Captain's log, Wednesday, mostly cloudy but no sign of precipitation, Dame Slap not on deck to do duties, apparently Monday outing was deemed a sufficient workload by the galley chef ... which is a pity because the pond had wanted to celebrate a story with her before it got too old...
Remember the glory days of Dame Slap with that Canadian weirdo? Just a quick sample ...
And so on and so forth, the weird Dame Slap in bed with a man who rapidly turned weirdo.
And then came this, and frankly the subject matter is simply too weird and pornographic for the pond, yet anything goes on Twitter these days in the age of Uncle Elon ...
And so on and on, and the pond looks forward to another celebration of deep weirdness by Dame Slap in due course.
Alas and alack, Killer Creighton is also absent today ... and the pond had had so wanted to share memories of its first long ago trip to Japan, inspired by this story ...
The pond remembers being startled on its first trip to Japan, and seeing people on trains or just out and about wearing masks.
It was explained to the pond that in a deeply conservative but also post being nuked caring society, it was deemed to be polite and caring for other people that if you had a sniffle, a cold, the flu, whatever, you donned a mask while in public. (The pond also learned of a deep contempt for the western way with handkerchiefs but that's another story ...)
This story was about a polite, deeply conservative society that will take whatever edge a mask might offer for self and others ...
There it is ... consideration for customers and others. Much like operating theatre teams don masks, out of consideration for patients (and possibly themselves) ...
But why did the pond go there? Well today the NBN has warned of a 400+ minute drop out of service - oh there's nothing like the NBN for service - and so the pond had to ram home a post quickly and besides this day the reptiles are in full war monger mode ...
The freedom fleet? Freedumb in 2050? On the upside, the pond decided it could steer clear of "Ned's" natter, though 'blather' might be more appropriate if less alliterative ...
The tree killer edition was also full of it ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, yet more freedumb ... how much freedumb can a koala bear?, and down below the fold, the reptiles were still full of it ...
Perforce the pond had to cover someone, so it had to be the bromancer, if only because the pond spotted him on The Drum last night, and so quickly switched over to the SBS News ... even lining up for the ABC's seven o'clock news is turning into a high risk proposition ...
You see? Only the bromancer could compare a Maserati to a brand new Corolla, apparently unaware that the cost of keeping a Maserati on the road is up there with that Fix It Again Tony joke of ancient times ...
Meanwhile, the pond hates to rain on the reptiles' freedumb parade but it couldn't but help notice this story ...
Oh dear, the isolationist wing in the GOP is strong ... is the bromancer troubled? Will News Corp be forced to campaign against the proto-fascist book banner and human rights abuser? Will News Corp send in the subs to scuttle Faux Noise?
Nope, on sails the good ship, the Speciously Spewing Bromancer, or SS Bro for short ...
Uh huh, but what if those intensely dangerous strategic circumstances include the new Faux Noise and News Corp pet?
There's more from that NBC story
here, but now the pond wanted a short break to note an ongoing reptile foible ...
The pond swears up hill and down dale that it accessed the web version, yet still the reptile bot kept insisting that the pond open the web version while on the web version ... and all the pond wanted was an answer from the bromancer should this happen to pop up in GOP isolationist circles ...
"While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between China and Australia is not one of them," DeSantis wrote in a questionnaire response Carlson posted on his Twitter feed.
Just wondering ... but there's no sign of a bromancer answer, just that bloody bot back again insisting the pond use the web version while on the web version ... as the bromancer gets back on to the theme of tanks, apparently unaware that if Ron DeSanctimonious had his way, we might be bringing back the Brisbane line ...
At the end of it, there was little comfort knowing that the pond would likely be long gone before the first second hand sub hit Australian waters ... or knowing that a correspondent had already drawn attention to a story in
The Conversation ...
Progress in detection tech could render submarines useless by the 2050s. What does it mean for the AUKUS pact?Historically, submarines have provided a distinct advantage: their stealth is the result of steady improvements in counter-detection technologies throughout the Cold War. Western submarines in particular are extremely quiet. Detection technologies, which mostly focused on sound, broadly struggled to keep up.
But this tide is turning. Subs in the ocean are large, metallic anomalies that move in the upper portion of the water column. They produce more than sound. As they pass through the water, they disturb it and change its physical, chemical and biological signatures. They even disturb Earth’s magnetic field – and nuclear subs unavoidably emit radiation.
Science is learning to detect all these changes, to the point where the oceans of tomorrow may become “transparent”. The submarine era could follow the battleship era and fade into history.
Oh dear, just when the pond was hoping for a quiet ride in the HMAS Bromancer, perhaps by 2050. Is there a quiet running Corolla still on the market?
