> In NZ roads are paid by taxes earmarked for that.
It would be better to say that all of the money from road use and petrol taxes are spent on the roads. Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system.
At which point it kind of becomes moot that those taxes are ring-fenced for paying for roads. Since I've lived here people keep repeating that ring-fenced fact like its some kind of special thing. General taxation and council taxes are subsiding just the road maintenance, and completely paying for new build roads.
> Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system
Yes they almost did.
Only a few years ago the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) was almost entirely self-sustaining, funded by road users.
Recently Crown funding (grants and loans) expanded significantly to ~40% of fund income.
But approximately 30% of government transport spending is being spent on rail (to placate voters I think). Before the Land Transport (Rail) Legislation Act 2020, not much we spent by the NLTF on rail.
Currently ~3% of driven kilometres by car use electricity - so as that number increases, BEV and PHEV vehicles will need to have increased taxation. Presumably something like $700 per annum (currently about how much a person driving a petrol car pays on excise tax).
Ultimately it is almost tautological that road users pay for roads, since government spending comes from taxes, and most people use cars. How things get earmarked is just sophisticated accounting.
New Zealand appears to be missing from the map. Hard to know in this case if we're missing for the usual reason or because we have no food production gap.
I would think New Zealand would be in a similar situation to Australia.
Australia would be fine - we export 2/3 of our produce so have no problem. This study doesn't seem to account for trade, consumer choice and price differentials world-wide.
We don't grow some produce because it's easier/cheaper to import and any local producer may struggle on price, unless they can differentiate on something else like organic.
As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import.
> As for fish, we prefer to maintain sustainable local fish stocks, and choose import.
There's hard evidence for this in the form of a map [1]. The light pixels close to the Australian coastline are Australian vessels fishing close in. The solid light areas further from the coast are other countries' vessels stripping the ocean bare. It's particularly obvious to the north east of Australia, where the solid line is the edge of Australia's exclusive economic zone. Minimal activity (dark) inside the zone, being stripped bare (light) outside the zone.
China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China [2]. Mind you, Australia's not helping if it's just buying from countries that are stripping stocks.
>China may be listed as self-sufficient in fish, but its fish are not coming from near China
PRC fishing is ~85% domestic aquaculture. THE HIGHEST RATIO OF SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE IN THE WROLD.
Of 15% remaining wild catch, ~50% is from east sea, i.e. PRC coast. So ~95% self sufficiency. ~98% including SCS, i.e. PRC definition of sovereign waters. Functionally, self sufficiency is at 100%, since PRC large aquaculture exporter.
All the distant fishing drama/propaganda is just 2-5% of PRC fishing, which per capita they underfish relative other major fishing distant water fishing actors like JP, SKR, TW, Spain etc. For reference PRC distant water catches like 1.5kg per capita, the others 3-30kg+, i.e. 2-20x PRC. TLDR is PRC is the largest aquaculture producer (absolute&relative) that also grossly under extracts from global commons relative to other DWF, unless one thinks PRC citizens entitled to less fish.
There's a good reason other countries are not heavily investing in aquaculture.
Pollution, pathogens and heavy use of antibiotics and vaccines required to keeping large numbers of fish in confined areas. It's not a solved problem at least in Australia and consumers prefer wild caught.
15% is still a large number. 15% of the Chinese population is 2/3 of the US population and 15x the population of Australia. That's a lot of wild caught fish.
But it's not just China. Fishing boats from Indonesia and other SE Asian countries are more often intercepted within Australia's economic exclusion zone.
You can make the same criticism for all terrestrial live stock, at least aquaculture has lowest feed conversion ratio, i.e. lower than chickens. World, especially east asia not going to go vegetarian, so aquaculture probably most ecological path to animal protein sufficiency / efficiency.
>That's a lot of wild caught fish
Note half of 15% wild catch is east sea, i.e. it's mostly in PRC EEZs. Most of other half in SCS, which is dispute shit show. We're really talking ~3% that is legitimately distant fishing, and to be blunt PRC, who due to geography as one of the LEAST EEZ to population / shore ratio (being surrounded by other island neighbours), only capturing 3-7% (if you include SCS) of total consumption via distant water is reasonable. Which is the "real" reason why PRC double down on aquaculture, they're simply large land country with huge population with high aquaculture appetite with limited EEZ resource.
