I was shcoked. Not by the breast -- I already knew she had two of them
-- but by the ugly ornament attached by a hole through the nipple. I've always been put off by people who mutilate their bodies.
Actually all parts of the American Colonies were involved in slavery of the
African Americans. But it was discouraged earlier in the North-East
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:13, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:55:40 +0000, The Natural PhilosopherTrue, After that the African nations SOLD their criminals and prisoners
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 15/03/2026 22:27, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
We USAians are a stubborn lot, and since England and Europe >>>>> in
general sent a lot of criminals here we likely are more stubborn than >>>>> most so we cling to our own system of measurements in many respects
Actually that was Australia. We *sent* the criminals there.
America was colonised by people fleeing from justice, or sufficiently
religiously intolerant that they were shunned in Europe, or people so
poor that even America looked attractive...In short the dregs of
Europe.
As I remember reading, Australia became interesting to the British when
America's revolution made it useful to find a substitute place to send
those criminals.
of war to America.
Further degrading the gene pool :-)
Locating where they were at sea was much improved by more accurateSince Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I
clocks -- finding Australia after sailing acros the Indian Ocean had
been a bit problematic before they knew where they were, east-west.
find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
Nonsense they also sent along rivals to claimants of leadership and
their families. Rubio in Florida wants to pretend that the Africans
learned useful skills in the USA but they sent us blacksmiths,
woodworkers, musicians, priests and learned people in the Koran,
other skills and rice farmers. The Gene Pool was improved by the
these imports of human beings. The plantation owners wasted these
folks on manual labor in the fields. The weath of the nation was
built by the African American slaves and subsequently by freedmen.
Under slavery and under the Black Codes also called "Jim Crow" a
fascistic regime was imposed on African descended people.
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:32:27 -0700
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
The Gene Pool was improved by the these imports of human beings.
"Eugenic" notions of gene-pool quality as rbowman seems to espouse have precious little to do with genetic diversity or long-term population advantages and much more to do with lending the weight of pseudo-
scientific authority to old established prejudices.
If you just pretend that "criminal" or other "undesirable" traits are hereditary, it gets real easy to tar a whole *group* you don't like
with that brush, just by claiming they had some Very Assuredly Real
defect of ancestry back in the mists of time, and your own bigotry is therefore rendered Logical And Objectively Correct. Amazing how that
works!
I'm a bit rusty in my knowledge of these topics (and it probably was
never that much knowledge to begin with), but weren't there astronomical tools that allowed at least some degree of position awareness?
Some but not enough until the English invented the very reliable chronographs to
measure time on board ship. There are I believe more than one PBS
science and technology in History show that references this. A very large prize had been offered
by the UK authorities for such a device.
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:32:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Rubio in Florida wants to pretend that the Africans learned useful
skills in the USA but they sent us blacksmiths, woodworkers, musicians,
priests and learned people in the Koran, other skills and rice farmers.
It must have been a considerable brain drain. Those skills seem to be in short supply in west Africa today. That includes Liberia, the ACS's
attempt to jump start Wakanda by shipping those highly skilled Africans
back to where the came from.
Had Lincoln lived he might have offset his disastrous policies by sending
all the former slaves back where they would be free to work out their
destiny free of white oppression.
PS The question of units of measurement is a non-issue. Electrical
engineers have been working in metric for many years, even in the USA. "American units" might be hanging on in many areas, but not in the
electrical world.
I was shcoked. Not by the breast -- I already knew she had two of them
-- but by the ugly ornament attached by a hole through the nipple. I've always been put off by people who mutilate their bodies.
Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged
your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 02:49:11 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
I do not know if it is possible to calculate the position of a land
without a chronometer (or a radio), somehow.
There is theoretically a way involving observations of the Moon. It’s
quite complicated, especially if you’re trying to do it without modern calculating devices.
When John Harrison offered up his chronometers to be considered for
the prize under the Longitude Act, the astronomers on the judging
panel were clearly biased against mechanical devices: they kept trying
to prove the lunar observation method, even after repeated failures to
do it properly.
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:11:33 +0000, Nuno Silva wrote:
I'm a bit rusty in my knowledge of these topics (and it probably was
never that much knowledge to begin with), but weren't there astronomical tools that allowed at least some degree of position awareness?
Latitude was easy, longitude difficult without an accurate chronometer.
On 16/03/2026 20:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:13, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:55:40 +0000, The Natural PhilosopherTrue, After that the African nations SOLD their criminals and prisoners
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 15/03/2026 22:27, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
We USAians are a stubborn lot, and since England and Europe >>>>> inActually that was Australia. We *sent* the criminals there.
general sent a lot of criminals here we likely are more stubborn than >>>>> most so we cling to our own system of measurements in many respects >>>>
America was colonised by people fleeing from justice, or sufficiently >>>> religiously intolerant that they were shunned in Europe, or people so >>>> poor that even America looked attractive...In short the dregs of
Europe.
As I remember reading, Australia became interesting to the British when >>> America's revolution made it useful to find a substitute place to send >>> those criminals.
of war to America.
Further degrading the gene pool :-)
Locating where they were at sea was much improved by more accurateSince Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I
clocks -- finding Australia after sailing acros the Indian Ocean had
been a bit problematic before they knew where they were, east-west.
find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
Its equally hard to miss Australia sailing south east.
Just follow the correct line of latitude from e.g. Cape Town
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
On 2026-03-17 09:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
war is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
And put us into a death trap. And be furious if we don't accept being
killed and destroyed.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Sun, 15 Mar 2026 11:09:32 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
'Nodding donkeys' would be appropriate for Trump's men too,
There was a P G Wodehouse story where the Big Boss was followed around
by a gaggle of Yes-Men and Nodders.
Every time the Big Boss made a pronouncement, the Yes-Men got to say
"Yes". The Nodders were a lower rank; all they could do was Nod.
Career advancement for the Nodders was to someday be promoted to a
Yes-Man.
Thanks, looked it up.
The story title is 'The Nodder',
and it describes a whole hierarcy of toadyism,
On 17/03/2026 00:10, Peter Moylan wrote:
PS The question of units of measurement is a non-issue. Electrical engineers have been working in metric for many years, even in the USA. "American units" might be hanging on in many areas, but not in the electrical world.
That was precisely my point.
Standardisation of units is no cure for random stupidity and incompetence.
On 2026-03-17 00:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2026-03-16, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/16/26 13:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:13, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:55:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
But in those days sailing in any open direction was problematic due to >> the small ships and the lack of later navigational instruments. ItSince Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I >>>> find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
still is not
easy as the Oceans and seas present enormous challenges then and now.
I'm a bit rusty in my knowledge of these topics (and it probably was
never that much knowledge to begin with), but weren't there astronomical tools that allowed at least some degree of position awareness?
The North-South position you can determine by looking at the position (height) of the Sun at local noon (you need to know the date and have
some tables). But to know the East-West position, you need to look at
what hour is the local noon. The stars give similar information. So you
need an accurate clock that keeps the correct time for months.
I do not know if it is possible to calculate the position of a land
without a chronometer (or a radio), somehow.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:10:26 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
Stability of the electricity grid has been a problem for many
decades now, although few people realise who close we've been
pushing to the edge of instability.
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to broaden the
peak at the top of the curve where the system is supposed to sit, to
form a little valley up there to make it more resistant to shocks. But
there will always be a limit to how much abuse it can take, and if you
get pushed beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
On 16/03/2026 23:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
I'm a bit rusty in my knowledge of these topics (and it probably was
never that much knowledge to begin with), but weren't there astronomical tools that allowed at least some degree of position awareness?
The sextant allowed easy calculation of latitude, because that is a
direct function of the height of the midday sun. Plus knowing the day of
the year.
But you need accurate time - of midday or sunrise etc - to tell longitude. Which is why, in general ships arrived at the correct latitude of their destination and then sailed until they got there.
PS The question of units of measurement is a non-issue. Electrical
engineers have been working in metric for many years, even in the USA. "American units" might be hanging on in many areas, but not in the
electrical world.
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
--
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
Jonathan Swift.
To help you differentiate them in the future, Marco Rubio is the one
in the shoes three sizes to big, and Ron DeSantis is the one with
lifts in his boots to make him look taller.
I've seen an essay/article that argued American violence is largely >attributable to the slavery experience. And it affected both races.
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
On 17/03/2026 11:58, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 09:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
war is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
And put us into a death trap. And be furious if we don't accept being
killed and destroyed.
Well there is no doubt that European NATO is way more competent than the
USA when it comes to anything beyond massive air assault, I think we should Do a Deal. A Billion dollars for every ship-day spent on station
and $50million for every European life lost.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 00:11, Nuno Silva wrote:
On 2026-03-16, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/16/26 13:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:13, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:55:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
But in those days sailing in any open direction was problematic due to >>>> the small ships and the lack of later navigational instruments. ItSince Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I >>>>>> find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west. >>>>>
still is not
easy as the Oceans and seas present enormous challenges then and now.
I'm a bit rusty in my knowledge of these topics (and it probably was
never that much knowledge to begin with), but weren't there astronomical >>> tools that allowed at least some degree of position awareness?
The North-South position you can determine by looking at the position
(height) of the Sun at local noon (you need to know the date and have
some tables). But to know the East-West position, you need to look at
what hour is the local noon. The stars give similar information. So you
need an accurate clock that keeps the correct time for months.
I do not know if it is possible to calculate the position of a land
without a chronometer (or a radio), somehow.
Of course it is possible, by astronomical observation.
That is why the English and others set up observatories
in strategic locations. (such as Cape Town, Jamaica, etc.)
In harbour near an observatory captains could take the time signals
in order to know how far theur chronometer(s) had drifted, [1]
Jan
[1] The noon gun at Cape Town is still being fired daily.
It is the last surviving one of its kind,
and also the oldest surviving and still functional guns.
On 17/03/26 00:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:13, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 12:55:40 +0000, The Natural PhilosopherTrue, After that the African nations SOLD their criminals and
<tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 15/03/2026 22:27, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
We USAians are a stubborn lot, and since England and Europe in
general sent a lot of criminals here we likely are more
stubborn than most so we cling to our own system of
measurements in many respects
Actually that was Australia. We *sent* the criminals there.
America was colonised by people fleeing from justice, or
sufficiently religiously intolerant that they were shunned in
Europe, or people so poor that even America looked
attractive...In short the dregs of Europe.
As I remember reading, Australia became interesting to the British
when America's revolution made it useful to find a substitute place
to send those criminals.
prisoners of war to America.
Further degrading the gene pool :-)
Locating where they were at sea was much improved by more accurate
clocks -- finding Australia after sailing acros the Indian Ocean
had been a bit problematic before they knew where they were,
east-west.
Since Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I
find that problematic...
As rbowman siad, it's hard to miss the Americas, unless you go so far
south that you;re in danger of hitting Antarctica. Finding land is easy. >Finding the right bit of land is maybe a bit harder.
A problem with the route from Europe to Australia is that the ships had
to run across the bottom of Australia. Too far north and you'll hit the >coast. Too far south and you're in really dangerous seas: shipwreck >territory.
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged
your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
"Eugenic" notions of gene-pool quality as rbowman seems to espouse
have precious little to do with genetic diversity or long-term
population advantages and much more to do with lending the weight
of pseudo- scientific authority to old established prejudices.
If you just pretend that "criminal" or other "undesirable" traits
are hereditary, it gets real easy to tar a whole *group* you don't
like with that brush, just by claiming they had some Very Assuredly
Real defect of ancestry back in the mists of time, and your own
bigotry is therefore rendered Logical And Objectively Correct.
Amazing how that works!
How quaint.
The gene pool speaks
On 16/03/2026 09:03, Ross Clark wrote:
Does any language use Yoda word order? 😉
German IIRC
Of course you do, you cute little reactionary.
Or they crashed into the West coast of Australia when turning North
again too late,
Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> wrote or quoted:
I've seen an essay/article that argued American violence is largely
attributable to the slavery experience. And it affected both races.
Maybe think twice about whether you really need to post that to
"comp.os.linux.misc" (under the subject "GNU").
Den 17.03.2026 kl. 00.03 skrev Peter Moylan:
I was shcoked. Not by the breast -- I already knew she had two of them
-- but by the ugly ornament attached by a hole through the nipple. I've
always been put off by people who mutilate their bodies.
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures,
and I remember a picture of some people who had holed their ears and
then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:50:11 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
It's difficult to quote Trump because he often says one thing in a
speech but then - later in the speech - he says the same thing but
with slightly different wording.
What I hear him saying was, in effect, "We don't need help, but other countries are not willing to help us now that we need help."
It's the same thing as his statement that we're at war but it's not a
war.
On 2026-03-17 13:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 11:58, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 09:50, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
war is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
And put us into a death trap. And be furious if we don't accept being
killed and destroyed.
Well there is no doubt that European NATO is way more competent than
the USA when it comes to anything beyond massive air assault, I think
we should Do a Deal. A Billion dollars for every ship-day spent on
station and $50million for every European life lost.
How much for each ship lost?
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to 'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:51:39 +0000
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
"Eugenic" notions of gene-pool quality as rbowman seems to espouse
have precious little to do with genetic diversity or long-term
population advantages and much more to do with lending the weight
of pseudo- scientific authority to old established prejudices.
If you just pretend that "criminal" or other "undesirable" traits
are hereditary, it gets real easy to tar a whole *group* you don't
like with that brush, just by claiming they had some Very Assuredly
Real defect of ancestry back in the mists of time, and your own
bigotry is therefore rendered Logical And Objectively Correct.
Amazing how that works!
How quaint.
The gene pool speaks
Sure does! (as the legally-blind left eye I got from my maternal grand- father can attest.) It's just funny how the list of supposedly "hered-
itary" behavioral defects claimed about Group B by Group A lines up so
neatly with the things Group A was already saying about Group B when
Gregor Mendel was still toddling around a farmhouse in Silesia. Mighty convenient, that.
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:13:15 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Of course you do, you cute little reactionary.
Oops, outed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:18:14 +0100, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 17.03.2026 kl. 00.03 skrev Peter Moylan:
I was shcoked. Not by the breast -- I already knew she had two of them
-- but by the ugly ornament attached by a hole through the nipple. I've
always been put off by people who mutilate their bodies.
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures,
and I remember a picture of some people who had holed their ears and
then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip_plate
Ears are one thing but in what universe is a lip plate a good idea?
Den 17.03.2026 kl. 00.03 skrev Peter Moylan:
I was shcoked. Not by the breast -- I already knew she had two of them
-- but by the ugly ornament attached by a hole through the nipple. I've
always been put off by people who mutilate their bodies.
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures, and I remember a picture of some people who had holed their
ears and then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
On 17/03/26 09:49, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
Also, he’s already destroyed 100% of their military capability.
So all the trouble is being caused by the remaining 0%.
He keeps announcing that the special military operation is almost over,
but it is showing signs of dragging on for years.
Our best chance of regime change is after the US mid-term elections.
Your Dark Enlightenment fellows want to return to those thrilling
days of yesteryear when Kings ruled and City States were the largest political entitities. No thank you.
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures, and I remember a picture of some people who had holed
their ears and then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
Ditto for the lower lip.
On 3/17/26 11:48, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 22:13:15 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Of course you do, you cute little reactionary.
Oops, outed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
I go along with Churchill's opinion of Democracy which is that
it is only better than all the other systems tried in the history of
mankind. Your Dark Enlightenment fellows want to return to those
thrilling days of yesteryear when Kings ruled and City States were
the largest political entitities.
No thank you.
[...] A regime change in the U.S. would help. All we have to do is find a suitable replacement. Hopefully one exists.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Growth for the sake of
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | growth is the ideology
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | of the cancer cell.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Edward Abbey
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures,
and I remember a picture of some people who had holed their ears and
then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip_plate
Ears are one thing but in what universe is a lip plate a good idea?
Well ears are two things for most people but how about the people who put more and more brass rings around the neck to lengthen it and incidentally weaken it so that without the brass rings the head got floppy.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged
your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
PS The question of units of measurement is a non-issue. Electrical
engineers have been working in metric for many years, even in the USA.
"American units" might be hanging on in many areas, but not in the
electrical world.
That is not surprising.
'The Electricians' messed up the already existing coherent unit system
to begin with. (so we are stuck with the mess that became the SI)
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
On 3/16/26 20:15, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 17/03/26 09:49, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:11:29 +0100, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
Den 16.03.2026 kl. 10.24 skrev Pancho:
You talk about bad wars, but when was the last time you had a
good president? This morning, I see your latest dementia patient
wants Europe to secure the Straits of Hormuz. Obviously, if the
UK sends a warship anywhere near Iran the Russians will give the
Iranians a state-of-the-art missile to sink it.
Besides since Trump already has won the war, why should we send
ships?
Also, he’s already destroyed 100% of their military capability. So
all the trouble is being caused by the remaining 0%.
He keeps announcing that the special military operation is almost over,
but it is showing signs of dragging on for years.
SOME bits WILL go on for years. Remember
the volume of FANATICS in Iran. Gotta keep
a close eye on them.
Our best chance of regime change is after the US mid-term elections.
Won't change to anything better alas - probably
MUCH worse ........
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
On 2026-03-17 13:24, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
PS The question of units of measurement is a non-issue. Electrical
engineers have been working in metric for many years, even in the USA.
"American units" might be hanging on in many areas, but not in the
electrical world.
That is not surprising.
'The Electricians' messed up the already existing coherent unit system
to begin with. (so we are stuck with the mess that became the SI)
Mess? Why? :-?
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another >time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of
the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:35:23 GMT
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
So have I. As a child I read some books by explorers of foreign
cultures, and I remember a picture of some people who had holed
their ears and then inserted larger and larger discs in the hole.
Ditto for the lower lip.
Whereas in Our Modern Age, we have...um, people tanning their nuts and smashing themselves in the face with hammers.
Fashion is fundamentally insane.
Or they crashed into the West coast of Australia when turning North
again too late,
Unfortunately, in order for democracy to work it needs a minimum
level of intelligence, along with a sense of social responsibility.
On 2026-03-17, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
On 17/03/26 09:49, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
Also, he’s already destroyed 100% of their military capability.
So all the trouble is being caused by the remaining 0%.
And he's already obliterated their nuclear capability,
and that remaining 0% is causing trouble too.
He keeps announcing that the special military operation is almost over,
but it is showing signs of dragging on for years.
Our best chance of regime change is after the US mid-term elections.
A regime change in the U.S. would help. All we have to do is
find a suitable replacement. Hopefully one exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip_plate
Ears are one thing but in what universe is a lip plate a good idea?
On 16/03/2026 20:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Its equally hard to miss Australia sailing south east.Since Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I
find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
Just follow the correct line of latitude from e.g. Cape Town
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:50:11 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 17/03/2026 00:00, Tony Cooper wrote:
Secretary Rubio has a history of opposing US involvement in foreignMeanwhile TACO has reverse weaselled from 'we don't need Europe- the war
wars and is now pursuing that goal by aiding and abetting our Dear
Leader in starting foreign wars that can be ended.
is won' to
'we need NATO to sort out the mess we have made'
My latest impression is that he is still saying both "We've won"
and "Now you'd better help."
Well, he's provoked the drone crews on one side of the Strait of
Hormuz, his destroyers are nowhere around where they are needed for
escorts, and his minesweepers are 4000 miles and at least 2
refuelings away.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
A problem with the route from Europe to Australia is that the ships
had to run across the bottom of Australia. Too far north and you'll
hit the coast. Too far south and you're in really dangerous seas:
shipwreck territory.
