Not very well for pigs, or pig farmers. (I guess the pigs were going to die anyway, but it is a waste to breed an animal and kill it not for food, but just because you can't afford to keep it living.)
From UK Sky News, which is not nuts, like our Sky News wannabe Fox News outlet:
Every farmers' worst nightmare is coming to pass; the mass culling of healthy animals because there simply aren't enough butchers to process them and get them off farms...
Last night, I tried watching the 4th episode of Squid Game, and I'm officially out. It struck me as a particularly unpleasant episode.
But I just can't get over the fundamentally stupid things about it as a story - even allowing for fictional fantasy.
And the violence is striking me as just too sadistic now - I am disappointed that there are not more people saying that character arc, or meta commentary on rabid capitalism, or whatever, does not justify this level of routine violence.
Here are some articles that support my condemnation of the show:
Squid Game: 9 Things That Don't Make Sense About The Series
(That article shows me that some of the things I already think are ridiculous about it are not resolved by the show's end.)
Things about Netflix's Squid Games that Make Absolutely No Sense
Same things, really.
There are plenty more links, and I might add some later.
Update: interesting article at The Conversation about the terrible history of labour fights in modern South Korea. Yet, haven't I read that South Koreans themselves are not the biggest fans of the show?
Update: I am pleased to see that Variety and NYT both gave it negative reviews. I am not alone.
Amused to see this on Twitter:
I will have to check on the Cathollaxy blog later, but I trust that the anti-government COVID response protesters are getting frustrated that the media covered last Saturday's protests with a bit of a shrug, with images of the attendees being just outright anti-vaxxer nuts.
They might be learning that just because social media allows protest organising to be easy as pie amongst a minority, it can still be ineffective in actually achieving anything.
I can't even remember the last, pre-pandemic, movie I saw at the cinema. Maybe if I search my movie review posts I could work it out.
But, happily, yesterday I discovered that the new cinemas quite close to home are really well fitted out, and cheap, and I am happy to get back into this movie going thing, as soon as more good movies start coming out. (I'm in on the new Spiderman, but the way. The Tom Holland incarnation and Dr Strange: I can't resist.)
Anyway, yesterday it was No Time to Die, and I was pretty impressed. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to not make another Bond, the Daniel Craig era was just so good, everything is going to suffer in comparison*. (I'm even a quasi defender of Quantum of Solace: although just re-reading my review now, I see it may partly have been because I saw it before I saw Casino Royale, and so the effectiveness of Craig in the role sort of blew me away.)
What to say about it? The action was really well handled (although tending at times to the "too quickly edited, shaky cam" end of the spectrum in some of the up close fights); I think it could have been trimmed slightly, but I was never bored, and I didn't notice anyone leave the cinema for a toilet break during its long run time; I tend to agree with most reviewers that Skyfall is a smidge better, but they both have the sense of gravitas that made Bond feel real.
I do have something to say that I haven't read elsewhere, although it must have occurred to some reviewer, somewhere: the screenwriters (sort of) lucked out with COVID giving a metaphoric topicality to the evil, world threatening device in this story - a fast spreading, silent infectious agent of sorts, weaponised (as Right wingers love to fantasise is the case with our current pandemic.)
Finally: unfortunately, one of the two big plot surprises was ruined for me by Peter Van Onselen. I agree with all the hate and douche-calling that followed this on his twitter account, and I hope he lost a thousand followers. He's a jerk, honestly.
OK, really finally: given our tough COVID response in Australia, it's a surprise to realise that the rest of the world is back to the cinema - I see that it has made $758 million internationally, although Variety claims that "insiders" say it needs to make $900 million to break even. (What a joke Hollywood and accounting is.) Anyway, it looks like it should make that goal. Congratulations, everyone.
* I can advise, though, that the last thing on the screen at the end of the credits is "James Bond will return". I then confirmed with the handful of others remaining in the cinema that this was why we were still there.
In the history books, PM Morrison is going down as the shallow, hapless PM who thought he could PR his way to success, while not being bright enough to realise he's not good at PR. This line of attack yesterday was just so inane:
The Liberal Party seems to really be specialising in giving us living examples of the Peter Principle, this last decade. Abbott was perhaps the best example of that, as he arguably gave earlier indications of maybe being a good political operator, only to turn out as PM to be a weirdo with a "mummy" thing going on with his chief of staff. Turnbull's problem was not exactly one I would call a Peter Principle issue; more just a simple lack of courage against the climate change deniers in his own party. But the PP definitely applies to PM Smirko. It's just that it hit very early in his working life, and somehow didn't stop further promotion. Politics can be like that, given it's often a case of "least worst option".
