No bows, no glory

Rashford takes out the Spurs 1-0

That’s right, Marcus Rashford scored the only goal in Manchester United’s away game against Tottenham Hotspur Sunday night (local time), netting them 3 Premiership points and placing them 6th at 41, the same level as the Spurs’ rivals Arsenal.

Give it up for Charb

Rodeo Must Die

Anti-rodeo protesters were gathered outside an event in Whangarei yesterday with signs shaped like tombstones. The signs read 'rest in peace' in memory of the animals which died last year taking part in the sport. Apollo Taito from Direct Animal Action says the New Zealand Government's review of rodeo practices isn't moving quickly enough. "We're just really frustrated and angry because it's taking a really long time for the Government to respond to the nature of rodeo." Mr Taito says action needs to be taken to ban the worst aspects of the sport. "We'll stand there with signs saying 'rest in peace', just dedicated to the animals that have passed away due to the cruel practise of rodeo." Four animals reportedly died in the previous year. One of those was covered up, activists say - the death of a horse at an event in Gisborne in December, shortly after a bull was put down after its leg was snapped. The bull's death was widely reported, but the horse's death wasn't. RODEO IS JUST STUPID ANYWAY. ALL IT IS IS A RETARDED EXCUSE TO GET ON A BUCKING BULL JUST TO GET THROWN OFF. IT'S NOT JUST ANIMALS GETTING HURT OR KILLED, IT'S ALSO THE PEOPLE TAKING PART. AND THOSE THAT DO SURVIVE WILL RACK UP HUGE HOSPITAL BILLS IF THEY'RE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO BE SITUATED IN POST-OBAMACARE AMERICA.

In case you haven’t noticed by now

FOR THOSE WHO STILL DON’T GET IT AFTER TWO YEARS

Sad noot indeed

Wearing that foil like a boss

They should also do yellow vests in tinfoil.

Slugged by the salt

Apple is life!

And around two thirds of that NZ$400 was money I had set aside for gender transition-related expenses (stuff like a deed poll of name change and getting ID issued in my new name). But hey, at least this Apple fanboy's got her priorities straight.

Como Chameleon

And that’s Newcastle beaten

Manchester United won their away game against Newcastle United 2-0 on Thursday night (local time), with Lukaku and Rashford scoring the goals in the second half.

