Discuss anything Huey Lewis related in this thread.
The News
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Finally, someone took the gag off Joe Biden’s mouth; let’s just hope people are listening!
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Now that he’s out of jail, Martin Shkreli is in the news again.
Crypto Plunge: Pharma Bro Shkreli’s Coin Drops More Than 90% – Bloomberg
Martin Shkreli’s crypto loses 90% of value after major wallet dumps tokens | Fortune
The cryptocurrency of “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli plunged 90% on Friday after a wallet that appeared to belong to Shkreli sold more than 160 billion tokens.
The Daraprim price hike controversy was not what got him convicted and imprisoned, but I think it was a convenient way to get the story out of the news. The essential problem was that it was an old drug for a rare parasitic disease toxoplasmosis that often doesn’t even need to be treated unless the patient has a compromised immune system. However, with AIDS and other immune deficiencies on the rise, it has become an essential drug. But one with only one manufacturer.
The longer the controversy remained in the news, the more risk there was that it would bring light to similar practices across the pharmaceutical industry. It is very convenient to have a single scapegoat saddled with all the blame for what all the drug producers do in regular business operation.
Daraprim Price Hike – Ethics Unwrapped (utexas.edu)
Dr. Wendy Armstrong, professor of infectious diseases at Emory University, said in response, “An old drug is not necessarily a bad drug… This happens to be an incredibly effective drug and has been cheap and well tolerated by patients for years.” Armstrong and Aberg both noted that some patients who take Daraprim must use the drug indefinitely. Writing for Bloomberg and The Washington Post, Max Nisen described how the price increase was indicative of larger issues in the pharmaceutical industry. He stated, “Old medicines are still sold at inflated prices because there’s no mechanism to compel drugmakers to lower them.” Nisen added that pharmaceutical companies “justify drug prices by reminding the public that developing drugs is costly and failure-prone. That’s a fair point. But drug companies also announced more than $50 billion worth of share buybacks and dividend hikes after the new [2017] tax-cut law passed.”
In 2018, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors of $10 million. But as Nisen points out, “Shkreli’s fraud conviction stemmed from his hedge-fund days — everything he did with drug prices remains legal.” In May 2018, the price of Daraprim remains $750 per pill.
The same year Shkreli was convicted, Trump’s tax cut was a big cash bonus for drugmakers as well: Trump tax law cut what US drugmakers owed. Now they fear an increase. | BioPharma Dive
Their objections are to be expected after the tax cuts put in place by Donald Trump collectively saved large U.S. pharmas more than $6 billion over the past four years, according to a BioPharma Dive analysis.
$6 billion that I doubt they invested in making drugs less expensive.
However, on the Crypto front, Shkreli is following in the footsteps of the self-named “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort who was a crypto skeptic turned crypto shill.
Wolf of Wall Street Jordan Belfort Changes His Tune on Crypto (gizmodo.com)
However, honestly, unlike Elon Musk who I find to be a bit scam-like in his off-and-on promotion of crypto and just in general with many of his “mars shot” projects that turn out to be busts, both Shkreli and Belfort have working class and middle class backgrounds and generally got ahead because of their smarts and hustle. I think a lot of their downfall is due to the incentives to be destructively greedy in the financial culture they entered as much as it has to do with any personal failings. Like how Madoff became the poster boy for the financial collapse when really the only connection was that the collapse exposed his ponzi scheme. His decades old scheme had nothing to do the actual financial irresponsibility that caused the collapse.
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Looks like the Queen may be quite seriously unwell.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62836057
Family travelling to Balmoral apparently. It doesn’t sound good.
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No the reactions suggest it’s very serious. They wouldn’t normally be making the official statements they are if it’s a condition that they’d expect to clear up. We may be seeing Operation London Bridge commencing soon.
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I’ve been slipped what may be some inside information and says she has had cancer for a while (it’s a long story but the source is someone who is close to one of her ladies in waiting).
