Interesting stuff
Very handy bit of knowledge. Much appreciated.
thankfully never been stung Stu, but am very familiar with these plants. A bit of bad luck you and the boy both copped it. There is another species, I think more common north of you and in my area - Dendrocnide photinophylla, the shining-leaved version. Looks similar to one of your images. They are all common in 'disturbed' patches or openings/edges in rainforest where a large tree has fallen - they'll quickly fill the gap. And there are some monsters in that Dorrigo NP area, also Lamington.
It used to be often said the sap from cunjevoi leaves (Allocasia brisbanensis - the old elephant ears plant) that will typically grow nearby the stinging trees were a good remedy. Apparently used by nthn NSW Aboriginals, but I'm not sure on the accuracy of that. You are all onto it - the old tape or wax is considered best. The hairs are like small hypodermic needles and will continue to inject venom every time they are disturbed until you get them out.
earlier posters are also onto it - a very useful perimeter plant for areas you want to protect. A mate once did just that around his nursery as some plants had been getting stolen (not mullies). Problem gone.
avoid them big time I say
Dave Prodan just took the WSL image to Full Simple Jack.
Looking at this shot of the Suez Canal I wonder if anyone's ever done any tanker wave surfing there??
Doubtful but I reckon if you did, you'd pull a crowd pretty quick.
It's controlled by Egypt, right?
I remember reading ages ago a story about a bunch of blokes getting arrested for surfing in Egypt. Wonder if things have changed?
I was thinking that before Pops.
Egypt is a pretty conservative country, even more so out of Cairo and away from the seaside resorts.
Reckon if you went surfing around the Suez Canal, the cops might be having a chat with you.
NSW shark survey https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9X3L73NGN3nCc2W Channel 7 has shark story 7pm Sunday
Been away from the net & news for a bit, to return to find the future of global trade now rests on the shoulders of two blokes and a digger.
Also, the ship appeared to make 'signs' before the disaster:
https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/catastrophic-oil-p...
Oh wow, looks like this was fully planned then?!
Watching the video of the full movement, looks like old mate could have been bored and did that while waiting haha.
Imagine him tracing it on the GPS and chuckling to himself...
With reality like this, who needs fiction?
Spent the last hour or two brushing up on Suez canal history (and the Egyptian canals of the ancient Pharoahs), it has a huge beneficial effect on global trade. Can't stop thinking of the Simpsons episode where all the hot-pants wash up in the containers and everyone celebrates... poor Europe if they miss out on the next containerload of hot-pants.
Saturday morning repost:
“The Boxer-Shorts Rebellion
Sadly but truthfully, very few Americans know anything about Chinese history. That includes Wall Street’s ‘China’ teams; DC think-tank ‘experts’; and politicians. Equally, a smaller but still overwhelming majority of Chinese people don’t know much about the shorter-but-nuanced history of the US. Most Americans also don’t know much about American history….and most Chinese people don’t know much about Chinese history either. I’ve been lucky enough to live in nine different countries (10 if you count the US via my father as proxy); and not one of them teaches an honest, no-holds-barred evaluation of its own national history. It’s all edited highlights – a bit like social media we spend all day on rather than learning any history.
This matters because aside from the randomness of day-to-day movement of markets - which yesterday bounced to reverse Wednesday’s slump: long live profit-free tech stocks, apparently - if you don’t learn from history then you are damned to repeat it. The only question is if, like the analysts who repeat Marx repeating Hegel repeating that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, this time it is going to be tears, or tears of laughter.
In particular, very important developments may be taking place in China. Western sportswear and clothing retailers such as Nike, Adidas, and H&M have all made recent statements they are “concerned about reports of forced labor” in Xinjiang, or have stopped buying cotton from it completely. The Chinese response has been furious: official rhetoric is withering - “China is not to be messed with,” and those who do “will find that we are force to be reckoned with”; social media is filled with nationalist attacks and open calls from celebrities to boycott these firms; and H&M stores in China have suddenly disappeared from search engine location functions.
