We live in trying times, and that was before COVID-19. And now there's this. So, here's a space for all your rants about life, the universe and everything. A good rant can be very cathartic, and can often be entertaining for onlookers, especially if done skilfully.
There is absolutely no requirement for you to be reasonable or rational here - just hang it all out.
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Everything welcome, from little trickles of lava, to massive volcanic eruptions spewing magma, hot gases and bedrock.
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Sample mild lava flow scale rant:
Nasal hair. What are you supposed to do with it? One fine day you get married, and another fine day you wake up with the morning sunbeams on your beloved's face, and you get all gooey looking at it until you notice there's a hair hanging out of his nose. You wonder if he inhaled a dog hair by accident, and move closer to his sleeping form to scrutinise it. The thing is black and pointy and appears to be attached. :1f631:
I ask you. It said nothing about that in the paperwork. You can't pull these things out; if you don't believe me, try one of your own, of which you have plenty even if they're still behaving themselves and staying out of general view. Would secateurs work? Hmmm, no, they don't fit into the aperture. Maybe those hairdressing scissors, they're nice and pointy. Hold still! I am relieving you of an aberration. Snip. Oi! I liked that hair the way it was.
That's the problem with being essentially photocopied over and over since you grew up. Have you ever seen what happens to a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy ad infinitum? Where's that nice clear print of yore? What are all these foreign objects? Grrrr.
Michael Leunig wrote about it, actually:
Each year my mirror seems much older
Somewhat duller and a fraction colder
The glass which always gleamed and twinkled
Now appears all scratched and wrinkled
Appears more blotchy, tired and droopy
Confused and haggard, dazed and loopy
Sadder, slower, grimmer, glummer
I think that I've been sold a bummer.
Yeah well. I hear they have attachments for electric shavers especially designed for the removal of aberrant nasal hairs. Krrrrrk. That's the beauty of capitalism, there's always a hundred gadgets for everything, some of which may actually work, and few of which won't break within a year or two. But that's another rant. A much bigger one...
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Haha, great idea 👍
No doubt you'll hear some of my ranting in here, but this time I won't feel the need to apologise because this thread is intended for it :)
...perhaps I should start with a rant about my inclination to apologise excessively 🙄
Quote from: word_on_a_wing on April 09, 2020, 14:28:18Haha, great idea 👍
Thank you. We need all the laughter and therapeutic activities we can get... :-D
Quote from: undefinedNo doubt you'll hear some of my ranting in here, but this time I won't feel the need to apologise because this thread is intended for it :)
Excellent. Go for it. :smth023 The more you ham it up, the funnier it gets too - not that it's always necessary to make it funny. Unfunny rants are also welcome and sympathetic / empathetic ears will be on offer.
You work in mental health, but who takes care of you? I've a dear friend who's a trauma therapist. She gets so depleted. We all need to help you guys share the emotional load of what you do. ♥
Quote...perhaps I should start with a rant about my inclination to apologise excessively 🙄
Is self-flagellation a subcategory of rant? :winking_tongue :angel Anyway, women are socialised to apologise excessively, and conditioning like that isn't easy to break, and not your fault. So you're not allowed to feel bad about that, OK? 'Cos from my own experience, if you feel bad about yourself or an annoying habit you're trying to shake, it gets harder to shake that habit, Murphy being embedded in the fabric of the universe and all that. ;) So they say,
Laugh at the devil, and he will flee from thee, and I think that's pretty accurate. Get yourself your own pitchfork and jab at that horned thing while going,
bwahahahahaha!Hey, Brett says we have many rant-worthy parliamentarians in our country, want to start on any of them? Or just pick something utterly banal and get really het up about it? :beaming-face No shortage of subjects, that's for sure.
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Sleep well and Happy Easter to you,
@word_on_a_wing! :cool
What annoys me are people who come to a forum and start with a first post which gives them the position of a smartass... like this one here:
http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9308.msg772229#msg772229
And when you question them, they're nowhere to be seen. :pouting-face
(That's not to say it's all wrong, but why oh why does this person think Curefans are such stupid a-holes who can't think for themselves? We already figured out that many concerts/festivals of 2020 might be cancelled after all...) :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
Quote from: Ulrich on April 13, 2020, 18:21:33What annoys me are people who come to a forum and start with a first post which gives them the position of a smartass... like this one here:
http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9308.msg772229#msg772229
And when you question them, they're nowhere to be seen. :pouting-face
(That's not to say it's all wrong, but why oh why does this person think Curefans are such stupid a-holes who can't think for themselves? We already figured out that many concerts/festivals of 2020 might be cancelled after all...) :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
this people are called 'trolls' for a reason :) remember, do not feed the troll!
(https://media.giphy.com/media/CzqaMnNuBhaNO/giphy.gif)
...help me understand why such a person is a 'troll' ...I don't see it
Quote from: word_on_a_wing on April 14, 2020, 00:07:20...help me understand why such a person is a 'troll' ...
Well I didn't see that person as a 'troll' - I saw him/her as just being a 'smartass'. :P
However, when you ask someone a question and this is ignored (or the person sets off a controversial post and then disappears without a trace), it is pretty close to trolling I'd say.
Ok thanks for clarifying 👍
I have a rant brewing. Just haven't had time to write it out yet. Grrrr though. I'm not sure whether to post it here or on the COVID-19 thread. :pouting-face
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Quote from: Ulrich on April 13, 2020, 18:21:33What annoys me are people who come to a forum and start with a first post which gives them the position of a smartass... like this one here:
http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9308.msg772229#msg772229
And when you question them, they're nowhere to be seen. :pouting-face
(That's not to say it's all wrong, but why oh why does this person think Curefans are such stupid a-holes who can't think for themselves? We already figured out that many concerts/festivals of 2020 might be cancelled after all...) :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
What I don't get is why people don't do their first posts in the "Introduce Yourself" section. Or at the very least say hello in their first post when they're posting elsewhere.
And yeah, that was an unnecessary post - like a stranger coming into a room, farting, and then taking off again. :1f635:
Thanks a million! :evil:
A good friend of mine in Sydney laments the near-death of two qualities in our lifetimes - commonsense and manners...
@dsanchez, that's a magnificently disgusting, and very apt, little clip! :cool
One thing I've wondered ...at the bottom of the curefans homepage it gives stats on how many guests have viewed the forum in the last 24hrs ... about 2000 (is this true? Seems a lot)
Anyway this recent discussion has me imagining a couple of scenarios...
1/ The person who has recently been roasted reading (likely with surprise) but not saying anything. What would they be thinking? From my reading the post I don't think they had bad intentions, perhaps just missed some of the social niceties they could have shown. But we don't know why. I agree though I would have liked to hear more about the person, the 'introduce yourself' thread has been pretty quiet recently.
2/ I'm also imagining other people (2000 of them?!) viewing from the sidelines... on the edge of getting involved ...alas they are become terrified they will be called trolls or that they have smelly farts? 😅
Quote from: word_on_a_wing on April 14, 2020, 14:13:40One thing I've wondered ...at the bottom of the curefans homepage it gives stats on how many guests have viewed the forum in the last 24hrs ... about 2000 (is this true? Seems a lot)
The ratio of readers-only to participating members is about the same as for the other forum I'm on. Also, people just taking a 3-second look and disappearing again counts as a visit! :)
It may also be that a repeat visit by the same person counts as an extra visit - depending on how the system is doing the counts -
@dsanchez? Do you know how this software does its counting?
Anyway, there's more than 2,000 people going to Cure concerts and buying records etc, and why shouldn't they want to hang out here as well? :angel
QuoteAnyway this recent discussion has me imagining a couple of scenarios...
1/ The person who has recently been roasted reading (likely with surprise) but not saying anything. What would they be thinking? From my reading the post I don't think they had bad intentions, perhaps just missed some of the social niceties they could have shown. But we don't know why. I agree though I would have liked to hear more about the person, the 'introduce yourself' thread has been pretty quiet recently.
