Gorth

Yeah. No end to the friends money can buy The disputed region of West Sahara is apparently quite rich in oil. Wouldn't that make Israel and the US the only two countries in the world recognizing Morocco's claim on it?

The UK may have a bad case of Russophobia, but that doesn't seem to stop the scientists... Behold, the Frankensteins Monster! https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-55270942 "As we mentioned earlier, UK and Russian scientists are teaming up to trial a combination of the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines to see if protection against Covid-19 can be improved. Mixing two similar vaccines could lead to a better immune response in people."

It's not only the usual suspects doing it.... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55232432 A dead professor and numerous defunct organisations were resurrected and used alongside at least 750 fake media outlets in a vast 15-year global disinformation campaign to serve Indian interests, a new investigation has revealed. The man whose identity was stolen was regarded as one of the founding fathers of international human rights law, who died aged 92 in 2006. "It is the largest network we have exposed," said Alexandre Alaphilippe, executive director of EU DisinfoLab, which undertook the investigation and published an extensive report on Wednesday. The network was designed primarily to "discredit Pakistan internationally" and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and European Parliament, EU DisinfoLab said. EU DisinfoLab partially exposed the network last year but now says the operation is much larger and more resilient than it first suspected.

Not quite as old as the Proto-Germanic stuff, but from the year Gorth was born... ...and from a couple of years before ...and also from 1966 I think (might be wrong, will need to look it up)

A different use for drones... The "Prometheus Drone" When Hollywood director Ridley Scott filmed astronauts looking for aliens in his 2012 movie Prometheus, little did he know that it would one day inspire a Network Rail drone project. But, bizarrely, that's exactly what has happened. Network Rail, which owns and maintains most of the railway infrastructure in Britain - from vast stretches of track to thousands of bridges, tunnels and level crossings - has long sought cheaper and easier ways of surveying the many underground caves and abandoned mines dotted around its property. ... ... This is how the "Prometheus" drone project got its name and, although the caverns Network Rail hopes to explore with the device will be smaller than the alien tunnels in the film, the technological principles are almost exactly the same. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55191623

Is this the Supreme Courts way of saying "**** off!"? The US Supreme Court has rejected a challenge against President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Pennsylvania. Republicans in the state wanted to overturn certification of the result, but justices rejected the request in a one sentence ruling. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55243008

If you read the comments sections on a few Fox News "articles", you'll get an idea of at least something that is wrong. People are little better than illiterate and woefully uninformed by anything outside Fox News. They are scared and the Murdoch media is fanning the flames, using scare mongering that would make most sane people with access to more than one source of information cringe. But too many people just seems to be stuck in 1950's America seeing things crawling around in the shadows, the threat of communism dissolving their country from the inside like some insidious cancer. The next Democrat in the White House is bound to add the hammer and sickle to the stars and stripes, close their churches, take away their guns and force them to have free schools and healthcare and other things normally associated with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. McCarthyism is back, stronger than ever, 60+ years after it was supposed to be dead. Of course, it isn't the only thing that is wrong and might not even be a cause, but a symptom that is noticeable even for a foreigner like me.

@Gromnir , let us just enjoy the moment a little dammit But I hear you. Let the Trump cultists donate their money if they want. Lawyers have to live too I guess Made a donation to the Queensland Food Bank https://www.foodbank.org.au/?state=qld instead. The increasing wealth inequality is really making life harder and harder for an increasing number of families, struggling to provide food for their kids.

I never get tired of watching Trump lose. Again and again and again and... (beats putting a video on repeat, at least he keeps losing in slightly different ways this way)

Hey, I was living in England at the time, remember? Brexit was the main reason for me leaving the country. The antipathy towards EU citizens were tangible, even though most of the ire and rhetoric was directed towards the large numbers of Polish immigrants (there were so many that Polish is the second most spoken language in England today). Having an idea of how messy the whole thing could get, I moved back to Australia 6 months after the referendum. But I did follow all the sometimes heated arguments for and against and a lot of the rhetoric, sometimes up close and personal at the time, being there and being affected by it

More northern European stuff. Possibly an acquired taste, unless you're from there. Then it probably runs in your genes And of a slightly more martial nature:

Zzzzz..... Come on guys... you (the UK) don't want to be in the EU and the EU can't wait to get rid of you. Get the foot out of the door and close it already. Then start making new deals without the time pressure maybe??? This has been going on even longer than Covid https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-55240910

Not sure how well linking to BBC videos works... smallest possums around. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/embed/p090wggq/55240839 Main article: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-australia-55240839

I don't think I ever believed there was such a thing as a "real" Santa Clause, but I remember as a small kid (6+ or so) always loving the stories and imagery of Santa. Part of my childish curiosity back then wondered, if Santa is wearing the national colours of Denmark, would a Swedish Santa wear blue and yellow instead? (yes, the logic of children)

I hate to ruin a good conspiracy theory, but the Arecibo observatory had already been decommissioned and closed for a while. It was scheduled for demolition when the collapse happened. More likely because it didn't get any maintenance after its closure?