To be explicit -- hitting the west coast of Australia was NOT
desirable,
so they aimed at the bottom. I forget what I read, but I think that unfavorable winds made it tough to beat the way south. Currents,
too?
When Australia established prisons, they were on the west coast. No
one was expected to try to escape from prison, into the wastelands
that surrounded them. I was impressed by "The Fatal Shore" by Robert
Hughes. (He may have overstated the brutality of those prisons.)
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:10:26 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
Stability of the electricity grid has been a problem for many
decades now, although few people realise who close we've been
pushing to the edge of instability.
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to broaden the
peak at the top of the curve where the system is supposed to sit, to
form a little valley up there to make it more resistant to shocks.
But there will always be a limit to how much abuse it can take, and
if you get pushed beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to
broaden the peak at the top of the curve where the system is
supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there to make it more
resistant to shocks. But there will always be a limit to how much
abuse it can take, and if you get pushed beyond that, then down the
mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against
its own interests.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:25:58 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to
broaden the peak at the top of the curve where the system is
supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there to make it more
resistant to shocks. But there will always be a limit to how much
abuse it can take, and if you get pushed beyond that, then down the
mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
No. Think of the landscape as a multidimensional space involving the
total operational state of the various components of the electricity generation and distribution system, and the height as the desirability
of that state. Gravity represents how the system tends to move to a
new state from any given position.
The highest point is where everything is functioning as it should.
Move too far from that, and you find yourself on a slope where it
becomes very hard to move back up rather than down.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:24:34 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Or they crashed into the West coast of Australia when turning North
again too late,
Old sailors’ tip†: if there’s land under your keel instead of sea, then maybe you should back up a bit before turning ...
†That I just made up
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:37:49 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon. >>
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another
time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of
the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
Clever! Thanks.
How fast the sun was rising or falling was probably tabled up, too.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct,
the US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another enormous cost.
On 18/03/26 08:45, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
If he invades Cuba, he'll lost track of what he was up to in Ukraine and Venezuela and Iran and ... . He already seems to have forgotten about
his plans to destroy the USA.
How many eggs do you have to juggle before dropping the whole lot?
On 2026-03-17, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:[...]
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
Oh no, here come the daylight saving time arguments again...
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:[...]
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon. >>Oh no, here come the daylight saving time arguments again...
I'm really looking forward to when our clocks change to BST on the 29th.
I detest long dark evenings, and early bright dawns are nearly as bad.
I'd rather that the working day began at sunrise so that we all rose
with the lark as the animal kingdom does. Who wants the tyranny of
the clock?
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct, the
US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another
enormous cost.
I hope I last long enough to vote for a really competent andserious
candidate again.
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:18:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I see the future of America to be brown people by and large.
I like the idea because I am so pale it hurts.
We have similar visions. I see the future of America as another failed
third world country.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
I think the Cubans just did that.
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left.
But then you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:11:07 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I hope I last long enough to vote for a really competent andserious
candidate again.
Again? Maybe Eisenhower was competent but I was too young to make a
judgment.
It is been ages since I see that type of symbols on footnotes!
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left.
But then you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe
On 18/03/26 06:03, rbowman wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lip_plate
Ears are one thing but in what universe is a lip plate a good idea?
It saves having to wash the crockery.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left. But then
you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the--
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:[...]
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
Oh no, here come the daylight saving time arguments again...
I'm really looking forward to when our clocks change to BST on the 29th.
I detest long dark evenings, and early bright dawns are nearly as bad.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:25:58 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more
redundancy to broaden the peak at the top of the curve where
the system is supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there
to make it more resistant to shocks. But there will always be a
limit to how much abuse it can take, and if you get pushed
beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
No. Think of the landscape as a multidimensional space involving
the total operational state of the various components of the
electricity generation and distribution system, and the height as
the desirability of that state. Gravity represents how the system
tends to move to a new state from any given position.
The highest point is where everything is functioning as it should.
Move too far from that, and you find yourself on a slope where it
becomes very hard to move back up rather than down.
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to
this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish
collapse.
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
We also have modern barbarian sympathizers who still put holes in
their ears or other suitable protrusions and put larger and larger
things in those holes not earrings or ear studs which I happen to
use but not to the extent of some of my prior close acquaintances
who had multiple holes with multiple studs in their shell-like ears.
But I see people on the bus frequently with holes in their ears
filled with stainess steel tubes of an inch inner diameter. I
don't understand this form of body modification but apparently it
expresses something I do not feel.
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
On 18/03/26 17:26, c186282 wrote:
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
His best card is his unpredictability. So look at it this way. While
everyone is looking at the Strait of Hormuz, he sends an invasion fleet
to Greenland ...
Le 18/03/2026 à 07:28, Peter Moylan a écrit :
On 18/03/26 17:26, c186282 wrote:
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
His best card is his unpredictability. So look at it this way. While
everyone is looking at the Strait of Hormuz, he sends an invasion fleet
to Greenland ...
He's like a dotty relative, whom one has to humour because… he has an H- bomb in his shed.
Hmm. When Greenland blocks the Denmark Strait, will he ask us for help?
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks should do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it gradually
day by day.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct,
the US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another enormous cost.
I don't
understand this form of body modification but apparently it expresses something
I do not feel.
Sadly and unfortunately even if we Impeach and dethrone Trump his
toady JD Vance is waiting in the wings. He is in the pocket of
Russel Voight who wrote Project 2025, which is a plan by Christian Dominionists who happen to be White Supremacists as well to replace
our secular Republic with a Church-State with death for all the
LBGTQ+ people, removal of the franchise (voting right) for Women.
This will redefine white as non-Hispanic, non-Native American, and
Black people will once again be chattel or indentured. Very likely
they will demand a minimum of property or wealth to be enfranchised.
I have strong disagreement with such a program. The Congress will be
in the Control of Democrats so we have to wait for the Speaker(aka
Squeaker) to be replaced before we can get JD Vance out of the Oval
Office.
I hope I last long enough to vote for a really competent and serious candidate again.
On 18/03/2026 01:36, Tony Cooper wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, "Carlos E.R."That's a likely scenario.
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct,
the US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another
enormous cost.
The thing about the USA that I first noticed on visiting back in 1973,
is that being filthy rich does not make people any smarter . In fact the reverse is true. Since people have access to wealth just by being born American, there is no incentive to work smart to acquire it.
As a result the middle classes are a generation of children who never
grew up, by and large.
Now whilst I find that admirable in many ways, it isn't up to running geopolitics.
And with a president in diapers, its frankly embarrassing.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 16:11:07 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I hope I last long enough to vote for a really competent andserious candidate again.
Again? Maybe Eisenhower was competent but I was too young to make a judgment.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
I can't comment on the Spanish case because I don't know enough about
it. What I do know is this: if anyone tells you there's a simple answer,
he's talking through his arse.
On 17 Mar 2026 01:25:28 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:18:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I see the future of America to be brown people by and large.
I like the idea because I am so pale it hurts.
We have similar visions. I see the future of America as another failed
third world country.
The USA is the First World.
If it fails, the Frist World fails. Don't
try to shift blame to the Third World. The First World must own its
own failures.
Worse in times like we have imposed on Iran, military leaders can
issue their own orders as they see fit. They have a large Revolutionary Islamic force and a large army. No wonder they are aiming at the
other nations which host the American forces
On 18/03/26 14:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left. But then
you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
Two. If you want Trump-style regime change, you have to shoot Vance
before shooting Trump.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
On 18/03/26 17:26, c186282 wrote:
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
His best card is his unpredictability. So look at it this way. While
everyone is looking at the Strait of Hormuz, he sends an invasion fleet
to Greenland ...
On 18/03/2026 06:16, Peter Moylan wrote:
I can't comment on the Spanish case because I don't know enough about
it. What I do know is this: if anyone tells you there's a simple answer,
he's talking through his arse.
No, its very clear. Although the chain of events was complex enough
for all those involved to say what you just said, in essence the
answer is simple.
Like a car with no dampers on a bumpy road, what finally breaks is
complex, but the root cause is bumps + no dampers.
Electricity demand is bumpy. And intermittent renewable generation is
also bumpy.
In a normal grid there is damping due to the inertial energy storage
of rotating steam and gas turbines, or even water turbines.
In a renewable grid fed by inverters, there is none whatsoever. That's
why they are adding batteries at huge expense. Worse, the inverters
wont just refuse to supply more power, if the system frequency falls
below a given limit they will trip out making the problem even worse.
All the 'complexity' arguments are smoke and mirrors by renewable
advocates who are desperately trying to hide the fact that
intermittent renewable energy is totally unfit to run a reliable
secure grid.
And those who have been proposing it are incompetent greedy little shits
When Greenland blocks the Denmark Strait, will he ask us for help?
The Greenland thing was a ruse, a test, 'motivational'.
Trump wanted to see if Denmark/EU/NATO would actually
put the needed money and resources into Greenland.
It won't.
So fuck 'em.
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks
should do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it
gradually day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours.
Or school hours
On 2026-03-17, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
Oh no, here come the daylight saving time arguments again...
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids was
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
It seems renewables in .es are now being fitted with the capacity to do--
what non-renewables failed to do on 2025-04-28.
It sounds to me you're saying it needs what the Spanish grid already had
in place, in order to cope with what happened, and then you ignore that
what failed in that was*fossil fuel plants*, not renewables.
On 3/17/26 18:13, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
Oh it does. They have decided to be informed thru right wing rags (news papers) and online sites where Republicans are praised and
Democratic Party members demonized, and i mean literally demonized.
On 18/03/2026 01:13, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:Not really. Adolf Hitler was a perfect example.
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American
development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the
wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those
countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class
vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against itsThere are racist parties - mainly on the Left - and there are anti mass immigration parties - mainly on the right,
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have
prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
On 2026-03-18 10:54, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 01:13, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:Not really. Adolf Hitler was a perfect example.
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American
development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the >>> wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those
countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class
vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against itsThere are racist parties - mainly on the Left - and there are anti
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
mass immigration parties - mainly on the right,
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of the
world.
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have
prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:25:58 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to
broaden the peak at the top of the curve where the system is
supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there to make it more
resistant to shocks. But there will always be a limit to how much
abuse it can take, and if you get pushed beyond that, then down the
mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
No. Think of the landscape as a multidimensional space involving the
total operational state of the various components of the electricity
generation and distribution system, and the height as the desirability
of that state. Gravity represents how the system tends to move to a
new state from any given position.
The highest point is where everything is functioning as it should.
Move too far from that, and you find yourself on a slope where it
becomes very hard to move back up rather than down.
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
On 3/18/26 05:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 01:36, Tony Cooper wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, "Carlos E.R."That's a likely scenario.
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct,
the US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another
enormous cost.
The USA can't afford to float all of Cuba.
Le 18/03/2026 à 07:28, Peter Moylan a écrit :
On 18/03/26 17:26, c186282 wrote:
On 3/17/26 05:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Disagree.
His best card is his unpredictability. So look at it this way. While
everyone is looking at the Strait of Hormuz, he sends an invasion fleet
to Greenland ...
He's like a dotty relative, whom one has to humour because… he has an H- bomb in his shed.
Hmm. When Greenland blocks the Denmark Strait, will he ask us for help?
Inverters are normally designed so that they follow the grid frequency.
But they can be designed to enforce a frequency and phase, ie, to
provide inertia (actually more inertia than iron). This is being done
now, I posted an article about this two days ago.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:25:58 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to
broaden the peak at the top of the curve where the system is
supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there to make it more
resistant to shocks. But there will always be a limit to how much
abuse it can take, and if you get pushed beyond that, then down the
mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
No. Think of the landscape as a multidimensional space involving the
total operational state of the various components of the electricity generation and distribution system, and the height as the desirability
of that state. Gravity represents how the system tends to move to a
new state from any given position.
The highest point is where everything is functioning as it should.
Move too far from that, and you find yourself on a slope where it
becomes very hard to move back up rather than down.
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, "Carlos E.R."
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
The various Cuban governments have done a pretty good job of
destroying Cuba without our help.
What I expect to happen is that Cuba will continue to self-destruct,
the US will step in and mismanage things, and the US will bear another enormous cost.
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:10:26 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
Stability of the electricity grid has been a problem for many
decades now, although few people realise who close we've been
pushing to the edge of instability.
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to broaden the
peak at the top of the curve where the system is supposed to sit, to
form a little valley up there to make it more resistant to shocks.
But there will always be a limit to how much abuse it can take, and
if you get pushed beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus torque
angle. You would never voluntarily run a generator at the top of that
curve, because that is the point of instability. You always have to keep
the generated power safely below the theoretical maximum.
The problem with a power system is that all the generators and loads are interconnected through the network, so of course they interact. You
cannot assess the stability margin of a generator by looking only at
that generator. Luckily, simulation software exists to model large
networks, but it takes multiple runs of those simulations to figure out
where the vulnerable points in the network are, and a well-educated
person is needed to understand the results.
On 2026-03-18 10:54, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 01:13, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:Not really. Adolf Hitler was a perfect example.
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American
development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the >> wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those
countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class
vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against itsThere are racist parties - mainly on the Left - and there are anti mass immigration parties - mainly on the right,
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of the world.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:24:34 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Or they crashed into the West coast of Australia when turning North
again too late,
Old sailors' tip†: if there's land under your keel instead of sea, then maybe you should back up a bit before turning ...
†That I just made up
On 17/03/26 19:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 20:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Its equally hard to miss Australia sailing south east.Since Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I
find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
Just follow the correct line of latitude from e.g. Cape Town
If you sail south east from almost anywhere in east Africa, you will
miss Australia
On 2026-03-16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:37, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-16 13:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well spain managed to crash their entire electricity grid despite
On 15/03/2026 21:13, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Gosh. It is amazing to us in Spain that there are people out there
not using the International System of Measures (or Units).
America is big enough and isolated enough to cope with different
standards.
Mars Climate Orbiter.
using metric units.
And that's got nothing to do with different units AFAIK, although do I applaud you refraining from the far-right bullshit this time...
Although I'd like to remark the inaccuracy of "*their* entire
electricity grid". The lack of engagement of fossil fuel plants which
would have prevented the blackout ultimately also crashed REN, not just
REE.
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have
prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:57:28 +0100
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of the world. >>This guy is pretty obvious with his right-wing views. I suggest you drop
the xposts or use your KF.
Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:What I said was "Its equally hard to miss Australia sailing south east."...
On 17/03/26 19:47, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 20:40, rbowman wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:19:57 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Its equally hard to miss Australia sailing south east.Since Australia the same size as the USA (excluding Alaska/Hawaii) I >>>>> find that problematic...
True, but it's really, really hard to miss the Americas sailing west.
Just follow the correct line of latitude from e.g. Cape Town
If you sail south east from almost anywhere in east Africa, you will
miss Australia
But you may get quite cold,
Jan
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have
prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
Jan
On 18/03/26 14:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left. But then
you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
Two. If you want Trump-style regime change, you have to shoot Vance
before shooting Trump.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
On 18/03/2026 12:24, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:57:28 +0100
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of the world.This guy is pretty obvious with his right-wing views. I suggest you drop the xposts or use your KF.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
My views reflect my life experience. They are not culled from any peer group.
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a shameless
bid to attract the Islamic vote
The Right oppose immigration, not any particular race. If anything they simply don't want to be flooded with hordes of unproductive people.
It is fashionable for the left to call this racist.
But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of Robert
Mugabe or Idi Amin.
Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
On 2026-03-18, Sn!pe <snipeco.2@gmail.com> wrote:As you probably know, Saskatchewan is always UTC-6, defined as Central Standard time. As a result, we (well, I) look forward to the rest of the country and the USA doing away with the time changes.
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:[...]
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
Oh no, here come the daylight saving time arguments again...
I'm really looking forward to when our clocks change to BST on the 29th.
I detest long dark evenings, and early bright dawns are nearly as bad.
My wife is a morning person; the change to daylight saving time
depresses her because all of a sudden the mornings are dark.
This also creates concern over children who find themselves
going to school in the dark.
My beef with daylight time is astronomical: the very definition
of noon (i.e. mid-day) is when the sun is at its highest point
in the sky - which is no longer true when the clocks jump ahead
an hour. Fields which need a stable clock - e.g. aviation -
use UTC, but then I have to remember that our time zone offset
changes from -8 hours to -7.
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
bliss--
On 3/15/26 20:56, rbowman wrote:
At least Trump is truthful enough to rename it 'Department of War'. Too
bad it hasn't unequivocally won a war in a very long time.
What about Grenada!
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted:Actually I have him in my filters. But other people keep quoting him.
On 18/03/2026 12:24, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:57:28 +0100
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of the world.This guy is pretty obvious with his right-wing views. I suggest you drop >>> the xposts or use your KF.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
My views reflect my life experience. They are not culled from any peer
group.
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a shameless
bid to attract the Islamic vote
We see the same thing in France with the far-left party La France Insoumise.
The Right oppose immigration, not any particular race. If anything they
simply don't want to be flooded with hordes of unproductive people.
It is fashionable for the left to call this racist.
But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of Robert
Mugabe or Idi Amin.
Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
On 17/03/2026 22:55, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I don't
understand this form of body modification but apparently it expresses
something
I do not feel.
It is just that in an era of relative wealth and ease, and mass media, people are treated like consumers of commodities.
Body art is a crude way to make themselves slightly unique. But if
everybody does it, you might as well not do it at all, and therefore
stand out from the crowd.
On 2026-03-18 00:15, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
My beef with daylight time is astronomical: the very definition
of noon (i.e. mid-day) is when the sun is at its highest point
in the sky - which is no longer true when the clocks jump ahead
an hour. Fields which need a stable clock - e.g. aviation -
use UTC, but then I have to remember that our time zone offset
changes from -8 hours to -7.
As you probably know, Saskatchewan is always UTC-6, defined as Central Standard time. As a result, we (well, I) look forward to the rest of the country and the USA doing away with the time changes.
You mentioned local noon. When we lived in the farm (40km east of
Regina) I noticed that when I looked south at noon, the sun was not
lined up with the north/south road we were on. Turns out local (true)
noon, is close to an hour after the CST noon.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
On 3/18/26 08:05, athel.cb@gmail.com wrote:
Actually I have him in my filters. But other people keep quoting
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted:
On 18/03/2026 12:24, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:57:28 +0100
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in myThis guy is pretty obvious with his right-wing views. I suggest
corner of the world.
you drop the xposts or use your KF.
him.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up. My views reflect
my life experience. They are not culled from any peer group. In
the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
We see the same thing in France with the far-left party La France
Insoumise.
The Right oppose immigration, not any particular race. If
anything they simply don't want to be flooded with hordes of
unproductive people.
Immigrants are among the most productive, entrepreneurial and
law-abiding people in the USA. Likely they would do the same in
other nations. Of course some are criminals but in the USA born in
the USA citizens are the most criminal. Some of the USA Citizens are
of course more law-abiding.
It is fashionable for the left to call this racist.