2/ I'm also imagining other people (2000 of them?!) viewing from the sidelines... on the edge of getting involved ...alas they are become terrified they will be called trolls or that they have smelly farts? 😅
Sometimes, a roasting is very much appropriate, and in my view it was for that little comment and its aftermath, and any other time people's manners are really out of line, and they're not treating others with respect (and as
@Ulrich said, this person just waltzed in and treated those present like we were a bunch of imbeciles, and then failed to respond to the friendly-but-assertive counterpost - which gave them an opportunity to correct their approach). If we excuse that kind of stuff, we lower our expectations, and people often happily sink to those low expectations. On the other hand, if we have high expectations of what people's behaviour is going to be, people often rise to those (or disappear entirely, to find murkier waters to wallow in). This then allows for a nice, warm, interactive environment where people can talk openly and feel supported and respected - rare as hen's teeth on the Internet, which is yet another reason it's worth doing.
The way I see it is that if someone chances on a nice, warm, interactive environment with mutual support and respect, they will more likely be encouraged to interact. If they see people objecting to disrespect and poor manners, that should be a plus for any civilised person - and not scare them away. There's plenty of sewers in cyberspace - but this forum isn't one of them.
And everyone's farts smell. :angel
Quote from: word_on_a_wing on April 14, 2020, 14:13:40One thing I've wondered ...at the bottom of the curefans homepage it gives stats on how many guests have viewed the forum in the last 24hrs ... about 2000 (is this true? Seems a lot)
Yeah, what Sue said: this is pretty "normal" for a forum. (Especially these days, with not a lot of Curenews.)
Also, there might be a certain number of "spambots" (there always are), i.e. I don't think there are 2000 Curefans looking at this now.
Quote from: word_on_a_wing on April 14, 2020, 14:13:40The person who has recently been roasted reading (likely with surprise) but not saying anything.
Judging from the profile, this person was last active:
March 08, 2020, 16:04:17
(i.e. shortly after setting off the post - I know why I ranted now, after a few weeks time!).
I don't think that person ever saw our replies or had any intention of discussing with us. Hence my rant!
This is the f***ing RANTING thread for letting off steam, so any people reading about farts now should've been aware before reading, don't you think??
Edit: this topic has ca. 200 views now, which seems realistic to me (this of course includes me & others clicking on it various times when new posts were made).
Quote from: Ulrich on April 14, 2020, 15:42:17This is the f***ing RANTING thread for letting off steam...
(hiding under chair)
Mummy, the moderator said ffff...libbertigibbet! :1f631: :1f62d: :angel :winking_tongue(exeunt dramatis personae)
Quote from: SueC on April 15, 2020, 04:41:13(hiding under chair)
This is for EVERYONE who reads this:
Keep your stinkbombs and your farts to yourself!!! :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
(Rant over.) ;)
Call THAT a rant? :evil: :P
...a mere two lines... :1f634:
...more like a rantlet. :angel
My rant is still cooking. However, Brett came home ranty yesterday, growling about how he wanted to kill people who talked in circles on the phone instead of getting to the point. :evil: Apparently it no longer attracts attention at his workplace when he's smacking his own forehead with his fist and miming strangling a person while on the telephone. The really funny part of that is that he is constantly complimented on his wonderful telephone manner. He claims this is because he turns off a part of himself in order to speak on the telephone. However, when I asked him if he did that when he was on the phone with me at the start of our relationship, he said no, that wasn't work. :angel I can't understand a) his misanthropy, and b) why he makes an exception for me, although he says the answer to b) is "mammary glands"... which clearly is a dodge, since around half the population has those.
I am asking him to explain his misanthropy and he's saying, "My philosophy is simple. People are idiots." The other day he said, "If you're breathing, you're part of the problem." (I noticed he was breathing. :angel)
Tea appears to temporarily reduce his symptoms...
Quote from: SueC on April 14, 2020, 14:29:09If we excuse that kind of stuff, we lower our expectations, and people often happily sink to those low expectations. On the other hand, if we have high expectations of what people's behaviour is going to be, people often rise to those (or disappear entirely, to find murkier waters to wallow in). This then allows for a nice, warm, interactive environment where people can talk openly and feel supported and respected - rare as hen's teeth on the Internet, which is yet another reason it's worth doing.
When I came here, I expected lively discussions, but I was quickly taught better. In the meantime, those who "just read" no longer bother me. This is because I no longer have the time and patience to read and reflect on
everything. When I listen to music or write a text, I am still concerned about 12 to 18 hours later. On the other hand, I'm happy when someone posts something that has been offline for a long time. Unfortunately, moments like this have become rare. When 2020 started, I thought to myself: "Oh G*d, don't let it be an off topic year again!" I'm "on the road" there too, but sometimes I think it's "too much".
I just wanted to officially post that after thinking about it for a bit, I came to a position halfway between my prior position and
@word_on_a_wing's position, and I thank her for voicing her thoughts on the matter. And that's why networking with other brains is so much better than just playing with your own. :cool
In summary: Grrrr.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/06/19/why-is-the-catholic-church-getting-jobkeeper/?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&ins=WktSZTR4R1dZN1p2S082MkpQbkExUT09&at=blpiK2xBM3B0ZFFhZHE0MUllYkxMZz09
A completely legal scam - the Australian Catholic Church collecting COVID-19 welfare payments on behalf of its
clergy (while the arts sector is quietly dying unsupported, as are some sole traders etc). Previously, the Catholic Church had spent decades immune from prosecution for institutional child sexual abuse by maintaining that the clergy were
not its employees...
A typical example of what's wrong with this whole shiitake system of ours: That politicians, clergy, corporations can pull stunts like this, and never, ever have to face legal consequences or lose their jobs - they make it all "legal" by writing the rules - one way for themselves, and another for the citizens. :evil:
"The age of entitlement is over," said a cigar-smoking Joe Hockey some years back when making life even more difficult for unemployed Australians. I wish - he's on a golden handshake plus a job-for-the-boys these days, and politicians are still shamelessly rorting taxpayers with their own travel expenses, all "legally"...
From GetUp today:
QuotePauline Hanson is eating fish and chips with right-wing donors on the public dime.
But a shocking string of revelations this week reveal she's not alone in her blatant misuse of public money.
💸 Senator Eric Abetz sent us the bill to attend a gala dinner to celebrate the mining industry.
💸 Deputy PM Michael McCormack billed taxpayers $4300 an hour for his RAAF flight to the Melbourne Cup.
💸 Three Cabinet Ministers flew to Sydney on the public dollar to wine and dine with mining and banking donors.
💸 Shadow Minister Chris Bowen billed taxpayers to be the guest of honour at a Labor fundraiser.
It's scandal after scandal – but these politicians aren't even breaking a sweat. Because without a federal corruption watchdog they know they won't face consequences.
At a time when people across the country are struggling financially, losing their jobs and pulling money out of their superannuation just to survive – this week's spotlight on politicians reckless spending shows they need to be held accountable for their misconduct.
https://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/democracy/icac-petition-hanson/sign-we-need-a-corruption-watchdog-with-teeth?t=AABeBHN7N
(https://media.guim.co.uk/5dc8cbf4388f56a7f3dfcaad717b8ed559254255/0_0_3508_7587/3508.jpg)
from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/17/who-needs-a-federal-icac-when-weve-got-the-integribot-5000
From Crikey (https://www.crikey.com.au/) this morning:
Quote from: undefinedBruce Gordon
Last week we learned expat media mogul Bruce Gordon, normally based in Bermuda, had been given an exemption by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to live in Australia during the pandemic without incurring an additional tax bill.
That's right. A 91-year-old billionaire who has lived in a tax haven since 1985 wanted to stay in Australia because, sources close to him revealed, he felt "safer" here.
