Open Thread – Weekend 2 April 2022
2,054 responses to “Open Thread – Weekend 2 April 2022”
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Winston Smithsays:
April 1, 2022 at 11:44 pm
John H:It will be so boring. Beyond the solar system space is so empty, a vast nothingness. Submariners and explorers had plenty to do but on long space flights we’d be better off in hibernation.
You can hibernate – I will be selecting the crew for the colonisation program on Alpha Centauri. Here is a sample.
It will not be boring.
OK Serious hat on…
The Kuiper Belt will only be useful for a laser highway project
First we need to mine the crap out of the asteroid belt.Winston you’re in big trouble. No gays, trans, disabled in the crew! Off you go then, to the airlock.
Weird site:
https://www.kuiperbeltminingcorp.com/
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Darn it I just flew my F4-E into an enemy fortification so I won’t be a pilot on the mission to Mars. -
Rex Angersays:
April 2, 2022 at 12:55 am
Darn it I just flew my F4-E into an enemy fortification so I won’t be a pilot on the mission to Mars.There is such a thing as too low, John. H.
What’s yer poison?
Project Wingman. Arcady style fighter game. Not that good, not enough tactical flying just constantly blowing stuff up. Good for what it is but if I wanted fantasy I’d go back to Freespace or try Elite Dangerous. Tempted to load DCS. I think a Russian group created it. Graphics are superb, flight models based on publicly available info, install for free but have to buy various bits and pieces to enjoy it. .
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You don’t do much do you comrade.
I think that’s quite unreasonable, Struth. In fact, it is both lazy and factually wrong.
After all, in the space of one wordwall today, you raged that taking up driving your beloved trucks again is all too hard and all too tyrannical and not something you feel like doing, while rather paradoxically proclaiming that
Freedom and self reliance are strong in my breed.
You then admitted at the very end of that selfsame wordwall, that you couldn’t destroy all my alleged ‘trolling’ and ‘lunacy.’ That’s a big move from you, Struth, admitting defeat in such a way. 🙂
And I’ve somehow united your august self and some of the most fractious and toxic posters on the Furniture Store in such mutual hatred of me, that Bird doesn’t even rage about perfidious Js anymore. You all get on with each other incredibly well, all of a sudden.
So you see, the assertion, You don’t do much do you comrade, is both lazy and factually wrong.
QED.
Got any impotent, schoolyard-level sexual crudity or appeal to marital incompleteness to reply with?
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I’ve seen and heard good things about Project Wingman, John. H. A great excuse to scratch an itch. 🙂
Tempted to load DCS. I think a Russian group created it. Graphics are superb, flight models based on publicly available info, install for free but have to buy various bits and pieces to enjoy it. .
The game engine is spectacular, but the cost in aircraft modules is impossible.
A good and relatively very old-school alternative is BMS 4.0, a bottom-to-top revamp and software and visual update of Microprose’s Falcon 4.0.
It isn’t as pretty and is fairly geo-locked to the Korean Peninsula, but the AI and game engine is pretty good and actually has an interactive simulated war carrying on around you. That your actions directly influence. And for the cost of $30 or $40 from Good Old Games.com and signing up to the BMS forums. There is a lot of learning curve and documentation to swallow, but there is nothing else out there like it.
If the DCS folks could provide a campaign engine like that to their system (Any of the eras modelled-40s, 70s, 80s, 90s, present day), they will be the last word in combat flight sims. Just nobody’s done it yet.
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A good and relatively very old-school alternative is BMS 4.0, a bottom-to-top revamp and software and visual update of Microprose’s Falcon 4.0.
Hmmm, I have Falcon 4.0 somewhere. The BMS makes it great. Might think about that.
Grim Reapers has fun with DCS, youtube channel. Their naval battle simulations are entertaining. Growling Sidewinder channel is much more technical, with some fighter pilots taking him on.
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Growling Sidewinder channel is much more technical, with some fighter pilots taking him on.
