It might well be that the pond's time with blogger is coming to a close. The pond has done nigh on 7,000 posts, and almost every one of them contains offensive or sensitive material, so the blogger bots could have a field day.
The pond had hoped to shuffle off into the night with the passing of Chairman Rupert, but he seems indestructible, while the other option - News Corp passing out of Murdochian hands by way of sale or bankruptcy - seems remote, despite regular reassurances by Crikey that the reptiles are on the ropes and a Succession saga is likely any day now ...
Meanwhile, there's always prattling Polonius for a Sunday meditation, and for once, you might ask why there's no bot handy to strike down offensively repetitive and tedious material ...
It's funny that Polonius should blather about balance, because Grant's problem was with the sort of ersatz balance that both the ABC and BBC practice (as does the NY Times and other outlets addicted to both siderism).
This story by Noah Lim in yesterday's lizard Oz - sorry the pond doesn't link to reptile stories - raised the matter of faux balance ...
The pond will skirt the notion of objective truth - best leave that to the hole in the bucket man's philosophical musings - just the truth sounds a bit like just the facts ma'am - but in any case Polonius's idea of balance is that if he isn't featured, it can't be balanced.
How he broods about being excluded from the fold, how his dumping from The Insiders gnaws at his vitals, and he's right in one sense because the show has gone on being as boring, pallid and both siderist as when he sat on the couch and rambled on ...
But back to Polonius missing the point ...
Good old Erica. Only a belligerent, ham-fisted player could deflect by calling others belligerent and ham-fisted ...
Back to Polonius still missing the point, and thinking it would all be fixed if they'd invited him instead of Erica ...
At this point, the pond must pause to chivvy the reptiles. As if to give Polonius some faux sense of visual gravitas, the reptiles slipped in two very large photos for no particular reason, forcing the pond to downsize them yet again ...
The pond knows why they do it. These are figures of hate, wax dolls useful for the pins supplied to every reptile subscriber eager to practise voodoo and get pleasure from the angertainment, and they also provide a break from Polonius's tediously predictable words ...
How many times has Polonius contended that the ABC is a conservative-free zone? When did you last reach the end of your calculating of π?
And so to a change of pace and a break for the pond because the pond doesn't often stray into oscillating fan territory ...
The pond will confess an ulterior motive ... the pond has taken to Sundays as offering a chance for a cartoon-led recovery, and there's any number of cartoonists willing to help ...
It's even better because the oscillating fan manages to sound clueless ...
DeSantis is a Socrates of the modern world? You might have had doubts, but surely now you'll have to admit that the oscillating fan is completely clueless.
The pond was reminded of Benjamin Wallace-Wells asking in The New Yorker What can Ron DeSantis do now? (sorry, likely paywall, but the pond can''t say thanks to auto log-in)
On the matter of Socrates there was this ...
It isn’t that DeSantis is charmless—or it’s not only that. It’s that his career has been spent on a charmlessness offensive, trying to persuade voters exhilarated by Trump’s willingness to brawl that he is made of the same stuff.
And the opener was this ...
Presidential campaigns are usually launched in a bright burst of hope. Slick videos are posted, bus tours of the hinterlands are announced, e-mails seeking donations flow into in-boxes like the tide. The candidacy of Governor Ron DeSantis, of Florida, contains some extra, darker emotional layers: defensiveness, a bristling ideological fixity, an undercurrent of dread. In a new poll, DeSantis is down nearly forty points to Donald Trump among Republican primary voters. Yet this month DeSantis set out on the trail—a barbecue joint in Iowa, the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire—hoping to make a good first impression on voters who do not follow politics obsessively and who may have missed the latest fallout from the arcane war he insists on prosecuting against the Walt Disney Corporation.
Then, on Wednesday evening, DeSantis formally announced his run during an audio-only discussion with Elon Musk, on Twitter Spaces. The event was a glitchy mess; it took twenty minutes to start and rapidly shed viewers. When DeSantis finally got going he dwelled on the niche interests of conservative insiders, at one point digressing about the “accreditation cartels” that govern universities. Somewhere out there, presumably, were voters curious to get a feel for him, but they couldn’t even see his face, only a miniature lecturing avatar.
As for policies?
...his brand developed almost entirely during the Trump era in a stepping-stone manner, built on his laissez-faire approach to the pandemic, his campaign to suppress the teaching of racial and gender themes in schools and to punish teachers who defy him, his backing of permissive gun laws, his aggression toward immigrants and trans people, and his ban on nearly all abortions after six weeks. It isn’t always clear how sincerely DeSantis means to impose a puritanical society in Florida (of all places) and how much of his culture war is about political positioning. But name a banner that the Republican Party has gathered under in the past few years and he is likely to have been the one waving it. He is, in that way, a very modern candidate.