Because it is directed at specific groups just as Trump tried to
import only white South Africans claiming that they were
discriminated against by the South African Government.
immigrants are from Central or South America or Mexico and Trump and
the Republicans say they are stealing American jobs. Actually Mexican
labor is vital to farms and construction in the USA. The ICE raids
have frighten 70% of the workers away from the fields which does not
help the cost of food. Trump thinks Asylum Seekers are running from
mental hospitals not from the gangs and brutal right wing groups in
the nations. Recently he has revoked Temporary Protected Status from
Haitians (black folks) and Afghanistanis given refuge because they
worked with the US Military in our recent 20 year Afganistan
adventure.
But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of
Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin.
"Black Lives Matter" is counter White Racism and is due to the
murder of numerous African Americans by Law Enforcement Officers not
just in certain cities but all over the USA. Use of deadly force,
whether firearms which killed an ER Nurse in her bed or the knee on
the throat should not be without punishment. Mugabe and Idi Amin are
the heroes Trump longs to emulate. Crazy as hell with no regard for
the consequences of their actions
Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
As to Iran and its demented Sharia Law (actually tribal law), he
wants demented Christian Law (white racist tribal laws) in the USA as
he is carrying out Project 2025. Or Russia: Trump envies Putin and
wants to be more like him. He continues to avoid the facts of the
matter of the Russian-Ukrainian War which started before the recent incursion. The Ukraine traded the nuclear bombs it had in the
Soviet Republic of Ukraine for national Sovereignty and Security
Guarntees which Putin violated when he put his ill concieved plan
into motion, trying to emulate the actions of Hitler's Generals who
did Blitzkrieg on Poland. But it started with the invasion of the
Crimean peninsula in 2014 then a vote under Russian Army occupation
to join the Russian Federation. Why no one did anything about that
earlier I do not know but the USA was still preoccupied with
Afganistan.
We currently have government of the Worst in the USA with very poor
choices of the people he has put in charge of the Government
department seemingly to put those departments out of business. He
believes what Putin tells him over what American Intelligence briefs
him on. Soon under his Aegis, American Intelligence will become a
term of derision.
I did not vote for Trump ever nor would I ever except perhaps on
threat of death. But I am old so I might just chose death over
Trump.
bliss - Tomahawk missiles for the Ukraine would have solved a lot of problems.
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
On 18/03/2026 18:02, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
Sadly people like you call moderates 'far right'
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before
Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the American Mob.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before
Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the
American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
On 18/03/2026 12:24, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 11:57:28 +0100
Mmm? I have not seen any racist party on the left in my corner of theThis guy is pretty obvious with his right-wing views. I suggest you drop
world.
the xposts or use your KF.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
My views reflect my life experience. They are not culled from any peer group.
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a shameless
bid to attract the Islamic vote
The Right oppose immigration, not any particular race. If anything they simply don't want to be flooded with hordes of unproductive people.
It is fashionable for the left to call this racist.
But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of Robert
Mugabe or Idi Amin.
Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks
should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it gradually
day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours.
Or school hours
On 2026-03-18 14:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
This is not racism.
On 3/17/26 20:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left.
But then you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe
Dictators have supporters so you never end up with only one to
shoot. Why do you think the aristocrats head rolled during the F
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:31:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks
should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it gradually
day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours.
Or school hours
Don't you have some sort of double daylight saving thing?
On 18/03/26 14:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left. But then you're
up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a benevolent
dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
Two. If you want Trump-style regime change, you have to shoot Vance
before shooting Trump.
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have
prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
On 3/17/26 22:30, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 14:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left. But then
you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
Two. If you want Trump-style regime change, you have to shoot Vance
before shooting Trump.
And if you do it before the Democrats control the Congress then you
will have to kill Mike Johnson Speaker of the House. Rubio comes after
him but he might be just ok.
Not that I advocate killing anyone, no never, even with a proper trial.
Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:10:26 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
Stability of the electricity grid has been a problem for many
decades now, although few people realise who close we've been
pushing to the edge of instability.
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is inherently
unstable. All you can do is build in more redundancy to broaden the
peak at the top of the curve where the system is supposed to sit, to
form a little valley up there to make it more resistant to shocks.
But there will always be a limit to how much abuse it can take, and
if you get pushed beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus torque
angle. You would never voluntarily run a generator at the top of that
curve, because that is the point of instability. You always have to keep
the generated power safely below the theoretical maximum.
The problem with a power system is that all the generators and loads are
interconnected through the network, so of course they interact. You
cannot assess the stability margin of a generator by looking only at
that generator. Luckily, simulation software exists to model large
networks, but it takes multiple runs of those simulations to figure out
where the vulnerable points in the network are, and a well-educated
person is needed to understand the results.
Australia is puny by comparison to the Europe-wide power network.
It is configured and planned on a day to day basis.
They hold a conference and auction each day to plan the next day,
on an hour to hour basis.
Those who need power say how much, those who have it put in bids,
until the plan is complete.
Curiosity: the spot price may go negative for certain hours.
Those who like the game can play too:
some supliers offer contracts with metering by the hour,
(which can also go negative, on rare occasions)
Jan
Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:37, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-16 13:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well spain managed to crash their entire electricity grid despite
On 15/03/2026 21:13, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Gosh. It is amazing to us in Spain that there are people out there >>>>>> not using the International System of Measures (or Units).
America is big enough and isolated enough to cope with different
standards.
Mars Climate Orbiter.
using metric units.
And that's got nothing to do with different units AFAIK, although do I
applaud you refraining from the far-right bullshit this time...
Although I'd like to remark the inaccuracy of "*their* entire
electricity grid". The lack of engagement of fossil fuel plants which
would have prevented the blackout ultimately also crashed REN, not just
REE.
But not France, or anything further away in Europe,
where they managed their things better.
EDF had the loss of the interconnector with Spain stabilised
in half a minute,
On 18/03/2026 18:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
This is not racism.
Then I don't know what is
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> posted:
On 3/15/26 20:56, rbowman wrote:
At least Trump is truthful enough to rename it 'Department of War'. Too bad it hasn't unequivocally won a war in a very long time.
What about Grenada!
Maybe my memory is faulty but my recollection is that they ran away even faster than than they did in Vietnam and Afghanistan when Mrs Thtacher threatened Reagan with her handbag.
On 2026-03-18 14:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/03/2026 13:37, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-16 13:53, The Natural Philosopher wrote:Well spain managed to crash their entire electricity grid despite
On 15/03/2026 21:13, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Gosh. It is amazing to us in Spain that there are people out there >>>>>> not using the International System of Measures (or Units).
America is big enough and isolated enough to cope with different
standards.
Mars Climate Orbiter.
using metric units.
And that's got nothing to do with different units AFAIK, although do I
applaud you refraining from the far-right bullshit this time...
Although I'd like to remark the inaccuracy of "*their* entire
electricity grid". The lack of engagement of fossil fuel plants which
would have prevented the blackout ultimately also crashed REN, not just
REE.
But not France, or anything further away in Europe,
where they managed their things better.
EDF had the loss of the interconnector with Spain stabilised
in half a minute,
The France-Spain interconnection is comparatively low capacity.
My beef with daylight time is astronomical: the very definition
of noon (i.e. mid-day) is when the sun is at its highest point
in the sky - which is no longer true when the clocks jump ahead
an hour.
[...] But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin.
Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
On 18/03/26 13:06, Sn!pe wrote:[...]
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to
this?
Yes and no. There's no short answer, so I'll confine myself to just a
few comments.
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish
collapse.
I can't comment on the Spanish case because I don't know enough about
it. What I do know is this: if anyone tells you there's a simple answer,
he's talking through his arse.
When a power system collapses, it's a snowball process. Some adverse
event, for example a lightning strike, causes a circuit breaker to open, taking one transmission line out of service. That causes a
redistribution of current and power flows. If it so happens that this overloads one line, another circuit breaker opens. That again
redistributes the currents ... I think you can see why I called it a snowball.
To solve that, you build excess capacity into the system. Analysis of
likely failure modes, usually via simulation, can tell you where extra transmission lines are needed, or extra VAR compensators (see below) or whatever. But bad luck can also play a part. If that lightning strike
had hit one hour earlier, it wouldn't have hit a time of peak demand,
and the system would have recovered.
Let's talk about frequency stability. If you start up a synchronous generator, connected to nothing, it will produce a sinusoidal voltage
that depends on its speed, and of course the speed depends on the (non-electrical) machine that's driving it.
If you now connect two such machines (and do it carefully enough so that
the combination doesn't go unstable), they will spontaneously settle on
a compromise frequency, with the machine with the biggest prime mover
being the most influential. Add more machines, and soon you'll have so
much inertia in the system that the mutually agreed frequency remains constant despite any disturbances. Of course a sufficiently large
disturbance can still bring the system down; but the bigger the overall
power system, the more it is resistant to disturbances.
Now, in what might seem a digression, let's look at VAR compensation.
The power flows in the system are actually complex numbers, in the usual formulation, having both a real and a reactive part. The reactive power
might not seem to be doing anything, but in fact the reactive power
balance can have a major influence on stability. You can improve
stability by injecting reactive power in the right place(s). This is
done with what are called VAR compensators.
The traditional VAR compensator, also known as a synchronous condenser,
is a rotating machine. In fact, it's just a generator that is not
producing or consuming any real power. (Apart from the inevitable
losses.) These days, however, we know how to do the same job with a non-rotating electronic device. Which is better? They're both doing the
same job, so the answer is that they're as good as each other. OK, the rotating version is contributing somewhat to frequency stability, but
it's outvoted by all the other machines in the system. The choice
between them is purely a matter of cost.
The big issue is DC vs AC. The rotating generators are all AC devices Renewable sources like solar panels produce DC. To connect to the
network, they must use inverters. Those inverters just synchronise to
the existing AC network, but they don't contribute to its inertia. If I
had my druthers, I would run a high-voltage DC network in parallel with
the existing AC network, and cross-connect them only at a limited number
of locations. The designers have not chosen to go that way.
Once you're producing more DC than AC power, the AC subsystem doesn't
have the same frequency stability as before. That's a solvable problem, though. The designers just have to think it through a little harder.
Australia is puny by comparison to the Europe-wide power network. It
is configured and planned on a day to day basis. They hold a
conference and auction each day to plan the next day, on an hour to
hour basis. Those who need power say how much, those who have it put
in bids, until the plan is complete. Curiosity: the spot price may go negative for certain hours.
On 3/18/26 08:05, athel.cb@gmail.com wrote:
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> posted:
Actually I have him in my filters. But other people keep quoting
him.
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
My views reflect my life experience. They are not culled from any peer
group.
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a shameless >>> bid to attract the Islamic vote
We see the same thing in France with the far-left party La France
Insoumise.
The Right oppose immigration, not any particular race. If anything they
simply don't want to be flooded with hordes of unproductive people.
Immigrants are among the most productive, entrepreneurial and
law-abiding
people in the USA.
But real racism is 'Black lives matter'
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:02, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
Sadly people like you call moderates 'far right'
I have no idea where you got that from. Do I really come across
as a left-wing radical?
Ar an t-ochtú lá déag de mí Márta, scríobh The Natural Philosopher:
> [...] But real racism is 'Black lives matter' or the communism of Robert
> Mugabe or Idi Amin.
>
> Or what goes on in Iran. Or Russia
The Islamic Republic of Iran cares about Shia Islam. Iranians don’t much like
Arabs, mostly for reasons that would, ceteris paribus, be termed racist in a Western European or North American context, but the Islamic Republic of Iran suppports Hezbollah and the Houthis because those profess Shia Islam, despite that Lebanon and Yemen are Arab countries.
I am fully confident that if a community of Bosniaks, a community of the Central African Republic, or a community of Filipinos credibly professed Shia Islam, that the Islamic Republic of Iran would do what it could to aid them and
that it would be unlikely to have a quarrel with them.
If the US were to credibly embrace Shia Islam as a state religion, I am confident the current war would come to a quick end. I am aware that there are
multiple systemic and cultural barriers within the US to this happening.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:02:40 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/17/26 20:44, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:46:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Authoritarianism might be the only viable option left.
But then you're up against that old problem: how do you ensure that a
benevolent dictatorship remains benevolent?
With a dictator you only have one person to shoot.
"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe
Dictators have supporters so you never end up with only one to
shoot. Why do you think the aristocrats head rolled during the F
iirc they started eating their own when they ran out of aristocrats. If
you look at the centuries of history the modern liberal democracy
experiment is a brief whim. Don't even mention Athens. They had a well designed voter ID scheme.
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before
Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the
American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what comes next is even worse.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before
Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the
American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
I have my doubts an European would use "liberal" meaning left.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
comes next is even worse.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad. Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away.'
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
On 18/03/2026 18:28, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:31:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks
should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it
gradually day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours.
Or school hours
Don't you have some sort of double daylight saving thing?
Probably. All I know is that I have to reset all the battery powered
clocks twice a year.
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is
just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't
call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then
we use other oils.
On 18/03/2026 18:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
This is not racism.
Then I don't know what is
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USAany
longer and I would not support such a change to our secular Republic.
Our B.C. premier (and wannabe dictator), David Eby, unilaterally
declared that we are now on permanent daylight time.
Sn!pe wrote:[...]
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
Yes, but the direct cause was that some of the plants with inertia that
were being paid to regulate, did not, either by failure or by neglect.
Inverters are normally designed so that they follow the grid frequency.
But they can be designed to enforce a frequency and phase, ie, to
provide inertia (actually more inertia than iron). This is being done
now, I posted an article about this two days ago.
Message-ID: <fm6m8mxm7p.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
-- I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't call
them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then we use other oils.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:30:44 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
This is not racism.
Then I don't know what is
It's interesting how the Jews appropriated 'Semitic' to the
exclusion of the other Semitic peoples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
Another tangled web.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:30:44 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:25, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:08, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a
shameless bid to attract the Islamic vote
This is not racism.
Then I don't know what is
It's interesting how the Jews appropriated 'Semitic' to the exclusion of
the other Semitic peoples.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people
Another tangled web.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:57:04 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USAany
longer and I would not support such a change to our secular Republic.
The US embraced capitalism as the State Religion long ago. The question is
if that has staying power. 275 years isn't a long time in the history of civilizations.
Carlos E.R. suggested that ...
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
-- I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we
don't call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is
tight, then we use other oils.
Are they fried in a skillet with a slurp of olive oil, or in a basket
that immersed in olive oil?
On 2026-03-19 01:36, Snidely wrote:
Carlos E.R. suggested that ...
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
-- I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we
don't call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is
tight, then we use other oils.
Are they fried in a skillet with a slurp of olive oil, or in a basket
that immersed in olive oil?
A pan with 1 or 2 cm deep of oil, enough to submerge all the potatoes.
If you have many potatoes, either more oil (and a bigger pan), or do two/three rounds. Yes, you can use a special pan with a basket.
If you fill too much oil, you can make a mess in the kitchen, specially
if the oil foams. Better a bigger pan and about half full, tops.
Or, a small electric (deep) fryer. Mine takes about 2.5 litres, I think.
Of course, in this case you don't change the oil till 20 or 30 uses.
Should be a number of hours, but the instructions say "times".
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
comes next is even worse.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad.
Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went>
something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away.'
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
On 3/18/26 16:16, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what >>> comes next is even worse.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad. Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went
something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a
thousand tyrants one mile away.'
But the Parliament and the officials between Ben Franklin and the King were
that bad.
During the WW II everyone on the Allied side was Uncle Joe's buddy. Because
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short
lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head
courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
he was using up Hitler's armies time. Once the Normandy landing were made the German armies were fighting a two-front war not counting the African front.
It was more than Hitler had ever planned on doing. And bringing the USA
into the War was the fault of the Germans advising Japamese Imperial Army that we would not fight back. So by attacking the USA Japan did the
French and English a great favor.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:02:11 GMT, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
Our B.C. premier (and wannabe dictator), David Eby, unilaterally
declared that we are now on permanent daylight time.
That doesn’t sound very wise to me.
Daylight saving has a point if you are far enough from the equator for
it to make a difference. Trying to stick to one timezone offset for
the whole year in such a region will cause its own problems.
On 3/18/26 11:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before
Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the
American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
We supported his ideas of Land Redistribution reforms.
But he fully embraced state ownership of the means of production which is anti-Capitalist. Finally we opposed his regime and the Soviets installed missiles which led to the Kennedy stand-off where the Soviets yeilded and withdrew their missiles.
Kennedy was a WW II veteran with disability and also a wealthy
man from a wealthy family and he reduced taxes on his class. So he
was not a disinterested party and if he had survived his presidency
he would likely be a billionaire by now if alive.
We usually think about 'cyber-criminals', but big govts/resources can
also paralyze/ruin/spy at the entire operating-system level.
Uncle Joe was NOBODY'S buddy ... but he was HARD to deal with. Post
WW2 he had nukes also and a huge army in eastern Europe. "The West"
had blown vast quantities of blood and treasure on WW2 and just
didn't/couldn't deal with Uncle Joe much.
And Israel has further appropriated "anti-semitic" to mean "critical
of the government of Israel".
On Mi 18 Mr 2026 at 06:15, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
My beef with daylight time is astronomical: the very definition
of noon (i.e. mid-day) is when the sun is at its highest point
in the sky - which is no longer true when the clocks jump ahead
an hour.
But this is never really the case unless you live right there where the
time zone is defined. The zones are 15 degrees wide.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is
just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then
we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with-
evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used canola (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't use it very
often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it smelled like the linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:31:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:28, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:31:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks
should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it
gradually day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours. >>> Or school hours
Don't you have some sort of double daylight saving thing?
Probably. All I know is that I have to reset all the battery powered
clocks twice a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_of_deviation
British Double Summer Time was what I was thinking of. I didn't know it
was a wartime measure. The term stuck in my mind for some reason.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:57:36 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
And Israel has further appropriated "anti-semitic" to mean "critical
of the government of Israel".
That term was originally popularized by the Nazis.
On 3/17/26 20:22, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
I think the Cubans just did that.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce.
Before Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator
and the American Mob.
Cuba has done more good than can be calculated by sending
their home-grown physicians to 3rd world nations that needed
help.
On 2026-03-18 14:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
But other people are reading, too.
On 18/03/2026 13:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected
to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
Jan
Because I am actually saying something important and Carlos, like you. doesn't want to hear it.
His response is to quote BS concocted by the green operators,. Yours is
to seek to dismiss me as 'far right'.
On 3/18/26 16:16, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what >> comes next is even worse.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad. Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a thousand tyrants one mile away.'
But the Parliament and the officials between Ben Franklin and the King were
that bad.
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
During the WW II everyone on the Allied side was Uncle Joe's buddy. Because
he was using up Hitler's armies time. Once the Normandy landing were made the German armies were fighting a two-front war not counting the African front.
It was more than Hitler had ever planned on doing. And bringing the USA
into the War was the fault of the Germans advising Japamese Imperial Army that we would not fight back. So by attacking the USA Japan did the
French and English a great favor.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Charlie Gibbs hat am 18.03.2026 um 19:16 geschrieben:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:02, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
Sadly people like you call moderates 'far right'
I have no idea where you got that from. Do I really come across
as a left-wing radical?
The self-styled Natural Philosopher is an extreme right-winger. I know appropriate adjectives to define him, but I don't know where he lives.
In the US is more or less everything allowed, elsewhere we want some limitations.
My take is the Allies should have slow walked the western front and let
the Germans push Joe & Friends into the Sea of Japan or at least east of
the Urals.
