Tuesday Unthreaded

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138 comments to Tuesday Unthreaded

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      Ian George

      Problem is they have never found an animal in China with the same furin cleavage spike.

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      R.B.

      At the same time this lays to rest the idea that the virus escaped from a laborator

      Seems as if this was the aim of the paper. Recommended by Ian = very dodgy.

      There were 27 cases identified in December. Most connected to the Wuhan Market. Well known so this “paper” really did zero research.

      The virus doesn’t stay viable for long in a corpse. While live animals are sold live in China, it’s rare. So are the Chinese bats. A nature paper found no evidence of the two being sold at the market. Pangolins are imported from other countries , and surprisingly, it did not jump to humans along the supply line.

      A human spread it at the market. Where was that human infected?

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    OldOzzie

    Biden White House facilitated DOJ’s criminal probe against Trump, scuttled privilege claims: memos

    “I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall wrote Trump’s team in May.

    Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

    The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

    By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive privilege, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.

    The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump’s Florida compound with a court-issued search warrant.

    The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May 10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers summarizing the White House’s involvement.

    That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.

    “The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,'” Wall wrote. “… I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege.”

    The memos provide the most definitive evidence to date of the current White House’s effort to facilitate a criminal probe of the man Joe Biden beat in the 2020 election and may face again as a challenger in 2024. That involvement included eliminating one of the legal defenses Trump might use to fight the FBI over access to his documents.

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            OldOzzie

            Joe Biden Will Rue The Day He Didn’t Assert Executive Privilege Over Trump Docs

            BY MATT MARGOLIS FEB 22, 2022

            The battle over Donald Trump’s White House records came to an end on Tuesday, with the Supreme Court rejecting his appeal. The highly partisan J6 Committee will now be able to access the records they are seeking as part of their “investigation.”

            Trump and several of his allies have invoked executive privilege to refuse to provide documents or testimony to the committee. However, executive privilege can only be asserted by an incumbent president, and Joe Biden has repeatedly rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege over the documents. Trump sued to block the release of the documents, claiming that the committee has no legitimate need for the documents they were requesting—many of which have nothing to do with the Capitol riot.

            “President Biden has refused to assert executive privilege over numerous clearly privileged documents requested by the Committee,” Trump’s lawsuit read. “The Committee’s request amounts to nothing less than a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition openly endorsed by Biden and designed to unconstitutionally investigate President Trump and his administration. Our laws do not permit such an impulsive, egregious action against a former President and his close advisors.”

            So far, despite all the efforts of the J6 Committee, they’ve never been able to prove it was an insurrection. As PJM’s Robert Spencer reported at the time, in December, texts released by the committee proved the opposite.

            The J6 Committee insists it needs the White House documents to understand what role Trump may have played in the Capitol riot—of course, he played no role—though, given the committee’s history of lying about the information they have so far, it seems inevitable that they will make more false claims about the documents they’ll be getting now.

            In December, Biden did say he would limit the documents that would be made available to the committee, after suddenly realizing that releasing all the Trump administration documents the J6 Committee had requested would “set a troublesome precedent for the executive branch, no matter who is president.”

            Now that the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal, the only person who can stop the release of the documents is Joe Biden, and there’s no reason to believe that he will. Despite limiting access to some of the documents, Joe Biden’s failure to invoke executive privilege will most certainly come back to bite him.

            “An incumbent administration does not have the constitutional authority to unilaterally waive the executive privilege of a previous administration—especially one so recent,” Trump Communications Director Taylor Budowich said in a statement in October. “If it did, then executive privilege doesn’t exist, including for Joe Biden.”

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              Tarquin+Wombat-Carruthers

              Am I the only one who sees Adam Schiff as Wile E. Coyote in his eternal pursuit of The Road-Runner (aka Donald Trump)? But who knew that Wile had sisters (Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney)?

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              OldOzzie

              Sources: GSA Packed Boxes of Documents Trump Brought to Mar-a-Lago, Not Trump Political Staffers

              Sources close to former President Donald Trump have confirmed to Breitbart News that the General Services Administration (GSA) packed the boxes of documents he took with him to Mar-a-Lago, not political staffers.

              Shortly after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago this month, reportedly to reclaim documents Donald Trump had taken from the White House in January 2021, journalist David Martosko announced that a source close to the former president confirmed the documents were boxed by government staffers in the GSA, not Trump’s own staffers.

              “A person very close to Donald Trump tells me it’s indeed true what’s being bandied about Twitter — that the @USGSA, not Trump or anyone working for him in the White House, packed the boxes that the FBI took in Monday’s raid. If that’s true, it scrambles the omelet a bit,” Martosko announced.

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                b.nice

                One would hope that USGSA would not intentionally pack documents that shouldn’t have been packed…… hmmmm..

                Could this be just another attempt at a “never-Trump” stitch-up ??

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                Lance

                In US parlance, it is called a Permanent Change of Station, PCS. A Govt contracted packing/moving company packs up all the Household goods and Personal Effects, boxes them, loads them into shipping crates, then delivers them to destination or into storage, then uncrates the goods and places them into the new location. One PCS I was involved in, the moving company even packed the wastebasket contents from each restroom and the kitchen. They pack everything that isn’t nailed down. Every pencil, paper, remote control, dish, silverware, in other words they clean the room and pack it. Everything.

                In the context of a Presidential transition, the chaos is palpable. There are only a few hours to move the old President out and the new one in. No way did Trump pack any of that stuff. The contractor packed it up.

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      OldOzzie

      Where Is Steven D’Antuono?

      The head of the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., has a lot of explaining to do.