That's because most of those grubby little tax "havens" are actually upmarket swamps that don't have the superior healthcare we have in this country thanks to, you know, those common little people who actually pay tax.
We also learned he spent most of the year holed up in his luxury Circular Quay apartment. It's the longest he has been in Australia since quitting our shores last century. That would be because the ATO has a strict rule that you must spend 183 days offshore to qualify as a non-resident to avoid paying pesky personal income tax.
:smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face 🥴 🥴 🥴 🥴 🥴 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 👺 👺 👺 👺 👺
Quote from: SueC on December 01, 2020, 03:54:32From Crikey (https://www.crikey.com.au/) this morning:
Quote from: undefinedBruce Gordon
Last week we learned expat media mogul Bruce Gordon, normally based in Bermuda, had been given an exemption by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) to live in Australia during the pandemic without incurring an additional tax bill.
That's right. A 91-year-old billionaire who has lived in a tax haven since 1985 wanted to stay in Australia because, sources close to him revealed, he felt "safer" here.
That's because most of those grubby little tax "havens" are actually upmarket swamps that don't have the superior healthcare we have in this country thanks to, you know, those common little people who actually pay tax.
We also learned he spent most of the year holed up in his luxury Circular Quay apartment. It's the longest he has been in Australia since quitting our shores last century. That would be because the ATO has a strict rule that you must spend 183 days offshore to qualify as a non-resident to avoid paying pesky personal income tax.
:smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :smth011 :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face :pouting-face 🥴 🥴 🥴 🥴 🥴 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 🤮 👺 👺 👺 👺 👺
😡😡😡😤😤😤
And this morning, First Dog eloquently ranted for all of us ordinary citizens here in Australia:
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5b7b6beb02f696d477b30500aab17e4c334228b6/4_0_1549_930/master/1549.jpg?width=470&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=af7e72795c5f38b004f3a5428cc94a70)
(https://media.guim.co.uk/f580a777c8e88b52f5dfac4254e0f7acbbe2e89d/0_0_3508_5740/3508.jpg)
from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/01/brenda-the-civil-disobedience-penguin-on-mathias-cormanns-oecd-application-he-what
Shopping is a chore at the best of times, but especially trying at Christmas. I can usually avoid going to town more than once a fortnight (since we grow a fair bit of our own food), and Brett advised, "Get in there before it gets completely crazy - avoid next week if you at all can!"
So this morning we went to town with a list of things required from different outlets. This included two new pillows, since our heads are so heavy with the weight of the world :1f635: that we tend to flatten new pillows within a year. This starts manifesting as earaches from lying on the ear cartilage without proper cushioning, or cricks in the neck that stop you turning your head fully without dreadful crunching noises and stabs of white-hot pain. :-D
This isn't a rant yet, but it will be, and I'm sure that no matter where you are in the world, you too are finding it impossible to go into public spaces without sonic bombardment by Christmas muzak... :1f629:
Target stores have particularly bad muzak this time of year. We held our breaths before entering through the sliding glass doors, mental maps of where we needed to go in our heads, and proceeding there rapidly because existence is brief. But it had started already. I tried to block it out, go to a quiet faraway place in my own head, but a particularly shrill, jangly bit of soapified electric guitar that was part of a contemporised Christmas carol penetrated my barricades like fingernails down a blackboard. "Brett!!! To think that someone took
music lessons in order to make that abominable noise! :1f635:"
We found the pillows pretty soon - side gusseted pillows don't go flat so quickly, and sadly only Target stocks them in our area - but then came the significantly harder problem of finding new standard pillowcases, preferably in flannellette cotton, possibly in thick-ish linen or bamboo or cotton jersey, and in any uniform colour from the palette of white, cream, mocha or anything in-between - not poly-cotton, not thin cotton you can read a newspaper through, not in fluoro pink or orange or another such ghastly colour, no prints and no knobbles. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently it is. :1f62d: We made round after frustrated round amongst the display shelving, finding dozens of European pillowcases within the stated specifications, but none like that for standard size pillows - which are, after all, STANDARD in Australia - but as Brett pointed our, "
Der, Sue, don't you know anything, if you need new standard pillowcases you're supposed to buy a whole new sheet set! And your old sheet set is so
yesterday, so you may as well ditch the sheets if a pillowcase wears out, and get whatever is
on trend today, and be a good little consumer robot! Vive la capitalism!" :evil:
And then, the muzak got more horrid: A totally inane cover of
Last Christmas came over the PR. "OMG, that was already a trial in its original form when George Michael sang it, but this is even worse!" To which Brett replied, "That's the legacy of
American Idol, that we get all these even more crap covers of crap songs! In this overblown, quasi-operatic style, if you can even call that a style..."
We got out of there pretty quickly after that, with new pillows, sans covers - sympathising with the nice young man at the till over having to work all day long with this stuff on - "How do you bear it?" He laughed, and agreed you couldn't make worse music if that was your actual intention... :1f635:
That was just our first stop for the day. The aural assaults continued all morning. Brett mentioned that he always shops with his iPod in when he's on his own, for that reason. But there was one blessed oasis in the series of establishments we frequented - at Icky Finks, a craft / odds and bobs place, they were playing Pink Floyd as we came in...
If they have to play Christmas stuff, couldn't they find something tasteful, or at least play the Corona Christmas (http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=9195.msg774064#msg774064) stuff
@Ulrich found?
We never did find suitable pillowcases - but the two other places we tried had the same type of muzak. Never mind, I know exactly where I'm going to get what I need: At the Denmark Co-op, next time we go hiking near Denmark. The Co-op there is a remarkable place, sort of like a little department store, but one that stocks only useful items, and well-made, and fair trade, and lots of natural materials - no junk, no built-in obsolescence. I found a lovely set of towels there this year after looking all over Albany first - the nicest towels we've ever had - thick, fluffy, absorbent, not in a screaming colour. :cool We've got all sorts of useful items from them like well-made kitchen scales, bamboo socks, stripey bamboo blend singlets and underwear, and sun hats with neck covers - and I make it a habit to try them first for particular items, if we can plan it that way. Hippie towns do have certain advantages - and I just know they'll have decent standard size pillow slips...
Well I guess it fits in here. Stupid fool that I am, I once said this:
QuoteI don't remember the exact wording or where I posted it, but I am so certain we're going to get a new album before 2020 is over, I said: if that ain't happening, everyone here will be free to shower abuse over me around Xmas 2020 (for a week or so) without being banned...
Obviously this won't be happening.
I got it wrong, the album isn't finished (yet) and it won't be out in 2020. Thus, if you want, feel free to
rant and rave now (you got until XMas)...
...and I was about to ask you if you have an old hat in your house! 😉🎩
I could bake you a hat,
@Ulrich! ;) It might be more palatable! :angel
You both are much too kind, you were supposed to rant here! :P
Anyway, in case you wanted to know or not:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2016/11/saying-ill-eat-hat-come/
(http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/eat-hat-340x434.png)
Quote from: Ulrich on December 17, 2020, 16:14:53You both are much too kind, you were supposed to rant here! :P
..."We have piped for you, but you would not dance" etc... :winking_tongue
Thank you for the information on hat-eating! :cool Always interesting to find out about stuff like this. All those shenanigans! :1f62e: A website to bookmark...
The original citation is so good it bears repeating! :)
For though we tumble down the wall,
And fire their rotten boats and all,
I'll eat my hat, if Jove don't drop us,
Or play some queer rogue's trick to stop us.
In the German-speaking world, 'old hat' can have a different meaning. Here is the translation:
Quote from: Wiktionaryits old hat idiom. Word separation: to be an old hat. Pronunciation: IPA: [aɪ̯n ˈaltɐ huːt zaɪ̯n] Audio samples: be old hat Meanings: [1] to be known for a long time, not new for a long time and therefore also a bit boring / bland.
