Bron Larner

Retired curator.

[Barbara Pocock @BarbaraPocock]

Labor needs to end the Big 4's special treatment - on tax, public reporting, professional liability & whistleblower protections - & regulate them like other large Australian firms. They've made millions from government work & abused the system. Their ethics fail every pub test.

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

@ShadowofEzra https://t.co/phpCmEu7S7

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

@MichaelWestBiz Leave us be. Look at the mess over-legislation has created.

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

The plague that killed half of China's population in the 14th century began in Central Asia, was carried by Mongol trading caravans, and reached Europe through a chain of transmission so well documented that historians can trace its exact path from lake Issyk-Kul to Caffa to Messina to every corner of the continent within eighteen months.

The Black Death's origins in Central Asia have been debated by historians and epidemiologists since the 19th century, but a 2022 study published in Nature provided the most specific and archaeologically grounded answer yet. Researchers led by Philip Slavin and Johannes Krause analyzed ancient DNA from human skeletal remains in a medieval cemetery near Lake Issyk-Kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan — a cemetery whose tombstone inscriptions from 1338 and 1339 recorded an unusually high number of deaths and noted explicitly that the cause was pestilence. The ancient DNA extracted from the dental pulp of three individuals buried in that cemetery contained the genetic signature of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, in a strain ancestral to all known strains of the Black Death bacterium — confirming this Central Asian site as the biological origin point of the pandemic.

From the Issyk-Kul origins, the plague traveled westward along the Silk Road trade routes — the same infrastructure that had connected Central Asia to the Mediterranean for a millennium — through trading communities and Mongol postal relay stations across the steppe. It reached the Crimean peninsula by 1346, where Mongol forces besieging the Genoese trading post of Caffa catapulted infected corpses over the walls in what is documented in an earlier post in this series. Genoese ships fleeing Caffa in 1347 carried infected rats and crew members to Constantinople, Messina in Sicily, Genoa, and Marseille in rapid succession. From these Mediterranean ports the disease spread along every trade and travel route in Europe simultaneously, reaching England by June 1348, Scandinavia by 1349, and Russia by 1351. The European death toll was approximately 25 million — between a third and a half of the continent's population. China had been affected by an earlier wave of the same pandemic in the 1330s and 1340s, with population records suggesting a reduction of approximately 50 percent in some Chinese provinces — a death toll of potentially 25 million in China alone.

© Reddit

#archaeohistories

[scha·den·freu·de  @BlisterPearl]

"Trickle down economics doesn't work, so let's try piñata economics. That's the one where we beat the billionaires until the hoarded wealth falls out."

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The only business I engaged in was selling my paintings. I averaged about $225k per year in income over the 4 years of my Dad’s presidency. Now you may be outraged by that but where is your outrage over Don Jr opening a private members club next to the White House called the Executive Branch club where the stated purpose is to rub shoulders with senior White House officials and Cabinet members. And the initiation fee is $500,000. Where is your outrage over Peter Navarro calling from inside the WH to push the Pentagon to grant the largest loan it has ever made to any company for a rare earth startup backed by Don Jr. Where is your outrage when Donald Trump took a Boeing 747 from the government of Qatar. Four hundred million dollars. Over a billion dollars in tax payer money for upgrades. The most valuable gift any foreign government has ever given the United States. And when he leaves office, it goes to his library.
He sued his own IRS for ten billion dollars and settled. And the settlement declares the IRS, and I am quoting the filing here, is “forever barred” from pursuing its audits of him, his family, and his companies.

[Step and fetch @FetchStep]

"No Warranty on #Aukus Subs"
Labor has paid $368B for 3 second hand Subs that have no Warranty and a Nuclear reactor that will only last for 20Years.
The #Aukus Grift gets better by the day.
No New subs
No Warranty
Only 20 year life span
Delivery 2040 maybe
#LaborCrimeFamily

[IISS News @IISS_org]

The Gulf states have accelerated their search for new air-defence systems after suffering from thousands of Iranian missile and UAV attacks.

South Korea, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States are among those countries that have been approached by Gulf states interested in near-term acquisitions, which include interceptor missiles, interceptor UAVs, point-defence systems, radar and surface-to-air missile systems.

➡️ Read the full analysis by @albert_vidal_: https://t.co/Wu0TiYr1oo

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

@RepLuna You love Muslims AND Chinese Muslims especially?

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

@RepLuna Yeah: you're armless.

