Interesting things too

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factotum started the topic in Thursday, 21 Nov 2019 at 2:21pm

For when one interesting things thread isn't enough.

memo...'s picture
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memo... Tuesday, 2 Mar 2021 at 10:44pm

"...as Info put it "someone knowledgeable", out there?"

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sypkan Tuesday, 2 Mar 2021 at 11:10pm

"Now that policies made famous by Bernie Sanders, like Medicare for All and free college, and newer ones like the Green New Deal, are infiltrating the political mainstream, advocates are always faced with the question: “how would you pay for them?” Although there are good answers to “this question” that could even be shrunk down to a TV-friendly length and vocabulary, they’re not always forthcoming. Even self-described socialists seem to have a hard time saying the word “taxes.” How lovely would it be if you could just dismiss the question as an irrelevant distraction?

Conveniently, there’s an economic doctrine that allows you to do just that: Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is at least MMT-curious, and it’s all over Marxist reading groups and Democratic Socialists of America chapters. It’s even seeping into the business press..."

I'm tempted to stop there... same old same old... but unusally forthcoming... ie. having the balls to mention 'taxes' rather than the usual bullshit over and around it...

I'll persevere...

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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:23am

well, I read 'the against'...

MMT sounds like a cult, no surprises there

questions facto...

exchange rates?

value; buying power; the rest of the world not having the luxury of a tenuous 'american exceptionalism'; basic commodities; investment to at least seed the dream and possibilty of climbing out from being a 'shithole country' forever...

inflation?

oz is practising a form of MMT now, ...leading to some crazy public financial flippancy, rather than the desired propping up... we're about due a 'recession we had to have' ...again... an acceptable management strategy?

JG - jobs guarantee, ...'workfare'... sounds ok in principle, but... seriously? ...this reeks of the much dissed 'old ways of thinking' the MMT crew love to bag... not much vision there for a very close automated, jobs scarce future...

the whole thing sounds incredibly immature

back to the drawing board, or at least answer some of this dudes questions...

I look forward to 'the for'...

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:33am

".. Under the spell of MMT, Ferguson urges radicals to junk “the Marxist image of money as a private, finite, and alienable quantum of value” and discover “money is a boundless public center that can be made to support all.” He proceeds to a series of declarations of a sort you don’t usually find in a university press book:

Seize the money relation!

Enlist the aesthetic in money’s expansion!

Hail money as the center of caretaking!

Declare your dependence on care’s center!

Relinquish attachments to thisness!

Imagine a boundless public center!

Never forsake abstraction for gravity’s attractions!

Exalt abstraction as the locus of care!

It goes on for over two hundred pages, as Ferguson summons Heidegger and the Eucharist to uncover in this new notion of money endless reservoirs and beauty and tenderness. This develops the utopian potential of MMT in ways that are outside the economist’s standard skillset, but it bears a tenuous relation with earthly reality.

very cultish!!!

resembles that 80's US teleavangelist dude or hillsong moreso than some lefty with an interest in modern economics...

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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 12:59am

american exceptionalism...

"Compared to the United States, such countries enjoy less “monetary sovereignty” — a core MMT concept. A monetarily sovereign state is one that can spend its currency at will, including from pure keystrokes. America enjoys a lot of monetary sovereignty; so do Canada, Japan, and Britain, though to a lesser degree. Those countries need, for example, to import things priced in dollars, like oil, and the value of their currency has a direct effect on living standards that Americans are insulated from because we can print the currency in which that oil is priced. Brazil, in turn, has even less freedom; it needs harder currencies like dollars and euros to import commodities and advanced manufactured goods; and poorer countries like Bolivia or Ghana have even less. To buy essential imports, these countries often have to borrow in those hard currencies. To pay off the loans, they need to earn foreign currency through exports.

MMT has little helpful to say about that situation..."

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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:38am

"MMTers will sometimes say they want to tax the rich because they’re too rich, but Wray said at a recent conference that he sees no point in framing the issue as taxing the rich to expand public services — presumably because government doesn’t need to tax to spend. Elsewhere, he has written that taxing the rich is “a fool’s errand” because of their political power. He told Bloomberg Businessweek he was “a bit disappointed” that Ocasio-Cortez connected tax hikes to the Green New Deal. And he once blamed the devastation of Camden, New Jersey on high tax rates — which makes it hard to explain the wealth of the very highly taxed New York City; the real Camden is lightly taxed and relies heavily on state aid.

It seems that many on the contemporary American left are still under the tax-phobic legacy spell of post-Reagan politics, which makes MMT seem appealing — an easy answer to “how are you going to pay for that?” Shortly before her election to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was stumped by that question in a TV interview with Jake Tapper. Afterwards she met with Kelton and had kind things to say about MMT...."

contradictory at best

wishful thinking, naive, immature (the plan), all over the shop, and spiteful at a minimum

AOC probaly shouldn't be the poster child...

