Sunday

8.1 out of 10 based on 26 ratings

139 comments to Sunday

  • #
    Annie

    G’day All. Beautiful 16C day here after early fog.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Many people think it was Guglielmo Marconi that built the first trans-Atlantic radio transmitter that made a successful transmission in 1901 but it was actually Sir John Fleming that built it under contract for him.

    The agreement was:

    “If we get across the Atlantic, the main credit will be and must forever be Mr. Marconi’s”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ambrose_Fleming?wprov=sfla1

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  • #

    No early fog in Sydney where I live although there was yesterday morning (Saturday).

    All the permanent fog seems to be in Canberra especially around the heads of Tennis Elbow, Blackout Bowen and Chalmers the Toy Treasurer.

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    • #
      TdeF

      You could apply for a job with Donald Trump with those names.

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      • #
        Broadie

        I was reading about the Queensland Senator Neville Bonner and how he described how lonely he was in Canberra.

        worse than being out droving … I was treated like an equal on the floor of the chamber, neither giving nor asking quarter, but there were hours just sitting in my office and I went home alone to my unit at night. There was never one night when anyone said, ‘Hey, let’s go out tonight

        Plenty of slaps on the back from the party Politicians yet no invitations for social outings. Reminded me of how Ben Carson described Trump during the 2016 Primary debates. Trump waited with Carson when he missed his cue.
        The difference is Trump is not a career politician.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Australia has always suffered appallingly bad politicians but I think today they are the worst ever.

    What do you think?

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Actions speak louder than words – and as I can’t understand a word they say, I’ll go on their actions: yep-yep, appallingly baaad.

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    • #
      Memoryvault

      It depends on whether you are talking collectively or individually.

      Collectively you are probably right, but individually Scott Morrison and John Howard stand head and shoulders above the rest of the pack while in their roles as PM.

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      • #
        Hanrahan

        Howard disarmed us and his treasurer sold tons of our gold at rock bottom prices supporting the USD.

        Tony Abbott has my vote.

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    • #
      el+gordo

      Donald Horne (The Lucky Country) said the same many years ago.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        Correct. He is regularly incompletely misquoted. His actual quote in 1964 was:

        Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

        He later clarified in 1976:

        When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: ‘Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.’ I didn’t mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never ‘earned’ our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits.

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        • #
          Ronin

          We certainly are lucky in that we are blessed with so many valuable resources, just rum by morons with the gift of the gab, Rudd and Elbow come to mind.

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          • #
            Geoff Sherrington

            Ronin,

            Please do not go along with the “lucky country” myth. Thos once-fine country was built by dedicated people with skills and freedom to exercise the. Our mineral finds that are so economically important now were not found by juck, but by the proper application of goos science, made possible by some far-sighted people with money to kick-start the effort. We had a fine Director, Sir John Proud, who arranged the money to make our efforts work.
            To this day, not a sinle person has ever said words like “Geoff, you helped to make a beaut team that found big new Australian mines faster than just about any other outfit here or abroad. Thank you”. Instead, there is almost daily mention of endearments like “filthy miners”. The mass media are big offenders.
            Geoff S

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            • #
              Ted1.

              I read Green Mountains in schooldays. A fascinating adventure story. We bypassed O’Riellys on our honeymoon 51 years ago because it was a long way in and out. I still want to go.

              I knew that the survivor Proud was from the jewellers family, but didn’t know all this:

              https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/proud-sir-john-seymour-30100

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              • #
                Geoff Sherrington

                Ted1,
                In about 1985 I was sitting behind Sir John in a single engined aircraft hired because of a strike of commercial pilots. We flew Rockhampton to Brisbane in lousy weather. The flight path took us over a low, good view beneath the leave him with his private reflections.
                Re his knighthood, I wrote a letter to the Feds suggesting it was appropriate. I assume other people did as well, but the overall result was that he was knighted two years after I wrote. It could not have happened to a nicer person. Geoff S

                20

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    What used to called Queen’s Birthday Weekend (public holiday Monday 5 June) is now King’s Birthday Weekend, even though neither of their birth days were/are on this date. It ALWAYS snows on this ‘auspicious’ weekend and, sure enough, 2023 is no different: snow to 400m down south, warnings for farmers and travellers alike, cold temps and dangerous driving conditions… even though the present-day ‘king’ believes the world ended in 2006? 2012? 2016? Frightfully fantastical failure!

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    • #
      Russell

      Hi Greg, New Zealand King’s Birthday holiday is tomorrow (5th) but Australia does in next weekend (12th is our public holiday)

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    • #
      Leo G

      … though the present-day ‘king’ believes the world ended in 2006? 2012? 2016?

      The first King whose birthday was celebrated (on Wednesday 4 June 1788) in Australia famously went mad in the same year as the celebration. He also likely didn’t know what day it was.

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  • #
    Memoryvault

    Speaking of weather predictions and forecasts . . .

    I was just out in the car and caught the news. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has announced its official forecast for 2023. Apparently there is, quote, “a fifty percent chance this will be an El Nino year”.

    Now somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but surely a prediction of a 50% chance that something will happen is exactly the same as a 50% chance that it won’t happen. That is, a random guess on a par with choosing heads or tails on the flip of a coin.

