The Anti-Targ

Is the lesson here that the way for protest to be effective is by adding a few death threats? https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/04/26/drag-queen-reading-group-cancels-nationwide-tour-amid-protests/ How about the police take some action against the people making death threats? Or are death threats only actually a danger when made by progressive groups?

Damnit, it hasn't been two weeks yet. I won't go full rant then, just say pay to nationalise rail with new money.

The link between interest rates and inflation is complex and depends a lot on debt and savings in the private sector. If there are a lot of savings out there higher interest rates will be net inflationary, because it's putting more money into the system. Right now the RBA is paying $billions in interest to banks because the inter-bank overnight exchange accounts (can't remember the correct name for them) for most banks are flush and the RBA is not forcing banks to buy bonds to takes liquidity out of those accounts and make banks pay interest via overnight borrowing. With the current plentifulness of cash in those accounts every interest rate increase is just RBA stuffing more money into bank's coffers. If the policy of letting banks maintain high balances in those counts continues then the only way to slow the flow of money is to lower interest rates.

Is Raynor a prospect to replace Starmer while Labour is in Govt in a way that won't wind up with Labour losing the subsequent election? I know very little of her or her personal politics, but the impression I get is that she's proper Labour in both the social and economic sense.

When people put the welfare of those living dying and suffering thousands of km away who they will never meet ahead of their own education, then you actually have a movement that might achieve something. I think student strikes and protests opposing crimes against humanity and inadequate action on global warming, if prolonged and sustained, can be effective. It does mean there need to be a clear message that resonates with the wider public though.

Very sound and sensible policies from Binface, but really did he have to spoil it with fantasy nonsense like voter ID policy? Making it easier for eligible people to vote has never done anyone any good.

Assuming they still exist. I guess things haven't got so bad that there are not reliable purveyors of objective information about world political events. But the number of such institutions seems to be a lot less than it used to. Either that or the biases and ideological influences were always there but are more obvious now.

Even Trump thinks MTG is too far off the reservation.

Unless a system pro-actively manages electoral rolls to ensure you are able to vote then it's effectively a voter suppression system. Difficult to manage in countries the size of the US and India esp given a lot of electoral administration is left to states rather than federal agencies. But still, if you are registered in one state to vote and move to another it should be possible to cast a special vote even if you relocated the day before the election.

What more example do people need that capitalism is bad in its construction. Capitalism always arcs towards monopoly or oligopoly. Complex laws and regulations are needed to mitigate against this outcome but they are typically flawed, and in some cases corporations are able to influence laws and policies that facilitate monopoly or oligopoly, including convincing govts that private ownership of a monopoly resource would serve the public interest better than public (state) ownership. Maybe in some parts of the UK it could be viable to install local rainwater+filtration+UV treatment to deliver residential drinking water. Volumes would not be enough to meet all home water use needs, but at least being able to drink clean water should be possible. In-home grey water systems could be viable too. Quite apart from decreasing dependence on a monopoly supplier situation, water conservation in general is a good thing.

I guess that would make you the first human without consciousness, quite the anomaly.

We all have a soul, the only difference of opinion is whether it's a discreet metaphysical entity or an emergent property of neuro-physiological and quantum biological phenomena.

Always suspicious of people taking PR photos with dark sunglasses on. The eyes are the window to the soul, as they say. It's easy to fake smile with your mouth, less easy to fake smile with your eyes, so what are the dark glasses hiding? Is AOC really smiling or has her moral corruption finally begun in earnest?

I imagine [enough] Democrats would vote to keep Johnson seated if only because the next speaker to appear from this Republican House members would probably be even worse (from the Democrat perspective). The only way to avoid that would be for some Republicans to break and become independents to strip the Republicans of the majority and undertake to vote in a Democratic Speaker. I don't see that happening. So I expect it will be Johnson all the way to the swearing in of the next Congress.

That would be right, fat and water don't mix, and in a slow cooked meat curry, or stew, you want the fat to render from the meat, and when that happens the only place it can go is to float on the top. If your meat is too lean to get an observable amount of rendered fat floating on the top then the meat will be dry after a long slow cook. If the meat is too fatty (which was the case with me buying diced lamb instead of buying a whole cut and dicing and controlling the fat content myself) then scooping off a bit of fat will often be necessary, unfortunately you can lose a bit of flavour that way if to remove too much fat.