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:34am

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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:36am

"you know when you're right, all you get is more lamemo..."

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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:38am

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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:41am

oh well, I'm honoured you revised your lamemo...

tucker was getting a bit repetitive

see, even you have something to learn from indod...

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 1:43am

too much trump mate, go back to the good advice from indod

you're good at that research...

trawling, trolling...

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:26am

"American exceptionalism."

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/

Blowin's picture
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Blowin Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 5:55am

Now Memo is an intermediate expert on macro economics

Lolololololol

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 5:58am

"well, I read 'the against'..."

"...no surprises there."

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Blowin Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:00am

Intermediate expert lolololololol

from Imgflip Meme Generator

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:03am

#IntermediateExpertOnMacroBlowin'

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Blowin Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:08am

4AM in WA and Memo is on his way to his wage slave job whilst simultaneously handing out intermediate expert macroeconomic advice

Lololololol

Here’s the resume of the bloke from Macrobusiness who Memo describes as an economic kook. Let’s see Memo’s intermediate expert resume on high finance......lolololol

“David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.”

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:08am

#AnthingUCanDoICanDoBetter?

Blowin's picture
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Blowin Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:11am

Have a good day at the sausage factory dckhead. Maybe you’ll have time to post more macroeconomic advice during little lunch in the tea room . That’s if you've finished those TPS reports.....lolololol

Blowin's picture
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Blowin Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 6:14am

Memo’s financial services........lololol

Intermediate expert advice !

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 10:08am

well, I read the first link you posted, err, because it was first, I didn't realise you had a for and against

the first very wordy waffly article I might add, a very well researched and historically enlightening article, but it was a bit of work

I will get to 'the for' later, as I said...

anyway, I gotta say, it's most disappointing, totally pathetic, ...but not surprising..., that you bag me for not reading and 'self learnin', then I engage in your waffly article 'in good faith', ask a few questions, and all I get back is more bagging

you're a pathetic little man

really really pathetic

and really little

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:19am

"Waffly article "

"didn't realise had a for and against"

"Good faith"

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:25am

"Look at how wrong they were about the real-estate market in 2020, something you think would be easy to predict."

"Velocity Johnno, or as Info put it "someone knowledgeable", out there?"

#MacroBlowin

#Houses&LaptopSharebrokin'Mountin'

#Y'allComeBack&SubscribeNowYaHear

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:31am

"American exceptionalism"?

#AusterityBudgetComin'RightUp

#ProfBillMitchellAussie

https://modernmoneyaustralia.org/bill-mitchell/

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:33am
sypkan's picture
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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:38am

this might come as a shock to you, ...and your self importance... but I don't hang on your every word, I skim your bullshit posts, and click on a link if its of any interest

this was of interest, because I've asked you before some very similar questions to the ones that are raised in the article

I got nothing, no reponse...

again...

well I did get belittled, lame memes, and character assasinated... again... another lame attempt to dismiss and de platform anyone with the audacity to ask questions...

there's a pattern here hilary, and you are one of the biggest indulgers, you cannot answer any questions that even remotely challenge your dogma, your religious fervour...

it was a waffly article, as I said, very well researched, and historically enlightening, but no real big revelations that a 1st year economics student couldn't see as 'challenges' to the dogma of MMT

but thanks, you've given me an endless supply of rebuttals should the need ever arise...

but I doubt it

carry on...

'winning'

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:35am

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:42am

booooorrrring

and repetitive...

back to the research big man

big little man...

memo...'s picture
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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 11:59am

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memo... Wednesday, 3 Mar 2021 at 12:14pm

#1stYearEconomicsStudentOr10YearSocialWorkStudent

#DogmaOfMMT

#Challenged

#EndlessSupply&Demand

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 9:18pm

'conspiracy' versus agenda...

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10158025911098177&id=2164154...

"you will own nothing and you will be happy"

...statement?

...mantra?

...demand?

as usual naomi klien is all over it, ...praise the gods for naomi klien!!

some great statements from naomi klien

not least of them... suggesting the seriousness of the pandemic may have been exaggerated to facillitate other agendas...

I hate flog my own case... but I've suggested this possibility before on here ...because shit sure seems that way...

but nah, that's conspiracy shit...

(that a very well educated, super swithed on, well intentioned, and conservative in the sense of her positions, chick is willing to suggest...)

interesting times indeed

memo...'s picture
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memo... Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 10:05pm
sypkan's picture
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sypkan Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 10:11pm

naomi klien...

cancelled

?