    The only difference I can see is that the random guess on the flip of a coin costs nothing, while the random guess by the BoM costs us 200 million dollars a year.

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  • #

    I’ve just finished watching a wonderful documentary series on Amazon Prime, and I also think it’s one or two other streaming services as well.

    It was a Ken Burns doco, and as much as I’m not keen on his extreme lefty politics, he does make wonderful and extremely well researched documentaries.

    This one was titled ‘Country Music’, and as much as you might think it’s an acquired taste, this was a walk back through the history of music as an overall whole.

    There are eight episodes, almost two hours each episode, so all but sixteen hours worth of viewing.

    Every minute was so worthwhile.

    Since my wonderful wife passed away almost seven weeks back now, I have resumed playing the guitar, at my son’s suggestion, and I purchased my life’s dream, A Martin D35 acoustic guitar. The only reason I got hold of that guitar, was the expense is the biggest motivator to keep playing it, and I’m doing around an hour to an hour and a half each day. I played for almost twenty five years in my earlier years, the first ten of them constantly, and I stopped playing around 1996, so I thought I would have to learn all over again. However, the process is a lot easier than I thought. I’m nowhere near as good as I was, but it’s coming back a helluva lot easier than I expected, and our Son, who also plays, tells me that it’s probably down to muscle memory. The strings have improved out of sight, and on my earlier acoustic guitar I used to use fine gauge Ernie Ball Super Slinky’s, and now I have Elixir strings on my guitar. They are coated, and while still wound, are a lot easier on my fingertips than strings were back in the 70s, but my fingertips are still sore. The Martin itself is a 1983 model, and is in perfect condition, for what is basically a forty year old guitar.

    However, and this harks back to that TV doco. Some of the songs I heard, and I thought …… man, I’d love to be able to play that, so I chased them up on a website my son directed me to, (EChords) and lo and behold, almost every song I’ve liked, and then wanted to be able to play is just three chords, and basic ones at that.

    It’s such a pleasure in life, and the thing about it is it’s a singular guilty pleasure just for me.

    If you are interested in history then this is one good documentary, and I thoroughly recommend it.

    And here’s a teaser. This song is a banjo song basically, and is written and played by Earl Scruggs. It’s what is now called ‘Bluegrass’, and was written back in 1949.

    Before this song, nobody played banjo like this, as Earl ‘invented’ it. After this song, everyone wanted to play Banjo like this.

    Foggy Mountain Breakdown

    Tony.

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    • #
      Len

      Tony, in the Army we used to refer to Country and western music as Queensland Opera

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    • #
      Steve of Cornubia

      Check out ‘The West’, another Ken Burns doco and absolutely superb in its portrayal of the amazing, brave people who founded modern western America. Educational in so many ways, the standout for me is the extraordinary way comparatively uneducated people were able to express themselves in letters. Despite having pretty basic education, they make today’s university graduates look downright inarticulate. An indication of how seriously people back then took English language skills.

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    • #
      Ronin

      I seem to remember Flat and Scruggs featuring a bit on the Beverley Hillbillies.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Funny I was watching some Youtube reaction videos last night with a guitar focus

      Some modern black families groups in the US looking at different things to their credit.

      They watched Tommy Emmanuel doing Classical Gas and Dire Straits live with Sultans of Swing. This lead to watching Stevie Ray Vaughn also live just for the hell of it 🙂

      I understand that I dont get out much these days being an old geezer, but I am not seeing the modern day legends in the making. Can anyone give me some leads.

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      • #
        Geoff Sherrington

        Tony and Yarpos,
        But why are we in a drought of composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Chopin – even more recent ones like Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich? Or even the wordsmiting of Gilbert & Sullivan, which has been replaced by incoherent yelling of schoolboy ryhme. Geoff S

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      • #
        Hanrahan

        I met brother Phil in a bar before I knew who they were. He was talking about playing in Sydney and I thought he was a bit of a talker. I later enjoyed a couple of his performances in a waterside cafe with a deck over the river. An island ferry was leaving the wharf next door so he played the theme from Titanic to see them off.

        I saw Tommy in a theatre and he was the more polished, professional performer but Phil was the entertainer.

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      • #
        joseph

        Don’t know if these are legends in the making but you might enjoy . . . .

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8UTheTR7s

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      • #
        joseph

        yarpos . . . .

        Don’t know if these are legends in the making but you might enjoy . . . .

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB8UTheTR7s

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    • #
      Brenda Spence

      Glad to hear that you have found something to keep you interested Tony. So sorry to hear about the loss of your wife.

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    • #
      Kjay

      Always a pleasure to read your posts Tony..
      Just wondering if you will be doing a few covers from AC/DC perhaps? 😄

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Further proof that free speech doesn’t exist in Australia.

    https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/outsiders/danout-victorian-mans-number-plate-deemed-inappropriate-by-vicroads/video/0ec2fb3b989e0fcf5b31f455749e17f5

    ‘DANOUT’: Victorian man’s number plate deemed ‘inappropriate’ by VicRoads

    4 hours ago

    A Victorian man’s personalised number plate “DANOUT” has been deemed inappropriate by VicRoads.

