Open Thread – Easter Weekend 2022
2,198 responses to “Open Thread – Easter Weekend 2022”
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Twitter headquarters has sustained extensive water damage following Elon Musk’s $43 billion bid to buy out the company. Early reports indicate that the source of the water is the tears of the company’s liberal employees who are devastated at the news.
RTWT -
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Rabz….boo.
You’re damaged.
Like KD.
History has not been kind to him.
Now he’s writing word walls of lies trying to change it.
Graeme is an anti semite and a Nazi apologist.
If he wasn’t removed in 5 seconds from the freedom Australia , there’d be howls from here.
Good to see the level of extreme hypocrisy is maintained while I note Rabz calling for him to be allowed to stay.
The level of frothing insanity at being dared to be questioned on moral values regarding my comments on Notafans Catholicism which were also in regards to hypocrisy show just how low the denialist minds have stooped.
All emotion, all the time. -
Another day with the Sermon on the Couch being apt for the time of year. Oh wonderful fountain of knowledge what is in store for humanity today? Lead with the chip on your shoulder then dribble out both sides of your mouth coz you know, you’re on the level, then crap on. Its all yours. By the way Knuckles has a job, what do you have? Nothing.
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The sinking of the Moskva is just going to escalate things. Vlad will show less restraint now. How can the Europeans allow such blatant provocation by the US on their doorstep? Pathetic really. They will be the ones who suffer, not the Yanks. Guess they prefer to starve and freeze.
Invading another country with a conscript army isn’t really showing restraint.
He can always retreat or just make reasonable demands regarding majority ethnic Russian provinces.
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A weepy soy-boy scientist is unhappy.
End of the world: NASA scientist in TEARS as he issues impending disaster warning (15 Apr)
Peter Kalmus, an activist and NASA scientist gave an emotional speech last week highlighting the fact that humanity is on the brink of climate disaster. … The NASA scientist chained himself to a JP Morgan Chase bank and gave an impassioned speech, after which he, along with several other scientists at the site, was arrested. … He then broke into tears, adding: “For my sons.”
I’m amazed from his photo that he has sons.
Here’s another scientist:
State Of The Climate 2021: No Sign Of ‘Climate Crisis’ (14 Apr)
In his annual State of the Climate report, Ole Humlum, emeritus professor at the University of Oslo, examined detailed patterns in temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans together with trends in climate impacts.
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And while the report finds gentle warming, there is no evidence of dramatic changes, with snow cover stable, sea ice levels recovering, and no change in storm activity.Professor Humlum said:
“A year ago, I warned that there was great risk in using computer modeling and immature science to make extraordinary claims. The empirical observations I have reviewed show very gentle warming and no evidence of a climate crisis.”
Dr Kalmus’s sons will be quite ok, but when they grow up they’ll think their dad is an idiot. Which is correct since he is.
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BoN, from the linked Humlum article:
With such a background and reputation, Richardson and Charney would have felt comfortable in using Dine’s equations as a basis for their model.
For the next seventy years no-one thought to investigate model programming back to the very beginning.
But then in 2017, someone did.
A British climate researcher, Derek Alker went right back to Dine’s equations which underpinned the Richardson/Charney model – and most models since. He discovered that Dine’s equations were flawed. Not only were they flawed, they even contradicted the basic Laws of Thermodynamics.
Dine’s faulty equations invalidated the Richardson/Charney model. The error has continued into all the modern GCMs, all of which now appear to be faulty. It’s no wonder that they all show greater world warming than the observations.Like wow! Must look into this further. It pays to regularly check any assumptions you make.
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“TikTok’s ad revenue is expected to triple this year to $11.64 billion from $3.88 billion in 2021, surpassing Twitter and Snapchat combined at $5.58 billion and $4.86 billion, respectively, according to a report by Insider Intelligence”
apparently money to be made -
“Fowler independent says Labor’s move to parachute Kristina Keneally into seat has left voters feeling like ‘second-class citizens’”
at sky -
I had a customer grizzle she had missed out on a $5 afterpay discount.
Reminded me of the days living pay cheque to pay cheque.
I don’t offer afterpay, but the online platform I sell through does.
for some afterpay is no pay, afterpay suffered 335 million loss -
“Countries prefer more effective vaccines’
China was the world’s biggest Covid-19 vaccine exporter. Not any more -
According to these your timing is off dot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#Minsk_Protocol -
Richardson/Charney model – and most models since. He discovered that Dine’s equations were flawed. Not only were they flawed, they even contradicted the basic Laws of Thermodynamics.
Eyrie – I don’t know about the climate models but I was once called in to consult on a certain multimillion dollar project. I put the chemistry into a thermodynamics package, as you do…delta G was positive. I changed the temperature, the pressure, the concentrations…delta G was positive for all combinations. A positive delta G means a chemical reaction won’t go under any circumstances.