      By Julie Kelly

      A few days after the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, a tough-talking FBI chief with a Boston accent promised the American people that the bureau would spare no resource in hunting down everyone and anyone involved in the four-hour disturbance that day.

      Steven M. D’Antuono, the newly appointed head of the Washington, D.C. FBI field office, gave the public a stern warning. “The FBI will leave no stone unturned. This is a 24/7, full bore, extensive operation,” D’Antuono explained during a January 12, 2021 press conference at the Department of Justice. “As Director Wray says, the FBI does not do easy.”

      His agency, D’Antuono bragged, has a “long memory and a broad reach.” Agents from 56 FBI field offices across the country “will be knocking on your door if we find out you were part of the criminal activity at the Capitol.” He urged people to turn in their co-workers, neighbors, and relatives if they had information that could help the FBI in its dragnet.

      Turns out, his comments weren’t just Beantown-style braggadocio. More than 850 Americans since then have been investigated, arrested, and charged for mostly nonviolent offenses related to the January 6 protest. Armed FBI agents have conducted early morning raids at homes across the country, using military style vehicles to batter in front doors while traumatizing families, children, and neighbors in the process. It is a crusade of fear and terror meant to reinforce D’Antuono’s threats that those who dared to demonstrate against the fraudulent election of Joe Biden that day will pay a hefty price.

      Nearly 20 months later, D’Antuono’s office continues to announce new arrests.

      And it’s not just Trump voters who face D’Antuono’s wrath. His agents publicly arrested Peter Navarro, a former Trump White House advisor, at Reagan National Airport in June on contempt of Congress charges. Navarro said FBI agents placed him in handcuffs and leg irons even though he lives next door to FBI Headquarters in Washington. After Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump confidant, was convicted on those same charges in July, D’Antuono boasted in a Justice Department press release how it was a great day for democracy: “The tenets of our government rely upon citizens adhering to the established rules of law. Lawful tools, such as subpoenas and other legal orders, are critical in our system of government. Mr. Bannon was found guilty of contempt by a jury of his peers for his choice to ignore a lawful subpoena.”

      D’Antuono’s agents also led the raid of Mar-a-Lago on August 8.

      Which is where the intersection of D’Antuono’s conduct at the FBI gets a bit tricky, if not shady as hell.

      The great irony here is that if the jury finds Fox and Croft not guilty, one contributing factor might be how D’Antuono’s raid of Trump’s home further torched the credibility of the FBI, particularly in places like western Michigan where jurors now deliberate their fate. And perhaps D’Antuono’s, too.

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      Brian the Engineer

      mostly surprised they bothered to get a subpoena.

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      OldOzzie

      WSJ – The Trump Warrant Had No Legal Basis

      A former president’s rights under the Presidential Records Act trump the statutes the FBI cited to justify the Mar-a-Lago raid.

      Was the Federal Bureau of Investigation justified in searching Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago? The judge who issued the warrant for Mar-a-Lago has signaled that he is likely to release a redacted version of the affidavit supporting it. But the warrant itself suggests the answer is likely no—the FBI had no legally valid cause for the raid.

      The warrant authorized the FBI to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§793, 2071, or 1519” (emphasis added). These three criminal statutes all address the possession and handling of materials that contain national-security information, public records or material relevant to an investigation or other matters properly before a federal agency or the courts.

      The materials to be seized included “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021”—i.e., during Mr. Trump’s term of office. Virtually all the materials at Mar-a-Lago are likely to fall within this category. Federal law gives Mr. Trump a right of access to them. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right, and therefore lawful, regardless of the statutes the FBI cites in its warrant.

      Those statutes are general in their text and application. But Mr. Trump’s documents are covered by a specific statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978. It has long been the Supreme Court position, as stated in Morton v. Mancari (1974), that “where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.” The former president’s rights under the PRA trump any application of the laws the FBI warrant cites.

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    Turtle

    I’d love to see some data about the nitrous oxide scare.

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      william x

      Turtle,

      Probably been posted before.

      https://www.n2olevels.org/

      Quote from website:

      “Nitrous Oxide (N2O) data for the current year (2022) is from in situ samples analyzed on a gas chromatograph located at Mauna Loa (MLO), Hawaii as part of the NOAA/ESRL halocarbons in situ program. This data should be considered preliminary and will be replaced with official averaged data at the end of this year (2022).”

      End quote.

      They report N2O levels were 335.4 PPB in March 2022.
      That is 335.4 per 1000000000 = 0.0000003354%
      It is such a minute trace gas in the atmosphere. It is virtually insignificant.

      As a first responder we have gas moniters to deploy.
      Like so many gases, N20 can be detected as it is dangerous or harmful at high levels.

      We use the detectors in confined spaces, and on the fire ground.
      We will get a warning signal if any gas level has reached its lel (lower explosive level) or toxicity risk

      N2O needs to be at a level close to 2000ppm for a long period of time (weeks) before occupational exposure is a risk.

      To support my claim, there is a publication here you could access if you would like.
      https://accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?bookId=391&sectionId=42069930

      Quote:

      Toxic dose. The toxic dose is not established. Chronic occupational exposure to nitrous oxide at 2000 ppm produced asymptomatic but measurable depression of vitamin B12 in dentists. The ACGIH-recommended workplace exposure limit (TLV-TWA) is 50 ppm (90 mg/m3) as an 8-hour time-weighted average.

      End quote.

      Note, an example of confined spaces are like the drains I have crawled into to rescue a recalitrant cat/dog or an exuberant young aged explorer.

      The gas detector will sound off as Methane, H2S, N2O are commonly at high levels in that stuation.