    According to radio station 3AW, the man’s registration could be suspended if he doesn’t hand the number plate in.

    Unbelievable. It shows you that there’s nothing that that monster doesn’t control in Vicdanistan.

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    • #
      Memoryvault

      He should claim he is a member oF the Aardyakka First Nations tribe and DANOUT is his Aboriginal name. It has no direct translation meaning but in English it would be spelled PISTOFF.

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  • #
    Rafe+Champion

    This is a comment in The Australian on line the other day, to draw attention to the world-leading wind-watching by Paul Mikelly and Anton Lang.

    The background is a series of pieces in The Spectator on line, tracing the fateful implications of wind droughts and starting to ask questions about integrity and credibility of the meteorologists of the world and especially their peak body, the WMO.
    You can read those pieces here:
    https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/05/15/rafes-roundup-15-may/
    https://newcatallaxy.blog/2023/04/30/dark-deeds-of-the-official-wind-watchers/

    With the closure of Liddell power station we have crossed the line into uncharted territory.
    Now it actually matters whether the wind blows continuously, or at last between sunset and sunrise.

    it does not, although continental wind droughts have only been studied since about 2010 when Paul Miskelly and others started to look at the information from the windmills which are the most useful instruments for detecting them.

    The outstanding contributor has been blogging under the name of Tony from Oz since 2018 and his thousands of records on all forms of generation must represent one of the most remarkable single-handed and unfunded research projects of all time.

    The BOM might have issued wind drought alerts but their system which was installed in the 1990s collected wind velocity measurements hourly and reported the data as averages for weeks, months and the year. The longest wind droughts max out around three days they only reduced the score for the week without actually revealing periods when there was effectively no useful wind.

    The big question is how the meteorologists managed to avoid seeing and warning about the consequences of the European Dunkelfauts that last for weeks. They only got an entry in Wikipedia in 2021! Mariners and millers on land must have experienced them for centuries. Interest has been aroused since Germany and Britain are now embarked on serious deindustrialization due to the Dunkelfauts plus the closure of coal and nuclear (in Germany.) There were clear signs of impending disaster at least a year before the Ukraine invasion.

    So the plans for replacing coal with wind and solar need to be re-jigged to take account of these now well-recognized wind droughts and lulls.

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    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day Rafe.
      It’s only in the last year or so that this link has provided a 7 day weather outlook graph showing forecast windspeed and direction, with a starting section showing the current day’s actual:

      https://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/central-tablelands/mudgee

      Two things stand out for me: the graph for the forecast is quite smooth, but the actual is hugely spikey; and quite commonly wind speed “parallels” the temperature graph, or paraphrasing, not much wind overnight.

      (It may be significant that I’m using an iPad Pro rather than a smart phone. Bigger screen size.)

      Cheers
      Dave B

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    • #

      Really Rafe, no need for all that, but thank you very much, and if I might be so bold as to offer a minor correction.

      I’ve been doing (all of) it since 2008, and not 2018.

      It’s just the daily wind data collection since 2018.

      Again, thanks.

      At the start, I wouldn’t have minded so much if wind actually delivered its power, and the single hardest thing I ever did was to hit the ‘Publish’ button and write that Capacity Factor figure for wind generation of 30%, and that was right back in late 2008. No one had even mentioned it at all, anywhere, and it was a case of ….. “well, here goes, Tony. Hit that button, and that’s the end of you!” ….. because I was absolutely certain that I was wrong, and that I had missed something completely.

      It’s really weird. If anything else performed that poorly, it would be laughed out of existence.

      Look at this.

      Wind Generation has a current Nameplate of 10277MW.

      Just in New South Wales alone, the Nameplate for coal fired power is just a tick over 8000MW, so it’s only 77% of the Nameplate for Wind

      ALL that wind generation delivered 25,000GWH of Power in the last 12 Months

      NSW coal fired power delivers 46,000HWH of power in that same 12 Month period. and that’s from 12 Units at four power plants while wind has 79 wind plants and around 3500 individual wind towers, and those 12 Units have an average age OLDER than the expected lifespan of any wind plant.

      Wind was mooted to REPLACE coal fired power, something it will ….. NEVER DO.

      Tony.

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      • #
        Rafe+Champion

        Thanks Tony, I used to say 2008, for some reason, maybe for the Spectator series, I changed to 2018. Given the number of detailed readings since 2008 that is is truly epic.

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      • #
        Graeme#4

        I note that in most comments in The Australian, your figure of 30% for Aust wind CF is now the accepted figure. And it’s also interesting that nobody challenges this figure

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    • #
      Graeme#4

      It’s interesting that Net Zero Australia, in their lengthy 197-page report, never made any attempt to properly monitor the wind Dunkelflautes, instead relying on very limited data from one wind farm.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Gee I hope the BOMs wind speed measurements are more grounded in reality than their temperature measurements. They have apparently agreed that work needs to be done. Here’s hoping wind is not just another can of worms.