Yes, we’ve seen similar Chinese moves against foreign products before. Some Aussie agri exports are currently locked out; South Korean soap operas and Norwegian salmon have been in the past; and back in 2012 there were major anti-Japanese boycotts and protests due to the geopolitical backdrop. Yes, those earlier storms passed: but that was arguably a very different China, at least in the eyes of the West, and according to its own combative rhetoric. Indeed, ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy --in the past few days alone-- has seen massively growing skepticism about China’s direction from Western diplomatic, military, and even businesses elites.
The problem is now on both sides. In China, the 2012 protests were quashed by the government, but this time round the Communist Youth League is actively trolling, and the diplomacy is blaring. The question in the minds of some who have read history is if this a - non-violent - replay of the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion rather than just a Boxer-Shorts Rebellion. In the West, the firms involved face a stark choice: stick to their professed social values and lose the China market, or accept China gets to dictate what they worry about - even when it reaches the alleged level of forced labour and genocide…and then try to explain corporate mottos like “Just Do It”. Could this even escalate to the level of the 2022 Olympics so we see the Para- and Parallel games? Probably not – but if it did, China has stated any boycotting countries will be sanctioned, dragging even more firms in. The risk is that this backdrop could accelerate existing moves towards decoupling of the global economy, which had been expected to be focused on semiconductors, but may now be on Lycra, sneakers, and socks and underwear value-packs too.
In short, yet again we see the underlying dynamic of hard choices having to be made by those who don’t want to make them: which we have been flagging as a logically-inevitable risk since 2017.
Markets should really be paying more attention. Not because of the hit to the stock-price of the selection of firms involved now, but because of the patterns one can see in history. True, these very often say nothing at all – unless you are a believer in dialectical materialism, which China’s Politburo officially is. Yet when one sees Hong Kongers who want to leave are being told their new British National Overseas (BNO) passports are not accepted documents allowing holders to make early withdrawal of their MPF retirement savings - hence one has to leave one’s MPF behind if one exits; and that Hong Kong is asking countries not to recognise BNO passports at all; where would one think a *possible* ‘historical dialectic’ could go next in a worst-case scenario? This is no kind of forecast at all: just stressing that rather than tracking headlines like a torch on a dark wall, one needs to look at current developments alongside longer-run trends and historical parallels to try to frame possible tail-risk scenarios.
Which, as noted, the US is not very good at. What is the US realistically aiming at vs. China, some ask? And how does one get there if one doesn’t have a clear vision of it? Well, President Biden just gave his first media press conference, and in it stressed he expects “extreme competition” with China. For Western sportswear firms, this is not what they have in mind with the phrase. Indeed:
Biden repeated former-President Trump’s claim that China’s ambition of becoming the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world is “not going to happen under my watch” --which requires a host of US measures from geopolitics to trade to capital flows (as the SEC pushes ahead with regulations forcing Chinese firms to de-list in the US) to the USD to achieve-- and will naturally be seen as a policy of containment by China;
The US will aim to counter China’s rise by increasing investment in science and research – which necessarily means science, education, tech, and supply-chain decoupling if so; and
The US will continue to call out China in an “unrelenting way” on human rights violations – which we already see will only amplify and accelerate existing decoupling trends, and place other Western countries in the same hot-seat.
So boxing gloves (and shorts) on. Indeed, China has just put sanctions on some British parliamentarians, who join their EU counterparts; Russia and China are cuddling up; so is North Korea; and so is Iran – which just fired a missile that damaged an Israeli ship. (That as Israeli PM Netanyahu narrowly failed to win the parliamentary majority he needed to halt his ongoing criminal trial in a fourth successive election against that legal backdrop, potentially making a risk-averse leader more bellicose.) At least the Suez Canal is already blocked so we don’t have to worry about that.
But I have to end with the Fed. They have enough challenges to deal with now that they face a K-shaped recovery, and are targeting inflation, and unemployment, and social justice: now add a Cold War they can’t afford to lose to that list. Against such a backdrop, they have decided that US banks can start share buybacks again as soon as the end of Q2. Because nothing helps heal a broken society and propel a war economy quite like financialization and a stock market bubble.
I told you Americans don’t read their own history. Happy Friday!”
Australians don't know their own history.
