In which the pond celebrates the Major, let loose to fly free and wild ...

The pond is as pleased as punch that the reptiles have decided to let the Major out from behind his paywall, or if you like, out of his cage. In the pond's experience, too many birds will ravage their plumage if not allowed to run wild and free …

The Major raises many significant points about recent reporting, not withstanding that he's a week late, compared to Media Watch's summary of those who got it wrong, here ...

Indeed, indeed, it must remain a mystery why people in the media are so gullible and willing to offer themselves up as front while scoring a shekel or two …

That story is here, and they had a couple of goes at the yarn, and discovered some odd company, as you can be found here ...

Sheesh, 970k paid to consultants?

The pond knew it was in the wrong game, but that brought it home.

And so to return to the Major for another gobbet ...

It's impossible to under-estimate how that must have agitated the Major Mitchell and cost him a few tail feathers.

The pond savoured it … "for once the Twitter left has been right about bank rotting", even if it does assume that somehow Twitter is only deployed by lefties, and social media is in the hands of activists, though it possibly helps explain why the reptiles are so useless at these arcane modern forms of communication.

Of course it's all the fault of diversity, and gays, and the useless, pesky, difficult blacks, as devined by the Devine ...

Never mind, the pond thinks it might have discovered a new word and a new concept …reptocracy, which is to say financial advice written by reptiles, struggling desperately to keep the onion muncher and Malware in power, while pretending to give a toss about wicked banks and working class losers.

It can join all sorts of other concepts of a similar kind …

In which the pond has to settle for second best, which is to say the original Adam ...

The reptiles have put up the shutters again, and the pond, determined as ever, refuses to stump up the price of admission to the Murdochian elite, and the free newspapers from the airport won't be in the home until night, and so the pond is forced to slum in the gutter with the ne'er-do-wells, dropkicks, losers and also rans in the reptile stable …

In particular Adam Creighton, who purports to be an "economic correspondent", though he doesn't appear economical in his homophobia and bigotry.

The pond had thought that poofter bashing had temporarily gone out of vogue with the reptiles, and they'd settled down, and only pockets of fundamentalist Catholics were telling their gay son that they didn't match up to the straights.

But Adam is a reliable sort and he gets out the cudgel in fine style ... 

Um, so being gay or trans is elitist?

And perhaps that reference to Woody Allen is a tad unfortunate, unless Creighton is talking about the chance of doubling your chance of a date on a Saturday night with your adopted daughter, or perhaps being mentioned in unsavoury despatches in relation to other matters …

But that aside, the pond is sometimes puzzled why the reptiles think that a commentary piece can show off the real thoughts of the reptile correspondents, including "economic correspondent", and yet somehow this sort of festering howl of rage and hate can be sequestered from 'straight reporting', so to say, if someone will excuse the pond for the unintended pun …

It's as if the original Adam had decided to set down in a foaming frenzy all that agitates the reptiles, be it uppity women or bizarre notions like enjoying health and life ...

Of course at this point everybody will recognise that the original Adam is going to do a "butt, billy goat butt" ...

Yep, the pond was almost reduced to tears by the original Adams concerns for the poor and for badly done by smokers … who will die early not because they're addicted, no thanks to the IPA, but so they can end up funding vice chancellors.

The pond apologises that it's been forced in to keeping the original Adam's company, which in turn means some hapless readers might be exposed, but at the same time, any fair-dealing stray reader will have to admit that his piece is a relatively concise compendium of reptile pathologies and neuroses …

In short, it's pretty much up there, or out there, with anything that the Oreo herself might offer.

Of course it's not a consolation.

Not having the Oreo to hand and being forced to munch on a stale Adam biscuit feels a bit like being evicted from the garden of surreal Eden … but it's just the way it is. Sure, calling the original Adam a tad weird in his obsessions is a bit like noting that the Donald is a narcissist, but hey it passes the time…until the reptiles realise that the pond remains one of the few chances for them to fix their business model with a bit of free publicity.

Meanwhile, the reptiles were as agitated as the Donald over Sarah Wolf's routines, while also being wildly excited by a Liddell power offer - dinkum Oz coal, oi, oi, oi - but the pond will just settle for the Donald being down wit it with Rowe … with more Rowe here …

In which the pond could wait, but Angela Shanahan can't ...

The pond is out and about this day, and so it wanted its last Sunday meditative post to be a ripper … and who better than the angelic Angela to do the job?

In a rare burst of interest, she sent the lizard Oz's twitter account right off, a rare event, since no one usually gives a toss about the reptiles' pathetic attempts at social media.

It doesn't help to be running a paywall that produces a 'pay to play' demand at the end of the click to produce an unhealthy level of anger ...

Luckily for the pond there's a natural sequence here. 