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    • #
      Geoff Sherrington

      Rafe,
      I join you with congratulations for critical inputs from Anton and Paul (and you) and add condolances for Tony from Oz.
      The wind drought intermittancy problem was known in the early 1970s when our team was planning electricity supply types for new mines we were finding in remote locations around Australia, like the NT Top End, Parkes NSW, Kalgoorlie WA, Lake Cowal NSW, to name just some. We found wind drought data for duration and frequency, some measured, some inferred, but I can’t remember the references now. It was stark enough to easily conclude that diesel was the choice, even with high trucking costs. Wind failed easily.
      Since then, we have felt episode after episode that repeats the wind drought problem. People making decisions refused to properly consider data that did not favour their personal preferences.
      Edith Efrom wrote “The Apocalyptics” about a 1980s cancer scare due to kill people from use of man-made chemicals. USA medical bureaucrats pushed the scare despite contrary evidence. We had Nader’s “Unsale at any speed” wave, again he refused to properly weigh contrary examples. Ditto with the Carson “Silent Spring”, doctored data on egg shell thickness pointed out by several. Waves got worse with the imaginative NGO campaigns of anti-nuclear, with the refusal to consider strong evidence that their LNT theory was wrong. Then Climate Change, with its sceptics not only weighted down, but in some cases actively cancelled. Getting seriously worse, the Covid-19 fraud is now playing out, with Governments still working hard to suppress tragic deaths from vaccine damage. The sceptics are treated even worse, by job loss and reputational destruction while citizens die needlessly because the warnings are not listened to. For Covid, see https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/covid/2023/05/the-curious-tale-of-hydroxychloroquine/

      Next, may I recommend several hours of most compelling video here, thanks to WUWT publicity:
      https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/03/emails-reveal-bureaucrats-censor-radiation-risk-science-fraud-by-cancelling-whistleblowers-huge-implications-for-nuclear-power-and-more/
      Professor Edward Calabrese has studied the “Linear No Threshold” LNT history. This dose/harm model is one of the key reasons why nuclear electricity is so expensive via regulatory capture. Calabrese does a deep dive into the LNT history on a detailed, referenced scale that I have never seen equalled. One of his main factors is the unwillingness of important players to look at science that shows them wrong. Highly recommended, for an aspect of these waves that IMO needs much more emphasis. Apart from the criminal academic/scientific misconduct.
      Geoff S

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      • #
        Gob

        The scoundrels driving the enormous falsehoods to which you refer are keenly anticipating the extra riches to flow when the last remnants of our adequately educated population go to the cemetery.

        I’d have been sceptical if you’d told me back then that fifty years is all it would take for the dissemination of ignorance to overwhelm the population yet here we are with imaginary
        sea level rise and planet heating carbon emissions installed as the principal fetishes the populace has been trained to chant in unison.

        Still I cling to the dimming hope that someone will emerge who is able to wrest control from our wicked masters and lead us away from societal collapse; an imponderably gargantuan task requiring first a rebuild of the education system which cannot be achieved in less than twenty years.

        Thank you Joanne for providing this forum.

        10

      • #
        Ted1.

        The Hole in the Ozone Layer gave it all a leg up.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    There is no plan to FIX anything because the plan is to DESTROY everything.

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    • #
      Honk R Smith

      Build Back Better

      Oh it’s just political rhetoric.
      They’re not being literal.
      Successful educated people don’t think that way.
      Not in Our Democracy.
      Dan would never ban vanity license plates for being taken literally.
      POTUS was not being literal when he called nearly half (probably more) of the American voting public “enemies of Our Democracy” and you know what “Supremacists”.
      Freezing your bank, getting you fired from your job, locking you in your home and preventing from seeing your dying relatives was just a temporary precaution, not forcing … the models said we should be scared … an emergency declaration … probably won’t happen again.

      Understand citizen, listening to our words, interpreting them without approved official definition will not be tolerated.
      Neither will intolerance be tolerated.
      The official definition of ‘fix’ is forthcoming.
      It will appear just after the new definition of ‘force’.
      Our Democracy requires compliance.
      We will speak and inform you what it means.

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      • #
        Belinda

        Eight out of ten cars on the Mornington Peninsular
        this fine Sunday, driving at noon with car headlights blazing
        because Dan Andrews told them too.

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        • #
          Kalm Keith

          It’s just so easy.
          Misdirect, mock, belittle, incarcerate, abuse and correct; all the skills found in moderne politicians.
          It’s second nature to them all.

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        • #
          Annie

          We don’t use day-running lights because the dictator said so. We use them as a long-standing habit from driving Volvos for years, many in Europe. We get quite a few dull days here and many cars are shades of grey, not very visible in poor conditions.

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          • #
            Geoff Sherrington

            Annie,
            But have you ever avoided a crash because you had headlights on in the daytime? Or because others had headlights on in the daytime? Did you ever have an accident, even a near-accident, because the other car(s) did NOT have headlights on in the day?
            Society today has more people than ever before, paid to tell other people what they can and cannot do. Never before in my lifetime have I seen so many people saying “The Government has to do something about this or that”. Never before have I seen so much regulatory capture, where people are not doing what they would like to do for fear that the bureaucrats might not approve it.
            Annie, try to treasure the spirit of free enterprise and the long-cherished Aussie larrakin trait of “I’ll do what I like until someone stops me” rather than the cowering “I’ll do noting exciting or interesting because it might be illegal.”
            It is more liberating to be a free spirit than to do anything to help communism/socialism of your mind.
            Geoff S

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            • #
              Hanrahan

              I can’t answer for Annie of course, but my personal experience is a “No” and I’ve done a lot of miles.

