Open mike 31/01/2021
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The gift that keeps giving: David Seymour has now opened a split in the coalition over the future of National’s promise to build a new medical school. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / TheKakaKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and ...59 minutes ago - Weekly Roundup 22-November-2024
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The speech yesterday by Treasury’s Chief Economic Advisor warning that the books are in worse shape than forecasted looks like it’s part of a softening-up process for either more cuts or a longer wait to get back into surplus. The speech was a highly unusual public preview of Treasury’s Half-Yearly ...5 hours ago - Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2024
Open access notables Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons, Lopez et al., Science Advances: Future changes to the year-to-year swings between active and inactive North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) seasons have received little attention, yet may have great societal implications in areas prone to hurricane ...14 hours ago - Chicken Kiev
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The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti arrived at Parliament on Tuesday – the size is being debated but estimates range from 42,000 to 100,000. The Prime Minister is defending not attending due to some of the organisers being affiliated with Te Pāti Māori. The national gang patch ban came into force ...22 hours ago - ‘These budget cuts are counter-productive and make no sense’
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- Release: Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori call on the Prime Minister to block the Treaty Principle...
The opposition parties stand united for an Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti, rather than seeking to rewrite it. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are working together against the Government’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...2 weeks ago
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- Critical milestones for earthquake buildings review
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- State of the art radiology machine for Auckland
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- Foreign Minister to visit Europe
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- First arrests made under gang patch ban
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- Better support for victims of sexual violence
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- Government moving forward with Regional Deals
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- MSA pilot participant update
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- Fighting for Kiwis in Trade
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- Government continues work to reinstate livestock exports by sea
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- New Zealand’s COP29 National Statement
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- New Zealand supporting loss and damage fund
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- Protecting New Zealand from foreign interference
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- Health survey results to help drive change
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- Final push needed to get to Smokefree 2025
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- New diplomatic appointments
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- Next steps for Regulatory Standards Bill
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- Better coordination of anti-scam efforts
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- Launching the White Ribbon Ride
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- Construction to begin on next stage of Papakura to Drury
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- NZ signs trade deal with Costa Rica, Iceland and Switzerland
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- Government and iwi work together on aquaculture
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- Government launches review to ensure electricity market is fit-for-purpose
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- Speech to Social Investment Hui: Jack and his whānau need our help
Kia ora koutou katoa. Nau mai, haere mai, piki mai. Ki te mihi atu ahau, ki te manwhenua nei, Te Atiawa, Ngāti toa rangatira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Thank you, Andy, for your introduction. Let me acknowledge you as the new Chief Executive of the Social Investment ...7 days ago
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- RNA editing is the next frontier in gene therapy – here’s what you need to know
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- Humans are killing off the old and wise animals that hold nature together. Here’s what must change
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- A man scouring Google Earth found a mysterious scar in the Australian outback – and now scientists...
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Labour claims Government is ‘cherry-picking’ smoking trends data to hide decade-first increase in daily smokers The post Smoke and mirrors in heated tobacco debate appeared first on Newsroom. ...4 hours ago
- Treasury bangs the drum on ‘unsustainable’ superannuation
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- This week three parties stood together – can they withstand the storm to come?
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The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
https://singularityhub.com/2019/08/23/the-promise-of-direct-air-capture-making-stuff-out-of-thin-air/
The cavalry is coming.
The only flaw I see is it means more plastic
and a shed load of energy
“However, the paper also points to the significant challenges associated with such a large-scale, rapid deployment of DAC, in terms of energy use and the need for raw materials.
“The energy needed to run direct air capture machines in 2100 is up to 300 exajoules each year, according to the paper. This is more than half of overall global demand today, from all sources, and despite rising demand this century, it would still be a quarter of expected demand in 2100.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/direct-co2-capture-machines-could-use-quarter-global-energy-in-2100
Baaa humbug
Set them up with solar and wind put in the arid wastes . Jobs for the locals ,carbon removed from the atmosphere, jet fuel what's not to love.
Lol…humbug? possibly, but I suspect we will be have more immediate uses for that energy which we can produce
"Consultation on the Climate Change Commission’s first draft advice to Government will open on Monday 1 February.
A full copy of the advice will be available on our website at 2pm on Sunday 31 January, the day before consultation opens."
https://www.climatecommission.govt.nz/news/upcoming-consultation/
there's a post https://thestandard.org.nz/having-a-say-on-how-nz-transitions-to-a-post-carbon-society/
so i have (subsequently) seen
this is the year the government must step up, shake off the shackles of the justice industry and the faux christians and decriminalise maryjewanna.
and the shackles of the perfed ex-police officer drug-testing (and self interested promotion of drug-testing) companies.