Which would explain the care at home, it’s untreatable and they just need to make the patient comfortable. If you don’t contract a disease or have an accident most people in the west die of 3 things – heart attack, stroke or cancer. The first two send you to a hospital.
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Well there’s a new piece of trivia to know.
By the way on the rumour above, it could be nonsense or could be educated guesswork, although it was passed on by someone reliable and they specified a blood cancer so we’ll see when more info is released if it was true.
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Either way, regardless of speculation on the cause, it seems that everything is gearing up to deliver the bad news now. Programming suspended on BBC One for live coverage. I imagine they might already know what to expect and when.
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I’ve always know succession is immediate so it’s not factually surprising but it is strange to see ‘The King” in the press release.
If Charles III is anything like Rocky III, it should be one of the best Charleses.
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The national anthem is now God Save the King (not that I have ever sung it).
I’ve always know succession is immediate so it’s not factually surprising but it is strange to see ‘The King” in the press release.
Yeah, it’s the accumulation of the little changes that is going to be so weird during this period and the near future. The national anthem changing. Stamps will be updated – those commerative Transformers ones will probably be the last issued with the Queen on. New coinage at some point – I’ve no idea if that’s an immediate wholesale change or phased in slowly.
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Nice to see the Tories made her work right up till days before she died. She really was one of us after all.
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I’ve always know succession is immediate so it’s not factually surprising
Monarchy is the only known phenomenon that breaks the speed of light. Transmission is instantaneous, regardless of how far away the heir is.
(Joke (c) Terry Pratchett.)
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Interesting bit of trivia:
When Elizabeth ascended the throne, the UK’s prime minister was Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874. The prime minister at the time of her death, Liz Truss, was born 101 years later, in 1975.
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When Queen Elizabeth II first clocked in on day one, Britain held 70+ territories around the world; at the time of her death that number had dwindled to 15.
She did reign over some of the end of Empire. India had already gone 5 years before she took her position and places like Canada and Australia long before that.
It’s a very interesting discussion whether that’s a weakness or a strength. The origins of the British Empire actually come from a private company, most of the territory stolen was by the East India Corporation and not the crown, taking that from them was much later and surprisingly short in duration. All the European and American land grabs died away, here the Philippines is very US centric because it was a colony, they are not exempt from the concept and neither are the Dutch or Spanish or French or Portuguese.
I think everyone had to face the reality of that being unacceptable, maybe Britain and Spain more than most but you have to be wary of measuring success by territories owned. I think a bigger damage the UK has inflicted on itself is Brexit, evacuating a top table position in the biggest and richest trading group in the world.
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But what about the real important stuff?
Is there going to be a paid Bank Holiday for the day of the funeral across the commonwealth?
And will that day be Monday September 19th?I need an answer soon as I’ve pretty much made plans.
That’s it, no other questions.
Oh, wait.
Will we have a holiday every year? Every Sept. 8th?
Sorry to seem so greedy, just loves me some paid time off. -
This year? Yep, 19 Sept. Future years? Dunno.
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I’ve seen some things where some countries may use this as an opportunity to exit the Commonwealth. Australia was one country mentioned.
I think what is expected in Australia is removing the British monarch as head of state. It’ll happen inevitably at some point I imagine, Canada too. Caribbean countries have moved that way in even the last year.
That’s different to being in the Commonwealth, most members don’t have the King as head of state, Malaysia is in the commonwealth and has had its own King as head of state since 1957, India 10 years previously. One African member I can’t recall right now wasn’t even in the British Empire but just asked to join.
There’s no real push for countries to leave the Commonwealth it doesn’t give you anything useful, you can be 100% independent of any British influence and it’s just a trading and immigration agreement. There is zero movement in Malaysia to exit the commonwealth, they like that it is much easier to get a student visa to the UK and Australia than it is for the USA which is a pain in the arse.
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Is there going to be a paid Bank Holiday for the day of the funeral across the commonwealth? And will that day be Monday September 19th?
Yes and yes.
