— originally uploaded by Red Wolf
The Shovel asked Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton — Australia’s most-loved reviewers — to critique the world’s least-loved year. As usual they had wildly different opinions — via Youtube
A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.
Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.
I have studied and worked to prevent genocide for forty years. Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide, the first international anti-genocide coalition, see such hate-filled conspiracy theories as early warning signs of deadly genocidal violence.
The plot, described above, was the conspiracy revealed
in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years — via Just Security
— originally uploaded by Red Wolf
— originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Michael Mad Mike
Hoare, widely considered the world’s best known mercenary, has died aged 100.
Born in India to Irish parents, he led campaigns in the Congo in the 1960s that earned him fame at the time, and a controversial legacy years later.
His career reached an embarrassing end in 1981, when he was jailed for leading a failed coup in the Seychelles.
Mr Hoare’s son, Chris Hoare, said in a statement that his father died in a care facility in Durban, South Africa.
Mike Hoare lived by the philosophy that you get more out of life by living dangerously, so it is all the more remarkable that he lived more than 100 years,
he said — via BBC News
In the Quadratestadt of Mannheim, Germany, the streets aren’t named: instead, the blocks are. It’s an exception to a rule that most people don’t even think about — especially not mapping companies — via Youtube
— via Youtube
With what3words, Chris Sheldrick and his team have divided the entire planet into three-meter squares and assigned each a unique, three-word identifier, like famous.splice.writers or blocks.evenly.breed, giving a precise address to the billions of people worldwide who don’t have one. In this quick talk about a big idea, Sheldrick explains the economic and political implications of giving everyone an accurate address — from building infrastructure to sending aid to disaster zones to delivering hot pizza — via TED
It’s not uncommon for parents to take some time to settle on a name for a new baby, but if they take too long, does the government have the power to step in?
Canberra’s six-month rule
In Australia, all births have to be registered under the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act.
Access Canberra is the government body responsible for recording the momentous occasions in the ACT.
… parents had six months to name their baby — a timeframe that’s only recently been extended from just 60 days.
Reviewing — and rejecting — names
As part of the registration process, Access Canberra reviews names selected by parents.
For the most part parents have free reign to choose a name, guided by a few simple rules, but it’s not the same all over the world.
… only two names have been rejected by the ACT Government to date – one because it contained symbols without phonetic significance, and another because it contained a title or a rank. In that instance, the name was Prince
.
What happens when the six months are up?
Ben Green, deputy director for licensing and registration, explained that parents would be strongly urged to find a suitable name for their child and complete the registration paperwork.
And, while it has never happened, the ACT Government even has the power to take parents to court to force them to register, and name, their child.
Bringing it back to Sam’s question, I asked whether the government could name a child, if parents didn’t meet the deadline.
Put simply no, not really,
Ben said.
The government does have two circumstances in which they can name your child, the first circumstance is if it’s a prohibited name and the second is if the parents can’t agree on a name.
Ben said that this had never happened in the ACT and there was no pre-approved list of spare baby names sitting on a desk at Access Canberra just in case — ABC News
Little Ross Island off the south west of Scotland is up for sale for the price of a typical semi-detached house. It’s a 29-acre island (and much more at low tide) in the estuary to the south of Kirkcudbright in the south west of Scotland and located just off Meikle Ross headland on the mainland. So not too isolated. Views of views of the open sea, coastline, countryside, the Isle of Man and Lake District too.
The island has a working lighthouse tower, which was designed and built by Alan Stevenson in 1843, but sadly not part of the actual sale. However, the lighthouse keeper’s cottages, a shared courtyard (with the light Tower) and the remainder of the island, including the three ruinous cottages, along with workshops, a walled garden, a further small ruin and a further walled garden on the southern side and a stone barn on the north side are all included — via Wow Hausd
It’s great for agricultural crops and a bit on the nose, but it’s not your standard manure.
About 180,000 tonnes of biosolids are generated from Sydney’s sewage each year, but authorities are having no troubles with getting rid of it.
Biosolids, which is a by-product of the sewerage treatment process, is proving a hit with New South Wales farmers who want to improve soil health and boost yields.
Harvested from 23 of Sydney’s sewerage plants, the waste is processed through reactors which also create renewable energy that is fed back into the system.
