@mariner4life said in Christmas Gifts:

SHIT! I haven't got my parents anything.

And you know what, i don't even know what they might need or want. I am so far removed from their lives i have no fucking idea. We talk on the phone maybe once a month. Maybe. And i haven't seen them in 14 months. I am a terrible son. I haven't spent christmas with my family in probably 4 years, but it might actually be 5.

I stopped buying for my sisters a couple of decades ago.

I always get my younger brother a decent present. He’s a tradIe who, as he has 5 kids, 3 of whom he’s put through uni with the last 2 due in the next couple of years, never has anything left for himself. He’s a great Dad and never expects much. A couple of Christmases ago I convinced Mrs JC to let me buy him the car he always wanted. It was worth it just to see the look on his face when he drives it. In return I expect him to research and buy me the best bottle of wine he can find for under 30 bucks.

Well for us kids just weren’t an option sadly. We tried everything but when we first got all the tests done they told us it would be extremely unlikely and they were right. The never ending hormone treatments permanently damaged Mrs JC’s health - one of the fertility experts guilt tripped her into some pretty extreme treatments by saying if she had any second thoughts then she just didn’t want kids enough. So now she’s got anxiety attacks, near constant IBS, blinding headaches about 50% of every month, excruciating period pain, everything except the child she desperately wanted and still misses. The kicker is she is a amazing with kids and would have been the most awesome Mum. Sometimes you just have to laugh because the alternative is you’d never stop crying.

@Frank said in US Politics:

@JC Unfortunately, a lot of people do listen to them. Sad.

Stop then. Nobody is making you wind yourself up with this drivel.

Honestly, the degeneration of this thread gives me the shits. I'm very interested in policy and especially economics in the US, but the nonsense on here about personalities, cucks, and the alt-right, the endless pathetic memes and the posting of links to fringe sites populated by feeble minds has made it pretty much unreadable.

@Crucial said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@JC said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Godder said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@JC it was agreed by our representatives in Parliament giving those powers to the government if an epidemic is declared.

And if the government keeps publishing criteria and revising it regularly, how will that keep public confidence? People don't trust them now, and that would look like flip-flopping.

Oh no. We can’t have them looking like they’re flip-flopping can we? That would be so politically inconvenient.

This is simple. If they know what the exit criteria are they should tell us. If they don’t know they should tell us that instead. The former has a time limit, even if it’s just connected to a condition or event. But if the exit criteria are rational, the abrogation of our human rights is temporary.

However if there aren’t any exit criteria it is entirely possible that there is no exit, ever. I’m not OK with living like that, and I don’t care what representatives decided it.

I’m not impressed by arguments that things are constantly changing when the people making the argument are the ones who are changing things.

It’s a decision based on a situation of many variables, not one the can be locked in and held to.

I get the element of frustration by some but things aren’t as simple as “when this number occurs”.
It isn’t trying to save face either. You know exactly what would happen if they set some targets but didn’t move when the targets were met because of other information that had to hand.

Of course it’s complex. But they chose an extreme course that varies from the original premise. Originally they needed to flatten the curve so that our health services would cope. The compact with the public was that we would temporarily surrender some freedoms so that could happen. I assume that they’ve used the time to upgrade our health systems so that we are prepared for a future wave. But I don’t know, because nobody has told us how that’s going. Instead something changed: we were going to go for elimination, something that nobody is sure will work. That’s a significant movement of the goalposts.

Assuming elimination works, what are the implications? The WHO said overnight that COVID passports shouldn’t be used because there’s no evidence that having the virus confers immunity. Think about that. We may be permanently stuck with this thing. If so, it’s about time someone started to talk with us about what rights and freedoms we are prepared to permanently give up. And the answer might be “none”. So be it.

I’m much more likely to be in the high risk category than most here, and I’d rather not die. But I’m fucked if I want to be the reason people who are at very little risk have their lives and livelihoods ruined just so that I can get a few extra years of living like a hermit. Fuck that. I’d rather take my chances and let people with an actual future have one.

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@booboo said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@canefan said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@antipodean said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@Luigi said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@MiketheSnow said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

@sparky said in RWC: All Blacks v Ireland (QF2):

Not really sure what Matt Todd could do there?