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I’m sceptical any of those kind of changes will happen as it’d involve unpicking a lot of the governmental structures. It’s easy to say you’ll reform the monarchy plus the voting system, ie. change to PR. But once in office as PM with the benefit conferred by FPTP and all those Royal Perogative powers? The allure of reform fades fast.
It could happen but it’d take a seriously committed politician to do it.
Conceptually, there’s no contest between an elected head of state and “divine right”, you can’t argue easily for the latter. The best defence for the monarchy is they probably generate, via tourism, more cash than they get given.
Would replacing the monarchy as head of state mean that disappears? Hard to say. They have enough holdings to be financially stable. Harry’s stepping down was about him wanting to live life outside of it all. Plus, the UK political system is built on fudging stuff.
One argument I’m not convinced of now is that an elected, ceremonial head of state role would result in the likes of Cameron or Johnson. If it had little political power attached – and no PM that sets it up will create a rival office – then that kind of individual would not want it.
As to where things go, both Charles and his mother were politically smart. Charles has already stated that he has to change to his new capacity, that the latitude permitted to him as prince does not apply to him as king.
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There is no system of voting that can easily prevent that if people keep voting for an ass.
Voters taking their responsibility seriously – or more accurately, failing to – is a widespread problem. Of course, the flip side is that Czechs see no problem with that individual being seen as representative of them.
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I’m sceptical any of those kind of changes will happen as it’d involve unpicking a lot of the governmental structures. It’s easy to say you’ll reform the monarchy plus the voting system, ie. change to PR. But once in office as PM with the benefit conferred by FPTP and all those Royal Perogative powers? The allure of reform fades fast.
Yeah. And I can’t honestly see the monarchy being abolished before the House of Lords is reformed completely and there doesn’t seem to be much hope of that currently, either.
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One thing I can see happening is an abandonment of the idea of being in the role unto death. We’re in a world where Popes retire, no reason why a monarch can’t. That opens the door to more proactive succession planning.
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It could happen but it’d take a seriously committed politician to do it.
I think that’s the main thing. I think Charles is definitely less popular than his mother but how far does that translate into radical constitutional change?
I think while Britain’s monarchy is a bit weird and very high profile it may not be fully realised looking from the outside that it is ignored and irrelevant in the daily lives to most Brits 99% of the time. I’m ethically against the monarchy but wouldn’t waste much time campaigning for it as there are a hundred more pressing issues.
It would take a very huge scandal to drive enough people to push for removing the sovereign, and probably not just an individual one as the Edward VIII story showed you can just move on if one person isn’t right.
It is far far more likely that Scotland will exit the union than the monarchy will be disbanded (with Wales and NI maybe on their heels).
I can see a scenario in 20 years where the UK no longer exists but more than likely a King of England will still be there.
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I’ve seen some things where some countries may use this as an opportunity to exit the Commonwealth. Australia was one country mentioned.
I think what is expected in Australia is removing the British monarch as head of state. It’ll happen inevitably at some point I imagine, Canada too. Caribbean countries have moved that way in even the last year.
That’s different to being in the Commonwealth, most members don’t have the King as head of state, Malaysia is in the commonwealth and has had its own King as head of state since 1957, India 10 years previously. One African member I can’t recall right now wasn’t even in the British Empire but just asked to join.
There’s no real push for countries to leave the Commonwealth it doesn’t give you anything useful, you can be 100% independent of any British influence and it’s just a trading and immigration agreement. There is zero movement in Malaysia to exit the commonwealth, they like that it is much easier to get a student visa to the UK and Australia than it is for the USA which is a pain in the arse.
You are correct. I misremembered and misspoke. I now realize what I meant to say was countries like Australia removing the royals as head of state. That is what I meant to say.
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No problem, it’s often a complex setup.
It’s surprising sometimes how much people are pulled towards the status quo. Despite the silly nature of a constitutional monarchy and the fact that it’s impractical to have a head of state who isn’t there this was put up for a vote before in Australia and rejected. Only a couple of years back NZ had the option to replace their current flag with a union jack on it for the silver fern symbol their sporting teams all wear and rejected it. Even as a Brit if I were living there I’d have voted to change.
