The Daily Blog Open Mic – 14th July 2023

1. Further on alcoholism and its enervating grip on our country. (Note I like it but I try to limit it, have to limit tea as well. Not a Mormon-type ban but careful on stimulants.)

   This summary of addiction from the UK 1700s, could apply here. We would be better to stop illegality and set floor prices on drugs for the needy. Also restrain outlets!; the smaller ones often set up by immigrants from poorer countries trying to get a foothold here – why should it be by profiting from trading on increasing degradation of the vulnerable.
   Alcoholism was widespread amongst the poor in the 1700s, and the rise of the ‘gin craze’ became infamous. Gin was cheap and potent, and for many people offered a quick release from the grinding misery of everyday life.

   And there is Hogarth’s famous print of degradation of a gin-soaked mother with baby slipping from her lap. (One early memory of a NZ temperance worker in the early 1900s? was of a Maori woman with baby riding her horse home after a meeting with liquor served. She was so befuddled that not till she was home did she realise the baby had slipped away, lost en route.)

   This print by William Hogarth, entitled Gin Lane, depicts all the chaos and misery of a drunken society. The print was intended to show the destructive effects of the drink; the slogan in Hogarth’s gin shop reads, ‘drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing’.
   Hogarth’s grim depiction of a society addicted to gin, 1768
   bl.uk https://www.bl.uk › collection-items › hog

2. NZ the country that gives and keeps on giving. Tap into it anywhere and it’s like winning on the fruit machine.
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/493712/counterfeit-passports-driver-licences-made-in-nz-used-by-international-criminals

3. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/493626/global-temperature-rises-in-steps-here-s-why-we-can-expect-a-steep-climb-this-year-and-next
   There are graphs and information here that we should all know. Take a paragraph a day after breakfast like a pill.

4. This is a startling story. It shows how hard it is to pass on useful new information when those with ears to hear and understand do not wish to. This is the summary of a book which is interesting even for the bare facts. Perhaps this trend of thinking and acting can be traced across the world but above-ground! Don’t you reckon?
   https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/marketplace/books/search? The Map That Changed the World

   The Map That Changed The World by Simon Winchester
   In 1793, a canal digger named William Smith made a startling discovery. He found that by tracing the placement of fossils, which he uncovered in his excavations, one could follow layers of rocks as they dipped and rose and fell — clear across England and, indeed, clear across the world — making it possible, for the first time ever, to draw a chart of the hidden underside of the earth.

   Determined to expose what he realized was the landscape’s secret fourth dimension, Smith spent twenty-two years piecing together the fragments of this unseen universe to create an epochal and remarkably beautiful hand-painted map. But instead of receiving accolades and honors, he ended up in debtors’ prison, the victim of plagiarism, and virtually homeless for ten years more.

   Finally, in 1831, this quiet genius — now known as the father of modern geology — received the Geological Society of London’s highest award and King William IV offered him a lifetime pension.

5. Knock! Knock!
   Who is about to be crushed under it’s own $300+ trillion dollar debt mountain that there are no buyers for?

   A. The US

6. Thinking about our politics. If we are not to be served and business put in place of us, then it isn’t a public service any more. Therefore perhaps we should declare ourselves a trust and not pay tax, we seem more and more to be relying on charity, well form our own charity, like in earlier centuries when there was need.

   Or the gummint could step down or register themselves as limited liability companies with restrictive regulations. We might hold a referendum and decide to appoint our own Commissioners from a selection who have been totally inspected with full backgrounds for us to read not just their aspirations and passions! We will elect say five by vote of 70% majority from those people who have passed a scratch test and know where NZ is in the world, what most of us dod for a living, and how to cook scrambled eggs and boil water, basic stuff like that!

   Then they will list all the things that are considered need repair, and prioritise them and make sure that there are apprentices coming along for useful stuff, in 3 year terms, with different mentors. Also ideas for new projects and who they will serve affordably etc. And so on. The whole rigmarole at present seems cynically being milked by some locals and imports who bring their glossy assured ways to we yokels.

   And let’s start weekly insurance and friendly societies to help look after us so when we get scammed by gummint or the sharp, we have fall-back besides the Mission for Social Dissolution.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_general_fraternities
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Fellows
   https://www.jstor.org/stable/24545187

   odd – fellows, benevolence and the – social limits of actuarial
   jstor.org
   https://www.jstor.org › stable
   25 Noem 2014 — ‘Odd Fellows’ to refer explicitly to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, … Friendly Societies and Coming of the Old Age Pensions Act, …

   • ..declare ourselves a trust and not pay tax, I am talking about a charitable trust like churches and keen sympathetic individuals can thereby make a business for themselves filling gummint’s lack-a-day role so notably deficient, and with eternal demand issues, how can it lose?

7. What’s all this about. Bad guy gets money yet what was so bad he could claim from Corrections?
   https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/493782/killer-jailed-for-racist-attack-released-from-prison-awarded-thousands-in-compensation

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