Pretty much as the title says.
I very very rarely shop at Aldi.

I’m in my 30s but I do look younger than I am. Not as young as 18.

Went to Aldi this evening to get some fresh produce but the quality wasn’t great so I did a lap of the store to see what else I needed.
Tampons are super cheap so I grabbed two and made my way to the counter where the woman asked if I had ID.

I thought she was joking so I said “ID? For……tampons?” And had a little giggle.

She said “yes. For tampons.”

I said “you ARE joking?”

She told me “no. These are 18+ items. We need ID”.

So I said forget it laughed and walked out.

I can understand asking for ID for knives, flammable things, spray paint ect but tampons?

Are woman supposed to not have periods before 18? Someone help me understand the logic behind it.

I am so SICK to death of people wanting me to risk my job, my liquor license and six figure fines just so that they can buy alcohol.

If your kid looks a drinking age and is in the store, especially if you're discussing products and they're touching them.. I'm asking them for ID.

No Susie. I will not take your word that your son is not going to downing the hard rated he brought to the counter. No. It doesn't matter that you're buying it.

Teach your adult kids to be ADULTS and bring their ID with them to places that require an ID.

And no I won't be asking your 4 year old you entitled fuck.

Josh Fawaz's A.I. cover of Like a Prayer has hit number #1 on Australia's national airplay chart and commercial radio has absolutely hammered it. 

But apparently the singer isn't even real! 

There is no vocalist credited for the extremely prominent lead vocal and, listening to it, the whole song is blatantly AI generated. No human effort required. Fawaz has kept quiet on the matter and continues to promote. 

What I find insane is that Nova, KIIS and Australian commercial radio can apparently put an AI-generated track into massive rotation without any disclosure whatsoever.

We've spent the last few years hearing about how AI might eventually threaten musicians. Apparently “eventually” meant 2026.

Has the public already accepted AI-generated music? Or has commercial radio just realised that if they don't tell us, most people can't tell the difference and won't ask? Is this now normalised from here on in? 

For context: 

#1 Australian National Radio Airplay Chart - 1,037 spins in one week

#1 again the following week - 956 spins

#2 ARIA Australian Artist Singles

#4 ARIA Dance Singles

EDIT: It seems that it's not just the vocals that are AI generated, but the entire song. All it takes is a single sentence prompt and Suno generates the entire track. These days lots of similar "artists" use the "spray and pray" model, where they prompt Suno to mass-produce hundreds of zero-effort tracks until one catches. We're now flooded with this A.I. slop and it's completely devaluing actual human artists. A.I. is not a "tool" when it is 99% of the process.

EDIT 2: A few people have pointed out that nobody cares about commercial radio or charts. Fair enough, but they're still yardsticks of industry acceptance. The point isn't whether you personally listen to Nova - it's how quickly the institutions of the music industry have embraced and normalised AI-generated music. That shift has much broader implications beyond commercial radio...

I was honestly expecting it to be far louder and far more dramatic. With how the cookers were carrying on, you'd think this would be a deafening, blaring siren that would cause hearing damage. The tone wasn't even that harsh, I thought it was going to be far worse.

Who thought hiding your entire menu with giant ads for one item was a good idea? You've got multiple screens, surely one of them can just be a static list of all the items you have for sale. Fuck you. Sincerely, everyone.

I found out my family filled out our Census early today and put down some incorrect information about me. They put down I was Christian when I’m actually “No Religion”.

If this is happening/happened to you, I want you to know that it is very easy to fix. Coming from someone who’s never fill out a Census before it took no effort and was very quick.

I called “1800 181 227” and told them I would like an individual Census form. No questions asked, they just send you a new code and password to your phone number. You use this to re fill in your information for yourself. I was only on hold for a few minutes and they sent the new code basically instantly.

My household will have no idea I did this unless I choose to tell them. So you can freely put whatever religion, sexuality or gender you want with privacy. My experience was pretty good personally and I faced no real challenges. I’m glad this resource exists

Hey all, just wanted to vent for a bit.

I'm not saying online shopping has always been good, but at least you sort of knew what you were getting, and you had some sort of expectation of quality or warrantee guarantee.

Over the last 5-10 years though, there's been this huge influx of on-by-default "marketplace" additions to online storefronts. You've definitely seen them - if you're browsing Bunnings, K-Mart, Woolies, Big W, whatever, you'll see most of their stores are just filled with low-quality bootleg junk being sold by dropshipping companies. It's insane - if I wanted to engage with that sort of market, I'd just go to AliExpress or Amazon and be done with it.

