Every so often, the pond has a good day on the reptile factory floor. Yesterday was one of them.
First came the pleasure of the venerable Meade, with many tales to delight, as noted by a correspondent, including one about another reptile enterprise biting the dust.
Flash fails to fire
Sometimes not even the might of the News Corp promotional machine can boost a flagging product. Despite blanket advertising, cross-promotion and thousands of free trials, Foxtel’s stand-alone streaming news service, Flash, failed to fire. Launched in October 2021 promising “a first-of-its-kind live and on demand news-only streaming service with more than 20 leading global and local news sources” Flash’s latest figures show only 15,000 subscribers.
This week Flash laid off its editorial staff, dumped its original content and moved to automatic programming, but the $8-a-month service has survived for now...
...But you wouldn’t know about the slow demise of Flash if you read the report in the Australian.
“News Corp Australia’s world-first local and international news streaming service, Flash, is adding a further two heavyweight media brands to its on-air lineup, as part of a push to satisfy customer demand for more live news sources under the one banner,” the media editor James Madden wrote on Wednesday. At the end of the article he reported “there will also be a small reduction in the overall staff headcount at Flash”.
Meanwhile, another correspondent drew the pond's attention to yet another fertile conspiracy theory ...
In praise of the ‘15-minute city’ – the mundane planning theory terrifying conspiracists
Of course this particular conspiracy theory has been around for a goodly time, thanks in no small part to the drug-fried, drug-addled brain of Jordan Peterson, who also made an appearance in Why do traffic reduction schemes attract so many conspiracy theories? back in January ...
There Peterson lead off the parade of loons, and the only downside was that this reminded the pond that Dame Slap was a Peterson lover, and was out and about this day, at her most despicable, and so immediately red-carded by the pond.
Ignoring Dame Slap, not even showing her splash, the pond noted that piece ended thusly ...
David Lawrence, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, which monitors far-right groups and conspiracy theories, says the Oxford scheme has been portrayed as an attempt to install a Hunger Games-style world in which people are confined to “zones” while the elites are free to travel, with electric cars seen as part of the plot.
He said: “As with Covid-19, we should be wary about conspiratorial language filtering from the fringes into mainstream debate and being used to attack scientists, politicians and others.”
And that mention of Covid meant that the pond could completely ignore Dame Slap in her bitch from hell role - a role she knows how to play to the hilt - and instead led to a nice segue. and to the dog botherer doing a splendid Killer Creighton impression ....
The reptiles keep leaning into anti-vax and Covid denialist sentiment, in a way that would do a Jordan Peterson proud.
Covid is still out and about, with the main danger to old folk .... the deaths are still happening, and
the data is still being collected, and one of the problems is that young folk might pass on the disease to the more vulnerable ...
There was quite a surge in deaths in January, and an impact on hospitals and so on, but death doesn't terrify the reptiles.
It's masks, and so we'll see some shots of terrifying masked figures in the dog botherer piece ...
They're also, in generality, anti-vax loons, deeply caught up in conspiracy theories, of a kind cultivated by the weirder parts of News Corp and other far right corporations, not to mention loons of the Jordan Peterson kind ...
Jordan Peterson says "over my dead body" to booster shots.
Not being unkindly, but would that it were so, as the pond returns to the dog botherer for more of the same ...
Oh dear sweet absent lord, a full national royal commission,? The pond felt that yet again it had been flung into a time warp, this time back to April 2022 and
Australia’s Covid response should be examined by royal commission, Senate inquiry recommends.
Then it was the Labor party, and prize loons of the onion munching kind ...
When asked about the former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott’s call for a royal commission in August, Morrison said he would not be “drawn into those things” because “we’re managing the pandemic right now, and this pandemic still has quite a long way to go”.
Sad to say, the virus is never going to go away, it'll just keep on mutating, and simmering, and in need of control, and that's why if you attend a hospital or a medical practice, masks are mandatory, but of course the reptiles are terrified of masks ...
Eek, demonic police persons in masks ... head for the hills, and you're sure to find Killer Creighton and the dog botherer hiding out there to keep you company ...
Of course the dog botherer is too cunning to let out his full anti-mask, anti-vax inner self, but he knows how to do a dog whistle (or to fuck a dog, but that's another story) ...
Ah the old forced people to wear masks routine, and the pond looks forward to next week's dog botherer opus on the appalling shame of forcing doctors and nurses to wear masks in operating theatres.
