[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Thaluikhain]

Former PM Bob Hawke was the (then) holder of the record time for drinking a yard of ale.

[Stahlseele]

Wait . . is a yard a liquid measurement?
I thought that was a distance measurement? x.x

[deaddmwalking]

It's both. A yard (drink) is served in a glass that is 3 feet tall (about waist height or .914 meters). Sometimes you can get a half-yard which is still a monstrously large drink.

The drinking glass serves 1.4 liters of beer.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Is the sobriety of the parliament now something that the voting public is now going to have to think about during elections going forward or is this relegated to just bring another quirky thing elected officials do?

Since we apparently have no say in it I guess its a quirky thing foisted upon us by a minority of brain dead morality voters living in their weird isolated pocket realities.

So it gets to be another "quirky thing" like all the sex with gay prostitutes in the federal parliamentary prayer room. (note: NOT just a rumor, 100% confirmed we only lack the final 100% confirmation of the specific MPs name)

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Former PM Bob Hawke was the (then) holder of the record time for drinking a yard of ale.

Bob Hawke somehow harnessed the Hat voter demographic while hardly ever wearing a hat. As such a political genius, but a traitor to the true labor movement.

[Stahlseele]

It's both. A yard (drink) is served in a glass that is 3 feet tall (about waist height or .914 meters). Sometimes you can get a half-yard which is still a monstrously large drink.

The drinking glass serves 1.4 liters of beer.

Huh. I did not know that.
Thank you.

Makes even the german Maß look small by comparision.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I can't stress enough how much Australia has a drinking problem. We keep having to add special addendums to major scientific surveys pointing out how by attempting to follow international norms the survey failed to grasp just how fucking drunk this country is because basically no one on the continent shares the same definitions of binge drinking and alcoholism than anyone else in the world.

Tiny rural townlets with a mainstreet with only two buildings that have been there 100 years somehow manage to have 3 of those buildings be pubs.

The Town I live near has a population of about 5700. Now I don't know what's normal for semi-rural suburban townships where you are. But We have a pub or other venue that sells alcohol every 2 blocks or so. No really I'll do a quick count...
Let see, Workers club, Bowling Club, NINE pubs, EIGHT bottle shops, 1 vineyard (number of vineyards jumps way up 1 town over), 1 "wine selectors warehouse", and 1 Wine tasting tour. Also for some reason SEVEN Chinese takeaways (which is also odd considering how much of a food desert it otherwise is) but some of the Chinese takeaways are secret venues that don't show up on google maps and I needed to count from memory, if there are also local pubs like that... well.

Also at least one of the Chinese takeaways is also a pub. edit: no wait, I've seen through the pattern on the Chinese takeaways. So we don't really have any good resturants, just takeaway food and club food. So Basically every single eatery in town is either a Bistro or cafeteria attached to a pub or club OR is a takeaway near a pub that sells food traditionally eaten by drunk people.

Oh and to give you an idea how much of a weird back water I live in. MY semi rural village just down the road from Pub central, has ZERO pubs and has never had a pub and THAT IS WIERD ON THIS CONTINENT. By population compared to the nearest Town we SHOULD have... lets see... 2.7 alcohol purchasing venues BEFORE licensed restaurants. But due to a weird quirk of religiosity among a narrow group of settlers nearly 200 years ago we still have zero.

But mostly because they shut the general store/post office/video rental/school lunch provider/pie shop that was also acting as a bottle-o.

[deaddmwalking]

Okay Phonelobster, come clean - are you being paid by the Australian Tourism Board?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Okay Phonelobster, come clean - are you being paid by the Australian Tourism Board?

In Australia that question is followed by "...and what did the pay out legally require you to keep secret forever?" and then also by "...Mr Prime Minister".

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So anyway.

Mulch.

I can do about an hour long rant about the just total state that mulch is in right now around here without even touching on how to use it or make it.

It involves Bikies, organized crime, money laundering, record bush fires, the desperate need for more failed pine plantations from the 80s, untreated sewerage, monopolistic business practices, the slow collapse of an entire industry outside of a capital city in order to feed that city Mulch, and why composted pine bark fines are now worth their weight in gold, and the collapse of the free beer for a truck full backhand barter system with local council workers.

But instead letting retarded pro-privatisation/red tape cutting /government spending cutting conservatives rule your state for the odd decade or so puts mulch in the local news because of another reason.

Asbestos.