They hadn’t ever actually checked this before they had embarked on the project. But I wasn’t liked for saying this, no sirree…
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“Timothy, who declined to give his real name due to fears for his family in mainland China, arrived safely back in Australia on Tuesday morning after what he describes as a “nerve-wracking” 72-hours leaving a citywide lockdown for a flight destined for Sydney.”
Well done SBS news, I suppose everyone with a wife and young child on a flight that China that arrived in Sydney on Tuesday morning should now be looking over their shoulder.
We’re lucky’: Chinese Australian leaves Shanghai’s strict lockdown which has trapped 25 million residents -
Rabzsays:
April 15, 2022 at 6:03 pm
Bourne – a hint – JC is this blogue’s biggest Springsteen fan.He’ll always acknowledge you if you post a Springsteen clip.
Trust me on this ?
If you want head prefect’s attention, appeal to his manliness and ask him out for a date. It works for me; we’ve had some wonderful times.
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DuckDuckGo Search Engine CEO Announces Changes to Internet Search Algorithms to Promote Approved Content
April 15, 2022 | Sundance -
Bill Hartnell is rolling in his grave like a Tardis in a time rift.
BBC to Use Doctor Who to ‘Tell Trans Stories’ (15 Apr)
The state-owned, publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) will use its flagship Doctor Who franchise to “tell trans stories”, according to its own reporting.
The notionally apolitical broadcaster announced on the front page of the BBC News website that it would be using the venerable science-fiction show — first aired in 1963 — to “let trans people tell trans stories”, linking to a story about an upcoming podcast spin-off.
The article, which boasted up front that the spin-off “is making the show more female and LGBTQ+ than ever before”, centred around a BBC Radio interview with BBC writer Juno Dawson, the transwoman who will be writing the series.
Eww. I’m certainly not regretting ditching my TV this time last year.
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Here’s the thing. You walked right into that Eyrie. Heads I win, tails you lose.
The pro Putinists point out what a horrible/illegitimate President Poroshenko (also Kuchma, Tymoshenko etc)) was/were but also expect Zelensky who was a political outsider to abide by the accords.
The pro Putinists also then are likely to point out Russia has only been territorially aggressive during the eras of two US Presidents they deem illegitimate.
It boils down to “fuck Ukraine because our side lost the US elections in 2008, 2012 and 2020”. It is bizarre because they (justifiably) despised McCain/Romney after all.
It’s no reason at all to write off 44 million people.
You’re also ignoring Putin’s Pan-Eurasian Nazism which considers the Russian Empire as the highest moral authority in the world. Putin has been quite open about this.
Russia can’t even look after its infrastructure and it has the most nukes on paper, yet Putin is aggressively demanding that other nations do not arm themselves! Russia should give up their nukes. They almost started WWIII back in the 1990s due to crumbling infrastructure (shit radar that stopped working properly). They are in no position to make demands or dictate terms.
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I think we can all agree that the Ukes have been at war with their own Russian speaking citizens since 2014. Enough evidence has been posted on this site alone.
We can also see that Ukrainian nationalism us a real thing. They are also squeezing the Hungarian minority in the west of Ukraine with a determination to prevent them using their own language in education, much as they did with the ethnic Russians. That is the reason Orban has limited Hungarian aid to Ukraine to only taking in refugees.
So where are the peacemakers? Surely, this situation is perfect for UN intervention and the deployment of peacekeepers in the Donbass to keep the warring groups apart, especially after eight years.
There are no peacemakers because too many parties want this war to continue regardless of the cost in human lives and suffering.
Dot, I believe you owe Eyrie an apology. By 2014, Yanukovych was long gone and Poroshenko could hardly be described as pro-Russian. In fact, it was he who uttered the most disgusting words about his fellow citizens that “our (Uke) children would be in kindergarten but theirs will be in caves”.
As I have said all along, the only solution is separation.
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Sharri Markson in The Australian has been digging into Albo’s attempts this week to lie about his past:
Anthony Albanese worked as an electorate officer – not a Canberra-based ministerial adviser – during the time his boss, hard-left Labor figure Tom Uren was a minister in the Hawke government.
After failing to nominate the cash or unemployment rate this week, Mr Albanese sought to re-establish his economic credentials by claiming he was an “economics adviser” to the legendary, reformist Hawke government.
But records obtained by The Weekend Australian, including ministerial directories from the 1980s, Parliamentary Questions on Notice in 1985, Mr Albanese’s biography and accounts from multiple Labor figures working in the Hawke government all indicate Mr Albanese’s job for Uren when he was local government minister was as an electorate officer based in Sydney, not a ministerial ¬adviser in Canberra.
Parliamentary Questions on Notice, dated May 31, 1985, list Mr Albanese as the most junior member on Mr Uren’s staff as “Electorate Officer 1”.
Ministerial directories for the years Uren was a minister from 1983 until 1987 do not list Mr Albanese as a ministerial staff member.
In his biography, Albanese: Telling it Straight, for which the Labor leader co-operated with ¬author Karen Middleton, his job title in the year 1987 is referenced as an “electorate officer”.
