Open mike 16/07/2024

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, July 16th, 2024 - 36 comments
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36 comments on “Open mike 16/07/2024 ”

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  1. SPC 1
    16 July 2024 at 6:20 am

    Those who participated in Zoom meetings during the pandemic will be pleased to know that within 2 years they may be able to choose to be represented by an AI version of themself.

    This might be an explanation of those deep fake images about the net, preparing us for the AI avatar front of others in the office. Gamers have been preparing for this for years.

  2. Dennis Frank 2
    16 July 2024 at 7:24 am

    Trump wasn't sure if he was saved by luck or God: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c29dn2j53w2o

    This is savvy framing. Secular voters will reckon it was pure luck that he turned his head at the right time so that the bullet clipped his ear instead of blowing off the back of his skull. Christian voters will know that God sent an angel down to intervene in the situation, and deflect the 8 bullets the shooter fired at Trump.

    So Trump instinctively provided effective explanations for both halves of the electorate. The angel seems to have done a good job, but the bullet that got so close almost eluded his efforts. God's will is also evident in the judge dismissing the charge that Trump illegally stored federal documents at this home after he left office.

    Since tv camera's showed the entire world that he had done so when fed raiders found them there, everyone knows Trump is guilty as sin. The judge found a technicality upon which he could feasibly claim that the prosecution was invalid: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/takeaways-dismissal-classified-documents-trump-cannon/index.html

    So the AG appointed the prosecutor illegally, the judge determined. The AG can have another bite at the cherry, apparently, and they ought to! Meanwhile, God's will be done.

  3. Ad 3
    16 July 2024 at 9:10 am

    I want to go to sleep and wake up after the US Presidential inauguration.

    It's just getting too depressing.

    • mpledger 3.1
      16 July 2024 at 9:43 am

      Especially now that Trump has chosen his running mate.

      • Bearded Git 3.1.1
        16 July 2024 at 9:52 am

        Yep Biden has done some great work supporting the transition to EV's, in the process taking on the USA auto industry. Trump's running mate/VP, JD Vance, will ditch all of this on day one if elected.

        Vance says “If you think that man-made climate change is a catastrophic problem, the solution for it is for us to produce more of our own energy, including fossil fuels, here in the United States”

        "He [Vance] has proposed a bill that would repeal certain tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act for electric vehicles and would create a $7,500 tax credit for gas-powered cars manufactured in the U.S."

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Vance

        • lprent 3.1.1.1
          16 July 2024 at 12:40 pm

          Vance says “If you think that man-made climate change is a catastrophic problem, the solution for it is for us to produce more of our own energy, including fossil fuels, here in the United States”

          Clearly rational logic and intelligence has escaped this fool. Does he truly believe that a global problem can be fixed by where you pump fossil carbon from?

  4. SPC 4
    16 July 2024 at 9:40 am

    Oz led a grid battery revolution.

  5. aj 5
    16 July 2024 at 10:02 am

    A spiteful, petty, and corrupt government. But …. tax cuts!

    https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/%E2%80%98heartbroken%E2%80%99-programme-forced-stop

    Last night’s Cargill Academy graduation ceremony may have been the last for the foreseeable future, after the government recently cut its funding.

    Graduation step towards life-long independence

    The education programme, run by Cargill Enterprises, aims to give people with physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities more independence by improving their numeracy and literacy, and teaching them about the digital world.

  6. bwaghorn 6
    16 July 2024 at 10:17 am

    https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/infrastructure/kiwirail-recommended-build-and-sell-option-to-resolve-551m-ferry-contract

    So the government had a way out of the ferries without loosing $400 million,

    But chose not to, so national would rather lose $400 million so they can play politics , or are to stupid to understand a good idea!?

    • lprent 6.1
      16 July 2024 at 12:35 pm

      They haven’t demonstrated much competence at actual governing to date. Mostly they have demonstrated that their opposition tactics are very costly when they come into government – their dropping of the 3 waters funding being an even more expensive debacle. Those ongoing double digit rate rises are going to hurt a lot of people, and their idea that they they can somehow separate ownership and the associated financial risks of ownership are just as insane as a Ponzi scheme over the medium and long term.