I think inevitable they will change in the end but it’ll be less of a gut reaction to who the monarch is than some imagine, it’s just a slow evolutionary process that’s been ongoing for about 130 years without a huge amount of drama in most cases.
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Charles has never been as well-liked by the public as his mother, and also has displayed tendencies towards being politically interventionist in the past (which is a bit of a no-no given his supposedly apolitical constitutional role). Both of those will help the cause of republicans.
I’m actually surprised Charles didn’t immediately abdicate in favour of William. People love William and Kate, and it’s a bit like casting a new Bond – you want someone young enough to have a few good movies in him. Charles would remain Duke of Cornwall and keep all of his land and privilege, and would actually have more ability to speak bluntly on the matters he cares about.
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I’m actually surprised Charles didn’t immediately abdicate in favour of William.
You shouldn’t really. People do love William and Kate but a deep seated hate of her uncle abdicating means Liz had and passed down a very strong message that the job is for life.
Personally for me, if I were 73, actually scratch that, if I were 33, I’d take my money, say ‘fuck it’ and move to the Bahamas and drink cocktails on the beach but these people weren’t raised like I was.
It may well be an underestimated ‘end of the monarchy’ scenario that it doesn’t end in some revolutionary zeal by the peasants but rather nobody can be arsed to do it.
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let William be a dad, at least until the kids are teenagers. Then his life will get easy-peasy…
Yeah, that’s EXACTLY how it works.
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revolutionary zeal by the peasants
Well, that’s never going to happen. There are multiple stories this morning of the police arresting anti-monarchy protestors, using their new powers of … literally arresting anyone who says something the government doesn’t like.
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revolutionary zeal by the peasants
Well, that’s never going to happen. There are multiple stories this morning of the police arresting anti-monarchy protestors, using their new powers of … literally arresting anyone who says something the government doesn’t like.
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On Twitter:
King Charles used tax breaks and off-shore dealings to grow very rich – as his people grew poorer and flocked to food banks – The New York Times https://t.co/QX1IPQ5kpb
— Brent Staples (@BrentNYT) September 13, 2022
Scammed again plebs. pic.twitter.com/XDahnid1FT
— Molls (@mollsunminding) September 10, 2022
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It’s interesting to see how the different broadcasters are planning to deal with the state funeral of the Queen on Monday, especially in contrast to how they’ve spent the week since her death.
BBC – shut down all their channels for about three days to simulcast obit coverage, turned BBC One over to continual coverage of every little thing that happened, plus endless talking heads. Yet the funeral is only BBC 2 and coverage ends at 5pm.
ITV – ran obit and rolling news on ITV1 but left their other channels carrying as is, AFAIK. Will simulcast the funeral on all their channels, except Children’s ITV and ITV Be, their reality channel, which seems to have an obit programme.
Channel 4 – ran obit coverage at the time of death, but stopped relatively quickly. Not showing the funeral.
Sky – ran rolling obit coverage on Sky News, Showcase and possibly what used to be Sky One, but left everything else as is. Yet is simulcasting the funeral on every channel they have (except the info channel, I think). Which means you get nonsense like this:
Presumably if you watch on Sky Sports Football you get minute to minute analysis by Gary Neville and Kammy.Interesting way to find out that Sky run E!, Movies 24 and Challenge.
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Good and accurate article. Stupid headline that again confuses the commonwealth with having the British monarch as head of state, and which the last paragraph directly opposes saying there is no impending risk to it.
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What is the role of the King in those other countries that still have him as head of state? Does he have any influence in say the Bahamas?
Normally the monarch appoints a governor who basically carries out the same role the King would in the UK. A ceremonial role where they have final sign-off on legislation and appoint the Prime Minister but never in practice reject what has been democratically ruled on. They (and their boss the King) would have influence as powerful people with direct access tend to have but it’s a very soft power.