      Ok that aside.

      Now what does a level of 335.4 PPB N2O, do to drive climate change? I’d guess nothing…. Yet I am not infallible.

      There will be better minds on this blog, than mine, to enlighten us.

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    OldOzzie

    WATCH: DeSantis Releases “Top Gun” Themed Campaign Ad Slamming the Media

    Top Gov… Dogfighting… Taking on the Corporate Media…

    Rules of Engagement are as Follows:

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    Ridiculous – it’s 2 pm in Canberra and 6°C. It’s as cold as Albo the Inclusives breath when talking about Scomo.

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    John Connor II

    Lawyers With Chips Implanted In Their Brains Will Be Better, Faster & Cheaper.

    Electronic brain implants would allow lawyers to work more efficiently, scan material quickly and cut costs in the future according to a new report.

    Supporters of neurotechnology for lawyers have argued that corporate clients will press for chips as an efficiency measure, as it would cut legal costs, as well as reduce the number of solicitors needed to work on complex cases.

    The report, published last week, forecasted that brain implants could become the “iPhone of the future” in the legal profession.

    Skyrocketing hourly billing rates for legal advice is a concern in the City, where a radical technological solution to reducing costs significantly would be an attractive option to chief executives and board directors, reported the Times.

    The report, from Neurotechnology, Law and the Legal Profession, predicted: “Lawyers might try to gain an advantage over competitors and try to stay ahead of increasingly capable artificial intelligence systems by using neurotechnology to improve their workplace performance.”

    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lawyers-could-chips-implanted-brain-133804399.html

    I saw the video equivalent of this the other day:

    https://www.jdjournal.com/2020/07/27/20-of-the-funniest-things-lawyers-have-actually-said-in-court/amp/

    Brain implants can’t get here fast enough. 😅😅

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    David Maddison

    Andrew Bolt and guest talk about the silence of former child actor Greta Thunberg.

    https://youtu.be/aHZym4QG7UQ

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    David Maddison

    The new one is still creepy and dead-eyed.

    https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/mark-zuckerberg-unveils-new-boyish-metaverse-avatar-after-getting-mocked-for-creepy-dead-eyed-version/articleshow/93679340.cms

    Mark Zuckerberg unveils new, boyish metaverse avatar after getting mocked for creepy, dead-eyed version

    Ryan HoggAug 20, 2022, 17:41 IST

    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his new, boyish metaverse avatar on Friday.

    He posted it on Instagram after a creepy, dead-eyed version from days earlier was roundly mocked.

    SEE LINK FOR REST

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    Catherine

    A good read:

    ‘Common Sense’, Bari Weiss:

    The New Founders America Needs
    What I told the first students at The University of Austin.

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    John Connor II

    Janet Jackson’s music video will destroy your computer

    Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation music video of 1989 has officially been declared a security vulnerability as it freezes some models of hard drives on older computers.

    Assigned CVE-2022-38392, the vulnerability we are talking about is a Denial of Service (DoS), specifically a side-channel attack that causes hard drives of some laptop PCs from 2005 to malfunction and crash.

    “Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video!”

    “It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 rpm laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.”

    In 2017, a security researcher named Alfredo Ortega demonstrated how playing a 130Hz tone could make an HDD stop responding to commands almost entirely.

    The same year, scientists from Princeton and Purdue published research explaining acoustic attacks on hard drives that could sabotage PCs, ATMs and CCTV systems.

    https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/janet-jacksons-music-video-is-now-a-vulnerability-for-crashing-hard-disks/

    Janet Who? 😁

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      David Maddison

      This form of computer attack is called “jumping the air gap”.

      I wrote about such vulnerabilities (but not that specific one) and others in Silicon Chip magazine Sep and Oct 2019 if anyone is interested.

      There is an air gap security web page at
      https://cyber.bgu.ac.il/air-gap/

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        John Connor II

        I thought in the extreme back of my mind I’d heard your name before!

        SC mag…haven’t bought that for 20 years (back in my techie/IT days), but did go through a dozen copies in the library recently to kill time.
        Oohhh..an amplifier project!
        How original! 😆😆

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    John Connor II

    Risk of volcano catastrophe ‘a roll of the dice’

    The world is “woefully underprepared” for a massive volcanic eruption and the likely repercussions on global supply chains, climate and food, according to experts from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and the University of Birmingham.

    In an article published in the journal Nature, they say there is a “broad misconception” that risks of major eruptions are low, and describe current lack of governmental investment in monitoring and responding to potential volcano disasters as “reckless.”

    However, the researchers argue that steps can be taken to protect against volcanic devastation — from improved surveillance to increased public education and magma manipulation — and the resources needed to do so are long overdue.

    “Data gathered from ice cores on the frequency of eruptions over deep time suggests there is a one-in-six chance of a magnitude seven explosion in the next one hundred years. That’s a roll of the dice,” said article co-author and CSER researcher Dr Lara Mani, an expert in global risk.

    “Such gigantic eruptions have caused abrupt climate change and collapse of civilisations in the distant past.”

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02177-x

    It will be interesting to see the effect of Hunga Tonga on Oz food production this year…

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      yarpos

      Its funny how many trillions can be spent on supposedly avoiding a faux “disaster” like AGW, but other far more likely planet level events have people looking the other way. Cant be as much money in volcanoes as there is in windmills, solar panels and vaccines.

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      el+gordo

      Hunga Tonga was short lived and had little impact. To make a discernible difference to climate it would have to be big.

      When Toba erupted 74,000 years ago (reckoned to be the largest eruption in 2 million years) sea level fell. It was the start of the Wisconsin glacial period.

