Gorth

It's like a bad dream you can't wake up from 😝 Hi @alanschugood to see you around again! 👋

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-60951030 There is something rotten in the state(s) of... Australia 🙄 Australia election: Enter a lacklustre advert for democracy There has long been something Biblical about the prime ministership of Scott Morrison, a Pentecostal Christian who declared on the night of his bolt from the blue victory in the 2019 election: "I've always believed in miracles". Since then, much of his term in office has read like chapters from the Old Testament. There have been fires, floods and the pestilence of a global pandemic. Even his defiant stance towards China has a Manichean frame: a good versus evil struggle between freedom and authoritarianism - the "great polarisation", he calls it. Recently, he sought to imprint his faith-based politics on Australian law, by pushing unsuccessfully for a Religious Discrimination Act offering legal protections to people of faith who made "statements of belief" - a charter, claimed its opponents, for the homophobic and transphobic. Just one long BBC article highlighting the tip of the iceberg of Morrison's numerous Faux Pas's As for why the opposition isn't outright stream rolling the Liberal Party, they are still heavily backed by the church, the resource and fossil fuel industry and ever present Murdoch Media (making it a David against Goliath fight)

My effective tax rate is somewhere around 35% (averaging out the income brackets, which gets taxed differently for each bracket you pass through). I do have a private health insurance in addition to that, costing me around $300 a month. It's technically optional, but if I don't have it, I get taxed more to the point where there is no difference money wise. It just gives me the perks of a private health insurance. Still nothing compared to the very expensive German mandatory health insurance 😖 Funny thing, when you compare tax rates in European countries, there are things they sometimes don't tell you. Both Germany and England have some hefty "hidden" taxes. In Germany it was the health insurance, which is not part of the official tax rate, but it's also not optional (and the amount you pay depends on your income). In England it was the local council tax. Bloody hell that was a lot 🤯 Edit: Tax rates in the Scandinavian countries (I'm not familiar with Finland and Iceland) sounds like it's very high, but compared to aforementioned, it includes more Edit2: I better correct myself, I'm not actually sure if the Aussie health insurance premiums are income dependent, I might have mixed that up with the German health insurance which was...

I can't really separate events out into their episodes, but the story as I get it so far has two protagonists... Vincent the immigrant and Re-I, the granddaughter of the "administrator". They live in a city, which later turns out to be a dome existing in a wasteland, sustaining a kind of utopia/dystopia kind of society, complete with constant messages bombarding the "model citizens" with how they should behave and act like good little consumers. AI "people" are everywhere and serves many purposes. It immediately made me think of Bladerunner. A virus, called "cogito", is spreading amongst the AI's (called "autoreives") and causes havoc. On top of that, the bureau of security as well as Re-I's grandfather have gotten their hands dirty with some unsavoury research just referred to as "Proxy". The results of which escapes a lab/holding facility and goes on a killing spree. Vincent manages to escape from the city using a vent, that cogito infected AI's has been using to escape the city and ends up with a small group of people living outside the dome. One of them wants to be more than a "dome parasite" some day (being people who lives off the sewage and waste of the dome). That's where I got to. Leaving out a fair number of details and characters. Edit: Looks like I got the name of the female lead wrong... the last letter is not an 'I' but a lower case 'L', i.e. 'l' (Re-l).

Finished Ergo Proxy episode 4... completely hooked on the story 🥰 Not really what i would think of when people say "Anime", which I normally associated with a few stereo types when it comes to art direction. Looks more like an animated version of a Jean Giraud ("Moebius") comic! Too much happening already to make a coherent summary of 😖

Which would no doubt involve the stationing of a large contingent of Belarussian troops in Ukraine? 🙄

I'm not really that interested in a NetFlix subscription, not even for a month or two to be honest (because I know I would feel compelled somehow to waste a lot of time watching NetFlix for a while, because of the time limitation). YouTube videos I save in a folder and watch when I have the time and inclination to do so Having VPN is nice though, even if most of the time it just masks my IP with another Brisbane IP (I use NordVPN, no idea how it compares to the competition, but it was what looked the easiest to use for me a day when I really needed one)

It just fits the MO of Wagner better than the regular Russian army. Not that the Russians don't kill civilians, they do, a lot. But it's usually more a "convenience" thing. Lets flatten those residential areas rather than fighting block to black and door to door kind of way. Bucha was atrocities for atrocities sake, somebody who wanted it to be seen and known.