“In what might be described as a substantial case of bad luck, he would find himself in a second ¬accident five years later (in 1987) when he was travelling in the back of a Commonwealth hire car in Canberra, where he was then working as an electorate officer to Minister Tom Uren,” it states, ¬referring to a car accident Mr ¬Albanese was involved in after an earlier one in 1982.
While based in Sydney, Mr ¬Albanese would travel to Canberra with Uren on occasion. The first time was as a “note-taker”. On this trip, Mr Albanese described himself as “an excited kid”.
Born in 1963, Mr Albanese was 22 when he started working for Mr Uren in 1985. At the time, Mr Albanese was considered a Socialist Left militant warrior and he ¬engaged in factional Labor Party activities, primarily based in Uren’s electorate office in ¬Granville, Sydney.
Middleton also wrote about how Uren took on “the young protege with his militant reputation”.
Mn Uren’s autobiography, Straight Left, he said that in the first two years Mr Albanese worked for him – from 1985 to 87, the period when he was a minister – they barely spoke.
“Anthony was an activist in Young Labor and was one of the main organisers of the Left in NSW,” Uren wrote.
“For the first year or two I never really badgered him. I would have talk (sic) with him occasionally, and just observe him, but I watched him a lot more than he realised.
“I was a minister and was fairly busy, whilst he had his own jobs.”
A Labor source who was a staff member in the Hawke government told The Weekend Australian that Mr Albanese “was not on Tom Uren’s ministerial staff. He was not an assistant private secretary or private secretary – these were ‘adviser’ positions at the time.
“A research officer is an electorate staff appointment,” the source said.
Former Labor leader Mark Latham, now leader of One ¬Nation in NSW, said Mr Albanese’s “main activity wasn’t working as a policy adviser in Canberra, it was a young Labor organiser”.
“Albanese worked in his (Uren’s) electorate office, he was an electorate staffer,” he said.
“Albanese spent most of his time in Sydney organising Young Labor numbers in the inner city.”
During the 80s, Mr Latham worked for Gough Whitlam, the Labor Party head office and later for Bob Carr.
“I was making speeches on the other side of the debate from Albanese,” he said. “He was the standard bread-and-butter leftie opposing Keating’s reforms at every turn. The stereotypical leftie from central casting.”
A senior Labor figure, who declined to speak publicly, recalled Mr Albanese’s work at the time was heavily factional for the Left.
“Albo was one of the leaders in their hardline activities on policy and in stacking the branches and use of the union movement to ¬attack the government that then became the modus operandi federally,” he said.
“Albanese was a very minor figure and worked out of the Granville office for a lot of the time, organising. I always thought he was an electorate officer.”
The Labor figure said that at the time Uren “was a very minor figure of no consequence in Canberra and that was reflected in his frustrations and ongoing attacks on the Hawke-Keating governments.”
During his time working for Uren, Mr Albanese engaged in factional Labor Party activities and also conducted research for the minister on economic policies.
The Labor Left regarded itself equally opposed to the Hawke government’s policies as the conservative opposition parties.
Uren was not in cabinet and was one of the strongest opponents to the Hawke-Keating economic reforms of the period. His policy views were regarded as entirely irrelevant and a cause for ¬annoyance by the senior figures in the Hawke government, particularly treasurer Paul Keating.
Mr Keating was reportedly furious when Hawke ruled that he needed to win support from the full ministry, not just the cabinet, for tax reform in September 1985.
“He had to endure opposition from left-wing ministers Tom Uren and Arthur Gietzelt, amid a marathon debate,” author Troy Bramston wrote in the biography Paul Keating: The Big Picture Leader.
Mr Keating, Bramston wrote, “was turning away from redistributive economics, class warfare and an ‘us and them’ mentality”.
Mr Keating voiced his frustration with the Left faction’s views in an attack at state conference.
“The Balmain Lefties … were all in good restaurants quaffing wine till 3.30 in the afternoon. That’s what aways galled me,” Mr Keating said in his speech.
Mr Albanese did not respond to repeated requests for comment.Link.
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Luzu says:
April 16, 2022 at 7:54 amI think we can all agree that the Ukes have been at war with their own Russian speaking citizens since 2014. Enough evidence has been posted on this site alone.
We can also see that Ukrainian nationalism us a real thing.
They are also squeezing the Hungarian minority in the west of Ukraine with a determination to prevent them using their own language in education, much as they did with the ethnic Russians. That is the reason Orban has limited Hungarian aid to Ukraine to only taking in refugees.
Well said Luzu, I think the war was premature but there was very little positive action forthcoming from the west, quite the opposite.
As to repressing the minorities, most on this blog have no idea at all to the extent of that repression.
No interest, some wouldn’t even know the number and ethnicity of those minorities, they are very sizable as a matter of fact. -
John Hinderaker has found some interesting vaccine data.
Does Vaccination Make You MORE Likely to Catch Covid? | Power Line (14 Apr)
Pretty clear that it does, although Hinderaker is being cautious. The data that makes it abundantly clear to me is the first chart, where there’s a significant jump in infections for >5 mths after the original duo-vax and also >5mths after the booster.
