I remember little about the prequels but for some reason I remember Darth Grevious dying by slipping on a banana peel. Consistant line of cool villains dying in stupid ways in star wars post 80s. Boba Fetts demise was silly I guess.

Drain the swamp. When are we getting a wall to keep non Pakeha out? We are not far from this with these populists.

But the old farts are growing in numbers, so to what degree were conservatives always that way, in other words are people becoming newly/more conservative about immigrants in their old age, or will the more liberal young ones of today bring this more open attitude into their old age , lessening conservatism over time?

This is anthropomorphic thinking. But in order to express the concept that aggressions and other interactions could increase toward species who have built their overinflated infrastructures across migration paths, territories or outright destroyed swathes of habitat of other species, yeh they probably are hella angry at these stupid hairless apes.

Yes it was good with much improvement of services and competition since. My memory of the various issues may be blurry now but their was alot of unhappiness back then with Telecom. Corporations will always trend toward monopoly unless regulated against. The telco duopoly we had for some time after the networks taxpayers paid for in the first place was privatised, were barely in competition and they had a vested interest in keeping it that way of course. Unbundling the copper network took too long, and telecom had an interest in fibre rollout being slow early on. It was a painful time and eye opening when travelling to ‘developing’ nations in the mid 2000s to experience high speed virtually open access to ‘broadband’ as it was called when we were still begging for better than adsl (or was it still dial up?) to ‘surf the net’ as a chorus technician lazily called it after finally getting my service going once when I was trying to get a small software business communicating with overseas customers.

Was another entity Kordia? Or did that break from nzbc/tvnz/rnz ? I’ve lost track.

Gladly things are pretty good with speeds and access for what I need now. I have empathy for my friends in colleagues in Aus and some other ‘developed’ nations.

The google situation is massive and they need to be broken up, their mafia styled control of the ad auction and data harvesting industries needs to be cut down. They also have alot to answer for with how they’ve damaged our access to information which hopefully this will start to address. They’ve mutated the internet to fit their image in order to profit when the actual value of their product to their customers (advertisers) is highly questionable. Probably beyond the remit for this case , but a start. High hopes for the case, but stakes are huge for them and they’re powerful.

Assuming this is sarcasm, I’m fine with being reminded of the CCP’s continuing disregard for international law, basic law of HK, and their pissing all over the joint declaration. Whether or not we saw it coming, its bad for the people of HK, China and the world. And it hasn’t been two decades since the regression got underway with this current clique of psychopaths anyway. Things were somewhat optimistic 10 years ago on both sides of the border. There were concerns, but the agreed arrangement which they’ve now torn up in order to turn HK into a dystopia, was working. Unfortunately positive human development is incompatible with insecure authoritarians. All of these developments are sad.

Thats been my thinking too. Degrade gov services so they struggle to provide what they’re meant to and the public blames the service itself, with the reactionary result being to defund further. ‘Drain the swamp’. No good will come from this and it will affect all parts of society including the wealthy - their wealth is built on the backs of the rest of us. Typical short term selfish thinking. But yes , the less advantaged will suffer first and these pricks will ignore with glee , or blame them for not ‘helping themselves like I did’.

Indeed. We need to start calculating and charging/taxing for the true human cost these megacorps are fleecing us for-let alone the total actual climate cost. More so than we already do that is. We get miniscule unneeded tax cuts as a cynical carrot on a stick distraction while much needed underfunded gov services are decimated further. These types get to literally destroy our shared environment while raking it in. Disgusting

I just finished Burmese Days, and as someone who grew up in a (former) British colony, it hits hard. Orwell had his finger on the pulse of the 20th century and spoke very plainly about what he saw around him, and most importantly within himself. Something we could all do more of.

This should not be happening.

I don’t have any skin in this game, but what are the Orwellian talking points you refer to? I’m curious how this term is used and develops over time.

That’ll help with keeping a low profile. I personally go for a red flashing clown nose, and triggers in my shoes which set off a loud explosion sound with every step. The speaker is in my ridiculously tall top hat.

Parent of a 5 year old year one student and just had first parent teacher interviews last couple days. As anecdotal as this will be, with my sample size of one, plus being in touch with other parents, this is a pointless populist move. The teachers are working their absolute arses off ensuring our kids are getting everything they can get. And already doing this needless to say. My kids teacher looks bloody exhausted at the best of times, and is made of stronger stuff than I or this highly rested smug shiny faced fake smiled property magnate. What teachers need are more resources, more time (i.e more teachers) and more pay. These useless checkbox ticking numbskulls think we fall for this empty grandstanding? Absolute wastage of resource, ironically.

SAAS your shit up…

Great phraseology, and have experienced it with Arlo.

No wonder it descended into a mob. They ordered ribs and got livers. Sounded pretty orderly saying that.

Great to hear! I’ve perservered despite this as it’s great for me in all other respects.

My main prob with viewtube has been its flakey resolution auto or manual selection. The UI with it is weird and i basicially have to randomly click unclick autoselect , and switch between resolutions before it somehow lands on 1080 . Might be my browser and OS combo - macOS librewolf. Hosted on kde locally. Otherwise love it. But I dont use much other than search and watch. I use metube if I want to keep anything.

I’d agree about waiting personally. Not to defend it of course, but isn’t this already happening? Probably not at the banking side other than for their internal benefit (I presume as they’re fairly regulated) , but at the retail , POS , even accounting system sides? Theres also all other data collection and harvesting sources - internet use basically, location data etc - but thats all known. This is likely to be a more consolidated competitor in that space I guess. All speculation. I’m more curious so fishing for knowledge

They’ve been increasing usage relatively fast. Air quality is an apparent motivator, but being less sufficient on coal , as well as increasing energy demands with of course massive (though recently slowing) growth of middle class population and their consumeristic and life needs are also motivators. I’m not sure of the share of generation. There is a fair amount of NIMBYism in China if you check on local or regional news occassionally. I’m not sure about recently but nuclear plants under construction have had protests, as well as serial polluting factories and other cases. I’m not sure if those qualify as NIMBYism but there is a culture of dissent where it affects the outcomes of especially individuals, believe it or not. None of this is in defence of the CCP who can go suck an egg and who have been much more stern in their responses to dissent in recent years.

It is their responsibility , though it should be at pain of death (of their profits), to innovate in order to supply what we demand sustainability. The problem is they are not compelled to do so by any mechanism - regulatory, or market driven. And worse than that , the biggest and most culpable perpetrators of these crimes against humanity (and all other living species present and future) have actively campaigned to misinform, divide and conquer, politicize, deflect and distract (including shifting all responsibility to the individual) since they’ve known for decades that this is coming and when they alone had the means and capital to adapt, innovate, research and develop solutions for the good of all, including themselves if they’d only planned for something other than their own pockets this financial quarter.

So it shouldn’t continue to be exposed ? Let the bad news (for Nestle) blow over ?