"Sir Keir has resisted calls from trade unions and many on the left of his party to nationalise the energy industry to help keep soaring bills down, arguing instead for an extension of the windfall tax on their profits."
We're going to have to work hard to get a public consensus in favour of forcing investors to sell infrastructure into public ownership (back into it in many cases). But having a windfall tax, let alone extending it, is a good start.
Winston First have been spreading a story that the poor state of our roads was caused by a change to importing road bitumen, instead of producing it locally at Marsden Point. All because of the last Labour government and those bloody greenies;
"The Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill, which was designed and passed by the Labour government in August last year, increased the level of onshore fuel stocks required to be held by fuel importers and wholesalers."
“It’s not lost on me that there are inordinately large competing demands on our infrastructure spend, but there are other ways to boost resilience, not the least of which is getting the oil companies working with Channel to increase onshore holding capacity.”
Another way to boost resilience is to reduce the fossil fuel dependence of our transport infrastructure as quickly as possible. Which the new govt is doing nothing much about.
When Ben played the Interislander jingle by The Warratahs as an interlude;
"What a way to start a holiday!
Sailing to the other side.
Cruising on the InterIslander"
... it reminded me of the way our passenger rail and ferry services have been rebranded and repriced as tourist cruises, rather than domestic transport services.
"... the Undying were weighed down by the huge burden of the past, each locked into a separate world.
... The present is just a surface bubble of sensation surrounding a great bubble of memory. You forget how to see, to hear; you forget how to talk to people. You forget other people even exist. You sink inwards into yourself, thinking about the past. Living on and on without end."
@strypey yes, I use Docker all over the place. Mostly, I currently upload them to hub.docker.com - not the best situation, but haven't yet changed to a different hub as it'll require a fair bit of work. I'm (at last count) hosting at least 91 Docker-based services. Will do a trial eventually, though, as I'm not overly happy with the way the Docker folks do stuff.
Despite decades of rumours of a reboot of the cult classic BBC TV series Blake's 7, I don't think it will ever happen. Listening to a podcast called Star Fall;
"The country's ambulance service is funded by Te Whatu Ora - Heath New Zealand and ACC, which fund about 82 percent of the service, at a cost of about $380 million a year.
The rest is made up through donations, and a part charge of $98 for patients transported by ambulance."
@cloventt
> Ōtautahi, so St John, and yeah maybe not enough vehicles, which also super sucks
Given the state of the ambulance service (and the health system in general), it would be great if more people were trained in first aid. That's also something St John do, and maybe that's an area you could volunteer in?
Had a chat with various MOLE* chat demos over the last few weeks. I'll be more impressed when they can run on our personal devices with no dependence on remote servers ("the cloud"). But as far as most people are concerned, we now live in the world with talking computers that can understand human speech and follow our instructions. Like in 90s Star Trek or before that, Star Wars and Blakes 7.
I've mostly dismissed the Cambrian explosion of AI as a bubble. There is a financial bubble forming around it. But I'm starting to think it's more like the DotCom bubble than the crypto bubble. I have to acknowledge there is useful MOLE-based tech that - like the useful bits of the late 90s web - can survive the bubble bursting.
This makes it even more urgent to break up the power concentrated in a handful of media tech corporations, and put it back in everyone's hands (ie revive democracy).
"Thus, an “influencer” could easily post a link to an article written by someone else within their own social media feed. The conversation was removed from the blog post and instead developed in the influencer’s feed. As a result, carefully written articles have become a mere resource for influencers."
Finally got around to watching the Dr Who specials with David Tennant, written by returning showrunner Russel T. Davies. Not as bad as Moffat's garbage series. But still, more melodrama, meta-discussion and self-parody. Yawn.
I've been noticing one of the biggest social problems with social media, as a medium (the fediverse included). It occurs when two people who've been in a social media space for a while, interact for the first time.
From each person's POV, they're at their local chatting with friends, and a stranger has come into their social space. Each expects the other to be more diplomatic, as they hopefully would if they joined a group chat at a bar. They'll likely be disappointed.