In which the pond ferrets through the lizard Oz for morsels of irony ...

 

 

Luckily the condition does pass ... the pond has occasionally discovered it read something in the lizard Oz that amazingly, remarkably, astonishingly, it agreed with ...

But usually the pond finds itself in a condition of bemused irony, and today, in the absence of heavy hitters of the savvy Savva or the bromancer kind, the pond decided to search out the morsels of irony on hand, and first up was the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

 

The rich irony here of course is that the home of Fox and Friends, Fox News, the Murdochian tabloids in the US and here, and the lizard Oz should give a flying fuck about civics ...the only serious question is whether it's irony, or gothic grotesque ... 

To help prove that it was distilled essence of irony, the lizard Oz editorialist saved the best irony for a final gobbet, and inevitably it featured climate science ...

 

 

Yes, beware of talking or thinking or learning about the fate of planet, young folk ... which naturally led the pond into another bit of rich irony, with two stories juxtaposed side by side ...

 

 

 

 

Hmm, how to explain that away, given the cult of dinkum clean pure Oz coal at the lizard Oz?

 

Well, good old Nick gives it his best shot ...

 

 

 

Go on Nick, we know the real problem here, it's all BHP's fault, it's BHP wot done it ...

 

 

Yes, yes, it's all BHP's fault, the pond knew it ... you see vulgar youff, no need to think about the fate of the planet when you have the reptiles to guide you ...

And speaking of that tone setting irony, the lizard Oz editorial on civics, there was another irony to hand, featuring, as might be expected the Donald ...

 

 

 

Fortunately, it's not long and the irony comes quickly in this one...

 

Beware partisan echo chambers? 

Oh that's so astonishingly rich to see in the lizard Oz, and best of all it comes amidst recent reports of doings in reptile world ... with Yahoo pillaging the Daily Beast to produce... Fox News Launches 'Purge' to 'Get Rid of Real Journalists,' Insiders Say...

... Even before this round of layoffs, Berry’s management and editorial style had resulted in the departures of several key employees, such as Jason Ehrich, former executive vice president of audience development and strategic partnerships, and Greg Wilson, the former managing editor of the Fox News website, among others.
As The Daily Beast reported, Berry’s influence over the network’s online properties has raised eyebrows among staffers, largely because he continues to act as a “shadow executive producer” for Hannity—yet another sign of the increasingly blurred lines at Fox between the network’s right-wing opinion commentary and its so-called news division.
The ouster of Stirewalt came months after he publicly defended the Fox decision desk’s early (and accurate) election-night projection of Joe Biden winning Arizona’s votes. The on-air call immediately infuriated President Donald Trump, as such a projection by his then-favorite network inhibited his plans to prematurely declare victory that evening. “Jared, you call the Murdochs! Jason, you call Sammon and Hemmer!” Axios reported Trump shouting that night at his son-in-law Jared Kushner and top adviser Jason Miller.
Immediately following the Arizona call, which has been linked to angry Trump fans abandoning the network for even more fact-free, right-wing outlets like Newsmax, Stirewalt was repeatedly grilled on-air over the projection and asked whether his team would reverse its call. “Not that I see,” Stirewalt said, standing by decision desk director Arnon Mishkin’s analysis.
Shepard Smith: I Don’t Know How Some Fox News Hosts ‘Sleep at Night’
While the network’s pro-Trump opinion hosts openly undermined the decision desk and political team’s Arizona call, parroting the Trump campaign’s complaints, Stirewalt refused to reverse course while also throwing cold water on the president’s bogus claims of widespread voter fraud.

And while we're into the irony of the current state of the cult and partisan echo chambers, why not read at the Daily Beast Hannity's Crony Has Taken Over Fox News Digital - and It's a Disaster, Staffers Say … currently outside the paywall.

And so is that Shep Smith story about sleeping at night...

Ah sweet Murdochian cult ironies, and so to the final short gobbet ...