🤓
It means the same in English! :)
However, I'm still trying to explain to my husband what "Du kannst mir den Buckel herunterrutschen!" actually means in English. The nearest thing is eff-off, of course, but I have to say, "You can slide down my hunchback!" or however else you want to translate it is just so much more evocative... :angel
@Ulrich, that website you posted has a podcast I'm now subscribed to! Will be nice to hear this kind of stuff when pruning trees etc. :cool
PS: Just to add a rant: 🌪 🐲 Bloody hayfever bloody sinuses bloody waking up at ungodly hours unable to breathe because a giant octopus is lodged in my throat 🐙 and I have to go make cups of octopus-destroying tea arrghh bloody bloody bloody arrghh :1f629: 👾 👺
Quote from: MeltingMan on December 17, 2020, 11:41:15...and I was about to ask you if you have an old hat in your house! 😉🎩
If he doesn't have one already, he can easily get one from an op shop. 🎩:angel
Brett and I would like to suggest that
@Ulrich send his old hat to Robert Smith, who can eat it instead, since he's in all likelihood the chief cause of the extended delay. :angel
Brett would like to add this clarification: "The culpability clearly being Robert Smith's for non-delivery of goods, and not Ulrich's for rashly promising to eat ancient headwear in case of non-delivery by a previously suggested date."
Disclaimer: We thought we'd build our own house in two years. It took us five. 👒🎓🎩💩💂♂️🕵️♀️🎅
PS: Of course, remember that good things come to those who wait.
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Quote from: SueCOf course, remember that good things come to those who wait.
I'd rather say if you wait long enough it'll all come back, but in that case you'll have to be happy if it gets released at all. All you have to do is look at this year. 'The impacts are getting closer' is such a term when one stands at the grave of one's mother or father. The next is you. That's why I'm not really in a 'ranting mood'. However, I am not a stoic, and to believe that at some point nobody will expect it, journalists included, is an illusion. So the torment continues ...😔
Quote from: MeltingMan on December 21, 2020, 11:10:12I'd rather say if you wait long enough it'll all come back
Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by! :cool
(This is the title of an album by Australian band The Drones.)
QuoteThe title of the album comes from a quote by Umberto Eco,[14][15] frequently misattributed[16][17] to Sun Tzu: "If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Long_by_the_River_and_the_Bodies_of_Your_Enemies_Will_Float_By
(Good album btw, I saw the band live around that time at a festival and from the description alone I knew I would enjoy them.)
Quote from: Ulrich on December 22, 2020, 11:43:37Wait long by the river and the bodies of your enemies will float by! :cool
ROFL :lol:
Quote from: undefined(This is the title of an album by Australian band The Drones.)
It's very good when someone from Europe can tell me about writers and bands from Australia I've never heard of! :smth023
...and that when I try to tell a European about a great German crime writer, that writer happens to turn out to be English! :beaming-faceSeems we're all having a hard time producing a decent rant right now. I can have a go at a little one: People staying in your house who don't manage to say hello/goodbye/please/thank you for three days running! :pouting-face :mad: :evil: 👾 👺
However, this was countered by the occupant of the other room being a shining example of humanity, and great fun to have around. :) So this is only a semi-rant, I'm sorry.
I'd be onto Labyrinth by now on my journalling tour of The Cure's 2004 album if it wasn't for Don Quixote. :pouting-face :mad: :evil: 👾 👺
The accursed animal decided to barge into me sideways while I was trimming his hooves on Wednesday morning, re-aggravating an ancient back injury...took three days of Pilates, gentle walks and finally anti-inflammatories to stop me looking like a twisted Hunchback of Notre Dame and get me back to normal posture and functioning. Don Q, otherwise known as Rotundo the Wonder Donkey (owing to his rotundity), got whacked across his amply padded, woolly backside with the hoof rasp after that, and I was determined to finish the job and did (before lying down on the grass with back spasms :1f630:). I'm not putting up with his nonsense anymore - he can darn well stand still when he gets his toenails trimmed - so no more "Oi!" and instead, taps graduating to whacks with the rasp if he as much as twitches a muscle, from now on, because I have no intentions of becoming a cripple because of the wiles of an obstinate donkey. :pouting-face
(https://live.staticflickr.com/896/42936362661_166a213d5f_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/28q95JR)
The accursed donkey! :1f635:
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/47977414206_a6859c7f07_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2g6AMJE)
...but who can resist his ears? :angel
Dealing with insurance companies. :1f629:
Here's a current real-life rant at our current Farm and Home insurance provider, with the name of the offending company changed for legal reasons. :1f629: :persevere: :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
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Dear (insert name of insurance contact person here)
Re: "I must advise that the excesses are a standard amendment to our insurance offering for each risk. You can amend the excess voluntarily however, any voluntary reduction in the excess will increase the premium and conversely any increase in the excess will decrease the premium.
If you want to review increasing the excess to any or all risks please let us know and we can provide you with a quote. "
When we originally began insuring with Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd in 2013, the excesses in the policy were all at $250, except Farm burglary and theft, which was an excess of NIL.
Then Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd started changing the excesses without discussion; in the first instance, in 2014 increasing the Classic home excess to $300 the following year, and in 2015 to $400, while at that stage keeping the others the same. This was done without any reference or explanation in the cover letters, and with no concomitant reduction in premium. It was a pure reduction in value for money for your customer.
In 2018 Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd doubled our excess for Farm legal liability to $500 and imposed a $250 excess on Farm burglary and theft. We complained about it and for 2019 it was reduced back to its original value in consequence.
In 2020 Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd not only doubled our excess for Farm legal liability back to $500 without any reference or explanation in the cover letters, but also did the same to Farm burglary and theft (which had started out on our original insurance policy with NIL excess) AND increased the Classic home excess to $500 as well - thus making a mockery of the previous year's re-negotiation: What you gave in that negotiation, you took back more than twice over in the next policy. We were too busy to write to you about it that year but we now need this matter addressed on the current insurance policy offer: We need the excesses back AT LEAST to what we had negotiated in 2019 - and preferably to what they were when we started insuring with you.
Furthermore, if we agree to insure with Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd again, it is on the mutual understanding that the excesses do not move thereafter (not without mutual discussion and agreement) on any of our four separate sub-insurances. Excesses with car insurances etc (other providers) have been FIXED for us from the beginning of doing business with these providers - they don't constantly creep up and need re-negotiating.
The moral equivalent of Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd's behaviour in regard to the excesses on our policies is that of a food manufacturer keeping a box of biscuits the same size while reducing the product mass inside, and selling that at the same price back to the consumer who may not be reading the "drained weight" label on the tin every time they go shopping. It's trickery, and it's why Choice magazine exists. What is clearly seen by some businesses as "good business practice" is seen by some of the people who pay your salaries and generate your corporate profits for what it is - underhanded and unethical behaviour, which it is our duty to call out, and not to support.
We run a small business, and we do not treat our customers in this manner.
Yours sincerely
Sue & Brett Coulstock
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Provided to CF with love and sympathy for any Cure fans who have similar issues with their insurance weasels - feel free to cut and paste any of this for writing your own complaints.
NB: The previous two letters I sent them on their policy weaselling were far more mild in tone, but they were still persisting their weaselling on the matter of excesses when I wrote them this. :smth011
This: https://www.crikey.com.au/2021/02/25/jobkeeper-2021-wage-supplement/
(https://www.crikey.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/job-keeper.jpg)
Quote from: undefinedWhile providing a much-needed lifeline for workers during the recession, JobKeeper has also been a cash bonanza for some companies whose fortunes have greatly improved off the back of a rise in consumer spending as Australia emerges from the worst of the pandemic.
The festival has come to a head this week with company reporting season providing a glimpse into some of the biggest publicly-listed rorters of them all.
