In the news today, Donald Trump and his followers said some stupid and hateful things. In other news, the sun rose in the east, the Pope is Catholic, and the Dalai Lama is in favour of world peace.
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I'm still looking forward to getting a micro diamond coating for my house, to protect it from weathering, fires, and space junk. I'm sure it was promised in science fiction.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/19/mined-and-lab-grown-diamonds-difference-can-you-tell-prices
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So on 15 Nov 1862, Joseph Garland tries to cross the Rakaia River in New Zealand, on horseback, herding cattle, after people warn him not to try it, and he falls off his horse and drowns.
Then on 26 Nov 1862, Sihon Stace is thinking about crossing the same river in the same way, but is wary about "sharing the fate of the poor Garland." But the cattle get across, and seem to be getting away, so he goes for it, and drowns.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT18621119.2.12?query=garland
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/LT18621129.2.13?query=stace
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When I was young and silly I thought it was good to own a car, and when I had enough money to buy a slightly better car, I kept the first so that I could always have one in working order to buy parts to repair the other one. Eventually, I realised that the repairs were taking quite a bit of my time, and I had no ambition to become a motor mechanic, and it would be quicker and cheaper just to walk everywhere. I could use buses, taxis, rental cars occasionally. That was decades ago, still no car.
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The back corner garden in December.
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"There are 12 active fires burning across the state, five of which aren’t contained", said the Rural Fire Service commissioner of NSW.
Now I'm pondering what the difference may be between an active fire and a regular, or inactive, fire.
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Trump wants to abolish daylight savings time? I think he's right?? My brain is going to explode. Just getting it out right away, that I'm not a Trump supporter just because I think daylight savings should be abolished.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-14/donald-trump-says-he-is-working-on-ending-daylight-savings-in-us/104726462
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Q. What do you call a pizza base that turns into a wolf during the full moon?
A. A weredough,.
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The back corner garden in November.
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Not a bad prediction, it has now reached the "rumor" stage.
https://www.newsweek.com/will-truth-social-merge-elon-musks-x-rumors-swirl-1982993
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I think it's odd that people are getting so worked up over the phrase "your body my choice". This has been mainstream policy for governments and religions for possibly all of recorded history. Even with what would seem like the most basic human right of choosing your own clothing. It wasn't just invented by some trolling incel.
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"Torsten" isn't a difficult name in English, is it? I'd query whether the initial sound should be "T" or "Th", but compared to many names from other ethnicities, it looks easy, and I like it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/02/i-didnt-mind-my-unusual-first-name-until-i-found-out-it-could-cost-me-dearly
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I suspect that X and Truth Social will merge at some point. They both seem to be similar sites targetting the same audience. I don't use either site, obviously, but this is my impression. Capitalists prefer to avoid competition.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/29/truth-social-trading-suspended
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An odd story. Jan van Speyk commanded a Netherlands gunboat during the Belgian Revolution. The ship was stuck at a quay at Antwerp, where Belgians had it surrounded. But rather than surrender, he ignited a barrel of gunpowder, blowing up the ship, murdering 28 of the 31 crew, as well as an unknown number of Belgians, possibly including civilians. King Willem I was so impressed, that he ordered the Navy to always have a ship named Van Speyk, which they still do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_van_Speyk
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One of them was Gerrit van Weezel, a professional musician: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrit_van_Weezel
Also killed at Auschwitz.
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I have written a few biographies on Wikitree for relatives of one of my uncles, who somehow survived WW2 with his mother, a Dutch Jew. It's not much of a biography, "he was born at The Hague, he got married, they had two kids, then the whole family was murdered by Nazis."
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/De_Leeuw-607
I find that writing this down affects me more than just reading about it. It's somehow personal.
How is it that today, there are families wiped out by Israeli bombs? Have they learned nothing?
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At least bees like the flowers.
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Of course, I don't use this system myself, because I don't need people to think that I'm even more bonkers than they already think I am. I have memories of when I decided to switch to UTC time instead of my local time zone, it didn't work out well.
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I've long had an idiosyncratic view about pronouns. Gendered pronouns aren't very useful, and we could manage perfectly well in English just using he/him to refer to anyone. Let she/her become archaic. Reserve they/them for plural usage. There are precedents. Words like "actor", previously mostly reserved for males, are becoming non-gendered. I've also heard that Chinese languages don't use gendered pronouns. Probably, the time to implement this was several decades ago.
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Another example. Is Labor being too radical by trying to make multinational companies publish more information about where they make their revenue? Some seem to think so. I appreciate Jacqui Lambie in this instance for her comment "“Multinationals have whole teams of people dedicated to avoiding tax and the Liberals really think they can be trusted to self-regulate? I mean, seriously, you couldn’t make this shit up.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2024/oct/14/labor-wants-multinationals-to-reveal-their-worldwide-income-for-tax-purposes-that-plan-is-under-attack
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