I think I’ve seen Growling Sidewinder demonstrating energy dogfighting with the DCS Spitfire, following a rabbit trail from a great little video RickW had linked about the P-40 Kittyhawk’s energy retention and combat performance. Summary was that the P-40 was underrated by postwar historians, and was really a quite competitive little aircraft below 10,000ft, even up to the end of the war. And in 1941-2, was right up there with the current marks of 109 and Spitfire.
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Here’s an interesting take from David Archibald about the Great Games of various national powers, and how they come back to bite…
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/russia_china_the_torpedoes_circle_back.html
‘Til the morn, Cats! 🙂
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Agree with CK’s article 99% . (1. These injections are not ‘vaccines’ as he calls them. 2. I’ve not seen any evidence that these injections actually reduce the risk of severe illness/death.)
Our cowardly response to Covid is a lasting disgrace
CHRIS KENNY
PHOTO. Masks on … Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese and MPs pose for a formal photograph. Picture: NCA NewsWire
11:00PM APRIL 1, 2022
The most frightening revelation of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we appear to be managing the decline of our nation.
Without a dramatic reboot – which is not on offer in this election – we could lose, permanently, many of the characteristics that have made us one of the most successful democracies in history.
If you want a Pythonesque example of how far we have fallen from the stoic, practical and sensible nation we once were, you only had to watch the start of question time on Wednesday when the Speaker organised an official photograph. “I would direct all members to turn around and face the official photographer – we’re leaving masks on,” he instructed.
Then, just to emphasise the directive and make sure there was no superspreader event, he said it again: “We are leaving masks on.”
Here, in the seat of government, 150 fully vaccinated people in a cavernous chamber duly donned their masks. Perhaps in years to come, some new technology will see through the masks in this photo so we can tell which politicians were smiling (the idiots) and which were grimacing (the smart, but foolishly compliant).
More than two years into this pandemic, with 95 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated, and almost 70 per cent having received booster shots, we need to procure a government permit, prove our vaccination status and submit to a Covid test in order to cross the state border into Western Australia. Masks are mandatory in airports and on planes, as well as in taxis and on public transport in most states.
In Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, people must provide proof of vaccination to enter bars, restaurants and other venues.
In most states, teachers, police, transport workers and hospital workers cannot work unless they are fully vaccinated.
This despite all the medical and scientific evidence, along with our lived experience, demonstrating that vaccination, while protecting against serious illness, does not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus.
Vaccine mandates are less about pandemic control than they are about Covid theatre. This is as illiberal and odious as it is laughable. Police, nurses, teachers, bus drivers and others are kept from their livelihoods for no good reason. And we reject their service for the same.
In South Australia, under the threat of a legal challenge, vaccine mandates have been scrapped for police, teachers and transport workers. It is past time the other states followed suit.
We are entitled to ask what sort of a country we have become when we routinely see frightened people wearing masks outdoors in the sunshine, or others donning them theatrically, even on their social media profiles, as a virtue-signal about their faith in overbearing government.
The media wear as much responsibility as the politicians. Unless you have been reading News Corp publications, watching Sky News, or following a handful of sensible columnists in the Nine Media newspapers, you will have been swamped by hysteria and alarmism.
It has been clear since at least March 2020 – two years ago – that children and healthy young adults have no more to fear from Covid-19 than influenza or a range or other common infections. For children, of course, influenza was and remains a greater threat.
We have flu jabs, sure, but for the past year we have had Covid-19 vaccines too. And it did not take long to get them into the vulnerable (mainly the elderly).
When I queried a range of medical experts in the first half of last year why we would not remove restrictions once the elderly were vaccinated, the standard (and, I thought, reasonable) answer was that widespread vaccinations would prevent broader transmission. It was not long before that was self-evidently untrue, but the Covid-zero fixation had taken hold, and lives were put on hold and freedoms were trampled while we waited for ridiculously high vaccination rates across populations where the majority faced no serious threat.
