Saturday, March 11, 2023

In which the pond is trolled by the dog botherer, indulges cultists with a groaning, and returns once again to climbing the Everest of "Ned", with a little visual relief and the hope of a happy ending ...

 

You are about to enter the asylum, or so they say ...

Or maybe you entered the asylum long ago, and was amazed to discover it was run by reptiles. 

Anything is possible in the bizarro land known fondly as the lizard Oz, or more quaintly, as that dung heap of Murdochian crap ...

And to continue mixing the metaphors, the dung beetles have been very busy this weekend, and it will take a Herculean effort to shovel out just a little for inspection by the pond's correspondents ...

First the pond must rule out areas deemed out of bounds, or GUR, as the pond once was told meant something to people who believed a shark could be a role model. 

The pond won't be mentioning  Robodebt: five years of lies, mistakes and failures that caused a $1.8bn scandal. The reptiles have deemed it unmentionable and disappeared it into the cornfield. 

And the pond will assume that everyone has done their preliminary reading for the course, always on a Friday, and this week starting with Antisocial media: ABC goes on warpath over coverage of Lisa Millar’s misogynist trolls, but including other tasty items.

Nor will the pond be mentioning Lachy, lying in his usual way, because lying is just the standard Murdochian business model, and so this noise, "A news organization has an obligation, and it is an obligation to report news fulsomely, wholesomely and without fear or favor,” Murdoch said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in San Francisco. “And that's what Fox News has always done, and that's what Fox News will always do, was just a really lame attempt at a comedy styling.  

While the pond was severely tempted, it won't be heading off to Vanity Fair to read Fox-Dominion case may star Lachlan Murdoch's defamation suit down under ... such a stupid boy, too stupid to waste much time on. Is there something in being handed-down filthy rich that encourages rampant stupidity?

Nor will the pond dwell at length on Uncle Elon's stupendous self-own ... a couple of twits using twitter to tweet about the chief twit will cover that cacophony ...





Before the pond gets really going on the day's chores, it will however start with a quiz. 

What reptile thought it was good to offer this as an inducement to entice an aged readership to indulge in a bout of dog bothering? Here's some truths you can send to your green left media-consuming friends to help free them from their woke cloistered world ...

The use of "woke" is a dead giveaway, and shows we're dealing with a prize parochial loon from Adelaide, yet to catch up with the news:

A GOP war on 'woke'? Most Americans view the term as a positive: USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds by 56%-39%, Americans say 'woke' means being aware of social injustice, not being overly politically correct...(here)

It's such a fuckwitted attempt at trolling, this talk of "woke", that only a boy from Adelaide, always trying to be a smart arse, but not too smart and so usually an arse, would attempt that sort of feeble importation, especially as it gets you into book banning turf, down there with Adolf and Ron DeSanctimonious's mob ...

It reminds the pond of the attempt long ago to import "librul" as a term of abuse, which foundered on the way that Ming the Merciless had set up the Liberal party, and regularly blathered about the virtues of liberalism. 

If you head back to 2009, you can read this in the Graudian ...

Oscar Wilde's notion that Britain and the US are divided by a common language is especially true of the use of the term "liberal". Stateside, Goldberg's title is provocative oxymoron; here it's flat-out contradiction. There, "liberal" is regularly used by conservatives to abuse anyone left of Paul Wolfowitz. In Britain, it has no such force: here, liberalism is underscored by Mill's principle of liberty, whereby the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. There are problems with the principle, but it can offer a bulwark against just those forms of totalitarianism Goldberg indicts and which he suggests were foundational for modern American liberalism.
Mussolini and Hitler didn't dig Mill. And yet, for Goldberg's thesis to make sense in Britain, they would have to. His book, as published here, is a triumph of the terminological will whereby words mean just what the author means them to. It was actually a Briton, HG Wells, who coined the term "liberal fascism". In 1932, Wells told Young Liberals in Oxford that piecemeal Fabian socialism and parliamentary democracy had failed to deliver, so should be scrapped. "I am asking for liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis," he said. What can we say about this other than that it was a then-deluded, now-forgotten speech, and that Wells would have done better to read more Mill? And yet Goldberg takes it as a key text for his own now-deluded, soon-to-be-forgotten thesis...

Well yes, and so on and so forth and etc, and being a devoted follower of Humpty Dumpty, the pond makes words mean what they should mean, and so when the pond reads "woke" it immediately understands the meaning is "I am a fuckwit", or possibly "I am a prize parochial dog bothering maroon from Adelaide" ...