              My current car is left on automatic and I know that works because they come on in the garage.

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              Robert Swan

              Geoff Sherrington,

              Never before have I seen so much regulatory capture…

              That’s at least two comments in this thread where you’ve used “regulatory capture” in a strange way. Regulatory capture is where the regulator falls under the spell of the things it’s meant to regulate (e.g. FDA, TGA, etc., going in to bat for big pharma rather than keeping them in line).

              The behaviour you’re describing might be simple cowardice, spirits broken through years of over-regulation, or possibly it’s a form of Stockholm Syndrome.

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          Steve

          Headlights are not just to enable you to see they also enable you to be seen. Regardless of what some brain dead WEF representative might say, it makes sense, always has, and it costs nothing.

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          • #
            Robert Swan

            Steve,

            it costs nothing

            If you run two 35W globes constantly, that’ll be 70W added load to the engine and 70W added wear to the alternator. Not a lot, but not nothing either. The other potential cost is in wear and tear on the light itself. Some of those fancy xenon HID bulbs are quite expensive to replace.

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          David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

          I have a 25 km drive into town and have my headlights on until I reach the 60km limit. I can’t say I’ve avoided any accidents, but I have noticed that I can see an on coming car sooner if their lights are on, particularly with dark cars on bitumen roads and differing light conditions. Country roads, shade from trees. Plus habit.
          Cheers
          Dave B

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            Gary S

            I venture to suggest that the road toll is a result not of driving without headlights during the day, but rather by drivers texting, eating cereal from bowls, reading, applying make-up, fiddling with GPS systems, etc. All of which I have witnessed on Victorian motorways with these morons driving at 100kmh, sometimes faster.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Quid quid latine dictum sit, ultum sonatur.

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      TdeF

      Whatever is said in Latin, it sounds like revenge?

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      • #
        David Maddison

        Yes.

        Or the other version is:

        Quidquid latine dictum sit altum sonatur.

        Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

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          TdeF

          So there are many good reasons Latin sounds profound. Serious speech was in Latin. Then you had the common tongue which was different. In India today that is the case with English for administration and then your state language and then your village language.

          I studied Latin for five years. It still had a few uses especially in medicine. And it was the language of science and religious discourse for most of two thousand years. Latin and Greek were the two bases of all science as we still use the Greek alphabet for all mathematics.

          Then French was declared to be superior to Latin in 1539 under Francoise I and made the langauge of state. And in the Terror in 1792 it was made illegal even to speak any other language.

          Meanwhile Elizabeth I moved to English unlike Henry VIII who spoke French along with his court, like the Plantagenets before the Turdors. And Shakespeare made this clear in Henry IV with the line ” he can speak French; and therefore he is a traitor.”

          So until the late 20th century France was the only country in which no other language was taught in schools, meaning that you had to do business with France in French. And as the oldest, biggest country in Europe, it was the Lingua Franca. Even the Olympic games are still announced in French.

          But underneath them all was Latin, the language of all science.

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            Ted1.

            Somehow in school they never got me interested in English. In the class aggregates half of my missing marks would have been in English.

            I learned my English at Latin, and claim that that gave me a better than average competence in English.

            I’d recommend a smattering of Latin to anybody who wanted to learn or improve their English.

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          TdeF

          So there are many good reasons Latin sounds profound. Serious speech was in Latin. Then you had the common tongue which was different. In India today that is the case with English for administration and then your state language and then your village language. So this idea of an official language is quite common.

          I studied Latin for five years. It still had a few uses especially in medicine. And it was the language of science and religious discourse for most of two thousand years. Latin and Greek were the two bases of all science as we still use the Greek alphabet for all mathematics.

          Then Franciose I was declared French to be superior to Latin in 1539 and it was made the language of state. And in the Terror in 1792 it was made illegal even to speak any other language.

          Meanwhile Elizabeth I moved to English unlike Henry VIII who spoke French along with his court, like the Plantagenets before the Tudors. And Shakespeare made this break very clear in Henry IV with the line ” he can speak French; and therefore he is a traitor.” That’s only 400 years.

          So until the late 20th century France was the only country in which no other language was taught in schools, meaning that you had to do business in French. And as the oldest, biggest country in Europe, it was the Lingua Franca. Even the Olympic games are still announced in French.

          But underneath them all was Latin, the language of all science. I have been amazed in Russian that the structures are almost identical, declensions, conjugations. And unlike the French, they have kept neuter unlike the French who seem to make anything with legs female. Like a table.

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            Kalm Keith

            Interesting.

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            • #
              Kalm Keith

              All of that covers a thousand years at the most.
              Our original people have sixty thousand years of unchanged language. Amazing.

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              • #
                TdeF

                That was one language for a hundred million people.

                I doubt aboriginal population passed 300,000 and given the vast area and lack of transport and massive passage of time in migration by walking only, was likely hundreds of extreme dialects with a very limited vocabulary of perhaps 500 words. This is language size. Even Maori which was a language shared across the Pacific has only about 700 words. To make Maori a standard language in NZ it is being reinvented with made up words to ten times the size. That’s not the same language.