An interesting outcome in some ways… Reagan allowing the rest of the world access to the gps system to avoid such navigational errors in the future 🤔

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61028380 I don't know how reliable Der Spiegel is as a source, but according to them, The BND (German Intelligence Service I think, Bundesnachrichtendienst or some such) intercepted radio communication between the Russian troops in Bucha, leading up to massacre of the civilians. According to Spiegel, the intercepts also appeared to indicate that mercenaries from Russia's private Wagner group played a key role in the Bucha killings. Wagner is known for callous brutality in previous theatres of war...

Second video released from Rammsteins new album (Zeit)

Life as a passenger jet near "hot zones" has a history of tragedies... the Donbas seperatists were shocked (watch the youtube video with subtitle when the commanders inspect the wreckage) to discover the Malaysian Airlines jet were a civilian plane flying over them and not the usual Ukrainian transport plane they were routinely targeting, The US shot down an Iranian passenger jet when it made a bombing run on a frigate, whose captain got a medal for bravery under fire or some such, or the Soviets shooting down a South Korean passenger jet because it strayed a few miles off course close to military installations in the far east of the Soviet Union. Edit: Forgot the Iranian shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet just a couple of years ago. I would say, plan your trip carefully and avoid the worlds hot spots where possible

Argh... looks like Ergo Proxy is only available on NetFlix... and not the Australian Netflix (which means subscribing for a month to NetFlix and using my vpn to pretend I'm Canadian or American or some such) Not going to pay a fortune for Amazon Blu-Rays (edit: which will be the wrong region anyway) 😔 Edit: It was on Crunchyroll until 2017 when it got removed, but comments suggests it may now be on Funimations Youtube channel. I'll check it out there Edit2: Looks like Funimation has folded and Crunchyroll is the only one left. I'm screwed 🤔 Edit3: Looks like most, if not all of the episodes are on Youtube, just not through official channels

I don't live in Sweden or Finland, but being an old ex-pat Dane, I can tell you the 6 months of darkness in the winter half gets to you (even if the 200 annual days of rain doesn't)... Edit: as @xzar_monty pointed out, the summer half has daylight until very late, even as far south as Denmark. As kids we used to laugh at tourists not being able to sleep at night (because the sun is still shining at 10 in the evening)

What I was thinking of was German words having three genders, determining whether to use der, die or das (I was reminded of it when changing the title of the Ukraine thread)

I think the English language is also limited to two genders?

The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986. Probably before most of the Russian conscripts were born. If not briefed by command to keep their shovels away, they may not have been any the wiser. We're talking about an army where the common soldier doesn't seem to be encouraged to show initiative or heaven forbid, critical thinking. (and it may not have featured regularly on RT either)

One of the paradoxes of WWII, Germany was the only country willing to help Finland defend itself against the USSR... the West was perfectly willing to sacrifice it Sudetenland style to make the Soviets happy and keep them in the war against Germany.

They do, but very rarely. It is an "OZ centric" group. Doesn't mean they wont cover the war in Ukraine some day, but I wouldn't hold my breath. E.g. they didn't cover things like Afghanistan etc.

They are preparing to invade Sweden and liberate Scania, Halland and Blekinge in a special military operation...

It's this horrible translated from Danish to English stuff (not machine translated, but it sounds "stilted"), but just a list of current and recent engagements. Includes peace keeping missions in various parts of Africa and the training of Ukrainian troops since 2016... https://www.forsvaret.dk/en/roles-and-responsibilities/International-operations/ As said, the numbers wont overwhelm anyone, but the experience gathered can be shared. Edit: Missing from the list is the Airforce being part of enforcing of the no fly zone over Libya... that one was always a bit weird, because it was never announced nor referenced afterwards. The public only knows because some journalists wondered where all those F-16's suddenly went and they were later spotted on Italian airbases flying sorties to the south...

Even a tiny country like Denmark has an experienced group of officers as the country has been constantly at war effectively since Yugoslavia fell apart (early 90's), fighting in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan (2014). Getting scores of body bags with young Danes sent home didn't really rattle the popular opinion either (since the casualties happened to professional soldiers, not enlisted men). I think these days they are mostly active with peace keeping in Kosovo and The Middle East as well as fighting pirates along various East African coasts (which would be navy units). Small, but with 30+ years of active combat experience in "real" war situations.

I watched the Ergo Proxy trailer on youtube and read a few lines about it. Sounds interesting enough for me to make it my next viewing project 👍

Why the English language and spelling is such a bastard... 😝

Agreed. It really depends on context and motivation. If Russia had attacked Ukrainian forces in say Syria (yes, completely hypothetical situation), the outcome may have been different. Possibly. Never underestimate a combatant fighting tooth and claw on their home turf to defend it.