And with all that exegesis out of the way, it's time to get on with the feeble, half-baked, half-arsed attempt at trolling ...






Oh for fuck's sake, just fuck the pond dead, but please do it quietly and gently. 

The pond knows no one else cares but once upon a time the reptiles had a graphics department, and now they go shopping of the shelf to get a shitty iStock image from Getty, and this is meant to mock the "woke", as opposed to the graphics department's pathetic budget?








And that's supposed to give the pond a grip on reality?

But that was just the beginning of the trolling ...






Oh not a bloody listicle ... the pond was reminded of that dictionary definition that included as an example "a Buzzfeed UK listicle entitled 'The 22 Types of Hipster You Encounter in London'"

If only they'd been able to use as an example  of the way to use the word as "a parochial maroon from Adelaide's pathetic listicle in the lizard Oz"...

Inevitably the first item in the listicle featured climate science denialism, and a positive joy, a singular relish of the fucking of the planet, even as record-breaking Tropical Cyclone Freddy lined up to slam Mozambique again ...

You see, if you don't accept or care about the science, you can dance on the planet's grave in delight, and you can nuke the fridge of costs yet again ...







The pond has heard this tune from the parochial Johnny one note bore from Adelaide so many times, the next troll in the listicle was almost a relief ...






Truth to really tell? Nobody knows, and given that dictator for life Xi runs a tight ship, it's likely no one will ever know, and all the rest is speculative bullshit, tainted as much by conspiracy theories as genuine science ...

On with the next troll ...






Eek, comrade Dan in a mask. Thank the long absent lord, Killer's not around, or likely he'd have a fainting fit on the spot ...

Meanwhile, the pond couldn't help doing a sneak preview taken from the Angelic one, who will make an appearance tomorrow ...

...the second reason that a blunt politics versus health scenario is not valid in the case of Melbourne is simply the biggest public opinion poll of all is an election. Andrews was returned at the election with a comfortable majority.
Whether you thought the response of the Andrews government massaged public opinion during the pandemic, it is unlikely that opinion went against the way the government handled the pandemic to supporting it. If the public had really opposed Andrews’ handling, the government would have been thrown out. 

Out of the mouth of the Angelic one, and how it sticks in the reptile craw. All the hard yards done to bring down comrade Dan and there he still is, and still the dog botherer impotently rages on, perhaps because it's a way of generating some sexual excitement in a dull life ...

On to the next troll ...







Already past jaded, the pond ran a couple of items together, but didn't want to forget that opening line "our natural disasters are not unprecedented."

Yes, this as unprecedented Cyclone Freddy just set a new unprecedented record ... and as sinister types began to mutter about climate change ...

Around the world, climate change is making hurricanes wetter, windier and more intense, scientists say. Oceans absorb much of the heat from greenhouse gas emissions, and when warm seawater evaporates its heat energy is transferred to the atmosphere, fuelling stronger storms.
Freddy has set a record for the highest accumulated cyclone energy, a measure of the storm's strength over time, of any southern hemisphere storm in history, according to the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.
The storm has generated about as much accumulated cyclone energy on its own as an average North Atlantic hurricane season, said Nullis.
"World record or not, Freddy will remain in any case an exceptional phenomenon for the history of the South-West Indian Ocean on many aspects: longevity, distance covered, remarkable maximum intensity, accumulated cyclone energy amount, (and) impact on inhabited lands," said Sebastien Langlade, a cyclone forecaster at the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre in La Reunion, in a statement from the WMO. (Reuters)

The pond won't hang around anxiously waiting for the dog botherer to produce a precedent for Freddy, or wonder why we're on a long path of recovering from a millennium drought, it will move on to the final troll ... which inevitably featured a stock shot of ghastly, Satanic, direly threatening, neigh terrifying, windmills ...


 


Food for thought? That's what the reptiles call a serve of mindless pap of the Frosties or Cocopops kind from a provincial maroon?

And now as a special treat for cultists before serious folk get down to doing the really hard yards with nattering "Ned", a serve of the Groaner, groaning away on a Saturday, perhaps serving as a substitute for the mourned, lost Gracie, off entertaining the troops elsewhere ...





The pond doesn't mean to harp, but speaking of press releases, did the reptiles have to fit up Dame Groan with a stock photo as a way of conveying her stock ideas?






