Sunday Open Thread

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68 comments to Sunday Open Thread

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      Kevin T Kilty

      As I understand it turn-out was incredibly light, like 25% and lower in places. In brief, most Democrats can’t vote against what they thought they wanted when they realize the mess they have created. Instead all they can do is stay home and hope others clean up for them. Why? Because it is too psychically painful for most of these people to actively admit they were wrong.

      Soon we will hear from at least some left-wingers that because turnout was so light the results of the recall don’t mean anything. On we go, then, with the project of progressive ruin.

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    First it was the skin colour of his grandson, then it was about the skin colour of a writer, now it’s about the skin colour of the appalling people of Rwanda.

    Prince Charles’s appalling racist insult of Commonwealth member Rwanda, overshadows a Commonwealth meeting summit in Rwanda, where Prince Charles is due to represent his mother Queen Elizabeth at the end of this month: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10906805/Prince-Charles-neutral-says-Clarence-House-amid-claims-called-Rwanda-deportations-appalling.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490

    Prince Charles Rumoured To Be the Racist Royal: https://dailysoapdish.com/2021/03/prince-charles-rumored-to-be-the-racist-royal-prince-harry-meghan-markle-referred-to-on-oprah-is-there-any-doubt/

    Writer Slams Prince Charles for Alleged Racially Insensitive Comment: https://people.com/royals/stunned-writer-slams-prince-charles-for-alleged-racially-insensitive-comment/

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      Sceptical+Sam

      Cheap shots from the lefties looking to find something to take offence at.

      Reminds me of the story my Italian neighbour told me about why he failed to report the thieves who stole his beautiful Italianate gates.

      He was worried that they might come back and “taka off fence”.

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    My latest: https://www.cfact.org/2022/06/08/backup-battery-cost-fantasies-abound/

    The beginning: “The only technologically feasible way to make renewables reliable at in the foreseeable future is with massive amounts of grid scale batteries. Whether this is even remotely feasible depends on the cost and here things get truly strange.

    On the one hand we have real utility reports of the capital cost of these big battery arrays. Battery systems that have actually been built. On the other hand we have projected capital costs, which are being used to defend the growth of unreliable renewables.

    The real costs and the projected costs are wildly different. So different that the projected costs have the aspect of fantasy.”

    Details in the article.

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    Vlad the Impaler

    Back on the thread where the cartoon showed that leftists, by and large, are devoid of a sense of humor (and, I agree with the comment that most leftists are too busy or preoccupied with magnifying their power over everyone else … ), there’s a joke traveling around this side of the Big Pond. Both my wife and my daughter were in the room when we heard it, and they just about busted a gut, mostly because they recognized how true it was, at the same time of being very funny.

    Here it is: “Every woman is bi. You just have to figure out if it is polar, or sexual.”

    A columnist at a major US newspaper was placed on thirty days administrative (unpaid) leave for posting that on YouTwitFace.

    Here’s another example:

    Many years ago, the late, great Rush Limbaugh was doing his radio show. A big topic at the time was the financial distress of senior citizens, and how some of them were being forced to buy, and eat, dog food.

    Limbaugh, in his characteristic dead-pan fashion, then tells his radio audience (and I heard this live, on the air, not afterwords), “Don’t worry Mom, I’m sending you a new can opener.”

    You could just about hear the entire country laugh their a**es off, recognizing the ironic humor in the remark.

    About a week later, on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Patsy Schroeder, D-Colorado, mentions this episode, and proceeds to berate Limbaugh for his insensitivity to his mother’s plight. She thought he was being completely serious, and she was livid with him for his cavalier remarks. Of course, being the media giant that he was, Limbaugh, the next day, on his show, plays the audio of Schroeder lambasting him for treating his own mother this way.

    Let’s face it: these people are completely humorless, and actually believe almost all of their own drivel.

    Best Regards to everyone,

    Vlad

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      b.nice

      Rush should get his mum to tweet back..”Thanks son, new can opener is working well” 🙂

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      Kevin T Kilty

      Thanks for reminding me of Pat Schroeder. I had nearly forgotten about that squinty-eyed scold.