Today we hand out awards for some of the most shameless — the gambling empires, billionaires and investment bankers that have pocketed large profits during the pandemic thanks in part to millions in government handouts.
:1f629: :confounded: :1f635: :1f62a:
Today I bought a pair of scissors at a self-service checkout - and was asked on the screen to wait while a staff member came to ensure I was over 18. WTF?
It's not just the inconvenience that they're apparently doing this to every adult who wants to buy a pair of scissors (or, I was informed, a kitchen knife) - imagine being 14 and wanting to buy scissors for school or craft purposes, and having to have an adult buy them for you. :1f632:
In this part of the world, a teenager can learn to fly a plane at 15, learn to drive a car at 16, people start their first year of university still 17 - but now you can't buy a pair of scissors or a kitchen knife until you are 18. What's next - nail clippers, nail files and other things forbidden in aircraft cabins since 9/11 will need proof of 18+ to purchase? Can anyone under 18 buy glass objects not made from safety glass? I mean, a smashed-up bottle can do more damage than a pair of scissors...
I was vastly amused too by the instructions on the packet the scissors came in (another ridiculous thing is the overpackaging of everything): "Never leave this pair of scissors unattended." Well, folks, I guess I better make myself a necklace to hang them from for the rest of my life, or hire a fulltime nanny to supervise these scissors, otherwise I won't be able to leave home without them.
I don't know how any of us oldies ever survived our childhoods. OMG, I had scissors from the time I was in Grade 1, and I'm still alive! I had a hunting knife from age 7 and used it to carve spears pretending to be Native American, and yet I never stabbed myself or anyone else. How was this possible?
Welcome to the Americanisation of childhood, people. :1f629:
To see what sanity looks like, note this Danish approach:
It is so disgusting how our political systems work... The Great Barrier Reef is dying. There have been three mass coral bleaching events in the last five years. Climate change, water pollution from poor land use practices, coal dust and excessive cargo traffic are all contributing. Scientists and citizens have been alarmed for over a decade. Finally, UNESCO is debating listing the reef as "in danger" which is an understatement.
And what are our politicians doing? Lobbying international ambassadors to put pressure on UNESCO not to list the reef as "in danger" - our Minister Against The Environment has been clocking a week of special private jet trips all over the world spewing carbon dioxide into the air while costing taxpayers over $4,000 an hour to try to sway the ambassadors - and ambassadors have stayed at taxpayer expense at one of the better reef locations for snorkelling, wining and dining to buy their allegiance. This is while scientists, nature groups and citizens are pleading that UNESCO list the reef as "in danger" so that the Australian government will be pressured into taking some action to save the reef, instead of just window dressing.
It really is enough to make you despair. Why are the bullies running the classroom? Why are decisions like this based on schmoozing and bribery instead of science and decency? Why do so many so-called "leaders" around the world make it so difficult to do anything about the problems we urgently need to fix?
OK, that's mostly a rhetorical question - for answers to that read Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything. And don't get me started on politicians kicking the can down the road another 30 years for net-zero carbon economies when we knew 30 years ago this was required urgently. It really is devastating to have studied biology and environmental science as a young person and then to have witnessed, both as a scientist and as an educator, the people in charge sitting on their hands while shackling the hands of others. :1f636:
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OMG the irony. An entitled white male who apparently doesn't believe in community, only in individual liberty and doing whatever the hell he likes, is carrying a banner likening vaccination to rape. Which is also an up-yours to any woman who's suffered sexual assault, and just typical for this kind of crowd. These anti-lockdown crowds, from what I've seen on the media, look remarkably similar in composition to the pond slime who stormed the Capitol on the back of their conspiracy theories: They're mostly white, they're more than 50% male, and they're all entitled pieces of work - I'd bet you anything that they're also disproportionately pro-gun, anti-LGBTIQ, xenophobic and misogynistic (and this includes females, who often perpetuate misogyny). The same old, same old bullies who don't like the idea of not being more privileged than people who don't look or think like them.
And none in the photo are wearing a mask properly, if at all.
Penetration, indeed. One thing decidedly not penetrating is the intelligence of a person like this.
3,500 people like him - aptly described by the NSW police chief as "half-wits" and "selfish boofheads" - decided to hold superspreader anti-lockdown protests in Sydney, in the middle of the Australian national emergency with the Delta virus running rampant in NSW.
And the local right-wing pollies defending these protests refer to the BLM protests, without noting the obvious differences: That a demonstration against systemic racism isn't the same thing as a demonstration against public health measures - and that the BLM crowd in Australia took exquisite care to be in masks and to socially distance during their protests, which did NOT occur during a Delta outbreak.
Someone just wrote a really good analysis of this kind of problem in the Guardian:
QuoteAs ever with anything involving this prime minister, the fatal farce of "freedom day" will be refracted through a thousand talk-radio discussions about Johnson's fitness to govern. But the Tory leader is surfing a wave far bigger than himself. Riding forces larger than himself is what Johnson has done throughout his career, and it is what makes him such an effective political campaigner. It is also what should make us worry about the terrain on which future political battles will be fought.
What he has correctly identified is a growing extremist individualism. It is an ideology that claims to be about freedom when really it means selfishness; and it sees any curtailment of its liberties, no matter how justified or temporary, as Stalin sending in the tanks. Last weekend, the chair of the Tory 1922 backbench committee, Graham Brady, claimed that face masks were really about social control. Railing at voters for meekly accepting a measure designed to reduce the spread of infection, he accused them of suffering from Stockholm syndrome. "The line between coercion and care becomes blurred, the hostage starts to see the man with the AK-47 who holds him in a cell not as a jailer but as a protector."
Selfishness is hardly a new characteristic of our politics. But what is striking today is how the politicians and commentators using it sneer at those who stand in their way. There is a cruelty to this politics that is breathtaking. The rightwing commentator Douglas Murray complained in the Sun on Sunday of Britons' "terrible fearfulness". He didn't trace this to the fact that the country is mourning more than 150,000 Covid deaths.
Before Covid came along, Murray had a line in rubbishing activists who have the gall to sound the alarm on the climate crisis. A "fringe eco-lobby", he declared in the Daily Mail, was committing "an abuse of children on a massive and unforgivable scale" by making them fearful of the future. The Covid deniers are, as often as not, also the climate deniers; who are – wouldn't you know it? – the most extreme Brexiters. Earlier this year, Steve Baker, the MP who calls himself the "hardman of Brexit" (which does admittedly sound better than his real title of "former software consultant"), joined the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organisation that claims to speak "common sense on climate change". Its honorary president is the climate-change denier Nigel Lawson. The carousel goes round and round, but the faces on it never seem to change.
from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/22/covid-climate-crisis-politics-individualism
More demonstrations of the low-intelligence/low-empathy levels of the anti-lockdown protestors:
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Total posterior orifice hurting a horse during lockdown protests in Sydney this week. What has the horse done to hurt this guy? Just about the worst thing you can do is yank the metal bit in their mouth painfully against their jaw (and he punched the animal in the face). Let's put a nose ring in this guy and then attach a lead to it and yank on it suddenly and see whether he likes that kind of treatment. :smth011
His T-shirt is making it pretty clear that his personal free-dumb is more important than anyone's feelings/welfare, whether horse, human or anything else apparently. Refer to the above post for the Guardian article on how the far right, and the plain stupid too I think, call their own selfishness "freedom"...
That guy is now in jail, where he belongs. And of course, refusing a COVID test. This means he's being kept in isolation, as is the health protocol - and his lawyers are whining about it. No sympathy from me - animal abuse on top of complete disregard for the safety of the Australian community. Typical bully, and like all bullies, only know about their own rights, not anyone else's - and protest loudly when there are consequences for their cruelty and antisocial conduct.