Its not ideal. But it sorta worksBritish Double Summer Time was what I was thinking of. I didn't know itBritain has done more experimenting with time than any other country,
was a wartime measure. The term stuck in my mind for some reason.
I think.
Let's hope they remain settled the way it is now,
and idem for the EU,
The story probably is an early example of non-internet rumors but it did
take a while for those new-fangled foods from America to become popular
like the potato and tomato. Then they were embraced with a passion, along with tobacco. Potatoes probably had the biggest impact, feeding the
peasants on the cheap.
Le 19/03/2026 à 10:48, J. J. Lodder a écrit :
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
OK. 'Third World.'
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:31:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:28, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:31:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks >>>>>> should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it
gradually day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours. >>>>> Or school hours
Don't you have some sort of double daylight saving thing?
Probably. All I know is that I have to reset all the battery powered
clocks twice a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_of_deviation
British Double Summer Time was what I was thinking of. I didn't know it
was a wartime measure. The term stuck in my mind for some reason.
Britain has done more experimenting with time than any other country,
I think.
Let's hope they remain settled the way it is now,
and idem for the EU,
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly
in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is >>>> just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't >>> call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then
we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with-
evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used canola >> (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't use it very
often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it smelled like the
linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Le 19/03/2026 à 10:48, J. J. Lodder a écrit :
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
The 'Third World' has already changed its definition. Originally, it was those countries not aligned during the Cold War either with the West or
with the Communist Bloc. It has morphed to mean poorer countries,
developing countries, or backward countries, depending on how
politically correct one wishes to be. (Verified in the OED.)
"Following the war… many people began to look upon the world as divided
in two parts - the Communist and the Western world. So intense was our concentration on this struggle that many of us failed to comprehend that
a new third world had been born…" - 'Washington Post', 1958.
"Andalusia, often described as Spain's 'third world', with its high
crime rate and unemployment" - 'The Times', 1980.
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
OK. 'Third World.'
On 18/03/26 13:06, Sn!pe wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:25:58 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 17/03/26 11:58, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
It seems to me the whole electrical power supply system is
inherently unstable. All you can do is build in more
redundancy to broaden the peak at the top of the curve where
the system is supposed to sit, to form a little valley up there
to make it more resistant to shocks. But there will always be a
limit to how much abuse it can take, and if you get pushed
beyond that, then down the mountainside it falls.
I assume that the "curve" you mean is the graph of power versus
torque angle.
No. Think of the landscape as a multidimensional space involving
the total operational state of the various components of the
electricity generation and distribution system, and the height as
the desirability of that state. Gravity represents how the system
tends to move to a new state from any given position.
The highest point is where everything is functioning as it should.
Move too far from that, and you find yourself on a slope where it
becomes very hard to move back up rather than down.
That's good poetry, and I'd love to see it translated into practical
terms. If you could find a formula or algorithm to express "desirability
of the state", that would be a major new contribution to power systems engineering.
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to
this?
Yes and no. There's no short answer, so I'll confine myself to just a
few comments.
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish
collapse.
I can't comment on the Spanish case because I don't know enough about
it. What I do know is this: if anyone tells you there's a simple answer,
he's talking through his arse.
When a power system collapses, it's a snowball process. Some adverse
event, for example a lightning strike, causes a circuit breaker to open, taking one transmission line out of service. That causes a
redistribution of current and power flows. If it so happens that this overloads one line, another circuit breaker opens. That again
redistributes the currents ... I think you can see why I called it a snowball.
To solve that, you build excess capacity into the system. Analysis of
likely failure modes, usually via simulation, can tell you where extra transmission lines are needed, or extra VAR compensators (see below) or whatever. But bad luck can also play a part. If that lightning strike
had hit one hour earlier, it wouldn't have hit a time of peak demand,
and the system would have recovered.
Let's talk about frequency stability. If you start up a synchronous generator, connected to nothing, it will produce a sinusoidal voltage
that depends on its speed, and of course the speed depends on the (non-electrical) machine that's driving it.
If you now connect two such machines (and do it carefully enough so that
the combination doesn't go unstable), they will spontaneously settle on
a compromise frequency, with the machine with the biggest prime mover
being the most influential. Add more machines, and soon you'll have so
much inertia in the system that the mutually agreed frequency remains constant despite any disturbances. Of course a sufficiently large
disturbance can still bring the system down; but the bigger the overall
power system, the more it is resistant to disturbances.
Now, in what might seem a digression, let's look at VAR compensation.
The power flows in the system are actually complex numbers, in the usual formulation, having both a real and a reactive part. The reactive power
might not seem to be doing anything, but in fact the reactive power
balance can have a major influence on stability. You can improve
stability by injecting reactive power in the right place(s). This is
done with what are called VAR compensators.
The traditional VAR compensator, also known as a synchronous condenser,
is a rotating machine. In fact, it's just a generator that is not
producing or consuming any real power. (Apart from the inevitable
losses.) These days, however, we know how to do the same job with a non-rotating electronic device. Which is better? They're both doing the
same job, so the answer is that they're as good as each other. OK, the rotating version is contributing somewhat to frequency stability, but
it's outvoted by all the other machines in the system. The choice
between them is purely a matter of cost.
The big issue is DC vs AC. The rotating generators are all AC devices Renewable sources like solar panels produce DC. To connect to the
network, they must use inverters. Those inverters just synchronise to
the existing AC network, but they don't contribute to its inertia. If I
had my druthers, I would run a high-voltage DC network in parallel with
the existing AC network, and cross-connect them only at a limited number
of locations. The designers have not chosen to go that way.
Once you're producing more DC than AC power, the AC subsystem doesn't
have the same frequency stability as before. That's a solvable problem, though. The designers just have to think it through a little harder.
J.R.R. Tolkien invented myths
and untangled them in his books but still supported racist tropes
and stereotypical behaviors of the upper and lower classes.
What are eleven races and the human races in his stories and whence
did the hobbits arise but from lower creatures, one of whom becomes
"Gollum" who was possessed by the Ring then dispossed of the Ring of
Power who went to his death to possess the Ring. The Dwarven people
were crafted by a lesser being but given real life by the Ultimate
power in Middle Earth.
On 3/18/26 19:01, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-19 01:36, Snidely wrote:
Carlos E.R. suggested that ...
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
-- I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but
Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which
is not suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we
don't call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is
tight, then we use other oils.
Are they fried in a skillet with a slurp of olive oil, or in a basket
that immersed in olive oil?
A pan with 1 or 2 cm deep of oil, enough to submerge all the potatoes.
If you have many potatoes, either more oil (and a bigger pan), or do
two/three rounds. Yes, you can use a special pan with a basket.
If you fill too much oil, you can make a mess in the kitchen,
specially if the oil foams. Better a bigger pan and about half full,
tops.
Or, a small electric (deep) fryer. Mine takes about 2.5 litres, I
think. Of course, in this case you don't change the oil till 20 or 30
uses. Should be a number of hours, but the instructions say "times".
You should change the oil more frequently than that which is why I do half deep frying in a couple of centimeters of oil and make sure to
turn the potatos, cased prawns(just very large shrimp), cased fish and
other foods. I might use the oil twice or three times at most because
the oil undergoes a process that makes it less of an edible and more of
a slow poison. Because oil is expensive I don't do this often.
bliss
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA
any longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:57:04 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA
any longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
The US embraced capitalism as the State Religion long ago. The
question is if that has staying power. 275 years isn't a long time
in the history of civilizations.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
Sn!pe wrote:[...]
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
Yes, but the direct cause was that some of the plants with inertia that
were being paid to regulate, did not, either by failure or by neglect.
Inverters are normally designed so that they follow the grid frequency.
But they can be designed to enforce a frequency and phase, ie, to
provide inertia (actually more inertia than iron). This is being done
now, I posted an article about this two days ago.
Message-ID: <fm6m8mxm7p.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>
Thank you for the reminder, Carlos, I've just re-read it.
I imagine that if anyone might have an opinion on this topic
worthy of consideration, it would likely be a Spaniard.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it >>>>> off, cannot do anything at all
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected >>>> to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
But other people are reading, too.
Well, yes, but why care? You can't answer every hobby horse rider
all the time.
If you want to have some more fun like that you can go to one of the crackpot/nutter groups, like SPR or TO.
This one seems to be rather boring.
But back to the thread.
Spain can congratulated on having done their electricity things
just right, with the timely move to a lot of solar power.
With the Middle East going up in flames
Spain is the country in the EU with the least dependence
on non-renewable imports to keep its electrical power up.
Well done,
Jan
Not just third world.
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
But back to the thread.
Spain can congratulated on having done their electricity things
just right, with the timely move to a lot of solar power.
With the Middle East going up in flames
Spain is the country in the EU with the least dependence
on non-renewable imports to keep its electrical power up.
Well done,
Jan
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
Sn!pe wrote:[...]
Is the concept of inertia due to rotating machinery relevant to this?
I read somewhere that the increasing proportion of non-rotating
generating equipment (e.g. solar) was a factor in the Spanish collapse.
Yes, but the direct cause was that some of the plants with inertia that
were being paid to regulate, did not, either by failure or by neglect.
Inverters are normally designed so that they follow the grid frequency.
But they can be designed to enforce a frequency and phase, ie, to
provide inertia (actually more inertia than iron). This is being done
now, I posted an article about this two days ago.
Message-ID: <fm6m8mxm7p.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>
Thank you for the reminder, Carlos, I've just re-read it.
I imagine that if anyone might have an opinion on this topic
worthy of consideration, it would likely be a Spaniard.
On 2026-03-18 19:02, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
AI Overview
This famous, often-quoted aphorism—suggesting youth is idealistic (liberal/left) and age brings realism (conservative/right)—is widely,
yet wrongly, attributed to
Winston Churchill. While the sentiment aligns with stereotypes about political maturation, evidence suggests the phrase originated in the
late 19th century in French, and there is no record of Churchill saying it.
Origin: The first recorded version of this sentiment is attributed to
French author Jules Claretie in 1875, or French politician Georges Clemenceau, who reportedly said, "If a man is not a socialist by the
time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time
he is 40, he has no brain".
I have my doubts an European would use "liberal" meaning left.
Le 19/03/2026 11:34, Hibou a crit :
Le 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder a crit :
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
OK. 'Third World.'
I'm kidding, of course.
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:31:55 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:28, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 09:31:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 03:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
The only thing I object to is changing the time which clocks >>>>>> should
do of themselves. And if they could do that they could do it
gradually day by day.
I object to changing the clocks instead of changing the working hours. >>>>> Or school hours
Don't you have some sort of double daylight saving thing?
Probably. All I know is that I have to reset all the battery powered
clocks twice a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time#Periods_of_deviation
British Double Summer Time was what I was thinking of. I didn't know it >> was a wartime measure. The term stuck in my mind for some reason.
Britain has done more experimenting with time than any other country,
I think.
Let's hope they remain settled the way it is now,
and idem for the EU,
There was a vote in the EU, about removing the summer/winter change. But
the politicians are dragging their feet about implementing it.
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is >>>> just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't >>> call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used canola >> (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't use it very
often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it smelled like the >> linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 18/03/2026 13:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:Because I am actually saying something important and Carlos, like you.
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it >>>>> off, cannot do anything at all
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected >>>> to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
Jan
doesn't want to hear it.
His response is to quote BS concocted by the green operators,. Yours is
to seek to dismiss me as 'far right'.
Not just far right, old.
You are still regurgitating third hand denialism from 50 years ago.
Saying this may not make me popular,
but on average the whole forum is definitely growing old.
It seems that many developments and insights from the last decades
just have not penetrated.
Jan
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is >>>>>> just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't >>>>> call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>>>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >>>> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used canola >>>> (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't use it very >>>> often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it smelled like the >>>> linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
Jan
And after the work on having renewables that regulate, electricity are
again lowering prices. Somewhere I read that we have lower prices than
other EU countries. I don't know if this is true, though.
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions)
immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
On 2026-03-18 23:57, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA any
longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
Then there is the photo of the orange guy with a bunch of pastors around
with their hands in his shoulder.
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:You may or may not know that FDR was for helping Great Britain and France but was stymied by out Isolationist and NAZI sympathizers who had
On 3/18/26 16:16, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what >>>> comes next is even worse.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to
overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he
declined to kiss US ass.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad. Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went
something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a
thousand tyrants one mile away.'
But the Parliament and the officials between Ben Franklin and the King were
that bad.
During the WW II everyone on the Allied side was Uncle Joe's buddy. >> Because
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short >>> lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head >>> courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
he was using up Hitler's armies time. Once the Normandy landing were made >> the German armies were fighting a two-front war not counting the African
front.
It was more than Hitler had ever planned on doing. And bringing the USA
into the War was the fault of the Germans advising Japamese Imperial Army
that we would not fight back. So by attacking the USA Japan did the
French and English a great favor.
But the ultimate mistake was made by Hitler himself,
with his unnecessary declaration of war on the USA,
as if it was just a formality.
This was just what FDR needed.
Without it those Americans who argued for not fighting in Europe,
or just for doing Japan first might have prevailed,
Jan
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 18/03/2026 13:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:Because I am actually saying something important and Carlos, like you.
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids wasA fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it >>>>> off, cannot do anything at all
*fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected >>>> to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
Jan
doesn't want to hear it.
His response is to quote BS concocted by the green operators,. Yours is
to seek to dismiss me as 'far right'.
Not just far right, old.
You are still regurgitating third hand denialism from 50 years ago.
Saying this may not make me popular,
but on average the whole forum is definitely growing old.
It seems that many developments and insights from the last decades
just have not penetrated.
Jan
THESE people are deeply anti European, anti Christian and absolutely anti-semitic.
Whether the inverter follows the grid or leads it is dependent on
whether it has access to stored energy to enable it to do that thing
Don't fall for pseudo technical bullshit.
The nub of the problem is that renewable energy of the solar and wind
sort has zero or close to zero energy stored in kinetics, and its output
is massively variable on sub minute timescales.
It needs energy storage to stabilise the output - to absorb the peaks
and fill in the troughs.
If that energy is a battery, yes it will have an inverter that can lead
the grid. But that is not the issue.
The issue is that renewable energy of the intermittent kind *cannot
operate alone* as a source of stable reliable electricity.
Whether is is backed up by expensive spinning reserves, or expensive batteries, it beeds access to very fast reacting storage.
This is the fundamental point, not the detailed technical description of
how this storage is utilised.
And it drives a fundamental stake through the heart of the claim that 'renewable energy is cheap because the sun and wind are free'
Even if the technology were cheap (which it is not) the infrastructure
to enable it to work is extremely expensive and the backup systems and maintenance are scarcely zero carbon
Look at the poor gas power stations that Carlos blames for not running spinning reserve when they are supposed to. Why would they? They are
burning gas, wearing out their turbines and repaying debt on the
principal used to construct them, but not receiving a penny for the electricity *they are not allowed to generate, because 'renewables by
law must take precedence*.
It isn't worth their while to operate at all. It certainly isn't worth capital to invest in efficient combined cycle ones.
In fact it is far cheaper to throw in simple diesel generators at 40%
thermal efficiency to fill the air with CO2. Or open cycle gas at
similar efficiencies. And bang goes *all* the carbon savings of 'renewables', once you add in the insane maintenance costs of e.,g
windmills that is done using diesel vehicles to access them...
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than
gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last decade and a half.
10 years ago was in the 1970s where the 'scientific consensus; was that
we were about to enter a new ice age. The 'deniers' of that period were
the warmist alarmists.
What I do know, because I am uniquely qualified to judge it, is that renewable energy is a crock of shit. It's expensive, unreliable and
does not *overall* reduce carbon emissions.
Le 19/03/2026 à 13:17, The Natural Philosopher a écrit :
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions)
immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been
paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than we
do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
On 3/19/26 05:49, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 23:57, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA
any longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
Then there is the photo of the orange guy with a bunch of pastors
around with their hands in his shoulder.
Well their inane plan was to elect Trump as "God's Chosen Man" and
then implement their stupid Project 2025 which would disenfranchise
women, and murder all deviates gender and sexual according to their standards. Then the ejection or subjugation of people who are not
white folks. Their perverted form of Christianity would be the law of
the land rather than the Constitution.
Our founders were well aware of Europe's history of wars over
religion which is why we have a secular republic. And then the
Baptists requested that they should have No State Religion since they
had been paying taxes to support a faith, Anglicanism the state
religion under the UK of which the English King was the head. A
religion with which they did not agree.
bliss
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
ISTR there was a story about taxi drivers in Cardiff(?) using waste
oil from fish & chip shops in their diesel taxis to avoid fuel duty.
Customs and Excise inspectors detected its use by the distinctive
chip-shop aroma emitted from their tailpipes.
Meantime volunteers had
already gone to China to help fight off the Japanese Imperial Army's air
arm, called the Flying Tigers.
Of course we are getting old because we are fortunate and we are on
Usenet. We don't all cut off new information because we are old but
of course some of us do just that living in a world of Fossil Fuel
propaganda and sports scores.
My favorite source of science information: Overnight News Digest:
March 18, 2026 <ww.dailykos.com/stories/2026/3/18/2373719/-Overnight-News-Digest-March-18-2026>
Sometimes at Daily Kos this is all political reporting but at least
once a week we have very intersting science news. It contains
further links to journals where more information is given.
bliss
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:11:08 +0000
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
THESE people are deeply anti European, anti Christian and absolutely
anti-semitic.
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say
all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,
because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they
persecuted the prophets who werebefore you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on
the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants
to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone
forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who
asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from
you." (Matt. 5:38-42)
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He
causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what
reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if
you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do
not even pagans do that?" (Matt. 5:43-47)
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In
this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the
world." (John 16:33)
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[...]
Whether the inverter follows the grid or leads it is dependent on
whether it has access to stored energy to enable it to do that thing
Don't fall for pseudo technical bullshit.
The nub of the problem is that renewable energy of the solar and wind
sort has zero or close to zero energy stored in kinetics, and its output
is massively variable on sub minute timescales.
It needs energy storage to stabilise the output - to absorb the peaks
and fill in the troughs.
If that energy is a battery, yes it will have an inverter that can lead
the grid. But that is not the issue.
The issue is that renewable energy of the intermittent kind *cannot
operate alone* as a source of stable reliable electricity.
Whether is is backed up by expensive spinning reserves, or expensive
batteries, it beeds access to very fast reacting storage.
This is the fundamental point, not the detailed technical description of
how this storage is utilised.
And it drives a fundamental stake through the heart of the claim that
'renewable energy is cheap because the sun and wind are free'
Even if the technology were cheap (which it is not) the infrastructure
to enable it to work is extremely expensive and the backup systems and
maintenance are scarcely zero carbon
Look at the poor gas power stations that Carlos blames for not running
spinning reserve when they are supposed to. Why would they? They are
burning gas, wearing out their turbines and repaying debt on the
principal used to construct them, but not receiving a penny for the
electricity *they are not allowed to generate, because 'renewables by
law must take precedence*.
It isn't worth their while to operate at all. It certainly isn't worth
capital to invest in efficient combined cycle ones.
In fact it is far cheaper to throw in simple diesel generators at 40%
thermal efficiency to fill the air with CO2. Or open cycle gas at
similar efficiencies. And bang goes *all* the carbon savings of
'renewables', once you add in the insane maintenance costs of e.,g
windmills that is done using diesel vehicles to access them...
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than
gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions
reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical
engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last
decade and a half.