As for the rest, Dame Groan would say that, wouldn't she? She's alright, she's been down with Santos, and been the token figure on sundry boards, and now as a token columnist in the Catholic Boys' Daily, gets to blather away in the lizard Oz about how she's alright Jill ...




Another iStock photo, and will someone tell the graphics department Getty trades in that brand as iStock, and not Istock? 

Sorry, sorry, prattling Polonius is on the morrow, and so the pond must keep its pedantry in check, but does hope that the cultists appreciate the sacrifice the pond is making by running with this groaning. If only she'd do a FIFO, and if not to the Pilbara, then at least the black stump ...





Okay, done and dusted, and the pond will leave the eating of the cupcake for others - the pond realises it's all the fault of women, except of course exceptional women of the groaning kind - and must move on to the Everest known as "Ned", and this is where the yards get really tough, and yet the pond must do it ... just as the frog hitched a ride with the scorpion, and drowned in a pond of verbiage ...







Yes, it's another cheap-arsed illustration from the once proud graphics department, this time apparently purloined from the US Navy ... perhaps as a way of signalling that these days putting together a rag and extracting money from punters is a step heavy with pitfalls ...

And then came two extremely large snaps of obvious figures ... so the pond shrank them down to a more useful size, what with them being bleeding obvious, and clearly a way of trying to break up "Ned" and make his blather more visually lively or at least palatable, in the manner of putting sugar atop a bowl of parritch ...








The pond had reached breaking point, and hit on an idea. The pond had been assembling cartoons to run with its Sunday meditation, but it didn't have the slighest interest in what Chicken Little "Ned" had to say, because it would be the usual blather about vast implications and heavy pitfalls and so on and so forth, always the grandiose so that "Ned' could sound very poo-bah and self-important, and at the very peak of affairs of state, so why not throw in some cartoons to help liven up the old chook's offerings?








Yes, that could work. "Ned" would hate being reminded of his kissing cousins Stateside, and the pond could find a way to get through a standard serve of hysterical "Ned" tosh ...







Oh yes, vast chasms, remaining doubts, near Herculean agenda, and so on and so hysterically forth, and ...








At this point the pond should acknowledge that the graphics department were thinking the same way ... that "Ned" was nigh unendurable and there needed to be some visual relief, so they flung in a threatening spectre, and naturally the pond downsized it ...








Instead of a threatening spectre, why not a cartoon?








And so with "Ned's" American kissing cousins in mind, the pond returned to "Ned's" adjectival career at News Corp ...







Ah, thar he blows, it's never long before "Ned" must turn to the leets and the experts so he can fill his stodge with imported guff ... is it a trend?








What a good week it's been ... at least until "Ned's" Everest came along ...








Yes, yes, many imponderables, and a few spectres, and rich ironies, and anger too, and serious constraints, and complications and provoked angst, and strong critics, and is it time for a cartoon?









That reminds the pond that stayers might be interested in heading off the track for a canter with How Murdoch Runs Fox News, in His Own (Often Terse) Words (NY Times but outside the paywall here).

In late 2020, Rupert Murdoch was holed up in the English countryside with his now ex-wife, far from Fox News headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. The pandemic seclusion left him “bored,” he recently said in a deposition, with little to do “but write stupid emails.”
Those “stupid emails” now make up an extraordinary paper trail that has exposed the inner workings of Murdoch’s Fox media empire, revealing how he shapes coverage at his newspapers and cable networks and interacts with some of the most powerful figures in the Republican Party.
People who have worked with Murdoch said he never did much of his most important business over email. He preferred whenever possible to convey his wishes in person. But the pandemic changed that, leaving a trove of emails that lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have used to build their $1.6 billion defamation case against Fox News....

It's great fun, and probably more amusing than the two short gobbets of blather to go ...






Ah yes, looks dubious, hole in budget, political pendulum swing like a pendulum do, "Ned" on bicycle two by two, and as the pond draws to a close, it's time for local cartoonists to help relieve the tedium. 

Perhaps an infallible Pope?







Yes, that'll do the trick, and so the next short gobbet is just a doddle ...




Indeedy do, dynamic responses, bold policies, buzzwords, buzz, buzz, growth, bigger, most bigly, not enough people on the planet, must fuck the planet, integral step in defence, heart of force projection, a few subs and we'll show Xi and a billion plus Chinese what's what, and you can be sure of one thing, if we can only project "Ned's" drone across the land, there'll be peace in the world, except perhaps for the sound of snoring, or people startled awake by an immortal Rowe ...