Over-koala-fied

The truth about debt

The legitimacy of a given social order rests on the legitimacy of its debts. Even in ancient times this was so. In traditional cultures, debt in a broad sense—gifts to be reciprocated, memories of help rendered, obligations not yet fulfilled—was a glue that held society together. Everybody at one time or another owed something to someone else. Repayment of debt was inseparable from the meeting of social obligations; it resonated with the principles of fairness and gratitude. The moral associations of making good on one’s debts are still with us today, informing the logic of austerity as well as the legal code. A good country, or a good person, is supposed to make every effort to repay debts. Accordingly, if a country like Jamaica or Greece, or a municipality like Baltimore or Detroit, has insufficient revenue to make its debt payments, it is morally compelled to privatize public assets, slash pensions and salaries, liquidate natural resources, and cut public services so it can use the savings to pay creditors. Such a prescription takes for granted the legitimacy of its debts. Today a burgeoning debt resistance movement draws from the realization that many of these debts are not fair. Most obviously unfair are loans involving illegal or deceptive practices—the kind that were rampant in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis. From sneaky balloon interest hikes on mortgages, to loans deliberately made to unqualified borrowers, to incomprehensible financial products peddled to local governments that were kept ignorant about their risks, these practices resulted in billions of dollars of extra costs for citizens and public institutions alike. A movement is arising to challenge these debts. In Europe, the International Citizen debt Audit Network (ICAN) promotes “citizen debt audits,” in which activists examine the books of municipalities and other public institutions to determine which debts were incurred through fraudulent, unjust, or illegal means. They then try to persuade the government or institution to contest or renegotiate those debts. In 2012, towns in France declared they would refuse to pay part of their debt obligations to the bailed-out bank Dexia, claiming its deceptive practices resulted in interest rate jumps to as high as 13 percent. Meanwhile, in the United States, the city of Baltimore filed a class-action lawsuit to recover losses incurred through the Libor rate-fixing scandal, losses that could amount to billions of dollars. And Libor is just the tip of the iceberg. In a time of rampant financial lawbreaking, who knows what citizen audits might uncover? Furthermore, at a time when the law itself is so subject to manipulation by financial interests, why should resistance be limited to debts that involved lawbreaking? After all, the 2008 crash resulted from a deep systemic corruption in which “risky” derivative products turned out to be risk-free—not on their own merits, but because of government and Federal Reserve bailouts that amounted to a de facto guarantee. The perpetrators of these “financial instruments of mass destruction” (as Warren Buffett labeled them) were rewarded while homeowners, other borrowers, and taxpayers were left with collapsed asset values and higher debts. This is part of a context of unjust economic, political, or social conditions that compels the debtor to go into debt. When that injustice is pervasive, aren’t all or most debts illegitimate? In many countries, declining real wages and reduced public services virtually compel citizens to go into debt just to maintain their standard of living. Is debt legitimate when it is systemically foisted on the vast majority of people and nations? If it isn’t, then resistance to illegitimate debt has profound political consequences. This feeling of pervasive, systemic unfairness is palpable in the so-called developing world and in increasing swathes of the rest. African and Latin American nations, southern and Eastern Europe, communities of color, students, homeowners with mortgages, municipalities, the unemployed - the list of those who strain under enormous debt through no fault of their own is endless. They share the perception that their debts are somehow unfair, illegitimate, even if there is no legal basis for that perception. Hence the slogan that is spreading among debt activists and resisters everywhere: “Don’t owe. Won’t pay.” Challenges to these debts cannot be based on appeals to the letter of the law alone when the laws are biased in favor of creditors. There is, however, a legal principle for challenging otherwise legal debts: the principle of “odious debt.” Originally signifying debt incurred on behalf of a nation by its leaders that does not actually benefit the nation, the concept can be extended into a powerful tool for systemic change. Odious debt was a key concept in recent debt audits on the national level, most notably that of Ecuador in 2008 that led to its defaulting on billions of dollars of its foreign debt. Nothing terrible happened to it, setting a dangerous precedent (from the creditors’ point of view). Greece’s Truth Commission on Public Debt is auditing all of that nation’s sovereign debt with the same possibility in mind. Other nations are likely taking notice because their debts, which are obviously unpayable, condemn them to an eternity of austerity, wage cuts, natural resource liquidation, privatization, etc., for the privilege of staying in debt (and remaining part of the global financial system). In most cases, the debts are never paid off. According to a report by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, since 1970 Jamaica has borrowed $18.5 billion and paid back $19.8 billion, yet still owes $7.8 billion. In the same period, the Philippines borrowed $110 billion, has paid back $125 billion, and owes $45 billion. These are not isolated examples. Essentially what is happening here is that money—in the form of labor power and natural resources—is being extracted from these countries. More goes out than comes in, thanks to the fact that all these loans bear interest. What debts are “odious”? Some examples are obvious, such as loans to build the infamous Bataan Nuclear Power Plant from which Westinghouse and Marcos cronies profited enormously but which never produced any electricity, or the military expenditures of juntas in El Salvador or Greece. But what about the huge amount of debt that financed large-scale, centralized development projects? Neoliberal ideology says those are to the great benefit of a nation, but now it is becoming apparent that the main beneficiaries were corporations from the same nations that were doing the lending. Moreover, the bulk of this development is geared toward enabling the recipient to generate foreign exchange by opening up its petroleum, minerals, timber, or other resources to exploitation, or by converting subsistence agriculture to commodity agribusiness, or by making its labor force available to global capital. The foreign exchange generated is required to make loan payments, but the people don’t necessarily benefit. Might we not say, then, that most debt owed by the “developing” world is odious, born of colonial and imperial relationships? The same might be said for municipal, household, and personal debt. Tax laws, financial deregulation, and economic globalization have siphoned money into the hands of corporations and the very rich, forcing everyone else to borrow in order to meet basic needs. Municipalities and regional governments now must borrow to provide the services that tax revenues once funded before industry fled to the places of least regulation and lowest wages in the global “race to the bottom.” Students now must borrow to attend universities that were once heavily subsidized by government. Stagnant wages force families to borrow just to live. The rising tide of debt cannot be explained by a rising tide of laziness or irresponsibility. The debt is systemic and inescapable. It isn’t fair, and people know it. As the concept of illegitimate debts spreads, the moral compulsion to repay them will wane, and new forms of debt resistance will emerge. Indeed, they already are in places most affected by the economic crisis, such as Spain, where a strong anti-eviction movement