      However that article does make me want to resubscribe to BusinessDesk. However my history with them after the purchase by NZME makes me really reluctant. They took the annual billing put of my account twice. Then there was a real hassle of getting a full refund, and the annoyance of them questioning me closing my account. Put me off having anything to do with NZME yet again, even at second hand.

      • bwaghorn 6.1.1
        16 July 2024 at 12:43 pm

        Be cheapskate like me , could only see the first para and that was enough for me to extrapolate it into an opinion that the nats are either arshole or incompetent.

  7. Stephen D 7
    16 July 2024 at 11:00 am

    A fascinating read about the economics of subsidies. China has it right, and the consumer benefits. For the rest of us, the billionaires benefit most.

    ”What China has done in industry after industry is to flatten the supply curve by subsidizing hordes of producers. This spurs innovation, increases output and crushes margins. Value is not being destroyed; it’s accruing to consumers as lower prices, higher quality and/or more innovative products and services.”

    https://asiatimes.com/2024/07/chinas-subsidies-create-not-destroy-value/

  8. Bearded Git 8
    16 July 2024 at 11:28 am

    Business commentator Oliver Lewis is saying right now on RadioNZ's Nine to Noon that Kiwirail's preferred position on the two large ferries was to build them and then on sell them, rather than cancel what was a really good price in the contract. This would result in either no loss or even a small profit. The proceeds from the sale could be used for whatever ferries were subsequently purchased.

    The foolish pig-headed COC cabinet rejected this option and decided instead to cancel the contract. All recent media reports I have heard say that this will mean a cost to the government of hundreds of millions, possibly close to half a billion, dollars. Lewis suggests that resolution of the dispute with the Korean shipbuilders may well end up in London courts.

    This catastrophic stuff-up needs to be highlighted again and again before the 2026 election.

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon

    • Mikey 8.1
      16 July 2024 at 11:56 am

      I look forward to hearing Simpeon Brown's explanation.

    • alwyn 8.2
      16 July 2024 at 2:30 pm

      Did they say who they were going to sell them to?

      And what the price was going to be? And how did they come up with the figure for the sale which would not take place for a couple of years?

      And why they thought that there job was to be spec builders instead of actually running the railways properly which is the job they were being paid for?

      • bwaghorn 8.2.1
        16 July 2024 at 5:45 pm

        Point of order!!

        Forced to be spec builders buy petulant willis.

      • Bearded Git 8.2.2
        17 July 2024 at 4:35 pm

        Alwyn-Kiwirail had been advised that they would easily be able to sell the ferries either at cost or at a small profit.

        While I accept that they are not usually involved in selling new ferries this would probably have saved several hundred million dollars compared with Willis' hasty and ill-advised cancellation.

    • DavidM 8.3
      16 July 2024 at 6:30 pm

      RNZ are delving deeper into the IREX project. This piece looks at allegations Labour underfunded the project scope:

      Interislander: How Labour's compromise over iReX ferry project led to $100m 'cost burn' (msn.com)

      The next piece will look into the decision the new government made to scrap it.

      From what I've read so far (edit) across all sources, I'm of the view cancelling IREX was the right decision.

  9. joe90 9
    16 July 2024 at 11:51 am

    The lettuce has yet to arrive.

    @chadbourn.bsky.social‬

    Like a harbinger of doom, Liz Truss has arrived at the RNC.

    https://bsky.app/profile/chadbourn.bsky.social/post/3kxe3w2jh622j

  10. joe90 10
    16 July 2024 at 12:16 pm

    Now where would a disturbed young man, and a registered Republican, get the idea that assassinating tRump was something he should do? (video inside)

    //

    @patriottakes

    5 months ago, Alex Jones and InfoWars guest Ivan Raiklin discussed how assassinating Trump would be beneficial, according to them, because it would lead to retaliatory “in kind” assassinations of a “deep state” list which includes President Joe Biden.

    Ivan Raiklin: “If they [assassinate Trump], option 2, behind Trump, is going to be so much better for us and so much worse them.”