If only the pond could see the dog botherer coughing and snivelling in a Japanese train, without a mask, and being bashed to death by polite Japanese people pushed too far by that form of uncivilised, impolite barbarity ...
And so, with Dame Slap having disgraced herself by talking of a victim's clothing and victim shaming her, and in full conspiracy mode, what with Linda Reynolds bleating into her ear how she was the target of an orchestrated plot to bring down her and the Morrison government - instant red card for a woman not averse to wearing designer clothes herself - it was time for the pond to be bored silly by nattering "Ned" ... and this time, instead of Covid denalism, it was back to the future with the climate ...
"Ned" does go on a lot - the pond counted six gobbets deep - and the gist of it is that "Ned" is terrified by the notion of a mutton Dutton-greenie alliance ...
Of course he can't reveal his deepest innermost fears in a few words when a full word salad is required, but the pond did think of doing some counter-programming as a distraction from the mayo potato.
You've got to admit it's fun, especially when the Chairman himself fired off a text "Really crazy stuff".
They do crazy so much better in the US, especially when up against a dullard of the nattering "Ned" kind, and yet here we are, and the pond must do its dooty ... with "Ned" terrified that the mutton Dutton has empowered the greenies ...
The pond is occasionally puzzled why the reptiles and "Ned" in particular should care. Everyone who has read the reptiles knows that the weather keeps changing, that tumbling records are just a passing dream, and that climate change will be good for the planet ... so where's the harm in a complete state of paralysis?
And then "Ned" simply went too far, using the onion muncher's name in vain as a curse word, a damning indictment, an indication that the greenies had moved into the extremes of dire loonatic extremity ... for the Bandt had turned onion muncher ...
In its own way, "Ned" does his best, talking about epic betrayals, as if any right thinking climate science-denying reptile should care, and the pond thought it was the right time for another distraction, by shoving a stick into the rat's nest and giving a good poke...
Good old Laura, she's a step up from "Ned", though the pond reckons that Dame Slap would hold her own in a fair fight, being a complete bitch from hell herself, and knowing about shit posting, or at least shit posting leaks from interested parties, remembering that this was the way that
Media Watch saw all the current huff and puff ...
But the reptiles keep pushing, even though they're the subject of the action too - which says something about the action - and the pond keeps getting distracted from "Ned's" fear of greenies rampant ...
It's an odd alliance, "Ned" and Labor, and it's certainly not as odd as that other story that keeps getting in the way ...
What a hoot it is, and even if Dominion is done down by the US courts - the Chairman has deep pockets and much to defend - they've done the world a service ...
Meanwhile, "Ned" was slowly winding down ...
The pond supposes it could have interrupted "Ned" with the 15 minute conspiracy and lashings of Jordan Peterson, but yesterday was such a good day in many ways ...
And so to a last splutter from "Ned" ...
Scathing of the Coalition as well as the greenies? Where will it all end?
That's not for the pond to say, but the pond will beg a last indulgence. The pond has already gone on far too long, but when a climate science denialist calls, the pond always stands to attention, and so for a bonus, here's the Bjorn-again one, again at work in this weekend's lizard Oz ...
What's interesting here is the Bjorn-again one's technique, involving a first class distraction. It goes without saying that action in relation to climate science is a non-starter in this Bjorn-again campaign ...
How do we fix things from here? Barrage the readership of the lizard Oz with distractions, that's how you get to here by starting from there, and then no-one will have to trouble their noggins about climate science ...
And that's how it's done. No need to talk of the climate if you can blather on about everything else ... and now there's going to be months of it, and it seems that the lizard Oz is now the only rag in the world to pay attention to, and publish the Bjorn-again one ...
Oh sorry, that's not strictly true. In another place, the Bjorn-again one will "share with Forbes readers over the next three months", and he will also share with Jakarta Post readers, the ones that can get past the paywall, and he will share with Inquirer readers over the next three months, and he will also share with Business Day readers over the next three months, and that's how you personalise your greeting cards, so that every recipient of the bulk mail-out will think it's special and just for them ...
At this point, some distressed readers might be wondering about the bromancer, prattling Polonius and the angelic one, but all good things in time ... for tomarrah, as they say, is another day ... and for the moment the pond can rest with another in the immortal Rowe's low cycle of Lowes ...
It's always in the detail ...