Who's next to take the mantle of "risen to his level of incompetence"? Seems likely it will be Dutton, the potential PM with the weirdest looking head since Federation. The only problem is, you can see the media narrative now: even if he proves the slightest bit effective as a campaigner, journalists will not be able to resist a "surprise! the public is finding him likeable after all" take.
That's my theory behind this headline (and review):
Most people tweeting about it seem to strongly disagree - but then, they might have gone the full 8 hours yet.
(As for my own views - like everyone else, I was pretty stunned at the clarity of the film that was shown on the preview some months ago - as if it was made yesterday (subtle pun) instead of 50 years ago. And it was very pleasing to see them looking happier than we all had been led to believe. But I am not the world's biggest Beatle fan, so yeah, 8 hours might be pushing it for me.)
You would think she might be smart enough to hold off making this point for a case where it didn't take two months for the white men who shot a black unarmed man on the street (and videoed it) to be arrested.
A really bleak assessment in an opinion piece in the Washington Post: Republican authoritarianism is here to stay.
A taste:
What has happened in the United States over the past five years is, in many ways, a classic of the autocratic genre. A populist leader rose to power, attacked the press, politicized rule of law, threatened to jail his opponents, demonized minorities, praised dictators abroad, spread conspiracy theories and lies, and then sought to seize power despite losing an election. When such despotic figures emerge in democracies, their political party has two options: push back against the would-be despot while reasserting democratic principles, or remake the party in his image. Republicans have quite clearly chosen the latter path....
What’s left, then, is some distant hope that a profound national crisis could jolt Republicans away from their embrace of authoritarian politics. Just as the tragedy of Sept. 11 brought Democrats and Republicans together, perhaps a major national shock could cause Republicans to rally back toward democracy. But we’ve already had two major crises — Jan. 6 and a once-in-a-century pandemic — and they’ve made the GOP more extreme, not less. If a violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol aimed at overturning an election and more than 770,000 dead Americans in the pandemic aren’t enough of a jolt, what would it take?
The conclusion is depressing, but we must face reality: The battle for the Republican Party is over. The Trumpian authoritarians have won — and they’re not going to be defeated by pro-democracy Republicans anytime soon.
So, I learn from Cathollaxy that Breitbart has a story up about how George Pell spent part of his time in cells writing up his whiny, non-expert, and patently out of date thoughts on how climate change is not real.
We've long known he was the captive of ageing crank geologist (and atheist) Ian Plimer's utter nonsense of climate change denial - funny how a religious conservative let himself be conned by a non believer into thinking that it was all hysteria caused by modern folk having lost religion!
I'm referring to the accuracy of GPS, about which I will never stop feeling awe as a technological and scientific marvel. I didn't realise, until watching a youtube about its monitoring applications, that high end, scientific research versions of GPS receivers can be this accurate:
High-end users boost GPS accuracy with dual-frequency receivers and/or augmentation systems. These can enable real-time positioning within a few centimeters, and long-term measurements at the millimeter level.
I have the feeling I knew this before, but had forgotten.
Here's the video, by the way:
Someone in comments to the video notes this:
I frequently vacation in coastal Oregon, where earth movement is a big concern. GPS stations (the most accurate in the world) measure earth movement as small as one third of a millimetre and they discovered the study area oscillates east and west every two weeks. Japan uses the same accurate GPS equipment, and I believe Oregon got their equipment from Japan (the US military probably has more accurate stuff). Good post! Thanks for sharing it with us.Other people question the millimetre accuracy, but it seems not out of the question:
I'd assume it's not just GPS. I'm 99% sure GPS does not provide millimetre level resolution. They're probably using a combination of positioning systems.
Here's the short version:
New research has shed light on a sudden cooling event 34 million years ago, which contributed to formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.
High-resolution simulations of ocean circulations show that the tectonic opening of Southern Ocean seaways caused a fundamental reorganisation of ocean currents, heat transport and initiated a strong Antarctic surface water cooling of up to 5°C....
“A 600m change in the depth of an ocean gateway can cause a dramatic drop in coastal temperatures and, therefore, the fate of the Antarctic ice sheet.”
The last land bridges connecting Antarctica with its surrounding continents, Australia, and South America, broke off about 34 million years ago. This tectonic event did not only leave the polar continent isolated by other land masses; it also led to a major reorganisation of ocean currents in the Southern Ocean.
A circumpolar current started to flow, preventing subpolar gyres from transporting warm surface waters to the Antarctic coast. At the same time, ice sheets started to build on Antarctica and the Earth underwent one of its most fundamental climate change events, transitioning from warm Greenhouse to cold Icehouse conditions.
The role of the opening seaways in the formation of Antarctic ice sheets versus decreasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, has always been strongly debated by scientists.
And here's the long version, in Nature Communications (open access).
There is much excitement over at dover beach's Cathollaxy, a pro-Christofascist blog, over the "success" of the large demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney last week over vaccination and mandates, etc.