It will be remembered - by the few readers that care - that only in the last post the pond was lost with Cardinal Newman, angels and fairies, and the whole damn thing, and yet kept insisting that somehow all the nonsense was an exact equivalent of reading the reptiles …

Now will the doubters apologise, or at least be silent in awe?

Please join the pond in examining the thoughts of a Catholic fundamentalist bigot, coincidentally taking her name from one of Newman's many delusions … oh if only he'd been able to have a normal sex life with his male friend ...

The good thing is that because Shanners sent the Oz twitter account into a frenzy, the pond has nothing to do by way of hard work, but rather can sit back and rest and admire the fuss …

Now before the pond is taken to court for defamation, in reproducing that remark about loving all children regardless of their sexuality, the pond should quickly point out that Shanners has form …and again all that's needed as evidence are a few tweets …

Anyone wanting the link in that tweet can find it here, and can find the following tweet and its links here ...

It's a pretty pass, n'est-ce pas, when someone prefers Catholic bigotry and delusions to the reality of their own flesh and blood, but it sets the scene nicely for the rest of the angelic one's rant ...

And so, because the pond is taking a break from arguing with the reptiles, here's another sampling of the twittering response, which suggests that the angelic one isn't helping the reptile business model …

Oh dear indeed …

Well after all that, just to wrap up, as the pond is now well off into the valleys of the moon and the peaks of delusion, why not a few Donald cartoons?

In which the pond takes a break from the reptiles and joins the fairies ...

The pond is eternally grateful to the street library system which operates around Newtown and elsewhere, though it's occasionally astonished at the treasures that people give away.

What soul in their right mind would willingly give up the Theosophical Society of America's classic 1966 reprint of Edward L. Gardner's classic book about fairies and the Cottingley photographs …?

Now the actual photos can be passed over quickly - the reproductions in the book are poor, but then the photos themselves are astonishingly fake …

The fakers couldn't even get the eyelines right ...

 

Anybody doing those sorts of eyelines would be drummed out of assorted directing and acting guilds …

Of course the intertubes is full of the Cogttingley fairies and photos - they have a wiki here for Greg Hunters and there are all sorts of yarns about how the hoax fooled those wanting to be fooled …some keep on wanting to be fooled, which is why the tale reminds the pond of reading the reptiles, and Donald Trump, and seemed a fitting subject for a Sunday meditation.

The pond first came to the hoax via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man behind the sharp-witted junkie detective, a credentialed doctor, which didn't stop him writing a book, The Coming of The Fairies, and contributing a foreword to Gardner's book …

And this provided an antipodean connection …

And Gardner put a quote from Cardinal Newman at the front which managed to evoke in the pond fond memories of all the Pellist claptrap and complimentary women nonsense from the Sydney Anglicans that it had featured over the years …

Angels, fairies, whatever …

Gardner's book is a short treatise on fairy wonders, with much metaphysical speculation and many eyewitness reports helping explain the nature and meaning of the creatures … and again there's an antipodean angle …

The pond can do only a few excerpts, but see how New Zealand is a potent land of fairies …

The pond picks up the story in the letters received section with one from the Rev. Arnold J. Holmes on the Islae of Man recalling the childlike trust of Manx girls, who to that day "will not forget the bit of wood and coal put ready at the side of the fireplace in …"

At this point, the pond can sense some interjecting and saying, but this is not like reading the reptiles, and the pond will remind them of Lloydie's octopi from outer space, and will continue with the excerpt ...

Well the pond would never dare to ridicule Miss Hall of Bristol, and so felt compelled to complete her report and add the thoughts of a water diviner …

There isn't room for then endless speculation by Gardner about the nature of fairies, but these pages serve as an introduction ...

The pond must leave the technical aspects of fairy wings to another time - suffice to say that their is no articulation, no venation and the wings are not used for flying, and may indeed appear because of human thought - and hasten to the end of Gardner's tract, where there is a cosmic coming together of the human and the deva …

The pond apologises for not properly explaining the deva, but readers should simply be reassured by the coming together …

The lesson the pond drew?

Well there's a reason the pond's evolution hasn't begun, and it is left with the likes of the Donald, Dame Slap and the whole reptile crew…

The fairies at the bottom of the pond's garden took a powder, did a split, vanished in a puff of smoke, and so the world's evolution didn't begin …

… but what a relief it was to leave the reptiles aside, and do an old-fashioned Sunday meditation, with many thanks to the unknown benefactor who enriched the pond's world via the local street library …

May the fairies frolic at the bottom of your garden forever, and may you keep evolving, so that eventually the reptiles are just a distant, fragile dream of lost dinosaurs …

In which the pond presents a Dame Slap rant that should only be viewed by herpetological specialists ...

