Daily review 04/09/2024

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, September 4th, 2024 - 17 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

17 comments on “Daily review 04/09/2024 ”

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  1. bwaghorn 1
    4 September 2024 at 6:29 pm

    https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/09/03/justification-for-raising-speed-limit-on-motorway-is-nonsense/

    brown talks nonsense, but the bogan's and the angry rich people that drive fast will vote for him

  3. joe90 3
    4 September 2024 at 7:46 pm

    lol

    @Larry_Ligar

    Looks like the West Coast minerals industry is going gangbusters in the capable hands of Shane Jones

    https://x.com/Larry_Ligar/status/1831032320880726374

  4. joe90 4
    4 September 2024 at 8:11 pm

    Treating a deal with our 5th largest trading partner like an Uber booking, a billion in penalties and an arm and a leg to keep the old ferries running.

    Heckuva job there, Nics.

    /

    New Zealand officials notified their Korean counterparts they were scrapping the Interislander ferry project via text message less than an hour before the public announcement.

    That's despite the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) earlier warning ministers cautious talks with South Korea would be required.

    "Careful and deliberate communications with the Korean Government would be required in advance of any public announcement," the Ministry said in an 8 December memo.

    Asked for evidence of that communication under the Official Information Act, MFAT provided two text messages.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/526974/korea-ferry-cancellation-talks-were-two-texts-sent-within-an-hour-of-announcement

    • Muttonbird 4.1
      4 September 2024 at 8:51 pm

      This is a feature of wheeler-dealers and shysters like the Nats. Remember, the business community is by definition encouraged to cut corners, take risks, intimidate both suppliers and clients, and oppose regulation. Integrity is a nice to have until it gets in the way.

      They prefer to operate in an environment where rules are bent and things are just tried out to see what happens.

      Well, we'll see what happens.

  5. joe90 5
    4 September 2024 at 9:37 pm

    Talia Lavin on the cookers determined to Make America Sick Again.

    .

    It’s just that the contemporary opponents of pasteurization—the “raw milk” movement, as they call themselves—are so fucking dumb, and so knee-jerk about it. The movement is endorsed by such disparate grifters as Gwyneth Paltrow; RFK Jr.’s erstwhile running mate, Nicole Shanahan; Christian TikTokers; the existentially stifled Mormon tradwife that is the wanly smiling face of Ballerina Farm.

    […]

    It’s “better for you!” Getting diphtheria will trigger the libs! It’s got super special vitamins! Pasteurization is a Communist plot!

    It’s not.

    […]

    It’s unambiguously a good thing. The fact that this “debate,” such as it is, even exists speaks to the kind of yawning gulf between realities that puts us at this grim precipice of an election. If we can’t even agree that boiling milk for ten seconds or so to kill germs and save kids is a good thing—what the fuck is consensus reality even about anymore?

    https://buttondown.com/theswordandthesandwich/archive/raw-milk-and-the-collapse-of-consensus-reality/

    • weka 5.1
      5 September 2024 at 1:00 am

      . In an industrial context…

      My understanding is that once humans were congregating in cities, they also started factory farming, and it was impossible to keep herds clean enough to avoid the diseases she is talking about. Pasteurisation was necessary because of factory farming.

      That's relatively recent, in the last several hundred years in euro and US cultures. It would be interesting to see what other cultures did. Did they just endure a lot of really nasty diseases? Did they manage animal husbandry differently.

      I've drunk raw milk a fair bit. I have farming relatives who all drank raw milk. My mother grew up on a farm where they all drank raw milk. This is common even now on industrial dairy farms. Cow's milk isn't inherently dirty but fir some reason, some humans are pretty successful at making it so.

      The Americans are crazy, and raw milk is tied in with the strong libertarian politic. You can pry my raw milk from my cold dead hands kind of thing. But that's not the same as raw milk being inherently dangerous. In our current state of society, we can have the best of both worlds. People that want raw milk can buy it from smaller farms who are all regularly testing their milk. MAF have shifted on this significantly in the past ten years and now support raw milk sales under specific conditions.

      In the same way that milk pathogens are connected to factory farming, they are also connected to shitting on the environment.

      • weka 5.1.1
        5 September 2024 at 1:01 am

        the reason that many people drink raw milk is because it has health benefits. Did she talk about that?

        • Belladonna 5.1.1.1
          5 September 2024 at 8:02 am

          IIRC, the main health risk of raw milk consumption is tuberculosis (Bovine TB can be transmitted to humans via milk).
          If you are very confident that there is no bovine TB in your milk source, and/or that antibiotics are an effective method of treatment (becoming less and less true, as antibiotic resistant strains of TB emerge) – then you can choose to discount this risk.
          However, both solutions are only present in relatively 'high' tech societies.