Yet if you questioned these policies over the past two years, you were placed in the virtual stocks and branded an “anti-vaxxer” or a “granny-killer”. The digital giants censored any dissent about the policy approach, vaccination strategy, treatments trialled by medicos, or the potential origin of the virus from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
We involuntarily surrendered our personal liberties, freedom of movement and, in some cases, our livelihoods, yet we were not able to question what was being imposed.
Parliaments were suspended, cabinets were not consulted, and unelected bureaucrats with narrow expertise were placed in charge without any accountability.
States closed their borders, the Australian passport became almost worthless because its chief purpose, a guaranteed right to return home, was unilaterally abandoned. And Australians at home were not allowed to leave.
Our national anthem, and the very purpose of our federation, were rendered ironic. We were neither one nor free. Some of this was forgivable, perhaps, as our early knowledge and defences were pulled together. But our current state of play is inexcusable.
Children who have missed months of face-to-face learning are still routinely kept home again because their sibling, parent or friend is infected. Some workplaces are still largely empty as staff who are fully vaccinated (and are bound to be infected sometime) are kept home to prevent infections at work. For what purpose? So the HR team can win a company prize?
The persistent demands for proof of vaccination are mindless and discriminatory because the unvaccinated are no more or less of a threat to others than the vaccinated. The unvaccinated pose a risk only to themselves – and unless they are vulnerable, that risk is not high.
It must be their choice. Otherwise, if we believe our laws can make health choices for others, we need to ban smoking, drinking, doughnuts, motorcycle riding, and rock fishing – just for a start.
Our self-reliance was already being smothered by a blanket of government largesse. The pandemic has thrown us a doona. This week’s federal budget has shown that fiscal reality is something for our dreams.
We have sent future generations the bill so we were able to sit out the pandemic in relative comfort. It is the very antithesis of how our forebears sacrificed their adulthoods, and more, in war time to preserve what they had for the young and the yet to be born.
This time we have panicked children about something that was never a serious threat to them, ruining many educations along the way. The impacts of our response, from shutdowns to school closures, disproportionately hurt the disadvantaged.
Professionals were able to work from home, and supervise their children’s remote schooling on iPads and laptops, while their asset values increased.
But children in disadvantaged homes might have lost school as a refuge, had few home-learning options, or seen parents lose work and struggle to pay the rent.
For the media/political class, largely on the public payroll and never under threat of unemployment, working from home was a novelty – just check out the social media posts from ABC journalists, who were sadly ignorant about the plight of small business owners, tradies or casual hospitality workers. This helps to explain why the revolt against draconian pandemic measures was not reflected in much of the political debate, and was demonised when it did emerge.
Another factor was the lack of political differentiation. The national cabinet – which I initially welcomed as a unifying innovation – quickly became a forum of the lowest common denominator.
Morrison had the choice of starting a monumental constitutional battle with the states (he should have) or going along with their varying responses. Only Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet in NSW had the courage and sense to push the nation towards the inevitability of living with the virus – lord knows where we would be without them.
Political oppositions, Liberal and Labor, were too timid to call out the Covid-zero approach, preferring to tarnish incumbents with every infection and death. And the media played the same game, with daily tallies as a macabre KPI.
Our traditional characteristics of self-reliance, stoicism, selflessness, distrust of authority, commitment to freedom and common sense fell by the wayside. Instead, we became a mollycoddled nation, handing over unlimited power to the very governments we mistrust, in the hope that we could be spared any confrontation with life’s only certainty – mortality.
Too many of us wanted everything controlled for us, like The Truman Show, only we volunteered for this abomination. And there is so little self-examination and debate – even now in a post-budget and pre-election environment – that it seems we have learned nothing, and would do it all again at the first sign of fever.
The absurdity was laid bare on Thursday when the courageous Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was beamed in live from some bunker in besieged Kyiv, addressing our political chamber of masked, socially distanced, nanny-staters eager to pay deference to his fight for freedom.