As usual, the pond turned to an immortal Rowe ... remembering the grand days of Das Boot, and the way those boats won the second world war for Germany ... (or did the pond mangle its history yet again?)
And so to a bonus, which the pond can slip in just before the NBN goes down ...
What the fuck? And even worse the reptiles then flung in a snap which the pond felt needed a proper treatment ...
It's the first time that the pond can remember any of the reptiles resorting the desperate subterfuge of creating hysteria about sport being rooned, but then the swishing Switzer is about as low as reptiles get.
It's a particularly irritating, whiny sort of voice, but once heard, not easy to forget ...
Just more of the standard fear mongering, with that blather about sport a non sequitur used as a form of click bait and trolling, and the pond immediately regretted it had gone there, especially given the amount of fear mongering and pondering and what ifs ...
Yes, 53-38, and if that happened to be a sporting contest, it would be deemed a thrashing, though with both teams soft on defence, perhaps as a result of reaching for a tired old Gough joke, as if that had a flying fuck to do with the matter at hand ...
The broader point is that all that blather about sport is bullshit, epic bullshit, and this scribbler is offered employment by the ABC, to that body's eternal shame ...
And now to the infallible Pope for a closing thought ...
From John Quiggin regarding the Ghost Shark UAV
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/JohnQuiggin/status/1634087940967272448?s=20
So Bjornagain is right: do the research and manufacture the technology.
DeleteNow here's the important question: have any of the AUKUS trio (Biden, Sunak, Albanese) ever heard of UAVs ? More to the point, have any of Australia's military hierarchy ever heard of them. Whatever happened to the Jindivik ? Come to think of it, whatever did happen to the Government Aircraft Factory ?
So anyway, we won't have to wait until the postulated superior detection technology in 2050 after all, the subs will be obsolete long before then. Unless the UAV turns out to be just another Nomad.
Befuddled - thank you for that link. In similar spirit - but from a mere meanwhile away (as Walt Kelly used to write) - a Larson
Deletehttps://twitter.com/dazzlemate
Not my particular area of interest but I have noticed some chatter about drones
Deletehttps://www.indianarrative.com/world-news/chinas-new-underwater-drones-detected-in-satellite-images-51888.html
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-poseidon-super-weapon-what-you-need-to-know/
There was aLeo a lot of talk about USS Connecticut supposedly colliding with a sea mount. A lot of speculation that it had collided with a drone, US or Chinese. The usual increasingly fanciful stuff followed on. It does seem odd that this technological wonder couldn’t detect a mountain.
Mind you,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Nottingham_(D91)
Ran aground on a reef named for an ex-Royal Navy boat that also ran aground in 1837
There was "also" a lot of talk about USS Connecticut. Is this sort of thing associated with a TIA? Gotta have some excuse.
DeleteA transient ischaemic attack, Bef ? Naah, just aging, mate - it happens to me too as you may have noted of late. I think it has to do with one's attention state: the old 'perfectionism' dies down and we aren't as critically focussed as once we were. Nor quite so mortified by not being perfect.
DeleteWell anyway, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Surely they've selected the wrong name BF? The pond suggests a modest re-naming ...
Delete“Due to its modular and multi-role nature, our adversaries will need to assume that their every move in the maritime domain is subject to our surveillance and that every XL-AUV is capable of deploying a wide range of effects — including lethal ones,” Breaking Defense quoted Quinn as saying. “Once your potential adversaries understand what a Ghost Sheridan is — not that we’re going to give them any specifics at all — we expect they will generate doubt and uncertainty.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) will also play a significant role in realizing Ghost Sheridan’s mission under the XL-AUV program, primarily in regard to its autonomy. While details are still sparse, Quinn touted “software-driven autonomous systems” as being a “force multiplier” for the Australian Defence Force, and Ghost Sheridan will be no exception. These goals are further echoed under the RAN’s overarching Robotics, Autonomous Systems, and Artificial Intelligence (RAS-AI) strategy, which envisions the rapid proliferation of these technologies within the service between now and 2040.
“Ghost Sheridan will join Ghost Bat and other autonomous systems as our investment in smart AI-enabled technologies come to fruition,” Quinn said. “Our recently released RAS-AI Campaign Plan includes the rapid development of combat-ready prototypes to accelerate operational deployment of game-changing capabilities such as Ghost Sheridan."
Ah, but here's the thing: how many Ghost-Sheridans will it take to sink one submarine ? And does anybody think that the Chinese don't already have one of their own.
DeleteSo the follow-up question is: how many Ghost-Sheridans will it take to defend the 22,293 km Australian coastline (mainland only, sorry Tassies) ?