The move to reject is really symbolic more than anything, why do we have this foreign woman or man on our coins or legal documents when they basically stole the land originally or bribed people? If say New Zealand changed to have their own head of state tomorrow nothing practical would really change in how they operate, they’d probably elect a head who carried out the same ceremonial apolitical role, but it would be a symbol of them standing fully on their own.
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I think that’s exactly the same as our King with Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten. Except those are officially still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, as autonomous constituent countries. (The “Netherlands” is officially just one out of four constituent countries of the “Kingdom of the Netherlands”)
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Bit of culture war debate over in the Marvel thread made me remember that I hadn’t mentioned the recent German “Winnetou” controversy yet. It’s all very silly, but people have gotten extremely worked up about it all.
https://www.dw.com/en/publishers-withdrawal-of-winnetou-books-stirs-outrage-in-germany/a-62907190
Another day, another online outrage over “cancel culture.” German Twitter lit up with instant indignation this week after a German publisher announced it was pulling two children’s books from its line-up amid accusations of racism and cultural appropriation.
Both books were inspired by Wild West stories from the wildly popular, and increasingly controversial, 19th-century German writer Karl May.
The books imagine the childhood of May’s most famous creation: the fearless Apache brave Winnetou, a fictional Native America chief who made his first appearance in 1875 and whose adventures have been retold in numerous novels — May’s books have sold around 200 million copies worldwide — as well as in several movies and even an animated series.
The new titles were to accompany the release of “The Young Chief Winnetou,” which hit German theaters August 11. Now there are calls to pull the film as well.
The publisher, Ravensburger Verlag, citing “lots of negative feedback” around the “romanticized” and “clichéd” depiction of Native Americans in the books, dropped the titles from its program and apologized if it had hurt anyone’s feelings.The blowback was quick, and predictable. #Winnetou has been a trending topic online since with the majority of posters furious over what German tabloid Bild, with characteristic restraint, termed the “woke hysteria” that was “burning the hero of our childhood at the stake”.
Germany’s Wild West obsession
Behind the online fury lies a very real, and particularly German, love affair with the Wild West, an affection that can be traced directly back to Karl May and his idealized depiction of 19th-century America.
May’s characters — the noble, heroic Winnetou and his white-skinned “blood brother” Old Shatterhand, a German immigrant land surveyor — are as present in the German popular imagination as the figures in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
You’ll find Winnetou books and records in many German households. A series of Winnetou films made during the 1960s are still staples on German TV. There are Karl May-inspired Wild West festivals and theme parks across the county where families gather to dress up as cowboys and Indians on stage sets of saloons and hitching posts. The most popular, in Bad Segeberg, attracts about 250,000 people a year.
That, for many, is the problem. Critics say May’s vision of Native American culture, as a sort of prelapsarian utopia, is little more than a convenient fiction that ignores the nastier truths about the genocide of Indigenous people by white settlers.
In the broader discussion around cultural appropriation and who has the right to tell which stories, it doesn’t help May’s case that he was a white man writing about a culture of which he had no first-hand knowledge.
May only visited America once, after he was already a successful novelist, and didn’t get further west than New York.
The Winnetou films, including the most recent, all feature white actors in the Indigenous roles. The most famous Winnetou is Pierre Brice, a white Frenchman who played the Apache chef in nearly a dozen films from 1962-68 as well as in a TV series in the 1980s.The ‘noble savage’ stereotype
At its core, the criticism of May and Winnetou, and the reason Ravensburger pulled its books from the shelves, is that the books and their characters are retreads of the old “noble savage” stereotype.
May’s Natives are not real people, the argument goes, but idealized, near-magical figures whose main role is to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the white protagonist.
There’s definitely some truth to that. Winnetou is more superhero than flesh-and-blood character, and, oddly sexless (though some readers detect a strong homoerotic vibe in the “brotherly love” between the Apache an Old Shatterhand).
But labeling May and his imaginary America as racist and imperialist ignores how radical, for its time, Winnetou was. A century before Kevin Costner’s 1990 epic Western film “Dances with Wolves,” Karl May flipped the traditional depiction of “wild Indians” and “civilized cowboys,” portraying Indigenous Americans (at least Winnetou and his friends) as the heroes, and white settlers mainly as the villains.