Ultimately this something for UN to sort out, and because PRC reliance much less on high seas fish resource, you're going to hear bitching from other DWF actors way before PRC. In the meantime there's simply no reason for PRC to not DWF at her current per capita rate just because people who can't compare per capita eat up propaganda. The reality is PRC is 20% of global pop and wild catches about 20% of global catch. Has about comparable IUU misbehavior. Useful idiot behavior singling out PRC when many other fishing nations... who happen to be US partners, are not getting same lazy propaganda talking point for extracting much more per capita.
Hey irishcoffee, why don't you do that. This 2026, why don't you plug-in your feels numbers with my broadly educated numbers into deep research and see what gets validated - lots of proxy indicators to establish bounds and see whose numbers it comports with and how it deviates from claims.
>it’s widely known
It's widely held cope (aka meaningless) argument by western useful idiots, who don't critically follow PRC subject matters. Some controversial PRC numbers are smoothed, trend/gross approximates are possible via proxy indicators. But domestic fishery #s not controversial, and stuff like aquaculture can be estimated / verified via 3rd party proxy measures i.e. last western geospatial from top of my head mapped PRC aquaculture pond sizes (which is subsect of PRC aquaculture) at ~23000 sqkm, which already gets 2/3 way to official production numbers based on yield/utilization guestimates. See, something's like agri/aquaculture, there are various way to guestimate / measure if one is not innumerate.
And mismeasure, like the propaganda surrounding PRC distant fishing #s that are in fact, without reliable source, and meaningless, i.e if you follow the subject matter claims of PRC DWF fleet size increased from 3000 to 30000 boats since 2020 while claiming PRC DWF catch increased from 12m tons to 15m tons. 1000% increase in fleet size to increase catch by 25%.
So yeah trying to find honest Western source about Chinese anything is not possible outside of mining #s to see if comport with reality, they don't exist. This isn't a conspiracy theory, but unfortunately it's not widely known - despite Trump/(lying)Pompeo publicly acknowledged 100b program to spread anti PRC propaganda (including PRC DWF to push USCG deployments). The US propaganda laundering system doesn't divulge this information accurately. But useful idiots will eat it up regardless despite basic numeracy/analytic skills can extract numbers from variety of sources to find meaning, i.e. figure out which numbers comport with reality, and which doesn't.
The DWF tonnage and derived per capita figures from western claims btw. So even propaganda #s designed to make PRC look bad with some basic decomposition shows per capita PRC better than JP, SKR, TW on DWF. But maybe we all better off being number nihilists and embrace numberwang.
I've got no dog in the hunt here, but one appropriate response to an observation that you provided no sources, would be to provide sources.
What you did instead, which is assert unsourced numbers harder, while attacking the messenger, is not appropriate.
Wait! Before you reply: Attacking another messenger (me) for making another observation (the one above) would also not be inappropriate. Feel free to not cite anything, though, that's totally your call.
Naw, SAUCE PLS in 2026 is rhetoric distraction strategy expecting knowledgeable person do HW, maybe it's valid pre LLM, but now it's safe to dismiss as insincere. It's entirely appropriate flex subject matter knowledge and expect skeptics to validate on their own in era of accessible deep research. And call out responses like OPs, who ask for source, but also dismiss/insinuate source "don’t exist", i.e. they're not actually curious for source.
Hence it's entirely appropriate to note bad faith, see ops other reply blow: "Nobody read that post, I wouldn’t bother correcting it.". As it is also entirely appropriate to tell you, ultimately also your call to be just as lazy, instead of wasting space on feed me sauce pls, go do a trivial copy paste into an AI model to validate claims.
> Naw, [asking for sources] in 2026 is rhetoric distraction strategy expecting knowledgeable person do HW
I can't tell if this is serious or satire of conservative politicians. Poe's law in action, I guess.
> go do a trivial copy paste into an AI model to validate claims.
Like I said, you're free to continue not providing sources for your assertions (even though you yourself claim it would take a trivial amount of your time to do), just like people are free to continue not believing your assertions.