Again to satisfy sceptical Cats note this is for infections not hospitalizations. On the other hand since unvaccinated people only have about 25% chance of catching the crud, based on Diamond Princess data, I suspect the chance of vaccinated people being hospitalized is actually higher, because more of them actually catch it in the first place. But maybe if someone could find a good cheap readily available antiviral protease inhibitor to treat all these infected people it might reduce the hospitalization rate across the board. I wonder what such a drug might be?
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“Fowler independent says Labor’s move to parachute Kristina Keneally into seat has left voters feeling like ‘second-class citizens’”
This is all media garbage! .. as someone who, actually, lives in Fowler I can assure you the average “Fowler” voter would be hard pushed to tell you who the retiring member is never mind who they’ll be voting for next! .. This is rusted-on, ethnically stacked, Labor territory .. voting out here is because it is “compulsory” and can affect the wallet not because anyone cares who their next “soon-to-be-invisible” trougher will be .. advertising will win .. whoever gets their name & pix front & centre in the media will score the votes NOT party policy ..
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Dot, I believe you owe Eyrie an apology. By 2014, Yanukovych was long gone and Poroshenko could hardly be described as pro-Russian. In fact, it was he who uttered the most disgusting words about his fellow citizens that “our (Uke) children would be in kindergarten but theirs will be in caves”.
I don’t. I was wrong.
However, the argument from the pro Russians is bizzare (and which is obviously more important) You’re just ignoring all of the ill will and incompetence the Russian state has.
*Ukrainian nationalism is a thing*
Yes, but so is Russian, Pan Eurasian ultra nationalism.
Russia is not an ally when the wrong team is in the White House and a pet when the right guy is in office.
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Catching a plane?
Qantas customer chief Stephanie Tully on holidays as colleagues man panic stations
It’s been all hands on deck – and in the terminals – over the Easter holiday break, with long queues and extended delays at airports across the country.
At Qantas, even senior executives have made the short drive from the airline’s Mascot HQ to the terminals – even after chief executive Alan Joyce initially blamed travellers who were “not match fit” – to help staff.
But there has been one executive absence noted by staff at this particularly difficult time. Where is Qantas chief customer officer Stephanie Tully? She is, after all, “responsible for all aspects of the customer experience”.
She’s on holidays.
Tully’s role places her aboard the airline’s 11-member management committee, which reports to Joyce. Margin Call is told she has been overseas. A Qantas spokesman confirmed that Tully was on holidays, but said she was only one of the senior executive team, many of whom would be working across the weekend, including Joyce himself.
Staff would surely be pleased to know that while they’re being seconded from their office jobs to work handling baggage, that the airline’s chief customer officer is enjoying a well-earned break.
More than 200 head office and other senior managers have been dispatched to Sydney and Melbourne airports in a bid to placate seething customers.
Oz
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bespoke says:
April 16, 2022 at 8:13 amHow much separation though?
Will having hundreds of micro states be more stable?
Total separation back to the mother countries, the areas in question are quite distinct.
Poland, Romania, Hungary and to a lesser extent Moldova, Slovakia has no problem with its minority living there, fellow Slavs.Of course it will never happen.
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If the thermo in the climate models is wrong our whole civilisational suicide may be based on a lie.
Climate modelling at a glance.
The same group of models are apparently able correctly hindcast the past 170 years of ‘global average temperature’ with astonishing accuracy – a band of 0.5°C either side of the mean and picking up major climate shifts along the way (scroll down to the first figure). This is accepted by the IPCC and the Climatariat as “evidence of skill”.
Anywhere else, this would be prima facie evidence that the models are all parameterised to fit the historical data – and thus are 97.3% useless as a forecasting tool.
Add to that the fact that the climate is already ignoring the models and running cooler than the 5:95 range of projections (scroll down to figure 1).
In the real world, the modellers would be standing outside on the pavement clutching their personal possessions in an archive box.
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Over the past week, more cracks are appearing in the vax narrative as even the MSM cannot hide the evidence of heart problems:
https://nitter.net/apexworldnews/status/1514611684555468807#m
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I think we can all agree that the Ukes have been at war with their own Russian speaking citizens since 2014.
Actually the Russian speakers have been at war with the rest of Ukraine since 2014, since they’re the ones who seceded with help from Russia. Not unlike the US colonies being at war with the British crown. Similar sorts of grievances on both sides in that conflict, although in 1776 people were politer about it, at least in N America. Not so many massacres and rapes.
It’s a moot point though, since like a bad marriage they can’t live in the same house anymore. Dunno how it will turn out but it’ll be a bloody mess whichever way it does.
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Never heard of Reinhard Gehlen?
The CIAs 70 years in Ukraine [9 minutes 20]
https://youtu.be/AqJZP6FFXWQ -
Anywhere else, this would be prima facie evidence that the models are all parameterised to fit the historical data – and thus are 97.3% useless as a forecasting tool.