                When Cook arrived, they took notes as always. It was a scientific expedition after all. And no one ever found that tribe which named the kangaroo.

                And then who needed a big vocabulary for an illiterate pre neolithic world of only wood and fire and without metal or cloth or flint or cities? There was no artisan class. And how do you build knowledge and wisdom except by storytelling?

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                Kalm Keith

                🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
                That’s what I was trying to say, but you’ve done it so well.

                Back in 1970 I stayed with the natives in PNG for almost a month.

                Nuku.

                I got an idea of how isolated they would have been without the input of Australia’s more modern structure.

                They were isolated, but because of Kiaps, churches, schools and health back-up they were much better off.

                Now they are self governing; as Prince Charles once said;
                “Whatever that might mean”.

                Do we add png to the list.
                Rhodesia Zimbabwe?

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                Kalm Keith

                Sarc.

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              • #
                el+gordo

                ‘… except by story telling.’

                They had mimes and around the campfire at night there would be much laughter.

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            Today, Latin is a “dead language”, I had to learn it at school for 4 years, earlier than English, but later than French. I never had a real touch to latin, nevertheless some latin vocabulary or relations to it I know, from science and so on.
            I never learned classical Greek, I had the opportunity, but had zero interest, but some scientific vocabulary I’m comfortable with.

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            • #
              Annie

              I did Latin (and French) at school for a few years. It was 50 years later I finally found a use for the French when we went for our first holiday there (and loved France too). The Latin was much more useful, despite my poor efforts at it. I tried to learn some Classical Greek, also useful. Subsequently I learnt some German while living in Germany and then some modern Greek (Cypriot Greek) while living in Cyprus.
              The Latin and Greek have been very helpful in learning the meanings and derivations of English words, especially modern hybrid ones!
              We had a refugee from Hungary at school and I tried to learn some Hungarian; she progressed in English far better!
              Not an adept language scholar here…oh well.

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        another ian

        A dish best served cold I have heard?

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    TdeF

    I have been listening to Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray on his new book, War on the West. The destruction of the West by the West is quite overwhelming. No power, no food, no education, no history, no heroes, resentment and revenge racism. And Murray’s prediction for the future is grim. He expects and explosion where currently 90% of the population is just being polite.

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    TdeF

    And on the appalling “The Voice” no one has any idea of what it is about. Whatever they want to do can be done tommorow by legislation without opposition. So changing our constitution has to have a most sinister meaning.

    While racism is bandied about, there is no race in our constitution. Surely it is racism to single out any group by race, let alone in our founding document.

    The other conclusion of the conversation was the lack of gratitude for all that the Industrial revolution, the British commonwealth, the rule of law, the revolution in medicine, Rational Science and those heroes like Churchill and Lincoln who are being pulled down. Where is the gratitude?

    And how can a society pull down its power generation with nothing to replace it? As Tony from Oz has pointed out for 15 years, wind will not do the job.

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    • #
      Sceptical+Sam

      Why on Earth would you expect Marxists to show “gratitude”?

      The whole purpose is to denigrate, destroy, and remove all those freedom giving attributes you list.

      That’s what Stalin did in the USSR. It’s what Pol Pot did in Kampuchea. It’s what Yuri Irsenovich Kim did in North Korea. It’s what Mao Tse Tung did with his red guards in China. It’s what Castro did in Cuba.

      It’s how the Marxists operate. Everywhere. And, always.

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        yarpos

        A lot like the murder and mayhem police shows my wife likes to watch. The victims families are always dismayed when psychopaths show no remorse when found guilty or being sentenced. They cant see that its just not how they are wired.

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      • #
        MP

        This video is called the great awakening. It is about whats goimg on now and how the isms have all joined to form colectivism.

        Done by the Highwire.

        Movie starts at 1 hour 35

        https://www.bitchute.com/video/de27PV6eFjYq/

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    • #
      Memoryvault

      And on the appalling “The Voice” no one has any idea of what it is about.

      On the contrary, TdeF, half an hour’s careful study by anybody with a functioning brain reveals exactly what The Voice faux referendum is all about.

      In a nutshell the intention is to transfer the power to alter the Constitution away from the Australian people where it currently resides, and hand that power to the Executive Government, that is, the PM and the Cabinet, bypassing even Parliament as a whole. It has SFA to do with giving anything to Aboriginals. Even the so-called referendum “question” itself is a fake which anybody should be able to discern in less than a minute.

      Couple that to the fact that in 2021 we apparently accepted the precedent of the PM appointing himself to any and all the Cabinet Minister positions, with the approval and assent of the GG, and we are well on the way to a one man dictatorship. The hell of it is that it is not even new, it is exactly the same script as played out in Nazi Germany in 1933.

      Time is running out for me so I am hoping people will start working these things out for themselves. If nobody does in the next week or so I will write it out as an article and ask Jo to publish it here.

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      • #
        TdeF

        So a race based coup, handing total power to the Prime Minister and in such a way that Parliament cannot undo it?

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        • #
          Ted1.

          I don’t believer there is anything a parliament can’t undo.

          It’s a matter of cost and getting the people on side.

