Open mike 02/01/2025

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, January 2nd, 2025 - 13 comments
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13 comments on “Open mike 02/01/2025 ”

  1. gsays 1
    2 January 2025 at 10:23 am

    If you want to fill an hour and have something to mull over afterwards I recommend this. Stephen fry in korero with the Triggernometry team.

    Speech codes (Blasphemy Laws), failure of 3rd way politics, "If the world is going to shit, it's because of you and me, not them." Langauge and the radical shift it has undergone. Not facing the truth behind a word.

    A lovely analogy about media as rivers. Formerly they were magnificent. clean and able to be swum in with the occasional turd. Now, like Britain's real rivers, they are basically sewerage and polluted.

    Reply
    • Anne 1.1
      2 January 2025 at 1:12 pm

      Thanks gsays. Will watch this later today. I have huge admiration and respect for Stephen Fry.

      Reply
    • SPC 1.2
      2 January 2025 at 1:21 pm

      Fry is now an Austrian citizen (they allowed descendants of those who left Austria as refugees to have citizenship), so has a European travel enabled passport despite Brexit.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/528649/british-actor-stephen-fry-gets-austrian-citizenship

      Reply
    • CD 1.3
      2 January 2025 at 5:35 pm

      An alternative title for this video could be, "Passive Aggressive Master Wipes Floor with American Deputies."

      By the time he says that the Clintons "…were once at the top of the Wheel of Fortune…" it looked like he was about to splat them, but instead he held true to his paycheck and only slapped them around for the remaining fifty minutes. The camera man caught that one, but the hosts just sat there wide-eyed, blinking. He seems to regret exercising his right to insult people in Ireland, but everything turned out ok, so far, but it was a close thing. Doesn't seem like he'll do it again. Free speech isn't about the right to insult people. Censorship isn't about silencing opposing views. When in doubt, look around, read the room, who will get hurt?

      Three times – or thrice if you're British – that guy tells him it's ok to insult people "because the truth hurts". Three times he replies, no sir, thou shalt not be a dick, with emphasis and example, until finally he ends the thrashing with the comment that Americans shouldn't be so conceited.

      He demonstrates that it isn't the Left (whoever they are) that are to blame, but powerful people of all kinds* who are well-meaning but ignorant (ignorance of the acceptable kind) or prejudiced, as most people are, until life teaches otherwise or smacks it out of them. In my opinion journalism, reporting of any kind, or policy, should not be made to emulate the flow of a river.

      *Notwithstanding those of all flavours with destructive agendas.

      Reply
  2. SPC 2
    2 January 2025 at 1:32 pm

    Factions on the right are advocating that the government not aid domestic media vs international corporations, as other governments have done, so that that media is more dependent on those with the money using them for political purposes to manage public opinion.

    https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/01/stuff_refusing_to_run_ads_on_the_treaty.html

    Reply
    • mikesh 3.1
      2 January 2025 at 4:59 pm

      I was reading a book over the Christmas/New Year, Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, which, though not specifically about global warming, mentioned that investigations have shown that 80% of the ICE contribution to CO2 emissions comes from old 'clunkers' and cars which have clocked up high milages.

      True or false?

      Reply
      • SPC 3.1.1
        2 January 2025 at 6:02 pm

        Unsure, it depends if those two definitions are broad enough to reduce the other to modern dual fuel suburban/city runabouts I suppose.

        Reply
      • lprent 3.1.2
        3 January 2025 at 12:45 am

        Try looking at bunker fuel. That stuff is as CO2 dirty as burning asphalt. Or look at trucks on diesel.

        The CO2 release of hydrocarbon fuels per km has a close correlation with the load being transported, and how far it is transported.

        Cars might travel a lot of kms. But they do not do nearly as much annually as loaded transport, and not nearly as much tonnage moved per km.

        The clunker is not about CO2. It is about smog.

        Nice myth for misinformation though. Redefine ICE engines as just being petrol cars, and it leaves open a diversion from all internal combustion engines – like trucks or ships.

        Reply
    • lprent 3.2
      3 January 2025 at 12:37 am

      Yeah, that was guessed long ago. Basically what was seen after the UK cleaned up their 'fog' (actually s smog) problem in the 50s also caused a rapid rise in relative temperatures.

      What they have now done is to provide direct proof because of the changes in bunker fuel on ships, and it's effects on reducing relatively low cloud formation. Something that can be seen with satellites in open ocean, but not otherwise.

      Now it gets wound into the models.

      What was mostly interesting was how fast the effect dissipated after the change in regulations.

      How long until some idiot engineer wants to do the same thing in the upper atmosphere stacks, without having any idea about downstream effects. It is literally impossible to guess what it will actually do.

      Reply

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