Over the weekend, the pond noted this graph in a Channel 4 news report which made its way on to YouTube here ...
Also over the weekend, as if embarrassed and wanting to hide it, the reptiles dropped in a report from Lloydie, saviour of the Amazon ...
Hmm, that seemed a tad alarming, and the reptiles repeated the dose of a planet in flames at the top of the story ...
Had climate science alarmism finally caught the reptiles' attention?
Naturally the lizard Oz readership were standing by, ready to jump on any dissent from delusion ...
They've been trained well, the lizard Oz readership, and the pond was reminded yet again of the ways of cultists ...
It wasn't just the cult of the Donald, that false messiah, brought to life by the Murdochians, reinforced by social media, parroting every Fox news talking point, or the HBO series on Heaven's Gate, or even that older series Wild Wild Country, about the Bhagwan in Ohio ... (more than four minds lost in Ohio, this summer the pond hears the drumming, planet fucked, and we're on our own and the reptiles and their readership are coming) ...
All the same, having delivered a pre-emptive strike by the readership, the pond thought Lloydie, saviour of the Amazon, should be given a hearing ...
Ah, sweet joy, oh bliss, oh poop, here have a serve of pure, dinkum, clean, decent, virginal delight ...
You're welcome ... come on back ya hear, and have a nice day ... and here's the coda ...
This seemed to be of at least mild interest and consequence, no matter what the lizard Oz readership, devoted devourers of the reptile kool aid might think, and so the pond wondered if the reptiles might feature a commentator on the Monday exhibiting some slight hint of anxiety...
Instead ...
Oh fuck it Rachael, the Murdochians have no claim to the moral high ground. Just remember all that Fox News did for the Donald, so it might be recirculated on social media ...
The safety of the public must come first? But your Murdochian devotees are busy trashing the Capitol and fucking the planet ...
Oh never mind, and there was was the war on China, and the war on Iran, and cricket ... and elsewhere, a juxtaposition that seemed sublime and full of irony, even if the pond knew deep in its heart that the reptiles didn't do irony ...
The pond, it goes without saying, is deeply uncomfortable at the notion of recycyling into the ether the fuckwitted thoughts of a fuckwit supposedly expert in the movement of floodwaters in quarries ... so it turned to the only other item on the commentary agenda, the lizard Oz editorialist doing this ...
Oh fucketty fuck, what to say that the pond didn't say yesterday? There was the lizard Oz regurgitating IPA propaganda bullshit yet again, while the oceans warmed and the planet heated ... and what the fuck? Well, what else was it possible to say? How else to respond? What the fuck, they're still grinding out this particular tune like a flock of monkeys deep into the kool aid?
And that's how delusion works. It's cultivated, spewed out, consumed, repeated, cultivated, spewed out, consumed, and so on, in an endless repetitive cycle, and in the end, the reptile readership might well come to believe that salvation will be achieved by reaching a higher level and being swept up into a UFO ...
Now the pond realises that all this has left the pond a little short weight for a Monday which was once filled with the best of the best, and much solid climate science denialism, so the pond reluctantly, and with a great deal of discomfort, reverted to the Caterist ... because after all, if the planet's fucked, why not fuck the mind as well?
Here's a question. Why is it that the lizard Oz is full of white men, and the occasional woman, and every so often Noel Pearson, pontificating away under the sun?
Might not the role of the Caterist be played by an intelligent person, though the pond acknowledges that acting the part of a moron comes hard up against those naturally equipped to play the part in a neo-realist way ...
Around this point the pond lost interest, and the mind began to wander, and the pond wondered if anyone else reverted to Twitter occasionally here to pick up the Rowe cartoon ...
But the pond has defeated the point by serving up the latest Rowe? Never mind, we plow on ...
Indeed, indeed, these are things you can't fix at the lizard Oz. Perhaps an indigenous voice in the Menzies Research Centre could ...
Oh the pond is only joking ... it realises the complete absurdity of that hope ... here, have a cartoon celebrating all the good the Murdochians have helped into the world ...
