May 2017
Complete text-bearing Facebook records from the export.
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” ― Walter Lippmann
Heaven forbid we'd actually tax rich bludgers in this country. Banks, boomers on tax-free super, that sort of thing. Better to make the clever and poor and young pay.
Which month is sex and junk food month? http://www.nomeatmay.net
"Flaubert spent a morning inserting a comma, and an afternoon removing it. If it’s what it took to write Madame Bovary, it was worth it."
Pretty much my life philosophy.
Happy birthday Big Will!
Happy Birthday Kath, if you still read FB!
If you have kids who want to go to uni, are you happy for them to pay for the big tax cuts to businesses who often aren't paying any tax anyway, and are mostly overseas? This isn't political, it's stupidity. This is the 'clever country', remember when we called ourselves that?
It's pretty amazing that this myth still lives. http://www.salon.com/2003/03/12/spectrum/
Playing computer games is the equivalent of exercising. http://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2017/05/03/virtual-gaming-makes-easier-workouts-a-reality.html
Happy birthday May baby! Beat me by a week
Ooooh look, Microsoft has built a Mac. https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/store/d/surface-laptop/90FC23DV6SNZ/20TL?icid=AU_Homepage_Hero_Surface-Laptop_5.2.17
"It's estimated as much as a third of all healthcare might not actually be needed, including many practices and treatments considered routine and uncontroversial." Fantastic initiative. Particularly because it encourages patients to collaborate with their doctors. http://www.choosingwisely.org.au/recommendations
GetUp really annoy the LNP. Good.
Facebook is struggling with this now. It's already at the point where it really could or should be a public service, regulated as a public institution.
Male circumcision is also a type of 'genital mutilation', but isn't usually seen in that way.
Another exercise myth bites the dust.
It's strange something as abstract as climate change become such a big political issue. Have often wondered why. It's most likely because there are two main responses to the challenges in the world at the moment, and climate change is the link between them. There are the 'globalisers' who think business as usual is the way forward - more open 'markets', less national laws and boundaries. Then there are those who are busily retreating to old ways - to sovereign nations, to nationalism and patriotism, to 'local' or community things (the 'authenticity' movements, for example in food, travel in your own country etc.). Climate change is what links both of these. It's what stops the globalisers, because it puts limits on what can be done (which is why they viciously attack it). And it's what also stuffs up the authenticity movements, the old 'think globally, act locally' idea falls apart because it's very hard to see how local action can actually fix anything.
Um, I hate it because an increasing number of adults, men and women, look like plastic aliens from Doctor Who. Lines add character to a face, and having this work done also stops the face being able to express the full range of emotions, which is the most beautiful and important thing the face does. "Because I feel like it", yeh that's a good reason for doing something. Anorexics feel like not eating.
Cutest thing of the day. We should have native animals as pets, always wanted a wombat. Roo would do.
As my mate @[585851453:2048:Adrian Farrell] always says, squatting like this is great for your hips and lower back. Would be interested to know how many people struggle to do this, and hold it for any length of time.
Nick Hanauer is an inspiration, he calls out the lie that rich people create wealth. He should know, he's a self-made billionaire.
How you end up looking if you eat your vegetables.
Most people you meet make sense in one way or the other. And then there are people like this.
Could be a description of a drug problem. No real difference. "The more you travel, the harder it becomes to hit that 'wow' factor when you venture to a new destination. It's a paradoxical conundrum. Travellers seek out foreign pastures, but after gallivanting around the globe for so long, cities start to mould into the same skyline, languages merge into a global tongue, and it becomes increasingly difficult to seek out an 'authentic' experience -- whatever that means."
We're not living longer, another article that doesn't understand how averages work. What it does show is that the people who do live to old age - and there aren't many more of them than there were in the past - are sicker. We're keeping them alive using medicine, but it's not always a nice life.
I'm onto my 3rd tissue...
Tony Abbott was a wrecking ball for Australia. Firstly every business that uses energy in the country curses him for wrecking a carbon price, and wants it back (it will come back), and then he smashed the NBN and put us lower than 50th in the world for broadband performance. And the idiot wants to be Prime Minister again. It'd be like putting a toddler in charge of a fine china shop.
Asking a property developer how to fix housing is like asking a 6-year-old to do the grocery shopping. You're going to get Coco Pops for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It's been years since I really used shampoo and conditioner, but I always wondered - why does the conditioner always run out well before the shampoo? I get that you need more conditioner than shampoo, but why don't they just make the conditioner bottles bigger? Do they do this so that you're more likely to stick with their brand when you go to the shop to buy replacement conditioner?
Most people noticed that the banks got hit with a $6 billion new tax to pay. Not as many noticed that their tax cut under the cut to the company tax rate was over $7 billion.
Yeh.
Happy Birthday Sarah! Part of the elite May bday crew.
Healthcare, US-style.
This fella stood up on Q@A last night and questioned how it's fair that rich people would have almost half their income 'confiscated' if the top tax rate went back to around 50%. Firstly he doesn't understand marginal tax rates. Only the amount above the top tax threshold would be taxed at that rate. But more importantly, this idea that tax is theft is surprisingly common. As if we all have private money, which the government then takes away. There is no such thing as private money, to make any money you need a government. If you don't believe me, go and live in Afghanistan or Syria for a few months. Tax is what you pay to get the services that allow you to live a good life, including making money.
The drug testing of people on welfare is an idiot idea, mostly because most of our ideas around drugs are idiot ideas. Read this if you don't believe me.
So many urban myths.
