Hi AC,

"we pay about $400 a quarter for water" yah the 2 of us on 500m2, 3 beds, we go through about 35 to 40 k/lt a quarter, a little above the Brisbane average (5 k/lt on a weekend if the family visit, those grandkids and showers, 16 towels to wash after they've left). The ball and chain stuff take that with a grain of salt.

"Yes the parks are going to be muddy slush." We can only hope, almost better than snow. Nothing like mud and slush to set the tone for a traditional Christmas.

Very busy with 200 Xmas Hampers, a bit of a fizz today with only about 70 coming in, hope for a better response on Friday. I know some people are doing it tough, but there are some generous folk out there. Talking earlier last week to a couple of young business people, (both under age 30) who run a local retail. Casually mentioned we were waiting on an order through Woolies for 200 1lt LL Custards, about $800 worth. Within an hour the two girls were back with the 200 custards and 200 1lt LL Milk's as well, over $1000 worth. When I contacted the manager at Woolworth he said "Someone came in a paid for and picked up your order."..I said "Did they also buy 200 milk as well"...."Yes" he said All thanks to a couple of young people and their generosity.

Armchair Critic- I'm sure everyone comes out with strange stuff. But I think that Elon Musk is part of the solution rather than the problem of the town square.

It's easy to see why youth crime is on the rise !

It's hard to know what to think about Musk,
I certainly agree with you that X is a far more free speech wild-west of a platform now than the woke tightly regulated platform it was as twitter.

But even some things on there surprise me.
http://x.com/VasiliD72739/status/1869446582074053044

Obviously he's a Department of Defense contractor with Space X.
He and Trump have ties to Peter Thiel (Palantir)
Musk and Thiel previously founded Paypal.

Palantir: the ‘special ops’ tech giant that wields as much real-world power as Google
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/30/palantir-peter-thiel-cia-data-crime-police

>>Peter Thiel’s CIA-backed, data-mining firm honed its ‘crime predicting’ techniques against insurgents in Iraq. The same methods are now being sold to police departments. Will they inflame already tense relations between the public and the police?

In Minority Report, the 2002 movie adaptation of the Philip K Dick novel, Tom Cruise plays a police officer in the LAPD “pre-crime” unit. Using the premonitions of sentient mutants called “pre-cogs”, the police are able to predict when someone is going to commit a crime before it happens, swooping down from helicopters and arresting them on the street before they can do anything. Their “crime” is that they merely thought about it.

Palantir, the CIA-backed startup, is Minority Report come true. It is all-powerful, yet no one knows it even exists. Palantir does not have an office, it has a “SCIF” on a back street in Palo Alto, California. SCIF stands for “sensitive compartmentalised information facility”.<<

With Little Fanfare, William Barr Formally Announces Orwellian Pre-Crime Program
http://www.mintpressnews.com/william-barr-formally-announces-orwellian-pre-crime-program/262504/

Peter Thiel: From Gaza AI War Criminal To White House Puppet Master
http://www.mintpressnews.com/peter-thiel-gaza-ai-war-white-house/288372/

Google 'Trump and Palantir'

[cont.] Canem Malum

Here's another X post that raised eyebrows
I saw the original a few days back, now it has several million views.
I'm not sure it's been taken down by X but I think X algorithms have hidden to prevent more views.

http://x.com/RedPillMediaX/status/1869480301350863029

Almost makes me wonder whether under the guise of 'free speech', they're deliberately allowing people to speak freely, but really it's a data mining operation and they're gathering data on citizens to figure out who's on Santa's naughty and nice list in whatever particular categories that suit their intelligence operations.

It's not beyond the imagination to think that good things have nefarious reasons behind them, because that's the world we live in these days.

I can't find the original 'Hitler deserves an apology post'
But the guy that posted it had an assassination attempt on his life yesterday.

Free speech is fine until someone is offended.
There's a lot of stuff which might be considered hateful or inciteful here, but what if some of it's true and holds merit.
https://x.com/RedPillMediaX

- The real issue is where free speech and truth collide.
http://x.com/RedPillMediaX/status/1869635468020887667

Sorry for going off topic.

Makes you wonder whether the real issue isn't harm to kids, and it isn't misinfo or disinfo, it's about creating a pretext to censor the truth, and identify anyone who represents a risk to the governing class by sharing or promoting the truth, and anything else that goes against the official government narrative, which could lead to civil unrest.