German society does not lack for racism but, thanks in large part to Karl May, Native Americans are held in near-universal regard, even if the image the average German has of Indigenous people bears little relation to reality.The thing is that this big controversy that has completely taken over the country was entirely caused by the Bild-Zeitung, our big tabloid, crying about how the woke mob wants to kill Winnetou and wants to ban the old movies from TV and censor the books and whatnot. All of which is complete nonsense. The publisher killed the adaptation of a Winnetou prequel because there was little to no interest in the movie and the only feedback they got where the book was concerned was people saying, hey, this fake stereotype from the 19th century really isn’t something that should be published today.
But they managed to rile up the conservatives and whip them into a frenzied hysteriya about how the radical left wants to destroy their childhoods. It’s a perfect example for how sucessful the business model is for the tabloid media. Quite amazing.5 users thanked author for this post.
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But they managed to rile up the conservatives and whip them into a frenzied hysteriya about how the radical left wants to destroy their childhoods. It’s a perfect example for how sucessful the business model is for the tabloid media. Quite amazing.
Same thing happened in the US a while back when Dr. Seuss’ publishers announced they were pulling 6 of his books because they didn’t sell any more. Fox News whipped up a mob claiming they were being “cancelled”
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Same thing happened in the US a while back when Dr. Seuss’ publishers announced they were pulling 6 of his books because they didn’t sell any more. Fox News whipped up a mob claiming they were being “cancelled”
Actually the official reason that the officials representing the Dr. Seuss legacy gave for discontinuing publication of those six books, as reported by CNBC was that they contained racist or insensitive imagery. So, technically, those books were “cancelled” for reasons that were not purely financial. But if the owners of those properties decide that those books could be offensive to some readers, and choose not to perpetuate that offensiveness by continuing to publish those books, is that censorship?
Early in his career Stephen King (writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) wrote a book in 1977 called RAGE about a high school kid who, after being expelled, retrieves a pistol from his locker and begins killing staff and holding his classmates hostage. Following numerous violent incidents at American schools in the ’80s and ’90s, King allowed that story (which had been included in a collection called THE BACHMAN BOOKS) to fall out of print. In 2013 he wrote and published an anti-firearms essay called “Guns” which clarified the reason for his decision and why RAGE will never see print again. Of course, since all of this occurred before Donald Trump became president and gave a sense of power to White Supremacist Americans, nobody made a stink about King’s decision at the time; if he tried this today he’d likely be vilified by the Karens.
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But if the owners of those properties decide that those books could be offensive to some readers, and choose not to perpetuate that offensiveness by continuing to publish those books, is that censorship?
I think for me quite plainly it isn’t. Censorship is an outside body telling you what you can or cannot say or depict.
Similarly to the Stephen King example Stanley Kubrick pulled A Clockwork Orange for release in the UK for a very long period because some youths were replicating the behaviour of the Droogs, that’s not censorship as it’s an artist controlling their own work. Around the same time period a lot of local authorities in the UK didn’t allow cinemas to show Life of Brian, that is censorship because the creators wanted it shown.
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I can’t believe that republican scum at Channel 5 aren’t showing the funeral. But at least they’re showing the only valid alternative.
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I can’t believe that republican scum at Channel 5 aren’t showing the funeral. But at least they’re showing the only valid alternative.
It’s what the Queen would have wanted.
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I can’t believe that republican scum at Channel 5 aren’t showing the funeral. But at least they’re showing the only valid alternative.
UK’s Channel 5 aired ‘The Emoji Movie’ instead of the Queen’s funeral
All of the UK’s major public-service networks aired coverage of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Monday — minus one.
Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8 after a 70-year reign. But Channel 5, owned by Paramount Global, opted to air Sony’s “The Emoji Movie” instead, according to Variety and reactions on social media.