At the start of the pandemic, I thought, "This juggernaut has been brought to a halt, here's a rare chance for humanity to turn this around." People were talking, were thinking about things they usually don't think about, things that are normally taken for granted as "background" and "necessary" - and suddenly, people were doing some things fundamentally differently, which without the pandemic they would have thought weren't able to be changed - like work from home instead of commute, with desk-based jobs - and just for a short window, a lot of people usually below the poverty line were pulled up just above it, in Australia (and the sky didn't fall in, and we could do this permanently instead of giving our tax money to corporations and have loads of change in the bargain, and the money actually going back into the economy from that instead of into offshore tax havens).
BLM got traction, and rightly so - it's appalling to look back at the last 500 years of history, at Europeans sailing all over the world to steal land and enslave natives, and make megabucks from doing this at other people's expense. I am a European; and I think it's the narcissists and sociopaths of a society (and their enablers) that go around doing things like that to other people, and that those are present in pretty much any society, but when they have disproportionate power over others - such as when we have hierarchical systems they can climb (or when they parent children) - then they really have a chance to do damage. We're seeing this in our own societies - in Australia, in the UK, in the US, in lots of countries - in the political and corporate leadership, in media, in workplaces, in families - in significant proportions of each, toxicity coming from the top echelons, when the people who inhabit these echelons aren't motivated by empathy, justice, rationality, love - and it in turn encourages toxicity in wider society, encourages people not in the top echelons to spew malice and victimise others (just look at what having Trump in power did to embolden racism, homophobia, misogyny in the underbelly of society).
For about a year after the pandemic began, I was optimistic that humans were going to be able to bring off some of the essential changes that need to be made in the way we operate, so that there can be better societies, so that the widening gulf between mega-rich and dirt-poor is corrected, and so that the biosphere isn't going to continue to collapse. But now I'm losing hope, and disengaging again from keeping an eye on media reporting - as we did as standard before the pandemic, because to do the best you can in your own circle of influence (with facilitating harmony in your intimate relationships, your local environment, with your friends, your work, and the local community), you can't have your energy sapped by the useless confrontation with vast arrays of problems - you need to channel it into positive efforts in your own life.
I had a barrel overflow on me in the past week or so - you know the idea, all the time you're aware of it and then there's that final drip and you've just reached your limit? For months some people in my own social circle were saying things like, "What about ivermectin? Why can't we have that instead of vaccines?" Well, if you've got worms or pubic lice, then ivermectin is a super thing for you and I heartily recommend it - I use it myself for parasite control in livestock. But if you'd like some immunity against SARS-CoV-2, try a vaccine...
I could understand the early hesitancy. Never before had a successful vaccine against a coronavirus been developed, and some of the early attempts caused death by causing an overreaction to the antigen. There was enormous pressure to develop something like this very quickly and probably the temptation to cut corners was there, in some places - because of the money there was to be made, and because of politicians wanting quick fixes etc. But we saw for ourselves that being unvaccinated brought with it a chance of ending up in ICU and perhaps in a body bag, and an even bigger chance of disabling post-viral syndromes that could drag on for many months - long COVID. The odds of vaccination creating bigger problems than the disease in the short term had already been put to bed; and the small possibility of potential long-term problems were a risk I was willing to take for myself, because they are really unlikely to be worse than the risks from the actual disease.
But to still have people screaming for ivermectin at this point is more than I can bear. So take the bloody stuff, but don't expect it to do you any good except in ridding you of parasites. And don't expect that it's completely without risks either. For example, if you're riddled with roundworms, their sudden death could cause a catastrophic gut blockage you could expire from. You could also have a rare adverse reaction to it, like chemical hypersensitivity.
And not just the ivermectin - the ridiculous, politicised stance on mask-wearing. What's this really about? Vanity? I-don't-wanna-be-seen-with-a-stupid-thing-on-my-face-people-might-laugh-at-me? Or if-I-wear-a-mask-I'm-a-leftie/I-support-science-and-rationality-and-not-so-called-skepticism? ...may I suggest you keep your skepticism for UFOs and snake oil and off-label uses of worm medicines which some crackpot is spreading as just the thing. Is it about discomfort and not being able to breathe as well? May I suggest you go talk to someone in the ICU and compare notes. May I suggest that you don't wear masks 24/7, just when circumstances require it.
I've never been able to understand how such a small thing you can do to significantly reduce community risk in this pandemic - to wear a mask at certain times of an outbreak when you're in high-density, poorly ventilated conditions - to wear a mask when you have respiratory symptoms or if someone else in your orbit has - is so massively objected to by some people. Even just common courtesy is on the side of this one...
I've also not been able to understand how even some people working in medical settings (who vote certain ways, of course) were trying to tell others that masks are of little benefit (oh yeah, tell that to the surgeons who wear them nonstop in the theatre) - when the research indicates otherwise, and when the long experience of Asian societies with SARS-CoV-1 showed otherwise - except that the research also shows that e.g. Americans who vote Republican will believe all sorts of things about mask-wearing, vaccines and anthropogenic climate change that aren't borne out by our best science.
All this so-called science "skepticism" - where's the motor mechanic skepticism? When these people take their cars in with a problem and the mechanic looks at their car and tells them what's wrong with it, do they usually trust the mechanic to fix it (after all, he/she knows more about the internal working of cars than they do), or do they say, "Well, I don't believe you, you're just making it up because you want to make money out of me, it's probably just bad petrol, and I don't believe in internal combustion anyway, it's all just a hoax!"?
It's not that motor mechanics are infallible, or that they know absolutely everything about cars, or that there aren't incompetent and self-serving individuals amongst them, but that on the whole, a good motor mechanic has a far better chance of fixing up your car than the average citizen - or than some unqualified bozo with alternative ideas on how cars really work.
I'm up to here with all this and have had enough of it. I'm now avoiding socialising with people like this. Usually I think it's a good idea to have friends with a wide range of political and world views, but I've had enough of this circus. This includes a neighbour who's trying to tell us SARS-CoV-2 was definitely cooked up in a Chinese laboratory - if you ask a range of international (and non-cherry-picked for a divergent view) virologists about this (and you can search for this across various media), they say it's a small possibility only, and far more likely to have come through an animal vector, probably a bat (and that we can expect more pandemics like this as we intrude further into the remaining wilderness areas which have increasingly stressed wildlife). This is the same neighbour who expressed surprise that we voted for marriage equality - "Why do those people need to get married?" He's in many important ways a lovely person, but I can't stand this BS anymore, and I don't want to have fruitless debates about it, or to have to bite my tongue and change the topic everytime something like this comes up.
For years I was tolerant and exercised forbearance, I looked past it at the good qualities of these people, I cultivated common ground - but now it gives me a rash and I don't want to hear it anymore, not even for two seconds.
Why? I think it's partly because it's more than a benign difference of opinion - it's about how our societies operate, it's about the future. We can't fix the car by refusing to believe in internal combustion. And this is a communal car, which is sitting there broken while people are spouting alternative theories.
My resumed minimisation of news media yesterday had a rather ironic start. I went to do some outdoors work with my little pocket radio, and on came a programme about the history of Haiti. OMG. :1f62d: :pouting-face An hour later I was shellshocked, and when my husband asked why, I turned the air blue with vocabulary I don't normally use - I was incoherent with rage. Because the history of Haiti is a prime example, and a particularly bloody and horrible example, of what is wrong with this world, with what happens when oppressed people try to take back autonomy, with elites feeling entitled to parasitise off the labour of ordinary people, with political interference from America, which so hypocritically parades itself around as a so-called paragon of justice and democracy when nothing could be further from the truth - their corporates and political sycophants are in the business of stuffing their own coffers any which way, and will interfere in democratically held elections in other countries if the genuine democratic choice of the citizens doesn't serve their own interests (as outsiders to the country, for God's sake). Such as, when the people of Haiti decided they wanted to raise their minimum wage and that was not OK with the USA. OMG, I couldn't bear this, not after all the BS I've heard in the current world, and all the parallels in it. Haiti, by the way, is still paying back a supposed debt that France decided they had to pay in reparation, when the slaves set themselves free by cutting the throats of their oppressors - not for the cuttings of the throats, apparently (but what do you do, just sing hymns and hope your oppressors will change their minds and be nice to you?), but for the "loss of property" of the French slavemasters when the slaves became free. OMG, now I've heard everything...