Oh but hey, this makes for a good read:
Delete'Red Alert' is a paper tiger
https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/red-alert-is-a-paper-tiger,17311
But then, Australia is way less war-ready than Taiwan, so maybe the Chinese could start here for some useful practice ?
"...this day the reptiles are in full war monger mode". Oh yeah, like everybody's favourite Cam Stew: "On almost every main indicator, Australia's nuclear submarines will be more technologically advanced than the vessels China is expected to produce over the next decade."
ReplyDeleteWau, and does it matter an iota to Cam Stew that unlike Australia, China already has 12 nuclear submarines and will produce more - and most likely further technologically advanced - subs than Australia will ever have ? And it will probably have at least another 12 by then ?
Oh, my apologies for an extreme underestimate; Peter Dean:
Delete"By the time our first SSN-AUKUS submarine hits the water the Chinese navy will have 70-plus submarines in service."
The Bro’s detailed analysis of the SSN AUKUS - Brit. hull, wth Yankee weapons, ‘US-style reactor’? did set off some of my brain cells on another triumph of international technical co-operation - the European Launcher Development Organisation. I became familiar with this in my time in the NT, in the late 60s/early 70s, when their communications base at Gove graciously provided accommodation, even though I was actually there trying to assess the likely environmental effects of the Nabalco alumina venture.
ReplyDeleteThey were an interesting bunch of people, utterly hospitable, and one could read that week’s better quality English publications in the ‘common room’, because two supply planes came in, from the UK, and sometimes France, every week.
The ELDO rocket was intended to put satellites into orbit for the European partners. Its basis was a British first stage, a French second stage and a German third. Later, when they realised that - even if it worked - it would be not quite enough to get a satellite into useful, geostationary orbit, they added a fourth stage - possibly made by Maserati?
Although the ‘Wiki’ claims some success for ELDO, that applied only to tests of the fist stage, which was ‘Blue Streak. The full composite rocket never worked. The entire function of the Gove facility was to press the ‘destroy’ button as each launch went awry. As I recall, they never gathered enough data from any attempt at a full launch, to get an inkling of what incompatibilities between what stages sent their projectile anywhere but into space.
Oh yeah, 'Blue Streak' - real blast from the past.
DeleteBut what amuses me is that the Bro speaks against tanks as kinda fighting the last war again - which we know that imagination deficient military folks are very wont to do.
But then so are 'nuke ' subs: they were the main battle wagons of the last war. Which as it turns out was a war - mainly because of nuclear warheads and nuclear subs - was never fought as an actual 'shooting war'. And just as well too. But the 'Cold War' was a real conflict just the same.
But now in the age of very high explosive conventional warheads and 'tactical nukes' and so forth together with hypersonic inter-continental missiles and smart torpedoes and smart drones and such like, nuclear subs are now just about as obsolete as tanks.
Can't expect the military and the Bro's mates to quite grasp that though, can we.
So, Swish Switz: "a growing number of Australians - including former attorneys-general, prime ministers and High Court justices, as well as leading Indigenous political and academic figures who have worked for the think tank I head..." Oh wau, Switz heads a "think tank". But I notice this "think tank head" hasn't given us a single name. Not one. Nor has he - from think tank investigations, BOC - told us how the Chinese born and Indian born (two of our largest immigrant groups after Pommies and now larger than NZedders) feel and what they will vote.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention all those British and NZ born immigrants. Some 7.16 million Aussie cits were born overseas, as indeed my father was but he's long since relinquished his voting rights. Will all of them mistake the Voice for wingnut "identity politics" ?
Another article on Jordan Peterson’s transition to internationally-ridiculed boofhead -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/03/jordan-peterson-became-internets-village-idiot
Thank you Anonymous - and I will keep 'lolcow' handy. Could be a useful word in future.
DeleteYes indeedy do Anon, loved that link, and loved that 'lolcow' and wants it in the pond record ...
Delete...Without realising it, Dr Peterson has become a “lolcow”. Wiktionary informs us that a lolcow is “somebody who can be ‘milked’ for laughs” – a fitting description of the space Peterson now occupies in the online attention economy.
YouTube is rife with edits that splice Peterson’s increasingly hysterical rants with gameplay from the Command & Conquer games, a series that features a cast of eccentric villains who issue apocalyptic threats to the player as they progress through the story. Sadly, these edits are not even necessary. Peterson’s video monologues are quite enough on their own. Last year, with Bond villain-esque delivery, Peterson warned the Masters of the Universe to leave him alone or face the consequences:
“Leave us alone, you centralisers of power. You worshippers of Gaia. You sacrificers of the wealth and property of others. You would-be planetary saviours. You Machiavellian pretenders and virtue-signallers objecting to power, all the while you gathered around you madly… Leave us alone, or reap the whirlwind and watch terrible destruction of what you purport to save in consequence.”