It is then trucked out to about 20 farms in the state’s central west, as well as several mine rehabilitation sites.
Stuart Kelly swapped synthetic fertilisers for human biosolids on his family property at Newbridge, near Blayney five years ago.
He said his soil was healthier than ever and the farm was booming.
My thing is healthy soils and healthy pastures is going to come back to healthy stock,
Mr Kelly said.
Mr Kelly said while he still got raised eyebrows for using the sewage, it was helping complete the production cycle between city and bush — ABC News
Protecting one book is easy. Saving 377,000 fragile historic documents from gun-toting vandals hell-bent on erasing centuries of knowledge? That takes a different type of hero — via Neatorama
Image credit: Flickr user United Nations Photo
The ways of Riga’s enigmatic priest are mysterious. Shopping at a night market, using his spiritual weapons by sprinkling the holy water at a sermon in a fancy wine bar, overseeing the city from bell towers, and hanging out with skaters at the waterfront will build your faith and make you believe in the wonders of Riga. By DDB — via Youtube
Members of the European Parliament will vote today on draft rules that would allow citizens to enjoy legally purchased music and movie streaming subscriptions when they travel to another EU country. It’s hoped that improved access to content will help to dampen frustrations and reduce Internet piracy.
Being a fully-paid up customer of a streaming service such as Spotify or Netflix should be a painless experience, but for citizens of the EU, complexities exist.
Subscribers of Netflix, for example, have access to different libraries, depending on where they’re located. This means that a viewer in the Netherlands could begin watching a movie at home, travel to France for a weekend break, and find on arrival that the content he paid for is not available there.
A similar situation can arise with a UK citizen’s access to BBC’s iPlayer. While he has free access to the service he previously paid for while at home, travel to Spain for a week and access is denied, since the service believes he’s not entitled to view.
While the EU is fiercely protective of its aim to grant free movement to both people and goods, this clearly hasn’t always translated well to the digital domain. There are currently no explicit provisions under EU law which mandate cross-border portability of online content services.
Following a vote today, however, all that may change.
In a few hours time, Members of the European Parliament will vote on whether to introduce new Cross-border portability
rules (pdf), that will give citizens the freedom to enjoy their media wherever they are in the EU, without having to resort to piracy — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Social Security card and number explained — via Youtube
Don’t you know there’s a war on? It’s being fought right now, all around us, between the baby boomers and the millennials.
Opinions differ as to the exact parameters that define each group of combatants, but the boomers are generally thought to have been born between 1946 (the results of the post-war baby boom, when people were so happy to be alive after six years of conflict that they jumped, en masse, into the sack) and the early 1960s. The millennials, on the other hand, take their name from the fact they came of age at the turn of the new century, so are usually defined as being born in 1982 or later.
The boomers don’t like the millennials because they think the younger generation are feckless, whiny snowflakes who are scared of hard graft and obsessed by status, more interested in posting a selfie to social media than doing anything useful.
The millennials, on the other hand, see the moomers as a rapacious generation that’s pretty much ruined everything for them. They’re living too long, taxpayers’ money is gushing into looking after them. They’ve kept house prices high, meaning young people can’t afford to buy. Workplace pensions are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Boomers are, by and large, Brexiteers and Trumpers. They remember when Britain was great, and think coming out of Europe will be a doddle. They want to make America great all over again.
If you fall into either of those camps, you’ll doubtless have strong opinions. If you don’t, then come and join me on the sidelines as the two sides limber up for the mother of all battles. I’ve got popcorn, it’ll be fun. And who are we, if we’re not boomers or millennials? Why, we’re Generation X of course. And when the slapping and fighting is all done and dusted, we’re going to save the world — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Today, Iceland tops the European table for the cleanest-living teens. The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 per cent to 7 per cent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 per cent to just 3 per cent.
The way the country has achieved this turnaround has been both radical and evidence-based, but it has relied a lot on what might be termed enforced common sense. This is the most remarkably intense and profound study of stress in the lives of teenagers that I have ever seen,
says Milkman. I’m just so impressed by how well it is working.
If it was adopted in other countries, Milkman argues, the Icelandic model could benefit the general psychological and physical well-being of millions of kids, not to mention the coffers of healthcare agencies and broader society. It’s a big if — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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