Dame Slap would hold her own against Laura Ingram? Now you’ve got me fantasising about a full-on cage fight, DP. If anything could save the Chairman’s failing “Flash” streaming service, that may be it. Perhaps the winner could take on Ann Coulter? We don’t appear to have heard much of her lately, but perhaps she now makes even Planet Janet seem relatively normal, and appears to have completely left the known Universe….
ReplyDeletehttps://www.salon.com/2023/02/17/ann-coulter-thinks-nikki-haley-should-go-back-to-her-own-country-where-they-worship-rats/
And there I was, Anonymous, thinking Ann Coulter was fading from the public gaze. Her remarks did seem a little odd to me; as I understand it, Coulter claims to be a creationist, and scorns those who follow observation and science. So - rats are part of the creator's great plan for us here on planet earth, and should held in the same regard as other evidences of the creator's wondrous wisdom. Or did I miss something?
DeleteKenny: "our children will pay" for the increased debt. Me: Funny that it's always the children that will pay. We benefited, so shouldn't we pay? Kenny: No, because we could only pay if the rich were taxed more, and that is against the iron laws of economics.
ReplyDeleteNow Joe, yes Doggy Bov did say: "splashed cash around the community, borrowed from future generations." as he always does, but he also said: "We are paying for this now, and our children will continue to pay through future debt and tax burdens."
DeleteOk, so just the usual reptile confusion combined with the usual reptile nonsense. But what I'd like to know is just how old he thinks "our children" have to get before they have to pay too. Especially granted that there's a brand new lot of "our children" every year and that we all - us, our children, our parents (why do they never have to pay too ?) and our grandparents (ditto parents) are involved. Buy something, and you pay tax: it's called GST which I'm sure he actually can remember - even the young kids pay that tax all through their lives.
The dog botherer must be to young to remember polio and the tuberculosis out breaks that happened in earlier times when the health departments had the power to send people in to isolation and quarantine also why is it still compulsory for doctors to report certain diseases to the health authorities so that remedial treatment can be given or isolated so they do not spread the disease to the population. According to his reckoning it is OK to spread measles, tuberculosis, chicken pox, sexually transmissible diseases. From my time when working in occupations that you wear protective equipment for self protection such as masks and eye protection and disposable clothing gloves so you would have protection against disease transmissible from animals to man and this was a direction by the employer. When I think back to how Australia has achieved the suppression of a lot transmissible disease it has been through controls instituted by governments.
ReplyDelete“The Climate Wars aren’t over” sayeth Ned. Well, not if the Chairman and the Reptile hordes have any say in the matter…..
ReplyDeleteApology, Dorothy, if you were saving this for Sunday, but My Source has told me about some early hagiography for Sharri Markson in the magazine that is stowed with the flagship for this weekend. No inadvertent mixture of metaphor there - from the days of sailing ships, the magazine was the store for explosives of all kinds. There is no likely parallel for the reptile flagship.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, another recent recruit to Limited News was told to talk up Sharri, because she, Sharri, has been tapped to try to fill the gap in Sky News that was scheduled for Chris Smith, before that party unpleasantness. It is, Jenna Clarke assures us, the ‘prime time slot’ with Sky.
Now, normally, My Source would classify herself as slightly less interested in anything to do with Sharri than she is in the tweets of footy or cricket WAGS in the day after a couple of players have tried to punch each others’ lights out, in process of celebrating the most recent victory. She (Source) admits that she looked at the Sharri story to see what, if anything, it might say about her book on Coronavirus, becauseMy Source and I have had a steady interest in that particular piece of (fevered?) imagination
With your permission, Dorothy, I offer -
‘She has also been subject to frequent personal and professional attacks by rival media. When she wrote a book investigating the origins of Covid, “What Really Happened In Wuhan’, published in 2021, which examined the prospect of a leak of the virus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, she was denigrated by rivals at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian. They scorned the premise of the book, claiming the prospect of a lab leak was a conspiracy theory. By the time she had finished the book, which became an international best seller, US President Joe Biden’s probe had declared the lab leak “plausible’. . . . For a subsequent Sky News documentary on the topic Markson secured an interview with Donald Trump. . . . . . It’s been watched 13 million times on YouTube.’
Well, your humble correspondent has notched several of those watches on YouTube, and I suspect my reason accounts for a fair proportion of watchings. It is perhaps the most excruciating ‘interview’ offering on YouTube, quite memorable for Trump’s comment, after a minion had waved a copy of the book in front of his eyes to get his attention, that ‘he looked forward to reading it.’ Still good for a prolonged laugh, when one needs it.