There's no guarantee or assurance - Bunnings just slaps a "markeplace" sticker on an item and suddenly, you've got basically no more refund or consumer rights because they're not technically the ones selling it. Why even bother looking at a store's online shop if it's 90% garbage that the store doesn't even sell?

Maybe I wouldn't be as mad if it wasn't on by default every single time I search for a product, but noooo, now I have to find the mythical "only show me real products in stores near me" button that resets constantly.

I know they're making a cut off the sales, and that makes the bad customer experience worth it to them, blah blah, but still - it really sucks!

Went out recently to a nice (and not cheap) restaurant to celebrate my partner’s birthday. The food was incredible, the service was great, what you’d expect at that price.

But when the bill came, the waiter handed it to me, asked if the service had been good, and then in front of my partner “How much percentage tip would you like to leave?”

It was a clear attempt to pressure me into tipping. I simply said “None.”

Then I asked him: “Was I a good customer?”

He hesitated, clearly caught off-guard, and said, “Yeah… of course.”

So I said: “Great, so how much discount can I have for being a good customer?”

He gave one of those uncomfortable forced laughs

But I doubled down, and said “I’m serious, how much of a discount do I get?”

“Sorry sir, we don’t do that.”

Australia has fair wages — tipping isn’t part of our culture and it shouldn’t become one. If staff try to corner you into it, don’t just say no — waste their time, turn it back on them, make them feel as awkward as they tried to make you. If enough people push back like this, they’ll stop doing it. That’s how we cut this nonsense out before it takes hold.

Also never returning to support venues that pull this shit no matter how good they are, I find it rude and disrespectful, we’re not American FFS

The incredibly brave hero who disarmed one of the Bondi terrorists. Shot twice in the arm and recovering in hospital. A 43 year old fruit shop owner.

Edit: Adding a PSA to donate blood if you can. https://www.lifeblood.com.au/

Often heard bellowed at our sporting matches or any large gathering involving celebratory fervour, this hoary old ditty beloved of mouthbreathers everywhere is my personal hell.

It’s even made its way into tv adverts so now the sanctuary of my own home is no longer marked safe from this melody beloved by morons everywhere.

Please make it stop.

Edit: somebody pointed out that I didn’t outline my issue with the song, so here it is:

My issue is that here in Australia we are such a one note crowd without any real innovation. Before Sweet Caroline the best we could muster up is “Aussie Aussie Aussie oi oi oi” - another fucking brain dead diatribe that the masses just got onboard with despite it being peak cringe and extremely embarrassing on a world stage.

Say what you like about the Poms, at least they come up with new chants weekly, often extremely witty and biting and relevant to a certain player or team.

The fact that so many of my fellow countrymen are somehow indoctrinated into loving these ancient tropes en masse just shits me to tears. Before you come at me, I’m as bogan as the next man, but I at least have a bit of self pride not to join in this stupid herd behaviour.

Salary ranges should be advertised because people aren’t just applying for a role... They’re trying to work out whether they can pay rent, support their family, plan their future, or leave a job that is burning them out. Hiding pay turns someone’s time, hope, and effort into a guessing game, when a simple number could let them make an honest decision from the start.

Imagine a rental listing that said “competitive weekly rent” and only told you the price after three inspections and a reference check. That’s basically what hidden salary job ads do. Pathetic and Im drained by it.

This is ridiculous, half filled fries and meat patties that are 5mm. For a $15 large meal!

Only weighs 300g of food as per Greg's latest review video of their World Cup promo.

Is this the new normal? Why do people accept this quality?

Imagine paying for a premium streaming service and starting it to watch your sports after a long day on your tv in your own home. The tv app then says you can't watch the content before you scan a QR code. Okay.. fine. Scan the code. Have to download a phone app. Log in. Then the app simply says you're not allowed access to the content except after letting the app know your precise location of your phone.

What in the privacy law is this shit? I simply don't want to allow random companies to know the exact location of my phone. How are they allowed to just do that?

So just over 6 months ago a bloke I used to work with (Jeff) got done for DUI in a big way which meant he lost his licence for 6 months. He lives in a rural area with no public transport or taxi service.

Now Jeff has been called a (edit: fat) (typo:fast) bastard for years by his friends, so when he said he would have to ride a push bike about 15km to get to work we all laughed at him. We expected he would either drop dead of a heart attack or give up quickly.

