Thyla
Thyla's JournalWe just made our list/menus
For a family of four.
Christmas Eve will be an apero, basically a bunch of finger food and snacks rolled out over the night.
Everyone chose a few things they want each, kids want things like crisps, chicken fingers, little franks etc. Also home made feta triangles, fresh baguette with brie and coloumier and a nice red to go with. Then some home made biscuits and a vienetta for desert.
Christmas Day brunch is crêpes with a range of sweet and savory toppings, my favourite is to put some ham and a slice of brie on the crêpe while it is cooking to melt it.
Christmas dinner is a new one for us but hey ho, it will be a curry night.
Start with papadoms with two dipping sauces, probably a spicy onion tomato one and a mint raita thing.
Then 2 main curry dishes, a butter chicken and a Goan spicy coconut chicken. Served with homemade garlic naan.
This will be a lot of work as it will all be made from scratch, no jars of sauce just spices and good recipes. I'll have to start the day before to marinade a chicken tandoori tikka which will eventually be the basis of the butter chicken.
The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/04/the-killing-times-the-massacres-of-aboriginal-people-australia-must-confrontThe truth of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight.
The stories of “the killing times” are the ones we have heard in secret, or told in hushed tones. They are not the stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to go away.
The colonial journalist and barrister Richard Windeyer called it “the whispering in the bottom of our hearts”. The anthropologist William Stanner described a national “cult of forgetfulness”. A 1927 royal commission lamented our “conspiracy of silence”.
But calls are growing for a national truth-telling process. Such wishes are expressed in the Uluru statement from the heart. Reconciliation Australia’s 2019 barometer of attitudes to Indigenous peoples found that 80% of people consider truth telling important. Almost 70% of Australians accept that Aboriginal people were subject to mass killings, incarceration and forced removal from land, and their movement was restricted.
There is also an interactive map which shows the locations of some of the conflicts. It is disturbing but something as the headline states, we must confront.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2019/mar/04/massacre-map-australia-the-killing-times-frontier-wars
And on a personal level it is entirely fair to say that this history has been hidden from most Australians, whether that is willfully or just buried out of shame or forgotten. Schools never taught such history beyond a cursory glance and whilst it is slightly better today the level of detail is low.
And lets be honest, if you have colonial ancestry in Australia just how much do you really know what happened back then. I know I have distant settler relatives, I have looked into it somewhat but little info is available from where I am and will likely have to pay a proper historian/genealogist to really get into more detail.
I wish ancestry was a little bit easier to navigate because I know I have found some saved letters stating a few interesting tidbits.
With that said I know we underestimate the hurt and suffering the Aboriginal people still feel today and we owe them soooo much more than we have shown. Maybe a clearer understanding of the past is at the very least a step in the right direction because if government won't act then it is up to the people to show some humanity and given the Australia Day controversy we seem a long way off of reconciliation.
Nobody needed this: Brian Burston levels sexual harassment allegations at One Nation leader
Too many visuals, none of them pretty.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-13/burston-levels-sexual-harassment-allegations-at-pauline-hanson/10809710
Two former Senate colleagues are engaged in a war of words, with the United Australia Party's Brian Burston levelling sexual harassment allegations at One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Key points:
Senator Burston has made a series of claims in The Daily Telegraph about Senator Hanson's behaviour towards him over the course of the last two decades, alleging she had acted inappropriately towards him numerous times.
He told the newspaper of one incident in which he alleged Senator Hanson "rubbed her fingers up my spine" in 1998, and also claimed she had propositioned him on a number of occasions after his election to Parliament in 2016.
Senator Hanson responded to the claims on Sky News on Wednesday night.
"I can't stop laughing about it," she said.
"I'm 64 … but I tell you what, I'm not that desperate."
The 'socialist' policies Donald Trump wants to target aren't that radical to Australians
Donald Trump kicked off his re-election campaign by making socialism into 2020's dirty word
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/donald-trump-wants-socialism-to-be-2020s-dirty-word/10793734
Make no mistake, Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for 2020 on Tuesday night when he delivered the State of the Union address.
Expect "socialism" to become a very dirty word (if it isn't already).
"Here in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country," the President said, adding: "Tonight, we resolve that America will never be a socialist country".
Huh?
Where did that come from, you may well ask?
Well, with a growing list of leftist Democrats declaring their intent to run for the presidency, a so-called migrant crisis on the border and political and economic chaos in socialist Venezuela, why not?