UK-based journalist Scott Bryan also tweeted about it on Friday, saying: “Nearly every main British television channel will be airing The Queen’s funeral on Monday. Apart from Channel 5 … who are airing The Emoji Movie.”
The decision sparked commotion on Twitter.
“No sign of Prince Louis, he’s probably at the palace watching the Emoji Movie on Channel 5,” said one Twitter user.
“Cant believe we are finally here, it’s going to be such a tough watch,” said another. “Good luck everyone getting through The Emoji Movie on Channel 5 this morning.”
Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The Emoji Movie” is one of the most critically derided movies of the last five years, receiving a 6% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes when it was released in 2017.
“This movie’s ‘believe in yourself’ message is borne out, in a perverse way, by the very fact that it even exists,” critic Glenn Kenney wrote for The New York Times. “And yet the whole thing remains nakedly idiotic.”
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Italy gone far right?
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/25/1124969934/italy-election-voting-europe
Well I don’t think it’s quite fascism but it comes close. She’s a bit similar to Orban in Hungary, Len Pen in France, and the Sweden democrats. Anti-immigration and for traditional values.
Meloni’s party and the Sweden democrats have their roots in fascist movements though. They claim to have reformed but that might be a trick to lure more voters.
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It usually takes people by surprise when uprisings like that happen. The next question is if they are organised enough to sustain them and effect any change.
Iran is probably a bit different to how many imagine. I have never been but meet quite a few Iranians over here, the ones here are middle class and basically taking advantage of the fact that Malaysia is on a friendly list with Iran as it’s a Muslim country but much more relaxed on the religious side. So pretty much all our conversations have been over beers at an Internations event a friend of mine runs. The women ditch any head coverings and wear what they want as nobody will police that in Penang.
Despite it being a theocracy for over 40 years from my observation they haven’t really inculcated those strict values in the young who have only known that regime.
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Iran is making me really anxious. Ever since the Arab Spring, I have little hope that this kind of thing will lead to reform and am instead just waiting for the hammer to drop on those poor, brave people.
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Considering he was married to her for almost three decades and so was most likely aware of what an absolute dumpster fire of a human being she is, I’m curious as to what the last straw was.
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With these reports of this latest storm devastating Florida…
It was said by some online that we might have had more policies addressing climate change
if the 2000 election went the other way, given how Gore was talking about it for years.
Not that he would have prevented all this, but (who knows?), some of the policies might have
offset these extremes…A lot of things would have been different looking back. We already talked about how different
the Supreme Court would be right now had Hilary won etc. (4 seats in that term). Roe v Wade
is only one difference etc.Regarding Roe v Wade overturned: Only then did some of the “feminists” get up in arms declaring it a clarion call.
Others are telling them that they didn’t move during the MAGA movement, attacks on LGBTQ+, the border and
kids in cages, BLM, the attacks on Asians during Covid… only now that it affects them personally.Some want to blame the Dems (who aren’t saints), but the blame should also go to the voters who
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Blast damages Crimea bridge central to Russia war effort | Reuters
A powerful truck explosion seriously damaged Russia’s road-and-rail bridge to Crimea on Saturday, hitting a prestige symbol of Moscow’s annexation of the peninsula and the key supply route to Russian forces battling to hold territory captured in southern Ukraine.
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Got no link, and wondered where to put this, but it is news.
Geographically, summer wasn’t horrible this time. Well, I don’t know.
After praying for something less than than the horrible heat, we seemed to get our wish.
Summer started late. It did get going, but never went overboard (no 40 degree temps).
How nice not to have a forest fire horror show (at least now at a level we can ignore if it doesn’t affect us)But now summer has just not gone away. It’s fucking October and we haven’t seen rain in so long.
Next week forecast has next Friday (Oct.14th!) at 29 degrees.
We’re in a drought!
I’m still keeping the window open in the bedroom and keeping a fan on.
For the record, I’ve never been one to complain about the rain. Now I miss it so much.If you don’t know, Vancouver is near a natural Rain Forest, and we should be deserving of our ‘Wet Coast’ nickname by now.