It's always in the detail, though it's a pretty big detail, and it takes the pond back to the grand days of The Bulletin way back when ... a perfect fit for "Ned" and the reptiles, a band playing near you ...







16 comments:

  1. Just on the way through Doggy Bov's "listicle" there is this:
    "But the IEA says 'Electricity produced from nuclear long-term operation by lifetime extension is highly competitive..." Now what does Doggy Bov think "by lifetime extension" means ? Does he perhaps think it means 'by building lots of new long-term operation nuclear power plants' ? Or has it dawned yet that it means 'by extending the lifetime of existing nuclears where the very large cost of construction has already been paid but which can only continue to provide the limited service that it does now' ?

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    1. I’m kinda worried that old mate here may run out of things to be wrong about pretty soon. Since it’s a really safe bet that dogger will be wrong on every point I don’t usually bother to check his offerings but since you have pointed out his apples and oranges error, what the hell, here’s the report

      https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-in-a-clean-energy-system

      It states, in part, “difficult market conditions are a barrier to lifetime extension investments. An extended period of low wholesale electricity prices in most advanced economies has sharply reduced or eliminated margins for many technologies, putting nuclear at risk of shutting down early if additional investments are needed”. Basically, new-build wind and solar are already competitive with refurbished nuclear.

      Probably worth noting that recent European power shortages were largely the result of planned and unplanned French nuclear shutdowns as well hydro running out of water. It seems a nuclear maintenance shutdown requires months, not days, and also, there’s something to do with climate affecting dam storage.

      The odd thing is, a serious discussion about extending the life of existing nuclear needs to take place but the main impediment to that happening is folk like DB who just use it as another stray object to be picked up and thrown in their war against progress.

      As a bonus

      https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-enjoys-80-1-pct-wind-and-solar-share-in-blackout-free-summer/

      Delete
    2. Thanks, Bef, especially for the URLs. The matter yet to be successfully resolved though is long-lasting storage, supersized batteries being just a tad expensive and a bit short-lived.

      But hey, we're doing (well, we and the rest of the world) just what Bjornagain told us to do: research and create technology. So:
      Harvard researchers design long-lasting, stable, solid-state lithium battery to fix 40-year problem
      https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/05/researchers-design-long-lasting-solid-state-lithium-battery/
      Cheaper, cleaner, faster - new technology for better lithium batteries
      https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/cheaper,-cleaner,-faster-new-technology-for-better-lithium-batteries2

      Delete
  2. On the origin of the virus, who ya gunna believe, Kenny or Nature (reprinted in SciAm)?
    "Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who has studied genetic evidence from the early days of the pandemic, told Nature that he found the proceedings “shockingly unscientific” and that they do not bode well for the overall investigation. “Not one of those witnesses had any scientific record of investigating and publishing peer-reviewed research on the origins of this virus in quality journals,” he said."
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/highly-politicized-congressional-hearings-air-covid-lab-leak-hypothesis/

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    1. "The picture ... is 'based almost solely on propaganda, cited as if it were fact'."

      Delete
  3. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Boverer do that same listicle just a month or three ago ? Is he repeating himself ? Completely run out of ideas and lies that he can claim as 'facts' ? And getting paid for it ?

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  4. Downer,  Sunak, refugees "illegal" and Grotius' Groan. And Scomo "awarded the inaugural Grotius Prize – named after the founding father of international law – to the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison," by Dean Godson, Baron Godson - nomen est omen! Scary!

    Downer at the 'we sucked Australia's worst' to UK thinktank - funded by a vampire squid too deep to see:

    "Policy Exchange since 2013, has skilfully led Policy Exchange through three different Conservative administrations in a way that other think tanks can only marvel at." Wikipedia.

    Policy Exchange's Chairman of Trustees, former High Commissioner of Australia to the United Kingdom - Alexander Stockings Downer, (along with Tony Abbott) has been debasing the asylum “debate" for years still with the "never come here's" refugees rotting, ala guantanamo. The Downer dynasty for close to a century - our dangerous Bunyip Aristocracy

    Policy Exchange echos back to the 1600's, as the  Policy Exchange's director awarded our - Australian - disgraced ex pentecostal multi secret protfolio grabbing ex Prime Minister Scott Morrison ... "Godson [nomen est omen] awarded the inaugural Grotius Prize – named after the founding father of international law – to the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, "in recognition of his work in support of the international rules based order"[38],". See Wikipedia Dean Godson, Baron Godson
    !!! Spit bevvy...
    "with dozens of its alumni now sitting on the Conservative benches in Parliament."[6]".