Yes, fly my pretties, fly, fly to Fox News, to Fox and Friends, or to other parts of the Murdochian empire ... because stay, what dread beast is that, slouching onto the horizon?
Begone OAN, begone the pond says, the fringe voices must stay at the heart of the Murdochian empire.
And speaking of fringe delusional voices, there's just a gobbet of the Caterist to go, still pretending he's going to sort out the indigenous voice in much the same way that he sorted out the movement of floodwaters in a quarry ...
Remember that ironic juxtaposition that the reptiles began the day with, the teases ...
Say no more ... but do admit that the Caterist has played his role splendidly in stoking the hate mail with his rant about activist fringe dwellers ...
Here, just to wrap things up, have a cartoon ... and remember, no more comparisons between the reptiles down under and their North American kissing cousins ...
The reptiles down under are just as skilled at ignoring the planet ...
Strewth, DP, Lloydie (and some comments), one or other of the "Editorialists" and Nicky C; not a really exciting or enthusiastic lot, is it. And that was probably about as good as the choices got.
ReplyDeleteBut just contemplate this from Lloydie: "NOAA said since warming is related to cumulative emissions, the overall amount of avoided warming [ie due to COVID shutdowns] will be minimised." Well, hucoodanode - nobody has ever told us that terrifying fact ever before, have they.
Then we have the "Editorialist" who pronounces that: "Gender and race are legitimate themes for study, analysis and debate in universities' humanities courses." and then goes on to show that they are not, unless you are either Campion College or are blessed by the Ramsay Centre. Needless to say, that includes almost nobody.
Lastly, Nicky C who wants to apprise us of the single most crucial question of the 21stC: "Can this role be played by a woman, someone who is trans or gender non-conforming, someone with a disability, a person of colour, an older person, etc."
Yep, a vital question, and one that is clearly a derivation from that ages old question - especially relevant in Shakespeare's time and for a century or two afterwards: "Can this role of a woman, trans/gender non-conformist, disabled, coloured or old be played by a youngish man ?" Because all of those parts - Portia, Othello, Richard III, Lear etc, had to be so played (except for all the transvestites, of course).
So of course that, along with sundry other matters, would be intensively studied at Campion or in a Ramsay course, wouldn't they.
If I have understood what the Cater has used to fill his column for this day - there is a business, in Carlton, offering to show movies. It is part of the market for public entertainment - persons look at the price, look at the movie on offer, and make a choice. The market in action.
ReplyDeleteOne punter in particular did not like - not the show itself, but some paid advertising, which was not part of the program as advertised. There is no evidence that the punter was so upset that (I will guess to gender) she set off a personal alarm at 130 decibels, nor that she exercised her untrammelled right to freedom of speech by yelling ‘fire’, or did anything else to detract from the experience of any of the other punters at that session.
Subsequently, neither did she make the theatre an offer of the form ‘drop the contrived ‘patriotic’ commercials forthwith, or a Molotov cocktail comes through the front door.’
No - she said she thought it ‘inappropriate’ - phew, talk about trial by combat - to have to pay to sit through that - and hoped that the theatre would reconsider using that material.
And the theatre - being a business - having received comment from a punter who otherwise identified as loving the venue, and the films that she understood she had paid to see - reconsidered.
And this is shaking our version of civilization to the very mortar of its foundations?
Should we file this away for the next time the Cater, and the DWAGs, and the IPAs and the rest of the whole chorus of loony tunes tell us that mother market is sacred, and will be all things to us, and, conversely, anything not of the market cannot be justified?
It does carry a tincture of the spurious claims of many of the DWAGS who claim to enjoy the commercials on those television channels, because that reassures them that they are participating in the sacred market. Of course, in that - they lie, but - that’s what it takes, these days.
Do you think Cater is engaging in "play-fights over symbolic issues"? After all, who gives a toss about the branding of cheese or wants to sit through some more publicly funded propaganda?