I'm ok with that happy equilibrium, so I don't feel compelled to do any particular research into your assertions for you. If you want me to do your job, you'll have to pay me.
> Hence it's entirely appropriate to note bad faith
To the extent it is "entirely appropriate to note bad faith": As a person equal to you, I am noting your attacks on others in lieu of substantiating your assertions.
Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too. It's not just missing data: Germany and Belgium gained a lot of North Sea shore.
I was actually interested in the Netherlands, because my country has for the last 80 years followed policies with the express focus of never having a food shortage again, even during world wars. It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.
Surprisingly, The Netherlands is missing on this map too.
Very strange indeed.
It's agricultural output is insane for a country with its surface area.
Isn't that, just like in Belgium, mostly so for meat and derived products? Which also happens to be one of the worst situations (of natural food production) ecologically: grow and import a ton of corn and soy, export again, and in the meantime all the pesticides and methane and nitrogen and manure etc are left in your country.
The Netherlands is almost legendary for its agricultural productivity. Its greenhouse operations were the model for NZ capsicum production and other efforts. It also leads food science research in some areas. Wageningen is perhaps the best in that field.
Worldwide, dairy & meat are big drivers in climate change, as well as other ecological problems. The NL has a front row seat there. :-( Eg. quality of surface waters is about the worst among EU countries.
Imho the NL would be a better country without its dairy industry: land to re-purpose for growing other crops, increase nature and/or recreational areas, reduce a host of ecological issues, etc. At the cost of a vanishingly small part of our GDP.
But alas - dairy industry, its suppliers & their lobby is a powerful one. So change is slow to come and only if/where absolutely necessary.
You're right I should have explained rather than throwing a link. Poor Tasmania suffers the same fate, even among Australians though I think the reason is more cultural
As a millennial, the TV show with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry was played when I was a kid, and I've rewatched it several times as an adult and read a few of the books. Our kids have watched the show with us too. I'm currently trying to learn the theme on the piano.
I'm sure it'll continue in some niche, much like Agatha Christie, where I've seen some recent youtube vids by younger people discovering how well they're written. I like it when they say "follows the old trope of ..." and then in the comments you get "doesn't follow it, invented it".
There are a few YouTube "can I solve [story] before the reveal?" style videos focusing on Agatha Christie novels ranging from around 4 years old to today.
My first job was VB6 and I really enjoyed working on it. It was pretty late in it's life - .NET had just come out when I started. The existing program I was working on was pretty complex though. I spent a year rewriting the database layer (well, it wasn't a layer when I started but it was by the end) from an old cursor / file based system to use SQL server. That extended the lifetime of the product by quite a margin as it had been struggling with bigger customers.
It was really stretching the VB6 runtime by the time I left - plenty of direct win32 calls to do various things - foggy on the details now but VB6 was single threaded and some of that was around keeping the interface going while it did more intensive tasks, drawing some complex controls around scheduling etc. I recall it got a bit unstable in development.
I used it for the Azure credits. My "startup" only needed a single instance so I really didn't spend many of them. I tried to get into the longer program but the form was broken in typical Microsoft fashion and kept looping over business verification, telling me I had to input my DUNS number and incorporation letter, then forgetting and throwing it back to that step.
Back in the early 2000s the company I worked for was a small IT shop and MS software reseller and the MSDN subscription included everything. I remember setting up Windows 2000 advanced server as my home network's router.
Engage with your kids. Don't give them personal devices until they're a bit older. Monitor their usage properly with your own senses, not with "parental controls". Talk to them about what they do.
If they're minded to bypass all that then they're going to bypass any technical block you put on anyway.
Parents want another option between their child being shown harmful content on social media and signing up their child up to be a pariah because they're not allowed to use social media altogether.
What I've suggested is the alternative. What we're going to get is kids banned from social media altogether. And I'm not 100% against that because my kids didn't really use it because we introduced it gently while talking about it a lot with them.
But when I say not 100% against, maybe 75% against it. The idea of age checking operating systems and browsers I'm very much against. Ban devices in schools: fine, it's a place of learning and there are always specific rules in shared environments.