The pond decided that Dame Slap's rant for the day should really be reserved for late afternoon …

When the Dame gets to ranting and hating, no one's safe, and only fully professional specialist reptile carers should be allowed to come near …

Why if Gandhi himself turned up spouting this sort of nonsense …

 

… Dame Slap would take him out the back, get out the cane, stick in the boot and give him a bloody good thumping …

And that goes double for misguided clowns, pacifists and people who refuse to celebrate the valiant sacrifices involved in war to the death! (Anyone with bone spurs exempted of course).

Now the pond isn't so sure that Gandhi had the recipe for defeating Hitler - lay down in his path and he might just send a tank over you - but the pond is always stricken with admiration at the way that the Dame can summon a hate-filled rant at those she accuses of hate crimes, when she probably really means thought crimes committed against the Dame's way of thinking ...

Step out of line and she'll give you a bloody good whacking, and drag in all sorts of historical metaphors and analogies … just look at the terribly violent photo of the shockingly animalistic anarchist students occupying the Sorbonne that the reptiles dragged out of the archives to illustrate her point ...

Somewhere deep in the pond's mind it recalls that the diggers were supposed to have died so that people might express a diversity of views and opinions.

Not in Dame Slap's world of hate and rage … why she even takes a view on disagreeable clocks ...

On and on she rants, and remarkably, in an exceptionally humourless piece, she muses about a lack of humour ...

Truth to tell, it doesn't pay to set the Dame going, because that's like waving a red flag at a … well, it's probably not right to say 'bull', but is there any other way out of the gender dilemma?

Indeed, indeed.

Critically, conservatism is not an ideological attachment but a pragmatic endeavour to preserve institutions, ideas and values that continue to serve us well …

Ah the glorious Donald, a pragmatic endeavour to preserve institutions, ideas and values that continue to serve well … 

Fill the swamp, fill the swamp …

 

Oh it's working out terribly well ...

What routinely amazes, astonished and delights the pond is that the Dame can generate this sort of crap on such a constant basis … though the barking mad interpretation of ancient Roman history that follows is sure to set off specialist herpetologists ...

Rome as a durable democracy?

Dragon energy? Kanye West? The Donald as conservative preserver?

What the fuck's in the drink? The pond wants some of it, in lieu of this cartoon …

Next thing the Dame will be ranting about pig energy …but Rowe has a lock on it, with more lock and load Rowe here ...

In which the pond continues to celebrate the evil empire ...

It seems as if the reptiles have decided to abandon - at least temporarily - their hard-edged paywall. Likely enough, the drop-of in hits got the marketing team a little agitated.

It's all a part of the paranoid, defensive, circle the wagons mentality that afflicts the reptiles, and to what avail?

The circulation of this blog, for example, is minuscule, the level of attendance risible. It poses no real threat to the reptiles if they were strong within themselves and true believers.

Alas the product they're selling has its flaws, but even so, to be a minor part of the conversation is better than being ignored.

Sure, there's the odd attendee who turns up at the pond motivated by malice and a desire to avoid paying to sup on the reptile conversation, but think of the up-side.

Everyone knows that in Star Wars the best character is Darth Vader, followed by the emperor himself. They wear black, they have the best samurai helmets or alien cloaks, and they know how to mess with the force.

Leaving good old Sir Alec aside (the pond's heart stays with The Ladykillers), there's not a single character to match the baddies. It certainly isn't that jumped up swamp frog with his Latinate abuse of the English sentence …

So for every visitor to the pond wishing evil on the evil empire, it's just as likely that other visitors will become entranced by the dark side, and be drawn into its wicked web …

Yes, that's it. The reptiles should be paying the pond for all the publicity it provides, and its ongoing devotion to herpetological studies …

And so to the lunch-time feast, this time featuring the dog botherer, scribbling about privacy.

Why did this set the pond's irony alert to 11?

So much for the Murdochians and privacy ...

And right now somewhere in the lizard Oz empire there will be an SEO studiously tracking the reptile subscriptions, working out how they can flog stuff to their suckers, and what more they can do with the data they've scored from their subscribers …and if there isn't, that helps explain why the reptiles are struggling ...

So it's on with the comedy …

The pond wonders if the dog botherer will get around to the real intrusions into privacy currently being mounted by the federal government …

The bureaucrats, thanks to the mutton Dutton, right this minute are still beavering away on a database that will cover just about everything and everybody.

There's only one real hope: the government will implement it in its usual incompetent way, and some howlers will draw attention to its more egregious uses:

The purposes for which the Department can use the information it gathers are very broad. They include preventing and detecting identity fraud, law enforcement, national security, protective security (protection of government assets, persons or facilities), community safety (for instance where a person is acting suspiciously in a crowded public place), and road safety. Those categories include criminal intelligence gathering and profiling, policing of public spaces and public events, and policing of activist communities and protests. Many of these policing exercises are highly data-driven, using new predictive techniques to identify criminal suspects and political agitators before any activity has even occurred. (The Conversation, here).