challenges the legitimacy of mortgage debt and has just gotten an activist elected mayor of Barcelona. As the recent drama in Greece has shown us, though, isolated acts of resistance are easily crushed. Standing alone, Greece faced a stark choice: either capitulate to the European institutions and enact austerity measures even more punishing than those its people rejected in the referendum or suffer the sudden destruction of its banks. Since the latter would entail a humanitarian catastrophe, the Syriza government chose to capitulate. Nonetheless, Greece rendered the world an important service by making the fact of debt slavery plain, as well as revealing the power of undemocratic institutions such as the European Central Bank to dictate domestic economic policy. Besides direct resistance, people are finding ways to live outside the conventional financial system and, in the process, prefigure what might replace it. Complementary currencies, time banks, direct-to-consumer farm cooperatives, legal aid cooperatives, gift economy networks, tool libraries, medical cooperatives, child care cooperatives, and other forms of economic cooperation are proliferating in Greece and Spain, in many cases recalling traditional forms of communalism that still exist in societies that aren’t fully modernized. Debt is a potent rallying issue because of its ubiquity and its psychological gravity. Unlike climate change, which is easy to relegate to theoretical importance when, after all, the supermarkets are still full of food and the air conditioner is still running, debt affects the lives of growing numbers of people directly and undeniably: a yoke, a burden, a constant constraint on their freedom. Three-quarters of Americans carry some form of debt. Student debt stands at more than $1.3 trillion in the United States and averages more than $33,000 per graduating student. Municipalities around the country are cutting services to the bone, laying off employees, and slashing pensions. Why? To make payments on their debts. The same is true of entire nations, as creditors—and the financial markets that drive them—tighten their death grip on southern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the rest of the world. Most people need little persuading that debt has become a tyrant over their lives. What is harder for them to see, though, is that they could ever be free of their debts, which are often described as “inescapable” or “crushing.” That is why even the most modest challenges to debt legitimacy, such as the aforementioned citizen audits, have revolutionary implications. They cast into question the certainty of debt. If one debt can be nullified, maybe all of them can—not only for nations but for municipalities, school districts, hospitals, and people too. That’s why the European authorities made such a humiliating example of Greece—they needed to maintain the principle of inviolability of debt. That’s also why hundreds of billions of dollars were used to bail out the creditors who made bad loans in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, but not a penny was spent bailing out the debtors. Not only does debt have the potential to be a rallying point of near-universal appeal, it also happens to be a unique political pressure point. That’s because the results of mass debt resistance would be catastrophic for the financial system. The Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 demonstrated that the system is so highly leveraged and so tightly interconnected that even a small disruption can cascade into a massive systemic crisis. Moreover, “won’t pay” is a form of protest easily accessible to the atomized digital citizen who has been sundered from most forms of political association; arguably, it is the only form of digital action that has much real-world impact. No street protests are necessary, no confrontations with riot police, to stop payment on a credit card or student loan. The financial system is vulnerable to a few million mouse clicks. Herein lies a resolution to the dilemma posed by Silvia Federici in the South Atlantic Quarterly: “Instead of work, exploitation, and above all ‘bosses,’ so prominent in the world of smoke stacks, we now have debtors confronting not an employer but a bank and confronting it alone, not as part of a collective body and collective relation, as was the case with wage workers.” So let’s organize and spread awareness. We needn’t confront the banks, the bond markets, or the financial system alone. What should be the ultimate goal of the debt resistance movement? The systemic nature of the debt problem implies that none of the policy proposals that are realistic or reachable in the present political environment are worth pursuing. Reducing rates on student loans, offering mortgage relief, reining in payday lending, or reducing debt in the Global South might be politically feasible, but by mitigating the worst abuses of the system, they make that system slightly more tolerable and imply that the problem is not the system—we just need to fix these abuses. Conventional redistributive strategies, such as higher marginal income tax rates, also face limitations, mostly because they don’t address the deep root of the debt crisis: the slowdown of economic growth worldwide, or, as a Marxist would put it, the falling return on capital. More and more economists are joining a distinguished lineage that includes Herman Daly, E.F. Schumacher, and even (though this is little known) John Maynard Keynes to argue that we are nearing the end of growth—primarily, but not only, for ecological reasons. When growth stalls, lending opportunities disappear. Since money is essentially lent into existence, debt levels increase faster than the supply of money required to service them. The result, as Thomas Piketty described so clearly, is rising indebtedness and concentration of wealth. The aforementioned policy proposals have a further defect as well: They are so moderate they have little potential to inspire a mass popular movement. Reduced interest rates or other incremental reforms are not going to arouse an apathetic and disillusioned citizenry. Recall the Nuclear Freeze movement of the 1980s: Widely decried as naïve and unrealistic by establishment liberals, it generated a vocal and committed movement that contributed to the climate of opinion behind the START agreements of the Reagan era. The economic reform movements need something equally simple, graspable, and appealing. What about the cancellation of all student debt? What about a jubilee, a fresh start for mortgage debtors, student debtors, and debtor nations? The problem is that canceling the debts means erasing the assets upon which our entire financial system depends. These assets are at the basis of your pension fund, the solvency of your bank, and grandma’s savings account. Indeed, a savings account is nothing other than a debt owed you by your bank. To prevent chaos, some entity has to buy the debts for cash, and then cancel those debts (in full or in part, or perhaps just reduce the interest rate to zero). Fortunately, there are deeper and more elegant alternatives to conventional redistributive strategies. I’ll mention two of the most promising: “positive money” and negative-interest currency. Both of these entail a fundamental change in the way money is created. Positive money refers to money created directly without debt by the government, which can be given directly to debtors for debt repayment or used to purchase debts from creditors and then cancel them. Negative-interest currency (which I describe in depth in Sacred Economics) entails a liquidity fee on bank reserves, essentially taxing wealth at its source. It enables zero-interest lending, reduces wealth concentration, and allows a financial system to function in the absence of growth. Radical proposals such as these bear in common a recognition that money, like property and debt, is a sociopolitical construct. It is a social agreement mediated by symbols: numbers on slips of paper, bits in computers. It is not an immutable feature of reality to which we can but adapt. The agreements that we call money and debt can be changed. To do so, however, will require a movement that contests the immutability of the current system and explores alternatives to it.