Zelensky is fighting our fight against tyranny; the one we gave up on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, the one Obama and Biden hoped might stop in Crimea.
If Zelensky and his people win, we will gain more in long-term security than they will ever gain from our aid. Yet we know if we swapped our leadership for theirs, our stoicism for theirs, Vladimir Putin would be leading a victory parade in Kyiv within days.
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Gateway Pundit:
According to FOX News reporter Hillary Vaughn, the Biden regime is moving doctors from the Veterans Department to help at the border when the agents are consumed with the half a million illegals ready to storm the open border.
Vaughn also reported that the Biden Administration is in talks to roll out a smartphone app that will do pre-screening before they show up at a port of entry. Vaughn added, “While that may help them get processed faster it will create a backlog on the other side of the border.”
This is all pure insanity. The Biden regime has no idea what they are doing. Or worse yet, they do know what they are doing. They know this will destroy the country. Maybe that is their plan? It’s hard to see it any other way.
linkMy note: it’s easy to just blame politicians for all the things that go wrong. But it’s the complicit and often scheming media who aid and enable them. It’s also the zombie left in all the institutions, from school teachers to school boards and upwards to local government and federal departments, NGOs, non-profits, activists and assorted useful idiots. After half a century of leftism the rot is deep.
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<a href="https://www.traveller.com.au/leased-planes-to-russian-airlines-largest-theft-in-the-history-of-aviation-set-to-take-place-h22tr3"leased planes to Russian Airlines largest theft in the history of aviation set to take place
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Thanks for the ‘toons, Tom.
The Ramirez one is a ripper, especially if you are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s statements about churnalists:
“I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.”
“If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.”
Seems like a reasonable chap.
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“In recent days, some glimmers of optimism have emerged. Ukraine has put forward serious proposals, which is centered around a commitment to permanent neutrality and an agreement not to seek NATO membership, in exchange for security guarantees. Russia has also reportedly eased up on some of its previous demands, including “denazification” — a likely ruse for regime change — and “demilitarization,” a sign that Ukraine’s battlefield successes so far have pushed the Kremlin to possibly reconsider some of its most maximalist demands.”
vox on those plodding negotiations -
Motor vehicles have been previously exempt from capital gains tax but Tony Gouger from the Fringe Offset Opportunity Liasion department of the Federal Treasury noted “the responsibility of the Government is to identify every opportunity where Australians are able to turn a profit and clip the ticket on the way through.”
Geebus!
No one that makes a few extra bucks are safe.
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I wonder if people who make ‘capital’ losses on the sale of second hand cars are going to be able to offset those?
This sounds to me like the tax on punting.
Unless you are a declared, not many in real numbers, ‘professional punter’ the tax office leave you alone. The reason is that most punters about98% are losers.How is it going to work out with cars? Are you going to get a rebate if your car is sold under the expected price?
Interesting times.
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They reckon they are going to make 4.2 billion from cgt on cars.
Might be right. Just watch the value of 2nd hand cars climb once Albo bans new ICE car sales.
He might not actually do it, but with Greens controlling the Senate, and his own left-wing agitating for it, it’s not impossible.
They won’t of course collect and CGT on electrics. Their value drops to zero in only 8 years, when the battery needs replacing.
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The caper with “offering” the “Bushmaster” vehicles to Ukraine seems a little odd, to me.
The Oz designed vehicle is a “protected” vehicle, NOT an “armoured fighting vehicle”. There IS a difference.
Only having four wheels mean that if one wheel is wrecked, the vehicle is disabled; and thus a “static target” Note how “serious” wheeled armoured vehicles, like the ancient LAV design or the excellent South African Ratel, have eight and six wheels, respectively. They are also REAR engined.
Also, given that our core defence “contractor”, Thales, who make the Bushwhacker, is a totally foreign-owned entity, any benefit that actually accrues to Australia will be in a minor blip on the employment stats.
Australia has long since ceased to be a serious country.
