Open mike 08/09/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 8th, 2024 - 25 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:


Open mike is your post.

For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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

Step up to the mike …

25 comments on “Open mike 08/09/2024 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Ed1 1
    8 September 2024 at 10:28 am

    https://centrist.co.nz/victoria-university-of-wellington-studying-ways-to-reduce-stigma-towards-people-with-paedophilic-tendencies/

    Now I have not seen any concern about the study mis-reported here, but at a time when we do have so many with mental illnesses, perhaps it is reasonable for a university to study such illnesses, and the impact that such disturbances have on others – I do wonder whether the author has enquired about the approval that the study claims to have received and why such approval was given. But we live in times of fiercely defended free speech by the ACT party in particular – does this article represent the freedom to hold those with other views in contempt and threaten those who support free speech – as the article says: "The risk that this study could provoke public outrage and political trouble for the university is acute. " – and "The Centrist" has fired the first shot in that campaign to shut down opinions it .

  2. adam 2
    8 September 2024 at 11:52 am

    Corporate scum, are going to throw Kim Dot Com in jail, but they can now kill you for free, if you subscribe to their services.

    First video full of bad language so for those who canny handle that, next video is nicer.

    • gsays 2.2
      8 September 2024 at 12:51 pm

      Thanks adam.

      I don't need much encouragement along these lines. Going back to the 'Home Taping is Killing Music' efforts against cassettes in the '80s, I have bristled against these efforts against sharing what I own.

      So often there is a dividing line with 'artists', one side the art is paramount the other the $ is supreme. eg, Radiohead's pay what you want for the digital release of In Rainbows vs Mettalica's efforts against Napster, the person to person file sharing site.

      Sony's DRM (Digital Rights Management) was confirmation that file sharing and the next iteration of torrents (Pirate Bay), was no less unconscionable when I lost a lot of albums that I had put on my laptop from CDs.

      The examples of Disney and their well buried clauses of legalese is a sign that The States is really now a corporatocrcy and the politicians are there to serve Wall Street and the banks.
      South Park did a great episode on this where Steve Jobs (I think) rants about folk not reading the terms and conditions therefore he was justified using them as a human centipede.

      We here are not a long way from this with the real estate industry and their funding of election campaigns.

  3. tWig 3
    8 September 2024 at 11:57 am

    Is The Centrist an offshoot of The Daily Telegraph? Claims to put up articles from left and right. But its exclusive opinion pieces include: that ex-Green MP Tama is a good argument for 90-day trials; and that MSM headlines overstate the urgency of global warming, quoting a single statistician to support its thesis. Reading further pieces made me go ugh, pure propaganda writing for ACT positions.

    The emphasis in the cited article is on the poor value of 'tax-payer funding' for the research, which would have had to pass the Victoria University ethics committee.

    • tWig 3.1
      8 September 2024 at 12:04 pm

      In answer to the 1st comment, unmoored.

    • joe90 3.2
      8 September 2024 at 1:10 pm

      It appears to be run by Canadians Tameem Barakat and Jim Grenon, a private equity tycoon who made headlines in Canada when he shifted $68.2m to New Zealand while involved in court action with Canada's tax agency.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/election-2023/499861/the-political-newcomers-spending-thousands-to-influence-the-election

      https://archive.li/2hgrd#selection-1055.0-1067.257

      • tWig 3.2.1
        8 September 2024 at 3:11 pm

        Thanks for disclosing that, joe90. Why anyone would waste their time reading at the site, particularly the opinion pieces, I don't know.

        Maybe the site is short of views, and will count any visitors from TS to up their profile. Unfortunately, to get the taste of the site needs a bit of a wade in the muck.

      • Ed1 3.2.2
        8 September 2024 at 7:29 pm

        Thanks for that link. Some time ago I was seeing references to the "New Essentials" website, which appeared to be an attempt to reduce the links between the NZ Taxpayer Union and nuttier article writers with strange beliefs. Peter Williams, who had been on the Board of the "Union", wrote quite a few articles at that time, but I note that now most articles to the new platform are anonymous – and there is a newsletter (which I have not seen) which may peddle material that is even more outrageous. I suspect it is there purely to keep some nutters happy that they have somewhere to keep issues like anti-vax etc going without embarrassing the government, and while also pushing ACT policies . . . . For sure there is nothing "Centrist" about the site!

        • joe90 3.2.2.1
          8 September 2024 at 8:40 pm

          Meanwhile, the planet's largest child sex mob's pedophile shuffle carries on unremarked.

          In the Pacific, a ‘Dumping Ground’ for Priests Accused or Convicted of Abuse

          Over a decades-long period, more than 30 Catholic priests and missionaries moved to remote island nations after they had allegedly abused children in the West, or had been found to do so.

          […]

          Over several decades, at least 10 priests and missionaries moved to Papua New Guinea after they had allegedly sexually abused children, or had been found to do so, in the West, according to court records, government inquiries, survivor testimonies, news media reports and comments by church officials.

          These men were part of a larger pattern: At least 24 other priests and missionaries left New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States for Pacific Island countries like Fiji, Kiribati and Samoa under similar circumstances. In at least 13 cases, their superiors knew that these men had been accused or convicted of abuse before they transferred to the Pacific, according to church records and survivor accounts, shielding them from scrutiny.

          https://archive.li/P9A25 (nyt)

  4. joe90 4
    8 September 2024 at 1:46 pm

    Yup, it was real.

    .

