cheap

Sydneysiders have been flushing jewellery, watches, and other weird items down the household toilet, causing major drain blockages.

In the past three months, Sydney Water crews have had to fix more than 7000 faults in the wastewater network.

Now an advertising campaign has been launched to remind people that pee, poo and toilet paper are the only types of waste that should be flushed.

Sydney Water’s Maryanne Graham said too many “unflushables” are going down the loo and wreaking havoc on the wastewater network.

They include jewellery, watches, notes and coins, kids’ toys such as Lego and figurines, earphones, lighters – and even, on one occasion, a brick.

Other items include wet wipes and oils.

censor

Much is revealed by who is bestowed hero status by the corporate media. This week's anointed avatar of stunning courage is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager being widely hailed as a "whistleblower” for providing internal corporate documents to the Wall Street Journal relating to the various harms which Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) are allegedly causing.

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

"Whistleblower" Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.

sour

A top US diplomat says President Joe Biden was not "fully aware" of the negative impact a joint United Kingdom-American submarine deal with Australia had had on France, after it was announced last month.

woke

No, no, no, ten thousand times… NO! I do not accept any kind of ‘personal guilt’ - no matter how hard the wokeys with their fascist tendencies push and push and push.

ignoramus

Ten iconic buildings I'd bulldoze, by Treasurer Dominic Perrottet

Sydney's beauty is marred by some horrible architecture that could only be improved by the wrecking ball.

Perhaps I was too hasty when I suggested the old White Bay power station should be demolished. This week, I visited the site with Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne and my colleague Planning Minister Rob Stokes, whose transcendent wisdom and insight bestowed upon me, mere mortal, a fuller understanding of its historical significance.

It really was a great discussion, and most importantly there now appears to be a bit of momentum to give the station a more dignified existence than "derelict rave cave". After all, everyone agrees it cannot just be left to fester.

Read more crap from Perrottet:

politico

Politico appears to have ended, or is trying to hide, a sponsorship deal between Lockheed Martin, the largest weapons manufacturer in the United States, and its popular newsletter National Security Daily. Evidence that the relationship had ever existed at all then vanished from Politico’s website.

loud

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook and its family of apps, including Instagram and WhatsApp, went down at the same time on Monday, taking out a vital communications platform used by more than three billion people around the world and adding heat to a company already under intense scrutiny.

Facebook’s apps — which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Oculus — began displaying error messages around 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, users reported. Within five minutes, Facebook had disappeared from the internet. Hours later, the sites were still not functioning, according to Downdetector, which monitors web traffic and site activity.

chinese chess...

The United States urged China to stop its "provocative" military activities near Taiwan, after the island scrambled jets to warn away close to 100 Chinese military aircraft entering its air defence zone over a three-day period.

briggs

Obtained from 14 offshore banking institutions and analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the ‘Pandora Papers’ reveal the financial chicanery of more than 100 billionaires, 35 current and former world leaders, and 300 public officials. The first round of information, handed to a select list of international outlets and studied by “600 journalists,” was published on Sunday.

sub

Australia's most popular fast-food restaurants need to be more transparent about their nutrition policies and should commit to reducing salt, sugar and saturated fat, according to a new report which ranks the retailers based on their public positions on tackling obesity.

The report, released today by Deakin University's Global Obesity Centre, examined the 11 largest fast-food restaurants – which cover about 67 per cent of the market – using publicly available information, then ranked them based on their policies relating to healthy eating.

It found the majority of the restaurants do not identify nutrition and health as being a focus area, with a sector-wide failure by "quick service restaurants" to disclose what they are doing to address obesity and nutrition.

grant

Emmanuel Macron was planning for a world beyond the US well before his anger erupted over the cancelled submarine deal.

The French President calls it strategic autonomy; it could just as easily be named "Europe first". Macron says Europeans must stop being naive and develop the power to defend themselves. 

And that may now extend to rethinking NATO, an alliance Macron has previously described as "brain dead". 

By Stan Grant

Would France leave NATO? Well, it has before — sort of. In 1966, President de Gaulle withdrew his country from NATO's command structure, albeit remaining an active member of the alliance. It didn't "rejoin" NATO until 2009. 

oink

The Democratic spending bills are economic packages that serve moral and cultural purposes. They should be measured by their cultural impact, not merely by some wonky analysis. In real, tangible ways, they would redistribute dignity back downward. They would support hundreds of thousands of jobs for home health care workers, child care workers, construction workers, metal workers, supply chain workers. They would ease the indignity millions of parents face having to raise their children in poverty.

…

Biden had it exactly right when he told a La Crosse, Wis., audience, “The jobs that are going to be created here — largely, it’s going to be those for blue-collar workers, the majority of whom will not have to have a college degree to have those jobs.”

fake journalism

Danielle Doyle, 37, was given two months of probation on Friday in the US District Court in Washington, rather than being sentenced to home confinement as prosecutors sought. She pleaded guilty in July to illegally demonstrating inside the Capitol, which she entered through a broken window. She spent a total of 24 minutes in the building and wasn’t accused of committing any acts of violence or property damage.

boris

Petrol supplies are not improving at independent forecourts, according to the the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA).

"There's been no easing off of the pressure from drivers wanting to refuel whenever they can, wherever they can, " said PRA chairman Brian Madderson. 

fool

Just 24 hours earlier, the Financial Review's annual power list had been trumpeting the fact that, for the first time in the 21-year history of the list, the Prime Minister was not perceived as the nation's most powerful person.

Instead, it was four premiers — Gladys Berejiklian, Daniel Andrews, Annastacia Palaszczuk and Mark McGowan — who were regarded as the ones running our lives.

But by lunchtime of publication day, Berejiklian — so often held up as the Gold Standard of pandemic management by Scott Morrison — was gone.

The woman touted as the one who had "saved Australia" in last year's power list could not save herself.