I've followed your argument elsewhere for several years; the points you
make are compelling. My own small experience of this stuff was nearly
60 years ago (test-synching local standby 1 MW diesel generators to the
11kV grid) so I'm long out of date.
On 19/03/2026 15:39, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Of course we are getting old because we are fortunate and we are on
Usenet. We don't all cut off new information because we are old but
of course some of us do just that living in a world of Fossil Fuel
propaganda and sports scores.
Well of course the alternative is living in a world of moral outrage
and renewable energy propaganda.
You will note that I have *never once advocated fossil fuels*.
Which show how blinkered you have been rendered by the Big Green Cash Machine.
For technically educated people there is only one future and that is
nuclear power.
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely
say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be
glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way
they persecuted the prophets who werebefore you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
Fucvk that for a load of old bollocks.
I bet he didnt say that.
I bet the Romans who wrote him up 500 years after the fact said that.
I wish the Muslims would agree with that.
We are *christian* because that is the morality you need, enforced by
law where necessary, to have sufficient trust in public bodies and institutions to make them work.
Well I guess that's why we spent 400 years in crusades against Islam
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:29:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
10 years ago was in the 1970s where the 'scientific consensus; was that
we were about to enter a new ice age. The 'deniers' of that period were
the warmist alarmists.
From Wikipedia on Global_Cooling
I note that 'conjecture' is rather far from 'consensus'.
Global cooling was a conjecture, especially during the 1970s, of
imminent cooling of the Earth culminating in a period of extensive
glaciation, due to the cooling effects of aerosols or orbital
forcing. Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued
cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature
of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from
an enhanced greenhouse effect.[2]
And it is generally acceoted that the cooling effects of particles
masked the warming effects of increased CO2. So, cleaning the smokestack-pollution fed into the warming trend.
What I do know, because I am uniquely qualified to judge it, is that
renewable energy is a crock of shit. It's expensive, unreliable and
does not *overall* reduce carbon emissions.
"Expensive" is fading as an excuse. The Chinese seem to lead
the way for solar.
Are you saying that the switch from coal to (cleaner) gas is
what is responsible for ALL the reduction of local CO2 emissions?
Or do you deny all the reported statistics?
A lot of information, too little critical assessment?
But the ultimate mistake was made by Hitler himself,
with his unnecessary declaration of war on the USA, as if it was just a formality.
This was just what FDR needed.
You may or may not know that FDR was for helping Great Britain and France but was stymied by out Isolationist and NAZI sympathizers who had
some congressional power, until Japan a German ally with Italy, attacked
the fleet at Pearl Harbor as well as the air fields.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:38:33 +0000
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely
say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be
glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way
they persecuted the prophets who werebefore you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
Fucvk that for a load of old bollocks.
I bet he didnt say that.
I bet the Romans who wrote him up 500 years after the fact said that.
I mean, if you don't believe the Bible in present form is authentic,
that's all well and good, but in that case, the entire foundation of Christianity is undermined - so why the appeal to its authority/value?
If your ultimate yardstick is what sounds right to *you,* why not just
own that?
I wish the Muslims would agree with that.
If you place any value in Christian teaching yourself, it shouldn't
matter one way or another whether some other group does. That's their problem, not yours.
"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on
you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so
that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are
insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit
of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise
God that you bearthat name." (1 Peter 4:12-16)
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face
trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." (James 1:2-3)
"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." (Romans 12:14)
"Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:10)
We are *christian* because that is the morality you need, enforced by
law where necessary, to have sufficient trust in public bodies and
institutions to make them work.
So you think we need a moral code based on a collection of writings you
don't think are authentic laying out teachings you don't agree with, by
the authority of someone you don't think said those things? What is the
use of building a society on a foundation of nonsense?
Well I guess that's why we spent 400 years in crusades against Islam
No, we did that because the Pope needed a way to get generations of squabbling nobles out of his hair and sending them to the Levant to
call take-backsies on a conquest that was already 400 years gone was a
pretty convenient way to do it. Shame they didn't stop to ask whether
that lined up with Christ's own teachings first; woulda saved Conrad's
boys a lot of trouble fifty years later!
No. The myths already existed. He was a scholar of dark age languages
and stories.
The Ring cycle of Wagner predates Tolkien, Middle Earth is a feature in Germanic myth.
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:57:36 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
And Israel has further appropriated "anti-semitic" to mean "critical
of the government of Israel".
That term was originally popularized by the Nazis.
The Nazis were not really needed for that. Anti-semitism was coined as a
word in Germany in 1879,
as a scientific-sounding substitute for 'Judenhass'. It was in wide circulation well before WWI,
and not just in Germany,
Jan
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:26:26 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
You may or may not know that FDR was for helping Great Britain and
France but was stymied by out Isolationist and NAZI sympathizers who had
some congressional power, until Japan a German ally with Italy, attacked
the fleet at Pearl Harbor as well as the air fields.
FDR had strange ideas of neutrality. There was a internment camp here that was mostly Italian detainees, like seamen and '39 World's Fair workers
that were detained before the US was officially at war.
Unlike Manzanar and Tule Lake some of the Italians enjoyed the area enough
to remain here.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:41:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
No. The myths already existed. He was a scholar of dark age languages
and stories.
The Ring cycle of Wagner predates Tolkien, Middle Earth is a feature in
Germanic myth.
And the Ring was a blend of the Volsunga Saga and the Nibelungenlied, both
of which were based on earlier material.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:48:51 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:57:36 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
And Israel has further appropriated "anti-semitic" to mean "critical
of the government of Israel".
That term was originally popularized by the Nazis.
The Nazis were not really needed for that. Anti-semitism was coined as a
word in Germany in 1879,
as a scientific-sounding substitute for 'Judenhass'. It was in wide
circulation well before WWI,
and not just in Germany,
Jan
Long tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 08:26:26 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
You may or may not know that FDR was for helping Great Britain and
France but was stymied by out Isolationist and NAZI sympathizers who had
some congressional power, until Japan a German ally with Italy, attacked
the fleet at Pearl Harbor as well as the air fields.
FDR had strange ideas of neutrality. There was a internment camp here that was mostly Italian detainees, like seamen and '39 World's Fair workers
that were detained before the US was officially at war.
Unlike Manzanar and Tule Lake some of the Italians enjoyed the area enough
to remain here.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:48:51 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
But the ultimate mistake was made by Hitler himself,
with his unnecessary declaration of war on the USA, as if it was just a
formality.
This was just what FDR needed.
It was a mistake but at least he honored the agreement with Japan. In a reversed situation the US would have said 'You're on your own, Hirohito.'
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is >>>>>> just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't >>>>> call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>>>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >>>> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used canola >>>> (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't use it very >>>> often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it smelled like the >>>> linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:29:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
10 years ago was in the 1970s where the 'scientific consensus; was that
we were about to enter a new ice age. The 'deniers' of that period were
the warmist alarmists.
From Wikipedia on Global_Cooling
I note that 'conjecture' is rather far from 'consensus'.
Global cooling was a conjecture, especially during the 1970s, of
imminent cooling of the Earth culminating in a period of extensive
glaciation, due to the cooling effects of aerosols or orbital
forcing. Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature
of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from
an enhanced greenhouse effect.[2]
And it is generally acceoted that the cooling effects of particles
masked the warming effects of increased CO2. So, cleaning the smokestack-pollution fed into the warming trend.
What I do know, because I am uniquely qualified to judge it, is that
renewable energy is a crock of shit. It's expensive, unreliable and
does not *overall* reduce carbon emissions.
"Expensive" is fading as an excuse. The Chinese seem to lead
the way for solar.
Are you saying that the switch from coal to (cleaner) gas is
what is responsible for ALL the reduction of local CO2 emissions?
Or do you deny all the reported statistics?
A lot of information, too little critical assessment?
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:29:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
10 years ago was in the 1970s where the 'scientific consensus; was that
we were about to enter a new ice age. The 'deniers' of that period were
the warmist alarmists.
From Wikipedia on Global_Cooling
I note that 'conjecture' is rather far from 'consensus'.
Global cooling was a conjecture, especially during the 1970s, of
imminent cooling of the Earth culminating in a period of extensive
glaciation, due to the cooling effects of aerosols or orbital
forcing. Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature
of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from
an enhanced greenhouse effect.[2]
And it is generally acceoted that the cooling effects of particles
masked the warming effects of increased CO2. So, cleaning the smokestack-pollution fed into the warming trend.
What I do know, because I am uniquely qualified to judge it, is that renewable energy is a crock of shit. It's expensive, unreliable and
does not *overall* reduce carbon emissions.
"Expensive" is fading as an excuse. The Chinese seem to lead
the way for solar.
Are you saying that the switch from coal to (cleaner) gas is
what is responsible for ALL the reduction of local CO2 emissions?
Or do you deny all the reported statistics?
A lot of information, too little critical assessment?
On 19/03/2026 13:24, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is
just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't
call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>>>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >>>> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used
canola (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't
use it very often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it >>>> smelled like the linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
Slight differences in viscosity and additives
On 3/19/26 03:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 3/18/26 16:16, rbowman wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:27:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 18:23, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 20:43:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:In general when you try to overthrow a corrupt dictatorial regime, what >>>> comes next is even worse.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce. Before >>>>>> Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator and the >>>>>> American Mob.
Yeah, I remember when Castro was a brave freedom fighter trying to >>>>> overthrow the corrupt Batista regime. That didn't last long when he >>>>> declined to kiss US ass.
I've seen it in S Africa, in Zimbabwe, in Uganda, in Iran, in Russia
George III wasn't all that bad. Mel Gibson's line in 'The Patriot' went >>> something like 'we're trading one tyrant one thousand miles away for a >>> thousand tyrants one mile away.'
But the Parliament and the officials between Ben Franklin and
the King were that bad.
During the WW II everyone on the Allied side was Uncle Joe's buddy. >> Because
Then you get rid of the new regime with extreme prejudice, like the short >>> lived Hungarian Soviet Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Hungary)
Bela Kun cut and ran but eventually got a bullet in the back of his head >>> courtesy of Churchill's buddy Uncle Joe.
he was using up Hitler's armies time. Once the Normandy landing were made >> the German armies were fighting a two-front war not counting the African >> front.
It was more than Hitler had ever planned on doing. And bringing the USA
into the War was the fault of the Germans advising Japamese Imperial Army >> that we would not fight back. So by attacking the USA Japan did the
French and English a great favor.
But the ultimate mistake was made by Hitler himself,
with his unnecessary declaration of war on the USA,
as if it was just a formality.
This was just what FDR needed.
Without it those Americans who argued for not fighting in Europe,
or just for doing Japan first might have prevailed,
JanYou may or may not know that FDR was for helping Great Britain and France but was stymied by out Isolationist and NAZI sympathizers who had
some congressional power, until Japan a German ally with Italy, attacked
the fleet at Pearl Harbor as well as the air fields.
Meantime volunteers had already gone to China to help fight off the
Japanese Imperial Army's air arm, called the Flying Tigers.
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids was >>>>>> *fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.A fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it >>>>> off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or neglected >>>> to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
But other people are reading, too.
Well, yes, but why care? You can't answer every hobby horse rider
all the time.
If you want to have some more fun like that you can go to one of the crackpot/nutter groups, like SPR or TO.
No, thanks! X-D
I don't need to have the last word, but I can say something about the
matter. Not getting involved in an endless argument, but showing to the
group that there is another view.
This one seems to be rather boring.
But back to the thread.
Spain can congratulated on having done their electricity things
just right, with the timely move to a lot of solar power.
With the Middle East going up in flames
Spain is the country in the EU with the least dependence
on non-renewable imports to keep its electrical power up.
And after the work on having renewables that regulate, electricity are
again lowering prices. Somewhere I read that we have lower prices than
other EU countries. I don't know if this is true, though.
Le 19/03/2026 13:17, The Natural Philosopher a crit :
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions) immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been
paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than we
do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 19:02, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-18, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
I started life as a socialist. Then I grew up.
Any 20-year-old who isn't a liberal has no heart.
Any 40-year-old who isn't a conservative has no brain.
-- Winston Churchill
Any 60-year-old who isn't a moderate has no soul.
-- me
AI Overview
This famous, often-quoted aphorism—suggesting youth is idealistic
(liberal/left) and age brings realism (conservative/right)—is widely,
yet wrongly, attributed to
Winston Churchill. While the sentiment aligns with stereotypes about
political maturation, evidence suggests the phrase originated in the
late 19th century in French, and there is no record of Churchill saying it. >>
Origin: The first recorded version of this sentiment is attributed to
French author Jules Claretie in 1875, or French politician Georges
Clemenceau, who reportedly said, "If a man is not a socialist by the
time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time
he is 40, he has no brain".
I have my doubts an European would use "liberal" meaning left.
It is the American use of 'liberal' that is silly,
as is their use of 'left',
On 19/03/2026 16:21, John Ames wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:11:08 +0000Fucvk that for a load of old bollocks.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
THESE people are deeply anti European, anti Christian and absolutely
anti-semitic.
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say
all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,
because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they
persecuted the prophets who werebefore you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
I bet he didnt say that.
I bet the Romans who wrote him up 500 years after the fact said that.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
[...]
Whether the inverter follows the grid or leads it is dependent on
whether it has access to stored energy to enable it to do that thing
Don't fall for pseudo technical bullshit.
The nub of the problem is that renewable energy of the solar and wind
sort has zero or close to zero energy stored in kinetics, and its output
is massively variable on sub minute timescales.
It needs energy storage to stabilise the output - to absorb the peaks
and fill in the troughs.
If that energy is a battery, yes it will have an inverter that can lead
the grid. But that is not the issue.
The issue is that renewable energy of the intermittent kind *cannot
operate alone* as a source of stable reliable electricity.
Whether is is backed up by expensive spinning reserves, or expensive
batteries, it beeds access to very fast reacting storage.
This is the fundamental point, not the detailed technical description of
how this storage is utilised.
And it drives a fundamental stake through the heart of the claim that
'renewable energy is cheap because the sun and wind are free'
Even if the technology were cheap (which it is not) the infrastructure
to enable it to work is extremely expensive and the backup systems and
maintenance are scarcely zero carbon
Look at the poor gas power stations that Carlos blames for not running
spinning reserve when they are supposed to. Why would they? They are
burning gas, wearing out their turbines and repaying debt on the
principal used to construct them, but not receiving a penny for the
electricity *they are not allowed to generate, because 'renewables by
law must take precedence*.
It isn't worth their while to operate at all. It certainly isn't worth
capital to invest in efficient combined cycle ones.
In fact it is far cheaper to throw in simple diesel generators at 40%
thermal efficiency to fill the air with CO2. Or open cycle gas at
similar efficiencies. And bang goes *all* the carbon savings of
'renewables', once you add in the insane maintenance costs of e.,g
windmills that is done using diesel vehicles to access them...
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than
gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions
reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical
engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last
decade and a half.
I've followed your argument elsewhere for several years; the points you
make are compelling. My own small experience of this stuff was nearly
60 years ago (test-synching local standby 1 MW diesel generators to the
11kV grid) so I'm long out of date.
On 3/19/26 05:49, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 23:57, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA any
longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
Then there is the photo of the orange guy with a bunch of pastors around
with their hands in his shoulder.
Well their inane plan was to elect Trump as "God's Chosen Man" and then implement their stupid Project 2025 which would disenfranchise
women, and
murder all deviates gender and sexual according to their standards. Then
the
ejection or subjugation of people who are not white folks. Their perverted form of Christianity would be the law of the land rather than the Constitution.
Our founders were well aware of Europe's history of wars over
religion which is why we have a secular republic. And then the
Baptists requested that they should have No State Religion since
they had been paying taxes to support a faith, Anglicanism the state
religion under the UK of which the English King was the head. A
religion with which they did not agree.
bliss
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 14:03, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-18 11:55, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 18/03/2026 10:26, Nuno Silva wrote:
Again, I remind that what led to the collapse of these grids was >>>>>>> *fossil* fuel plants failing to act as expected. That ought to have >>>>>>> prevented the failure initiated by Iberdrola.A fossil plant that is not online, because renewables have driven it >>>>>> off, cannot do anything at all
Green cope.
No. Several plants were paid to run regulation, and failed or
neglected
to do so.
Why bother talking to him at all?
He is just airing his hobby horses,
But other people are reading, too.
Well, yes, but why care? You can't answer every hobby horse rider
all the time.
If you want to have some more fun like that you can go to one of the
crackpot/nutter groups, like SPR or TO.
No, thanks! X-D
I don't need to have the last word, but I can say something about the matter. Not getting involved in an endless argument, but showing to the group that there is another view.
This one seems to be rather boring.
But back to the thread.
Spain can congratulated on having done their electricity things
just right, with the timely move to a lot of solar power.
With the Middle East going up in flames
Spain is the country in the EU with the least dependence
on non-renewable imports to keep its electrical power up.
And after the work on having renewables that regulate, electricity are
again lowering prices. Somewhere I read that we have lower prices than
other EU countries. I don't know if this is true, though.
Well done,
:-)
Thanks.
Jan
On 2026-03-19 16:17, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/19/26 05:49, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 23:57, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA
any longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
Then there is the photo of the orange guy with a bunch of pastors around >>> with their hands in his shoulder.
Well their inane plan was to elect Trump as "God's Chosen Man"
and then implement their stupid Project 2025 which would
disenfranchise women, and
murder all deviates gender and sexual according to their standards.
Then the
ejection or subjugation of people who are not white folks. Their
perverted
form of Christianity would be the law of the land rather than the
Constitution.
What religion are these people? Some version of evangelism, perhaps?
bliss
Our founders were well aware of Europe's history of wars over
religion which is why we have a secular republic. And then the
Baptists requested that they should have No State Religion since
they had been paying taxes to support a faith, Anglicanism the state
religion under the UK of which the English King was the head. A
religion with which they did not agree.
bliss
Christian morality in this country has very little to do with quoting scriptures and a lot more to do with understanding the actual
messages and moralities referred to.
I think it was Douglas Adams who summed it up as 'putting a guy to
death on a cross basically for saying wouldn't it be a better idea if
people were nicer to each other' Its a beuatiful story that
illustrates a principle.
Like it or not the secular Western world still espouses a humanistic morality derived from basic Christian precepts. And it has its
issues, but it works.
On 19/03/2026 17:31, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:29:34 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
10 years ago was in the 1970s where the 'scientific consensus; was that
we were about to enter a new ice age. The 'deniers' of that period were
the warmist alarmists.
From Wikipedia on Global_Cooling
I note that 'conjecture' is rather far from 'consensus'.
That is because all the wikipedia is written now by cliimate actvists as anybody who has tried to change any of it soon discovers.
On 3/19/26 09:45, Sn!pe wrote:[...]
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than
gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions
reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical
engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last >> decade and a half.
I've followed your argument elsewhere for several years; the points you make are compelling. My own small experience of this stuff was nearly
60 years ago (test-synching local standby 1 MW diesel generators to the 11kV grid) so I'm long out of date.
Well in California we have wind, solar in several modes, the use of the heat
of the Earth, hydro-electric power, gas and as well as nuclear reactors retired due
to the failure to realize that building such on rarthquake fault lines
is a bad idea.
We also have large battery backups for all of these renewables and every
year our renewable power percentage of the total production goes up.
