Utopia, you are standing in it!

This brilliant map by Norse Redditor PisseGuri82 explores the question, “When were the world’s current international borders first defined?” Today’s international borders loom large in the consciousness of people around the world. Ask anyone to imagine a world map, and the first thing that they will think of is the outlines of various modern nation-states. But that was not always the case. Far from being an innate feature of our planet’s landscape, or even having significant historical basis, most of the world’s international borders were only created in the 20th century, and they came into existence with only the stroke of a pen.

Below is the cartographer’s description of their process:

Researching this has been painstaking, because a lot of the sources are fuzzy. Even the facts are fuzzy, different cultures have had different systems for defining a ruler’s area of influence and which rulers together form a larger entity. National…

Two animal activists thought they were doing the world a favour by sneaking into a home and releasing a caged bird. But it ended in disaster.

By Ben Graham, News.com.au

A seasoned veterinary nurse has hit out at the “despicable” actions of two animal rights activists who snuck into her mother’s home to “rescue” a caged bird — which was then fatally mauled by a cat.

Georgia Rowe, a Wildlife Information, Rescue and Education Service volunteer from Mosman on Sydney’s north shore, wrote a lengthy post for the Mosman Daily Facebook page saying she had been in the UK visiting “old and unwell relatives” when the pair struck.

She wrote that on Saturday, at about 9.30am, the pair — a young woman and a man, according to a neighbour’s description — entered the home via two locked gates.

It was then that the activists stole her non-releasable rescue rainbow lorikeet…

A new Prime Minister is expected to be appointed tomorrow, the day before MPs break up for the summer recess. With just 14 weeks remaining before the current Article 50 deadline, the Commons is then not due to meet for almost six weeks. This creates some very obvious scrutiny gaps. Meg Russell and Daniel Gover suggest that pressures for a Commons ‘recall’ during the summer recess seem likely, but that this will revive difficult questions about who can, and should be able to, recall MPs.

On Thursday, MPs are due to leave Westminster for the summer recess. Yet, barring mishaps, a new Prime Minister is expected to be installed in Downing Street only the preceding day, making immediate parliamentary scrutiny of the new government’s key decisions all but impossible. An added pressure, of course, comes from the Brexit context. The current Article 50 deadline for the UK to depart…

i don’t believe this. Not in response to condemnation by non Greens, only after backlash from within. If Green members did not like it why did they run it.

Greens co-leader James Shaw has said sorry for a Green Party attack ad that featured an exaggerated voice-over of Simon Bridges.

The ad was pulled after massive backlash from Green Party members who said the ad was mocking Bridges’ accent. pic.twitter.com/MPvWyJ3W8i

— Jason Walls (@Jasonwalls92) July 23, 2019

Who approved that crap

Was it Gareth ‘Plotter and Schemer’ Hughes?
Don’t forget they ran this in a poll week. Want to bet it makes the TV News at 6? Mission accomplished!

Episode 1 and 2 seem to be missing

Special Branch is a British television series made by Thames Television for ITV and shown between 1969 and 1974. A police drama series, the action was centred on members of the Special Branch anti-espionage and anti-terrorist department of the London Metropolitan Police.

The first two series were shot mainly in a studio on videotape with filmed location inserts; a standard method of the time but one which suffered from jarring differences in picture quality between interior and exterior scenes. The location scenes of some episodes were shot on outside broadcast cameras, leading to smoother transitions between location and studio work for those episodes. Series 1 and 2 starred Derren Nesbitt as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Jordan, working to Detective Superintendent Eden (Wensley Pithey) and subsequently Det. Supt. Inman (Fulton Mackay). The episodes featuring Eden (the first nine…

Superb interview of University of California, Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti.

He explains why despite the internet people continue to work in select concentrated locations:

EF: During perhaps the first decade or so of the World Wide Web, there were numerous predictions that geography would disappear or almost disappear as an issue in knowledge work. It seemed as if white-collar workers, if one believed the predictions, would be able to work from anywhere.

Moretti: Yes.

EF: What happened?

It’s Sunday, so perhaps you have more time to watch a little longer intellectual discussion of capitalism and freedom from Thomas Sowell, brilliant as usual. A splendid commentary on the general conversation out there today.

Sowell discusses his early life as a high school dropout and his first full-time job as a Western Union messenger delivering telegrams. He admits to flirting with Marxism in his early twenties as he first tried to grapple with the housing inequality he saw across the neighborhoods of New York City. Marxism, he says, was the only explanation he could find at the time. He went on to serve in the Marine Corps before continuing his education in economics at Harvard and earning a master’s at Columbia and a PhD at the University of Chicago.

Sowell’s first job after his receiving his PhD in economics was working for the Department of Labor, and he says…

International Cricket Council has suspended Zimbabwe as its member:

Zimbabwe have been suspended from the ICC with immediate effect. ICC funding to Zimbabwe Cricket has been frozen, and representative teams from Zimbabwe will not be allowed to participate in any ICC events while under suspension, making Zimbabwe’s participation in the Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier in August and Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier in October highly unlikely.

After several rounds of meetings in London this week, the ICC Board unanimously decided that Zimbabwe Cricket was in breach of Article 2.4 (c) and (d) of the ICC Constitution, and that the actions of the Sports and Recreation Commission (SRC) in suspending the board in June constituted government interference in Zimbabwe Cricket’s affairs.

“We do not take the decision to suspend a Member lightly, but we must keep our sport free from political interference,” ICC Chairman Shashank Manohar said. “What has happened…

Don’t let Bill McKibben’s red T-Shirt fool you…

Fascism comes in all shades, including ‘green’. Marching around and telling other people what to do, makes the green fascist no different than the jackbooted kind, of old.

Where the green fascist differs, is in his ability to pontificate from the high moral ground, while engaging in every act he so vocally despises.

Which brings us to Bob Brown.

Dr Bob has called in an airstrike in his own position, with the media having a field day with his very sudden about face on wind power.

The former head honcho for the Australian Greens is now guilty of precisely the charge he’s been laying at the feet of oppressed rural folk for years.

Bob and his ilk scream N-I-M-B-Y whenever ordinary Australians jack up about the idea of having a few hundred 300 tonne plus, 270 m whirling wonders speared into their…