M15 - The 15-minute City Conspiracy
I have no idea how the 15-minute city conspiracy theory started but it seems to be one of the more unhinged conspiracy theories that I have heard of. Put simply, the 15-minute city conspiracy theory seems to cite road construction as evidence that civil governments are going to install checkpoints to keep the population from going anywhere and thus keep control of the population somehow. Further supposed evidence for this was that the that the Covid-19 pandemic wasn't real and that it was an excuse to implant 5G micro-tracking in everyone. Just the writing on that sentence makes me question why anyone would think that this is remotely credible.
I don't understand how people can possibly conceive that governments have the capacity for mass tracking and surveillance, when they can't get simple things like taxation processing done properly. One of the reasons why the relatively light touch to keep us within 5km of our houses during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, wasn't due to the overtly coercive force deployed by governments but people's despite to maintain law and order imn the face of an unknown and possibly very dangerous contingent threat.
I also wonder about the sanity of people who wouldn't want things like schools, hospitals, shopping centres, libraries et cetera within 15 minutes of their house. Are these people seriously actively arguing in favour of having more inconvenient cities, being stuck in traffic for longer, and wanting longer commutes? Admittedly I have no problem with commuting 44km one-way to work but that's because I have a job. If someone wants to pay me six figures to work closer to home, then I am willing to lay that burden down.
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L150 - Levi's 501 Turns 150
According to the flickering advert boards of insanity, in between hawking eau de eye sting, soaps that smell like oatmeal, and sunglasses that have a retail price of more than a small hatchback, the 501 Jean by Levi Strauss & Co. is 150 years old. This means that this particular line of denim, dates from 1873; which is bang in the middle of the reconstruction era; in a state that wasn't really unconstructed.
The State of California, was given statehood pretty quickly after the discovery of payable gold and hence payable taxation streams. The gold miners, 49ers, all flooded to San Francisco to seek fortune, based upon the literal chance of striking it rich. It takes a canny businessman though, to see that the real fortunes to be made were not in dirtying one's hands by digging for gold but sending one's hand into the pockets of miners, by selling them things. Levi Strauss & Co.
The 501 jean which dates from 1873, is well after gold fever has subsided and the rolling drudgery of normal life has returned. Evidently people still wanted a hard-wearing pair of pants; which given that indigo as one of the first synthetic fabric colours which was properly cheap, must have been pretty neat as well. I do not know if they had hep-cats and cool people in 1873 but there must have been enough people who liked these jeans to warrant their repeated sale.
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A20 - ABC
Australia’s national broadcaster has established an internal advisory group and brought in external consultants to try to stop the dramatic decline of its radio audiences in capital cities across the country.
In the first GfK radio ratings survey of the year, all of ABC’s metropolitan stations, as well as respective breakfast and drive time programs, reported a concerning drop in audience share compared to the same time the previous year. The cumulative audience, which quantifies how many people listened to a station at least once during the week, has fallen in every single market.
- The Age, 20th Mar 2023
To be honest, the announcement that radio ratings have fallen at the ABC is not surprising. So-called "legacy" media like Radio, Television and especially Print media has been decimated in the past ten years; to the point where ratings look anemic right across the board. It also does not surprise me that The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, which are part of Nine Entertainment Co. are reporting this as a loss for the ABC because they need to feel good about themselves as they too, suffer falls in revenues across their media assets.
As the national broadcaster and one of the last bastions where actual journalism takes place, the ABC losing ratings is not something that should be merely laughed off. A lot of this has to do with the editorial choice by management to make the ABC run a screen for the tory interests which hand picked them. ABC flagship programs like 7.30 and Insiders, are not quite the hard hitting investigative journalism that we used to have and should expect in a functioning democracy. It is telling that the hardest criticism of the government's spending of more than a third of a trillion dollars on nuclear submarines, comes not from journalists but from a former Prime Minister who is now unchained.
However having said that, this article appeared in both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald; which as Nine Entertainment Co. print media assets, are crowing far too loudly to be taken seriously. Nine Entertainment Co. which also happens to own Macquarie Radio, owns such radio stations as 4BC, 2GB, and 2UE. We can all take a giant belly laugh at the hilarious collapse of 2UE which went from being a fortress and stronghold of talk radio, to the point that having now morphed into a music station whose key demographic appears to the the residents of morgues, now likely has an entire audience which would struggle to fill a taxi.'
The ABC Local Radio Network has lost market share against stations like 2GB; not because they are inherently bad but because commercial radio has almost practically committed suicide. 2GB has managed to hold onto and consolidate all of the ex-2GB/2UE audience into one angry sordid right-wing wailfest. 2GB has decided that it wants to be a close of Fox Radio in the United States; because there is commercial advantage in stoking the fires of racism, xenophobia, sexism and any other culture war which they can light the flames to.
Of course as expected, I would not be sitting atop my high horse if I didn't intend to ride it somewhere. I fully intend to ride this showpony into the ring and dazzle everyone with my amazing feats of utter boredom. Hey, it's a zero trick pony. My plan to drive audiences and ratings to the ABC is... make stuff they'll like.
