Open mike 19/10/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, October 19th, 2024 - 33 comments
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33 comments on “Open mike 19/10/2024 ”

  2. Grey Area 2
    19 October 2024 at 7:13 am

    Totally agree. They are beyond incompetent and corrupt. Almost every day they take us down further.

    There is an extra layer of cruelty, callousness,and lack of human decency in everything they do.

    Truly unbelievable.

    Totally appropriate it’s the heartless Van Velden announcing this.

    Reply
  3. gsays 3
    19 October 2024 at 8:05 am

    What a reversal of form!

    The White Ferns are in to the final of the T20 World Cup, having beaten West Indies in the semi-final. Coming up to the competition, they had lost the last 10 games they played.

    A solid opening partnership from veteran Suzy Bates and newbie Georgia Plimmer wasn't supported by the middle and lower order.

    While bowling there were a few dropped catches and Dottin threatened to take the game away with a flurry of sixes. The team held their nerve, the game getting to the final over with WI needing eleven runs from five balls.

    They play Sth Africa in the final 3am Monday.

    Reply
    • Bearded Git 3.1
      19 October 2024 at 9:37 am

      T20 is Mickey Mouse cricket. Slog and giggle.

      Now, the Blackcaps bowling India out for 46 in India in a Test Match-that is news.

      Reply
      • Descendant Of Smith 3.1.1
        19 October 2024 at 10:01 am

        Aye and snapping up that wicket right at the end strengthens our position leading into tomorrow.

        Just hope we don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as we have done a few times in the last ten years.

        Reply
        • Bearded Git 3.1.1.1
          19 October 2024 at 10:58 am

          True…a couple of quick wickets early is the ticket. (Don't let Southee bowl).

          Reply
          • gsays 3.1.1.1.1
            19 October 2024 at 12:00 pm

            I've had to curb my criticism of Southee this test. Started the capitulation on the first day and supported Ravindra through to his century on the second.

            Reply
            • Bearded Git 3.1.1.1.1.1
              19 October 2024 at 12:30 pm

              True…he played very well….7th test 50 which is low given his obvious batting talent….he has been a fantastic servant for the test team….but time to hang up his bowling boots now.

              Reply
    • tsmithfield 3.2
      19 October 2024 at 11:39 am

      I think there were several results that favoured us.

      Firstly, the West Indies beating England. We have tended to struggle against England. Where as West Indies seemed more beatable for us.

      Secondly, South Africa beating Australia. Now we are in the finals, South Africa seems more beatable for us that Australia who we have struggled against.

      In both WI vs England and SA vs Australia, England and Australia would win most of the time in those match ups I expect. But, luckily for us, both England and Austrlia had their occasional losses to those opponents in the same tournament.

      Reply
      • gsays 3.2.1
        19 October 2024 at 11:59 am

        You are correct.

        There have been a lot of odd, unexpected results in this tournament.

        Us beating India to kick off with was a pleasant surprise. As you say, other results have certainly opened up the contest.

        One more game. What a way to send some marvelous players into retirement.

        Reply
      • SPC 3.2.2
        19 October 2024 at 12:21 pm

        We were due. WI won the 20/20 semi-final in 2016, and the loss to them in the 2022 one day tournament cost us a place in the semi-finals.

        Winning against India (who nearly beat Oz) was key.

        The holding wicket helped negate the form of their batters (as well as our own top 4), the little used Halliday and Gaze did enough closing it out.

        Reply
  4. PsyclingLeft.Always 4
    19 October 2024 at 8:34 am

    Clean Rivers. The Public would surely be the Majority ? Farmers the Minority ? Under NACT1 who will get what they want ?

    Public wants fast rivers clean-up but farmers call for handbrake

    Two months of talking to Taranaki people has exposed the split between the farming industry and the rest of the region over polluted rivers.

    Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) community meetings in June and July found most people want cleaner waterways as soon as possible – but the farmer lobby wants a slowdown, worried they will shoulder too high a cost.

    Those Maori…..what more do they want ?

    Iwi and hapū reinforced their consistent call for the highest freshwater standards at hui across the region, calling for awa healthy enough for people to collect kai.

    And.. well, havent they always ?

    Intensifying dairy farming was the main cause of Taranaki water pollution but farmers did not want to be told how many cows they could have.

    TRC policy manager Lisa Hawkins

    "Stocking rates as a proxy for managing further intensification did come under quite a lot of scrutiny," Hawkins said.

    The kickback was so strong the council would likely drop the approach, with evidence unclear about how well limiting stock would improve streams across the region's variety of farms.

    WTF !? I'm sure Andrew Hoggard ex FarmFed Pres and now ACT MP would have been influencing….

    The government last week announced it would no longer require resource consents for future intensification, which Hawkins said would leave a hole in the rules.

    Farm pollution..denial.

    At TRC's first community meeting in Ōkato in June, councillor Donna Cram questioned whether most of Taranaki's pollution was coming from farms, despite mountains of evidence presented to the Policy and Planning Committee on which she sits.