The so called ‘governments’ are taking orders from above.
Unless the freedom fighters start proper full blooded violence, they wont win.
and
flyingduk says:
Unless the freedom fighters start proper full blooded violence, they wont win.
Quite, some people are afraid this will lead to all out war, the people v their governments – I am afraid it wont.
Which led to a severe dressing down by the blog controller:
dover0beach says:
Can we ease up on the rhetoric please.
Of course, they're paying attention:
struth says:
Hey, …..Hey, ……..they’re killing us.
But………Don’t be so uncivil and threaten violence back, FFS, says the forever submissive.
They are killing our children.
They’re imprisoning, enslaving us.
They have taken all our freedoms and separated families.
The army are now dragging people away to camps.
Write a strongly worded letter.
That should do it.
Well it didn’t work did it?
And peaceful rallies just increase the speed of their growing tyranny as they start to see the need for urgency.
What do they need to do before you suggest they’ve crossed a line , here?
At what point do you pick up a rock?
Dover beach was at the rally himself, and posted boring photos of it. He routinely notes dubious analysis of the Covid vaccines.
Catholic conservative wannabe Christo-fascism at its finest. [That's sarcasm, for any Federal domestic violence authorities who are reading.]
An article at The Conversation, about how Chinese school books are developing the personality cult around Xi Jinping.
I don't know - in the digital world, it feels it should be harder for a personality cult to be built up in children - or teenagers - especially when Grandpa won't let them play video games except for a few hours one night a week.
Not only that, but it seems to me that the wingnut Christofascim of Australia has a distinctly Catholic colour to it - unlike America where it's primarily Southern evangelical. I mean, last week it was a statue of Mary being paraded in front of the "hang Dan Andrews" rallies; on the weekend it was a long time nutter and Australia's own wannabe Michael Flynn starting his speech before the "Freedom rally" with the Lord's Prayer. (He is Catholic, and amusingly, I've noticed many people at dover beach's Cathollaxy think he's gone too nuts and Qanon-like.) Here's the video, if you can stomach it:
He called for a general strike until the country bends to his views - I am curious how many absentees there were today as a result of this call. I doubt it's many.
How much should we worry about the nutty Freedom rallies? They are scary in the way they illustrate the power of the internet to co-ordinate protest, internationally; but at the same time, the vaccination rate here (Australia) would indicate that their numbers over the entire population are not as large as they might think. I know - there would have been some vaccinated people in the crowd who were protesting for the rights of the un-vaccinated - but I suspect they would be in the small minority. So vaccination rates in the big states would tend to indicate the number of people whipping themselves into an anti-vaccination frenzy is probably under 10%, perhaps less than 5%? Yet the internet gives cranks the impression that their numbers are larger than they really are.
It must be driving many of them nuts that Dan Andrews is still polling strongly in Victoria.
Children of women who use marijuana during or soon after pregnancy are twice as likely as other kids to become anxious, aggressive or hyperactive, according to a new study. The findings add weight to a growing body of evidence linking cannabis use during pregnancy to psychiatric problems in children. The behavioral issues may be driven in part by changes in the activity of genes found in the placenta, the organ that provides nutrients and oxygen to the growing fetus.
For pregnant women, cannabis isn’t just a means of getting high. Some women use it to ease severe morning sickness and anxiety, and they may not be aware that it can pose risks.
Women “tend to think smoking and drinking during pregnancy need to be avoided at all costs, but not cannabis,” said Yoko Nomura, a behavioral neuroscientist at Queens College, City University of New York, and a co-author of the new study. “We have a long way to go to educate pregnant women, policymakers and even OB-GYN doctors on this issue.”
Research suggests that a growing number of women are using cannabis during pregnancy: One study found that in 2016, nearly twice as many women in California reported using cannabis while pregnant than in 2009.
Yet for more than 40 years, research has been raising concerns about the effects of marijuana use during pregnancy. A longitudinal study that began in 1978 linked maternal cannabis use with children’s behavioral problems as well as deficits in language comprehension, visual perception, attention and memory. More recent research has linked cannabis use in pregnancy to low birth weight, reduced IQ, autism, delusional thoughts and attention problems, although some other studies have not identified such associations.
Of concern, too, is that cannabis today is nothing like the cannabis of years past. Levels of THC, the compound responsible for most of marijuana’s psychological effects, have increased significantly in recent years. “One joint today is like 17 joints in the 1970s,” said Dr. Darine El-Chaâr, a maternal-fetal medicine physician at The Ottawa Hospital in Canada who studies the health risks of marijuana use during pregnancy and was not involved in the new study.
That's quite some list of potential poor outcomes for the child!
I still suspect the US is going to regret the normalisation of marijuana use.