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 10:13pm

...yeh... you're a much better 'authority' on all things that matter...

cough cough

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 10:14pm

"you will own nothing and you will be happy"

you all in on this?

not surprising

very commie i must say

sypkan's picture
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sypkan Thursday, 4 Mar 2021 at 10:16pm

...and I gotta say, Im very minimalist in my lifestyle, like very very minimalist...

but you keyunts are fucking dreaming...

again...

Blowin's picture
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Blowin Friday, 5 Mar 2021 at 8:00pm

Is Tucker Carlson either :

A/ Smarter than Memo
B/ Richer than Memo
C/ More educated than Memo
D/ Possessing a spectacularly more impressive resume than Memo
E/ More famous and successful than Memo
F/ All of the above and then much more.

memo...'s picture
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memo... Friday, 5 Mar 2021 at 10:32pm

"Is Memo either :

A/ Smarter than Blowin
B/ Richer than Blowin
C/ More educated than Blowin
D/ Possessing a spectacularly more impressive resume than Blowin
E/ More famous and successful than Blowin
F/ All of the above and then much more"

batfink's picture
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batfink Saturday, 6 Mar 2021 at 12:06am

Oh Jaysus, I’ve just conned onto this page, and blow me down you’re all talking about MMT.

Oh dear Sypkan, when you’ve understood the first thing, come back to us.

In simple principles, you mostly think that a national budget holds to the same principles as a household. That is, that whatever you spend must be met by your income, one way or the other. That’s true, for households.

But what if you’re a government that can print your own money? Many of you seem to think the same principles apply. They don’t. You go home from your day job and then you print money to pay any bills. That is how government works. You have all been duped over the last 50 years to think that a government has to ‘balance’ its budget, over time. You have been conned. MMT is the beginning of you realising that this isn’t the case. Unfortunately if we told everyone they would want everything and wouldn’t want to pay any taxes. That would be bad, and lead to the inflation that everyone seems to be worried about.

For the record, Japan has been doing this for 30 years. Did anyone notice? How’s the inflation there? If you haven’t caught up, the US has been doing it on steroids for more than 11 years, as a response to the GFC. Europe much the same. Where’s inflation?

Whatever you thought you knew about macroeconomics is likely wrong, whatever you thought you knew about National budgets, money markets, inflation, is likely wrong.

First principles, understand this. The federal government is not a household. Once you’ve really understood that, things change.

By the way, the Reserve Bank of Australia is currently buying up billions of dollars in bonds every month. If you don’t think that is ‘printing money’, there is much to read.

batfink's picture
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batfink Saturday, 6 Mar 2021 at 12:30am

Hey VJ, re a page or two back, you forgot the d) that time is cyclic, which is actually central to Hindu mythology.

Cyclic time, the greatest mind f#ck of all, the idea that we have been here before, that explains, pre-cognition and déjà vu, that provides a backdrop to the idea of intuition. Also explains background radiation and so many of the stories of the ‘past’.

Perhaps time just cycles back on itself, and we are all pawns in a larger game.

Remains the most interesting thought experiment I’ve come across in all my years.

And I’ve read a fair whack of science fiction.

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stunet Friday, 12 Mar 2021 at 9:55am

"I had, without any supporting evidence, a shameless and pathological belief in my own awesomeness. Whilst many other musicians’ dreams seem to stretch to getting a gig at the local pub on a Saturday night, my dream was always, always, world domination."

"...any competency I display now, such as the ability to write, record or perform songs, came about through repetition and practise and a bloody-minded pursuit of my own particular vision. Nothing came naturally. I worked at it."

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/boy-on-fire/?fbclid=IwAR2XdmFCMJZjjQx1dDLnfvfdxQ47w_hWdcsO8X-3qG1NLLFmO4rZJ30GOKI

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velocityjohnno Friday, 12 Mar 2021 at 10:48am

Hey Batfink, yep, d) time is cyclic - the great themes of humanity come and go and return. The technology might be different, but the human action is the same.

Your second para, you are getting into it a bit more deeply than I understand the themes, can you explain a bit more? Fascinating. Background radiation being the residue of past lives/current lives repeated infinitely in different dimensions? How is it that I see in dreams the three waterspouts off the coast of Mooloolaba - that my mother saw as a girl?

Edit: Stories of the Past/Dreams: any of you had the 'tidal wave' dream? You are in a verdant green coast, mountainous, and you are a child/ teen. Your tribe tells you to run for high ground, so you do, through the redwoods, running like mad. You reach elevation and look back to see a massive blue wall of water. Both the Ms and I have had this dream, separately.

