He was killed by death. (but got better).

(Hamlin didn't die of anything, as far as I'm aware. His heart stopped for a while, though).

Which is an improvement from a 4 hour committee meeting, punctuated with violence.

New Zealand:

Possum stew.

Every Kiwi has now thrown up a little in their mouth.

They say "New Zealand and Southern US states".

It's not even the same ANIMAL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_brushtail_possum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum

Wouldn't surprise me. If a volcanic eruption can do it (Tambora in indonesia erupted in 1815, which lead to the "year without summer" because of particulates in the atmosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Yeah, they're a trap, eucalypts. Excellent firewood, mind you.

And Aus and Canada and Cali (and NZ) sharing firefighters every year is a heartwarming thing.

You want radioactive drop bears?

Because that's how you get radioactive drop bears.

Like vegans or people with hobby farms?

You know that the frogs who are adapted to these sort of events will be welcoming the rain, to fill up their water bubbles for the next dry season?

The last hundred years in Australia have been unusually dry. This greening is both welcome and expected, and not a "major shift" of any sort.

>then wildfires

Largest ever Californian wildfire was just over a million acres. In 2020. That year, the wildfires burned just over 4 million acres. Which was a record.

https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/4jandlhh/top20_acres.pdf

In Aus, in 2020, bushfires burned about 10 times as much acreage (46 million). A bad year, but not the worst.

In the last 20 years, the 99 million acre one in the Northern Territory.

THe 1974-5 season took out 290 million acres. (The state of California is 104 million acres in size).

Trust me, Australian bushfires make californian ones look tiny.

The bad season in 2020, the Southern Alps in New Zealand got a fair dusting of ash from the Australian bushfires. That;s like getting the ash from a California fire in Arkansas.

Australian trees (eucalypts) have evolved to survive bushfires, there are that many of them. Australia does bushfires worse than anyone else.

Sir Brian, Dr May rolls better.

Lotta fragile egos in this thread.

I must admit, I'm looking forward to the first female US president.

If she's a Democrat, she'll have to be MASSIVELY overqualified, because of the sexist nature of conservatives (right of centre Democrats are conservatives, from my point of view. Bernie Sanders is only centre left).

If she's a Republican, it'll be a complete train wreck. Which will be fun to watch, if nothing else.

OK, but do you have the cultural referents to make sense of the information?

For example, is this person left or right wing?

"She has strong links to the Māori King Movement; her father was the adopted son of King Korokī and the elder brother of Māori Queen Te Atairangikaahu.[9] She is related to the Māori monarch, Kingi Tuheitia.[10] Her sister, is the co-chair of the Māori Health Authority.[11]"

Or this one?

"She grew up in Morrinsville and Murupara, where her father,worked as a police officer,[18] and her mother worked as a school catering assistant.[19][20] She was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), and her uncle is a general authority in the church."

(They're both left-wingers. The first is the current NZ Minister for foreign affairs, and the second is the Prime Minister)

A lot of it goes with the party. A lot of Green MPs are ex community workers. A lot of Labour politicians are ex Government Employees.

For your private equity fund managers, look to the National Party.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/research-papers/the-2020-general-election-and-referendums-results-analysis-and-demographics-of-the-53rd-parliament/

Start with Table 8, and knock yourself out.

Well, it's always interesting to follow what's going on in one of the freest nations on Earth.

The partial democracies will follow eventually. Who knows, the US might even have a female President this century.

China don't PLAY every sport. Their cricket team is shit. (So is the US's, just quietly).

But for the national game? (Table tennis) Yeah, pretty dominant, really.

You could look it up, instead of being an insinuating cunt about it?

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/research-papers/the-2020-general-election-and-referendums-results-analysis-and-demographics-of-the-53rd-parliament/

Table 8 for occupation, pre-parliament.

It's actually 6.7%, but don't let that get in the way of your hate.

https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/library-research-papers/research-papers/the-2020-general-election-and-referendums-results-analysis-and-demographics-of-the-53rd-parliament/

"The 53rd Parliament has eight MPs who identify as being of Asian ethnicity, the same number as in the previous Parliament. Overall, MPs who identify as being of Asian ethnicity comprise 6.7% of the parliament, which is less than half the share (15.1%) of the population who identified as being of the Asian ethnic group in the 2018 census (15.1%)."

The nice thing is that, even though Asian representation remained static, and Maori representation dipped slightly to 25 MPs, the number of Pasifica MPs rose, and we got the first 2 MELAA (Middle Eastern/Latin American/African) MPs.

10% (a little over) LGBTQ+, but still far too many Gen X.

Cherry-picking only gives a tenth of the actual story.

As a Kiwi, it's nice to see a "lone tree" picture from somewhere other than bl**dy Wanaka.

Beautifully composed, incidentally.

My guy, just MENTIONING Kashmir has trolled the hell out of you.

I didn't even mean to. All I was doing was pointing out that Kashmir is under dispute.

As long as you don't nuke anyone, I don't give the tiniest fuck what happens there. I find the entire thing incredibly stupid, everyone involved with it equally stupid, on all sides, and a complete and utter waste of time to even think about.

I have spared 2 minutes to type this out, but that's about as much as I care about it.

I mean this in the nicest possible way.

You need to go outside, and have a walk.

(This particular inanity actually took longer than I expected. Maybe people are maturing?)

The Tommy Dorsey song?

I don't get why, mind you.

India and Pakistan aren't fond of each other.

One of the places it comes to a head is in the disputed province of Kashmir. It's a gorgeous, mountainous region that is currently being disputed between India, Pakistan and China.

Until this recent unpleasantess in Ukraine, it was my personal pick for "most likely place for a nuclear war to break out".

So, playing Kashmir, the Led Zepplin song can be seen as an excellent troll by the Australians (who are hosting the match) to both sides.

(you may know the riff from Puff Daddy (as he was then) sampling it for the theme to 1998s Godzilla movie)

Try to find some potato starch - that would seem to be the main thing you're missing.

Nah, it aint supposed to be like that. One of the amazing things about Korean FC is the retention of crunch, even through sauce.

Did you go and grab one of those bags of Fried Chicken mix? That's the simplest method, I reckon.