calli at 7.54:

the sunset over Darwin tonight was spectacular, aided as it was by great towers of clouds, many grey with stored raindrops. Others white and puffy and back lit with the orange/red setting sun. There was a moment when the great, burning orb touched the sea…faster…faster…and then it was gone. Nothing quite like a tropical sunset over water.

We sat on the roof, a little beer garden perched to catch the cool breeze.

Welcome to heaven.

the vinyl couches

I think you mean ‘futons’.

Why the fuck do you hang around here matrix? It just seems to make you unhappy

Just wondering why you’re so wound up and abusive to people here?

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/fun-fact-there-is-no-idea-so-stupid?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2MTY3NjkwOSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NTQ2MzMzNDUsIl8iOiI3TjZVKyIsImlhdCI6MTY1MjQ0OTA3OCwiZXhwIjoxNjUyNDUyNjc4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzIzOTE0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.IsOb3PWq9JmWbZ9FAV2e5ycLAjZql-Ekf3FsJzWHs7o&s=r

the 70’s were also a time of truly awful monetary management and deeply deluded regulatory overreach.
among such wonders were price controls as an attempt to rein in inflation. nixon literally tried to freeze wages. it was a hilarity of failure and debacle, because in the war of diktat vs supply and demand, supply and demand is undefeated.
if you mandate a price higher than market, demand collapses.
if you mandate a price lower than market, supply dries up.
this “rocks are hard, water is wet” levels of basic understanding.
the simple fact is this: in a free market, the cure for high prices is high prices.

Dover Beach:

BREAKING: Turkey’s President Erdogan says his country does not favor Sweden and Finland becoming NATO members

Always on the cards.

Then Turkey can go ally itself with some other market group that will put up with his bullshit.
…and take back all the Turks in the EEC who supply him with lots of lovely foreign currency.

CryptoWhale
@CryptoWhale
If you invested $250 million in Luna one month ago, the fourth most popular cryptocurrency at the time, you now have $0.06

Cryptocurrencies are a gigantic scam. It should be illegal to promote them in any form. Luckily, as they are now worth nothing, governments can ban them without any blowback.

Rapunzel-esque.

Sancho Panzersays:
May 13, 2022 at 11:53 pm
The bonhomie* and good humour needs a lift.
I expect to see a big improvement tomorrow.
…
* From Latin, via French.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rrr8yLST4g

Sancho Panzer:

I’m sure there are others, but which ones deserve to be called TrAiTorS and which ones can be given a free pass as having taken a reasonable decision?
Show your workings.

I refused because I’m a grumpy old fart from the National Grumpy Old Fart Church.
Also I’m a committed Contrarian with Sadistic Tendencies.
So, up yours.
Shithead.

730 until 1130.
Doesn’t take long to pack up a couple of guitars and a Bose stack.

It would be good to have a chat about pubs with you one day.
Even in my younger days in Alice we’d go hard until about one in the morning and as the punters got too pissed we then sent them down the road to cause trouble elsewhere.

Rosie, baking is not my forte at all, so I won’t be visiting any helpful sites. I would be a useless reporter of these anyway. There are huge baking competitions held here, and it is quite a thing.

The Director of Activities (aka Hairy) has it all planned out for me anyway, kindly taking note of my interests and of places he’d like to visit or revisit. This is like a Royal Tour and I pity the poor Queen, for to keep moving and meeting up with people and on the hop constantly (plus a lot of figure-improving walking) is exhausting.

Yesterday, for instance, was to be a ‘quiet’ day with a ‘short’ drive. He’s got the gps going now. In the event however we went to Flatford Mill with our picnic lunch, the place where John Constable painted his extraordinary clouds in what are now chocolate-box scenes. As we approached the mill we were driving down country lanes and I thought we’re reach an open field in isolated splendour. No such luck. We round the bend of the last lane and I see a huge tourist bus appear in view, and behind it a very large car park, and that is Constable country today. Visitors everywhere. However, the mill and river and lock are all there, the cottager’s cottage is now a cute little museum (where I bought a handy woolen Boadicca-check rug), and the day was fine, the walkways peppered with ambulant OAP’s.

After lunch we head off and to my surprise I realise we are close to Sutton Hoo again – for his intention is to take me to explore the area of Rendlesham where recent archaeology has suggested a major hall of King Raedwald, of ship burial fame, had his headquarters. No signs at all suggestive of recent archaeology though, so it seems a wild goose chase until I see a sign saying St. Gregory’s Church. It’s a clue, a clue, I say, so turn around, we’ll go there. Cherche le church, I say as I said in the finding of the Bartlow Hills. He’s skeptical and sits in the car while I explore around the church and go into it, to come out exultantly saying yes, I was right, it is St. Gregory the Great, Saxon-named in the early seventh century. No sign to any recent archaeology, but we are on the Raedwald track al right.
Documents inside the church suggest that King Raedwald did have his religious centre here on this sacred site (the church is 13th century). Bede mentions that Raedwald had two altars here: one to the new Christian god and one to the old god/s. Each-way Raedwald, I’ve always called him. More recently that’s made me think of Albo and I thought we might go home now so I could catch up on the Cat and Aussie news.

Not so. Next he drives me to a place called Dunwich, now a small modern village on the Sussex Coast, where a thriving port town in the C13th was gradually taken over by the incoming North Sea, so that the town was holus-bolus sent underwater, to live only in myths of chiming church bells and ghostly apparitions arising at night from the deep. In his Last Kingdom series Bernard Cornwall has my hero Uhtred there fighting and setting fire to a tavern of rowdies who were after his blood. More mythology, I murmur.

To round off the day with even more long hours of country by-ways driving (very scenic, and during which I demolished the best part of my fruit gum collection as a pick-me-up) we arrived at Aldborough much further along the coast, where a Tudor Moot Hall on the seafront is the main point of interest, although the town itself is attractive and redolent for Hairy as he spent a holiday there with his family in his teenage years. They played golf a lot there, but thankfully he didn’t insist on finding the golf course. We bought some lightly smoked haddock to have for dinner that night (we have a kitchen where we are). Freshly caught and smoked in Aldborough, and very delicious it was too.

We finished off today with a quick look at the pre-historical and Roman section of the Museum of London, which was noisy as it is currenting undergoing a big renovation. Came home to cook our British lamb chops with some Waitrose vegies. We have eaten out such a lot that these brief forays into my home cooking seem rather good. Miracles never cease. We leave here tomorrow and head to the Norfolk Broads, waterways for them what likes such. Our friends who have now sold their narrowboat recommend a day out on a self-drive boat here, but I am dubious.

Norfolk are folk from the North, and Suffolk are folk from the south. Not to be confused with the Sussex (South Saxons) and Essex (East Saxons). More to ponder on in my dreams. It’s bedtime here.