    Alex Jones: “I was about as to say, If they kill him, that’s best case scenario from a sick level. From a sick level medium, ‘Oh, please kill him.’ I mean, it’s so good after that.”

    Raiklin: “Oh, it’s going to be the best cleansing and the fastest cleansing that we’ve ever seen in my lifetime. I guaran—, I access, with almost certainty, with the highest level of confidence, that if they assassinate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

    https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1812460546236518607

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

    • lprent 10.1
      16 July 2024 at 3:13 pm

      That has been a constant meme in the nutbar right for a number of years – sacrificing Trump to get a ‘cleaner’ solution. I wonder what Trump thinks about it?

      • Dennis Frank 10.1.1
        16 July 2024 at 3:26 pm

        Well, the shooter was both gun nut and registered Republican, so that dual thing can seem a plausible basis to many viewers.

        And get some of us into a dangerous tendency to roll eyes in different directions simultaneously.

        • Bearded Git 10.1.1.1
          17 July 2024 at 4:39 pm

          I love the way the MSM has repeated endlessly that the shooter contributed $15 dollars to a "liberal" cause when he was 17. As if this is relevant at all.

          (Here "liberal" is used almost as a swear word)

  11. Dennis Frank 11
    16 July 2024 at 1:01 pm

    So we have a staunch moral stand:

    Tana spoke to 1 News, telling them her party did not support her through the lengthy investigation process, that she had nothing to do with her husband’s business dealings, and that at this stage she plans to remain a Member of Parliament… When asked what mandate she had to remain in Parliament, the list MP said: “It’s not so much about mandate, as about the kaupapa.”

    Being maori means being staunch perhaps but the key point is the side-step.

    Tana went on to say she was “concerned” about the party’s summary of the findings, saying the report did not say migrant exploitation had occurred, or that she was responsible for it in any capacity.

    A wokeist would be obsessed by impressions rather than reality though, and wokeism is where the current crop of Greens seem to be at. She could have pointed that out.

    Newsroom understands Tana and her partner have not signed off the report’s release. https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/07/15/darleen-tana-has-no-plans-to-resign-from-parliament/

    So therefore it cannot be released? Which rule or law forbids freedom of information?

    “Natural justice wasn’t served in that report, it was not comprehensive. It did not include the voices of key witnesses who were directly involved in the situations,” she told 1 News.

    Well that makes it seems as if the lawyer hired by the GP didn't do the job properly.

    • Nordy 11.1
      16 July 2024 at 2:24 pm

      You are now taking gullibility to a new level. Of course they refused to sign off the report. That is what guilty/stupid people do to delay the inevitable. The report was about her knowledge of the issues and from when, not the issues themselves. It's not that hard to understand.

      • Dennis Frank 11.1.1
        16 July 2024 at 3:06 pm

        not that hard to understand

        smiley Depends how keen anyone is to jump to a premature conclusion, I guess.

        Not everyone has your skill level when it comes to reading the mind of a lawyer.

    • Incognito 11.2
      16 July 2024 at 5:54 pm

      Here we go again, attacking the Green Party with:

      1. moronic stereotyping (cf. ‘staunch’)
      2. moronic ‘analysis’ through quasi-woke-ist lens
      3. feigned ignorance of privacy laws
      4. jumping to conclusions on expert matter in a typically flawed and biased manner
  12. Michael Scott 12
    16 July 2024 at 2:47 pm

    Elon Musk has committed 45m per month to elect Trump.

    • Incognito 12.1
      16 July 2024 at 3:01 pm

      Elections are in the pocket for/of those with deep pockets. This is an increasing intrinsic flaw that can turn the fragile façade and foundation of any democracy into a sham.

    • Macro 12.2
      16 July 2024 at 4:17 pm

      Small change for Eion on his $56Billion salary.

      that's less than $200 m or 0.36%

      • Michael Scott 12.2.1
        16 July 2024 at 5:44 pm

        Wow I had no idea anyone could earn that much. He is a financial genius.

        I assumed he was short of cash after his Twitter purchase resulted in so many leaving the platform.