Yes, we don't know what you've done, but we know you're up to something.

Some have already raised tentative concerns, as listed at Itnews here …

The OVIC said it also holds concerns around extending identity-matching services to the private sector and local government because of “the variation in the quality of governance and security that can be expected”. It welcomed the fact that the use of the facial identification service (FIS) was limited to law enforcement and border protection agencies, but said it would be “very concerned” if those functions were to undertaken by the private sector, particularly given the “broad power” handed to the minister. The "breadth of discretion” surrounding the operation of the identity-matching services and the minister’s ability “to do anything necessary or convenient” were also worrying, the OVIC said. “The ability for fundamental controls to be amended without parliamentary oversight may also be problematic,” it states.

The OVIC statement is available in full here as a pdf, direct link, and while it's couched in serious bureaucratese, it does also express serious concerns…

And little wonder, because the federal government is currently embarking on the most massive surveillance program the country has ever seen …

Why was the pond expecting this not to turn up in the text of the mutton Dutton-worshipping dog botherer, when the easy fruit of social media is easier to write up?

With hapless punters being blamed for their careless ways ...

What about our involuntary submission to the federal government?

Oh never mind, though the story of how a genealogy website - at The Atlantic here - helped catch the alleged Golden State killer via DNA matching does provide a warning to anyone making use of such services for genealogical purposes. Not everyone's a criminal, but some people might find unexpected surprises popping up if they start letting their DNA data loose ...

Your data isn't safe, though the pond understands why many find it hard to follow the pond in only using cash at supermarkets (let them work out the pond's shopping tastes from that), refusing to be on Facebook, refusing to tweet, and refusing to become an addict to the small screen and bump into anyone passing in the street, on foot, or of late, while driving (and there's a reason the pond is anonymous, and it's not just fear of reptile persecution).

And so back to the dog botherer, to give him one last chance to mention the biggest developing scandal of them all, featuring the mutton Dutton and his over-reaching department, and their desire to make all sorts of data available to all sorts of people, including the geese in councils …

Yes, they're all eager and Toowoomba led the way back in 2017, and here's the thing: if you've got a vast array of surveillance devices, in the street, or inside buildings, hooked up to facial recognition hooked up to a potent database, the intrusions Facebook has managed might look small beer up against an allegedly liberal Liberal government (and don't expect comrade Bill to change things should he get into power) ...

For the record, m'lud, might the pond be allowed to note that Angus Taylor is a clueless goose, and a part of the problem.

There he was boasting about 'contactless' international travellers in company of the mutton Dutton, back in 2017, with nary a thought as to what might happen to all those pictures sitting the databank, while the real business, of having a visual record of every Australian sitting in a government database for specified and unspecified purposes rolls on …

Oh yes, we're in the big league, and scored a mention in a 2016 Fortune story about the nightmare of facial recognition, here …

So why is this so bad? The problem is that the technology is escaping the control of any gate-keepers, and now more and more people are using it. Online images are turning into a way to spy on us in the real world. If this keeps up, anyone will be able stand outside a gay bar or a mosque or an AIDS clinic, and use their phone to identify people going in and out. We’re not there yet, of course. Right now, the worst abuses are taking place in Russia. But face-tracking is catching on in other countries too. Australia is preparing a tool called “The Capability” that will give police the power to pick out faces from millions of photos, possibly including ones from Facebook. Meanwhile, Malaysia is mulling plans to deploy the technology to screen for trouble makers outside night clubs.

And if you follow that link, to the ABC back in 2015, and remember that the mice have been very busy since then, this is what you read ...

The Capability will give law enforcement and security agencies quick access to up to 100 million facial images from databases around Australia, including drivers' licences, passport photos, and perhaps even Facebook photos. The photos will be coordinated through a system called The Hub that will help agencies quickly identify people and tackle cross-border crime. 
 Privacy activists, such as Australian Privacy Foundation vice-chair David Vaile, are concerned. "Biometrics, unlike any other form of identification, is tied to your biological existence, which has some benefits for its use as an identifier but it has the great downside that if something goes wrong, if it's breached, if it's hacked, it can't be revoked," Mr Vaile said. "It's not like cutting up a credit card or getting a new phone number or something. 
 "Basically if anybody manages to get this, they breach the security, potentially you're compromised for life."

Forget the hackers, the mutton Dutton has got you for life …

There's the dog botherer rabbiting on about Orwellian, and there's the mutton Dutton busy pursuing a 1984 dream …and not a boo to a goose from the dog botherer about it.

Is it any wonder that for a little light relief, the pond turns to the Pope for some papal wisdom, with more available here …

Remember, an infinite capacity for bungling might be the country's only hope ...