How are we not all blushing with shame at this shared history? How is the fallout from this still being perpetuated? Why has this alleged debt not been cancelled long ago - if anything, it should have gone the other way... and why is history forever repeating? Remember, for example, the Scottish crofters, the Celts who once owned their land and were dispossessed by some decree of the narcissists-in-government who installed overlords over them and made them pay rent for their own land? The overlords parasitising off the work of the people on the land, and eventually chucking them out when keeping sheep became more profitable than keeping crofters?
Etc etc ad infinitum, everywhere you look, and these days countries like Australia and the US are creating a modern feudalism, in which the ultra-rich increasingly (and legally) dispossess the poor further and further - all under the banner of so-called freedom, and a so-called free market (which isn't really free). And that's my rant for the day. :'(
Quote from: SueC on July 26, 2021, 08:11:13(https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/353743b2428d406c00bb31926eb69786?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=3333&cropW=5000&xPos=0&yPos=0&width=862&height=575)
OMG the irony. An entitled white male who apparently doesn't believe in community, only in individual liberty and doing whatever the hell he likes, is carrying a banner likening vaccination to rape. Which is also an up-yours to any woman who's suffered sexual assault, and just typical for this kind of crowd. These anti-lockdown crowds, from what I've seen on the media, look remarkably similar in composition to the pond slime who stormed the Capitol on the back of their conspiracy theories: They're mostly white, they're more than 50% male, and they're all entitled pieces of work - I'd bet you anything that they're also disproportionately pro-gun, anti-LGBTIQ, xenophobic and misogynistic (and this includes females, who often perpetuate misogyny). The same old, same old bullies who don't like the idea of not being more privileged than people who don't look or think like them.
And none in the photo are wearing a mask properly, if at all.
Penetration, indeed. One thing decidedly not penetrating is the intelligence of a person like this.
3,500 people like him - aptly described by the NSW police chief as "half-wits" and "selfish boofheads" - decided to hold superspreader anti-lockdown protests in Sydney, in the middle of the Australian national emergency with the Delta virus running rampant in NSW.
And the local right-wing pollies defending these protests refer to the BLM protests, without noting the obvious differences: That a demonstration against systemic racism isn't the same thing as a demonstration against public health measures - and that the BLM crowd in Australia took exquisite care to be in masks and to socially distance during their protests, which did NOT occur during a Delta outbreak.
Some nice analysis from Cam Wilson of Crikey today (via email newsletter) further to this issue:
QuoteDuring the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's murder last year, every time I looked at Twitter I'd see see another shocking video of someone — almost always a person of colour — on the receiving end of excessive force from police.
Traditionally, police have been the loudest voice in media coverage, but the emergence of camera phones and mobile-first social media changed the balance by elevating the voices and perspectives of others.
According to the University of Newcastle's Dr Justin Ellis, who's researched the topic, there's a link between the trend of amateur videos of police brutality shared on social media and the Black Lives Matter movement. "It's not a coincidence both emerged in 2013," he said.
Towards the end of last year, I started seeing videos that echoed this — shaky eyewitness-perspective footage of clashes between police and individuals shared to social media with a call-to-action — but which were coming from people refusing to wear masks or social distance. These would circulate in anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown groups before often bubbling up to my normal feeds. These videos are engaging and prone to being widely shared. They've got conflict, power dynamics and intrigue — a perfect recipe for going viral.
This is another example of anti-vaxxers co-opting the rhetoric and symbols of successful social-justice movements, to piggyback off success and normalise baseless claims.
Since the mid-2010s, anti-vaxxers have lifted from successful reproductive rights movements by co-opting bodily autonomy slogans like "my body my choice". (Friend of the newsletter Gina Rushton points out that these same campaigners and politicians simultaneously oppose abortion.) Similarly, anti-government messaging popular on the right is used too. Drawing from both sides of politics' messaging reflects the movement's composition of people from all parts of the political spectrum, and might explain why, frankly, a lot of what they say doesn't make sense.
But these different users aren't at all the same. Videos of police brutality depict people being hurt by a system that's supposed to protect them. Anti-lockdown advocates are putting others at risk by refusing to follow rules, but hoping to frame their struggle as that of a victim.
Sometimes, there is a blending of the two issues when police respond violently to people breaking public health measures. Police brutality, no matter how fringe someone's beliefs are, is still brutality. Even in the face of a hostile individual, law enforcement has a responsibility to respond in a proportionate way.
But it's a greyer area when you consider how these interactions are baited: people intentionally and proudly eschewing public health orders, often intentionally inciting such an interaction with police with the hope of gaining public sympathy for their cause.
Being arrested makes for great content. Plus, you look like a martyr! When Monica Smit, leader of Australia's new major anti-vaxxer group Reignite Democracy Australia, was arrested for incitement recently, her first instinct was to tell her livestream audience: "Please share this video as much as possible".
Even arrests where police do everything by-the-book can appear brutal, particularly if you sympathise with the person being arrested.
(These anti-lockdown groups have inconsistent relationships with police. Members of these movements often sympathise with law enforcement, and claim police are being forced to enforce rules they don't actually believe. Others threaten to doxx or even kill police as retaliation for enforcing the state's whims.)
Initially, I thought that these tactics are politically agnostic, but Ellis frames it a different way.
"We're seeing a broadening of these tactics across the political spectrum," he said.
The subtle difference is that amateur video of police arrests shared to social media still has a political slant: it's anti-police and, by extension, anti-state. But this perspective doesn't belong to just one side of politics, and it certainly doesn't belong to people fighting against real struggles and not confected conspiracies.
A few weeks ago, I saw something that illustrated just how far COVID-19 denialists would go to co-opt the success of other movements: users in online conspiracy groups sharing footage of what they claimed was a man who attended the August anti-lockdown protests having his head stomped on by police.
Except, it wasn't. The footage was from 2020, and it depicted a man who had nothing to do with anti-lockdown protests.
A user found the video and decided to reappropriate someone's worst day on earth to try and score points for their own campaign. After all, why put yourself in harm's way for a few retweets when you can just re-share someone else's pain for your own cause?
What an awful mess this has become. I think in its essence, it's anti-community. Even here in Sweden we have had protests. Most people seem to look at them and think: "really? you are having a problem with our lax covid restrictions?" (I can rant about the 'Swedish position on covid' another time)
When you start looking at what the individuals really have in the baggage, you see it is almost invariably a mix of anti-government, anti-vaxx, covid-denialism, climate change-denialism, anti-5G, anti-immigration, chemtrails, and what not.
It's an intellectually dishonest (of course) position these groups have put themselves in, but at the same time awfully smart. It's nearly impossible to keep the discussion going with a group holding unfalsifiable claims who keep moving the goalposts continually. If they need to have the police as the enemy of their cause, they can deconstruct any event to favour this notion. And they (anti-vaxxers) are not the only ones to use these tactics. But maybe they are the ones that do it all the time and is inherent in the way these group work.
Hiya,
@Pongo, hope you are well! :)
You might find it ironic that an article was published in the Australian media a couple of days ago in which one of those people was praising the Swedish pandemic response to the skies and claimed that in the country of his ancestors, there had been neither lockdowns nor many deaths and we should all take a leaf out of that book. I wondered where he got his information but it was probably social media or far-right rags, and has nothing to do with facts on the ground reported by health authorities. I suppose he thinks that's all made up by the evil cabal that runs the world.