Especially since the “historical data” has also been “adjusted” to fit the model output.
Messing With Texas (14 Apr)
The total data tampering is more than five degrees Fahrenheit. The year 1900 was cooled more than three degrees and 2020 was warmed two degrees.
This is the graph he’s referring to. Cooling the past quite blatantly in order to produce a warming trend which isn’t in the data.
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Albo caught in a lie about his past? […]
He’s making Shorten’s 2019 campaign look professional.
This is the problem you get in the Westminster system when you thrust a shitty, careerist, retail politician into a Presidential Election format.
They end up looking like shitty, careerist, politicians.
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If you can’t go in ahead of that kind of attack you could never do it in a decade of Sundays.
The problem is that no one’s ever fought a war the way Putin is fighting this war, because it’s stupid.
Withdrawing from Kiev caused a massacre of 345 ethnic Russians by the Ukes.
What will happen if he decides to withdraw from Mariupol? -
Dot,
I really don’t believe your average Russian is interested in pan-Eurasian nationalism. If anything, it is a Putin and his stooges obsession. Just look at the opposition to this war within Russia itself.
It must be said that Russians in general do not like people from the former Soviet republics, although in the Far East, the significant Korean minority that were left behind by the defeated Japanese are treated better now than under Communism.
Ukrainian nationalism has a rather darker undertone. It is entirely ethnically based and for all the pumping of Zelensky and the plucky Ukes as liberal, Western types by our media, the actions of successive governments in attempting to forcibly Ukrainianise their ethnic minorities says otherwise.
That being said, the simplest fix is for Ukraine to allow the Donbass to have autonomy. No more Russians being expected to use the Ukrainian forms of their given names, no more renaming of their streets and towns unilaterally and no forcible removal of Russian language from their education system.
Again, why is there no interest in a peaceful settlement being found? The Ukrainian people deserve so much better than to be used as pawns in other people’s proxy wars. As much as the Ukrainian government’s use of military force against its own citizens was deeply wrong, that does not mean the Ukrainian people should suffer, too.
I am convinced that there are too many evil people (like that revolting female, Nuland) for whom power is the most important thing, little people be damned.
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I really don’t believe your average Russian is interested in pan-Eurasian nationalism. If anything, it is a Putin and his stooges obsession. Just look at the opposition to this war within Russia itself.
Is Russia a democracy or not?
Ukrainian nationalism has a rather darker undertone.
Did it exist in 1991?
Did it exist in 2008?
Did it exist in 2014?
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“bespokesays:
April 16, 2022 at 8:43 am
Wrong Rabz did.Rubbish.”
Not rubbish…..Rabz last night.
Rabzsays:
April 15, 2022 at 6:52 pm
Now this is what it is all about, Cats.The Bird, running rampant. He’s better value than certain others.
Doves, please keep the ban hammer on ice.
I think that confirms my point.
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Especially since the “historical data” has also been “adjusted” to fit the model output.
Yes indeed. That’s become an industry in itself.
But, for me, the tell is the stunning inter-model consistency in reproducing a chaotic system.
Plus the apparent ability they all seem to have to model hemispheric climate shifts which are caused by drivers not understood by oceanographers and atmospheric physicists.
Data-free, science-free, shame-free.
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This is the problem you get in the Westminster system when you thrust a shitty, careerist, retail politician into a Presidential Election format.
True, but otoh, Australians have always had a thing about their PMs looking “prime ministerial.”
They must have a certain gravitas, particularly when overseas, so they don’t embarrass us.
People don’t like Morrison, but they know from experience he can at least carry it off.
They’re looking at Albanese and thinking he doesn’t cut it.
Of course, other factors are in play, but that will be in people’s minds in the voting booth.
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Dr Faustus says:
April 16, 2022 at 8:27 am
If the thermo in the climate models is wrong our whole civilisational suicide may be basedGood stuff.
Take the absurdity of the BoM and the media propagandising top temperatures now or in the past.
Take a hot partly cloudy city day in summer. Averages about 36 but a break in the cloud late in the afternoon could see that hit 40 for an hour as the heat shimmers off the tar and the record is broken for that day.
The previous record was set when the road and housing density was much lower and the tall buildings didn’t block the cooling breezes sucked in from the hills or the sea.
That day in the past would have been hotter overall but that’s not the story they want to sell so the dollars keep rolling in and the job position is assured. -
“bespokesays:
April 16, 2022 at 8:51 am
That was value judgement, Cassie not encouragement.”Rubbish. Rabz thought it would be fun having Bird run amok for while except the “fun” lasts five minutes and the inevitable comes along because Bird can’t help himself, up comes Khazaria and the new homeland and on and on it goes.
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Its because a certain ethnic group was trying to set up a colony
I have heard that theory before, and yes it did used to be a large colony for the Jewish people (the Khazarian empire). However I’m skeptical on the “Zionist plot” to create a new empire.
One reason is that Zelensky is not a practicing Jew and is married to an Orthodox Christian (not that she is practicing either, but it does throw cold water on your theory).