If the guy was non-partisan in his thinking that there is a massive military industrial-politicians-billionnaires conspiracy controlling the world, well he was not totally wrong in this. When was the last time a true champion of the people ascended to high office? Biden has the appearance of being the closest to it, but he's still largely captive of the neo-lib orthodoxy.

Wonder if it might not have Iran running to China to get some better AA defence equipment.

Yellow is the cheapest here, followed by red followed by shallots. I don't know whether I see white onions ever at the store. I vary between shallots and yellow onions in cooking, depending on how fancy I want / need to be. Plus I always hear Uncle Roger over my shoulder saying "onions are shallots for poor people". Speaking of shallots, making lamb rendang tonight for the daughter-in-law's parents. They are Hindu so can't go with the usual beef. I've made the lamb version a couple of times before. On balance I would say I prefer beef, but the lamb is very good too. Have to scoop off a bit of fat during the cooking process though.

So, Israel has titted Iran's tat, I guess we should be expecting an Iranian tat in the coming weeks. Potential silver lining (though feels a bit gross calling it that), but perhaps the escalation between Israel and Iran will help Ukraine in that Iran will be less able to supply Russia with the hardware it needs to keep prosecuting its war of aggression.

Kinda cool that we will be able to see a nova with the naked eye in our life times, kinda meh that no one will notice it except those who know where to look. Also pretty cool that astronomers are able to be this precise about when it's going to happen. Though I guess it needs to happen before anyone can say the predictions were correct.

Mine is so vanilla it's almost embarrassing to mention it in a serious thread: spiders. Though it's not really even a complete phobia, little spiders that I know can't bite me in any way that I can feel it don't bother me at all. So I guess the real phobia is being bitten by a spider. Interestingly the two critters I have some fear of are the two critters that I got bitten by when I was a kid and had no phobias up to that point. I got bitten by a [non poisonous] spider when playing with a spider and by a weta* when playing with a weta. I was obviously freaking the two critters out and they were probably afraid for their life, hence the bite. So if I had been more aware of their fears at the time I probably would not have those fears now. *what is a weta? Cockroaches in groups give me the ick, but definitely not a phobia.

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding of what bias means? Bias is never an objectively good thing, at best it's neutral in situations where the issue is of a benign nature, like what's your favourite colour. When it comes to economic systems, social and environmental policy bias is an undeniably bad thing. Good things happened with capitalism, but that does not mean they would have only ever happened under capitalism. Bad things happened and are happening because of capitalism. To me capitalism is like thalidomide. Seemed to be amazing for a while, and then the deformed babies started to turn up and suddenly people realised it was not so great after all. And now it's time for my fortnightly MMT plug: Capitalism was on the brink of failing hard in the 1970s, but then Richard Nixon did the world a huge favour and killed the gold standard dead forever, transforming almost all the world's currencies into fiat currencies with the flick of a wrist. This, along with floating exchange rates, finally released governments from the shackles of having to balance budgets and allowed the near perpetual running of national deficits to be used for the general public good (but often were not, sadly). Remember folks deficits don't matter (within reason and depending how they are used) and taxes don't pay for [national] govt spending. Govt budgets are moral documents, not financial documents.

I'm impressed you know of Babism. That's not a widely known aspect of Baha'i history.

In my anecdotal experience the Iranian diaspora is very patriotic, but many left Iran because of the current regime and they rather look forward to the day the Islamic Revolution comes to an end. One of the most interesting things about watching Alexander on Netflix is learning a bit about the last days of the Persian Empire that he smashed to pieces. It was a great empire that had its glory days, but as with every empire in history it became corrupt, complacent and stagnant and fell to pieces when the right person came along to bring it down.

Just a point of clarification, Baha'i is POST-Arab-Islamic not pre. I don't see large numbers of people getting into Baha'i given to do so means confiscation of your business, inability to get any job in the public sector, harassment of your employer if you have a private sector job, expulsion from school / university, possible imprisonment, torture and execution.