OUR GOAL FOR 2019

No more Macron!

We have decided on the final induction into the Sick Phoque Club for 2018. The inductee for December 2018 is Emmanuel Macron. Why him? Google the phrase “yellow vest” for more.

Cherries end 2018 with loss

Manchester United beat Bournemouth 4-1 courtesy of a first-half Pogba brace and a goal each by Rashford and Lukaku. Neither Aké’s injury-time attack on the Reds’ net or Bailly’s red card could put a damper on what was both teams’ last game of 2018.

Drumpf, Drumpf hast, Drumpf hast mich

Taser Eclipse of the Heart

Just Jonah being Jonah

Another win means another three points

Manchester United won their game against Huddersfield 3-1, with Matic’s first-half goal and Pogba’s second-half brace being more than enough that Zanka’s 88th-minute strike didn’t matter.

Some guy legit just stuck an Android on the back of his iPhone

A Visit from Calvin and Hobbes

Christmas, Aussie Style

Welsh side schooled 5-1

Manchester United earned another three points from a 5-1 walloping of Cardiff City. Rashford, Herrera, and Martial scored for Man United in the first half; with Camarasa scoring Cardiff’s only goal in the 38th minute and Lingard scoring a second-half brace for the Red Devils.

Music is a gift that keeps on taking

Avocado's constant

Coming alive to the flat-pack generation

Swedish furniture giant Ikea will open its first store in New Zealand, the company announced today. Jesper Brodin, Ikea global chief executive, will host an event in Auckland on Friday, January 11, where an exhibition of "iconic Ikea range" will be on display. The company will be showing off its democratic design principals "where good design is the perfect combination of form, function, quality, and sustainability, all at an affordable price." The concept behind Ikea is to show people how their homes can be changed with the products which are displayed in the stores, so kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms and lounge rooms are all shown, fully furnished. While the product range and prices are at this stage unknown, if the New Zealand Ikea is anything like in Australia, Kiwis could grab outdoor products like a three-seat sofa for A$465, table with four chairs for A$459, or a charcoal barbecue with cabinet for A$528. Spring bed mattresses start from A$99, and there are wardrobes at A$95, and clothing storage units at A$14.95. But the question is: will the products be any good?