I generally accept the Eastern religious view of cycles/stages repeating. On the Western side, I came across a mention of the concept of 'eternal return' in Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness of Being'. He says that if the actions of someone like Robespierre were repeated ad infinitum through time, the French people would be less proud of him. (such a shame we have to continually repeat the Jacobin-style 'revolutionaries' for the last 250 years without learning from the slaughter).

In finance, technology increases and times apparently change greatly - yet human psychology is what determines the value of many things and presents as constant manias and busts. Thus, you can see head and shoulder tops form on US Steel in 1929 in one of my prized old technical analysis texts, and exactly the same formation forming in 2000, in 2008 (eg WPL) and you will see it long into the future - even though the people alive and taking part in 1929's mania, are long passed and it's another group of people today punting today's brave new technology to the moon. It all ends the same way. Cyclical.

This is also why I think the MMT guys will be revealed as charlatans in time.

groundswell's picture
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groundswell Tuesday, 16 Mar 2021 at 7:14am

I read this recently and I found it very interesting. This seems like a good place to change the topic

The working man in those days did indeed work very, very physically hard. It does, and did, go unnoticed and as this story starts out they are the forgotten people in the Titanic story. Have a read, these men would've been either extremely fit or extremely exhausted. Constantly. I got this off another site, thought I'd share. A tribute to the working class man of yesteryear.
Never seen or encountered by Titanic’s passengers, the ‘Black Gang’ provided the manpower behind the horsepower.
Life in the Engine Room of a merchant vessel in the coal-burning era was one of harsh conditions of extreme heat, dimly lit, dirty, and back-breaking work.
Here toiled the ‘Black Feet Brigade’—firemen, stokers and trimmers who worked in the stokeholds and boiler rooms enduring the searing heat from open furnaces in steamships like Titanic.
Their sobriquet derived from the coal dust on their faces, exposed skin and clothing, and the hot, dust laden atmosphere in which they labored.
Titanic had 29 huge Scotch type boilers that comprised 159 furnaces—24 double-ended boilers and 5 single-ended boilers. Combined, these furnaces had a heating surface of 144,142 square feet which sent steam to the ship’s reciprocating engines.
The coal fires within each furnace heated the boilers to 400° F with steam pressure at 215 psi. When all were fully fired they consumed 850 tons of coal a day. This demanded a team of 176 men hand-shovel 35 tons of coal every hour she was underway on a 5 day crossing. Titanic’s total bunker capacity was a staggering 6,600 tons.
Each of her six boiler rooms was manned by ten firemen and four trimmers whose job it was to keep these boilers fed, shoveling a ton of coal every two minutes. Their labor resulted in over 100 tons of ash needing to be ejected into the sea every day. This in itself a colossal task.
Scotch boilers took almost twelve hours to reach normal working pressure. For Titanic to be ready to sail at noon, most of her boilers would need to be fired around midnight.
Note the scale of a man next to the boilers here prior to installation in Titanic’s hold.

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velocityjohnno Tuesday, 16 Mar 2021 at 10:13am

The 4th funnel was a dummy funnel* and the black gang could climb up and overlook the passengers from the top of it, which they did once, freaking out those strolling on the deck.

*Titanic wasn't the thoroughbred that Lusitania or Mauretania were, and as such only required the 3 funnels and power for 22, not 26 knots. All of those 22 knots were used as they drove her into an enormous area of reported ice - a huge anomaly such a big field so far south at that time of year. The ice created it's own incredibly calm, still conditions; with no swell - sailors with 30 years experience had never seen an ocean so calm. So white water was almost impossible to see on bergs. The binoculars were misplaced at Southampton. Recent evidence suggests a coal bunker fire prior to leaving greatly weakened the steel and bulkheads in the vicinity of the collision - while the angle of hit and length of tear would be almost impossible to recreate if doing it again. If she hit head on, she would have survived. There is other evidence that they were having trouble handling these new big ships, eg sister ship Olympic colliding with the cruiser Hawke.

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groundswell Tuesday, 16 Mar 2021 at 10:27am

good info VJ thanks i dont know why i posted that here i felt like posting it somewhere and it seemed like a good place lol.

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Rowley Birkin Friday, 2 Apr 2021 at 3:46pm

"Between 2015 and 2018, senior members of the New Guard and other right-wing groups, monitored "moderately right-wing" public groups and online forums for people whose vitriolic views could be exploited."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-02/insider-shares-neo-nazi-group-s-r...

Could it happen here on Swellnet? Maybe it already has??

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indo-dreaming Friday, 2 Apr 2021 at 3:52pm

Seeing roughly 90% of people here seem to hold centre to left wing views and the other 10% extremely moderate centre right conservative views, id say very unlikely.

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Rowley Birkin Friday, 2 Apr 2021 at 4:02pm

Are you a statistician or a political scientist, Indo Dreaming? Both?

Have you been approached?