      A volcano in Antartica (Mt Takahe) erupted 17,748 years ago and continued to explode over the next 192 years. This brought an end to the ice age and the start of global warming.

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        Hunga Tonga was big (not in a Toba way) but big in a water vapor way. It did carry material up to 58km.

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          el+gordo

          It was extremely powerful but had a negligible effect on weather.

          ‘In the ionosphere, the extreme winds also affected electric currents. Particles in the ionosphere regularly form an east-flowing electric current – called the equatorial electrojet – powered by winds in the lower atmosphere. After the eruption, the equatorial electrojet surged to five times its normal peak power and dramatically flipped direction, flowing westward for a short period.’

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          This NASA link has some details on the effects of water vapour in the stratosphere – considered to have a warming effect, as opposed to volcanic ash that appears to cool – like most things to do with climate, it’s complex.

          ….estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer. That’s nearly four times the amount of water vapor that scientists estimate the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines lofted into the stratosphere.

          It appears that water vapour in the stratosphere has been increasing for some time, represented by noctilucent clouds appearing away from the poles. This NASA report links rocket launches as a means of “seeding” water vapour high into our atmosphere.

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          Ted1.

          In weather terms Hunga Tonga was practically local for North Eastern Australia. It is quite conceivable that it might have had a bearing on the flooding.

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          John Connor II

          The impact is in lingering stratospheric particulates resulting in lower temperatures south of the equator and impacting on Oz upcoming planting season and yields…

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    John Connor II

    World’s first commercial electric plane completes point-to-point flight.

    An aviation company at the cutting edge of electrified air travel has taken a significant step forward, completing a first-of-a-kind test flight using a retrofitted seaplane. Harbour Air’s De Havilland Beaver completed a short hop from the Canadian mainland to Vancouver Island using its all-electric drivetrain, demonstrating the viability of its cleaner approach to short-haul flights.

    Last week, on August 17, the company’s electric aircraft completed its first point-to-point test flight, in what might resemble a future commercial service. The plane took off at 8:12 am from its Fraser River Terminal and landed at Patricia Bay on Vancouver Island 24 minutes later, completing a 45-mile (72-km) journey purely on electricity, with ample power reportedly leftover.

    https://harbourair.com/harbour-airs-all-electric-aircraft-operates-first-point-to-point-test-flight/

    24 minutes. About the same as the average drone…

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      yarpos

      🙂 if it gets of the ground every flight is a point to point flight.

      I wonder what “ample power” means in terms of diversion or return?

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      Graeme#4

      For a start, the DH Beaver is a STOL aircraft, so doesn’t need a lot of power to become and stay airborne.
      Secondly, they never explain exactly how many people were in the aircraft on these test flights. Usually it’s just the pilot, surrounded by batteries, with no spare capacity for passengers of cargo.
      Colour me unimpressed.

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      Philip

      There was some Australian company or person involved with electric plane engines. I wonder how that’s going? I also wonder about the scalability of this concept. Small trips perhaps, but I doubt this will carry cargo or large passenger numbers. A 70 km trip ? Id rather drive thanks.

      But I try not to be cynical about these technologies, including electric vehicles. Being too cynical allows the other side to take the praise and scoff at cynics should they come to fruition. The meme of horse riders gloating they beat the steam engine comes to mind. I don’t think it wise handing enemies such ground.

      Im all for new technology. Im opposed to mandating new technologies that are inefficient and expensive.

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        Hanrahan

        Flight schools are already buying EV trainers. Sounds OK to me.

        but they are never far from their charge point.

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        Graeme#4

        I have noticed that the air taxi concept has gone from a large drone using vertical lift to one that has sprouted short STOL wings. To me that indicates their original design couldn’t meet its design goals. And I doubt this new iteration will either. But then I’m a skeptic…

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    John Connor II

    Australian Rabbit Plague Puzzle Solved With DNA Profiling

    A new study provides genetic proof that Australia’s ‘rabbit plague’ began at Barwon Park, the estate of Thomas Austin, near Geelong in Victoria.

    Rabbits were first introduced to mainland Australia in 1788 when five domestic animals were brought to Sydney on the First Fleet. At least 90 subsequent importations would be made before 1859, but none of these populations became invasive. However, within 50 years, at a rate of 100 km (62 miles) per year, rabbits would spread across the entire continent. This makes it the fastest colonization rate for an introduced mammal ever recorded. So what changed after 1859 and how did the invasion begin?

    “Our findings show that despite the numerous introductions across Australia, it was a single batch of English rabbits that triggered this devastating biological invasion, the effects of which are still being felt today.”

    The scientists found that as the rabbits moved further away from Barwon Park, genetic diversity declined and rare genetic variants which occur in rapidly growing populations became more frequent.

    “There are numerous traits that could make feral domestic rabbits poorly adapted to survive in the wild but it is possible that they lacked the genetic variation required to adapt to Australia’s arid and semi-arid climate.

    “To cope with this, Australia’s rabbits have evolved changes in body shape to help control their temperature. So it is possible that Thomas Austin’s wild rabbits, and their offspring, had a genetic advantage when it came to adapting to these conditions.”

    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2122734119

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    OldOzzie

    Citi says prices could enter the ‘stratosphere’

    UK inflation forecast to hit 18.6% early next year Warning of highest level in five decades

    Inflation is forecast to hit a 50-year high of just over 18 per cent in January, putting pressure on the Bank of England to increase interest rates to get the economy under control.

    The investment bank Citigroup warned that inflation was “entering the stratosphere”, adding to the strain on households already struggling with the cost of living crisis.