You are the person requesting others comply (on behalf of the aggregate) the onus is on you to provide this solution. The solution that was provided, specifically engaged parenting, is the appropriate response.
Nope, because it will be passed unless you come to the negotiating table in good faith. The truth is that all this resistance mean you don't get a seat at the table, will be left out of discussions and your worst fears will come to pass because you took a hard-line position.
Good luck. People who aren't willing to collaborate don't get what they want.
Now that we've gotten the ad homs out of our system, provide a solution.
I'd like the nice thing of a workable solution. The failure to do so means you get the first proposed solution - the one you obviously don't want. It's crazy to believe that despite detesting age verification, none of that vitriol can be redirected in to coming up with a workable better idea.
Frankly outside of what I wrote below (which I think mere existence is still threat factor by creation of authoritarian OS for computers) you will not get 'solution' from me (unless by that you mean age rating and voluntary enforcement by computer) because you are creating the problem - You don't want to do work but want to exert control, which is contradictory and entitled position. You are not entitled to get anything, and with amount of people with kids dwindling it is beyond me why do you think 'it is for children' will even work to begin with as popular talking point. The parental controls are the best solution, assumption otherwise makes you extremist from another’s eye.
Simply put the idea of computer for you is "a tool" for another it is extension of memory and mouth - you don't get control any of that, ever. There is no 'vitriol' - there is only rightful anger that you crossed of boundary of acceptable speech by another person. The most basic thing that you must get right before you start to advocate for change, is "what is my Overton window - and what is the other person's one", because thinking of workable solution works only when people windows cross to begin with - and they do not have to because sometimes you do not have the ability to have both freedom and control. And you should clearly know that for some freedom is more important than control.
The failure to do so means you get the first proposed solution - yes I agree, the first solution is by definition the status quo before the 'now' solution.
There are times that you have to accept: there is no middle ground, other than the ground you stand upon.
"Provide a solution." "can be redirected in to coming up with a workable better idea." Did you entertain the thought that there is no better 'workable' idea than status quo?
You want to control the user - kid, and not control the user i.e adult, you also want parent to not bother. That is impossible. Either parent have to do active part, other (because by definition kid already is - since the age is already available to whatever malware will be running on device) people will be harmed by surveillance or we keep status quo. Classical choice triangle.
The only "rational" (still for me this seems like possible trojan horse) way would be to actively enforce existence of "for-child OS" on company controlled OSes, and use something like Secure Boot if parent SO DESIRES (with caveat 5 ).
0. (short version) Effectively this would mean buy separate device for kids or learn how to do it. And it would fundamentally be bound to device not user,
1. by enforcing main key to be Owner's (Parent) and signing the OS developer key with the main key for purpose of OS boot (start) - so that OS 'provider' can sign kid-friendly OS version with that developer key. (you probably could ease that with vendor key - but still requires possibility of changing the key which leads to
2. then lock the UEFI by password... that still require knowledge about the tech - unless you get password in device box [then again parents have to exercise some parenting and not give device with the box], and don't start about phones - they would require UEFI and Secure Boot available for user first - not just manufacturer.
3. and you would HAVE TO (this bit is especially trojan otherwise) enforce every OS manufacturer and vendor that provide ones for kids to always provide the non-kid version (and support it!) - so that it would not create de facto surveillance OS/PC. Let me guess this is impossible for you Americans.
4. Then app developers can sign apps for kids with the OS developer key that is FOR the kid variant - otherwise will not run (in that scenario 'kid-OS' only).
5. you would have to limit it for kids devices ONLY so you would have to reverse "ID check in bar" to confirm the existence of kid instead of adult (during buying the OS/device) - otherwise again trojan horse (because of commonality of solutions).
If you find this version 'workable' please have it - but for me it seems contradictory to desire of not bothering parents. *From my perspective this is effectively parental controls on steroids*. This is exceptionally similar to attestation except it has opt out for people who actively kept the password, no IDs, and no 'sending age over wire'. This will help exactly zero to stop spread of some files if parents give a kid in class for-adult phone/pc unless you enforce signing every file by kid-OS and not opening unsigned files - congratulations your kid would be using OS approved by north Korea! - do you start to see the issue with 'workable' ideas? They inevitably flow to surveillance and autocratic tech.