River beds are dry, and this will have a long term affect on spawning salmon and lots of other ecological shit.We can’t win. And you just know the pendulum will come swinging the other way.
This is some kind of…
Gave up trying to wrap this up. Admit I’m only bring bad news with no hope of any kind of answer.But I do miss the rain, and having the natural gas fireplace on during Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
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Maybe the Russia hitting their own Nordstream pipelines makes a little more sense here:
Putin: Russia ready to resume gas supplies to EU via Nord Stream 2
President Vladimir Putin says Russia is ready to resume gas supplies via one link of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that remains operational, in his address to the Russian Energy Week international forum.
The Russian leader said gas could still be supplied by one remaining intact part of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The ball was in the EU’s court on whether it wanted gas supplied via the pipeline, he said.
Putin says:
Russia is ready to start such supplies. The ball is in the court of the EU. If they want, they can just open the tap.
The recently completed Nordstream 2 was cancelled by Germany and other EU states planning to use it, now it remains the only way to pump the gas, pressing their politicians to re-approve it or go without.
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“Please buy our gas again. We need the money.”
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Comedians Eric André and Clayton English sue over Atlanta airport searches
Duo say police, in separate incidents at Atlanta airport, singled them out for drug search and questioning because of their race
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Maybe you’re right. It just sucks that so many nations are against the West in this, seemingly the entire Middle East. I mean even Israel is still in business with Russia.
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I mean is OPEC just Saudi Arabia? It is more than a dozen nations I think who together decided to cut the overall output. So why the focus on the Saudis.
OPEC is (in theory anyway) any country that exports more oil that it consumes. Many countries are oil producers, the UK is, so is Malaysia but they don’t qualify for OPEC status because their production levels are relatively low and consumption high.
Saudi Arabia has by far the highest oil reserves, they could theoretically provide for the entire globe on their own for a long time, which gives them this massive influence. It’s not just them but they are the big dogs, the alpha males of OPEC that lead the pack.
Which as Christian rightly says means the west has spent decades turning a blind eye to all the fucking awful things they do (they also buy lots of arms from the US and UK for billions of dollars we have basically given them for overpriced oil). Biden called them out a few years back as a ‘pariah state’ but the reality is they have a massive level of control over how much a gallon of gas costs in Wisconsin so he went back begging.
As I say the whole thing is a scam, OPEC is openly described as a cartel which is illegal in any other circumstance. Tightening the release of their oil which in reality is worth no more than $5 a barrel for what it costs to extract enriches them beyond belief. It’s why we all need to shift dramatically away from reliance on them. They fucked up economies in the 1970s and are doing it again now.
We will always need oil to some degree, for making plastic etc but we need to get radical about renewables and electric vehicles to essentially make these rogue states irrelevant, nobody wants to actually live in that Neom bullshit, 50 degree temperatures and the risk of random arrest for having a wank or a pint of beer. They are scared at what will happen post oil reliance and we need to accelerate it.
This is possible, in the cold war investment in nuclear was massive. The first Soviet nuclear power station cost more to power than it generated, that improved of course but with massive subsidy to get there. The UK has had a bill of £72bn to decommission the Sellafield plant, a fraction of that amount would insulate every house in the country and reduce energy demand by a quarter.
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Whoa!
Almost 1B he has to cough up!
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He used to be fucking hot:
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It’ll be interesting to see how Alex Jones ends up now. He’s got no money and never will, after this, and it seems like he’s lost most of the relevance he had with his target audience / the people he conned into buying fake shit. He’s also a massive alcoholic. It’s nice to see somebody getting their comeuppance really. Those moments from his trial were hilarious.
But he did used to be hot.
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I would be more satisfied if Jones was sent to prison for a period of time, and was legally barred from ever podcasting or broadcasting again; but unfortunately these are civil cases, not criminal trials, and the penalties imposed by the jury are only financial. And we all know that, if his appeal fails, Jones will immediately declare bankruptcy and only pay a tiny fraction of the judgment, if anything.
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