The un-Natural Philosopher is devoted to the solutions of yesterday.
He will never be convinced otherwise. Some people like this have economic connections to the Fossil Fuel producers but I don't know about
the u-NP.
bliss
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
What religion are these people? Some version of evangelism, perhaps?
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 3/19/26 09:45, Sn!pe wrote:[...]
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than >>>> gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions >>>> reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical >>>> engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last >>>> decade and a half.
I've followed your argument elsewhere for several years; the points you
make are compelling. My own small experience of this stuff was nearly
60 years ago (test-synching local standby 1 MW diesel generators to the
11kV grid) so I'm long out of date.
Well in California we have wind, solar in several modes, the use of the
heat
of the Earth, hydro-electric power, gas and as well as nuclear reactors
retired due
to the failure to realize that building such on rarthquake fault lines
is a bad idea.
We also have large battery backups for all of these renewables and every
year our renewable power percentage of the total production goes up.
The un-Natural Philosopher is devoted to the solutions of yesterday. >> He will never be convinced otherwise. Some people like this have
economic connections to the Fossil Fuel producers but I don't know about
the u-NP.
bliss
Name calling devalues your argument, Bobbie.
Here in Britain, we have an ideologically motivated Energy Minister determined to force our conversion to using renewable energy sources
for political reasons. This is without regard to the enormous cost,
both financially and in terms of world competitiveness, that is being
heaped on consumers, industry and the nation at large.
It seems to me that there is a very great deal of money to be made by
big corporations, and perhaps politicians too, from the green agenda
and coerced conversion to 'Net Zero' emissions.
I am convinced that financial enrichment is the prime mover in this.
To discover the truth, follow the money.
Every read the novel "Stand on Zanzibar"...
bliss - say hi to Gordon for me.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:43:36 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
What religion are these people? Some version of evangelism, perhaps?
The common term seems to be “Christian Nationalists”. They still hate Jews, like Christians have long done, but they seem to see Israel as
playing a part in fulfilling a prophesy about the coming of the End
Times. Which is why they are so supportive of its aggression against
its neighbours.
In other words, these nutcases want the world to end.
Not all Christians hate Jews. I did not. But the current breed are
acting in a hateful way, it is hard to not hate them.
Here in Britain, we have an ideologically motivated Energy Minister >determined to force our conversion to using renewable energy sources
for political reasons. This is without regard to the enormous cost,
both financially and in terms of world competitiveness, that is being
heaped on consumers, industry and the nation at large.
It seems to me that there is a very great deal of money to be made by
big corporations, and perhaps politicians too, from the green agenda
and coerced conversion to 'Net Zero' emissions.
I am convinced that financial enrichment is the prime mover in this.
To discover the truth, follow the money.
On 18/03/2026 03:35, Steve Hayes wrote:
On 17 Mar 2026 01:25:28 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:18:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I see the future of America to be brown people by and large.
I like the idea because I am so pale it hurts.
We have similar visions. I see the future of America as another failed
third world country.
The USA is the First World.
Bless!
If it fails, the Frist World fails. Don't
try to shift blame to the Third World. The First World must own its
own failures.
America is not fiorst world. Its second world.
In the UK the Labour party is frighteningly anti-Semitic. In a shameless
bid to attract the Islamic vote
On 18/03/26 23:05, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Australia is puny by comparison to the Europe-wide power network. It
is configured and planned on a day to day basis. They hold a
conference and auction each day to plan the next day, on an hour to
hour basis. Those who need power say how much, those who have it put
in bids, until the plan is complete. Curiosity: the spot price may go
negative for certain hours.
Australia too has a "free market" approach to setting prices, but it
worries me.
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity
companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission >lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the >background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is
bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no
engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
Le 19/03/2026 à 10:48, J. J. Lodder a écrit :
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
The 'Third World' has already changed its definition. Originally, it was >those countries not aligned during the Cold War either with the West or
with the Communist Bloc. It has morphed to mean poorer countries,
developing countries, or backward countries, depending on how
politically correct one wishes to be. (Verified in the OED.)
"Following the war… many people began to look upon the world as divided
in two parts - the Communist and the Western world. So intense was our >concentration on this struggle that many of us failed to comprehend that
a new third world had been born…" - 'Washington Post', 1958.
"Andalusia, often described as Spain's 'third world', with its high
crime rate and unemployment" - 'The Times', 1980.
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:43:41 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity
companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission
lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the
background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is
bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no
engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
Rich you are wasting your time with the un-Natural Philosopher.
He is an advocate of burning fossil fuels until the end of time.
So far there is no reduction in Carbon Dioxide or Methane levels as
the fossil fuel profiteers have put all their weight behind it.
Plus apart from power considerations the Wars in Ukraine and
the current attacks on Iran are giving the atmospheric gases
a boost.
In the California we are having a heat wave currently
with records for this time of year being broken for the last
week in the San Francisco Bay Area due to a high pressure
area slowly moving East. In the Sierra Nevada the snow
is melting a bit early. We may have a drought year and
it may go into multiple years. Time will tell.
Was there ever anything to it,
beyond the desinformation campaigns of big oil?
THE big development of the last decade is the precipitous drop
of the price of solar panels, by a factor of about ten.
(with the Chinese moving in)
Solar is by now the cheapest electricity by far.
(but the prices of wind energy have dropped a lot too)
I can now buy single panels at about 100 euro/Wp.
In bulk for less. (and prices are still dropping)
By now the support structure may cost more than the panels.
Slight differences in viscosity and additivesYes, but if you start out with frying oil you can make both,
(and they only mix in a small proportion)
Not really, Spain is about average. But those numbers are rather
meaningless, because there are large differences in subsidies and
taxation between countries. Hungary for example has low electricity
prices, essentially by subsidies aimed at keeping Orban popular.
On 2026-03-19 19:38, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/03/2026 16:21, John Ames wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:11:08 +0000Fucvk that for a load of old bollocks.
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
THESE people are deeply anti European, anti Christian and absolutely >>>> anti-semitic.
If you're worried about being overrun by "anti-Christian" people, it
may be worth reviewing what the man himself said:
"Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say
all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad,
because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they
persecuted the prophets who werebefore you." (Matt. 5:11-12)
I bet he didnt say that.
I bet the Romans who wrote him up 500 years after the fact said that.
Anathema! Heresy! You will burn in the stake.
Well in California we have wind, solar in several modes, the use of
the heat of the Earth, hydro-electric power, gas and as well as
nuclear reactors retired due to the failure to realize that building
such on rarthquake fault lines is a bad idea. We also have large
battery backups for all of these renewables and every year our
renewable power percentage of the total production goes up.
The un-Natural Philosopher is devoted to the solutions of yesterday.
He will never be convinced otherwise. Some people like this have
economic connections to the Fossil Fuel producers but I don't know
about the u-NP.
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 3/19/26 09:45, Sn!pe wrote:[...]
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
*Holistically* renewable grids are about 2-5 times more expensive than >>>> gas, coal or nuclear and represent no overall global carbon emissions >>>> reduction *at all*.
How do I know this? It's not because I am some sort of far right
Believer. It is because I have am honours masters degree in electrical >>>> engineering and have done my own research and calculations over the last >>>> decade and a half.
I've followed your argument elsewhere for several years; the points you
make are compelling. My own small experience of this stuff was nearly
60 years ago (test-synching local standby 1 MW diesel generators to the
11kV grid) so I'm long out of date.
Well in California we have wind, solar in several modes, the use of the
heat
of the Earth, hydro-electric power, gas and as well as nuclear reactors
retired due
to the failure to realize that building such on rarthquake fault lines
is a bad idea.
We also have large battery backups for all of these renewables and every
year our renewable power percentage of the total production goes up.
The un-Natural Philosopher is devoted to the solutions of yesterday. >> He will never be convinced otherwise. Some people like this have
economic connections to the Fossil Fuel producers but I don't know about
the u-NP.
bliss
Name calling devalues your argument, Bobbie.
Here in Britain, we have an ideologically motivated Energy Minister determined to force our conversion to using renewable energy sources
for political reasons. This is without regard to the enormous cost,
both financially and in terms of world competitiveness, that is being
heaped on consumers, industry and the nation at large.
It seems to me that there is a very great deal of money to be made by
big corporations, and perhaps politicians too, from the green agenda
and coerced conversion to 'Net Zero' emissions.
I am convinced that financial enrichment is the prime mover in this.
To discover the truth, follow the money.
You call him ideologically motivated but the ideology is backed by facts. The planet is heating, the sea and ocean life is dying from over heating. The Glaciers are melting into the sea some faster than others
and soon(indeterminate value of soon) fresh water will have to be
obtained by desalinization of sea water.
In article <1rs8qlp.1t56wsx1qc2yjyN%snipeco.2@gmail.com>,
Sn!pe <snipeco.1@gmail.com> wrote:
Here in Britain, we have an ideologically motivated Energy Minister
determined to force our conversion to using renewable energy sources
for political reasons. This is without regard to the enormous cost,
both financially and in terms of world competitiveness, that is being
heaped on consumers, industry and the nation at large.
It seems to me that there is a very great deal of money to be made by
big corporations, and perhaps politicians too, from the green agenda
and coerced conversion to 'Net Zero' emissions.
I am convinced that financial enrichment is the prime mover in this.
To discover the truth, follow the money.
I don't think anyone could believe that Ed Miliband is motivated
by financial enrichment.
-- Richard--
Well their inane plan was to elect Trump as "God's Chosen Man"
and then implement their stupid Project 2025 which would
disenfranchise women, and
murder all deviates gender and sexual according to their standards.
Then the
ejection or subjugation of people who are not white folks. Their
perverted
form of Christianity would be the law of the land rather than the
Constitution.
What religion are these people? Some version of evangelism, perhaps?
Not particularly evangelical but believing in a Militant Christ and
the superiority to all others of the so-called White Race they have
been working for many years to convince people that the USA is a
Christian nation and that their idea of Christianity should be
imposed on the national government. That would be dis-franchisement
of women and other inferiors. Degrees of death to all of the LBGTQ+
folks they can get their hands on and death for abortion for both
physicians and women. That is the basic content of the Project 2025 document.
On 20/03/26 13:31, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Not all Christians hate Jews. I did not. But the current breed are
acting in a hateful way, it is hard to not hate them.
It's important to distinguish between Jews and Israelis. Not all Jews
support the war criminals. Even in Israel, there are those who would not
vote for the current mob of extremists.
That is called 'vandal-proofing', and with good reason.
Wikipedia cannot exist without locking out the nutters.
America is not fiorst world. Its second world.Trump is a commie?
And all those billionaires?
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.Don't be more silly than is necessary.
On 19/03/2026 21:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Slight differences in viscosity and additivesYes, but if you start out with frying oil you can make both,
(and they only mix in a small proportion)
One of the most expensive ways to make fake fossil fuel
On 20/03/26 13:31, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Not all Christians hate Jews. I did not. But the current breed are
acting in a hateful way, it is hard to not hate them.
It's important to distinguish between Jews and Israelis. Not all Jews
support the war criminals. Even in Israel, there are those who would not
vote for the current mob of extremists.
On 19/03/2026 21:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
THE big development of the last decade is the precipitous drop
of the price of solar panels, by a factor of about ten.
(with the Chinese moving in)
Solar is by now the cheapest electricity by far.
(but the prices of wind energy have dropped a lot too)
I can now buy single panels at about 100 euro/Wp.
In bulk for less. (and prices are still dropping)
By now the support structure may cost more than the panels.
Utter bollocks. The price of solar panels has nothing to do with the
price of electricity, especially at night.
On 19/03/2026 21:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Was there ever anything to it,
beyond the desinformation campaigns of big oil?
You really have drunk the koolaid. haven't you?
Around 2004 I was involved with a firm of investment brokers. They put
on a conference about 'alternative energy' and invited potential
investors to attend.
WE had presentations from all sorts of people with renewable energy
carbon capture, Shell and BP talked about their plans and it was all
nice and jolly.
On 2026-03-20 03:46, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 20/03/26 13:31, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Not all Christians hate Jews. I did not. But the current breed are
acting in a hateful way, it is hard to not hate them.
It's important to distinguish between Jews and Israelis. Not all Jews
support the war criminals. Even in Israel, there are those who would not
vote for the current mob of extremists.
Well, we have seen the videos of Jews going to terraces to drink and
dance while they contemplated the bombing of Gaza from afar.
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered...
...than to have answers that cannot be questioned
Richard Feynman
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:43:41 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
On 18/03/26 23:05, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Australia is puny by comparison to the Europe-wide power network. It
is configured and planned on a day to day basis. They hold a
conference and auction each day to plan the next day, on an hour to
hour basis. Those who need power say how much, those who have it put
in bids, until the plan is complete. Curiosity: the spot price may go
negative for certain hours.
Australia too has a "free market" approach to setting prices, but it >worries me.
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity >companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission >lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the >background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is >bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no >engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:48:51 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:57:36 +1100, Peter Moylan wrote:
And Israel has further appropriated "anti-semitic" to mean "critical
of the government of Israel".
That term was originally popularized by the Nazis.
The Nazis were not really needed for that. Anti-semitism was coined as a word in Germany in 1879,
as a scientific-sounding substitute for 'Judenhass'. It was in wide circulation well before WWI,
and not just in Germany,
Jan
Long tradition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
On 17 Mar 2026 01:25:28 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:18:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I see the future of America to be brown people by and large.
I like the idea because I am so pale it hurts.
We have similar visions. I see the future of America as another failed >third world country.
The USA is the First World.
On 2026-03-19 14:24, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is
just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not
suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't
call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>>>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >>>> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used
canola (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't
use it very often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it >>>> smelled like the linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
Jet fuel is kerosene.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene>
Kerosene is a low-viscosity, clear liquid formed from hydrocarbons
obtained from the fractional distillation of petroleum between 150 and
275 °C (300 and 525 °F), resulting in a mixture with a density of 0.78–0.81 g/cm3. It is miscible with petroleum solvents, but not with water. It is composed of hydrocarbon molecules that typically contain
between 6 and 20 carbon atoms per molecule,[12] predominantly containing
9 to 16 carbon atoms.[13]
Diesel fuel is gasoil.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel>
Petroleum diesel is the most common type of diesel fuel. It is produced
by the fractional distillation of crude oil between 200 and 350 °C (392
and 662 °F) at atmospheric pressure, resulting in a mixture of carbon
chains that typically contain between 9 and 25 carbon atoms per molecule.[23] This fraction is subjected to hydrodesulfurization.
Usually such "straight-run" diesel is insufficient in supply and
quality, so other sources of diesel fuels are blended in. One major
source of additional diesel fuel is obtained by cracking heavier
fractions, using visbreaking and coking. This technology converts less
useful fractions but the product contains olefins (alkenes) which
require hydrogenation to give the saturated hydrocarbons as desired.
Another refinery stream that contributes to diesel fuel is
hydrocracking. Finally, kerosene is added to modify its viscosity.[24]
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 11:48:51 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
There is sort of a biodiesel program here. The real problem with most of
the recycling attempts is the lack of economic feasibility so it becomes
an exercise in virtue signaling.
On 2026-03-20 08:36, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/03/2026 21:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Was there ever anything to it,
beyond the desinformation campaigns of big oil?
You really have drunk the koolaid. haven't you?
Around 2004 I was involved with a firm of investment brokers. They put
on a conference about 'alternative energy' and invited potential
investors to attend.
WE had presentations from all sorts of people with renewable energy
carbon capture, Shell and BP talked about their plans and it was all
nice and jolly.
It is not 2004...
I prefer the company of people who are looking for the truth to the
company of those who have found it.
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
On 3/17/26 20:22, rbowman wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 22:45:40 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-17 10:10, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 17/03/2026 07:13, c186282 wrote:
So Trump needs to go for everything we need NOW.
He doesn't have any cards left to play...
Destroying Cuba.
I think the Cubans just did that.
No the Cubans did not destroy Cuba. We did not destroy Cuba
but have badly damaged it by cutting it out of normal commerce.
Before Castro it was a winter vacation paradise but run by a dictator
and the American Mob.
Cuba has done more good than can be calculated by sending
their home-grown physicians to 3rd world nations that needed
help.
Not just third world.
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
“Europe is full of Cuban doctors” (not true)
Le 19/03/2026 à 13:17, The Natural Philosopher a écrit :
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions)
immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been
paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than we
do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another
time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of
the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
On 2026-03-19 15:45, Hibou wrote:
Le 19/03/2026 13:17, The Natural Philosopher a crit :
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions)
immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than we do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
That's a good point.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class vote.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support for
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
On 17 Mar 2026 01:25:28 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:18:27 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
I see the future of America to be brown people by and large.
I like the idea because I am so pale it hurts.
We have similar visions. I see the future of America as another failed
third world country.
The USA is the First World.
Really?
Even Trump has said that the USA often feels like Third World.
And of course it often is, on the inside,
Jan
On 3/18/26 01:13, Peter Moylan wrote:
On 18/03/26 06:37, John Ames wrote:
Every working-class pro-authoritarian seems *immensely* convinced
that toppling democracy will end up with them, personally, at the
top of the heap. They never seem to consider the possibility that
they're actually one of the Useful Idiots, to be put to work under
the lash or disposed of at the first convenient opportunity.
"Working-class pro-authoritarian" seems to be a peculiarly American
development. In most countries authoritarians are found mostly among the
wealthy right-wingers. The working class votes mostly left-wing,
preferring a socialist rather than a wealth-dominated society. In those
countries someone like Trump or Biden would not get the working-class
vote.
In the UK, the left wing Labour Party has a problem with traditional
factory worker types being very socially conservative, including
xenophobia. This causes a schism with richer London type Labour voters
that are much more socially liberal. It isn't a coincidence that the UK
Tory party has a Black Woman leader and Labour has a white man.
It has always seemed to me that the US working class votes against its
own interests.
Well that is what propaganda is for.
The world might be changing, though, because of the rise is support forI think is a misleading to conflate racist and anti-immigration. There
the racist anti-immigration parties in a number of Western democracies.
are reasons to oppose immigration that have nothing to do with racism.
Also, the new world Slave Trade was racist and yet promoted immigration.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than
we do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
That's a good point.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostlyBut some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
On 20/03/2026 11:45, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostlyBut some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
Christ you're well up there with the best of the remoaners/.
NO ONE 'hated' Spanish nurses. Or Portugese. Or Slovakian. Or any other nationality.
The hatred was in the Spaniards who objected to British tourists and
told them to go away.
Which they did, leading to economic collapse along the costa del sol.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 15:45, Hibou wrote:
Le 19/03/2026 à 13:17, The Natural Philosopher a écrit :
On 19/03/2026 10:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
[...]
There are also many Cuban doctors, and other health staff,
working in (mostly southern) Italy and Spain.
Or maybe we should redefine 'third world',
Same experience here in UK.
Many many qualified and often excellent (with a few exceptions)
immigransts from all over the world run our health system. [...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been
paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than we >>> do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
That's a good point.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
But some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been
paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than
we do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
That's a good point.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
While in turn we Brits have our own doctors, nurses and others, trained
at great expense by us, poached by Australia, New Zealand and the US.
On 2026-03-20 16:51, Sn!pe wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
[...]
Is it moral for rich countries to recruit staff whose training has been >>>> paid for by poor countries? Don't those countries need them more than
we do, and shouldn't they benefit from their investment?