Some democratic policies look like socialism to the Trump base
In his remarks, Mr Trump was targeting the liberal policies of the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and newly minted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who's not running for President but is an "influencer"
.
They're promoting:
universal healthcare
subsidised tertiary education
big taxes on the rich
pro-environment initiatives in the form of a "New Green Deal" to reduce the use of fossil fuels
It's a weird thing living in America coming from a country like Australia where Medicare and heavily subsidised education are taken for granted.
To us, their policies are not quite radical. Fuel for valid political debate and prioritisation of public funds to be sure, but to suggest the United States might imminently turn into Venezuela seems like a big leap.
And it is.
Universal healthcare and subsidised education are hardly precursors to state control and the death of the American free market.
And it is something we do take for granted, not only in Australia but here in the EU and many other nations with similar policy.
Oh, and for what it is worth we don't think of it with terms like 'socialist' or 'socialist policy'. We don't see ourselves as socialist countries. It's just the way things are in a free and fair society and not a big scary word.
Changes to Flickr
Hopefully it is OK to post this here as I figure there may be a few users here this could apply to.
Basically next year flickr is going to change things up and if you have 1000 or more pictures on the site then you will be required to sign up for the PRO account and 49.99 a year.
Personally I'm not sure how I feel about this, maybe it's because I'm over the 1000 limit but I like to think it is just because I'm cynical.
https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/
Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. If you need unlimited storage, you’ll need to upgrade to Flickr Pro.
Lastly, we looked at our members and found a clear line between Free and Pro accounts: the overwhelming majority of Pros have more than 1,000 photos on Flickr, and more than 97% of Free members have fewer than 1,000. We believe we’ve landed on a fair and generous place to draw the line.
Still taken on face value that everyone of the so called '3 percent' with over 1000 pics then subscribes that is a heck of a pay day, 3 percent of 100 million users multiplied by 49.99 is close enough to 150 million. Nice move smugmug.
To be fair no matter what changes they make someone is always going to have a problem with it and some of the changes are definitely for the better like allowing non yahoo registrations.
For me I don't know, if I wanted the PRO account I could of had it by now, not sure I see the value of it and possibly if I was going to spend money on such a thing then maybe I'd be better off with a private site or something else. I don't know to be honest.
I'm going to wait and see what sort of backlash they get and if they change anything before rushing to delete or back up pics on my account.
Spanish anti-terror law has 'chilling effect' on satire, says Amnesty International
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/spanish-anti-terror-law-has-chilling-effect-on-satire-says-amnesty-international
This is actually pretty scary to think about in a supposedly "modern" EU country although after living in Spain for a while it is hardly surprising. It's time for the EU courts to do their job I think despite that a ruling would likely be roundly ignored as usual.
The charity is calling for the law to be repealed, arguing that recent high-profile cases brought under article 578 of Spain’s criminal code have highlighted the danger the legislation poses to freedom of speech and international human rights law.
Under the article, those found guilty of “glorifying terrorism”, justifying terrorist acts or “humiliating the victims of terrorist crimes or their relatives” can be jailed, fined and banned from holding public sector jobs.
Over the past two years, the legislation has been used with increasing frequency. In 2016, a judge eventually shelved an investigation into two puppeteers who were suspected of glorifying terrorism during a performance in Madrid.
Two musicians – César Strawberry, lead singer of the group Def Con Dos, and the rapper Valtonyc – have given prison sentences following prosecutions under article 578.
Strawberry was sentenced to a year in prison in January last year for tweeting jokes about Eta and giving the king “a cake-bomb” for his birthday, while Valtonyc recently had his three-and-a-half year prison sentence upheld after being convicted of distributing songs online that threatened a politician with violence, glorified terrorism and insulted the crown.
A film-maker and a journalist are also among those charged under the legislation.
Perhaps the most notorious case, however, is that of Cassandra Vera, a student who was given a suspended jail sentence and banned from doing a publicly-funded job for seven years for tweeting jokes about the 1973 assassination of a Spanish prime minister.
Inbox told me to say Hi!
So I figured I would.
A little about me I guess, firstly I am an Aussie living in Spain. Might as well get that one out of the way straight up.
I used lurk here a long time ago and only really just rediscovered it, this place is kinda my people I would say. I certainly share many of the current worries that most here do in regards to the Dotard which is probably why I made the jump to actually join. Plus it is nice to just post with people who are not bat shit crazy.
Anyhow, that's all for now. Any questions just fire away.
Cheers
Thyla
Profile Information
Member since: Wed Jan 24, 2018, 03:24 PMNumber of posts: 791