The second is the Jews already have a home in Israel.More likely this is born from a lust for money and power than anything else. The people behind the curtain who instigated the coup in 2014 (eg. Nuland , Soros, McCain) and have installed Zelensky into power (eg. Ihor Kolomoisky) want to keep power and their money. Although there are many Jews in that elite camp, there are also many non-Jews.
The thing is – Satan doesn’t care what your background is he will will try and ruin your soul any way he can. -
From “The Age.”
Marathon Ben Roberts-Smith trial reaches crucial watershed
Deborah Snow
By Deborah Snow
April 16, 2022 — 12.15amThere have been few civil courtroom contests in Australia to match the sheer scale and drama of the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case as it has unfolded over the last three months.
Gripping headlines have sprung from allegations of skulduggery on and off the battlefield, raw emotion has spilt into the courtroom as the one-time war hero’s most intimate personal relationships have been pulled apart, there have been guest appearances (on opposing sides) by Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie and former defence minister Dr Brendan Nelson, and rare insights into the minds and methods of SAS elite soldiers.
Add to that the proxy contest between two of the country’s largest media conglomerates – Seven West Media, whose chair, Kerry Stokes, is bankrolling Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit, and Nine, the owners of this masthead – and the label “marathon” doesn’t begin to do the saga justice.
The trial began in the middle of last year after two-and-a-half years of preliminary procedural skirmishing. But it was forced into temporary suspension as the pandemic raged. When hearings resumed at the start of February this year, there were confident predictions it would all be wrapped up within 10 weeks.
Instead, 11 weeks on, Nine has only just called the last of its witnesses while Roberts-Smith’s military allies will not begin testifying until Tuesday.
This week, then, marks an important watershed. Despite the wave of negative headlines for the Victoria Cross recipient (who instigated the action), it’s still too early to predict who will emerge the ultimate victor. But many of Nine’s witnesses have exceeded the expectations of its legal team.
The company’s mastheads, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, are defending their stories on the grounds of truth, meaning there’s little room for shades of grey in the competing narratives.
Nine’s barrister, Nicholas Owens, SC, acknowledged as much when he advised presiding judge Anthony Besanko at the outset that: “Your honour will be asked to choose between two diametrically opposed stories incapable of being reconciled to one another.”
A unique feature of the case is its hybrid nature – what the president of the Australian Bar Association, Matt Collins, QC, calls a war crimes trial “masquerading as a defamation action”.
The gravest allegations the media outlets have levelled against Roberts-Smith are the six unlawful killings of prisoners which they say he committed or was complicit in over the course of several missions to Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
Nine has also alleged that the Victoria Cross recipient brutalised prisoners, bullied two junior soldiers, endeavoured to intimidate several other SAS troopers to get them to change or drop their evidence to the Brereton inquiry (which was conducting its own probe inside government into war crimes allegations) and that he sought to conceal evidence by burying USB sticks with classified photos on them in his backyard and setting fire to his laptop.
He has also been accused of striking his former lover, Person 17, after she fell drunkenly down a set of stairs at a Parliament House dinner. His estranged wife, Emma Roberts, swore he’d threatened her with the loss of their children if she didn’t back up his alleged lie that he was separated at the time of the affair.
Roberts-Smith has denied all wrongdoing. He says the stories have ruined his life and reputation. He insists the only people he ever killed in Afghanistan were lawfully slain during combat. His senior barristers, Arthur Moses, SC, and Bruce McClintock, SC, say the media outlets have been drip-fed rumours and gossip by bitter former comrades, jealous because of Roberts-Smith’s high profile, his Victoria Cross and other military awards. There has been evidence from some soldiers of “pro” and “anti” Roberts-Smith camps inside the regiment.
Nine was never going to be completely sure of the strength of its case until the 19 current and former SAS troopers it had summoned delivered their testimony.
A number of these soldiers were not happy about being required to give evidence. They testified under certificates of immunity granted by presiding judge Anthony Besanko to protect them from self-incrimination.
But they have stood remarkably firm in the face of days of gruelling cross-examination by Moses (one later complained to a fellow witness that Roberts-Smith’s barrister had come at him “like a rabid dog”, the court heard). And it is striking that some of the most damning evidence has come from those who were most open about their discomfort at being in the courtroom.
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China turns back on the West as oil giant exits UK, US and Canada ‘over sanction fears’
CHINA’s state oil giant CNOOC is reportedly set to halt operations in the UK, US, and Canada amid fears of sanctions, a report has claimed. -
Dredd
More likely this is born from a lust for money and power than anything else. The people behind the curtain who instigated the coup in 2014 (eg. Nuland , Soros, McCain) and have installed Zelensky into power (eg. Ihor Kolomoisky) want to keep power and their money.
This corruption extends to some extent into virtually all “democracies”, and is endemic in authoritarian and dictatorial governments.
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We have the world is an historically dangerous position and the horrid fucker (actually, both horrid fuckers) thrashing around in the long grass and warbling about revised positions on fringe issues.