Tackle?

Exactly. It ain’t about intent anymore. Or even it being an accident. If you’re in the way, flailing around like a epileptic squid you’re gonna get pinged. Todd got sent off for being a muppet. Can’t even claim cynicism, just rubbishness.

He's directly responsible for both of Ireland's tries. His YC was deserved - you're supposed to tackle.

Please explain to me the rule that Todd broke? He was inside, the vision clearly showed that. He did not make shoulder or arm contact with the irish player's head. It was at best a collision I would have thought? Honest question

I'd go with foul play obstruction. He made no attempt to tackle and simply plopped himself in the way.

Who is he obstructing. Isn't obstruction preventing someone from playing?

The ball carrier, from playing the ball. I suggest you watch a replay. It's obvious and uncontroversial. Ignore that he got flustered in his explanation, the penalty and card are justified.

I had to go and watch again after reading this. He did not prevent the ball carrier from playing the ball. The ball could have been made available to a team mate at any time and Todd didn’t stop him from trying to do that. He was, for the record, behind the try line when the ball carrier picked up the ball and only moved forward after that. He flopped clownishly at the base of the posts but was onside when he did it. If you called it a tackle or a breakdown then he was on the NZ side of it. If you called it open play then he can be wherever the fuck he likes.

Or are you saying that defenders have an obligation to let a player attempt to place the ball and score a try? Because I missed that law change and so has everybody else who tries to hold up the ball and prevent a score, like in every game ever.

As you’ll have gathered, I’m not accepting it’s obvious and uncontroversial just because you say so.

Of course I could be wrong but you’ll need to cite your source.

@Siam said in US Politics:

@MajorRage genuinely, what's been shocking about the trump reaction? You think his quote is defining?
From the little I've seen his addresses to the nation have been pretty reasonable and met with majority approval.

I fail to get the point of majority approval. That’s for when a politician wants to hedge his bets on re-election. It’s not the same as leadership, which is what’s missing here.

Somehow the US has turned into a gerontocracy, with both parties’ likely candidates stupid old men. Maybe they were both clever once, but they’re not now. Biden acts like he’s suffering from dementia and Trump is a 140 character mind in a longform world.
It’s sad it’s no longer shocking that Trump’s tendency to confuse what he thinks plays well in a tweet is the best response to any real world situation. Autocracy may play well in states where the political framework allows for it, but the US isn’t that place. Everybody in the country knows that ultimately they have the constitutional right to tell him to piss off, yet he continues to act as though ordering around free people will work. It doesn’t. He needs to find another way, and I think he’s too old to change, and too much a believer in his own myth for him to even think he needs to.

And yet, where is the viable alternative? Charlatans, shallow panderers, mass-produced gladhanders who think a generic law degree is the ticket to wisdom that nobody else has, virtue signalling empty heads in bad American suits. How did a great country fall so low, so fast? From an embarrassment of riches to simply an embarrassment?

Many of the smartest people I know are Americans. Trump and Biden aren’t fit to be seen in the same room as them. A pox on both their corrupt houses.

@Rapido said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

My hunch is 28 days short sharp pain will do less damage to the economy than a drawn out half arsed approach.

28 days which includes school holidays, plus 2 stat holidays. 18 working/trading days for many.

Let a hairdresser or dentist stay open but with desultory turnover but still all the costs? Or shut stuff down , reduce all costs, subsidise wages, defer mortgages. Shift the pain to the commercial landlords who shift it to the banks.

Wont work for all, for some time is money. Can't save everyone, let the 'creative destruction' begin as the textbooks say.

Can’t agree. “Creative destruction” is pretty offensive really. The majority of businesses that go to the wall represent the sweat, dreams and livelihoods of individuals and families all over the country. They will not recover. Many will have guaranteed their debts with their personal assets and they will lose their homes, in many cases their families, and in some cases their lives. They will not be able to borrow any more money to start again. They will fail to pay their debts, often to other small businesses, leading to more of the same. Recession, too, is a virus. What most small and medium sized businesses want is to be in control of their own destiny, not have failure forced on them by someone who has no idea of what is needed to keep a business afloat in good times and bad, or empathy with the sense of helplessness when you see the hurt felt by your family, your employees and their families, and the community who depends on you to deliver your services and pay your debts. And it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how honourable your intentions are, you can’t do anything about it. Because you have been ordered not to.