    Influencer Rain Monroe, 21, became internet famous when she debuted her inked devotion to The Donald, set to run in the next presidential race. But lo and behold, she’s now fed up with the negative vibes thrown her way and is considering coughing up serious cash to reverse it.

    Rain's Instagram has been ablaze with updates this week. One pic showed her in the UK capital – totting a "Need money for tattoo removal" sign and seeking charity from strangers while Donald's name blared on her brow for all to see.

    https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/us-news/woman-trump-forehead-tattoo-begging-33611511

    • joe90 4.1
      8 September 2024 at 3:19 pm

      Thinking about this astonishingly destructive behavior by an influencer in England. The kid's 21 years old, she's going to need some pretty flash graft surgery to paper over the scars from removal and she'll go through life as the dipshit who had TRUMP tattooed on her forehead.

      tRump is a malign influence on humanity.

  5. SPC 5
    8 September 2024 at 2:04 pm

    Does Team New Zealand have an oil problem?

  6. joe90 6
    8 September 2024 at 3:07 pm

    Correlates with the maga loons I know – big, noisy fish in a small pond.

    .

    In her forthcoming book Stolen Pride, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild describes her time spent in the towns and hollers of Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District — one of the whitest, poorest, and most-Trump-supporting districts in the entire country. During her time there, she noticed something interesting about who tended to be most excited about the Trump movement.

    “Those most enthralled with Donald Trump were not at the very bottom — the illiterate, the hungry,” she writes. Rather, Trump’s biggest fans could be found among “the elite of the left-behind,” meaning people “who were doing well within a region that was not.”

    […]

    When they tried to use these different “subdimensions” of rural consciousness to predict Trump support among rural voters, they found something interesting. People who saw the plight of ruralities in cultural and political terms were most likely to support Trump, while those primarily concerned about rural poverty were, if anything, less likely to support him than their neighbors.

    https://www.vox.com/politics/369797/trump-support-class-local-rich-arlie-hochschild

  7. SPC 7
    8 September 2024 at 3:08 pm

    On September 20 people will be able to sell their Trump media stock shares – the current share price will then halve. The value of Trump's shares will fall to $1B.

    Prediction.

    Trump will give half his shares to those who fund his election campaign (they are in fact worthless, yet this seems loyal).

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/trump-media-stock-plunge-has-cost-donald-trump-64-billion-in-potential-wealth/KSHYLJUFZZACJLG5JXOFU6PZKI/

  8. tWig 8
    8 September 2024 at 3:25 pm

    A report by an energy economist says an immediate total switch to renewable sources and household solar energy will save NZ billions.

    A revisioning of energy infrastructure as inclusive of home solar energy, eg, by cheap loans, would be part of this realignment.

    • KJT 8.1
      8 September 2024 at 4:45 pm

      The monthly costs of imported oil exceeds the claimed annual net income from dairy.

      It is easy to see the advantages to our balance of trade with substituting home grown more renewable energy.

      Unfortunately not going to happen until the coalition of cockups is removed.

      • Graeme 8.1.1
        8 September 2024 at 6:17 pm

        Unfortunately not going to happen until the coalition of cockups is removed

        Although a trade off for National between donations fossil fuel interests and votes from the solar suppliers and installation tradies.

        When Onslow was being investigated the solar industry and associated tradies were pretty vocal down here about getting an installation on every roof instead of spending billions on pumped hydro. It'd be a good piece of work for the trade, and big benefits for the country. And a lot of votes from the tradies and suppliers. Lets see how this goes once there's a lot of sparkies looking for work.

    • Bearded Git 8.2
      8 September 2024 at 8:59 pm

      Saul was interviewed on Radio NZ's Nine to Noon at 9.07am a couple of weeks ago…well worth a listen….to me he sounded brilliant.

      NZ is being run by Luddites. Even the terrible conservative government in the UK gave some encouragement to renewables.

    • tWig 8.3
      8 September 2024 at 9:11 pm

      South Australia aims for 100%renwables energy by 2027.

  9. BK 9
    8 September 2024 at 5:09 pm

    Dr Mike Joy has a book out which deserves a mention just for the absolutely great job he does, RNZ has a story up but sorry I can't get the link to work

  10. Jilly Bee 10
    8 September 2024 at 6:07 pm

    I thought I should read the article in the Herald about the founder of Sistema products (yes, I have plenty in my kitchen and elswhere throughout the house), Brendan Lindsay. Yes, good on him for taking on Martha Stewart in insisting her line of Sistema products sold in the USA have 'made in New Zealand' on them, when she wanted to have it removed. He is a now an incredibly wealthy bloke, as his empire started in a garage in Cambridge. I was, however pissed off, but not surprised when I read that he had donated generously to National, ACT and N Z First last year, as in his words;

    'Lindsay has donated $50,000 to each of the National, Act and NZ First parties. He is impressed with the direction of the coalition Government – he’s described it as doing an “absolutely tremendous job” – and the performance of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. He was very worried about where the country had previously been headed, for his grandchildren’s sake.

    He knows Luxon personally.'

    He's living the life of Riley, while seemingly happy that plenty of minions below him are in some instances in struggle street, homeless, jobless and generally on the bones of their arses. I fear for some of my grandchildren if the CoC stays in power for too much longer. The article is behind the Herald's paywall.

    I do pay to see what is behind their paywall, as some of the articles are worth reading – Simon Wilson, Shane Te Pou and some of the other journalists who do report on the subject matter in hand, without chanting that it's all the last Government's fault.