Scotty is an okay guy [for a PM]
Remember Turnbull, Abbott, Rudd, Howard, Keating, Hawke and Fraser?
They were and are all “horrid Fuckers”.Let’s compare how Australia is traveling compared to the rest of the Anglosphere?
Great Britain?
ha ha.
Canada?
You can’t be serious.
The United States?
GTFO.
New Zealand?
Buy a plane ticket to Auckland, see ya later. -
I clean up bird on the freedom site.
I don’t clean up people speaking poorly of others.
But I tell you what when you guys do it here we’ll do it there.
You’re quite welcome to head over and have a go.
I looked at it and claiming they were trying to dox you seemed a stretch.
They obviously don’t like you.
But let’s try to keep the rabid hypocrisy down.
If dover took out all the mean and bitchy comments here he wouldn’t have a blog.
You’re a big girl go and sort them out. -
Director of a company I worked for was a Colonel in the Hungarian division of the German Army WWII. Had the photos. He said it was our only way to survive, nobody thought any less of him including the ANZAC’s working there. Everyone called him the Colonel. He was upfront about what he did. On the other hand a friend of Polish extraction whose parents were Polish refugees, when at a party they had her old man and his mates were pretty pissed and I picked them as being ukes by the things said about their wartime experiences. I mentioned it to womans husband who was my mate. He said don’t go there. These people were not like other Poles I’d met.
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John Foster’s brother headed up the CIA until JFK fired him.
Thanks Roger. Correct, I was thinking of Allen.
JFK fired him and sealed his death warrant. Dulles sought to stitch JFK up over the Bay of Pigs (after JFK stitched Dulles up by refusing military support for the operation.)
Dulles turned Gehlen- and many other nazis- into seriously effective CIA assets post war.
Bottom line is – the CIA get what they want. Brennan demonstrated that , helping to oust Trump.
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John Foster certainly wasn’t without a say in CIA affairs, Makka.
Of course. Running State he basically set up the post-war dynamic in Europe from ’53 to the end of the decade. While his brother did the dirty work at the Agency.
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government
Not a bad read to understand the going’s on of that time. Unfortunately openly leftist at the end but the facts are laid out.
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“Wondered that myself but it could be anyone at a service or another Abbott sister or relative, maybe a friend of the Morrisons.”
None of Abbott’s sisters (he has three) are nuns. One is now a lesbian married to another woman and Abbott….whom the left regard as the perpetual bigot, attended his sister’s SSM wedding.
Such a bigot.
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CHINA’s state oil giant CNOOC is reportedly set to halt operations in the UK, US, and Canada amid fears of sanctions, a report has claimed.
When the US confiscates your stuff merely for being Russian, and now says they will never return those goods (it is theft) don’t expect any country to invest in the West.
The capital will now cease flowing as a two-tiered world economy is rapidly being put in place.
The US just shot themselves in the foot again.
These people are so stupid. -
Clearly the Swedes need to do more to combat right wing extremism.
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“Especially since the “historical data” has also been “adjusted” to fit the model output.”
I’m sure this is just an amazing coincidence…
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/NOAAUSHCNAdjustmentVs_shadow-1.jpg -
Wondered that myself but it could be anyone at a service or another Abbott sister or relative, maybe a friend of the Morrisons.
Doesn’t look like an Abbott relative, but Abbott doesn’t look real happy with the photographer.
She may be speaking to Scotty’s other daughter, obscured by Albo.
Here it is:
https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02942fa51ecb200c-pi -
Arky says:
April 16, 2022 at 9:30 amAnd just like that the Catallaxy gang was again in favour of moderated comments.
I wish you’d make yer minds up.Oh Look, it’s the Leadership dissembling again. Moderating Bird out of existence is not identical to the bullshit you were doing to comments on the Thought Leadership threads, you mindless dickhead. It’s never been and will never be the same.
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Nina ? Byzantina
@NinaByzantina
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20m
Oles Buzina was a prominent Ukrainian historian + journalist. Buzina was assassinated on April 16, 2015 by figures linked to ultra-nationalist organizations like C14. He was a patriot who supported the federalization of Ukraine and two official languages, Ukrainian and Russian.Interesting.
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“I’m talking about the very attractive woman wearing a blue dress sitting next to Tony, on his right hand side.”
The whole thing is just a media stunt for some publicity & pix .. why on earth would a grope of troughers turn up at a church in, no-where land, Punchbowl, NSW unless it was pre-arranged?
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Matt Kean aka Matt the Green is calling for Katherine Deves to be dumped.
If she’s going off the reservation, then flick her now while there’s still 5 weeks to go.
She may be attempting to win the Seat by doing
a Pauline Hanson/Oxley/1996, which is okay though short sighted,
but Scotty can’t afford to be putting out grassfires that she’s lit as the Endorsed Candidate. -
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government
In the Dulles’ brothers’ favour, they were vehemently anti-Communist. John Foster carried over from the Truman administration George Kennan’s doctrine of containment of the Soviet Union, cementing it as US policy, which would eventually lead to the the Soviet Union’s demise.