BTW, shifting the pain to the banks? Like that actually ever happens... The banks will do fine. And if they don’t, the squeeze will go onto their customers, and there’s nothing the government can do to stop them.

Now, I know what you’re thinking and it’s very unfair.

If she wants to talk about stolen childhoods maybe she should spare a thought for the fact that many in the generations that so outrage her grew up with missing fathers because they died fighting the Third Reich whilst her country was “neutral”. Or as neutral as you can be when you’re shipping 10 million tonnes of iron ore a year to Nazis.

As for western industrialisation, it put end to the famines that ravaged Sweden for hundreds of years and lifted the peasant class out of starvation poverty.

Greta, our generations didn’t steal your childhood, they gave you one. Maybe ask your parents what revisionism means.

@Hooroo No

@snowy

@r-l Explain a faux barbecue. Is there actual food involved, or just the intention of food?

@nzzp said in Trans weight lifter:

@no-quarter said in Trans weight lifter:

I just can't believe this is even up for debate let alone actually happening, and I'm utterly ashamed that NZ is sending a biological male to compete against women that have trained their whole lives for this moment.

so ... how do you stop it? It's the framework and the regulations that are wrong, not the individual athletes. If NZ Olympics didn't pick their best eligible athletes, there'd be judicial reviews and they'd get smacked. Their hands are tied, they are forced to be blind to this issue.

But yes, one of the outcomes could be destroying women's sport as we know it.

Unfortunately I don’t think you can. The movement and its allies have captured the debate. Only people on one side of the debate are allowed to participate, and men aren’t allowed to participate at all without being accused of bad faith - we’ve had a poster on here say “ I very much doubt that most male opinion on this topic is due to feeling sorry for women”. Any concern we may express for women is dismissed as bogus, a cover and a pretext for bigotry.

Women in the mainstream have been bullied into silence and the silence then disingenuously interpreted as support. Those women who don’t shut up are dismissed, and if they continue they are dispatched to their own little part of professional hell. You’d have to be one of the small subset of women who really are passionate about sport to expose yourself to that.

The exit from this nightmare is for the administrators to get a grip and refuse to throw female athletes to the wolves. But the IOC has long been a sinecure for the would-be jet set, they’re hardly guardians of sport. They are Will Carling’s 57 old farts. They put themselves forward for beanos to exotic locations and freebies, and they’re not going to jeopardise that for the sake of supporting a bunch of girls.

@broughie said in Trans weight lifter:

@nostrildamus why not have their own competition? The physical differences are stark. They are not women physically even with the introduction of hormones. Whether they believe they are female or not their bodies don’t match their desired emotional state. I don’t think we have to defer to experts all the time. Common sense and logic often trumps these fools.

That’s simply never going to happen. The trans advocacy movement is very powerful right now and they’ve made it clear that their goal is to ensure there is no distinction at all between women and transwomen. The endgame must be that when anyone says the word woman in any circumstance or situation they are including people who were born female, people who have transitioned from male to female, and anybody who identifies as a woman. When they say transwomen are women, they mean exactly that.

Any compromise such as you’d have suggested, however sensible, must fail because it would run counter to the goal of complete 100% parity.

I think anyone who believes that trans activism won’t sacrifice women’s sport in its entirety to achieve their version of parity has really misread the politics at play here.

@r-l That Legolas has let himself go

@dogmeat said in F off with the damn PC Brigade:

@jc Only a Porsche. I could buy the whole of freaking Russell. I was anchored up in the Bay once for 11 days and there was nothing to do but row ashore to the Duke and eat oysters and drink beer. Plus I usually have at least two weekends there every year.

Don’t you remember that TV ad? I think it was supposed to stop us drinking or something.

Yep, the Duke was awesome, haven’t bee since it went upmarket

@dogmeat Man I wish I had a buck for every drink I've taken in Russell. I coulda bought a Porsche

@dogmeat Dungeon planning. You forgot dungeon planning.

@donsteppa IIRC he used to do a really good Piggy Muldoon that happily really annoyed Piggy Muldoon. RIP