One of the things that causes humans the most trouble both individually and as a species is the tendency to only look at the narrative they want to believe, rather than learn how to think thoroughly, analytically and critically and to learn how to identify reputable sources of information, and to look at various points of view, and to understand a bit about statistical analysis and scientific method so that there's enough scientific literacy to be able to make informed rather than ignorant critiques of things, including of the scientific process, and to be able to tell pseudoscience from science.
We had a letter in the local newspaper by a neighbour down the road who claimed she could prove surgical masks were of no benefit against infection because - wait for it - you can smell the farts of clothed people. That was her "proof" and she was serious. She talked about "poo particles" getting through underpants and pants, clearly imagining little brown solid microparticles of faeces and never having heard of hydrogen sulfide, methane, skatole, cadaverine etc etc. She mentioned that she understood what molecules were, but didn't seem to have any concept of the varying sizes of those, or the difference between a molecule and larger units constructed from them, and the considerable size difference between a small molecule like hydrogen sulfide, and a large molecule like DNA and RNA, let alone a virus constructed from either of them or, God forbid, droplets or aerosols carrying such viruses; and also unicellular organisms like pathogenic bacteria which can cause primary or secondary infections. Instead she felt so clever that she had single-handedly toppled the whole edifice of science by her rare powers of observation and inference. ...a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing, as is a closed mind and an attitude of anti-learning and "I know so much more than other people!"
It would help with so much to have that education mentioned above - with telling information from misinformation, with escaping fundamentalist religious cults, with the oxymoron "scientific creationism" - with any situation in which people cobble together important-sounding codswallop that supports their preferred narrative - and I include growth economists in that category. And if we could have a bit of philosophical education on epistemology, in high school (and I've had the pleasure of teaching at a school which had philosophy on the core curriculum for all of middle school), so much the better. It wouldn't stop people making up pure BS, but it would mean more people would have the skills to call that out, and less people would be swayed into that kind of stuff by their friends, neighbours, biased news channels etc.
I think you're so right that the anti-vaxx, COVID-denialists, anthropogenic climate change denialists, free-dumb people are anti-community - and isn't it interesting that they usually declare their hate of socialism, and confuse it with communism, social democracy etc. (Back to Dunning-Kruger here...)
Psychologically it seems to me that their brand of extreme individualism stems from a misconception of love as "if you love me you will let me do anything I like and have anything I want" - which is kind of toddler level. Love of course requires us to consider other people and the effects of our actions on them, and to care about that, and to at times step back a bit from our own desires so other people can have a turn, have a fair slice of the pie, etc and with COVID it's been about people who perhaps don't have such a high risk themselves caring for the health and welfare of others enough to modify our own behaviour considerably.
I have a huge respect for people who have done this, and am so fortunate not to live in the USA - while we have problematic people in Australia too, the majority of our community actually believes in doing things for the greater good, and in having compassion for people with health issues and not wanting to put other people's grandparents in danger. Of course, the right-wingers label that as sheep behaviour, but bullies are usually pretty good at projecting their own flaws on other people! (...and casting themselves in the role of victim of course...classical!) ;)
From Crikey this morning:
QuoteIn a development that beggars belief, the prime minister of Australia — the leader of the world's largest carbon polluting country per capita — hasn't yet decided whether he'll turn up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. The summit is considered the most significant meeting on climate change since the signing of the Paris Agreement.
See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-58703128
...and if that's not rantworthy enough, Nancy Pelosi from the USA in the past few days extremely misguidedly praised Australia for being so-called "leaders in addressing climate change" - no we're not. We're the worst example in the world - truly appalling - and our politicians are sitting on their posteriors trying to protect the fossil fuel lobby (i.e. their mates), are still allowing fracking, and solar uptake on household rooftops here has been in spite of federal government policy, not because of it. We could have phased out fossil fuels decades ago but didn't because the corporations were getting rich off coal, oil and gas. And 2050 is way too late. I'm so offended - when I went to university in the late 80s/early 90s we already knew about climate change and had for several decades. It's now 30 years later and they want to take another 30 years? OMG.
Apparently change happens one funeral at a time. :1f629:
But sadly, these bastards seem to live forever, and if they ever do die, they're immediately replaced by more of the same. Brett says, "Look at Rupert Murdoch. He could play Davros, and wouldn't need make-up to do it."
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Which one is a maniacal power-drunk science fiction dictator - and which one is the newspaper magnate?
It would be assumed that the staff in cardiac doctor's offices have received psychological training. Patients accept long waiting times. If I show up on time and the doctor calls me between ten and twenty minutes, I don't have the feeling of wasting my (valuable) time. When it becomes forty or even sixty minutes and then the assumption is made that I am "impatient", then there is an internal communication problem, which is only too often carried out on the patient's back, and that makes me really angry, which in turn harms me . The doctor is only doing his duty. It is not his job to "turn away" patients who appear without an appointment. Some examinations / conversations take longer - no doubt. Appointments are given to be kept - from both sides! It shouldn't be a problem to speak to patients about irregularities. I am the last one who has no understanding. But obviously I am considered a 'troublemaker' or generally disliked. Well...the doctor still wants to see me again. - 😡
@ Inbals Tarot
Christmas Eve, 8 p.m.: I already had such a queasy feeling and see myself confirmed. Your Gemini readings appear to be p*ss*d *ff (with the exception of the annual readings). How much longer do you want to do this? They are the least clicked.😳 Who should feel addressed to look at the other chargeable two thirds? 🤑 In addition, it doesn't fit. Take an example from Chelsea.
She only publishes positive predictions, even on weekdays! Take the bull by the horns. 🐂
Quote from: WDR DokuWomen need different medicine than men - women doctors know and have been demanding this for years.
It would be better if the
ethics committee of the federal government deals with it. Instead, a conflict is brought into the health system that has no business there. Greed and lobbying are much worse. In addition, there is a lack of humanity and empathy - at least among employees who are on the verge of burnout. Stop this sh*t...!
It is annoying, infuriating and sad (all at the same time, more or less) when you "lose" old friends because they fell for stupid "conspiracy theories" or tell you other useless "facts"! :unamused:
One guy told me on the phone how in the U.S. they were allegedly not allowing vaxinated people onto airplanes, which was just plain bullsh*t - I have friends over there I can ask if I wanna know what's really going on. Needless to say, I avoided phoning him since then. :pouting-face
One guy, who works in laboratory at a university (of all places), feels the need to tell me that he considers the vaxination as "without effect", even though it's known that the 2 jabs + 1 booster (which he has too) offer a protection of 60%, which is certainly not "ineffective". You'd think with his job he'd have more insight into "science" than I do, but... :1f62b:
Others posted rubbish on their FB etc., trying to "prove" strange theories, but it was all too confused to make any sense at all. :persevere:
In short, sometimes you just wanna give up on fellow humans. :disappointed:
At least I still know a few decent people who do use their brains, so I'm ending this on a more positive note.
Quote from: City Hall L*hn*Please always reserve an appointment before visiting City Hall, unless it is an urgent emergency. Thanks.
I don't see the system as progress, because it increases the feeling of
bondage and
being at the mercy inside the customer/patient, sometimes for hours. It may not be a great loss for people who don't know any different, but not for my generation. I highlighted the word because, consciously or unconsciously, the reasoning has been borrowed from healthcare. 'Emergencies' also have priority there, if the red signs are to be believed. It is not the order that matters, but the urgency. This may have worked well during the pandemic, but it is unacceptable as a permanent condition.
Quote from: MeltingMan on June 11, 2022, 13:22:20This may have worked well during the pandemic, but it is unacceptable as a permanent condition.
I do agree, a city hall should be "open to the public" if possible. Of course making an appointment sometimes makes sense, to avoid waiting around for hours.