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CHINA’s state oil giant CNOOC is reportedly set to halt operations in the UK, US, and Canada amid fears of sanctions, a report has claimed.
Two things:
1) Not a good sign. Potentially a harbinger that Emperor Xi can see advantage in China coming to the aid of his BFF, Poot, as Russia flounders in Ukraine.
2) When CNOOC bought into Nexcen’s North Sea interests it famously paid far more the assets were worth as a ‘strategic premium’ for operatorship.
It has struggled in the North Sea regulatory, infrastructure and tax mire and will be happy to realise the current oil price.
So, win-win-win.
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Invading another country with a conscript army isn’t really showing restraint.
Because they are less disciplined or motivated than regular troops?
Or because they are shit and likely to call down artillery rather than get shot?
I think its pretty awesome, its revealed just how wrong I was on the effectiveness of conscripts as a viable ‘backbone” for a military.
They seem to be fine on their own turf, on the defensive, but catastrophically inept at attacking or supporting their armor units.Some countries seem to do conscripts ok, but again on the defensive. I wonder just what % of a force has to be regulars vs conscripts to be effective?
And no, I dont support Vlad, hes a poisonous turd who was fine with meddling in Ukraine behind the scenes until his puppet was overthrown by other shit peoples selection.
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Don’t know if it helps re climate “modelling” but I have found the following to be a useful life-hack since the very early days of the COVID scam.
Substitute the word “bullshit” for “model/modelling” whenever mouthed by a politician, official, or TV talking head.
This will result in an instant improvement in both clarity and accuracy. -
Abbott would have a P.A., obviously it’s not going to be a Nun, so she’s Tony’s P.A..
Is it Kathy Jackson?https://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d02942fa51ecb200c-pi
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Cernovich
@Cernovich
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52m
Russians are going to blame America for this. Unbelievable what you ?? wavers have gotten my country into.You’re created an army of future terrorists with your support of war crimes.
This really is grotesque.
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My favouritist Eastery themed picture.
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Daily Tele.
Labor insiders say they weren’t surprised by Anthony Albanese’s shocking week on the election campaign trail
In extraordinary bloodletting, Labor insiders have revealed morale within the Labor Party has “fallen apart”.
James Campbell
James Campbell
National political editor
@J_C_Campbell
5 min read
April 16, 2022 – 9:50AM
News Corp Australia Network
241 commentsExclusive: Anthony Albanese is “infamous” for not properly reading his policy briefings, surrounds himself with too many inexperienced advisers and has been exposed as a political “chameleon” on the campaign trail, Labor insiders and some of his MPs claim.
In extraordinary bloodletting six days into a campaign he remains favourite to win, the Labor leader’s critics within his caucus are already privately gunning for him and have revealed morale within the party has “fallen apart” after a week which one MP labelled a “s**tshow”.
NewsCorp has spoken to a number of Labor frontbenchers, multiple backbenchers, staffers and operatives employed on Labor’s campaign who, speaking on the condition of anonymity, revealed they weren’t surprised by Mr Albanese’s shocking performance because of his failure to do basic preparation.
Those exasperated with Mr Albanese include some supporters as well as factional enemies.
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What causes people to dive down these rabbit holes?
Excellent question.
Nothing better to think about. Or as my granny would put it, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.”. Just substitute “minds”.
No wonder Saint Paul tells us to take every thought captive.
In other news, I see we’ve had the usual Free Speech skirmish and subsequent cleanup.
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I moderated your comment at the outset, and consequently improved my threads because they subsequently didn’t have any of your vile crap.
No you didn’t, you lying piece of lard. I never posted on your stupid threads because they were word salad crapola. I actually never even read them either and only became aware of the shit you were pulling because people like Tom complained about your behavior. When Tom complains about stuff like that, we know which side of the track is the wrong side. You dishonest lowrent freak.
“I don’t need to know naffing”.
Correct, you’re a fat lard ball who has no idea about much.
Go on, fuck this thread up like you do everywhere you drag your putrid carcass.
I don’t. It’s you that fucks up threads even open threads, you vile piece of shit. Everything you say about me is projecting.
Let me repeat again, so you don’t get away with your bullshit again. What you were doing on the Thought leadership threads is nothing like banning Bird, you hypocrite.
You’re like a blog version of Satan. You change the tempo on every blog thread with evil, negative crap.
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I think its pretty awesome, its revealed just how wrong I was on the effectiveness of conscripts as a viable ‘backbone” for a military. They seem to be fine on their own turf, on the defensive, but catastrophically inept at attacking or supporting their armor units.
Australian conscripts in PNG were extremely good. You could argue that PNG was then part of Australia but in the 1945 Bougainville offensive for example there was a widely held view that it was an unnecessary campaign*. Yet the guys fought superbly.
(* I don’t think so, for several reasons, but then I might think differently if I was waist deep in swamp whilst carrying a Bren.)
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What she said isn’t what she meant.
Alles ist klar!
Nicht wahr?
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