    Cram was until recently on Taranaki Federated Farmers' executive and was 2023 Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year and she still struggled to see beyond the farmer perspective by the end of the meeting.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/ldr/531115/public-wants-fast-rivers-clean-up-but-farmers-call-for-handbrake

    Reply
  5. gsays 5
    19 October 2024 at 9:19 am

    A insightful interview with a genuine, intelligent and compassionate finance spokesperson. Labour's Barbara Edmonds.

    Came across to me as unscripted, considered and sincere. The future got a little brighter with this MP who could articulate an alternative vision without dissing the current hierarchy.

    Reply
  6. AB 6
    19 October 2024 at 9:46 am

    Iwi and hapū reinforced their consistent call for the highest freshwater standards at hui across the region, calling for awa healthy enough for people to collect kai.

    Well, this is a very old and very one-sided battle – the right to gain subsistence from land that is managed in common and 'held' in common (but not owned by anyone), versus having to gain subsistence by abasing oneself to the coercive forces of a labour market. Over several hundred years, the wrong side has kept winning. If you want to know why Seymour et al want to nullify the Treaty, this is it: they want their side to keep winning.

    Reply
    • Subliminal 6.1
      19 October 2024 at 1:33 pm

      Well put AB. I mean hows a privatised health system expected to make any money if we go and stop poisoning the places we live in??

      Whereas public health is enhanced by a clean and healthy environment.

      Its the same with privatised prisons. How can they make any money if namby pamby judges get to divert the crims into rehab?

      The first part is to bend the structure of society by loading up public health and other societal goods with enough costs that it becomes untenable to fund. Then privatise and once privatised there is only incentive to continue degrading the environment and peoples health.

      Funding public infrastructure is the only path to a healthy future because it incentivises a healthy environment and society. When health is public, it makes sense to make good the environment in which we live.

      Reply
  7. Stephen D 7
    19 October 2024 at 9:56 am

    I was at a public meeting last night with Deborah Russell and Craig Renney. He spoke about the economics of what the CoC is doing, and how the economy is in real trouble. And is going to get a lot worse. All data via Treasury.

    Deborah went over the Policy Council and caucus discussions around tax policy, and how to change the conversation. From tax being a burden, to it being an investment in all our lives.

    The Labour Party annual conference is in late November. Expect announcements after that.

    Reply
  8. Dolomedes III 8
    19 October 2024 at 10:24 am

    I've only just come across this good news story. The so-called "Disinformation Project" is closing its doors: https://www.thedisinfoproject.org/

    Their website shows an astonishing level of delusion and paranoia:

    At the same time as disinformation grows, social platforms like X (formally Twitter) and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) are part of a larger trend of companies preventing independent researchers from accessing the open-source data they need to study disinformation growth on their platforms.

    I'd love to knnow how companies are preventing Hannah and Hattotuwa from accessing open source data. Actually, there is probably more data now publicly available than at any other time in history, thanks to an increasing number of research journals requiring authors to make their data publicly available on sites like figshare. But perhaps more importantly, Hannah and Hattotuwa were never "independent researchers". They were shills for the Ardern government's culture war offensive. A researcher is a truth-seeker who asks questions and is open-minded about potential answers. Do Hannah and Hattotuwa really imagine that's what they are?

    Reply
  9. Descendant Of Smith 9
    19 October 2024 at 10:35 am

    We've seen here various National stooges caught on-line pretending to be left wing extremists in order to garner disdain for the left (usually be accidently forgetting which account they were logged in to) but when money is involved you can take it to a whole new level.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/10/pro-trump-dark-money-network-tied-to-elon-musk-behind-fake-pro-harris-campaign-scheme/

    An initiative called Progress 2028 that purports to be Kamala Harris’ liberal counter to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is actually run by a dark money network supporting former President Donald Trump.

    Building America’s Future, the dark money group at the helm of the network, has steered money to a constellation of groups and initiatives boosting Trump’s agenda and spreading messaging aimed at chipping away voters from Harris. The dark money group reportedly received over $100 million in funding from billionaire Elon Musk, along with other donors, the New York Times recently reported.

    Reply
    • SPC 9.1
      19 October 2024 at 12:37 pm

      Musk trying to buy a presidency, an ethics free zone.

      Reply
    • joe90 9.2
      19 October 2024 at 12:52 pm

      Apartheid Clyde doing his thing..

      /

      An Elon Musk-funded group called Future Coalition PAC is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris. In areas of Michigan with relatively large Muslim populations, the Super PAC is painting Harris as a close friend of Israel and is suggesting that she is beholden to the beliefs of her Jewish husband Doug Emhoff; in parts of Pennsylvania with relatively large Jewish populations, the advertisements call Harris antisemitic and say she “support[s] denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands.”

      Meanwhile, a related PAC also funded by Musk is microtargeting likely Black voters on Snapchat with ads that says Kamala Harris is trying to ban menthol cigarettes (surveys have shown that 81 percent of Black smokers use menthols, and big tobacco has disproportionately marketed menthol cigarettes to Black Americans).