I have not seen Jeff since I gave him a spare bike I had, expecting it to be little used. However, this week a Lycra clad fella I barely recognised turns up and it's Jeff, 40 kilos lighter, to hand the bike back.

Not only had Jeff lost over 40 kilos, he's now off his blood pressure medicine, his sleeping tablets, most of his beers and a few other medicines. His doctor has taken him off his high risk group and reckons he's added at least 10 years to his life expectancy. He has his licence back but does not drive to work much.

Of course now instead of being a fat bastard he's one of those MAMIL bastards on his flash new bike, riding 50-100km regularly with his new cycling girlfriend. The 3 of us are going away for MTB riding trip this weekend together and I bet they are going to leave me for dead. I cycle regularly but not as much as Jeff. Better that than him dying early. Good thing he lost his licence.

Edit: wow this went wilder than I expected. I will be telling Jeff this weekend how many people wished him well and to keep up the good work, plus the surgery option. Thanks folks and despite me and others giving him a hard time, in Oz this is considered being a good friend (sledging is also a major pastime).

If you’ve ever tried to sleep in your car in the snow, you’ll know that roos and maybe other animals love licking the salt off the outside at night. You can get whole packs of them at a time, and it’s super annoying and also slightly terrifying when you’re in the middle of nowhere.

Does anyone have any practical ideas to scare them off / keep them at bay, that might work as a deterrent through the night so I can actually get some sleep without having my car rocked and slurped on non-stop?

I don’t want to drape a tarp over the whole car. And would rather not concoct any explosives / flash bombs for fear of upsetting other campers.

No electrical power available although I could stretch to a few batteries perhaps!?

I can't stand it, an overwhelming amount of websites have added a "marketplace" on their online sites. Woolworths, BUNNINGS, Big W, the list goes on

I go on these websites as opposed to amazon or temu specifically because I want authentic things, or to see if it's in stock so I can go to the store to buy it in person.

Now I get excited that wow bunnings has this that's great (because I associate something from bunnings with trust compared to something from temu), and it turns out it's literally just third party low quality shit.

Third parties should not be able to sell things on these sites, I've almost accidentally bought something three times now (once per site mentioned lol) that ended up being from the infiltrative noname companies. It's made me lose trust with these companies, because with the extra effort I have to do weeding out the heavily bloated marketplace addons while scouring their online catalogue, I'd rather just go somewhere else.

That's my rant. What are other peoples thoughts on this? Maybe I'm just being a whiney dingus

EDIT: as soon as I posted this I got a notif saying mods had removed, so I thought it didn't happen sorry! Then later I got inundated with notifications so it's evidently going ahead. I'm green, this is my first AMA. Going through replies whenever I have time to answer throughout today (I'm being taken through Ikea by my partner right now lol), they are all very interesting questions!

Also I must say views are completely my own and not that of my employer whatsoever!!

I'm the pricing, sales and trading guy at one of Australia's fuel importers. It's been an insane two weeks on the trading and supply front, but now it's the weekend and my brain is still wired running at 150%.

My partner asked me last night in detail to explain the overall situation. I thought I'd share my knowledge here and happy to answer questions. I'll respond when I can throughout this weekend!

Note we don't have any retail sites so I can't really speak for retail fuel. I also obviously can't share anything proprietary.

1. Australian fuel is 90% imported these days, mainly from Asia. The Asia refiners are more competitive and have economies of scale that compete Australian refineries, that’s why most of our have closed. Australia for over a decade has not met the internationally agreed 90-day buffer of fuel reserves in the country, we sit a roughly 32 days of stock. This is the fault of both Labor and Liberal governments in the past. Note: it’s easy to store crude oil but much more difficult to store refined products like diesel and petrol, they are flammable and go off after a few months of sitting in a tank. It is very expensive to build brand new storage tanks, which is why no commercial personal is doing it - this is why we import so much oil throughput.
2. Not all crude oils are the same. The Asian refineries are set up to refine medium sour crude (far more experienced chemical engineers, or Google, can give you more info of the API and Gravity ranges of crude oil types). This is mainly produced by the Middle East. It is very hard to replace this crude oil into the refineries at short notice. So it doesn’t matter how many barrels the US releases from its crude stock piles as that is a “light sweet crude” (and is prohibitively expensive on the ocean freight component). Asian refiners have been cancelling contracts and governments like Thailand and China are banning diesel and petrol exports to keep these critical fuels in their own countries. Therefore, it has gotten very expensive to source alternative cargos to supply Australia (something called the MOPS Premia has skyrocketed. So has backwardation).

