Written By:
- Date published:
6:00 am, December 28th, 2025 - 9 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
comments in the Feed seem to have disappeared
186 French ski resorts closed. Most others will close in the 2030s.
And what remains is nature takes over. Made me think of Ohakune, Chateau Tongariro, and the Marlborough and Canterbury fields.
http://www.theguardian.com
Hard to understand why we're not doing a slow retreat of the ski industry in NZ. Or at least planning for it.
Interesting. I'd guess that the French economy is big enough and diverse enough to provide alternative employment for at least some of the people who used to work on those ski-fields – and that any French government would be inclined to at least think about that as a problem to be resolved. I wouldn't have the same confidence about NZ on either point. More likely it will just send more people towards the Australian bolthole.
And in future, do other tourism assets also decline in value as the climate warms? No snow to ski down is one thing, no snow to look at is another. What about eroded coastlines, muddy, flooded rivers, burnt hillsides? It's an industry built on the back of the 'free gifts of nature' no less than mining or agriculture, and we are dependent on all of them.
A libertarian is challenged, is there ethics without God?
He makes a response. By saying an innate sense of fairness is based on human reason.
Then baldly states the Inquisition was inevitable, without saying why.
The short answer is tribalism (an order to Christian identity) and being corrupted by power (supremacy). Mohammed and some Arabs simply coveted what was in the north – an empire with a God authority religion, thus conquered their own via the sword (and for a time flourished – taking in Greek and Indian learning, while the West declined for centuries). Whereas the one at Rome had been gifted the power of that empire and was corrupted by it.
His "secular Christian" defence, is antithetical to the spiel of Ayn Rand and any ACT allegiance to the ideology of the Atlas Network he has internalised. Servitude, to the supremacy of a capitalist order to society, is not consistent with an innate sense of fairness.
Despite rising disquiet at wealth inequality, Musk and Bezos are not interested in philanthropy and Thiel finds the greater support of women for social justice a reason to retreat from democracy into a Palantir affiliated technocracy.
Oligarchy is not a result of a human society having an innate sense of fairness at the centre of its governance.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360918744/praise-lord-and-pass-brandy
Their positions and arguments are always in conflict. The thought experiment example showed that people will innately not accept an unfair deal but libertarians argue for unfair deals all the time because something is better than nothing, right?
He claims human nature alone displays morality but his socio-political ideology displays anything but. After all, he’s a convicted criminal who spent time in prison.
My guess is he’s quite thick but needs the gig from Stuff to pay the bills.
Good guess, DG is another useful tool being provided a regular soapbox to sell it to the sheeple.
One wonders what tales he has in store to woo us with in 2026.
Damien Grant's overly generous. The reason he was having this discussion with a Muslim rather than a Christian is because Christians have had their arses handed to them by atheists so many time over this canard that they no longer peddle it. The short version is that if you argue "Morality comes from God, therefore a man who doesn't fear God is capable of any evil and could be expected to rape women and kill any who annoy him," you're just telling on yourself bro.
So a high end corporate jet owned by a high end hiring company lands in Wellington around 3:45pm Boxing day and departs around 2:30pm today. Arrived from French Polynesia and is not on a public tracking circuit. Not filthy rich holiday makers for sure:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/360919140/watch-luxury-jet-leaves-wellington-within-24-hours-mystery-over-passengers-remain