    "Transparify's report How Transparent are Think Tanks about Who Funds Them 2016? rated [Policy Exchange] as 'highly opaque,' one of 'a handful of think tanks that refuse to reveal even the identities of their donors.'[31]

    "Giorgio Agamben, of an 'economic theology' in regard to Grotius, a term that is, in turn, derived from Carl Schmitt's notion of 'political theology'." (Brill.)

    Driving policy, economic theology & political theology plus xenophobia.

    Baron Godson: "Dean Godson, who has been the Director of Policy Exchange since 2013, has skilfully led Policy Exchange through three different Conservative administrations in a way that other think tanks can only marvel at. The softly-spoken Godson is often thought of as an ideological right winger, yet his pragmatism has enabled Policy Exchange to reach new heights of influence, with dozens of its alumni now sitting on the Conservative benches in Parliament."[6]"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Godson,_Baron_Godson

    Grotius's "Mare Liberum and Vitoria's De Indis, Following Agamben and SchmittIn: Grotiana"
    ..."to Grotius's Freedom of the Seas, which Vitoria had developed in his De indis, is connected to the legal justification of Christian mission and so has a clear theological connotation. In Grotius's work, Vitoria's concept of a universal right to Christian mission supervised by the pope was transformed into a theologically supported right to free trade. With this transformation of the ius communicationis into the principle of the Mare liberum, Grotius develops a theological basis not for politics but for economics.
    https://brill.com/view/journals/grot/30/1/article-p65_6.xml

    Dame Groan goes way back to Grotius. We soon will be in 1600's with total surveillance capitalism and the abNewsCorpse Zombie.

    Tyler Cowan promotes a toilet - whch will soon join Policy Exchange as buddies. Swapping secrets at the sacristy.

    "Tyler Cowen March 10, 2023 at 11:33 am
    3. New on-line journal FUSION is soliciting submissions, mix of liberty and tradition ideas.  And Civic Future fellowship (UK, improving the public sector and its workers). LMAO!
    Fusion Magazine: In the Tradition of Liberty
    Editor: Samuel Goldman. - associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is ... Twitter.

    Ban the lot- especially "Christian nationalism is real. The way you talk about it might make things ...
    Careless use of the term risks discrediting a powerful alternative to a genuine problem."
    by Samuel Goldman

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  5. Well, Dog Bovverer - or DogBot3.1 - just delivers another ‘restate, rinse, repeat’, so we can leave that, just as we leave that machine in the laundry that performs the same service.

    Dame Groan has delivered a little cult-ivation this day. She has dropped a couple of names, although without references to published work, but, well, that does allow her to tell us that the person cited is ‘the standout researcher in the field’ - and pump up her interpretation with authority.

    Actually, Claudia Goldin - who does have a substantial reputation - is a little more nuanced than our Dame would have you believe. Goldin looked forward to what she termed ‘a last chapter in gender convergence’. She saw the final reductions in pay gap being considerably reduced if the work culture in some firms did not disproportionately reward individuals who labor long, and particular, hours. She notes that this is still the case (in the USA) in finance and legal firms, while technology, science and health have moved, broadly, to much more benign work culture - that are every bit as productive, if not more so.

    As it happens, this is of a piece with major work by Deborah Cobb-Clark - whom our Dame also cites, but without much insight - that reviews the interplay of hormones and gender in the work place, and how that mitigates against women advancing in many work cultures, because they tend not to be super-competitive with others in the firm, nor spectacular risk takers.

    Actually, if our Dame wished to commend Deborah Cobb-Clark to her readers, she might also have directed them to the 80-some pages by Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, which Cobb-Clark mentioned as being ‘forthcoming’ in her review of the nature of ‘gender’ in the work place, and is now available. Because of its chosen data base, the Blau/Kahn work focuses on the USA. It notes that the steadily narrowing gender gap there can be explained mainly by better education for women, but that there is an almost intractable gap near the top - not amenable to education or other qualification, but, again, to the kind of work culture that Goldin observes.

    The message surely should be, not that ‘there are jobs that just don’t suit women’, but that we all would benefit from change in the culture of work in self-defined ‘macho’ jobs.

    Oh - I cannot work out what her ramble into superannuation was about, except that there must be a few short straws still circulating in the reptile communications system saying ‘keep up sniping at super - we might crack something there, sometime.’

