Gary Houston

Location: Lutruwita / Tasmania

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Last Notes

2026-10-31 01:15:00 UTC

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Patrick Stewart seems to have been universally loved, even in right-wing places like the comments in the Daily Mail. I was surprised!
https://www.dailymail.com/tvshowbiz/article-16250535/Patrick-Stewart-dead-Star-Trek-X-Men-dementia-alzheimers.html

2026-10-12 22:42:03 UTC

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supposedly the most spoken by first language are 1. Mandarin Chinese 2. Spanish 3. English ... and you missed the first two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
Edit: omitted the first two and included nos. 21 and 22. "Other" would get a lot more votes if poll-takers were representative of the global population.

2026-08-20 06:22:34 UTC

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the catch would be that expressing outrage doesn't do much, and in two days nobody will remember it.

2026-08-07 02:08:08 UTC

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hmm, yes, I'm more familiar with modern cattle farming which is all fenced in, and their workers don't spend much time herding, I think.
The "romantic" part of US history seems to have been a brief period where the land was unowned, unsettled, with left-over Spanish cattle wandering around.

2026-08-07 01:48:52 UTC

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it seems to me that "cowboy" would typically be a low-wage job with a boss, not really anything romantic.
Constantly herding cattle seems like an odd way to farm cattle, but I read a little and apparently it was/is something done in semi-arid grasslands with semi-feral cattle, originating with "vaqueros."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy#History

2026-08-07 00:48:20 UTC

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my father had four occupations, that I can think of offhand. I suppose you pick the last? Does "retired" count?

2026-07-22 02:34:59 UTC

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I assume the USA thinks it should control Cuba for the same reason that Argentina wants the Falklands and the UK historically wanted Ireland, i.e., "it's close."

2026-07-22 02:32:02 UTC

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I suppose Cuba took over these responsibilities after Venezuela was brought into line.
Cuba was able to defend itself in the 1960s, but I think the main factor was that the USA wouldn't make an outright attack because the Soviet Union was their ally.

2026-07-07 07:39:52 UTC

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Offer to buy Flanders or Wallonia. The other side may be willing to sell it.

2026-07-04 01:51:37 UTC

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Here's the deleted Odin article, for reference:
https://archive.md/gItVL
It seems to me that topics that have a genuine community following deserve an article, even if the commercial or peer review publications haven't thus far found it interesting.
A counter argument is that if you relaxed notability requirements, you'd also let in endless amounts of vanity, spam, scams, and AI dross. Maybe it's hard to distinguish one from the other in a rules-based bureaucratic way, such as Wikipedia uses.

2026-07-04 01:19:00 UTC

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This reminds me of how Wikipedia rejected a draft article on Donna Strickland, a physicist, due to supposed lack of notability.
The article was then hastily created when she won the Nobel Prize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Strickland
Edit: updated due to my memory failing on a detail.

2026-07-04 01:14:00 UTC

On of the flaws of Wikipedia is its concept of "reliable sources." Which means "mainstream" sources like commercial media.
An article on the Odin programming language was deleted, since the references consisted of self-published blogs, and an e-book. Written by experts on the language, presumably, so likely to be technically reliable.
If only Odin had been mentioned on Fox News, or the White House had complained about it, its status would probably be secure.
https://katamari64.se/posts/2026/odin-wikipedia/

2026-06-17 22:33:38 UTC

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Whenever he's quoted now he sounds like a troll on 4chan. I suspect he was more coherent back in 2020.

2026-05-17 09:31:07 UTC

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they look like flying saucers coming down to land.

2026-05-13 22:23:50 UTC

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doesn't it come via the horror genre, the haunted house with spiders and bats is creepy, or scary, so they guy trying to lure you into his car is scary / creepy.

2026-05-12 02:21:21 UTC

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Hmm. I mentioned cultural, because of this article I saw a few months ago, and I was thinking "go up and flirt with random strangers, so creepy, who would do that?"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/16/australian-men-dont-do-flirting-why

2026-05-12 00:29:50 UTC

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it may be a cultural thing, but randomly complimenting strangers with something like "Your hair is amazing; I love that color blue 😊" seems rather intrusive to me.

