You fail to understand just how big a large container ship is. If a shirt comes on a ship from China, the truck taking it from the warehouse to the shop emits more CO2 for that shirt than the ship did bringing it from to the port. In fact, if you walk for ten minutes to the shop and back, you have emitted more CO2 than the ship did to carry that shirt. A container ship emits a large total amount of CO2 because it’s very big, carrying a massive amount of cargo. But overall, shipping is one of the most efficient modes of transport we’ve invented.
Oh this is an easy one. Remember you saw it a few days ago as a neighbour of the main country. There’s a region that isn’t universally recognised as independent shown in grey, and they double up by also treating that region as a neighbour. A bet each way, I guess.
Look, I'll be brutally honest. If you have excess fat, it will scream at you to feed it. You need to simply not listen to it. Skip the rice with dinner. Just have fruit and yoghurt for breakfast. Don't eat until you're full. Stay active, do aerobics. It will get pretty bad after a week or so, but once you start to starve the fat off, you can start noticeably losing fat every day.
More than 1000 convictions under question, tens of millions of dollars expended and a host of former and current police potentially facing charges. What on Earth is the Nicola Gobbo story all about?
The revelation in March 2019 that a former gangland barrister called Nicola Gobbo was also a police informer was a legal scandal like no other – one that threatened the foundations of the state's criminal justice system and some of Victoria Police's most celebrated convictions.
The scandal, unfolding largely in secret and shrouded by suppression orders, took almost a decade to play out until the Director of Public Prosecutions finally decided Ms Gobbo's former clients had a right to know that she might have informed on them, breaching her duties as their lawyer.
The police fought for years in the courts to try to keep her name from public disclosure. They took the case all the way to the High Court, which found in December 2018 that Victoria Police’s conduct in using her as a confidential informer was "reprehensible" and had corrupted prosecutions.
It left Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews with no choice but to call a royal commission into the police's handling of Ms Gobbo and other informers.
Thousands of news stories and millions of dollars later, two convicted criminals released and many others launching appeals, now the royal commission has handed down its final report.
Essentially:
Nicola Gobbo was legally representing organised crime figures while also acting as an informant.
This was an undisclosed conflict of interest as well as breach of attorney-client privilege.
This means Gobbo’s clients were denied their right to due process and hence their convictions are questionable.
The Police fought to cover this up to avoid the possibility of convictions being overturned.
We supposedly have rights, rule of law, and due process here. We like pointing the finger at other countries’ failings. But then you find all the instances of stuff like this happening.
My take is that it’s a situation where the police thought, “We’re going after bad guys, so it doesn’t matter if we bend a few rules to make it easier to get convictions.” Classic “end justifies the means” thinking. The trouble is, when you violate people’s rights because “they’re bad guys”, you bring the whole system into disrepute. Who gets to decide who the “bad guys” are? How do you ensure only “bad guys” have their rights violated? What good are rights if they disappear as soon as you need them? How can we lecture other countries for flawed legal systems when we have these systemic issues at home?
The worst part is the way the police spent so much time and money trying to cover it up.
Labor won Evelyn after promising no tolls on Eastlink. After breaking that promise, they completely destroyed any chances they had of winning any seats in the area. People are still bitter about that.
In case you really didn't get the reference, the writers of the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf decided to invent "future" slang in an effort to avoid making the show look dated rapidly. For a four-letter single syllable profanity, they decided to use "smeg", because it sounds kind of rude. The characters on the show use various derivative terms, like calling each other "smegheads" as an insult.
Now people watching the show decided they needed to determine the etymology of this profanity, and concluded it must be an abbreviation of "smegma". The show's writers denied any connection, saying it's purely coincidental and they didn't think of it.
Meanwhile, the Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla (Emilian Metallurgical Enamelling Works Guastalla) company started going by the initialism/acronym "SMEG", which definitely has no connection to Red Dwarf or smegma.
But this provides many opportunities for humorous puns. For example, the most common:
My wife said she wanted a fridge with "SMEG" on the front. I tried to oblige, but she wasn't impressed.
Naturally, a SMEG toaster would be ideal for making toast to be consumed with penis butter or vaginamite.
I explained the reason for this on reddit. TL;DR African farmers have better access to refrigeration and transport, and as a result have switched to more profitable crops than cacao (the reason they were growing cacao specifically was because it can be dried and stored without refrigeration until transport is available and demand is present). The price of chocolate has to increase substantially. There’s no point stockpiling it.
This graph is a reflection of African farmers’ lives improving playing out in global supply/demand economics. It’s only “depressing” if the only thing you care about is your access to cheap chocolate.
One of my sons got a stuffed mudkip as a Christmas present from a relative once. He was thrilled to get a famous Pokémon. ("Stuffed" like a plush toy, not a taxidermy.)
Isn't that wasteful? Every extra paper towel you use has an environmental impact. Even if they're recycled, there's still a substantial energy and water cost.
Detaining people with no warning or explanation, and no arrangements for food, baby supplies or sanitary supplies, is disgusting. No other people were treated like that.
When the Ariele in Maribyrnong became a tier 1 exposure site, everyone got a letter delivered to their doorstep and people were still able to leave. Some people left the building without reading the letters and only realised something was happening when they saw the news crews.
The Kings Park complex in Southbank was notv surrounded by police to prevent anyone leaving.
I actually enjoy ironing, but my wife doesn’t, and our ironing board in Melbourne is covered with her junk so I can’t actually use it. I just avoid wearing stuff that needs ironing most of the time in Melbourne. I iron my clothes in Sydney, though.
You fail to understand just how big a large container ship is. If a shirt comes on a ship from China, the truck taking it from the warehouse to the shop emits more CO2 for that shirt than the ship did bringing it from to the port. In fact, if you walk for ten minutes to the shop and back, you have emitted more CO2 than the ship did to carry that shirt. A container ship emits a large total amount of CO2 because it’s very big, carrying a massive amount of cargo. But overall, shipping is one of the most efficient modes of transport we’ve invented.