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      • #
        Gee Aye

        The voice does not vote in parliament

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Really on fire there TdeF.

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    TdeF

    And what is going on in Victoria with vast reserves of coal we are not allowed use or export? Similarly with gas. Forget being a Green energy powerhouse. We in Victoria have wealth like Saudi Arabia and could pay all our debts with coal, but it is not allowed. So we are being driven into bankruptcy by endless public projects no one needs and which do not make economic or practical sense. What is the agenda. It is not the good of the people but governments totally out of control. As in the Nederlands and Sri Lanka.

    Snowy II is beyond farce. And the malefactors have escaped with $444million in play money, without accountability. The $20Billion + wasted on Snowy II is damning. While at the same time we are told to stop growing food, digging coal and iron ore and to stop making metals and stop manufacturing.

    There is no science, economics, sense in any of this. And even the backbone of the Labor party, the manufacturing sector is being dismantled. We cannot make nuclear submarines in South Australia. We cannot even make cars. Politicians talk nano technology in a country where we have never made a transistor.

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    • #
      Sceptical+Sam

      Marxists work in subtle ways.

      The useful idiots just follow along.

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    • #
      Sambar

      “Politicians talk nano technology in a country where we have never made a transistor.”
      Cant even make cartridge primers. Three parts, cup, compound, anvil. Defence capability zero.

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  • #
    el+gordo

    EU criminal sanctions on climate change disinformation.

    ‘ … the increase in climate change denialism can be linked to a wider embrace of conspiracy theories in the public discourse that is based on the deliberate creation of a counter reality and the rejection of science, and which includes false ideas about everything from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to COVID-19 vaccines; emphasises the role of foreign actors in disseminating disinformation about climate change and EU climate policy, which is undermining public support and is also being used in the narratives of domestic actors who exploit climate disinformation for their own political ends.’ (wuwt)

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    David Maddison

    Does anyone know anywhere in Victoria where there is an exposed outcrop of coal where you can collect small amounts for personal use? I think all coal is buried underground in Victoria, however.

    40

    • #
      John Connor II

      …owning a 5l v8 is bad enough, and now you want to burn coal? 😆😆

      /oz humour

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    • #
      william x

      DM, I am not an expert on Victorian coal seams, yet I am on NSW coal seams.

      As a mining engineer that formerly worked at Metropolitan colliery.

      This is my advice.

      The Illawarra, Wollongong and environs is the easiest place to get coal for “Research Purposes”.
      It has cliffs along the coast. The coal seams are exposed.
      One can walk from a beach onto a rock platform and can easily see those seams.
      Some are 4 inches, some are 4 feet in height.

      All of the mines in the area are underground and recover coal from seams that are 6 to 12 feet thick, mining back from the coast.

      This link below, shows images of the exposed coastal coal seams.

      http://www.geomaps.com.au/scripts/illawarracoal.php

      Maybe DM, you could vist NSW for research purposes and subsequently enjoy a warmer home.

      Hope this helps.

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      ianl

      The lignite deposits in LaTrobe are extraordinarily huge, with the anticlinal strike of the topmost seams only a few metres below the surface. A short time with a frontend loader would do it.

      BUT: 1) it’s illegal and you will be dobbed, over and over; 2) LaTrobe lignites (brown coal) are very high in water content and correspondingly very low in Specific Energy – which means you need an awful lot of it, and constantly, to keep your house warm in winter. Apart from the illegality, the domestic logistics for an independent home owner are overwhelmingly difficult.

      There are likely a few small retail outlets for domestic use, and possibly some of the miners run a sideline (some NSW mines have this opportunity), but the sheer volume needed for useful domestic heating is cautionary to say the least.

      There are almost no economic black coal deposits in Victoria for useful industrial or domestic purchases, so no joy there.

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      • #
        yarpos

        Last winter you could buy compressed lignite fire bricks in Bunnings, from of all places Germany. Havent seen the this year.

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      We’ve got plenty up here in NovoCastria.
      The cliffs around the beaches.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Ernst “Klaus Schwab” Blofeld.

    (One minute video.)

    https://youtu.be/DYaHg6TV5p0

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    another ian

    Ridicule the best medicine?

    “Planeload of passengers spontaneously break out in laughter at farce of Welcome to Country”

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2023/06/planeload-of-passengers-spontaneously-break-out-in-laughter-at-farce-of-welcome-to-country.html

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    • #
      TdeF

      How can you welcome people to their own country? Or is that the real point?

      Just once I would love to go to a function and have the ab*riginals thank everyone for improving the place. There was absolutely nothing.

      I love the British Time Team excavation team. It seems everyone has Roman ruins in their back yard. And in places in France, Neolithic paintings of great art and complexity, some now below sea level after the end of the last ice age.

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    David Maddison

    Caltech say they have successfully beamed electrical power from space to earth via microwaves.

    There is no indication of the amount of power, however.

    There’s plenty of opportunity to waste more billions or trillions of dollars on space-based power schemes, and think of all the birds and aircraft that will get fried if they fly through the beam.

    https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/in-a-first-caltechs-space-solar-power-demonstrator-wirelessly-transmits-power-in-space

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    • #
      KP

      Well, if you wanted the power to hit one fixed receiver you would need a geostationary satellite. That’s a long way away, making accuracy very difficult, and you’d fry low-orbit satellites as well as birds and airliners. Another problem would be the shadow cast by your geostat mirrors right over your receiver during the day..