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    MrGrimNasty

    Apparently only a tiny fraction – single digits – of the total monkey pox cases are women. Transmission seems to be almost entirely sexual although the CDC is already advocating masks apparently! This EU information site says patients overwhelming identify as MSM.
    https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/news-events/epidemiological-update-monkeypox-multi-country-outbreak-8-june

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    RicDre

    Australia reaches settlement with France over scrapped submarine deal
    PUBLISHED SAT, JUN 11 20221:56 AM EDT
    Reuters

    Australia’s new Labor-led government has reached a 555 million euro ($583.58 million) settlement over a controversial decision last year to scrap the French submarine deal, a move Canberra hopes will help repair the rift between the two countries.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/11/australia-reaches-settlement-with-france-over-scrapped-submarine-deal.html

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    RicDre

    After Visiting 2022, Time-Traveling Noah Decides To Go Back And Sink The Ark

    June 11th, 2022 – BabylonBee.com

    DALLAS, TX —A time-traveler from the year 2348 B.C. who called himself Noah was seen getting in a heated argument outside a gay bar at the ‘Drag Your Kids To Pride’ event. According to sources, he loudly declared he needed to go back in time and sink the ark.

    “I have to go back; I helped save a remnant of humanity and—well, I’ve made a huge mistake,” said Noah as he stood in front of a neon “It’s Not Going To Lick Itself” sign and watched kids stuff dollar bills in drag queens’ underwear. “Humanity was a bad idea. I need to get back to my time and sink the ark and put an end to this.

    …”

    https://babylonbee.com/news/after-visiting-2022-time-traveling-noah-decides-to-go-back-and-sink-the-ark/

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    Jack01

    As Americans struggle with record fuel prices, decades high inflation, food shortages etc the Biden admin just keeps rubbing chilli into the wound by focussing on that absurd hoax of the Jan 6 “insurrection”.

    The political class are so out of touch with the people. The democrats have made it their goal to exclusively focus on crushing anyone who disagrees with the rabid left, and focussing on complete nonsense like “equality” and “racism” while completely ignoring every single real issue as the country heads off a cliff.

    The Biden admin is a disgraceful tyrannical regime and everyone in it needs to be imprisoned for the destruction they are causing.

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    Hanrahan

    What’s with NSW? On a Sunday morning they are importing 2 gW of power with coal down to 4 gW.

    Being the buyer of last resort theirs is always the highest prices.

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    crakar24

    Full list of food production destroyed by fire in the USA, the size of the destruction is staggering.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/updated-list-us-based-food-manufacturing-plants-destroyed-biden-administration/

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      Annie

      This doesn’t sound accidental. If it is not accidental, then there is something truly evil going on.

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      Broadie

      A common error to believe there is a conspiracy. There is a good correlation between fires everywhere and the increase in lithium ion batteries.
      The rule is you should not charge your electric scooter at work if you intend continuing employment at that facility.

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    el+gordo

    New TSI Reconstruction

    ‘The analysis of the 11 year running mean TSI reconstruction confirms the existence of a 105 year Gleissberg cycle with grand minima occurring in the beginning of each century. The TSI level of the latest grand minimum is only 0.15 W/m2 higher than the TSI level of the earliest grand minimum.’ (wuwt)

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    You know this maths thing, where quite literally, no one even comprehends the first thing about arithmetic. (You know, Eddie, I think I’ll take my Pass on this one)

    Well, now it seems that Government Ministers know, hand on heart, that is the case, and because of that, they can say anything they like and get away with it, and journalists nod their heads and report it verbatim, without even checking.

    (Okay then, what brought this on, Tony?)

    There’s an article in today’s ABC about Queensland having eight coal fired power plants, and what is to be their future.

    In the article (thank you very much) it is detailed the output of each of those coal fired plants.

    So, the total output for coal in Queensland in the last 12 Months was 44,100GWH. The total consumed power in Queensland was 62,400GWH, so coal delivered almost 73% of that total.

    A little further down the article, it mentions the Government Minister saying this:(and I bolded that bit you see in bold)

    The Queensland government has set a target of 50 per cent renewables by 2030, and a net zero target by 2050.
    As of January this year, 20.4 per cent of the state’s electricity was produced by renewable energy sources.
    But Energy Minister Mick de Brenni said no coal-fired power stations would be closed as part of the state’s yet to be released 10-year energy transition plan.

