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Created
Fri, 16/02/2024 - 00:00

Dear Me,

What, you think your bird feeders clean themselves? That rainstorms are Mother Nature’s dishwasher, making everything just ducky at the thistle feeder? That you can simply hose down your bird-feeding stations once or twice a year with whatever water’s left over in the spray nozzle and call it a day?

Well, allow me to piss in your Cheerios, princess. See, our feathered friends shit where they eat, which means your improperly maintained platform feeder is now a petri dish of disease and death. That wasn’t a purple finch you spotted at your feeder, toots. It was a common house sparrow with pink eye. And every time Pinky rubbed its little crusty, diseased head against anything it touched? That’s right, genius. Say hello to Conjunctivitis Carnivale for the aviary known as your backyard.

Pestilence starts with ignoramuses like you who don’t have the first clue about proper bird-feeder-cleaning protocol.

Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 22:05

On Sunday night, the Israeli army carried out a series of intensive strikes in multiple locations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Political commentators referred to the strikes as ‘diversion’ tactics, intended to cover a rescue operation that reportedly brought two Israeli hostages home. For Palestinians, the experience was one that has become familiar: […]

Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 17:29
Over the last few years, the Australian and UK Labor/Labour[1] parties, have followed strikingly parallel paths. A better-than expected result with a relatively progressive platform (Oz 2016, UK 2017) A demoralizing defeat in 2019, followed by the election of a new more conservative leader (Albanese, Starmer) Wholesale abandonment of the program Failure of the rightwing […]
Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 15:52

THE third and final session of the Ignite Mini’s series hosted by Regional Development Australia Mid North Coast (RDAMNC) was held at Bellingen Golf Course on Thursday 8 February, after earlier sessions in Taree and Kempsey. Attracting a full house of key stakeholders from a diverse range of industries, the one-day forum covered a host...

The post Ignite session covers challenges and opportunities for Mid North Coast appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 15:49

SIXTY years of service to the Coffs Coast community is being celebrated by the NSW State Emergency Service (SES) Coffs Harbour Unit. The Coffs Harbour Unit, formed in 1964, has supported the community through several major natural disasters, including multiple major flooding events in 1991,1996 and 2009. Advertise with News of The Area today. It’s...

The post Celebrating 60 years of Coffs SES, a vital force in the community appeared first on News Of The Area.

Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 12:54
Today (February 15, 2024), the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest – Labour Force, Australia – for January 2024, which confirms a weakening in the labour market. The signs of a slowdown were appearing in late 2023 and the January figures probably confirm that trend, although the changing holiday behaviour makes it difficult to…
Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 11:30
Recent papers have argued that monetary policy and economic conditions can influence the amount of innovative activity in the economy, and therefore productivity and living standards in the future. This paper examines whether this is the case for Australia, a small open economy that tends to import innovation from overseas. We find that contractionary (expansionary) monetary policy reduces (increases) aggregate research and development (R&D) spending, and that lower (higher) R&D spending reduces (increases) future productivity. However, using firm-level data and a broader survey measure of innovation that also captures adoption, we find heterogeneous responses across different firm types. Small firms decrease innovation in response to contractionary monetary policy shocks whereas large firms increase innovation. This heterogeneity appears to reflect differing exposure to the channels through which monetary policy affects innovation. These channels include affecting demand or affecting financial conditions and constraints. We also find that US monetary policy spills over and affects Australian firms' innovation.
Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 11:30
And I’m talking about stupid weird Monmouth poll:  – Just under 1 in 5 Americans believe the singer Taylor Swift is part of a covert effort to help President Joe Biden win the 2024 election. At the same time, the Monmouth (“Mon-muth”) University Poll also finds that most Americans are supportive of efforts by Swift to encourage her fans to vote. Just under half (46%) of the American public has heard something about Swift being part of a supposed covert government effort to help Biden win the 2024 presidential election. Just under 1 in 5 Americans (18%) believe such a conspiracy involving Swift exists. Fully 71% of those who believe this identify with or lean toward the Republican Party and 83% indicate they are likely to support Donald Trump in the fall. Also, nearly three-quarters (73%) of those who believe the Swift conspiracy also believe the 2020 election outcome was fraudulent.
Created
Thu, 15/02/2024 - 10:00
This is good: None of that means she’s going to back off on the issues that matter to her — Gaza pre-eminent among them. It does mean that she isn’t being myopic about the stakes for the whole world, including Gaza, if Trump wins the election. It will be a nightmare of epic proportions. She is an amazing politician and I can’t wait to see how she matures even further. I would vote for her in a second.