Apparently some of the big monopolistic Sydney based "producers" (not precisely their actual role), not all currently named, were taking advantage of deliberately lax testing regimes to completely fake their results.

Then they stuffed their mulch full of building waste. Full of asbestos. And other currently unnamed toxic waste. Also most of these guys also add untreated sewerage but that's not been mentioned yet.

They of course make money getting rid of the waste, and even more money because mulch is so precious you gotta cut it with a poisonous filler like you were a bad drug dealer selling 3rd rate "Cocaine".

Anyway, its lining childrens playgrounds all over the state.

But much as the limited supply of Mulch is almost all for Sydney, and the limited supply of actual childrens playgrounds and public parks at all are almost all for Sydney... so the vast concentration of play equipment installed onto beds full of soft bone break preventing asbestos, is in Sydney.

But then again there are also sites "in the rest of NSW" but even the people writing the articles couldn't be bothered fully listing sites and mapping them outside of Sydney. Hell, the record keeping from mulch places that like to dispose of toxic building waste in their primary product isn't that great anyway, and I'm sure they have basically NO IDEA where it went to outside of Sydney, but that's OK, because since it's outside of Sydney no one actually cares.

It is increasingly clear that as someone living outside of the capital and more than 10 minutes away from a smaller city, I need to invest in a sorta grungy S&M gear, a gyrocopter and a wild orphan that throws a razor sharp deadly boomerang thingo at my rival gangs.

Certainly, I do need to become the next Immortan Joe if I want to ever again get my hands on precious pure uncut composted pine bark fines free of deadly corruption. Potting rare plants with it, running it through my fingers and laughing, plunging my hand into the heap and pulling out an eyeless burrowing snake, cutting off the flow spilling onto the peasants. Good times.

[Stahlseele]

So Canadia is making new hate speech legislation?
Life in Prison possible for online hate speech if you advocate for genocide for example.
For Antisemitism several years.
Which should prove interesting what with the current Israel versus Palestine Conflict ongoing.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Thing is multiple western countries right now are pushing such anti-hate speech legislation.

And its got that Orwellian thing going on, on the face of it by the titles and so on it looks loosely positive and almost exactly like what say, a pro-Palestine peace activist might want.

But it is probably not that because it comes in the context of establishments trying to ban those very peace activists and the lobbies pushing for it are Israeli funded Zionists of the "smear them all as Iran backed antisemite Hamas who have the arab blood curse that makes them want to kill jews on sight" type.

So basically its probably mostly just attempts to legislate that the words "Free Palestine" are the only real act of genocide going on.

[Kaelik]

Israel noticed that ambulances kept going to the places they bombed in Lebanon (because Israel is at war with everyone they want to be at war with at all times) so they started blowing up the ambulances because they thought they were probably Hezzbollah ambulences running secret military supplies to locations that Israel bombed. (Or you know, because when the US promises to defend you no matter how much genocide you do, there's never any reason to dial down your genocide.)

[Kaelik]

Guess Biden can go back to pretending to oppose an invasion of Raffa now, because Israel just decided to launch attacks at Iran and also Syria and also Iraq.

Almost like Israel has the explicit goal of turning their palestinian genocide into a wider regional war, because then the US will step in on their side and stop criticizing their genocide.

Maybe the US should have punished them instead of explicitly rewarding them when they previously attacked Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I have a new prediction.

Israel's next act of war crime will occur in almost exactly 7 days.

edit: Actually better specify, their next major, planned, intended, very public one. There will be genocidal soldier tick tocks and under reported gruesome discoveries from Gaza and the West Bank all week.

[MGuy]

Iran has downplayed the importance of the attacks overall which is a really good sign that Iran is not interested in pushing things further itself. So outright war with than has been thankfully avoided so far.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Well you see the USA asked Iran, begged really for them to do exactly that.

Iran did as asked so they are rewarded with MORE SANCTIONS.

Israel did not do as asked in Iran AND Raffa, so they are punished with MORE MONEY AND WEAPONS.

The US foreign policy in the middle east for the last 30 years in a nutshell.

[Stahlseele]

German Satire about the Middle East:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57fMqUl-sng

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So anyway. My prediction of a big Israeli war crime event was based on an observed pattern/media cycle theory that says its probably some time in the next 12 hours or so or they wait another week.