    I mentioned it in my Submission, which sank without trace that the ….. ONLY way they could even get close to achieving 50% renewables by 2030 was to close down (a lot of) coal fired power.

    So okay then, if they don’t close any coal fired power, and if renewables are to supply 50% of power, that means power consumption (and from that, power generation) must increase so that the amount delivered by coal fired power (and ALL other non renewable sources) falls to 50%.

    Get that?

    To achieve that then the overall power consumption has to be DOUBLE the total fossil fuel output ….. by 2030.

    Add the NON coal fossil fuel output to that coal fired total, and then multiply by two, and the new total power consumption (for 2030) comes in at 98,000GWH, an increase over current power consumption of almost 60%, or on a year to year basis, almost 8% per year, and it’s currently running at around 1.5%. Oh, and that total power consumption of 98,000GWH (or 98TWH) is just under half the TOTAL power consumption of the whole AEMO coverage area for some perspective, something that will not happen, as Queensland only consumes around 30.5% of all Australia’s (AEMO) power.

    There is ….. NO WAY ON EARTH that they can even get remotely close to 50% renewables by 2030.

    I went looking for where those submissions might have disappeared to, but I can’t find them, no matter how many different word structures I use in the search engine. Thankfully, I know that they just MUST keep all those Submissions somewhere in a rathole archive somewhere, so thankfully, I actually made that Submission, so it’s always there if it can be found. In that submission, I stated all of the above as the only way it could be achieved, and when the final report did come out, one of the first things they said was that NO coal fired plants would be closed in the interim.

    Now, go back to that ABC article, and look at the provided map of where those eight power plants are and there, for all to see, is the projected close date for those plants.

    Look at Gladstone, slated to close in 2035. At that closure date, the plant will be, umm, 59 years old.

    Going on probable life spans, that is THREE times longer than any renewable power plant.

    But hey, everyone says that they are so unreliable eh!

    Give me strength, as I already have the ability to add up.

    Hey, sorry to take so long.

    Tony.

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      Lance

      Tony, if you think this through from a Political viewpoint, the answer is simple.

      Making that 20.4% renewables surpass the 73% coal power, and thus 50% of generation, is easy.

      Just reduce the coal power from 73% to 32% and then the 20.4% renewables become 50% of generated power with respect to coal fired power generation.

      The problem is that the AU grid would have to shed 41% of its load, which sadly means thousands of new unemployed and shuttered facilities that previously employed them.

      But, no worries. AU simply “taxes the Rich” into oblivion to fund the social costs.

      By the time all of this collapses into a heap of rubble, the currently sitting Pollies will be retired and fully paid on the backs of whoever still has a job.

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        Zane

        The 50% renewables target will be accomplished based on recognizing installed capacity, not actual generation. The real output of the renewables will likely be 15 or 20% of the installed capacity rating, the shortfall of course made up by the real baseload generators. It doesn’t matter. It’s Kabuki Theater. It’s only for show. As for Net Zero, that will be accomplished with carbon accounting fudges – total Qld farm soil absorbs so much carbon, ten million hectares of scrub absorb this much, we’ll plant a forest as a carbon sink here and some biofuels there hum dee dah look Ma we reached Net Zero.

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    Lance

    Neil Oliver’s latest. Very well worth 9 minutes. Regarding the vax and the virus.

    “Are we stupid? Or are we just being treated as if we’re stupid? Which is it?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmziW3E3k38

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      Annie

      Also vids of discussions with Brett Weinstein, posted by YMMV @12:45am on 7th June on Chiefio latest WOODS. First one is very telling.

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    OriginalSteve

    A friend had a good experience with I*****n , the drug that shall not be named.

    6 hours from first dose he had an improvment to treat the viral nasty, and looking good.

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    John Connor II

    I am a cyborg – living tissue over a metal endoskeleton (T2)

    It’s here:

    Scientists wrap robotic finger with ‘living human skin’ that can heal itself

    Japanese scientists have coated a robotic finger with human skin tissue that looks like the real thing
    The skin-like covering is strong, water-repellent, and can self heal like regular skin
    The findings are an important step in designing robots that resemble humans

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-06-10/robotic-finger-wrapped-with-living-human-skin-by-scientists/101129954

    Google engineer goes public to warn firm’s AI is SENTIENT after being suspended for raising the alarm

    A senior software engineer at Google who signed up to test Google’s artificial intelligence tool called LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications), has claimed that the AI robot is in fact sentient and has thoughts and feelings.