      Here are two ads created by Future Coalition PAC. The ad on the left below are being delivered via Snapchat to people in ZIP codes in Michigan that have many Muslim voters; the ad on the right being delivered via Snapchat to people in ZIP codes in Pennsylvania that have many Jewish voters.

      https://www.404media.co/this-is-exactly-how-an-elon-musk-funded-pac-is-microtargeting-muslims-and-jews-with-opposing-messages/

      https://archive.li/ZZt64

      Reply
  10. Dennis Frank 10
    19 October 2024 at 12:13 pm

    If AI is to swing the result for Trump, expect it to do so in the fortnight before election day. The obvious would be a media blitz in which the voice of Kamala Harris is heard.

    A recent study by Ivanti, an IT security and systems management company, revealed that 54% of office workers were unaware that AI can impersonate anyone’s voice. https://techinformed.com/ai-disinformation-2024-us-election-deepfakes-voter-manipulation/

    Saying something likely to cause apparent self-harm to swing voters, I mean. To succeed, such a tactic must affect a slice of the electorate above the margin of error and happen too late for any accusation of fakery to be effective in countering it.

    According to Simon Horswell, senior fraud specialist at Onfido, this proliferation of fake content is evidenced by a 3000% increase in deepfake attempts in 2023.

    Reply
    • Dennis Frank 10.1
      19 October 2024 at 12:52 pm

      Further to that, looks like some yanks need AI to tell them how to vote:

      A CBS news account from June 2024 reported that ChatGPT had given incorrect or incomplete responses to some prompts asking how to vote in battleground states. And ChatGPT didn’t consistently follow the policy of its owner, OpenAI, and refer users to CanIVote.org, a respected site for voting information. https://theconversation.com/4-ways-ai-can-be-used-and-abused-in-the-2024-election-from-deepfakes-to-foreign-interference-239878

      We must keep in mind that half the electorate are below average intelligence, so the reservoir of those in need of AI help is deep. Bit of a worry that the robot is disobeying its owner though. Folks will recall what happened when Dr. Frankenstein's artificial human did so & wonder what next. Perhaps the owner has already given the programmers of the machine a tongue-lashing & the deviation has been rectified.

      Reply
  11. Dolomedes III 11
    19 October 2024 at 1:34 pm

    It would be great if TS moderators protected commentators from actual abuse.

    [TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]

    Reply
    • weka 11.1
      19 October 2024 at 2:31 pm

      we're not mind readers. Point to what you think the problem is, link, explain the problem, and ask us to take a look at it.

      Reply
  12. Subliminal 12
    19 October 2024 at 2:18 pm

    Yahya Sinwar has died heroically fighting the Israeli Occupation Forces on the frontline in Gaza. Drone footage shows a dust covered Sinwar, obviously badly injured with one arm useless after fighting off Israeli soldiers and sustained tank shelling, sitting in a chair in somebodies ruined house. His last act is to hurl a stick in the direction of the drone which takes his life.

    Israel didn't even know who they were fighting until afterwards a soldier examining the scene recognised the face and posted a photo to social media.

    This brave man will be remembered and honoured. At 62 years old, he still led from the front. He refused to hide and preferred martyrdom in service to the struggle for a free Palestine.

    The Resistence will not be defeated. It has reformed more strongly after each of the previous assasinations of leaders.

    https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/yahya-sinwar-killed-combat-israeli-forces-gaza

    Reply
  13. joe90 13
    19 October 2024 at 3:35 pm

    A member of the UN Security Council is hunting civilians with drones.

    Fuck Russia.

    /

    Two years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, civilians living in the frontline city of Kherson are grappling with the new threat from small civilian drones adapted to carry explosives.

    On social media, Russian soldiers openly boast that their objective is anyone or anything that moves. Since the drones began swarming the city in July, there have been thousands of attacks each month, killing 24 civilians and injuring hundreds more.

    “The hunt has started,” urged one Telegram post above a satellite image of an ordinary van. “Any black minivan must be destroyed no matter where are they going.”

    They have dropped grenades on buses and people waiting at bus stops, civilians on bikes and queueing for humanitarian aid, or, like Ustenko, just walking home with shopping.

    […]

    In August there were more than 2,500 attacks, or dozens each day, the vast majority of them inside Kherson city, said Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, a spokesperson for the Kherson military administration. In September there were more than 2,700.

    Between 1 July and 11 October, drones injured more than 400 civilians, including seven children. Many of those injuries were life-changing, including some requiring amputations, Tolokonnikov said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/18/drones-carrying-explosives-stalk-streets-of-kherson-ukraine-russia

    Reply
  14. joe90 14
    19 October 2024 at 3:56 pm

    All the official @KamalaHQ account has to do is to quote Trump's discombobulated weaves .

    @KamalaHQ

    Trump: Over the seas and over our land. And then they want us to have clean. I said wait, we’re gonna be clean but it’s all flying. Just remember that. Does that make sense? In other words, it’s all coming through the currents through the air, they can name it

    https://xcancel.com/KamalaHQ/status/1847000306535612563

    Reply

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