2026-05-06 08:02:55 UTC

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maybe get the Pope involved, didn't one of them divide the world between the Spanish and the Portuguese? Perhaps Iran could have the east end of the strait and the USA the west.

2026-02-11 05:30:15 UTC

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Canada is building a bridge to the US? Why?

2025-12-09 05:16:12 UTC

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National, One Nation, what's even the difference.

2025-11-23 04:26:01 UTC

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I only see the holes they leave in lawns, I think they come out at night.

2025-11-17 04:58:05 UTC

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"American women, scientists, minorities...you're welcome in the EU!"
I didn't think the EU was an easy place to emigrate to, if you want a permanent visa and aren't rich, at least. The details vary from country to country, but even legitimate refugees struggle to get in, and I doubt that Americans would qualify as refugees.

2025-11-15 01:20:17 UTC

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They already provoked the war by having oil reserves and not giving the US (and Trump in particular) a sufficient cut. Everything else is just a slowly escalating war starting with the prisoners, then the boats, then whatever comes next. Israeli-style random bombings? Take control of the oil fields? A CIA coup?

2025-11-13 01:55:17 UTC

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that science/technology advances as fast as science fiction authors think, that strong AI, colonisation of the solar system and maybe beyond, and human immorality would all be achieved early in the 21st century (2000 being the science fiction date of the somewhat distant future.)

2025-10-28 22:14:43 UTC

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I can't register to vote (my passport has expired, and would cost too much to renew just for this).
Otherwise, despite some scepticism of this kind of politics, I'd still take the time to vote for the Pirate Party. It's quite disappointing that they've never reached the 0.67% threshold for a seat.

2025-10-28 21:47:13 UTC

The Dutch parliamentary system seems to be a lot more robust against fascist take-overs than say the USA or the UK. Sure, there were headlines that Wilders had won the last election, allowing him to take part in a coalition government with 3 other parties. But that didn't give him the chance to turn the Netherlands into another Hungary, or to leave the EU. They just spent their time in arguments until Wilders forced a new election, and it seems he has lost support.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/28/netherlands-polls-geert-wilders-faces-political-isolation

2025-10-22 23:14:19 UTC

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I'm pretty sure starlings notice when I'm looking at them. They don't like it.

2025-10-20 01:39:57 UTC

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I think you can really only have a community that rejects domination, hierarchy, if the majority of that community want to follow such principles, and the minority who don't either have to conform or go somewhere else.
Dominance of non-dominance, what a concept.

2025-10-20 01:03:10 UTC

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I think a majority, at least if it's an enthusiastic majority that cares enough to try to get its way, should probably be able to dominate a community, or project. The solution is really separatism, having a different community / project for every minority who want to do things differently. A community/project needs a charter which can form the basis for negotiating issues but which can be changed only with consent of the entire community.

2025-10-19 23:28:48 UTC

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What is the alternative to some form of democracy? All I can think of is "whoever fights the best gets their way." Is democracy a ritualised form of combat?
Situations like, one group wants to preserve a wilderness area, another group wants to clear it for timber / farm land. How do you even decide which group should prevail?

2025-09-19 03:13:43 UTC

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Are you suggesting that fascists have some higher calling than simply obtaining power for its own sake and then using it to bully people? What do fascists actually want?

2025-09-19 01:32:19 UTC

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It's all intense these days, free speech vs outlawing hate speech, and open borders vs ethnicities with their own territories. Europeans remembering their own colonisations and fearing the reverse?
I remember when it took off in the Netherlands with Pim Fortuyn. He had a particular objection (as a gay man) to Muslim immigration, seeing the immigrants as non-integrating and religiously conservative. I suppose his right wing successors are mostly Christian conservative.

2025-08-31 01:09:04 UTC

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On the face of it, it doesn't seem terrible if all the racists go and live in one place and leave the rest of us alone.
I'd guess however, that such people can't really live in their bubble and be content, especially when it turns out that life with only white people is really nothing special or exciting.
They'd need to keep the rhetoric going and demonise the people living outside their borders, making the whole area unsafe.

2025-07-20 23:47:34 UTC

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How does this work? Worldwide payment processors quaking in fear of an obscure Australian "radical feminist organization"?