Mate , if you don’t know Australia’s history it’s up to you to open your mind to the education offered at every turn. Jump on the net and take a look if you are in the dark, Snuffy. No one to blame but yourself.
Good read Blowin. It's as I said with the election results, Biden (read: US whole-of-govt) to continue the Trump stand, but focus on rebuilding alliances. In the week some of the actions are backing the rhetoric Blinken has been using: so this seems not to be a facade, but the real deal. This is reassuring for Australia. Global trade has done a peak globalisation, as it did in the years leading up to 1914 last time (eg Joseph Chamberlain's 'Imperial Preference' policy). Separate trading blocs? That's not too bad, it's something most of us here have already lived through as children/young adults. Did we miss out not being able to buy a Trabant? We did get Lada's however.
Edit: it is incredible just how vulnerable our hugely complex, global society is. One ship in one section of a canal throws it out, as does a shortage of semiconductors. Building resiliency, simplicity, and self sufficiency, into production is preferable in these kind of 'fat tail' events. But it costs more.
& back on the epic boatfail news, apparently the tides in the Suez will change in a bit by next week, risking grounding the whole ship for much longer. I'd suggest instead of the digger working 7am-4pm, maybe get radical and have it dig from 5am till 8pm...
Craig, can you forecast tides for the canal?
Also, if you have time and a coffee and are interested in a crucial time in Chinese history (from a Westerner's standpoint) I'd strongly suggest a read of this account (incredible pictures):
https://jimmygreensdiaries.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/part-two/
Tucked away in a hard-to-find part of the net, it is the account of a sailor on HMS Cumberland, stationed on the big river in Shanghai defending the International Settlement as the Japanese Army sweeps through it, fighting the Chinese on all sides.
Cracking read VJ. What a time to be a fly on the wall - you’re on the money: much of what occurred in that time has set the scene for our current environment. Chinese nationalists (KMT) switched from fighting communists in the civil war, to fighting Japanese which gave the CCP forces a chance to retreat to the north and regroup. KMT bore the brunt of fighting the Japanese up till their defeat in 1945, at which time the Chinese Civil war reignited and the CCP re-emerged, armed with captured Japanese weapons and equipment, to defeat the exhausted KMT and drive them onto Formosa (Taiwan).
Scene set for the next Act shortly - forced reunification???
As an aside, one of the pictures shows transfer of civilians to the merchantman Rawalpindi. In 1939 my great uncle was on HMS Rawalpindi, by then impressed into RN service armed with a couple of 8inch guns, that intercepted / ran into 2 German battleships while patrolling in the North Sea. That one-sided battle ended predictably with the loss of almost all of the ship’s crew.
My grandfather ended up marrying his late brother’s fiancée- my grandmother!
Scott Morrison "I stopped the boats!"
Captain of the Ever Given "Hold my beer"
etarip - wow, my condolences, that was a very one-sided engagement. They went down fighting, but didn't stand much of a chance up against the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. In terms of the odds stacked against them, they were very brave. I've read an account of two brothers on the ship as she is on fire and sinking, they are briefly separated and the surviving brother never sees the other again.
Notice in the pic Rawalpindi is sporting civilian colours and two funnels (I reckon she looks her best like this); these had been reduced to a single funnel by the time she was painted grey and armed. Would love a large scale model of the ship, but no-one makes it.
Agree with your take on China btw - we may not be the same souls that were the ones forcing trade and exploitation on them; I see a lot of the horrid stuff like fentanyl importation and addiction as them playing payback which is equally reprehensible. Don't get me started on what they've done to war graves like the HMAS Perth, USS Houston, the De Ruyter, the Exeter, Repulse and Prince of Wales...
Great reads VJ and Etarip.
Yeah bloke it's in the dark alright and for some reason your still on here?
VJ, I’ll check in with the family to see if there are any models. My great-grandfather was an old school merchant sailor who went to sea at age 12. He served from the Boer War, was on the Terra Nova that rescued Scott from the Antarctic in 1904, served in both world wars and finished his career on a troopship taking Commonwealth troops to Korea in 1950! Reasonable resume! I think he received an MBE from King George VI at some point. He was an avid model maker, made hundreds of them. Guess you’ve got to fill some time in all those decades at sea! We’ve still got some of these models, scattered across the family between here and the UK. The one of the Terra Nova is amazing. Given that his eldest son was lost with the Rawalpindi I’d assume that he would have made a model at some point. I just don’t know if it has survived.