DeleteBefuddled - I think he intended to do the usual reptilian effort, as with discussions on the climate - nurture the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt) but include the odd statement that there could be some virtue in moves to a 'voice'. He gives himself away, I suspect quite inadvertently, when he writes 'A yes vote will only succeed if Australians can be convinced that this is a permanent step towards a better future, not just a stick of shame with which to beat THE REST OF US over the head.' My emphasis, of course.
DeleteI thought it also came to this from Cater: "It would be a waste of time to ask at which meeting the Gunaj/Gunditjmara people elected @MerikoKO as their spokesperson ..." . So, at which meeting was Cater elected as the spokesperson for THE REST OF US ?
DeleteIt was certainly no meeting I ever attended.
Thank the long absent lord or at least Chadders and GB and BF for doing what the pond can no longer be bothered doing when the Caterist is in full flight. Somebody regularly needs to beat him over the head ...
DeleteFlies still have to be swatted DP, lest their buzzing becomes just too annoying.
DeleteI've been reading Stanley Fish on 'free speech'. He wrote a book about free speech, the blurb at Amazon is amusing https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Such-Thing-Free-Speech/dp/0195093836/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=There%27s+No+Such+Thing+As+Free+Speech%2C+and+it%27s+a+Good+Thing%2C+Too&qid=1610945532&s=books&sr=1-2
ReplyDeleteWell it is good to have somebody state the bleedin' bloody obvious from time to time, Joe, but absolutely nothing of any value could ever come from debating that total clodhopper Dinesh D'Souza.
DeleteAfter all, just because true justice and decency for all may be impossible to achieve doesn't license us not to try.
I wish I could make a white chocolate bar with nuts in it (in the shape of a single wing) and call it "RWNJ" and see how long it takes Concertina Ferrari-Wells to complain.
ReplyDeleteThanks DP for wrestling such first-rate satire from the second- and third-string reptiles on deck this month.
ReplyDeleteWould love to hear your thoughts on the below article...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/were-on-the-verge-of-breakdown-a-data-scientists-take-on-trump-and-biden
If the Caterist is not a prime example of "elite overproduction" I give up.
A good link, and you might also enjoy ...
Deletehttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-cyber/qanon-received-earlier-boost-from-russian-accounts-on-twitter-archives-show-idUSKBN27I18I
And all down to Tracy 'Son-of-Diego'. It's a wonder living in the USA, isn't it: you can always get Russian money for any contrarian, and preferably treasonous, undertaking.
DeleteI'd never heard of, or encountered, MegaAnon though - did it just fade away when QAnon took off ?
Anonymous - on a quick look, it seems to me that Peter Turchin has come to similar conclusions to what Fred Hirsch set out in his 'Social Limits to Growth', over 40 years ago. This takes nothing from Turchin's methods; I find it interesting that there is remarkably little discussion these days of Hirsch's 'positional goods'.
ReplyDeleteYair, haven't seen any discussion of 'positional goods' - like a night at the opera - for quite a while now. Too much to learn, too little time (as Peter Sellers once proclaimed).
DeleteThough there was an episode of Big Bang Theory I very vaguely recall in which Sheldon gave a rundown on 'positional goods'. Alzheimered memory means I don't recall much about it and DuckDuckGo refuses to find it for me.
Should get on board with Big Tech GB
Deletehttps://the-big-bang-theory.com/quotes/quote/545/
Sheldon: There's an economic concept known as a positional good in which an object is only valued by the possessor because it's not possessed by others. The term was coined in 1976 by economist Fred Hirsch to replace the more colloquial, but less precise "neener-neener".
A gem - thank you DP and GB. Good to know that there are still writers for American TV series who can be amusingly erudite.
DeleteAh merci, DP. Yep, that's the one. If I'd remembered "neener-neener" I might have gotten it. Still trying to remember who brought it up; it may have been John Quiggin or maybe Nicholas Gruen or even Kevin Drum.
DeleteYep, now DDG found it for me: Episode 315 The Large Hadron Collision back in 2010 (season 3).