The Anti-Targ

It's pretty stupid. Inherent athletic ability is not equal, and neither is the intrinsic testosterone level in females and males. If people with higher than "normal" testosteronne levels must lower them by artifical means, does that mean people with lower testosterone levels than normal should be allowed to elevate them by artificial means? I aspire to athletic greatness, but my natural hormone levels prevent me from achieving that greatness. I demand to be allowed to correct for my natural deficiency in order to achieve my dreams.

Global warming putting more water into the air and thus some of that water vapour eventually making down to Antarctica one should expect more precipitation over Antarctica just like we are expecting and experiencing more precipitation in other parts of the world. I think one of the things that needs to be kept a close eye on is acceleration of the seaward movement of Antarctic glaciers. Ice sheets are keeping glaciers moving at a, well, glacial pace, but if ice sheets are disappearing and more snow is dropping inland then the forces holding glaciers back will diminish relative to the forces pushing them towards the ocean. Over the next decades it's possible we will see a rapid (relatively) acceleration in glacial movement.

Alternatively, they got Al Capone on tax evasion, not for any of the really bad crimes he definitely committed, or was at least an accessory to.

Will it be unprecedented in modern times for a country to enshrine some sort of guaranteed indigenous influence on policy and law? I assume if passed this would become part of Australia's constitutional arrangement? We only have legal indigenous rights because the crown signed a treaty with most Maori back in 1840 and after over 100 years of it being left to largely languish in obscurity (and partly rat eaten) the treaty provisions have been applied and used to compensate for past injustices. But if that treaty from 1840 did not exist I wonder what our indigenous relations would be or if there would be anything in law that provided for a guaranteed indigenous voice.

A pretty big decision by World Athletics https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/03/24/trans-women-banned-from-female-athletics/ But they say the door is not closed forever I thought Sabine Hossenfelder did an interesting and thoughtful piece on this issue last year.

Pure speculation, but I'm guessing to get a military manufacturing contract in Europe your machinery might have to be metric. 105mm = 4.133858267716535 inches or 4 and 26771653543307/200000000000000 inches.

Suffering, misery and disaster are what drives pardigmatic changes in humanity. Warnings of the need for pandemic preparedness were met with half-arsed responses from governments and societies. An actual killer pandemic is what drove substantial changes, and, hopefully meaningful preparedness for future pandemics. There's two types of fear: fear of what might happen or a perceived threat, often leading to negative or harmful decisions esp when the perceived threat is a group of people: Jews, gays, non-white people, trans-people, women. Then there is fear of an actual crisis and disaster that is happening. That usually leads to good decisions by those who take that disaster seriously and look to address the causes. One of the problems with this pandemic is that too many people were dismissive or conspiratorial about it, so the good decisions that were made or could have been made were thwarted.

You mean it's true what they say?

The number of deniers is less important than the influence they have on policy. Every year they are able to delay the implementation of policies that can rapidly reduce emissions worsens the eventual severity of the disaster that looms over us. We appear to have reached one point of no return (the chance to avoid warming going above 1.5C), so now the question is whether those influences will see us blow past another point of no return.

A budget is meant to lay out the govt's spending plans for the coming 12 months. It's playing games to announce free childcare in a budget when it's not going to be implemented in the financial year, and possibly not even in this parliamentary term.

Sure, stagflation has 3 pits, inflation, negative economic growth and increasing unemployment. The first two pits are already established facts. The third pit is all but guaranteed as a stated aim of pretty much every RB that has been putting up interest rates and while I doubt the next official unemployment figures will show high unemployment in an absolute sense, I am pretty sure it will show increased unemployment.

We're largely in agreement there. Something devastating will need to happen, and I think that something is coming in the next handful of decades, things can't carry on the way they are. Which doesn't seem "soon" to a lot of people, but considering the span of human history a handful of decades is the blink of an eye. The combination of the inequalities neo-lib capitalism inherently causes and climate change remaining inadequately addressed (mostly because of neo-lib capitalism) is a potent combination for creating a tipping point to global catastrophe. Looking on the bright side my go to reality checker on fusion recently put out a much more optimistic video than I thought. Commercialisation being a decade away at least, and then large scale deployment some time beyond that means it does not meet the Monbiot "next few months" criteria. But by the mid 2030s it might mean we have a solution to getting ahead of the demand curve that keeps coal, oil and gas generating plants needing to continue to operate to avoid black outs or rationing.

But any other child, fine no problem? That's the problem with "as a parent" arguments. They are motivated more by selfishness not love. Personally I would be sad beyond belief, but if the death of my son (of which I have two) meant saving humanity from an apocalyptic scourge I would encourage my son to do it. Many is the parent that has happily told their sons (and more recently daughters) to go off and fight in a war for the good of their country / freedom / democracy etc, implicitly being willing for their child to die as well, since not everyone returns from a war. Was it though? As Ellie's defacto parent in the moment he also had the moral option of consenting on her behalf, knowing that she probably would have made the sacrifice herself. Wrong for Marlene not to ask Ellie, but Joel could mitigate that wrong, even up to the last minute before shooting the doctor, and possibly even after that and before shooting Marlene. You're right that it was a bit of narrative BS in the game and the show, there was no need to immediately go to the kill step. But given 20 years ago the greatest scientific minds couldn't figure out a cure or vaccine, it's also not outside the realms of realism that there is no reason to believe taking blood samples or any other non-lethal interventions would help. A recoverable brain surgery might have been possible 20 years earlier with fully functional medical infrastructure, but with 2 nurses and one surgeon, not so much.

Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Last Q of 2022 saw, unsurprisingly, negative GDP of -0.6%. RBNZ in it's interest rate panic reaction has steered us right into stagflation, since there is very little doubt that Q1 2023 will also be negative, with additional interest rate rises, cyclones and flooding. RBNZ said it was looking to deliberately plunge us into recession towards the end of 2023, but we're there already. Bloody marvellous!

I'll interpret this as you not purporting to speak for all religions and religious people. There are a lot of people of faith who do not hold any of the attitudes you might be attributing to us. Unfortunately a lot of the religious people with substantial political power do have those harmful views so you are correct that the prevailing religious influence on policy is working against meaningful action. I'm convinced at least 50% of flat Earthers are just trolls who know it's BS. Just like a lot of 2020/2022 US election deniers also know nothing was stolen.