Just looked up the illegal (?) salvaging of WW2 wrecks that you mentioned. Absolute travesty. I can’t work out the commercial value in that stuff - there must be some.
hey etarip, the commercial value is in the steel - steel poured before the first atomic weapons went off does not have the radiological contamination, and is prized for this reason. Medical uses? I have a bit of oak from HMS Victory, not really the same thing!
Your great grandfather has a resume and a half. Rescuing Scott would be a task and an adventure at the same time. I was always impressed by Charles Lightoller - senior surviving officer of the Titanic, got off the Campania (there was a beauty) when it went down, retired with his wife and they just sailed through the Norweigan fjords in the 1930's together; when Dunkirk came around he volunteered and sailed his private boat right into it, survived being attacked, and rescued troops as a retiree.
A rellie served in the fore-turret of the battlecruiser HMS New Zealand, including Dogger Bank and Jutland. Apparently, the crew would be checking to see if the captain was wearing a gifted Maori grass skirt into battle - if he was, they were safe. Lucky ship it was too.
Let me know if you find any models your great grandfather made!
(Contemplating digging a ditch, filling it with water, and building a small container ship model and getting it stuck in it. Will need Hot Wheels digger and some bath tugboats to complete diorama. I will call it "The End of Global Trade")
https://www.frontlinehobbies.com.au/revell-1-700-container-ship-colombo-...
https://finescale.com/product-info/kit-reviews/2009/11/revell-germany-1-...
close as I can find. Painting all the individual containers might try the patience a bit
Aha, I knew salvage was big business but I figured that it was cargo rather than the ships themselves that were usually the objective. That makes sense. I don’t have any wood from the Victory (that’s amazing btw) but I do have a Samurai sword that my grandfather on the other side of the family ‘salvaged / liberated’ from a Japanese ship at the end of WW2. He was RN too. Less of a career man, his service record is an interesting series of promotions, demotions, awards and punishments!
Ref Suez and the Evergreen... seems almost too effective to be an accident! That thing is jammed in there. The timing is also interesting; just as trade is supposed to be on the recovery from COVID as the vaccine starts rolling out! I’m sure we’ll get the conspiracy theories coming through soon.
Ever had trouble at work? Maybe trouble at both work and home at the same time? And then a really bad day that makes one reach their breaking point? Must admit it would be tempting to just give up on it all, and draw a giant penis on the workplace, then block the workplace so it can't function, and leave.
@VJ, curious about the comment about steel poured before WW2 doesn’t have radioactive contamination? If the iron ore was 100feet underground when Hiroshima went off and was then mined and processed, how does it get impacted by radiation?
blowin good post about china...history, in 1971 the pres of usa (nixon) did away with the gold standard and all currencies were pegged against the $us, which made them extremely wealthy and powerfull economicaly.
2008 gfc usa bankrupted western financial markets, china lost heaps as well because of usa crooks.
the biggest buyers of gold since gfc has been china, oh and they are the biggest miners of gold in the world as well, russia nxt then india.
what this means is china can back their currency with gold the west can't.
I asked a kalgoolie gold employee how much gold is kept by fed govt he said "non at all it's all exported".
we had a chance to sort out the crooks in 2008, instead print money and "it's the same as it ever was".
Guardian not afraid to be mistaken for satire
Hey Distracted, when you take that iron ore and smelt it, has the oxygen been underground as well? I think it's in the process of making the steel that today's atmosphere makes its impact felt.
Ahhhh! Just looked it up. That’s crazy how such low concentrations in the atmosphere used in the smelting can impact the iron produced.
Found an interesting article on recycled metal contamination while down that rabbit hole. It had crossed my mind when I was at the tip the other day, how do they manage impurities that end up in the scrap metal pile.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-growing-global-threat-of-r...
jamie metzl, clinton administration, the WHO, not exactly a quack from donald trump's voodoo school of medicine...