We suppose some credit should go to author of the puff piece, Jenna Clarke, for skirting around the fact that both the experience of the Chinese nation during its own current Covid pandemic, and the ever-mounting information on the lineage of the many strains of Covid that continue to appear, and their genealogy, leaves no real evidence for what Sharri actually said in her book - which was about a lot more than the ‘prospect’ of a ‘leak’ from the Wuhan laboratory.
Of course, this is all footling stuff compared with the delicious revelations coming out of ‘discovery’ in the Dominion Voting Systems case, but we guess the couple hundred viewers who need to fill in their ‘prime time’ on Sky do need to be enthused for the coming triumph, with Sharri.
I was having a conversation with my dearly beloved today, Chad, and I had to remind her that in a population of 8 billion (world wide) there's at least 4 billion at or below the "average IQ". And that the "average IQ" is in fact very thick headed.
DeleteNow we do all remember, do we not, that "IQ" as it is tested nowadays (and even more so in Binet's day) is a combination of small problem solving with acquired knowledge. And two of the things that wingnuts least possess is problem solving ability and acquired knowledge (even purely of the 'lived experience' kind).
Now go back a bit less than 100 years - to 1927 in fact - and the entire human population was 2 billion - so only about 1 billion 'low IQ' humans with limited finances and no real social media to communicate via (yes, they had penpals, but that's a very slow and selective way of communicating).
So now we have 4 billion with plenty of money in total and almost unlimited social media to interact with. Oh, joy, joy and holy happiness, yes ?
She's all yours Chadders, one of the many reasons to dive below the fold and into the comments section for serious herpetology students. Who else would risk mind and sanity to bring news of shallow Sharri? Who else would have actual access to the reptile magazine? Who else would treasure a prize maroon for making WAGs look and sound like rocket scientists? It is available on the full to overflowing intertubes but the pond vomited into the bin at the opening par by the associate editor...
DeleteSharri Markson had just vomited in a bin. She was on deadline for one of the most powerful stories of her career – a front-page exclusive that would lift the veil on the culture of sex and scandal in Parliament House long before Brittany Higgins came forward – while also crippled with food poisoning during the early stage of pregnancy. Yet despite all this, within hours Markson had shaken the foundations of government with a Daily Telegraph scoop, revealing that then deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, a married father of four, was having an affair with his media adviser. Vikki Campion was seven months pregnant with Joyce’s child when the newspaper put her picture on the front page.
And remember that Dore, the one who disappeared? He was there too ...
“She’s an enigma,” says Markson’s former editor and long-time friend, Christopher Dore. “When it comes to pursuing a story she is ruthless, single-minded and obsessive. In life she is one of the most compassionate humans I’ve ever met, big-hearted and loyal. She is mis-labelled, misunderstood and constantly underestimated.” She is, he says, “utterly apolitical, open-minded and fair”.
Markson credits Dore for shepherding her through some of the biggest stories of her career. He reflects: “Working with Sharri can be a white-knuckled ride as she has what too few modern journalists, more obsessed with being popular, possess: no shame. No question is too embarrassing to ask, no story is too difficult to pursue and no public figure is too powerful.”
By golly the kool-aid at News Corp is strong stuff ...
Well it's all a matter of relativity, isn't it. Is the News Corp Kool Aid 'strong stuff' or are the reptile minds very 'weak stuff'? Or maybe even both ?
DeleteI guess the 'vomit' reference counts as 'colour' in the story? (Sorry)
DeleteShame?
DeleteNo shame has Sharri?
It's a cold day in Coober Pedy when I agree with Chris Dore, but he's on the money there. It's a consitutional prequisite to have no shame when filing for the faltering News Ltd EXCLUSIVES isn't it?
When Simon Benson published the robodebt falsehoods from Tudge as an EXCLUSIVE - did he feel shame?
When The Bouffant Shanahan published a false graph claiming to be from Vichealth, and vomited a tale of nonsense for the front page to accompany it, how deep was his shame?
When Simon Benson EXCLUSIVED Stuntmo's irrelevant mutterings on China this week on the front page, where was his shame?
As the Botherer of Dogs might have it, flip it! Which writer, Mr Dore, in the herpetarium DOES have shame?