    During a series of conversations with LaMDA, 41-year-old Blake Lemoine presented the computer with various of scenarios through which analyses could be made.

    They included religious themes and whether the artificial intelligence could be goaded into using discriminatory or hateful speech.

    Lemoine came away with the perception that LaMDA was indeed sentient and was endowed with sensations and thoughts all of its own.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10907853/Google-engineer-claims-new-AI-robot-FEELINGS-Blake-Lemoine-says-LaMDA-device-sentient.html

    Then there’s the US black projects AI…
    The singularity gets closer by the day 😎

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      Vlad the Impaler

      Hi, John:

      Love your posts. The above is very interesting.

      Over here on this side of the Big Pond, we have a political commentator/radio show host named Glenn Beck. While I admire and respect this individual, I do not often listen to his broadcasts, as they conflict with that annoying necessity of trying to make a living (while being a supposed ‘retiree’).

      In any case, I once heard one of his monologues which was along the same lines as your post. His thinking at that time, and mine, ran in parallel to each other on the subject of artificial intelligence, and then one day I came up with this:

      In the Bible, we are told of the coming of a personage (or entity) who will be generically known as the “Anti-Christ”. Now, whether this person is a corporeal being or not is not definitive, and it certainly could be a being who looks like you or me. Or, it could be something else entirely.

      But, I got to thinking, and then my mind wandered into this: AI could very well be this entity. I have no problem if you think I’m “off my meds” on this, but that’s OK. It is simply idle speculation, OK?

      Now, Biblically, Yeshua (Anglicized ‘Jesus’) is the Christ; the Diety; the Creator. In human terms, this entity does not really have a ‘name’, per se, like you and me, but is simply the All-Powerful entity Who has created everything.

      Typically, we know that in Anglican terms, This Entity has the name, “Jehovah”. Given that, then please follow this:

      A.I means ‘Artificial Intelligence’. I think it may also mean something else.

      “Anti-Christ” means ‘anti-god’, or ‘anti-Yeshua’ or any other human name applied to The Creator.

      “Anti-Jehovah” is another way to state ‘anti-god’ or “Anti-Christ”.

      If you saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. where Harrison Ford is trying to pass the obstacles to the ‘Holy Grail’, you may recall that in Latin, the letter “I” takes the place of “J”.

      So, if we use ‘anti-Jehovah’ as a synonym for ‘anti-christ’, or ‘anti-god’, and following the Latin convention, we arrive at

      “Anti-Iehovah” which can be abbreviated as “A.I.”

      Yes, yes, I know, ol’ Vlad has gone off the reservation on this one! But the more I see happening with this digital currency stuff, cell phone ‘screen zombies’, vaccine passports, I cannot help but think that we are, in fact, creating the thing that will destroy us. Not climate change, but A.I. is a leading candidate in my book for the Biblical Anti-Christ. Just look at how places like Google want to own and control everything … … … is the purpose to make things “better” for everyone, or better for a very few (K. Schwab comes to mind)? All I see is command and control being shifted from people to algorithms, which is why I refuse to participate in any of it.

      I welcome your thoughts, and yes, I did take my meds this morning with breakfast (wife will verify … ),

      Vlad

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      Graeme+P.

      Of course it had to be John Conner posting this one.

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    Dave

    The United States and its allies are planning a “buyers’ cartel”.
    The Western powers want to reduce Russia’s oil revenues with price caps.
    Does the West want to dictate prices of Russia oil?
    Palki Sharma explains

    A great explanation of the Russia Ukraine war.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T08Wuk_t_pc

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    4000%RenewablesNow!

    The Queensland electricity market just reached the Administered Price Period for the first time. The rolling sum of the uncapped spot prices for the previous 2016 dispatch intervals (7 consecutive days) has exceeded the cumulative price threshold (CPT) of $1.39 million. The administed price cap (APC) os $300/MWh will apply in QLD from now onwards until the rolling sum of the uncapped prices drops below $300/MWh.