"Jamie Metzl -- former NSC official in the Clinton administration and member of a WHO advisory committee on genetic engineering "
cbs news, hardly right wing nuttery land...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbs-news/%3famp
"...Jamie Metzl -- former NSC official in the Clinton administration and member of a WHO advisory committee on genetic engineering -- is one of more than two dozen experts, including virologists, who signed an open letter earlier this month calling for a new international inquiry with a return to China. The letter says the WHO team did not have the independence or access "to carry out a full and unrestricted investigation" specifically into a possible accidental leak from a laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the city where the first outbreak occurred.
Jamie Metzl: We would have to ask the question, "Well, why in Wuhan?" To quote Humphrey Bogart, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, why Wuhan?" What Wuhan does have is China's level four virology institute, with probably the world's largest collection of bat viruses, including bat coronaviruses.
Lesley Stahl: I had seen that the World Health Organization team only spent 3 hours at the lab.
Jamie Metzl: While they were there they didn't demand access to the records and samples and key personnel.
That's because of the ground rules China set with the WHO, which has never had the authority to make demands or enforce international protocols.
Jamie Metzl: It was agreed first that China would have veto power over-- over who even got to be on the mission. Secondly--
Lesley Stahl: And WHO agreed to that.
Jamie Metzl: WHO agreed to that. On top of that, the WHO agreed that in most instances China would do the primary investigation. And then just share its findings--
Lesley Stahl: No.
Jamie Metzl: --with these international experts. So these international experts weren't allowed to do their own primary investigation.
Lesley Stahl: Wait. You're saying that China did the investigation and showed the results to the committee and that was it?
Jamie Metzl: Pretty much that--
Lesley Stahl: Whoa.
Jamie Metzl: --was it. Not entirely. But pretty much that was it. Imagine if we have asked the Soviet Union to do a co-investigation of Chernobyl. It doesn't really make sense.
China had ruled out a lab accident long before the WHO team arrived at the airport in Wuhan on January 14 and were greeted by people in full PPE gear...."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-wuhan-origins-60-minutes-2021-03-28/
...but all these bloody questions, it's all about racism I tell ya!
There was an Interesting interview with Stan Grant yesterday, mostly about China but also wide ranging ideas about geo politics. He tells the story of how he and Batman even went the biff with some Chinese secret police once.
Good listening for anyone interested
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/stan-grant-the-rise-...
QED Blowin, the Guardian never has anything of value?
I’m not sure if I’d go that far. The above headline doesn’t seem to offer much of value though does it?
No Blowin, you are correct. But just consider when we used to read newspapers (I know, so last century), we would skip over the dross (eg. lifestyle articles, puff pieces on politicians etc).
My thought is, that it's the same with online content, there is a lot of crap out there, but without being a rusted on "true believer" and using some critical thinking the Guardian generally provides some good news content and analysis
The Guardian does do the best live politics blog. Amy Remeikis who mostly writes it, is a great journalist who comes out with some classic commentary. They also had a lively BTL comments section which they have removed since all the LNP rape club stories emerged because they didn't want defamation actions from the likes of Porter and Dutton.
Greg Jericho, Richard Denniss, and Jeff Sparrow are all worth visiting TG for.
Interesting thing....I watched one of those old science shows today with host Morgan freeman.
It was called "through the wormhole" on NITV. which is something I have been interested in for years as I'm fascinated in the possibility of shortcuts through space/time, seeing as its so big.....Its fascinating that science is coming full circle and back to the belief of a single force that binds everything together....This is how they describe it....
New research into gravity and quantum entanglement hint at a stunning new insight. We may all be bound together by a single force. Like the one in Star wars. Is there a force with us?..........Stunning new insight?....Maybe they are just finding God by taking the long road......finally.
Opto ill give you credit for trying to work every angle possible.
NITV coming up 8.40 pm The legend of Eddie Aikau.
.
politicians ......dirty bastards
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-08/six-men-to-be-accused-of-sex-acts...
Has to be asked: How do you masturbate a desk?
“Six men to be accused of sex acts in Parliament House, as part of desk masturbation video investigation“
Have it cunts