This is anyway probably faulty in something I did not thought about.
You're reaching for legally mandated solutions. Why can't this be one?
"Choose to be a good parent, vs legally mandated spyware". Why not "legality mandated be a good parent"? This would solve a lot of other problems too. Like, all those people who hand wring "oh we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas! It's not working! Whatever could work in aggregate?!" people who don't actually parent can be trained to parent, and if they refuse they face consequences.
> If they're minded to bypass all that then they're going to bypass any technical block you put on anyway
School bans have been effective because the entire friend group is taken off at once. That network effect is important. We need a real solution for keeping kids off social media—there is too much popular will for this not to happen. The debate is realistically around how.
How much supporters agree is void point unless you are making Wunschkonzert - wish-concert, it is how much the decliners and reality disagree that is the most serious problem. You either operate on "We don't like, we disagree, we disagree and will not accept, we disagree so much that we will vote on People more volatile then current U.S one to make the point" - If you start to operate in third and worse the fourth then no agreement will solve this issue. And you started from proposition that is so outright insane that you may as well count many in third view.
> According to Cassini data, scientists announced on February 13, 2008, that Titan hosts within its polar lakes "hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth." The desert sand dunes along the equator, while devoid of open liquid, nonetheless hold more organics than all of Earth's coal reserves.
The next obvious question is where do they come from since presumably there weren't dinosaurs and plants dying there 300 million years ago.
Went on a bit of a rabbit hole and it appears that there is a lot of methane in the atmosphere and that gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow, and the methane likely is there from the formation of the moon originally via methane ice.
> gets broken down via photolysis into hydrocarbons somehow
See Figure 2 [1]. Protons, electrons and water ions from space dissociate, in the presence of sunlight, nitrogen and methane. Those combine into intermediate-mass hydrocarbons that produce complex organics. The part we don't understand is how those complex organics, e.g. benzene and naphthalene, turn into large organic particles.
"abiogenic oil" is a fringe belief that I just can't stop myself from giving some credence to. I know all the experts say it's not true, and I'm not crazy enough to deny the evidence, but there's still the niggling doubt in the back of my mind. There's so many hydrocarbons out in space.
After reading your comment I did read up on the Gripen. Seems very interesting. Procurement is about the same as the F-35 but the running costs are about 1/4 so over its expected lifetime it'll be considerably cheaper. On the procurement front though Saab seems to offer factory set up as part of the deal, so you make back some of the cost into your economy. Being able to build and maintain them yourself seems like a big plus.
Capability wise the gap isn't as large as I thought either. The latest Gripen-E has similar radar, possibly better software, and they can be kitted out to fire the same air to air weapons. What they don't have is a stealthy airframe and they aren't designed for some of the same mission profiles. If you're a country that doesn't make your own aircraft then having access to both, or just the Gripen for interceptors would make some sense.
We don't need to take sides though. It's fairly easy to find some of the papers and whether they were referenced in the Benn Jordan video or not, and whether they say what he says or the article author says.
I have generally enjoyed Benn Jordan's videos, but I have also been skeptical about the infrasound / hum stuff. It seemed like amplifying a fringe pseudoscience, much like the wireless and 5g stuff. So not that surprised to see a debunking article.
I don't think numbeo can be a good source, it seems to be self reported metrics. I asked it for comparison of NZ to USA and it told me that NZ was about the same or worse on most numbers. But actual crime rates are lower in NZ. The murder rate is 5x lower.
Murder is a faulty good comparison as it’s unlikely to be a stat that gets manipulated much. Every other crime seems subject to political and social whims of various departments and political agendas.
It would be better to say that all of the money from road use and petrol taxes are spent on the roads. Those taxes don't actually cover the cost of maintaining the road system.
At which point it kind of becomes moot that those taxes are ring-fenced for paying for roads. Since I've lived here people keep repeating that ring-fenced fact like its some kind of special thing. General taxation and council taxes are subsiding just the road maintenance, and completely paying for new build roads.
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