And it wasn’t the only video. Peterson made a similar vlog just a month later addressed to the then Twitter chief Parag Agrawal, protesting the suspension he received for comments about actor Elliot Page, before effectively calling for his own anonymous critics to be suspended themselves. Singling out Agrawal and his “demented and presumptuous minions”, Peterson accused the CEO of enabling “anonymous Machiavellian narcissists and psychopaths who inhabit the Twitter troll underworld”.
This month, Peterson was also mocked for attempting to lecture the Pope on Christianity, while during an appearance on Fox News he delivered a bizarre monologue about environmentalists and the Earth that left host Tucker Carlson looking confused: “The environmentalists offer us a story to live by and it’s a pseudo-religious story and it essentially elevates the biosphere – the Earth, Gaia, the Earth goddess, let’s say – to the status of primary deity and characterises her as sort of a waif-like, innocent victim easily taken advantage of and fragile. It casts the entire human endeavour on the social front as a raping and pillaging patriarchal monster only interested in power, and it casts the individual as a devouring mouth riding on the back of that giant.”
Peterson proposed that while this narrative had an element of truth to it, since humans do “wreak environmental havoc”, it’s a dangerous idea because it “demonises”. Watching all this, you realise how far Peterson has travelled from telling the boys, quite reasonably, to tidy their rooms.
There is more lolcow material out there. Peterson’s obsessive hatred of anonymous social media users and the rants that accompany it, have given the internet a treasure trove of quotes. Such as, “Up yours, woke moralists. We’ll see who cancels who!” and his repeated attacks on the “narcissistic Machiavellian, sadistic trolls” who can supposedly be identified by their use of “Lol”, “LMFAO”, “OMFG”, “bro” and “dude” – which has led to the creation of thousands of memes, enough for Peterson to have his own dedicated page on the Know Your Meme database...
What great fun and there's more, including the village idiot bit, and it made the pond's day ...
OrcAUS - billion-dollar coffins.
ReplyDeleteOr Scomo strikes again.
"Our analysis shows they might soon be so easily detected they could become billion-dollar coffins.
"Our key result was that the oceans are, in most circumstances, at least likely (probability 75%) – and from some perspectives very likely (probability 90%) – to become transparent by the 2050s. Our certainty of these estimates, which the software evaluated independently, was high (above 70%).
"This suggests that, regardless of progress in stealth technologies, submarines – including nuclear-powered submarines – will be able to be detected in the world’s oceans as a result of progress in science and technology.
"The results should ring alarm bells for the AUKUS program to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. Our assessment suggests there will only be a brief window of time between the deployment of the first SSN-AUKUS boats and the onset of transparent oceans.
https://theconversation.com/progress-in-detection-tech-could-render-submarines-useless-by-the-2050s-what-does-it-mean-for-the-aukus-pact-201187
Sublieutenant Sheridan needs a new sub-editor...
ReplyDelete"Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton get the credit for crossing the nuclear Rubicon and 'brining' Australia, the US and Britain together in the AUKUS partnership."
So...on the subject of 'saline solutions' I am hereby subscribing to the notion that the Bromancer is subliminally subtexting that our subservient navy is now fully submerged in the subversive brine of US-UK subterfuge.
In other words they are well and truly pickled, and must subsequently submit to being subordinate subcontractors of substandard submersibles.
Tomorrows edition will be interesting after Paul Keating address to the press club he did not pull any punches.
ReplyDeleteFirst meeting of the design committee for the new submarine will be interesting. "What system of measurements will we use? Metric, as in Australia? An incomprehensible mix of metric and British Imperial, as in Britain? Or Us Imperial?"
ReplyDelete:)³ Just provided we can pay for it with Royals ...
DeleteThe name of the new currency unit became the subject of a public competition that elicited nearly 1,000 suggestions. They ranged from the sober recommendations of the Austral, Dollar, Crown, Pound, Regal, Royal and Tasman, to more outlandish ideas based on fauna (Goanna and Magpie), Australian pastimes (Phar Lap and Schooner) and national identities whose names might lend drama to the currency, such as bushranger Ned Kelly. Prime Minister Menzies announced in June 1963 that the new banknotes would be known as the Royal, so maintaining a link with the United Kingdom and shared aspects of British culture...
https://museum.rba.gov.au/exhibitions/pocket-guides/a-decimal-reformation/a-decimal-reformation.html