[USS Liberty Veterans Association @usslibertyvets]

I once contacted a retired Marine organization, told them about the Marines on the #USSLiberty that were left behind and asked him how that squares with the Marine motto of not leaving a Marine behind.

He replied with the Marine equivalent of "that motto is bullshit."

And the Marines killed on the #USSLiberty are proof.

Follow us on X https://t.co/OTdBqObXgu

Visit the New #USSLiberty Veterans Website -- https://t.co/DkY1YBvJoa

@adl @PhilPhilTourney @TuckerCarlson @RepDonBacon @DanLamothe @AlexHortonTX @shaneharris @EricSchmittNYT @helenecooper @charlie_savage @nancyayoussef @glubold @RepThomasMassie @TheRobbCarter

#RememberThe34

[💧Michael West @MichaelWestBiz]

BHP and MinterEllison. Not enough just to sue the coal miner and the journalist. Last night they went after us for money. To pay their costs.
#auspol
https://t.co/fikG3n5DEQ

[Chebureki Man @CheburekiMan]

@medeabenjamin https://t.co/d09EmxTMHV

[The Shovel @TheShovel]

Man Simultaneously Furious About Government Causing House Prices To Fall and Immigrants Causing House Prices To Rise

https://t.co/38wwHhsa3K

[Peter Cronau @PeterCronau]

These words should be carved in stone on the steps to the Australian War Memorial.

To be recalled and recited by every visitor to that sad mausoleum.

They neatly sum up the state of the US Alliance with Australia:

“And I want to thank that fella down under. Thank you, pal. Appreciate it.”

A brief history of Australia eating shit on AUKUS
via @crikey_news https://t.co/d9c0YQLboW

[Joel Jenkins @boganintel]

I spoke to media legend @MichaelWestBiz about this exclusive story BHP is fighting to bury.

An injured miner sleeps on his mum’s garage floor while Australia’s biggest company tries to suppress sworn evidence of $11.4 BILLION in alleged wage theft — using a $2 shell company then suing West to shut it down.

Corporate bullying at its worst.
https://t.co/Iru2NtzQFv

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

@SenRickScott RUBBISH.

[💧Mary Kostakidis @MaryKostakidis]

A Must Read. Mike Gilligan on just how much of a scam the AUKUS lemon is cc @AlboMP @RichardMarlesMP and why it is an unprecedented disgrace and betrayal of the people of Australia. The PM should take this opportunity to WITHDRAW. The Public Enquiry will be excoriating. You dont give away public money in this way.
‘The Virginia class submarine is not a general-purpose vessel such as our Collins class. It is designed for supreme acoustic invisibility for a specific purpose – to find, track and attack submarines seen as a nuclear threat to the US mainland. That is the job which the US expects Australia’s submarines to do – effectively embedded into US military command – against China’s growing capacity to annihilate continental US from under the sea, anytime.
Why this role is of utmost priority for the US requires some explanation. Nuclear armed submarines, such as China possesses, present a uniquely difficult threat to the US homeland. Unlike the readily discernible launch locations of hostile land-based missiles, or from aircraft or sea-surface vessels, the submarine’s habitat and mobility make it largely invisible and impregnable across the vast ocean approaches to the US.
The US attempts to deal with this risk using specialised attack submarines (ie the Virginia), which can locate, track and destroy China’s nuclear submarines as they move into and around Pacific waters. This is one critical part of a mosaic of US self-protection measures, the effectiveness of which is eroding as China’s submarine production expands.
So, the hefty sacrifice which Australia’s taxpayers make to acquire new submarines is not for Australia’s benefit, but for defending continental US. Australia’s submarine needs are quite specialised and different, but simply ignored by Minister Marles…
the evidence is incontrovertible this government has forsaken independence in protecting Australia. And deceives its people on how it lets the United States controls our priorities to its own benefit, damaging our own defence capacity. The implications of such betrayal are profound.’
We are just vassals to a fading hegemon who wants to be able to keep goading our biggest trading partner because its economic growth presents a threat to the US lording it over the world. FFS time to grow up and stop supporting a bully.
https://t.co/ao0LLjC9bS

[💧Michael West @MichaelWestBiz]

BHP proceedings against MWM have been discontinued by agreement of the Court and BHP. The Simon Turner defence continues. We are back to being a court reporter!

[Bron Larner @Numabiena]

Sign this petition https://t.co/TMB7FNiu0e Fix unfair law so regional Australians can access assisted dying