That's a good point.
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
While in turn we Brits have our own doctors, nurses and others, trained
at great expense by us, poached by Australia, New Zealand and the US.
Wow. Did not know that, I simply thought that medicine was not
attractive to students.
I heard that they were not happy with the labour conditions in Britain,
and the possibility of having a bad case in court. Still, the conditions must be better than in Spain.
And where was here? The Germans sent to POW camps
in the State of Washington were very happy to be there as they did not
enjoy being at war very much.
On 19/03/2026 22:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
That is called 'vandal-proofing', and with good reason.
Wikipedia cannot exist without locking out the nutters.
Unfortunately it has been taken over by nutters in many areas. Climate
change being one.
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:39:00 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/03/2026 22:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
That is called 'vandal-proofing', and with good reason.
Wikipedia cannot exist without locking out the nutters.
Unfortunately it has been taken over by nutters in many areas. Climate
change being one.
I find Wikipedia a valuable resource and contribute during their fund
raising drives. However any page that has anything to do with political or other controversial topics is absolute left wing bullshit.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
On 19/03/2026 21:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Not really, Spain is about average. But those numbers are rather
meaningless, because there are large differences in subsidies and
taxation between countries. Hungary for example has low electricity
prices, essentially by subsidies aimed at keeping Orban popular.
Hungary's grid is fed from uber cheap Russian gas and that's why its cheap
Or at least it was...
If you chart electricity prices against percentage of renewable energy,
you see that there is a direct correlation., The more expensive it is,
the more that country espouses renewables.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
No, if it is middle ages you mean.
They just expelled them all,
Jan
Well, we have seen the videos of Jews going to terraces to drink and
dance while they contemplated the bombing of Gaza from afar.
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:42:17 +0000, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
If you chart electricity prices against percentage of renewable energy,
you see that there is a direct correlation., The more expensive it is,
the more that country espouses renewables.
That makes sense in one direction. (Correlation is not causation.)
Also, the more strongly that states (US) support the death penalty,
the more murders they have.
The more (and larger) prescriptions a person has had for
psychotropic drugs, the more likely they are to be crazy. Crazier.
The more fire trucks show up for a blaze, the more expensive
the damage is apt to be.
On 2026-03-20, Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> wrote:
The more fire trucks show up for a blaze, the more expensive
the damage is apt to be.
"Look, mommy, there's a fire engine. There's going to be a fire."
-- Fahrenheit 451 (movie)
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:11:43 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Well, we have seen the videos of Jews going to terraces to drink and
dance while they contemplated the bombing of Gaza from afar.
The majority of Israelis approve of their Government’s abuses of Palestinians.
Jews outside Israel ... I think that tells a different story.
I once read about some hayseed being asked about nuclear power.
His answer was, "We don't want no damn atoms around here!"
To me, Three Mile Island is a demonstration of just how safe
nuclear power is, even when things go sideways. Chernobyl was
nastier, but there were some big regulatory failures there.
And even then, there have been a lot of natural disasters
with worse results.
I haven't decided to go for an electric car yet. Even at
today's prices I can buy a lot of gas for the price of an
electric car. Our power grid is coming under enough strain
as it is. But if I do make the switch, it might be to one
of those Chinese cars that Canada has decided to let in.
Surveillance technology? You think Elon Musk isn't doing
it too?
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
No, if it is middle ages you mean.
They just expelled them all,
Jan
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis>
J. J. Lodder <nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
No, if it is middle ages you mean.
They just expelled them all,
Jan
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:31:21 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:11:43 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Well, we have seen the videos of Jews going to terraces to drink and
dance while they contemplated the bombing of Gaza from afar.
The majority of Israelis approve of their Government’s abuses of
Palestinians.
Jews outside Israel ... I think that tells a different story.
US Jews always have had a problem with cognitive dissonance.
On 20/03/26 15:10, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:43:41 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity
companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission >>> lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the >>> background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is
bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no
engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
It is surprisingly difficult to discover who is doing the engineering >planning for the Australian electricity grid. The most concrete
statement I could find by googling was this:
"Many of the issues the industry is presently facing are due to the fact
that there has been a substantial de-engineering of the organisations >driving
the electricity industry."
This is from a submission by Englineers Australia to a government
enquiry. I think this is the first time I've encountered the word >"de-engineering".
It was 88° Farenheit in San Francisco today but it is supposed
to cool off over the weekend.
Electric cars are efficient and a good choice, and can get quite fast -
some achieving speeds over 200 km/h, and today 160 km/h might even be
the state of the art for the base tier, but I mean
especially/specifically the ones made with larger dimensions to carry
more people, and which go with metallic wheels on metallic surfaces, and which receive power from overhead wires.
In the Middle Ages the boundaries of Montana were simply unknown.
Jews by the way were more welcome in states that were Muslim
in the Middle Ages. They and the Muslims and Christians had a great
culture going in the middle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula.
The point of my post was to show that in the middle ages the
ill-treatment of the Jews was commonplace throughout Europe.
Obviously, Montana had not even been colonised at that time.
Well the Jews that were already here were able to bring in
small numbers but we had some anti-Semitic types in the State Department
and they did not welcome the Jews fleeing persecution by the NAZIs.
Neither did Cuba. And very few places welcomed Jews because of that
age-old hatred.
Carlos E.R. wrote:
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
But some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
On 3/20/26 17:16, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Well the Jews that were already here were able to bring in
small numbers but we had some anti-Semitic types in the State
Department and they did not welcome the Jews fleeing persecution
by the NAZIs. Neither did Cuba. And very few places welcomed
Jews because of that age-old hatred.
But remember in Pre-War ii USA we had a lot of isolationist--
and pro-NAZI feeling. Father Coughlin a RC priest had a radio
show that was rabidly anti-Jewish. The Wartime administration
finally shut him down in 1942. But he had a bid audiende
and when I went to a parochial School in the 1950s we had
at least one priest who conducted a mass meeting int he
HS auditorium and railed against the Jewish entertainer
Eddie Cantor and other Jews I believe. I was already a rather
liberal person and thought if very disturbing and that was
before I heard about Father Coughlin.
bliss- now a rather progressive liberal
On 3/19/26 05:49, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 23:57, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
If the USA did embrace any State Religion it would not be the USA
any longer and I would not support such a change to our secular
Republic.
Then there is the photo of the orange guy with a bunch of pastors around
with their hands in his shoulder.
Well their inane plan was to elect Trump as "God's Chosen Man"
and then implement their stupid Project 2025 which would
disenfranchise women, and
murder all deviates gender and sexual according to their standards. Then the ejection or subjugation of people who are not white folks. Their perverted form of Christianity would be the law of the land rather than the Constitution.
Our founders were well aware of Europe's history of wars over religion which is why we have a secular republic. And then the Baptists requested that they should have No State Religion since they had been paying taxes
to support a faith, Anglicanism the state religion under the UK of
which the
English King was the head. A religion with which they did not agree.
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:39:00 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/03/2026 22:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
That is called 'vandal-proofing', and with good reason.
Wikipedia cannot exist without locking out the nutters.
Unfortunately it has been taken over by nutters in many areas. Climate
change being one.
I find Wikipedia a valuable resource and contribute during their fund
raising drives. However any page that has anything to do with political or other controversial topics is absolute left wing bullshit.
On 3/20/26 12:30, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 08:39:00 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 19/03/2026 22:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
That is called 'vandal-proofing', and with good reason.
Wikipedia cannot exist without locking out the nutters.
Unfortunately it has been taken over by nutters in many areas. Climate
change being one.
I find Wikipedia a valuable resource and contribute during their fund
raising drives. However any page that has anything to do with
political or
other controversial topics is absolute left wing bullshit.
Which merely means that it does not agree with your Right Wing Nut Job positions.
You poor crazed person.
bliss
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
On 3/20/26 17:16, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Well the Jews that were already here were able to bring in
small numbers but we had some anti-Semitic types in the State
Department and they did not welcome the Jews fleeing persecution
by the NAZIs. Neither did Cuba. And very few places welcomed
Jews because of that age-old hatred.
But remember in Pre-War ii USA we had a lot of isolationist
and pro-NAZI feeling. Father Coughlin a RC priest had a radio
show that was rabidly anti-Jewish. The Wartime administration
finally shut him down in 1942. But he had a bid audiende
and when I went to a parochial School in the 1950s we had
at least one priest who conducted a mass meeting int he
HS auditorium and railed against the Jewish entertainer
Eddie Cantor and other Jews I believe. I was already a rather
liberal person and thought if very disturbing and that was
before I heard about Father Coughlin.
bliss- now a rather progressive liberal
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:00:55 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Jews by the way were more welcome in states that were Muslim
in the Middle Ages. They and the Muslims and Christians had a great
culture going in the middle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula.
It took the Christians to expel the Jews from Spain. More people than Columbus sailed in 1492.
Roast pig rulz.
Some places with a
small and disperse population aren't that suitable for mass transit, but there are plenty of cases where dense urban areas still see a lot of
cars going around.
Engineers are trained to look for the source of a problem and fix it.
MBAs are trasined to use PR to hide the problems they don't know how
to solve -- often even from themselves.
she attacked Britain and the British, and I came away with the feeling
that she was just one more proof that people are mirrors, that what
she'd experienced was her own attitude reflected back to her.
On 3/20/26 15:16, Sn!pe wrote:
J. J. Lodder <nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a >>>> rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
No, if it is middle ages you mean.
They just expelled them all,
Jan
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
In the Middle Ages the boundaries of Montana were simply unknown.
In the Low Countries there was more tolerance of Jews but the Jews
were less tolerant of the dissenters such as Spinoza. Not sure about the depths of the Middle Ages but the Netherlanders were traders and they
might well have been happy to have people who were sound businessmen
and women around.
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
On 3/20/26 17:16, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Well the Jews that were already here were able to bring in
small numbers but we had some anti-Semitic types in the State
Department and they did not welcome the Jews fleeing persecution
by the NAZIs. Neither did Cuba. And very few places welcomed
Jews because of that age-old hatred.
Le 20/03/2026 11:45, J. J. Lodder a crit :
Carlos E.R. wrote:
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly
nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
But some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
Do you have a source for that?
Do you have some numbers?
What they don't realised is that Anne Frank (born 1929)
could still have been alive, and could have been
a respected literary figure in for example New York,
if only...
A BBC documentary, iirc, with some interviews.
Caring for people who openly dislike you, despise you,
or even hate you is psychologically hard.
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:16:31 +0000, Sn!pe wrote:
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
Were Jews welcome in the US in 1939?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
Americans no longer want to know how anti-semitic
many of them were before WWII.
FDR wasn't, but he had to go along with the majority
because he wanted the 1940 nomination.
There were some well known notorious anti-semites,
such as Henry Ford, and Charles Lindbergh.
Henry Ford even bought a newspaper to disseminate his views.
It was as bad as Julius Streicher's 'Der Stuermer' in Nazi Germany,
(you may know that he was hanged for it at Nurnberg)
Jan
On 21/03/2026 12:42, J. J. Lodder wrote:
A BBC documentary, iirc, with some interviews.
Caring for people who openly dislike you, despise you,
or even hate you is psychologically hard.
Ah., The Boy Buggering Communists. Who still cant believe anyone voted
for Brexit.
So discredited as beyond woke these days.
Unlike them I have spent many days in hospital being treated by nurses
from all over the world including Portugal and Spain.
It seems unemployment is higher there.
Lovely nurses all, and well liked
Hibou wrote:
Le 20/03/2026 à 11:45, J. J. Lodder a écrit :
Carlos E.R. wrote:
Spain exports a good number of health professionals to Britain, mostly >>>> nurses. We, in turn, import then from Central and South Americas.
But some of those nurses moved back during and after Brexit,
saying that the general atmosphere of hatred
that they experienced did not suit them,
Do you have a source for that?
A BBC documentary, iirc, with some interviews.
Caring for people who openly dislike you, despise you,
or even hate you is psychologically hard.
Nursing in particular should be a matter of mutual trust.
They were deeply unhappy.
Do you have some numbers?
No.
The American ones were a
big contrast, and were jingoistic and racist from the word go.
Let us not forget that the British citizens most affected by Brexit, that is to say ones who didn't live in the UK, were denied the vote. That was probably
illegal, but I don't know if it was ever taken to court.
Let us not forget that the British citizens most affected by Brexit, that is to say ones who didn't live in the UK, were denied the vote. That was probably
illegal, but I don't know if it was ever taken to court.
"The UK's highest court upheld the decisions of both the High Court and[...]
Court of Appeal. / UK citizens are not eligible to vote on 23 June if
they have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years."
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:24:56 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
It was 88° Farenheit in San Francisco today but it is supposed
to cool off over the weekend.
I think it hit 77 here. I put the street tires on the car, and fired up
the Smokey Joe for the first time this season to grill up a nice pork tenderloin. Screw kosher, halal, and any other weird West Asians dietary restrictions. Roast pig rulz.
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
On 21/03/2026 00:14, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some places with a
small and disperse population aren't that suitable for mass transit, but
there are plenty of cases where dense urban areas still see a lot of
cars going around.
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport
scores. short journeys , many people
That is common in Europe but less so in the semi-rural USA where one
thing that is cheap is land.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know
when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
For which you would need a previous fix,
and a knowledge of how you have moved in the meantime.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another
time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of
the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
Verne's expositions on science must sometimes be taken
with more than one grain of salt,
Jan
(but don't have this one)
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 14:24, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but mostly >>>>>>>> in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease but Greece is
just another nation and it is famous for olive oil which is not >>>>>>>> suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we don't
call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is tight, then >>>>>>> we use other oils.
https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with- >>>>>> evoo
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used >>>>>> canola (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't >>>>>> use it very often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it >>>>>> smelled like the linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
Jet fuel is kerosene.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene>
Kerosene is a low-viscosity, clear liquid formed from hydrocarbons
obtained from the fractional distillation of petroleum between 150 and
275 °C (300 and 525 °F), resulting in a mixture with a density of
0.78–0.81 g/cm3. It is miscible with petroleum solvents, but not with
water. It is composed of hydrocarbon molecules that typically contain
between 6 and 20 carbon atoms per molecule,[12] predominantly containing
9 to 16 carbon atoms.[13]
Diesel fuel is gasoil.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel>
Petroleum diesel is the most common type of diesel fuel. It is produced
by the fractional distillation of crude oil between 200 and 350 °C (392
and 662 °F) at atmospheric pressure, resulting in a mixture of carbon
chains that typically contain between 9 and 25 carbon atoms per
molecule.[23] This fraction is subjected to hydrodesulfurization.
Usually such "straight-run" diesel is insufficient in supply and
quality, so other sources of diesel fuels are blended in. One major
source of additional diesel fuel is obtained by cracking heavier
fractions, using visbreaking and coking. This technology converts less
useful fractions but the product contains olefins (alkenes) which
require hydrogenation to give the saturated hydrocarbons as desired.
Another refinery stream that contributes to diesel fuel is
hydrocracking. Finally, kerosene is added to modify its viscosity.[24]
Yes, different names.
It should be obvious that there is more overlap than difference,
I attended a Phillipino celebration shortly after I moved to San
Francisco
and they served suckling pig. All sort of Americans of mutiple
political persuasions will agree that roast pig is delicious.
On 20/03/2026 19:33, rbowman wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a
rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
Long before America was even thought of.
"On July 18, 1290, King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, formally ordering all Jews to leave England by November 1 (All Saints' Day) of
that year. Driven by rising antisemitism, financial motives, and Church pressure, this decree forced an estimated 3,000–16,000 Jews to leave
behind their property, which was confiscated by the Crown."
A move worthy of Donald Trump.
On 21/03/2026 13:48, athel.cb@gmail.com wrote:
The American ones were a big contrast, and were jingoistic and racist
from the word go.
One pub in the south of England banned all American Whites for being
racist towards Black Americans
On 21/03/2026 03:51, Steve Hayes wrote:
Engineers are trained to look for the source of a problem and fix it.
MBAs are trasined to use PR to hide the problems they don't know how to
solve -- often even from themselves.
Which is why is engineers referred to them a s 'Mostly Bloody Arseholes'
On 2026-03-20 12:39, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:For which you would need a previous fix,
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know >>>>> when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>>>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon. >>
and a knowledge of how you have moved in the meantime.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another
time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of >>> the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
Verne's expositions on science must sometimes be taken
with more than one grain of salt,
Jan
(but don't have this one)
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
On 21/03/2026 00:14, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some places with a
small and disperse population aren't that suitable for mass transit,
but there are plenty of cases where dense urban areas still see a lot
of cars going around.
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport scores.
short journeys , many people
That is common in Europe but less so in the semi-rural USA where one
thing that is cheap is land.
My grandparents were pretty anti-semitic.
My parents were dubious I went to school with several and one of them
became my best friend.
I had a Jewish girlfriend at one time.
I've also had a Muslim girl friend.
It'd not cost much not to do things like references to religion in the
pledge of allegiance and legal tender, for example. Or in oaths of
office.
And that passing through probably sadly says something about how
resilient the secular republic is.
On 21/03/2026 05:10, rbowman wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:00:55 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Jews by the way were more welcome in states that were Muslim
in the Middle Ages. They and the Muslims and Christians had a great
culture going in the middle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian
Peninsula.
It took the Christians to expel the Jews from Spain. More people than
Columbus sailed in 1492.
IIRC it was the Muslims they expelled ...
... but I still think mass migration is a problem. It imposes
logistical (housing…) and cultural stresses on the receiving
country, and it is impossible to fix all the world's trouble spots
by moving their populations somewhere else.
Americans no longer want to know how anti-semitic many of them were
before WWII.
On 2026-03-20 11:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:https://www.californiaoliveranch.com/articles/yes-you-can-deep-fry-with
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 14:24, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-19 11:48, J. J. Lodder wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:00:26 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2026-03-18 17:40, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 3/18/26 09:16, lar3ryca wrote:
--
I was told that french fries are not cooked in France.
The are cooked in Greece.
French fries are cooked in oil, beef tallow or lard but >>>>>>>> mostly in Belgium. You can call the oleagenous substance grease >>>>>>>> but Greece is just another nation and it is famous for olive oil >>>>>>>> which is not suitable for French Frying.
In Spain we do fry them in olive oil and we love them, although we >>>>>>> don't call them "French". Just fried potatoes. If your budget is >>>>>>> tight, then we use other oils.
I only use olive oil but I don't deep fry stuff. Decades ago I used >>>>>> canola (rapeseed oil) that was promoted as heart healthy. I didn't >>>>>> use it very often and one day when I opened the bottle I realized it >>>>>> smelled like the linseed oil I use for wood finishing.
Yes, and sunflower oil will do as well, [1]
Jan
[1] In these parts used frying oil is being collected,
for recycling into bio jet fuel.
Huh? Here it is collected, but for use as diesel fuel.
Jet fuel and diesel fuel are practically the same thing,
Jet fuel is kerosene.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene>
Kerosene is a low-viscosity, clear liquid formed from hydrocarbons
obtained from the fractional distillation of petroleum between 150 and
275 °C (300 and 525 °F), resulting in a mixture with a density of
0.78–0.81 g/cm3. It is miscible with petroleum solvents, but not with
water. It is composed of hydrocarbon molecules that typically contain
between 6 and 20 carbon atoms per molecule,[12] predominantly containing >> 9 to 16 carbon atoms.[13]
Diesel fuel is gasoil.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_fuel>
Petroleum diesel is the most common type of diesel fuel. It is produced
by the fractional distillation of crude oil between 200 and 350 °C (392 >> and 662 °F) at atmospheric pressure, resulting in a mixture of carbon
chains that typically contain between 9 and 25 carbon atoms per
molecule.[23] This fraction is subjected to hydrodesulfurization.