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Question for those who think about real world economics. If a party imposed a ceiling on interest rates on owner occupied home loans, like in the 80’s what effects would follow. I was one of the lucky ones with a capped rate at the time but was too busy to look around at the results of the policy. If a party were to institute a similar policy now the cap would of course be much lower, maybe 5%? I assume that new loans would be free to follow the market. So what happens next?
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This guy needs to be put out to pasture.
Fauci: Americans Should Be ‘Prepared for Possibility’ Of More COVID-19 Restrictions (1 Apr)
White House COVID-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci warned about the potential for the reinstatement of COVID-19 restrictions in the United States.
Americans, he told the BBC on Sunday, “need to be prepared for the possibility” of an uptick in COVID-19 cases, which may lead to further restrictions.
On second thought, not a pasture. He’d kill all the grass.
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@ Rosie:
“Motor vehicles have been previously exempt from capital gains tax but Tony Gouger from the Fringe Offset Opportunity Liasion department of the Federal Treasury noted “the responsibility of the Government is to identify every opportunity where Australians are able to turn a profit and clip the ticket on the way through.”
Did anyone else notice the date on the original article?
The truly tragic part is that this exercise will generate another “life imitating art”, event with the usual suspects being “inspired” to “do something about it”.
This will, as ALWAYS, be to the great detriment of the peasantry, as is intended.
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Tomorrow is the Hungarian election. C.L. has put up this link on his superb site…it’s well worth reading. I hope he doesn’t mind if I post it here. The US, the EU and the always sinister George Soros loathe Victor Orban, who happens to be that rare thing, a true conservative leader. Thus they seek to oust him…and in order to do so they’re more than happy to cohort with neo-Nazis and far-left groups. This has been known for a while now in regards to Hungary….the US State Department under the Sniffer is deliberately fomenting the Hungarian opposition to Orban.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/31/why-viktor-orban-needs-to-win/
Both Orban and the Polish PM have a firm understanding of their neighbourhood, perhaps because both reside in the area and know its complicated history. Both refuse to kowtow to US state department machinations…..be over Russia or social policies that the US is desperate to export…such as queer theory and so on.
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Alex Antic, Senator for South Australia, explains the horrors of the WEF. In Parliament yesterday.
This is our future and we are powerless to stop them.
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My CX3 was 6 years old but only 33k on the clock, mostly racked up when it was new and I was travelling to Sydney weekly. It hardly ticked over in the last two years.
I didn’t want to be thrashing around waiting for a buyer to pay top $, just someone who would enjoy and appreciate it. The Beloved did all the negotiations, but I met her yesterday when she picked up the keys and the baby.
The newie on order is a bit higher in the saddle, mainly because I’ll be transporting my parents here and there and it will be easier for them to get into. I suspect this year will be the one that Dad has to hand in his license.
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To make it clear, the Drive article about CGT on used car sales was an April Fools Day joke.
Hard to tell these days with the Left now wanting to apply CGT to unrealized paper gains. And I’m serious about the ICE ban, that’s in the green-left canon. The EU is doing it possibly in 2025 just three years away, so are Boris’s wet Tories in 2030 only eight years away. Sure to be ALP policy, although Albo won’t say so until after the election.
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Bruce of Newcastle says:
April 2, 2022 at 7:57 am
They reckon they are going to make 4.2 billion from cgt on cars.
Might be right. Just watch the value of 2nd hand cars climb once Albo bans new ICE car sales.“Albo” is not going to ban petrol cars, you deranged nimbus.
What drugs are you on?
He might not actually do it, but with Greens controlling the Senate, and his own left-wing agitating for it, it’s not impossible.
It’s 100% impossible, you dildo.
They won’t of course collect and CGT on electrics. Their value drops to zero in only 8 years, when the battery needs replacing.
The value does not drop to zero as the battery pack can be replaced. Should you really be talking about batteries?