    It said the Bank of England might be forced to raise interest rates from the present level of 1.75 per cent to as high as 7 per cent to stop price increases becoming embedded.

    In other developments:

    • Gas prices rose by 37 per cent yesterday after Russia said it would shut down a critical pipeline to Europe for three days for maintenance.

    • Shoppers are already suffering a hit of more than £160 a month to their disposable income, according to data from Asda, with under-30s bearing the brunt of the increasing cost of essentials such as food, rent and transport.

    • Spiralling prices increased the pressure on Liz Truss, the frontrunner in the Tory leadership contest, to set out more details of her plans to help those who are struggling.

    On Friday Ofgem, the energy regulator, is expected to announce that the energy price cap will rise from £1,971 to £3,500 in October. Truss is determined to wait until after the contest ends on September 5 to announce detailed plans.

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      OldOzzie

      UK GDP saw its biggest drop in 300 years – data

      Revised data for 2020 showed the country’s economy shrank 11%

      The British economy shrank by 11% in 2020, its largest drop in 300 years, revised data from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed on Monday. The previous reading had been a 9.3% decline.

      This happened to be the biggest drop since the ONS began keeping records and the UK’s largest GDP slump since 1709, the year of the ‘Great Frost,’ when the country’s economy shrank by 13.4%, according to historical data provided by the Bank of England.

      The downward revision was triggered by new data showing the effect the Covid-19 pandemic had on healthcare and individual retailers.

      [snip]

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      John Connor II

      Numerous articles out there too on massive food hikes coming in 2023 as the world is still on 2021 food stock (but most people have no idea) and global crops are suffering major harvest shortfalls or not even being planted at all.
      Some in the know are hinting at 200 to 300% hikes…

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        Mike Jonas

        Thank you, Greens.

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        PeterW

        The cost of growing wheat has roughly doubled in two years. The price has to double if we are going to keep growing it. More than double to make up for the risks involved. You can lose a lot of money rather quickly if tge weather doesn’t cooperate.

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      OldOzzie

      How much will my energy bills cost if the price cap rises again in October? Use our monthly gas and electric calculator

      As prices continue to rise, find out how much your energy bills will cost for the rest of 2022 with our calculator

      How much will my energy bills cost in 2022?

      Ofgem will announce the new energy price cap figure(opens in new tab) towards the end of the summer and it will come into effect on 1 October 2022.

      Right now, analysts at Cornwall Insight are predicting around an 80% hike for average use in October, taking average energy bills to a whopping £3,500. This follows the 54% increase that came into effect in April 2022. Predictions are changing frequently so this estimate will likely change again before the official figure is announced.

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    John Connor II

    People don’t need cars and shouldn’t live in remote areas

    https://mobile.twitter.com/adamkotsko/status/1561367698587750400

    They probably moved to those remote areas to get away from d%ckheads like him. 😇

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    RickWill

    Summer is coming to an end in Europe and the winter is coming.

    Last week in Germany, electricity prices nudged over EUR750/MWh a few times:
    https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation_price/23.07.2022/23.08.2022/today/

    You may think this is an aberration rather than omen but Tuesday’s look ahead average price in Germany is EUR600/MWh. Greece wins the race though with Tuesday price at EUR616/MWh:
    https://euenergy.live

    I am reminded of Game of Thrones – the coming winter will be truly horrifying. I can envisage German plebs raiding government buildings to find anything that will burn. Where is Jon Snow when you need him. Time to plan is fast running out and the dreaded Putin from the north is about to reign in the Hell on Earth he so evily masterminded.

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      Dennis

      We need to send Anthony Albanese, Chris Bowen and all the other woke fools to experience the energy crisis, send some dark Greens and pale green Teals with them.

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      el+gordo

      ‘ … the coming winter will be truly horrifying.’

      We don’t know that yet, it depends on the strength of this La Nina and its association with a negative NAO.

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    The B$$tards of Australia’s Pandemic Tyranny

    From the Spectator Magazine –

    The behaviour demonstrated by political leaders and public health officials within Western democracies will linger to their eternal shame. There will be a bookmark wedged in 2020 to ensure we never forget the hysteria and demonising of the so-called filthy, disgusting, dirty unvaccinated underclass.

    ‘The virus hunts down the unvaccinated,’ said Queensland Premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, while justifying what amounted to house arrest.

    ‘Life will be miserable without being vaccinated. You won’t be able to hide. You won’t be able to get a doctor to sign off that you got an exclusion [to the mandate] because there are quite set rules on that and doctors will be audited to see [if they were valid]. Every one of their exclusions will be looked at very carefully. They’ll get fined. They’ll get struck off,’ said Dr Chris Perry, of the Australian Medical Association.

    https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/the-bastards-of-australias-pandemic-tyranny/

    A good read.

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      another ian

      Obviously not read by the upper echelon of the Qld Education Dept.

      Courier Mail on-line headline has non-vaccinated teachers having their wages docked

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        Ted1.

        It is certainly clear that some at least of the “vaccines” were not what we were told they were. In use they turned out to be not fit for purpose.

        This, surely, invalidates the mandates.

        This in turn will entitle people who lost their jobs to compensation.

        Moving the goalposts must not be allowed.

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    David Maddison

    Have you noticed that a lot of correspondence from government, universities and other woke organisations includes in the signature block the preferred pronouns of the being with whom you are corresponding?

    E.g.

    He/She — Zie, Sie, Ey, Ve, Tey, E.
    Him/Her — Zim, Sie, Em, Ver, Ter, Em.
    His/Her — Zir, Hir, Eir, Vis, Tem, Eir.
    His/Hers — Zis, Hirs, Eirs, Vers, Ters, Eirs.
    Himself/Herself — Zieself, Hirself, Eirself, Verself, Terself, Emself.