A visit from the latest version of OneDrive

Shocking good bath

Lingard’s goal walks alone

Liverpool beat Manchester United 3-1, with Liverpool opening the scoring through Kane, answered by Lingard, and finishing with a Shaqiri brace in the second half.

Heil der Deutsche Sprache!

My dad drinking from his new mug

XMAS SURVIVAL GUIDE: A great idea for a game

1. Start with a room containing five monkeys. In the room, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. You don't need to wait long and a monkey will go to the stairs and start climbing towards the banana.

2. Now, as soon as the monkey touches the stairs, spray all the monkeys with cold water as punishment. After a while, another monkey gives it a try with the same result – all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

3. Next step, turn off the cold water. If, later, another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it even though no water sprays at them.

4. Now, remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be punished.

5. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

6. Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

7. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkey, all the monkeys that were sprayed with cold water have been replaced.

Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs, but no one really knows why. All the original monkeys who experienced the water-spraying punishment have been replaced.

What we're left with are five monkeys who know that they can't touch the banana, but they don't really know why. Because that's the way it's always been done around here.

Jesse an outlaw like his namesake Mr James

The man accused of murdering British backpacker Grace Millane was jeered in court as his identity was revealed publicly for the first time. The killer, 26-year-old Jesse Kempson, was called a “scumbag” by a heckler in the public gallery during his first appearance before a judge at Auckland's District Court in New Zealand. He appeared in a blue boiler suit and sat close to the family of his alleged victim, whose body was found dumped in woodland close to a busy road on Sunday. Ms Millane had been travelling in New Zealand when she disappeared, last seen allegedly in the company of the man at CityLife hotel on December 1. The defendant was listed on a charge sheet as residing at the hotel on Queen Street in central Auckland, and is supposed to be - get this - under name suppression. The court system here is a joke. HE KILLED SOMEONE. HE VIOLATED THE SIXTH BIBLICAL COMMANDMENT (fifth if you’re a Catholic). HE SHOULD BE NAMED AND SHAMED FOR WHAT HE DID TO GRACE. IT WAS A CIS WOMAN THIS TIME, BUT WHAT IF A TRANS WOMAN SUCH AS MYSELF WERE NEXT? THIS IS WHY WE NEED THE FOURTH ESTATE. WE NEED TO HOLD THE PIECE OF SCUM TO ACCOUNT FOR HIS ACTIONS, AND THIS IS WHAT WE AT DISSEMINATORS OF THE TRUTH WILL DO. NO COURT ORDER IN THE WORLD WILL STOP THE LIGHT FROM SHINING THROUGH THE DARKNESS.

Striking, Japanese style

Best way to get fired in like ever

Just face it already: there is no upgrade!

Four fabulous goals

And those were scored for Fulham by Manchester United’s very own Ashley Young, Juan Mata, Romelu Lukaku, and Marcus Rashford. Kamara scored for Fulham in the 67th minute, but teammate Anguissa got sent off in the 68th.

Second half of Infinity War finally gets official name

And that name is Avengers: End Game. To avoid confusion with an unrelated TV series known as The Avengers, the movie will be released in the UK and Ireland under the name Marvel Avengers Assemble: End Game.

Capitalist machine expands footprint in the Bay

Crowds of excited shoppers queued for the opening of the first stage of the $115 million redevelopment of the Bayfair Shopping Centre in Tauranga. Thirty new retail stories, many fashion and lifestyle product retailers, have joined Tauranga's main shopping mall including Mecca Maxima, Platypus Shoes, Redcurrent, Collette, The Source Bulk Foods, Macpac, Jacqui E, and Portmans. AMP Capital Shopping Centres managing director Mark Kirkland said the opening marked a milestone in the development with the additional 30 stores and an expanded shopping centre. I personally couldn’t care less. It’s all just another excuse to spend, spend, spend in the lead-up to the most commercialised holiday of the year. Parents will spend thousands on the latest tablet or smartphone for their kids and they won’t appreciate it and will just want a more expensive model next year. My iPhone 4S still works after seven years, and even though I upgraded just to upgrade, I didn’t go all the way up to a XS Max. I just went for the cheapest one that can still run the latest iOS (a space grey 5S).