      With lower orbiting reflectors you could grab 10minutes of power as the satellite went overhead, then it passes 10minutes of power to the next receiver etc. Somehow I can’t see this working..

      40

      • #
        KP

        “Somehow I can’t see this working..”

        Actually, I can see this working! I was looking at it the wrong way! The world is running on Govt Subsidy Harvesting these days, and there is at least $2.2billion/year up for grabs from NASA, the amount they threw away on Space Launch Systems.

        So even if you know your idea is hopeless in practice, you can do very well by bleeding it out over 5years and make some handy cash!

        40

        • #
          Kalm Keith

          Like the Singapore cable; the money was in the preparation of the “plan”.
          Unlikely it could ever be built.

          Go Twiggles.

          40

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        No worries.
        Just use the copper cable that they have ready for the underwater passage to Singapore.

        10

  • #
    David Maddison

    James Bond 007 meets Klaus Schwabb.

    44 sec video.

    https://youtu.be/otqxRoJASdU

    30

    • #
      TdeF

      Yes, the Hitler youth himself with his dreams of a new world of supermen and slaves. It seems DAVOS is a cover for SPECTRE.

      40

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    another ian

    “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Buses”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/06/03/we-dont-need-no-flaming-sparky-buses-3/

    More nonperforming school buses

    And read the comments, including this “blunder bus” link

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/200-billion-electric-school-bus-bust

    20

    • #
      Ronin

      I remember the one the labor bruvvers were on prior to the last election and they couldn’t charge it for some reason, had to be rescued by a diesel bus.

      30

    • #
      yarpos

      OK so the buses are tricky, but you just watch how the electrics semis go fella. Its the dawning of a new transportation epoch!

      31

      • #
        Hanrahan

        Your avatar has you poking out your tongue. I assume that is the spirit in which that post was made.

        10

  • #
    David Maddison

    QUOTE

    Does this situation seem familiar?

    First we overlook evil. Then we permit evil. Then we legalize evil. Then we promote evil. Then we celebrate evil. Then we persecute those who still call it evil.

    Fr Dwight Longenecker

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    No it didn’t.

    00

  • #
    David Maddison

    The Daily Wire has put Matt Walsh’s famous documentary “What is a Woman?” free on Twitter this weekend (USA time) so it should be still available for a while longer in Australia and NZ.

    Highly recommended!

    https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1664424891372941312

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    another ian

    A successful conclusion on the way from those Russian sanctions –

    “As Oil & Gas Decrease, Inflation & Recession Increase, Government Destabilizes”

    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2023/06/04/as-oil-gas-decrease-inflation-recession-increase-government-destabilizes/

    Check the list for Germany and think of the opportunities for Oz with a sane energy policy!

    (/s in there – just in case)

    40

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    another ian

    “Follow The Science”

    “Straight into the memory hole: …according to one group that tracks publications in scientific journals, a lot of the original research and test results are mysteriously disappearing. More than 300 papers and scientific articles have vanished in the past year.”

    “The medical field is erasing its own COVID-era history”

    https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/05/30/the-medical-field-is-erasing-its-own-covid-era-history-n554277

    Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/06/04/follow-the-science-8/

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  • #
    another ian

    EH!

    “Kanekoa Releases The Konnech Files: FBI Shielded Two Firms Tied to Chinese Communist Regime That Holds US Voter Data in Mainland China”

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/kanekoa-releases-konnech-files-fbi-shielded-two-firms/

    Check the first table – Queensland, Australia is listed as a user

    20

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    another ian

    FWIW

    “EXPOSED! $4.5 billion National Indigenous Australians Agency fraud safeguards are a JOKE!”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNEJw73ieCc

    10

  • #
    Lance

    It was 34 years ago tonight when the Chinese government sent the Mongolian Army into Tiananmen Square to crackdown on the mostly student protestors.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/06/04/tiananmen-34-years-ago-tonight/#more-247382

    When totalitarianism, tyranny, and censorship, require a “face”, then this is it. Well, that and the J6 travesty.

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  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    TdeF,
    IMO, we the people should be insisting on official documentation of what is preseved since the First Fleet arrived, of original aboriginal tradition, craft, way of life. The good and the bad and the ugly, like reasons to disembowel a male youth for getting fresh with a girl (a NT example around 1980 comes to mind).
    So much that is claimed to be Tradition worth saving, valuaing and learning from is, I stronly suspect, written by early observers, particularly academic anthropologists. They would be tempted to add their private embellishments to make tasty casseroles from lean meat.
    Do you, does anyone, know of the existence of documents preserving the records of traditions and myths, direct from original aboriginal sources with no whitey input as to meaning?
    Geoff S

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      el+gordo

      Tropical cyclones were also more intense.

      ‘New research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) published in Nature Geosciences reveals that tropical cyclones were actually more frequent in the southern Marshall Islands during the Little Ice Age, when temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were cooler than they are today.’ (Woods Hole)

      20