    And other such invented what used to be called “nonsense words”, back in the day.

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    Okay, I can have my eyeballs scrubbed with the best of them. (and only ‘true’ Monty Python fans of Terry Gilliam’s cartoons know what I mean here)

    Our son put us onto a series on the Apple Streaming Service, and with not much at all on free to air TV these days, thank heavens for those streaming services.

    The series is on the Apple streaming service , and is titled ….. ‘For All Mankind’, and while some of you might scoff, it’s actually not too bad really, typical American ‘we’re the best’ stuff.

    However, having an actual knowledge of recent history makes this a little quirky in nature, because it’s basically a ‘what if’ type scenario, and is an ‘alternate’ History.

    It opens with the Russians beating Neil Armstrong to the moon by four weeks, and goes from there.

    So far, there are three Series, and each series has ten parts.

    Now I hate the credits at the end of each program, and one of the good things about the streaming services and series is that ten seconds into the credits, the next part in the series appears and starts.

    However, at the end of that first series, it did not happen, and they played all of the credits. Luckily, for some reason I thought that any second now, the new episode will open, and it didn’t.

    After the credits, they played a future scene from the next series, and it only went for a minute, showing the launch of a resupply rocket to the now established base on the Moon. It was startling to watch the launch, and I wondered how TV writers could get so loose with the truth and do whatever they wanted to.

    This short sequence was a ‘construct’ of an actual idea from an engineer at NASA, Robert Truax, and his design of a rocket called Sea Dragon. My interest piqued, I actually chased it up and found that it actually was a proposal, that was being considered, and unlike the TV Series where NASA’s budget seemed limitless, whereas the actual NASA budget decreased till space exploration almost collapsed totally, then this proposal never left the drawing board.

    Great special effects though, and I tracked down the short video to show you, and it only lasts one minute.

    The TV series is okay, but some of the politics in the background might just make you all smile a little.

    Link to video – Launch of The Sea Dragon

    Tony.

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      another ian

      I was fortunate to know a bloke who was a NASA project coordinator for the Mariner and Pioneer series.

      He was smart enough to work out that once they got to the moon the money would run out – and went elsewhere.

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      Chad

      Tony, unrelated, but a little data for your files..
      Tesla have just relaesed details of their new utility back up battery system using their MEGAPACK XL
      It is a LifePo4 based system, containerised, in 3.8 MWh units costing us$2.4 million each.
      Each unit can supply 1.9MW of power for a max duration of 2 hours.
      These are bigger (capacity, physically and weight) than existing LiNCA based Megapacks, with much less tendency to burst into flames.
      I strongly suspect there are the units to be used in the 1600 MW Blackrock storage facility near Wellington

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    Lockdowns 20X Deadlier Than COVIG

    From Martin Armstrong –

    The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a study that found the lockdowns were deadly. In fact, the lockdowns were 20 times more deadly than COVID. The lockdowns were a mass human experiment. There was no evidence that indicated this method would be effective. We saw the impact that the lockdowns had on the global economy, but their effects on the human mind are now coming to light.

    “The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past. The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.”

    https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/lockdowns-20x-more-deadly-than-covid/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=RSS

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368251/

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    • #
      PeterW

      This was predicted. They were warned…

      …… and I still hear idiots claiming that “they had no other option.”

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    OldOzzie

    Doomed Planet

    Quadrant Online – How the Elites Will Keep Their Lights On

    23rd August 2022

    What would it take to end our nation’s climate madness? I used to think a few cold showers and the gas running out while the soufflé was in the oven would be enough to induce our Green-washed ruling class to take a more sceptical attitude to “renewable energy”. Now I wonder. These are the people, unassailable in towering banks or parliamentary offices, who run the country, who influence things, make them happen. Right now what they are making happen is the certainty of power shortages as a result of their quasi-superstitious fear of conventional energy generation.

    This class determines its political projects and the rest of us pay for them through taxes or surcharges. They may occasionally burble about “the welfare of all Australians” but in effect, they are not interested in us lesser mortals and don’t care if our lives are a struggle, as they’ve shown by pursuing the policies that have given us shamefully rising power prices we scrimp to pay but the nobs can easily afford, and if themselves “renewables” investors, make money out of.

    Then what? Having imposed “net zero” and condemned the rest of us to shiver and starve, do “renewables” enthusiasts naively imagine that our privations and “good example” will touch the consciences of polluters like China and India, whose huge emissions make ours look like a puff of smoke from a Greenie’s spliff? That these industrial giants will shut down their coal-powered economies just in time to prevent the planet becoming a molten ball or whatever it’s supposed fate is?

    There are no two ways about it. Either they are dumb enough to believe that or the whole net-zero crusade is a fraud, just another weapon from the Marxist armoury in the never-ending strategy to weaken and ultimately destroy the Western democracies.

    Climate catastrophists are either fools or quislings.

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    John Connor II

    Thought for the day

    If you ever feel useless, remember that it’s somebody’s job at BMW is to install turn indicators. 😆😆

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    David Maddison

    Modern civilisation will collapse rapidly at an exponential rate.

    I think it will happen much faster than earlier civilisation collapses because of the much more rapid means of communication and of the enemies of civilisation’s ability to distribute propaganda.

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    el+gordo

    Jennifer Marohasy tackles the Lismore floods and finds BoM has lost the data.

    https://jennifermarohasy.com/2022/08/bom-buries-record-daily-rainfall-during-lismore-floods/

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    Drought strike occurs frequently in china. According to historical records, from 206BC to 1949AD, there had been 1056 drought events. This means at least one drought event took place every two years.