 

 

The pond appreciates irony isn't to everyone's taste, and so the irony of advice to stand up to Murdochian bullies might not be enjoyed by some ...

Here have a cartoon, and just enjoy the monsters and the wild things ...

 

 

Stupidity is more to some people's taste, and luckily the reptiles also had the Switzer on hand this day ...

 

The good thing is that the swishing Switzer has nothing much to say, and so spends only a short time saying it, but as well as offering nuggets to stupidity hunters, irony searchers will be rewarded as well ...

 

There you go ... "not unlike Barack Obama" ... what a natural comparison and what a charming piece, as revisionism cranks into gear ...

And the pond did enjoy Switzer's despair, which the pond roughly understood to say ... "how the US gets one of the world's largest coal suppliers, Australia, still heavily dependent on domestic foreign fuels, to decarbonise its economy (and hurt its economy) is unclear", because who would harm a hair of dear sweet dinkum coal, and who would talk of the economic possibilities of a green, sustainable economy?

It's simply not the reptile way ... and so for a final bout of gibberish in the new ABC way ...

 

Not to worry. SloMo is still infatuated with the Donald, so everything's hunky dory, and the reptiles' war on China is going exceedingly well ...

Here, have a cartoon about an organisation which strangely isn't much mentioned by the reptiles these days ...

 

 

 And so to wrap up the ironies with a story that ran yesterday, and indicates the deep fear that all isn't going well with the reptiles' favourite campaign ...

It's pretty feeble stuff, especially given the way that this story appeared in the Graudian here ...

The inventor of the world wide web says proposed Australian media laws requiring tech giants Google and Facebook to pay for displaying news content risks setting a precedent that “could make the web unworkable around the world”.
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web in 1989, said the draft legislation “risks breaching a fundamental principle of the web by requiring payment for linking between certain content online”.
In a submission to an Australian Senate inquiry on the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code bill, Berners-Lee said the ability of web users to link to other sites was “fundamental to the web”.
Requiring digital platforms to pay to host that link, a world-first provision of the proposed Australian laws, would “block an important aspect of the value of web content”, the computer scientist said.
Berners-Lee argued the proposal “would undermine the fundamental principle of the ability to link freely on the web and is inconsistent with how the web has been able to operate over the past three decades”.
“If this precedent were followed elsewhere it could make the web unworkable around the world,” he said. “I therefore respectfully urge the committee to remove this mechanism from the code.” 

Yes, there's the rub, and the story ended this way ...

…Google said the proposed code “remains unworkable”, saying that forcing Google to pay for links and snippets that appear in Google Search “would break the way search engines and the internet work for everyone”.
It said results in its search engine should be exempt from the code. Google said it would work out commercial agreements with publishers to appear in its Google News Showcase service – which it was already doing.
It also said the arbitration provisions were skewed toward media companies and should be replaced by a standard commercial arbitration mechanism.
Twitter, which would not be subject to the code, said the proposed regulatory regime lacked transparency and risked entrenching “dominant players at the expense of smaller digital platforms” if news outlets choose to funnel all their content through platforms that paid them for content.

 Meanwhile, the reptiles carried on with their domestic, house-trained loon ...

 

 Of course the survey was just a distraction, a pathetic ploy in a war between big tech and fading, aged old media, hanging on by fingernails behind a paywall ... because that's all you get when you click on a Murdochian link, a bloody big paywall and an invitation to pour cash into Murdochian coffers, so you can indulge in the ironies of a civics lesson, or talk of climate science, or BHP ruining coal, or the importance of not paying attention to the Murdochians and their cult if you want to retain any sanity ... you know ...

Never mind, remove the echo chamber from Google and all will be well ...

Wouldn't it be more honest to say that news publishers of the News Corp kind are broadly supportive of cash in the paw, because the current failing business model keeps flailing around, as partisan echo chambers are wont to do when their hero has left the room, indeed, the building ... and for that, the pond only needs to turn to the immortal Rowe for a final irony, with the pond still able to link to Rowe here ...