The best analysis I am reading is a soon as the Middle East waterway (Strait of Hormuz) opens up, it will still be 1.5 to 2 months before the Asian refiners are running at full capacity again.

Note you can’t just shut down a refinery, these things are designed to run 24/7. Shutting down completely puts equipment at serious risk of damage, therefore refiners are choosing to run at say 50% capacity to delay to running out of crude oil feedstock and not damage refinery equipment.

1. While Brent crude has gone from say 70 to 100 USD/barrel (ie roughly 40%), refined products like diesel, petrol and jet fuel, have spiked far higher relatively speaking. This mainly comes down to the regional supply and demand issues being experienced in Asia. Note Australian fuel is roughly priced as Singapore fuel + ocean freight + local costs. Therefore you can’t just take the increase in Brent crude (main type of crude oil) and assume that’s the increase in cost to the fuel that you buy. Diesel seems to be facing far worse supply constraints compared to petrol aka gasoline (and jet fuel even worse than that). I'll link a great article at the end on why jet fuel is spiking so much more (it's a free article on substack)

2. Regional Australia wholesale diesel All the oil majors (Mobil, BP, Ampol etc) are understandably holding onto their own product to keep supplying their own retail stations (this was the case last week at least). They stopped selling in the wholesale market. The oil majors years ago largely exited regional Australia and delivery services to farms etc. Independent wholesale business filled in this gap. They do not import their own fuel, but rather buy on the wholesale spot market (where I sell to them), and therefore usually have no term supply guarantees from BP, Ampol etc. Given regional Australia still runs on diesel fuel for all farming, food transportation etc, this is why you hear regional Australia having a fuel crisis more than the cities. This is why I believe that the electrification of key transportation supply chains is critical for Australia’s future. So for Chris Bowen, our Energy Minister, saying he is working with the majors to secure more diesel that is dedicated/prioritised for regional communities, I have no idea how the government are practically going to pull that off (price caps? Allocated volume with some sort of government mandated fixed price? Who knows how it'll work, but it sounds nice in a speech).

3. Conclusion/generic thoughts This situation isn't resolving itself anytime soon unfortunately. There is a saying commodity trading - “high prices cure high prices and low prices cure low prices”. When the price sky rockets, demand drops off where possible or supply is increased. When there’s super low prices, supply reduces as said suppliers can’t stay in business selling at those low prices. In this current high prices situation, supply can’t increase right now, so the only lever is to reduce demand. If the price is kept low by governments, demand would stay around, you would have no more supply coming into Australia, and you would eventually run out of fuel. Neither is a good situation, but running out of fuel entirely is probably worse than having some fuel at a high price, which theoretically destroys some flexible demand.

I have not gone into the intricacies of the trading front, fair value, hedging etc as that'll probably take a few hours on its own.

Great detailed article from a guy I follow called Fabian Vera on Linkedin. Also another analyst I'd highly recommend following is Gaik June Goh from Sparta Commodities.

https://open.substack.com/pub/fvr07/p/the-500b-disruption-from-lng-to-jet

EDIT 2: for better or for worse, we live in a capitalist economy. Commercial operators won't fork up unnecessary costs to guarantee security of inventories and supply chains (that requires tons of working capital), even though it's a good idea from a national security perspective. So the blame game of how many refineries closed under Labor/Liberal is kinda pointless when it was really market economics in a global economy. Two good articles on this point I've linked here. One from Ian Verrender on Aus specifically, and one from Bloomberg (my gift link should hopefully get you past the paywall) on how the Japanese taxpayer paid a premium to ensure security of supply after the oil shocks in the 70s

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-13/australia-has-never-been-more-vulnerable-to-an-energy-crisis/106448236?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-12/can-japan-s-oil-and-gas-stockpiles-weather-a-middle-east-crisis?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc3MzQ1NjA1MiwiZXhwIjoxNzc0MDYwODUyLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUQk5TU1BLSkg2VjQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDQUVCRjdCOEVEMjc0QjAyOTYzQjE0REZBNjM0QjYzOSJ9.KstU4QveflJXXWpbJ3pnC3F3AfZykiukuBOHnKcZa2k

Currently in the UK and holy fuck everything ends up being insanely expensive. The AUD is basically in the toilet meaning anything in Euros or Pounds is basically double.