    Interesting read from this link.

    We might have it easy!

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    Dennis

    “The former prime minister responded to the legal advice late on Tuesday in a lengthy Facebook post where he reiterated his justification that the circumstances surrounding the decisions were “extraordinary”. Mr Morrison also rejected that he ever acted as a “co-minister” and said he only interfered on one occasion – when he blocked the controversial PEP-11 gas exploration project as resources minister. “The authorities at issue were put in place as an emergency power to be used only in extreme circumstances due to incapacity or in the national interest,” he said.”

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    Dennis

    But now the mob demands an apology for doing nothing illegal?

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    Honk R Smith

    Speaking of ‘settled science’.
    Isn’t the Big Bang in a bit of trouble?
    William Astley did a better job of mentioning this at the end of a previous open thread.
    Reposting zhis/zher link (the Vic government might be watching):

    https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.3015

    Sifting through the academic pig Latin, doesn’t this mean that those old galaxy portraits don’t look the way they’re supposed to look … if there was a Big … you know, Bang?
    Dang, and 75-80% of people infected with the historic plague virus, the indisputable cause of the historic plague, don’t get the historic plague, or even a sniffle.
    And all this just as ‘Science’ becomes socially unquestionable.

    Settled Science History note: Didn’t it take 50 years after evidence of Pre Clovis human habitation of the Americas was found, for the Clovis ‘settled’ narrative to be abandoned by the Academic Fashion Police.

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      Honk R Smith

      Additional personal note:
      Much more ore than decade ago, when there were still book stores, I bought a discount coffee table book of Hubble images.
      One small entry was a deep field gathering of what was thought to be empty space.
      Instead it was littered with formed galaxies.
      Just like the younger closer ones.
      I thought, that doesn’t seem to fit.
      But ‘Science’ is reluctant to jump to conclusions, except in climate, pandemics, and gender identity.

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    John Connor II

    FDA Finally Approved An Alzheimer’s Drug… But Everything Surrounding It Is Controversial

    Aduhelm is the brand name under which the Alzheimer’s drug Aducanumab is marketed. It is developed by the U.S. company Biogen. The drug is to be administered as an intra-venous infusion every four weeks.

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Aducanumab in June 2021, making it the first Alzheimer’s disease medication approved by the FDA since 2003. It is also the first ever approved Alzheimer’s drug targeting the presence of amyloid beta (a type of protein) plaques in the brain.

    However, almost everything about this drug is controversial, from the theory on which the drug is developed, to its clinical trials data, to the FDA approval itself.

    Brain swelling and brain bleeding are known to be possible side effects of Aduhelm. Biogen conducted two phase 3 studies prior to the FDA approval. The phase 3 studies started in August 2015, but Biogen pulled the plug on both studies three and a half years later, in March 2019. The decision was based on a futility analysis conducted by an independent data monitoring committee, which indicated the trials were unlikely to meet their primary endpoint upon completion. That is, the trials were unlikely to prove the drug’s efficacy in slowing cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s patients.

    The safety data from the terminated phase 3 trials were published in JAMA Neurology in November 2021. The study focused on amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), which can cause headache, confusion, dizziness, nausea, brain bleeding, and swelling.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fda-finally-approved-alzheimers-drug-everything-surrounding-it-controversial

    Nice list of adverse events there!
    As I posted recently, amyloid plaques are not a symptom of the disease but of the immune system, therefore this treatment, as is so often the case, works in opposition to the body and immune system.
    Another fail for big pharma…

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      another ian

      “After careful review and thoughtful deliberation, Duke Health has decided it will not provide aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease at this time.

      This decision was made after evaluation by Duke’s Pharmacy Medication Management Committee, which includes providers from various specialties and medication experts, who review all medications for their availability at Duke Health.

      https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/what-you-need-know-about-aducanumab

      Via a comment at Chiefio

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      Hanrahan

      Would I be right in assuming that the plaque kills the effected brain cells? If so, even if this worked as hoped, it could not reverse any cognition loss.

      There is a point where decline is so severe that the carers would not thank you for any theoretical benefit. They are just on a vigil.

      Until there is a genuine treatment early diagnosis is no great help but I now believe that OCD [could show in many ways] and loss of smell show long before memory loss. With Mrs H it showed in her shopping. She never burned a candle in her life but there are scented candles around the house. Many things like that that show compulsive behaviour.

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    David Maddison

    A bunch of Coral Sea islands presently owned by an Australian might be sold to the Chicomms and would then be a place to project power against Australia.

    The silence from foreign minister Penny Wong and the Lamestream media is deafening.

    https://youtu.be/8Bnv2ywWcLo

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      Hanrahan

      You can’t blame the owner for wanting to sell. Tropical islands are of little value. Dunk, a once pleasant resort is still closed with the swimming pool full of sand after Yasi in 2011.

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      John Connor II

      Ooohhh…so nice too…and just $20M or so.
      Total bargain.

      The sort of thing Elon should buy…

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    another ian

    “Lockdowns will kill more than Covid and yet there’s still no apology, says Dan Wootton”

    https://www.gbnews.uk/gb-views/lockdowns-will-kill-more-than-covid-and-yet-theres-still-no-apology-says-dan-wootton/356112

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    MrGrimNasty

    1295 people boated across the English Channel yesterday. That’s only the ones they counted. And they’re still coming on the lorries etc. too. I guess with probably 1.2million people in the UK that shouldn’t be already, it doesn’t make much difference!