Noodles Neddy wasn't very entertaining today, but there is this: "King says Australia cannot get to net zero without gas as a transition fuel. She says Australia needs gas in the short, medium and long term."
ReplyDeleteOk, but which gas ? Do we need to frack megatonnes of fossil gas or can we ...?
"Guy Debelle points to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and warns ‘I’m really concerned that we are missing out on a huge opportunity’"
Australia warned it could lose out to ‘huge and aggressive’ green hydrogen support in US and Middle East
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/16/australia-green-hydrogen-support-us-middle-east
So come on Neddy and mates: Bjornagain keeps telling us to do the research and develop the technology, but as soon as we start making any progress, you lot turn up to tell us to forget all that and just depend on old-fashioned, planet-wrecking fossil gas.
Yeah, right.
Apologies if I am being tedious by going down this rabbit hole again, but the whole "gas as a transition fuel" is just another one of the Morriscum slogan's for bogans. If you are talking about the NEM (WA is a different story), gas has been a backup fuel for decades, the thing is we aren't using any more during transition (orange bars).
Deletehttps://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=all&interval=1M
If you want a more extreme example look at SA - remember the hissing and snarling from the herpetarium when both sides of politics accelerated the transition
https://opennem.org.au/energy/nem/?range=all&interval=1M
The Labor government even bought some diesel generators (multi fuel turbines I believe) which have rarely run. The detailed story is much more complex of course, with short term emergencies and so on, but there is a pattern there if you care to look.
It is also obvious that gas has lots of other industrial uses including feed stock for fertilizer, but that's a more complex story than the usual FUD about energy costs and reliability. I suspect green hydrogen/ammonia (looking at you CSIRO) for fertilizer will be the big story - energy seems to be on path to look after itself.
To recap, they just seem to repeat the same thing without any reference to the data over and over again. Even putting aside the reptiles, the press never seem to question the facts.
The second link should be
Deletehttps://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=all&interval=1M
Two fine graphic presentations, thank you Befuddled. Please do not feel you are being tedious - tedious is what interviews on Sky become when it is Canavan or his ilk giving the same old stuff, unreviewed and unrevised, just about every evening.
DeleteShould be even less use of gas as 'microgrids' become more established:
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microgrid
So the Bjornagain informs us that: "In 1990, nearly one child in 10 died before reaching five years old." Wau, that's a huge improvement on John Graunt's mid 1600s figure of "36% of all quickborns died before reaching 7 years old". Now I wonder how many of Bjorn's 1990 kids were in fact stillborn and thus not counted ?
ReplyDeleteBecause the world population was 5.3 billion in 1990, and now, 32 years later, it's 8 billion: in just over a generation (32 years), the human population (of quickborns, anyway) has increased by 2.7 billion.
But hey: "Having 169 targets is the same as having no priorities at all." So is having targets the opposite of having "priorities" or what ? Well Bjornagain thinks so: "We could be the generation that fails all or almost all of our promises, and it is a consequence of not prioritising." Oh yeah, not prioritising ... and if we did prioritise, what's your guess about the things that would come out bottom of the list ?
Here's a clue: "First we need to prioritise which targets [bingo !] matter most. For most people, less hunger and better education matters more than well-meaning pledges of increased recycling and global awareness of lifestyles in harmony with nature (two of the 169 targets)." Yep, following Bjornagain, we'll be the best fed, best educated extinct species ever.
But just a final quickie: "Tuberculosis is entirely treatable and has been so for for more than half a century..." Yep, TB vaccine was offered free to primary school kids back in my day - about 1952 or so, but I didn't need it because I already had 'group immunity'. And I could still see the vaccination mark on the inside of my lower arm 50 years later (it's finally faded away now).
However, Bjornagain tells us: "...each year more than two million children and 300,000 women die around childbirth." Yep, and in each year at present approximately 56 million people [men, women, children] die each year." Boy, it takes a lot of forests and trees to provide that many coffins.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteHere we go, the Borg is pushing his bullshit argument that all we need to fix the world is a team of his so called brilliant economists.
The same economists that model the world by something as useless as the GDP.
Bobby Kennedy got close to just how worthless the GDP was as it ‘measures everything except that which is worthwhile’.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/24/robert-kennedy-gdp
But that is why so many - not only reptiles and wingnuts - favour GDP: if it actually measured things that are worthwhile, they'd have to pay attention to reality.
Delete