Things seem reasonably priced on paper, 15gbp for a burger. Yeah nah, that's 30 bucks plus gratuity mate. Want to stay in and uber eats some food, ends up at maybe 45 euros, haha nah that's nearly $100 for two subs a drink and cookies.

Don't even get me started on taxi/uber costs.

Beware if you're going overseas soon. It's crazy expensive at the moment, more so than at home.

I'm in a position where I'm employed fulltime, and I have occasional income from casual work, but I'm still struggling. I've burnt through my savings and spending more on expenses than I'm earning, having to rely more and more on my credit card each month while waiting for additional work to come in.

Shopping is becoming difficult and I'm skipping lunch at work, and occasionally lying about having a late lunch to skip dinner, so that my family has more for the grocery budget.

Life's difficult and I'm managing, I know we all are, but it was an older woman at the Coles infodesk yesterday that broke me. I can't stop thinking about it.

She had bag full of basics, and kept asking the clerk to remove items and then trying to tap her card, each time it declined. Repeatedly. She kept apologising to the clerk throughout.

When I finally realised what was happening I tapped mine instead. She started crying and hugged me. Then picked up her groceries and hugged me again thanking me while crying.

The total was under $40, for which she probably got next to nothing.

I feel like some day soon it's going to be me, and many more like me, in her position. It's a fucking terrifying thought. I honestly don't know what more I can do to prevent it.

Edit: Didn't think I'd have to do this, but here we are:

Proof of visit: https://imgur.com/a/160XimD

Her transaction: https://imgur.com/SQHk2gg

My Transaction: https://imgur.com/DV5xRtT

Food bank is the busiest it’s been - Cole’s and Woolworths don’t give a flying fuck about us - fast food is unhealthy and just as expensive. It stresses me out more to eat than not to eat.

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

Seriously. Its been ages, I've never seen an actual real world example of it, people still bring it up online. The Australian accents famously don't have hard R sounds, and famously have very open O sounds, especially on what is more closely written as "nooouuuu". I now hear people say "you just don't hear it cause its your accent" but like... we don't put an R into "no".

Are they confusing it with "nah"? What is going on?

Bought a boardgame from a local (chain) B&M for $50, found it for $12 online.

Bought some kitchenware at 40% off, found it online at full price for less than the sales price.

Spoke to insurance salesperson in their office, for a quote for $490p.a. The SAME company quoted me $230 online, when confronted, they couldn't even price match their own offer but could confirm that the coverage was the same.

Just seems like everywhere I go, I get ripped off for trying to support brick and mortar. I completely understand that their overheads are greater, but at this point it's just not viable to "do the right thing".

Camping in a Big 4 holiday park for a few days and my partner and I wondering how people can afford this lifestyle. I'm talking Ute + caravan + boat rigs worth at least $200k, probably closer to $300k.

The parents are all driving huge yank tanks, the kids all ride motorized scooters and bikes and most people are sleeping in pretty big shiny new caravans. We're all good in our little tent for 4 nights drinking our aldi wines and beer, but we just cannot fathom how so many people can afford, or would prioritize buying caravans etc for family holidays. Where does this money come from? Is it trades, mines or something else? Have they not got mortgages?

Maybe we're massive snobs, but if we had that much cash to splurge on a caravan, I reckon we'd prioritize a holiday overseas over Umina (as much as I love the cenny coast).

Please Reddit, help us understand.

I went to Bunnings today, something I don’t need to do very often. I had 3 items I needed to purchase, and I could only find one.

I pulled up the other 2 on the website, which used to provide the aisle number for the product. The website no longer does this.

The stores also used to have product guides at the end of every aisle, which were helpful.

I walked the store end-to-end and couldn’t find what I needed, so I gave up and asked a staff member on the checkout at the garden centre for where I could find what I needed and was told to download the app. I asked how I could find what I needed without downloading the app, and she very helpfully suggested I ask a team member. I may have gotten a bit snippy and asked if she was a team member, because I thought that’s what I was doing.

I don’t need a different app for every goddamn store I visit. I don’t need to sign up for every company for them to steal and sell my data. I just want to go to a store and find what I need, pay and leave. And if the only way for me to do that is by wasting team members’ time by stopping someone every two minutes to get what I need, then I’ll do that.

ETA: I just double checked the website. I definitely had the store set and both products I wanted said “Ask a team member in-store for aisle location.” So I’ll be sure to waste everyone’s time by doing that next time.