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    1. Ah Chad, Groany is just doing the usual reptile thing: invent a world that they can vigorously criticise and then vigorously criticise it. Exactly the same as the Doggy Bov today. When you don't have to show any grasp of reality, the life of a reptile is easy.

      However, I did think a little about "the steadily narrowing gender gap there can be explained mainly by better education for women" and I thought that just maybe a little bit better education for men probably helped too. I recall my secondary education starting back in 1955 in the initial year of a very modern 'High School' (now aka Secondary College) and I remember two features of the school: one was a fully furnished 'practice flat' where the young ladies could learn and practice all the 'domestic arts' - except for married sex of course, that was a find out for yourself but don't get pregnant doing it thing - and the other was the 'Sloyd unit' - woodwork and metalwork - for the boys.

      Do you reckon any 'Secondary college' would dare do that now ? Though when I visited the place a couple of years ago, the 'practice flat' had long been absorbed into the general educational process, but the Sloyd unit still stood - rather dilapidated and unfunctional now, but still standing.

      Interestingly, going back to 1960, of the 38 'matriculation' (year 12) students, 17 were girls, and several went on to be successful practicing lawyers and doctors and such. I think it may have been the situation at the end of WWII: the ladies who had significantly contributed to the war effort (eg the Land Army) were basically sent back to domestic bliss while the men took over the jobs they'd surrendered to take up arms (as you might recall, Australia, with then a population of about 7 million, had nearly a million - mostly men - in uniform on VP Day).

      It was said that most of the women responded along the lines of "Yes, ok, but I am the last: my daughters will have the same opportunities as my sons". And I reckon that by 1960, they were well on the way.

      Delete
    2. Mmm - good points GB, and thank you for them. Similar in Queensland public schools in the 50s (and, for all we knew, private schools too. My home town had separate, secondary, colleges for Presbyterians, CofE and, of course, Catholics). Visiting my old high school ten years back, I noticed that the 'honour board' still shows a male student with the best pass for the school in what was called 'Junior' for around 1957. The best pass for that year - and she scored about third in the state - was actually a female, but in 'commercial' subjects, which weren't, well, y'now - truly ruly subjects. They relied a lot on memory, and manual skill (shorthand, typing, bookkeeping). So the much less impressive male who had been in the 'science' stream, was deemed the more honourable pass.

      By the late 70s, my own offspring at school in Adelaide, had classes in sewing, cooking and other 'domestic' skills, as well as making usable items of furniture.

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    3. The shifting of awards from female to male indeed did happen: my own partner herself had a similar experience in the late 1950s (before I knew her). Don't think it happens quite so very much now.

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  6. In case you might use it if Gramsci (or Dutschke) pops up in future this might be of use DP

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/long-march-the-right-wing-christian-plan-to-infiltrate-politics-20230306-p5cpod.html

    It’s slightly different to the Donner’s version because it has really been happening unlike the straw man version he prefers. It’s really odd the real conspiracies sometimes happen as a response to imaginary ones.

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    1. It’s really odd “that” real conspiracies etc (small screen, fat fingers, bad eyesight)

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    2. Ta, BF, though the pond keeps on confusing the notion with the pond's long march through the reptiles like a dose of cathartic salts ...

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  7. Kenny's first point, that 'net zero is impossible with current technology' is probably true, but about as sensible as claiming, in 1993, that a worldwide encyclopedia (" a wikipedia") is impossible. Technology is improving. Even in the dysfunctional UK they are innovating:
    "(the UK Government) are also developing a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) mandate with the aim of ensuring 10% of aviation fuel is sustainable by 2030. Technological developments mean it is now possible to produce low carbon fuels from non-renewable sources like RCFs (recycled carbon fuels). These are produced from unrecyclable waste plastics or industrial waste gases that cannot be avoided, reused, or recycled. RCFs have the potential to deliver significant carbon savings over traditional fossil fuels like diesel and kerosene and have become a replacement for difficult to decarbonise sectors like aviation and heavy good vehicles." https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-security-bill-factsheets/energy-security-bill-factsheet-recycled-carbon-fuels-and-nuclear-derived-fuels-for-transport
    See eg https://lanzatech.com/lanzatechs-waste-gas-to-saf-facility-receives-25m-grant-from-uk-department-for-transport-advanced-fuels-fund/

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  8. "so the pond shrank them down to a more useful size"
    I always thought that movie title should have been "Honey I shrank the kids" but thought, what would I know?

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