I am sure with all the issues that we currently face, that such a 1st world issue being solved as you so wish will be the panacea.
With self drive cars and jobs being done by robots and computer's there will be no need to drug test.
Oh, good, we can all stay home, watch YouTube and smoke pot all day. I can’t wait for it to happen …
Better than to be still watching reruns of Reefer Madness. It would be terrible to have more of these guys.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/50-most-successful-marijuana-enthusiasts-you-should-know-114790/
With all those cow pastures, you guys need to decriminalize psilocybin. We did:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2020/11/oregon-becomes-first-state-to-legalize-psychedelic-mushrooms.html?outputType=amp
Here’s a great documentary:
Worked for Bill Hicks
The William Shatner version of "Common people" with visuals done by someone with far too much time to poor over the original Star Trek videos.
I knew there was a reason (apart from not having TV in the 60s) for avoiding the original Star Trek.
Surprisingly the Shatner talk over for Common People is actually good. As was Joe Jackson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_People#William_Shatner_cover_version
I have a soft spot for the original series. Some bits or episodes are as bad as one can imagine in every way: clunky acting, clunky story, abysmal effects, 60s attitudes…
But there are episodes that are just fecking awesome. Possibly maybe even better because they're payoff for sitting through Tribbles.
Star trek is responsible for the slight sadness I feel that I'll never get to go roaming out there to edge. edge.
But am loving watching mr Musk leading the charge ,
That dude pisses me off.
I give him a 20% chance of creating indentured servitude on Mars or just creating an elysium satellite for rich people in orbit.
Probably but the frontier is always a wild place .
Humans are expansionist to our core might as well accept it and get on with . Going way out west to chance your luck on mars has to be preferred to the lofty goals of getting a fucking huge mortgage and slaving your life away to pay it off .
I heard years ago that the westward expansion in the US had only a third of settlers survive five years out there.
And that was to open territory – Musk has floated the idea of indentured servitude for the people who can't afford the trip. And once you're out there, you have to pay company store rates.
So , there are no adventures left on this planet , why do you think people do daft shit like climb Everest, take selfies from cliff edges and join motorcycle gangs ? Because life is so fucking boring and safe . And opportunities are limited to those that already have ,and those rare bird high achievers.
Space ,the final frontier my friend.
[Shatner voice] surely… didn't they know that… the BIGgest adventure… is the exploration… of the human condition?
[Spock raises eyebrow, fade to credits]
♫ oooo-OOOOOOO-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooooooo ♬
I am more of a Babylon 5 fan, and seeing Koenig cossak dancing like that was a bit of a shock; when you think of him more as Bester, than Chekov. Also that scifi show's depiction of the; Mars dome colonies, seems more likely with someone like Musk exploiting them. The CG in the first couple of series is pretty janky though.
Anyway, if you are looking for; musical, Star Trek related, pop culture; I find it hard to go past this (although the spliced grindhouse scenes are so brief as to barely rate as a slashup):
Once seen – it can never be forgotten. Nor unseen.
However I will try…
Musk is just the ground breaker .,more will follow .
If I had my way we the un would have teeth and it would devide all new planets up along territorial lines that exist on earth now ,so little old nz owns a plot of equal % in area on any and all planets we move to in roughly the same place on the new rock as we control now
But that's wishful thinking
I susoect Musk's little settlment, if it even happens, will end up like the Darien Expedition.
Apparently Musk is wanting to send non-crewed missions there next year.
I suspect a more realistic and sustainable option would be an LEO station supporting connections to an Aldrin Cycler (maybe with a staging point at HEO or an earth/moon lagrange point, and a mars orbiter supplying the actual landing missions.
The bulk of the problem is getting off Earth. Two stages of Saturn V got three astronauts… 200 miles up. The relatively tiny third stage got them the rest of the way to the moon.
Indentured servitude doesn't happen out of a sense of adventure, it happens because of economic coercion at home. Or at least the sense that the new life will be an improvement. What's worse than indentured servitude on Mars? Maybe an Earth ravaged by water wars and crop losses due to climate change? Maybe we should fix our shit at home before going off on the next big adventure.
The early adventurers are not the same group as the ones that come after to colonise and do the hard graft.
Lots to be learned from Beltalowda. I also don't trust Musk.
(btw, expansionist colonising is not universal to human cultures. Some cultures colonise, others don't).
Bloody brilliant thanks.
brilliant and cringe all at the same time.
Fossil pandemics embedded in our genes and most other mammals.
Writing and debugging unit-tests and browsing youtube seems to work.