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    red edwards

    And on the economic front, the Euro broke below the Dollar. EUR/DOL was at .9939.

    30

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    Geoff Sherrington

    Please tell me if I am dreamin’ or if you have noticed this too.
    It is mainly illustrated by major projects like a big new mine or a new underground rail for a city.
    In the olden days, we used to talk with pride and awe about a new million dollar project. As the years passed and inflation took its toll, this became a ten million dollar project. More years pass and we talk of billion dollar projects.
    Why did we jump over the hundred million dollar project category?
    Did you feel this effect? That we made that enormous logarithmic jump from millions talk to billions talk as if it was linear? So society jumped 3 orders of magnitude with hardly any time spent in the brackets in between, the ten millions and hundred millions?
    It is hard for me to understand how it moves through orders of magnitude? Not so long ago, we seldom spoke of trillions. Now we do.
    I wish my income jumped in such leaps and bounds. In 1970 or so I was on $12,000 a year. By 1990 it was only about $120,000 a year. That is one order of magnitude in 2 decades that feels slow compared to millions to billions rates. And that salary example included seniority increases. Weird??
    Geoff S

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    red edwards

    And yes, Vitamin D is good for you.

    https://academic.oup.com/ije/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ije/dyac087/6586699?login=false#354594217

    First paragraph of discussion

    “In this large-scale genetic analysis, we observed evidence for a causal effect of vitamin D status on CRP with no support for CRP as a determinant of 25(OH)D concentrations. The association between 25(OH)D and CRP was largely restricted to the deficiency range, where only individuals with low serum 25(OH)D concentrations have elevated serum CRP. The shape of the observed association supports the previously proposed threshold effect,12 suggesting that correction of vitamin D deficiency in the affected individuals is likely to reduce systemic low-grade inflammation and potentially mitigate the risk or severity of chronic illnesses with inflammatory components.”

    Gee 😉 who’d of thunk that. . . . 😀

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      another ian

      Better send that to The Australian. IIRC they’ve been running headlines about how Vitamin D is useless as a supplement

      00

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    John Connor II

    Y Chromosome – YMCA parody

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDmaPIKrC-A&feature=emb_logo

    Only the “woke” and permanently baffled fall for the BS…

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    cadger

    Matt Ridley

    What could be more natural than organically grown Golden Promise barley, used to make craft-brewed pale ale?

    As one artisan brewer boasts: “The Golden Promise malt, showcased in this pale ale, is an early-maturing spring barley from Scotland. It has a very clean sweetness and a prominent biscuity flavour that is perfect for UK-style pale ales with their rich and malty flavour profiles.”

    Only hang on a minute.

    Golden Promise was produced in 1965 by irradiating barley seeds with gamma rays from Cobalt 60 isotopes provided by the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment to a profit-seeking plant breeding firm.

    It was one of the first fruits of this new high-tech approach to scrambling the genomes of plants by busting their DNA in random ways in the hope of haphazardly generating valuable new forms of variation. Known as ‘mutation breeding’, some 2500 crop varieties have been bred in this way.

    https://www.scienceforsustainableagriculture.com/mattridley2

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    another ian

    Some ponderings on the Big Bang theory

    “Tired Light & Red Shift Problems”

    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2022/08/23/tired-light-red-shift-problems/

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    another ian

    Re

    “The bastards of Australia’s pandemic tyranny”

    https://spectator.com.au/2022/08/the-bastards-of-australias-pandemic-tyranny/

    Some feedback I got on that from a nurse

    “Did you notice who’s going to be accountable for adverse affects if any occurred after giving someone a vaccination? No not the government not AHPRA but the poor sod who actually administered it. (Failing to disclose all adverse affects- bit much when they would be de registered if they talked about Covid at all)
    It’s going to be a long battle. “

    10

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    el+gordo

    Javier Vinos defends his position.

    ‘Akasofu, Abdussamatov, Archibald, they all had their 15 min of fame predicting impending cooling.

    ‘It is the same problem in reverse. Modern Global Warming cannot be explained without a strong natural contribution either. Without a strong natural contribution, this period since 1997 would not be a pause but a period of warming, as the IPCC predicted and failed.

    ‘The pause is evidence that both natural and anthropogenic components are acting in different directions.’ (WUWT)

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    OldOzzie

    ‘You don’t frighten us, FBI pig dogs!’ Monty Python footage of FBI raid on Castle Mar-a-Lago funniest damn thing you’ll see today (watch)

    We’d like to think this is how it went down for the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. Heh.

    If you’re a Monty Python fan you will appreciate this even if you’re not a Trump supporter. Ok, that’s probably not true, since most people who hate Trump have a perpetual stick wedged up their backside and find little humor in much but this is freakin’ funny.

    Unless you’re not a Python fan and then this won’t make much sense to you … note, if you’re not a Python fan you need to fix that, ASAP.

    Watch.

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    OldOzzie

    Sacre Bleu – Drought threatens wine output in France

    However, vineyards say the French won’t be left without their favorite beverage

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    OldOzzie

    feelthebernsays:
    August 24, 2022 at 11:44 am
    The Paul Pelosi DUI footage is out.

    Paulie was smashed.

    The Reason Why!

    Paul Pelosi Pleads Guilty, Sentenced To Return To Nancy Pelosi In 5 Days

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    OldOzzie

    IT’S FUNNY THAT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT IS CONSTANTLY LEAKING IN A CASE ALLEGEDLY ABOUT CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures.”

    Turley: “It is litigation by leak where the government prevents others (including the target) from seeing key representations made to the court while releasing selective facts to its own advantage. It shows utter contempt for the court and the public.”

    10