Wow.
Inform. Educate. Entertain.
Wow.
If I was Grand Poohbah And Lord High Everything Else, then I would pivot Radio National into something closer in spirit to BBC Radio 4, and leave pretty well much everything as is. The ABC Local Radio network already excellently serves its niche. Triple J is perfectly happy to wear its 'ratbag radio' badge. ABC News Radio already basically is a cousin of the BBC World Service. Likewise, ABC Classic FM already is a cousin to BBC Radio 3.
I would however make ABC Radio National the actual showcase for comedy and drama. We currently don't really do scripted comedy or drama on the radio and the medium is excellent at trialing out things because the lack of a visual dimension means that everything must live and die on the strength of performance and writing. Also, comedy radio panel shows are excellent. I find it scandalous that we do not have our own news quiz. This is also an excellent place to put on comedy shows from places like the Melbourne Comedy Festival and Adelaide Fringe.
As for ABC TV, the only real suggestion that makes any sense is to increase the budget. When the ABC produces TV drama and comedy, it draws from the whole pyramid of Australian theatre and is of such good quality, that it invariably gets exported. We are perfectly capable of making our own equivalent to Scandi crime drama, Britain's police procedurals, satire, and panel shows. If the ABC produces drama and comedy, it can then sell those shows overseas.
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CC13 - The Crown Is A Corporation
It should be noted that the Commonwealth of Australia IS a corporation. This is the one fact that the mad conspiracy theorists have correct. As with any corporation, the Commonwealth of Australia has a set of replaceable rules called a Constitution; which may be changed subject to the rules spelled out within the bounds of said Constitution.
Unlike a limited liability corporation such as a listed or unlisted company (usually denoted by Limited in their name), or a Non-Limited Company of the form that mining companies like to use, or a Proprietary Limited Company, shares in the Commonwealth of Australia can not be bought or sold. However, just like any other corporation the Commonwealth of Australia has a share, which happens to be owned by itself; through the rather opaque concept of the person of the Crown. The Crown is Corporation Sole which means that not only does it theoretically have a share which presumably is inheritable, but as a Corporation it has all of the useful powers of legal personhood in that it can buy things, own things, sell things, can enter into contracts, sue people, and be sued by people. Also like any other Corporation, it appoints a board of Directors which we call the Parliament, and it appoints agents in the Civil Service who carry out the functions and the business of the Corporation.
Get it? Got it? Good.
So the reply that the racists have that they are not responsible for the actions of people before them, is in fact perfectly legally true. Why should we hold people alive today responsible for the actions of people long since dead? The truth which racists will generally always deny, is that the Commonwealth of Australia which is corporation sole, and this also goes for the Six Several Crowns of the States, are still the same legal persons that they always were.
There is a very good case to be made that the Crown of the State of New South Wales came into existence upon the declaration of the colony which traditionally is settled at 26th January 1788. At that point, Captain Arthur Philip was no longer just a Captain of a Fleet of 11 ships but the Governor of a Colony, which was corporation sole and intertwined with the legal person of The Crown. Various Acts of the British Parliament followed including the passage of responsible government in 1855, which handed more control to the Crown of NSW. A similar series of events occurred for each of the other five several States. Likewise, the proclamation of the Commonwealth Of Australia on 1st January 1901, invented a new Crown as Corporation Sole, bound by the replaceable rules of the Constitution.
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SS17 - Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan's Terrible Plan
There are some questions that I get asked about that really make me question whether or not there is intelligent life on Earth at all. The real reason why we've not seen aliens is because they've already seen us and decided that we're stupider than a bucket of sentient space slime.
The question was: How much Soy Sauce could someone drink and still be safe?
This question came to my boss via a client via their 18 year old son. That ought to be enough information right there to frame this nicely. Nevertheless, if you ask a silly question you deserve a silly answer, or rather you deserve a sensible answer to show you just how silly you are.
As best as I can determine, the only thing in Soy Sauce which is likely to kill you is salt. Salt is a very simple chemical with only two elements and the bonds between the Sodium and Chlorine atoms are so strong that the chemical is dealt with exclusively as a solid component.
The LD.50 of salt, that is the Lethal Dose which would typically kill 50% of the population is a lower bound of 0.74g/kg of body weight. For the purposes of this calculation, I'm going to assume that our genderless victim called Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan, weighs 60kg.
60 * 0.74g = 44.4 of salt
A tablespoon of Soy Sauce (20mL) contains 900mg of salt, or 0.9g.
Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan who weighs 60kg would need to drink 49.3 tablespoons of Soy Sauce, or 987mL of Soy Sauce.
It probably goes without saying that Sam Pan the Kikkoman Fan, if they drank almost a litre of Soy Sauce, is going to have a bad time. They're not going to experience the same kinds of lightheadedness as alcohol, water, or other kind of intoxication and the kind of coma that they lapse into will be quiet. Perhaps the biggest deterrent to drinking almost a litre of Soy Sauce, is the prospect of drinking almost a litre of Soy Sauce. I don't know about you but there are far more pleasant things to be drinking a litre of.
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