2025-07-19 08:10:19 UTC

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If you want a far-out prediction, what if Labor agrees to prop up a Lib minority government, to "get the stadium through"?

2025-07-15 05:35:33 UTC

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If I contemplate the female-gender-reserved things I "can't" have, there's not really anything I want. High heel shoes, dresses and skirts, painting ones nails, lipstick, handbags? No thanks, they just seem to make life more complex for no benefit. Well, handbags are useful, but there are plenty of substitutes.
Perhaps this is why feminism has made some progress, giving women access to many things previously reserved for men, while it seems men haven't gone far the other way.

2025-06-27 23:39:28 UTC

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would the US citizenship of the baby born in New York be recognized in Kentucky, or would they have to get a visa to travel there?

2025-06-14 05:15:03 UTC

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Well, we can hardly expect anyone to fight fascism for free.

2025-06-14 01:37:12 UTC

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fair enough, but your "one sentence" may not seem so perfect if it was 1800 words long.

2025-06-13 03:27:23 UTC

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one URL where somebody has already said it.

2025-05-05 04:45:51 UTC

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if you ignore the numbers, and just focus on what we think should have happened....

2025-05-05 04:24:41 UTC

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why not merge with One Nation while they are at it, and a few others.

2025-04-28 05:21:16 UTC

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Internet Archive's Open Library is also a catalogue.
https://openlibrary.org/

2025-04-20 01:18:52 UTC

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I am too demotivational, but potatoes are bonkers in cool climates. They just go wild and take over entire areas of garden that you neglect. Tasmania is similar to NZ, I've lived in both.

2025-04-19 12:51:49 UTC

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Wikipedia says:
During her run, the race manager Jock Semple assaulted Switzer, trying to grab her bib number and thereby remove her from official competition. After knocking down Switzer's trainer and fellow runner, Arnie Briggs, when he tried to protect her, Semple was shoved to the ground by Switzer's boyfriend, Thomas Miller, who was running with her, and she completed the race.
I suppose Jock Semple is the guy in black, and Arnie Briggs is on her left?

2025-03-19 02:15:32 UTC

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camera pans back to show badly decomposed bodies, then further back to show the scene of death and devastation across the entire continent.

2025-02-24 03:17:14 UTC

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A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth is said to be one of the longest novels, 1,488 pages in paperback. I haven't read it.

2025-02-23 11:04:31 UTC

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possibly The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton, with about 1000 pages. It did hold my attention, because it's just one crazy thing after another. It's the first part of a trilogy of equally long novels.

2025-01-30 21:26:31 UTC

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it would be a dangerous job to have, because when something goes wrong due to such shortages they'll still be looking for a scapegoat.

2024-12-28 00:10:01 UTC

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there's not really much that people do that I find weird these days, but DIY bureaucracy as a hobby? Is this something popular in Germany, and are there clubs for it?

2024-12-09 01:48:18 UTC

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Syria didn't sign up to the ICC for some reason.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/09/17/qa-syria-and-international-criminal-court

2024-12-06 01:18:25 UTC

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more likely adding 4chan to the block list for flouting Australian laws.

2024-11-18 03:58:27 UTC

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yes, or when setting aside nature reserves. Taking away the profit motive is going to help a lot, but still, if people decide to start clearing areas in the nature reserve because they think it would be a good place to live, building their own fields, roads, etc., then I don't see that there's any way to stop them, if violence can only be used in self defence. Or if you had an arsonist burning down temporarily empty buildings.

2024-11-17 21:41:44 UTC

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well, in the first case, you've got some kind of system, where people are voting per-street on whether to have trees or not, and perhaps they have to put up signs on every street explaining their policy for wandering woodcutters. But who decided to institute and maintain this system? And how do people defend their trees? Do they have to always have somebody chained up to a tree to prevent somebody cutting it down?

2024-11-17 21:16:57 UTC

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I'm puzzled by anarchist ideas about decision making. Surely collective decisions need to be made, but the critiques of democracy are also valid. You presumably wouldn't force people to vote, and in practice the people who show up to vote may form a fairly small clique. So how do you make any collective decisions? Things like, we want to have street trees so people shouldn't cut them down?