Sorry again for the late post

Because I’m still doing too many late posts, all posts going forward will be done during the afternoon (NZ time) instead of at night.

LATE SPORTS UPDATE: Man United drew against Arsenal 2-2. The enemy goals were by Mustafi and Lacazette, with their equalisers being delivered by Martial and Lingard respectively.

Lame-duck doesn’t get lamer than this

Hundreds of protesters organized by Women’s March Michigan took to the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan Tuesday to protest the actions of the state’s lame-duck legislature. This includes gutting the minimum wage increases that the legislature passed earlier this year. But Michigan Republicans have been up to so much more than that - for instance, after Michigan passed a ballot initiative expanding voting rights, lame-duck Republicans have been working to curtail those efforts. This includes state senator Mike Kowall (R) introducing legislation to roll back the voter-approved automatic voter registration initiative. Seriously, what a bunch of sore losers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Earlier film gets first trailer

In a bizarre move - as the long, long wait for a first look at Avengers 4 continues - Kevin Feige's studio has instead promised a full trailer for Captain Marvel, which hits cinemas in March. This vaguely - but not quite - aligns with previous rumours suggesting an Avengers 4 trailer would come on Monday, followed by Captain Marvel on Wednesday. Were the two films just the wrong way around? I say yes. Captain Marvel will be released earlier so her trailer bloody well should be released first, then the second half of Infinity War. And why call them trailers if they’re played before the film as opposed to after?

Mugger loses to a girl

A would-be mugger in Brazil has been left begging for mercy after attempting to rob a female jiu-jitsu expert. As 22-year-old Sabrina Leites awaited outside her family home, 18-year-old Magdeel da Silva and his accomplice pulled up on a motorcycle and demanded her cell phone. But after Ms Leites decided to fight back, the pair attempted to flee. Da Silva's criminal partner managed to escape on the motorcycle, but left his friend alone to flee on foot. A neighbour saw the robbery attempt and ran da Silva over with a car. Then Ms Leites, who has a white belt in the fighting sport, turned the tables and pounced. Video shot by a bystander shows da Silva helpless in an arm-bar while crying in pain and begging for mercy. "No more, no more," he yells, while Ms Leites gives the thumbs-up sign. "When you have the technique you know how to act in a situation of immobilisation because all this is a technique of immobilisation," Ms Leites told media. Da Silva has been arrested and charged with attempted robbery, and that is why you need to be careful about who you try to rob.

Drawn-again Reds

Manchester United played to a 2-2 draw against Southampton with all scoring taking place in the first half - Armstrong and Cedric for Southampton then Lukaku and Herrera for United. They need to get back to the form they had under Sir Alex Ferguson and one point per game just won’t cut it.

George Be Not Alive

George HW Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, was a steadfast force on the international stage for decades, from his stint as an envoy to Beijing to his eight years as vice president and his one term as commander in chief from 1989 to 1993. The last veteran of World War II to serve as president, he was a consummate public servant and a statesman who helped guide the nation and the world out of a four-decade Cold War that had carried the threat of nuclear annihilation. His death at the age of 94 marks the passing of an era, one for which he will be remembered more for his broken campaign promise of no new taxes.

Disseminators of the No More Memes

Let’s face it - the quality of posts on Disseminators of the Truth has declined over the 8+ years we’ve been around and yet here we are. This is why November 2018 will end with us being inducted into the Sick Phoque Club. We’re not the blog we were in 2010 and the daily posts are just becoming nothing more than a common chore. Sometimes, I have been skipping a day and doing two posts the next day. But that is not the blog I want to run - I want the Disseminators of the Truth of old back. This way, the posts will have substance like they did in the first half of the decade. I, Melissa Eilish Laureline Isabelle Simone Sarah Amelia Jade Amber Desiree Emily Healy (and yes, that is the full name I picked out for myself), resolve to turn this blog around before it becomes Disseminators of the Shit.

