadly popular sport to a rump activity basically patronised by the rich, by anti-social groups, and fuelled by alcohol and host...
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@liamvhogan the bookies are still there, but only the true tragic or money launderer uses them
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@ThermiteBeGiants @liamvhogan I've been around horse racing my whole life, my grandfather was a tragic and owned a horse, my parents had a couple of horses for a while. My sister worked for a bookie. There has never been any actual romance, it's a brutal past time co-opted by organised crime.
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@Kels_316 @ThermiteBeGiants yeah, greyhound racing in my family.
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@liamvhogan @ThermiteBeGiants horse racing for the underclass.
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@liamvhogan You've got my vote!
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@Kels_316 @ThermiteBeGiants greyhound puppies are indescribably cute and fun to be around
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@liamvhogan @ThermiteBeGiants they are lovely dogs
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Gambling and games of risk-chance are fundamentally human, they’re common to almost all cultures. And the social aspect of playing cards or mahjong or whatever is absolutely a socially positive thing, in its place.
There’s a reason gambling ads stress homosocial, matey habits so strongly, ‘bet with your mates’ and so on. It’s because the experience of in-app gambling is exactly not that, it’s furtive and lonely and compulsive. And it has no right to exist. It doesn’t have to be that way.
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@liamvhogan @Kels_316 I met a greyhound owner-trainer once. One of the least-likeable people I have ever met, and that’s saying a lot given my weird job history to date
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@liamvhogan not everyone can get to a pokie mate, this is ableist
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@ThermiteBeGiants @Kels_316 yep, the industry is a culture of scumbags, and is not reformable. I do think greyhound racing can exist, in theory, but not in its current industry.
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@liamvhogan @Kels_316 I don’t think an ethical greyhound racing industry can exist at all. Horse racing and gambling could be reduced to a rump of amateur/picnic races and their associated trappings (i.e in-person betting) but the fact remains that the racing industry in its historical and current form is a nexus of power that engulfs and entangles our societal élite in a way that is hard to precisely excise
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David "Dave" Treloarreplied to Liam :fnord: last edited by
As long as we get the sing the divy-van song, it's all good, we all love a good sing-a-long.
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@liamvhogan *holding on to a small scrap of paper that has “vote [1] Liam | $5 | 1000-1” on it and gazing up at the big elections board to try and find the Grayndler results*
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@liamvhogan @ThermiteBeGiants @Kels_316 There is whippet racing, apparently, I was going to take mine when she was young and fast, but it was in some outer suburb and I couldn't be arsed. Strictly amateur though, just because they love to run. https://wrcv.asn.au/