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8815239/

          • tWig 5.1.1.1.1
            5 September 2024 at 9:08 am

            "There have been a number of infectious diseases linked to the consumption of
            unpasteurised milk, including campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, Escherichia coli (E.
            coli) O157:H7 infection (Shiga-toxin producing E. coli; STEC), listeriosis, tuberculosis,
            brucellosis, yersiniosis, staphylococcal enterotoxin poisoning, and streptococcal
            infections. Healthy cattle are reservoirs of E. coli in New Zealand, and bacterial
            contamination is an inevitable consequence of the milking process."

            2015 NZ govt review on supposed benefits of raw milk.

            Which is why those selling raw milk in NZ must adhere to testing for pathogens in every milk batch they sell, and must also have a customer register to inform them if contamination is detected.

          • weka 5.1.1.1.2
            5 September 2024 at 2:48 pm

            as tWig points out, it's also the gut pathogens. But the same principle applies. Where one is confident in the source (and knowing they selling legally which means they are testing), then I agree it's a reasonable choice where one is informed.

            However, I also think that humans have used milk products for a very very long period of time, and mostly knew how to do this without excessive risk. Problems arise with industrialisation.

            I have drunk milk from non-testing farms, back in the day. It's not illegal to do so, it's only illegal to sell it for human consumption outside the rules. I felt very confident because each time I did it, I knew and trusted the farmers (whose families also drank the milk).

            • Belladonna 5.1.1.1.2.1
              6 September 2024 at 10:31 am

              Which illustrates my point: if you are A) convinced of the cleanliness and checking processes for your raw milk; and B) convinced of the adequacy of healthcare options available to you to deal with any issues arising; then raw milk is a safe option. If either is not true, it is not a safe option.

              TB has been around for millennia – it was (probably) a disease which arose due to farming (people and domestic animals living in close proximity), not industrialization.
              Yes, prior to pasteurization, people drank milk. And lots of them died from what are now preventable illnesses.

              • weka …
                6 September 2024 at 11:20 am

                I'd like to see some evidence that people died from milk transmitted diseases at a significant rate before animals were farmed industrially. By industrial, I'm talking about the advent of cities, not since the industrial revolution. eg where there was overcrowding of animals because humans were living at high density (not the historical norm).

                Am also very curious now what was happening where humans and animals lived in the same building, because those were also places were food scarcity was an issue, so it wouldn't have been easy to cull animals. If I get time I will do some reading.

              • weka …
                6 September 2024 at 11:38 am

                And lots of them died from what are now preventable illnesses.

                my general understanding about public health is that many illnesses have been solved by raising standards of living. Things like good housing (not overcrowded, warm/dry), and better diet/consistent access to nutrients. Medicine helps too, but it's those other things that form the basis of it.

                so the question becomes before let's say the industrial revolution, what was the historical norm? It's tempting to think humans had lives that were nasty brutish and short, and that was true in some places and times. But not inherent I think.

                So the idea that drinking raw milk caused a lot of harm isn't a given.

                • Belladonna …
                  6 September 2024 at 1:13 pm

                  Not really. The advent of effective antibiotics (e.g. Penicillin) did far more to combat mortality (especially infant mortality) than any increase in standards of living.

                  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369527419300190

                  The question now, is how we will cope without effective antibiotics – and will this mean a reversion to lower survival rates for diseases we have previously been able to treat. Certainly TB (just as an example related to this thread), is growing in antibiotic resistance.

                  Access to food (except for actual famine) doesn't really make a huge difference in mortality; understanding of nutritional value does – (eat your greens, so you don't get scurvy) although folk wisdom covers a lot of the basics. You may (as a society) be shorter, but there's no evidence that food quality alone is going to result in you dying sooner.

                  Prior to the Industrial revolution – some humans did well (wealthy upper classes and guilds), some did really poorly (peasants). Famine was a constant risk. Child mortality was extremely heavy (there's a reason that pre-industrial societies had a lot of children, so that some survived). Diseases (not only the Black Death, but other epidemics) were widespread and fatalities were heavy. Those, of course, are the societies with written records, where we have some level of evidence.

                  We don't have anything like the same level of evidence for pre-literate societies – but we do have evidence of communities going extinct – sometimes with a correlating explanation, sometimes without.

                  Life for everyone wasn't necessarily nasty, brutish and short – there were golden ages in every society. But no one (not even the most wealthy) had anything like the quality of life that we experience in the 21st century in NZ.

  6. Ngungukai 6
    5 September 2024 at 2:42 am

    $1.4 Billion Budget Cuts to the Health Sector and $2.9 Billion Tax Cuts to Landlords, does not make economic sense to me, maybe I am a bit thick ???

    • Kay 6.1
      5 September 2024 at 8:20 am

      But the Nats are the best economic managers! It doesn't have to make sense, they know what they're doing. /s

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