THIS IS MY PROMISE TO YOU:

We Will Make Disseminators of the Truth Strong Again.

We Will Make Disseminators of the Truth Wealthy Again.

We Will Make Disseminators of the Truth Proud Again.

We Will Make Disseminators of the Truth Safe Again.

And, Yes, We Will Make Disseminators of the Truth Great Again.

Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless Disseminators of the Truth.

Thinnest. Port. Ever.

Auto-tune this!

And that, people, is why bears crap in the woods

It’s always better done the Japanese way

Unlucky 13 means no goals for either

Manchester United played to a 0-0 draw in their home game against Crystal Palace today.

Legality =/= morality

When Faiths Collide: The Coffee Shop

She knows nothing... nothing!

Look at Dolph. He is Science Guy now.

I'm just going to leave this here

 

It puts the music in the show and it gets the dance again

New metrics for the metric system

The Systeme Internationale before the redefinition: Dependence of base unit definitions on other base units (for example, the metre is defined in terms of the distance travelled by light in a specific fraction of a  second), with the constants of nature and artefacts used to define them (such as the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram for the kilogram).

The SI system after the redefinition: Dependence of base unit definitions on physical constants with fixed numerical values and on other base units that are derived from the same set of constants.

The new definitions will come into effect next year.

What hath Eve wrought?

Cutest. Koala. Ever.

 

Just call him already

 

Kids with Lawyers

 

RIP Stan Lee (1922-2018), a true marvel in his field

 

Blue victory in derby

Manchester United lost their game against City 3-1, with the Reds' only goal being Martial's penalty in the second half and City scoring through Silva, Agüero, and Gündogan. This is why they've gone through three different managers right up to what would have been the final season of Moyes' original deal. We can only imagine how much worse it could have been if he was allowed to stay on.

There can only be one lifter

It’s time to start leaving Scott behind once and for all

And what better way to start than with a new email to transition all my online profiles to:

GOP loses house majority

1 like = 1 thoughts and prayers for the GOP

 

Finally upgraded after 7 years with the 4S

And I’m using the new phone (an iPhone 5S running iOS 12) to type this post. As version 12 will likely be the last one to be released for the 5S, I do plan to upgrade again in the future. My iPhone journey began in November of 2009 with a white 3GS, with upgrades to the 4 in 2010 and the 4S in 2011. In hindsight, it would have been cheaper to just hold onto the 3GS until support ended in 2013, and then go straight to 5S, and then in 2019 to whatever models come out, all the while putting away NZ$10 a week and consistently ending up with more than enough come upgrade day.

The Pewd got more peeps than Siam

 

Turtles are doin' it for themselves

 

Just uploaded an old video from 2011 to YouTube

Cherries massacred by Red Devils

Manchester United won their match against Bournemouth AFC today, with Wilson opening the scoring for the home side at the 11th minute, and Martial and Rashford, the latter of whom is 21 this week, scoring the Reds' goals. This victory over the Cherries has pushed the Reds up to 7th on the Premiership table, but more remains to be done so I suggest they better get to it.

VOTE DEMOCRAT THIS MIDTERM OR ELSE!

 

This is how Wall Street rolls

 

And still nothing from the coroner

We have made our decision on who October 2018's inductees into the Sick Phoque Club will be - the Victorian Coroners Court. And here's why: Four years after 18-year-old Sommer Warren died giving birth, her mother Leisa Scammell is still waiting for answers about what went wrong. Chaos in the Victorian Coroners Court has meant the coronial investigation has only just been reassigned to a new coroner, days after current affairs program 7.30 inquired about the matter. Ms Scammell had just marked four years since her daughter's death and grandson's birth. Warren presented to Goulburn Valley Health in Shepparton in October 2014, nine days past her due date. In the days between her expected delivery date and her death, she had called the hospital five times and presented four times asking to give birth. In desperation, she had also sought advice from a private obstetrician, Dr Ruary MacKenzie, who detected elevated blood pressure and recommended the hospital deliver her baby immediately. Despite this, the hospital did not induce Ms Warren until five days later. Ms Warren's baby Lincoln survived the birth. And it's taken the coroners four years. The coroners investigating Dolores O'Riordan's death only needed six months to finish their inquest.