Usually such "straight-run" diesel is insufficient in supply and
quality, so other sources of diesel fuels are blended in. One major
source of additional diesel fuel is obtained by cracking heavier
fractions, using visbreaking and coking. This technology converts less
useful fractions but the product contains olefins (alkenes) which
require hydrogenation to give the saturated hydrocarbons as desired.
Another refinery stream that contributes to diesel fuel is
hydrocracking. Finally, kerosene is added to modify its viscosity.[24]
Yes, different names.
It should be obvious that there is more overlap than difference,
Properties like ignition point, vaporization, etc, are different. They
can have the same hidrocarbons, but the resulting mixture properties are different.
On 2026-03-20 12:39, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an
east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know >>>> when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
For which you would need a previous fix,
and a knowledge of how you have moved in the meantime.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another
time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of >> the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon.
Verne's expositions on science must sometimes be taken
with more than one grain of salt,
Jan
(but don't have this one)
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
On 3/20/26 15:16, Sn!pe wrote:
J. J. Lodder <nospam@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote:
rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:46:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My own minor investigations reveal a very intelligent people who
absolutely favour hard work intelligence and education. as well as a >>>>> rigidly ethical approach to business.
Didn't Britain expel the Jews until they needed money?
No, if it is middle ages you mean.
They just expelled them all,
Jan
Were Jews welcome in Montana in the middle ages?
How about in the Low Countries?
In the Middle Ages the boundaries of Montana were simply unknown.
In the Low Countries there was more tolerance of Jews but the Jews were less tolerant of the dissenters such as Spinoza. Not sure about the depths of the Middle Ages but the Netherlanders were traders and they
might well have been happy to have people who were sound businessmen
and women around.
Read Eric Flint's "Ring of Fire" series if you can and you will
find out a lot about how things were in the Germans principalities and
else where at the near end of the Middle Ages. Not as dry as most historical novels.
Jews by the way were more welcome in states that were Muslim
in the Middle Ages. They and the Muslims and Christians had a great
culture going in the middle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula.
bliss -
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 18:00:55 -0700, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Jews by the way were more welcome in states that were Muslim
in the Middle Ages. They and the Muslims and Christians had a great
culture going in the middle of the Middle Ages on the Iberian Peninsula.
It took the Christians to expel the Jews from Spain. More people than Columbus sailed in 1492.
I attended a Phillipino celebration shortly after I moved to San Francisco
and they served suckling pig. All sort of Americans of mutiple political persuasions will agree that roast pig is delicious.
Otherwise you're just replacing one problem but still having theExperience shows that unless your public transport is every minute or so
mobility nightmare of a bunch of people on private vehicles that could
be on public transit instead.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:38:21 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/03/2026 00:14, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some places with a
small and disperse population aren't that suitable for mass transit,
but there are plenty of cases where dense urban areas still see a lot
of cars going around.
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport scores.
short journeys , many people
That is common in Europe but less so in the semi-rural USA where one
thing that is cheap is land.
You obviously haven't bought any land around here.
On 2026-03-20, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
On 2026-03-20, Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> wrote:[...]
The more fire trucks show up for a blaze, the more expensive
the damage is apt to be.
"Look, mommy, there's a fire engine. There's going to be a fire."
-- Fahrenheit 451 (movie)
How does that one fare compared to the book? I might try watching it
this year.
On 2026-03-21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport
scores. short journeys , many people
For *sedan*-type vehicles, no, that's where they're inefficient. For
anything bus-size or bigger, yes.
Otherwise you're just replacing one problem but still having the
mobility nightmare of a bunch of people on private vehicles that could
be on public transit instead.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:14:26 +0000, Nuno Silva wrote:
Electric cars are efficient and a good choice, and can get quite fast -
some achieving speeds over 200 km/h, and today 160 km/h might even be
the state of the art for the base tier, but I mean
especially/specifically the ones made with larger dimensions to carry
more people, and which go with metallic wheels on metallic surfaces, and
which receive power from overhead wires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Greater_Boston
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:43:41 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
Australia too has a "free market" approach to setting prices, but it
worries me.
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity
companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission
lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the
background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is
bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no
engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
That's no news.
You seem to blame her for everything that goes wrong in South Africa.
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:32:06 +0100, nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
Lodder) wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
That's no news. You seem to blame her for everything that goes
wrong in South Africa.
Not everything, only the things that can be attributed to to her
(and Ronald Reagan's) neoliberalism.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 20:38:24 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about
calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
I’ve been reading some old SF magazines which mention a kind of “Verne effect”, where he got credited with inventing things that he actually didn’t.
For example, that the patent on submarine periscopes was denied
because Verne had already described such a thing in “20,000 Leagues
Under The Sea”. In fact, the “Nautilus” submarine in that story never had a periscope.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-20 12:39, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> >>>>> wrote:
This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an >>>>>> east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to know >>>>>> when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either misjudged >>>>>> your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes?
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much off-noon.
For which you would need a previous fix,
and a knowledge of how you have moved in the meantime.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another >>>> time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of >>>> the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon. >>>Verne's expositions on science must sometimes be taken
with more than one grain of salt,
Jan
(but don't have this one)
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about
calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
Verne could certainly do the sums needed for ordinary navigation.
In his rich years he owned a private yacht, [1]
and travelled widely in Europe,
Jan
[1] Several in fact. He started with a small boat.
As he got richer he bought bigger ones.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 10:06:40 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
My grandparents were pretty anti-semitic.
My parents were dubious I went to school with several and one of them
became my best friend.
I had a Jewish girlfriend at one time.
I've also had a Muslim girl friend.
afaik there were no Jews in the small town where I grew up. (or blacks, hispanics, arabs, asians, etc). The town wasn't large enough to have a
high school so we were bused into the city. I was in the Enriched
Curriculum group, sort of a proto-AP, and many of my classmates were
Jews. The group was pretty much a clique since they had all went to the
same grade school in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
I hung around with a Jewish girl in college but she wasn't a girlfriend
per se. I don't think I ever knew a Muslim girl.
The Jews had their own country club because they weren't going to get into the regular one, not that my family was country club material. I would say they were tolerated but not loved.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:17:37 +0000, Nuno Silva wrote:
It'd not cost much not to do things like references to religion in the
pledge of allegiance and legal tender, for example. Or in oaths of
office.
And that passing through probably sadly says something about how
resilient the secular republic is.
I was in 4th or 5th grade when 'under God' was added to the pledge of allegiance. I tended to skip that part.
On 2026-03-21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 21/03/2026 00:14, Nuno Silva wrote:
Some places with a
small and disperse population aren't that suitable for mass transit, but >>> there are plenty of cases where dense urban areas still see a lot of
cars going around.
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport
scores. short journeys , many people
For *sedan*-type vehicles, no, that's where they're inefficient. For
anything bus-size or bigger, yes.
Otherwise you're just replacing one problem but still having the
mobility nightmare of a bunch of people on private vehicles that could
be on public transit instead.
That is common in Europe but less so in the semi-rural USA where one
thing that is cheap is land.
Uuuuh... no, Europe has areas like that too. The USA may have these at
bigger scales, but Europe has that stark contrast too.
On 22/03/26 11:22, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:32:06 +0100, nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
Lodder) wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
That's no news. You seem to blame her for everything that goes
wrong in South Africa.
Not everything, only the things that can be attributed to to her
(and Ronald Reagan's) neoliberalism.
I suppose you've noticed that the new Japanese Prime Minister is an
admirer of Thatcher. The Japanese probably need to start worrying about that
For those who don't know her, she's the one who was attacked by Trump's >latest boorish comment. I'm a little surprised that the entire Japanese >delegation didn't walk out.
That attack, by the way, is something new. When Trump was rude to
Zelenskii and others, that was premeditated bullying: not very
admirable, but consistent with his personality. This latest incident
looks to me like a sign of frontal lobe damage. His supporters might
well be starting to think about how to arrange a discreet medical
retirement.
We are one nation under the Constitution, a document composed
by a representative body of male land holders and it should be
referenced.
They were smart enough to provide for the Amendment of that document by
the consent of the States thus United.
I would not expect the delegation to walk out. They are diplomats
whose very nature is to not show distaste.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 13:26:03 +0100, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Americans no longer want to know how anti-semitic many of them were
before WWII.
They simply didn’t want to know what Hitler was doing to his own people during the 1930s. As far as the Americans were concerned, Nazi Germany
was an important bulwark against Communism, and it was important to
support that.
History repeats, doesn’t it? Nowadays, Israel is seen as an important bulwark against ... something or other. And therefore Americans must
turn a blind eye to any atrocities it is committing against the people
living on lands that it wants for itself.
In North Africa, those who went to the Fez kingdom suffered all kinds of ill-treatment and were plundered, even by the Jews who had lived there
for a long time.
Those who fared the best were those who settled in the
territories of the Ottoman Empire, both in North Africa and in the
Middle East, such as in the Balkans and the Republic of Ragusa,
after having passed by Italy. Sultan Bayezid II gave orders to welcome
them, and exclaimed on one occasion, referring to King Ferdinand: "You
call him king who impoverishes his states to enrich mine?" This same
sultan commented to the ambassador sent by Carlos V who marveled that
"the Jews had been thrown out of Castile, which was to throw away wealth."[99] Over the course of a few generations, the Ottoman Empire's cities emerged as the heart of the Sephardic world.[98]
That attack, by the way, is something new. When Trump was rude to
Zelenskii and others, that was premeditated bullying: not very
admirable, but consistent with his personality. This latest incident
looks to me like a sign of frontal lobe damage. His supporters might
well be starting to think about how to arrange a discreet medical
retirement.
On 21 Mar 2026 05:04:17 GMT, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:14:26 +0000, Nuno Silva wrote:
Electric cars are efficient and a good choice, and can get quite fast
- some achieving speeds over 200 km/h, and today 160 km/h might even
be the state of the art for the base tier, but I mean
especially/specifically the ones made with larger dimensions to carry
more people, and which go with metallic wheels on metallic surfaces,
and which receive power from overhead wires.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybuses_in_Greater_Boston
Trolley buses have rubber tyres and do not run on metallic surfaces.
You are probably thinking of trams:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram>
Although at some place or time, they had to pay a tax in order to have
the right to be different.
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 22:35:22 +0100, Carlos E.R. wrote:
Although at some place or time, they had to pay a tax in order to have
the right to be different.
https://swedenherald.com/article/do-you-have-to-pay-the-church-tax
Or you can pay a tax anyway.
I'm not sure but I think in the 19th century in some of the Nordic
countries you couldn't opt out. I know there was a religious element in
the influx of Scandinavians to the US.
In London I discovered that weather permitting, it was quicker for me to
walk from Belsize park over Primrose Hill and down to the canal and into Camden than to get to the tube station and take the tube
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:04:11 +0000, Hibou wrote:
... but I still think mass migration is a problem. It imposes
logistical (housing…) and cultural stresses on the receiving
country, and it is impossible to fix all the world's trouble spots
by moving their populations somewhere else.
Economic studies continue to show that immigrants are a net asset to
their host countries, not a net liability.
In other words, migration is a problem with its own solution. All the disruptions are essentially short-term: given the chance, the migrants themselves contribute to the pool of skilled workers and businesses
that will create the facilities for accommodating the increased
population.
In other, other words: the most important resource in any economy is
people. Countries with low birth rates, in particular, need to make up
the shortfall in new, younger minds and bodies somehow; if the women
don’t want to have more babies, how else are you going to do it, if
not by mass migration?
Does mass migration - more workers - improve just GDP or GDP per
capita? Does it make the average person better off? This is a hard
question to answer ...
<Tongue in cheek>
Steve the Butcher, Tea Room, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Fray Bentos… - 'Pourquoi y a-t-il autant d'Anglais à Eymet' -
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssgb4aFjKzw>
</Tongue in cheek>
On 22/03/26 11:22, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:32:06 +0100, nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
Lodder) wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
That's no news. You seem to blame her for everything that goes
wrong in South Africa.
Not everything, only the things that can be attributed to to her
(and Ronald Reagan's) neoliberalism.
I suppose you've noticed that the new Japanese Prime Minister is an
admirer of Thatcher. The Japanese probably need to start worrying about
that
For those who don't know her, she's the one who was attacked by Trump's latest boorish comment. I'm a little surprised that the entire Japanese delegation didn't walk out.
On Sun, 22 Mar 2026 06:42:45 +0000, Hibou wrote:
Does mass migration - more workers - improve just GDP or GDP per
capita? Does it make the average person better off? This is a hard
question to answer ...
Here’s a question that’s easier to answer: as the proportion of old people in your population increases, where are you going to get the
money for all those pensions? That has to come, at least in part, from
taxes on those still of working age. If your nation’s birth rate is
below the replacement level, then the relative size of that tax-paying
base is going to decline accordingly.
I’ll ask my question again: if the women don’t want to have more
babies, how else are you going to make up the shortfall, if not by
mass migration?
Le 21/03/2026 à 21:23, Lawrence D’Oliveiro a écrit :
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:04:11 +0000, Hibou wrote:
... but I still think mass migration is a problem. It imposes
logistical (housing…) and cultural stresses on the receiving
country, and it is impossible to fix all the world's trouble spots
by moving their populations somewhere else.
Economic studies continue to show that immigrants are a net asset to
their host countries, not a net liability.
In other words, migration is a problem with its own solution. All the
disruptions are essentially short-term: given the chance, the migrants
themselves contribute to the pool of skilled workers and businesses
that will create the facilities for accommodating the increased
population.
In other, other words: the most important resource in any economy is
people. Countries with low birth rates, in particular, need to make up
the shortfall in new, younger minds and bodies somehow; if the women
don’t want to have more babies, how else are you going to do it, if
not by mass migration?
I see what you're saying,
On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:04:11 +0000, Hibou wrote:
... but I still think mass migration is a problem. It imposes
logistical (housing…) and cultural stresses on the receiving
country, and it is impossible to fix all the world's trouble spots
by moving their populations somewhere else.
Economic studies continue to show that immigrants are a net asset to
their host countries, not a net liability.
In other words, migration is a problem with its own solution. All the disruptions are essentially short-term: given the chance, the migrants themselves contribute to the pool of skilled workers and businesses
that will create the facilities for accommodating the increased
population.
In other, other words: the most important resource in any economy is
people.
Countries with low birth rates, in particular, need to make up the shortfall in new, younger minds and bodies somehow; if the women don’t want to have more babies, how else are you going to do it, if not by mass migration?--
Ar an chéad lá is fiche de mí Márta, scríobh Lawrence D’Oliveiro:
> On Sat, 21 Mar 2026 14:04:11 +0000, Hibou wrote:
>
> > ... but I still think mass migration is a problem. It imposes
> > logistical (housing…) and cultural stresses on the receiving
> > country, and it is impossible to fix all the world's trouble spots
> > by moving their populations somewhere else.
>
> Economic studies continue to show that immigrants are a net asset to
> their host countries, not a net liability.
In financial terms, the Danish studies (and I understand the Dutch studies) say
that depends on the origin of the immigrants. In humanistic terms, it’s hard to
refute the above.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124004815
> In other words, migration is a problem with its own solution. All the
> disruptions are essentially short-term: given the chance, the migrants
> themselves contribute to the pool of skilled workers and businesses
> that will create the facilities for accommodating the increased
> population.
>
> In other, other words: the most important resource in any economy is
> people.
No. If that were the case the Philippines would be an economic powerhouse, Ireland circa 1847 would have been an economic powerhouse, Denmark wouldn’t have a better standard of living than India.
> Countries with low birth rates, in particular, need to make up the shortfall
> in new, younger minds and bodies somehow; if the women don’t want to have
> more babies, how else are you going to do it, if not by mass migration?
On Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:32:06 +0100, nospam@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.
Lodder) wrote:
Steve Hayes <hayesstw@telkomsa.net> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 09:43:41 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
wrote:
Australia too has a "free market" approach to setting prices, but it
worries me.
In practice, all of the companies that we think of as "electricity
companies" produce no electricity, and own no generators or transmission >> >lines. They are pure marketing firms. As such, they do no planning for
the future.The underlying assumption is that the hardware can sit in the >> >background looking after itself, and that the only important thing is
bidding and investment strategies.
As far as I know, the top-level energy market regulator employs no
engineers. The whole system is run by accountants and lawyers. The
people who do the design and analysis and system planning still exist,
for now, but they are gradually being edged out.
The smae thing has been happening in South Africa -- instead of
engineers, they have MBAs running things, often with disastrous
results.
I blame Maggie Thatcher.
That's no news.
You seem to blame her for everything that goes wrong in South Africa.
Not everything, only the things that can be attributed to to her (and
Ronald Reagan's) neoliberalism.
In South Africa Thatcherism really took off around 1987, when building societies were commercialised, and parastatals like Escom became SOEs
like Eskom, the Post Off ice ceased to be the responsibility of the
Minister of Toasts and Photograp... sorry, Posts and Telegraphs, and
were run by semi-independent managers who awarded themselves large
bonuses.
When the ANC came to power in 1994 they didn't reverse that process,
but allowed Thatcherism to continue, with all its defects. I suspect
that some of the leaders who had been in exile in the UK just absorbed
the Zeitgeist.
One of the things it led to were huge levels of corruption in both
places.
On 2026-03-21 22:32, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-20 12:39, J. J. Lodder wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-17 16:43, Rich Ulrich wrote:
On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:21:47 +1100, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> >>>>> wrote:
You might use another time, but you have to know exactly how much >>>>off-noon.This sounds like a north/south navigation problem, but it's also an >>>>>> east/west problem. Sailing across the Indian Ocean, you need to
know when to expect to see land. If you don't see it, you've either >>>>>> misjudged your longitude or you're wandering into the Roaring
Forties.
The check on north-south, by the sun, is only at noon each day, yes? >>>>
For which you would need a previous fix,
and a knowledge of how you have moved in the meantime.
In one Jules Verne novel, they measure the height of the sun at another >>>> time, because it was cloudy, but they took two measures at both sides of >>>> the noon, in order to estimate the height of the sun at the exact noon. >>>Verne's expositions on science must sometimes be taken
with more than one grain of salt,
Jan
(but don't have this one)
Verne was not a scientist, but he asked others. He wrote a lot about
calculating the position. Probably he could not do the calculation
himself, but he was familiar with the general procedures.
Verne could certainly do the sums needed for ordinary navigation.
In his rich years he owned a private yacht, [1]
and travelled widely in Europe,
Jan
[1] Several in fact. He started with a small boat.
As he got richer he bought bigger ones.
Wow. I did not know that.
On 2026-03-21, Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
On 2026-03-21, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Where electric cars suit is also where mass public transport
scores. short journeys , many people
For *sedan*-type vehicles, no, that's where they're inefficient. For
anything bus-size or bigger, yes.
Otherwise you're just replacing one problem but still having the
mobility nightmare of a bunch of people on private vehicles that could
be on public transit instead.
Electric or fossil fuel, you still have to park them somewhere.
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