And while they are talking up how they are definitely right now ready to storm Raffa in the next five minutes for sure... I wouldn't rule out an extended wait because they always say that and there are good reasons to believe (independent of Biden's non-influence) that they might not be ready or able to do it at all. But it will seem weird to me if they wait only a day or two before starting.

[MGuy]

From what I'm understanding they have been doing things in Rafa but they've not been doing the full scale assault they were talking about before. The 'big' war crimes news are the uncovered mass graves that they found with reports talking about them harvesting some of the organs, bodies that were clearly bound when they were buried, etc etc. Though this would be a war crime they already committed that is just coming to light to add on to the impressive build up of war crimes this country is very eager to continue funding.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

The 'big' war crimes news are the uncovered mass graves

Yeah but that doesn't count for my prediction because it wasn't effectively planned for media launch shortly before a weekend.

It is instead an example of how much the media is still towing the Israeli line even without excuses like the weekend, as the media, and politicians in the US manufacture and flood with distractions like the crack down on college protests rather than cover the mass graves story at all.

I mean bodies with the skin stollen, children in the mass graves, people buried (initially) alive amidst the corpses, every international agency involved on the ground directly demanding international war crimes investigations immediately in a distinct escalation in urgency as a response to what they found. The whole thing where its pretty clear those graves are full of a lot of until now "disappeared" civilians including doctors and medical staff. The whole thing where these are mostly at hospitals.

The mass graves story is big. And it's got everything it needs to really stain Israel as a genocidal rogue state in the eyes of even limp liberal audiences that have been trying to hold on until now. But like everything else. They purge a few more journalists, they keep the main stream media in line, and apparently that's the only reality that matters? And Biden and friends think there will never be further consequences? Even while they dismantle the credibility and function of the entire international diplomatic system to do it.

[alora31]

The 'big' war crimes news are the uncovered mass graves

Yeah but that doesn't count for my prediction because it wasn't effectively planned for media launch shortly before a weekend.

It is instead an example of how much the media is still towing the Israeli line even without excuses like the weekend, as the media, and politicians in the US manufacture and flood with distractions like the crack down on college protests rather than cover the mass graves story at all.

I mean bodies with the skin stollen, children in the mass graves, people buried (initially) alive amidst the corpses, every international agency involved on the ground directly demanding international war crimes investigations immediately in a distinct escalation in urgency as a response to what they found. The whole thing where its pretty clear those graves are full of a lot of until now "disappeared" civilians including doctors and medical staff. The whole thing where these are mostly at hospitals.

The mass graves story is big. And it's got everything it needs to really stain Israel as a genocidal rogue state in the eyes of even limp liberal audiences that have been trying to hold on until now. But like everything else. They purge a few more journalists, they keep the main stream media in line, and apparently that's the only reality that matters? And Biden and friends think there will never be further consequences? Even while they dismantle the credibility and function of the entire international diplomatic system to do it.

media's selective coverage and political distractions regarding the mass graves in Israel highlight a concerning pattern of prioritizing narratives over truth. The urgency for international investigation underscores the gravity of the situation. It's a pivotal moment that challenges the credibility of global diplomacy and demands accountability beyond political maneuvers.

[Omegonthesane]

Faced with a calculation of a brief period of reduced inflation plus the likely trajectory of Labour staying pretty Zionist even as the Gaza genocide gets harder to ignore thus alienating some of their core voter and activist base, Dishi Rishi has called a UK general election for the 4th of July.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

If there is one thing recent history tells us its that once Labour gains power in the UK they will have an iron grip on it right up until one day their leader ties his entire brand to dying on the hill of supporting US backed war crimes in the middle east.

So right up until he does that Kid Starver will be able to new labour Tory policies (and actual Tory MPs) all over the suffering British (they deserve it, they could have had Corbin, and the best EU membership deal anyone had).

Right up until he does that one very specific thing which very specifically lead to the downfall of his direct predecessor that only a potato considered some sort of a reverse idiot savant specifically for politics even amongst the high power charisma world of potatoes would ever be so monumentally stupid as to ever do.

And definitely not already have done and kept doubling down on for at least six months. I mean, he would have to be worse at politics than Hillary Clinton. And there are parasites that feed on the insides of politically incompetent root vegetables with more political acumen than her.

[Omegonthesane]

Now admittedly I was an ignorant and incurious child during the Blair administration, however as much as the Iraq war tainted his legacy I don't recall it being a major factor in his entire party losing the 2010 election.