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This despite all the medical and scientific evidence, along with our lived experience, demonstrating that vaccination, while protecting against serious illness, does not prevent contraction or transmission of the virus
The bolded bit is all they have left and it’s utter bollocks.
Do these idiots ever bother looking a bit further afield than the rocks they exist under?
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weet bix and baked beans together at last
Haha, maybe this story has something to do with that.
“Fertilizer Is Out Of Control” – US Farmers Ditch Corn For Soy To Save On Costs (1 Apr)
A Bloomberg survey found that farmers will plant 2 million more acres of soybeans and about 2 million fewer of corn. That’s because soybeans require very little fertilizer versus corn.
Farmer Tim Gregerson of Omaha, Nebraska, said he’ll plant more soybeans this year because “fertilizer is out of control.” He said fertilizer prices spiked even before the Russian invasion, and it was then he decided to reduce the corn-to-soy ratio to about 50-50 this upcoming growing season.
On top of soaring fertilizer prices, he told Bloomberg, diesel, tractors, machine parts, feed for livestock, herbicide, and seed costs, and just about everything to do with farming are astronomically higher this year.
Corn flakes not on the breakfast menu next year, unless you are rich.
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“My note: it’s easy to just blame politicians for all the things that go wrong. But it’s the complicit and often scheming media who aid and enable them. It’s also the zombie left in all the institutions, from school teachers to school boards and upwards to local government and federal departments, NGOs, non-profits, activists and assorted useful idiots. After half a century of leftism the rot is deep.”
Add to that list the now complicit large corporations.
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Regarding very good Chris Kenny article in The Australian below is my rejected post:
One of your best columns. That people are still losing their jobs over not taking an ineffective vaccine multiple times is simply outrageous.
Not one union has stood up and said enough is enough.
This is beyond politics as it affects people on left and right side of politics.
The health “experts” should not be running our lives and the politicians should not be hiding behind them. Only NSW leaders have made an effort to not restrict freedoms.
As most of us know the danger from the virus is overwhelmingly for the elderly with co-morbidities ”
You have to wonder which para did not fit the narrative. Ineffective vaccines?
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Hard to tell these days with the Left now wanting to apply CGT to unrealized paper gains.
It is just gaslighting.
People with real jobs can’t fuck around like this. Did they even follow tradition and pull the article at midday?
“Oh we were only joking about that”
*We are not joking about the same with unrealised gains in Victoria*
*Let’s have a medical apartheid police state for two years over a common cold variant*What you are seeing is literally the same strategy Putin has with churning out real and fake news.
It is abusive and shows that the political establishment think we are chattel.
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Yet some of us remain convinced it does significantly reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death.
Oh well.Probably not.
Even if the vaccines are effective, the cohort of the dead were just so compromised the vaccines likely don’t pass a CBA.
2500 dead from 2.1 mn cases; look at the age profile and comorbidities.
The only vaccine with a high enough efficacy rate to actually engender herd immunity (Novavax) was delayed for approval for almost a year.
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Don’t know about wider doors. If the seat is a little lower than “bottom height” the elderly person can reverse, grip the door frame (or the helper’s arms) and sit. Then swivel to get their legs in. Ditto to get out.
My recently sold car was about 100mm too low, which doesn’t sound much until you’re 90.
I’m not yet at the ambulance stage of transport!
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JCsays:
April 2, 2022 at 8:31 amThe value does not drop to zero as the battery pack can be replaced.
right…. but economically it becomes prohibitive.
Who’s going to plonk a $20+k battery in a devalued car? It’ll be going straight to the wreckers.
As an example, a 2014/15 Mitsubishi PHEV (hybrid) replacement is of the order of $15k.
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It’s not the dead dot, it’s the ones that didn’t die.
Australia after two years of semi international isolation isn’t a good example.
Better to look at the before and after in countries where covid was far more prevalent.
Iirc Dr Faustus seems to think vaccines made a difference and I trust his judgement. -
“immunocompromised patients in the study had persistently high risk of mortality after both first and second dose vaccines.””
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