You're right. The notion that they need to cover their research costs is a bit outdated it seems. I thought it it used to be the reason, but you made me dig a bit. Turns out drug companies are just abusing a position of power. It's sheer price gouging these days with prices way beyond anything justifiable by the expenditure. If you thought banks were unethical... they got nothing on drug companies. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/drug-prices-high-cost-research-and-development/585253/ "The most telling data on a disconnect between drug prices and research costs has received almost no public attention. Peter Bach, a researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and his colleagues compared prices of the top 20 best-selling drugs in the United States to the prices in Europe and Canada. They found that the cumulative revenue from the price difference on just these 20 drugs more than covers all the drug research and development costs conducted by the 15 drug companies that make those drugs—and then some" "To be more precise, after accounting for the costs of all research—about $80 billion a year—drug companies had $40 billion more from the top 20 drugs alone, all of which went straight to profits, not research. More excess profit comes from the next 100 or 200 brand-name drugs."

@BruceVC I would expect the profit being limited to what they can justify as a reasonable margin of the manufacturing cost if tax payer money paid the research. Part of what you pay the pharmaceutical industry for is taking risks in their research (all the failures and dead ends). If tax payers take all the risk, profiting off that is not justifiable. Anyway, The UK hot on the heels of the Russians with vaccine distribution: A 90-year-old woman has become the first person to be given a Covid jab as part of the mass vaccination programme being rolled out across the UK. Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 next week, said it was the "best early birthday present". https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55227325

You never know, he might surprised you. Like actually help funding research of vaccines and their distribution? Something Trump flat out refused (which is why for example the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine was funded by Germany and the EU)

Everything comes to an end eventually. Similar things happened to the Roman Republic. Even murdering Caesar didn't stop it from happening. Still, 200 years is not bad for a social experiment

All the best mate

Finished my first game of Xenonauts. Made a classic mistake of putting 3 of my troopers too close together around a corner at a doorway. All 3 taken out by a handgrenade. Decided to ignore the reactors and just soldier on, killing the boss and... was at a loss what to do next Turned out I didn't really need to do much. Got flooded by reapers, taking out my remaining 5 troopers (lost the tank int he boss chamber to cross fire) and decided to pull the pins of a few plasma grenades and call it a day rather than being converted into *that*. Then the game ended and declared me the winner Ok, I'll have to try this again. Now building bases with much better radar coverage of both northern and southern hemisphere and I know to stock up on the best armour and mag guns for the end fight. I should put some memorial plaques up on walls and houses in small villages, commemorating the brave heroes what departed earth, unknowingly *cough* going on a suicide mission to save earth and their commander!

Apparently the Chinese made a miscalculation somewhere and started refocusing their efforts. Xi's being busy... "In Wednesday's virtual discussion at the Aspen Institute think tank, Mr Evanina, chief of the Director of National Intelligence's counter-intelligence branch, said the Chinese had been attempting to meddle in the US efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine and recent American elections. He continued: "We've also seen an uptick, which was planned and we predicted, that China would now re-vector their influence campaigns to the new [Biden] administration." ... "He told the discussion that after the FBI conducted dozens of interviews with other individuals, "more than 1,000 PLA-affiliated Chinese researchers left the country". Mr Demers said "only the Chinese have the resources and ability and will" to conduct such alleged political and economic espionage and "other malign activity". He told the discussion these researchers were in addition to a group to 1,000 Chinese students and researchers whose visas were revoked by the US back in September." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55168633

Tim Minchin... one of the best live shows I ever attended

The UK are our guinea pigs pioneers! Distribution of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to start in about a week (unless the subjects keels over in droves I suppose). If enough of the British survive the process, I might line up in the queue for a few shots myself here down under when it becomes available. Edit: source https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55145696