Some fun facts about welfare. - far and away the largest welfare cost is the aged pension - unemployment benefits are one of the smallest welfare costs and will remain stable for at least the next 4 years - welfare fraud runs at about 0.03% of all claims - in the last 20 years the proportion of the adult population receiving some form of benefit has dropped from 34% to 27% - childcare costs is one of the biggest growth categories, but is still tiny compared to the aged pension. And is a cost that is being borne disproportionately by the taxpayer, and not by business, and is mostly necessary because both parents have to work to survive, and housing is unaffordable due to other massive tax breaks to property investors (business welfare) - tax exemptions for baby boomer super are now already larger than the cost of the aged pension (over $40 billion per year), are still climbing, and flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest boomers. Next time you see a politician try to convince you the country is going broke because of drug-taking people on the dole, imagine them rotating on a spit over an open fire. Works for me.
The Dunning-Kruger effect, again. Or why dumb people are generally convinced that they're smart, and smart people are generally convinced that they're dumb.
So sweet of Telstra, mobile phone tower for every farm *cough*
Can you copyright dance moves?
Rand gave birth to thousands of obnoxious twats who launch 'culture wars' to force us all to be, um, individuals.
Trump is hopeless, no doubt. But getting rid of him will be a shallow victory. The others in his party who would replace him are actually much worse. And the people who voted for him will be furious if he's impeached, it will make voter dissatisfaction with politics go up another level. It's a mess.
Have a guess who this is.
Actual photograph of Abraham Lincoln (red arrow) with the troops, just before giving the Gettysburg Address.
Really fascinating report on the impact of social media on young peoples' mental health. Instagram is the worst, followed by Snapchat. YouTube is the best. The overwhelming reason for the negative impacts is comparison. Looking at pictures of others and what they're wearing, their body shapes, their glamorous holidays or weekends etc. Adults do this just as much on social media, often innocently, thinking they're just sharing what they're up to. But the culture eventually becomes one of constant comparison.
Really fascinating report on the impact of social media on young peoples' mental health. Instagram is the worst, followed by Snapchat. YouTube is the best. The overwhelming reason for the negative impacts is comparison. Looking at pictures of others and what they're wearing, their body shapes, their glamorous holidays or weekends etc. Adults do this just as much on social media, often innocently, thinking they're just sharing what they're up to. But the culture eventually becomes one of constant comparison.
The clever thing Queen did with lighting design was to put the lights in blocks. That way the lights took on a character of their own, rather than just being something to light the stage.
One more Queen goodie. Genuinely unique, blew every other artist off any stage.
A key and piano strings. Responsible for creating one of the most famous sounds on TV. Any guesses?
Right, try again. A couple of false facts a day to slay, good for the soul.
We've just lived through two decades of economic 'boom' times. Part of that was people losing perspective around their spending, at every scale, from what they're prepared to pay for a drink or a meal, through to the outrageous mortgages many are now struggling with. Those who swum against this stream were often called cheap or stingy, but as this piece says, that misses the point. It's more about having some degree of intentionality about your use of money. Being a grown up with it, rather than a perpetual teenager. Living 'below your means' - a wonderful phrase. All booms are really psychological phenomena. You can try to explain them using economics, but 'irrational exuberance' is about how people feel and think. They're mostly about comparison, booms are about people leveraging up to feed the comparison of status.
I thought Max was a genius creation. Has sort of disappeared without much trace.
Actual photograph of the last lifeboat leaving the Titanic. Not entirely sure how the photograph survived, as the taker seems to have been still on the ship. (P.S. is actually taken by a rescue ship)
"Australian banks are upset. Their $30 billion per year gravy train of profits from the Australian people is finally being slowed down...To be clear, the banking system is a regulated cartel. Its primary function is to provide a public good in the form of the money supply of the country. As such, we would expect it to be uncompetitive, and use tight regulatory controls to ensure that the privileged position of private banks is not being abused." https://gameofmates.com/2017/05/17/the-bank-competition-myth/
Hey, I just walked on the moon.
This is the true face of the 'culture warriors' who have been spewing their filth into the country for the past 15 or so years. People who talk about the 'Left' and the 'Right' a lot. And who never shut up about the evils of terrorism, whereas they're the people who create the climate which lets terrorism thrive. It's a perpetual, 24-hour hate machine, through different outlets like Quadrant, Fox, The Daily Telegraph etc. These are the real un-Australians in our midsts.
Nagasaki blast, at ground level.
The old Top Gun was a bad idea.
The idiots are winning in the world because they at least know one thing - that morals and values are important. The smart people are losing because they think morals and values are old-fashioned, even (gasp) 'religious' things.
Whether you agree with her views on this particular issue or not, I thought this interview was disrespectful and rude. Sniggering at her, badgering her. And leave her tennis out of it. She's still more of a superstar than many realise. Every week 100+ coke-heads run out for the NRL and AFL and we don't bat an eyelid, I don't think her views here are worth the anger against her. http://www.smh.com.au/sport/tennis/tennis-great-accuses-gay-community-of-bullying-over-margaret-court-arena-name-change-20170526-gwedwp.html
History is such a good teacher.
Worth another go around.
Look into my eyes. Yikes.
Looks like a boring story from the business pages. But another scary warning of the time bomb we're sitting on, this could change everything about how we live. At some point many people will owe Steve Keen a massive apology.
As the old cliche says, do you do the drug, or does the drug do you?
Happy Birthday Silke! :)
Is there anything, besides Kell Drengenberg, more beautiful than an autumn day?
$400 million can buy you only so much good PR. https://theaimn.com/400-million-isnt-enough/