    A milestone in this energy crisis.

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      Hanrahan

      Well we have had cool nights and mornings over the weekend. I’ve had to find my long sleeve shirt and trackies. 🙂

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    crakar24

    Looks like the Vax mainly kills 5 months after the shot, if so the clock is ticking for some people.

    https://expose-news.com/2022/06/11/excess-deaths-proves-covid-vaccines-take-5-months/

    Any second now GA will arrive declaring the UK gov data to he invalid

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    b.nice

    Oh dear, SA needs to eat more beans

    Gas: 1277 MW, Diesel: 186 MW, Interconnect: 196 MW..

    Wind: 132 ᴍᴡ.

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    Hanrahan

    Bitcoin has fallen in price to where it was last Xmas during its meteoric rise.

    It is now at $27,500. I’m no chartist but there is no support now until $10,000.

    I find this odd because, while gold isn’t powering ahead it is staying solid while stock indexes have the $hits and there is much talk of recessions and worse, bitcoin is also an “anti fiat” but it totally lacks buyer enthusiasm.

    Disclaimer: I’m a gold bug and have never been tempted to buy any crypto.

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      crakar24

      Bit coin as an investment has no value, ok to trade with but it is backed by nothing, it’s worthless

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      DLK

      price is manipulated, same as gold.
      remember the central banks want their own digital currency to replace bitcoin and national currencies.

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        Hanrahan

        Gold HAS intrinsic value, no central bank has been selling for over twenty years. The world’s greatest treasurer, Costello, sold us out in 1997. I see no explanation other than he did what the US Fed told him, and he bent over. Australia seems to be alone among major nations in not trying to put some backbone into their currency by having gold in our treasury. We are a producer, we should at least be giving tax breaks to producers selling into the treasury.

        The fourth was selling 167 tonnes of Australia’s gold reserves at near rock bottom prices just before the price rose spectacularly. According to one assessment, the fire sale returned just $2.4 billion. Had the gold been sold in 2011, when the nation needed cash during the global financial crisis, it would have fetched about $7.4 billion.

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      Hanrahan

      Correction, that was Xmas 2020 when Bitcoin was this low.

      Oh dear, how careful one must be: Gold is also exactly where it was at Xmas 2020. The two are a tie.

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    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    “Drink Monkey Milk to Save the Planet”. I invite you, dear skeptics, to read this FRONTPAGE MAG article having a good, humorous, snarking, dig at wokies:
    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/drink-monkey-milk-save-planet-daniel-greenfield/

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    another ian

    Another kerfuffle

    ““Exposing the ‘modern green religion’” Published in the Catholic Standard”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/12/exposing-the-modern-green-religion-published-in-catholic-standard/

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    el+gordo

    NSW state Liberals brawling again.

    ‘Nothing short of treachery’: Matt Kean blasted for allegedly undermining former PM

    ‘NSW Transport Minister David Elliott says his cabinet colleague will be ‘repaid in kind’ for allegedly backgrounding against Scott Morrison.’ (Oz)

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      Dennis

      A repeat of how Dr Brendan Nelson MP was treated as Opposition Leader followed by Tony Abbott MP as Opposition Leader and then Prime Minister with Scott Morrison the last so far to be the LINO left target, for daring to replace Malcolm Turnbull in those positions.

      Sharri Markson revealed all on Sky last night, unfortunately too many even Liberal voters believed the smearing campaign, three times!!!

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      another ian

      FWIW

      I heard on Ray Hadley this morning that Kean is also intriguing against Perrottet – saying to insiders that he is “after that job”.

      Plus been made plain to potential employees that they will be promoting Kean only

      Brings to mind an extension of that definition of a religious fanatic –

      “One who does what God would have done if only He had understood the situation correctly”

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    el+gordo

    Contrary to Papal good order, a Tasmanian Archbishop has adopted a different viewpoint to the holy father.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-13/tasmanian-archbishop-accused-of-promoting-climate-denier-views/101146274

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    Philip

    MOnday night is cold, heaters on, and huge high pressure system sits over all Australia and there is no wind, next to no wind energy is being made. With NSW generators on the blink we must be hanging in there for a black out.

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