As if to make that point, the reptiles slipped in a large snap of the two peas in the pod ...
Shame really ... they could have deployed cartoons ...
Never mind, none of this would have been possible without the oscillating fan ...
He's more capable of winning over non-aligned centrist voters?
Now back for a final gobbet ...
Uh huh ... but what happens when Dr Rupert Frankenstein creates a monster, lets it loose on the world, and then tries to bury it? Spoiler alert, you get a repeat of the closing cute jolt in Carrie ...
As they kept on saying on MSNBC, DeSaster's best hope is that special counsel Jack Smith turns out to be a top notch prosecutor ...
And so to a bonus, and the pond only goes there because the pond was terribly worried about the bromancer's gassing. Would he be up to returning to gassing the lizard Oz readership? The pond needn't have worried, because he was sounding like his old self, with his keyboard set to helium squeak ...
It takes incredible skill and years of practice ... a bit like the pond delivering with a straight face "fundamentalist Catholic tykes are inclined to be expert on the left."
At this point, the reptiles did it again and slipped in a large snap. Admittedly it featured the man at the centre of the bromancer story, but still ...
Why not a little humour to help the serve go down?
Instead on with the bromancer ...
The pond was pleased to see Lipavsky play a straight bat with a straight face. We wouldn't want another Ron DeSaster moment ...
Too soon? But there are gobbets of self-important bromancer to go, gassed up with too much helium ...
NATO came in at 11 in the top 20:
Tuckyo Rose has gone now, but you can't do a Lady Macbeth by scrubbing the paws or trying to erase the stench ... but the bromancer does his best ... because there's the war on China by Xmas and a possible ally in the fight ...
And so to the next gobbet, with a big reveal at the end of it ...
That took the pond right back ... to the days when it wore certain libertarian T-shirts...
And it seems it's still a plank in the local party ...
And yet there was Robert Thomson, News Corp chief executive, bleating away this very weekend ...
Memo to bromancer. Check out what the Pirate Parties of the world are really on about ... then no one will be asking Robert Thomson to pay for using that quote ...
And now back to the final gobbet ...
Well there are many forms of death, with one of them captured by the immortal Rowe ...
... and we all, at one point or another, end up negotiating with terrorists ...
And now this being a Sunday, the pond would like to end on a gobbet relating to GB and the like in Britain.
The pond has had to drop off the UK end of things, and the charms of Suella and Rish! and Marina Hyde doing over Jeff Bezos and partner in grand style ... but it's there, just below the surface, and it occasionally rises, as when Peter Geoghegan did this piece for the LRB ... and if you can't get past the paywall, let the pond know, and the pond will do it in daily gobbets ...
No room at the inn? It's a great read, and after this gobbet there were two and a half to go ...
Sounds like there's a killer punchline at the end of it all ...
The bromancer is currently visiting the very right wing Danube Institute in Hungary.
ReplyDeleteAlong with the oh-so-earnest all American loon Rod Dreher he is a key-note speaker at this gabfest.
http://danubeinstitute.hu/en/events/the-danger-and-falsehood-of-the-disenchantment-project
Dreher is quite popular with the quad-rant cabal. He has also been featured (interviewed) on the Ramsey Institute website, as is Henry hole-in-the-bucket
Dreher's book Live Not By Lies is favorably reviewed on John Anderson's website. The bromancer is also featured (interviewed) on the Ramsey site too.
DeleteExcellent tracking NN. It's hard to keep track of this vast international communion of cabalists, and each thread adds to the cavalcade of clowns..
DeleteSo Polonius' idea of "political balance" is to play Jacinta Nampijinpa Price off against Stan Grant ? What kind of nonsense is that ? No, it's just the old reptile chorus that "it isn't balanced unless we win".
ReplyDeleteNow it may, or may not, have been noticed that very many ABC presenters cop every bit as much and more egregious crap as Stan Grant and much more frequently. Why is there no calls for ABC support and apologies to them ? Is it because - many of them being women - they're just used to a lifetime of putting up with Polonius' idea of 'balance'.
Or maybe just that the ABC management didn't expect anyone to take that crap seriously ? You know the proposition: 'if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen'.
The 'oscillating fan': "Australians need to remember that our compulsory voting system coupled with preferential voting drives politics to the centre.
ReplyDeleteIt is very different in the US."
Well it certainly is different in the US, and it's also different in the UK. But is that because of their 'top of the stack' (erroneously categorised as 'first past the post' because most of the winners never actually reach the 50% post) voting system ?
Or is it because in these current and past empires people automatically believe in their, and their country's, righteousness ? We'd have to ask, wouldn't we, just how the non-empire of Australia came to that voting scheme in the first place - who's idea was that ? And let's not forget that much of the 'compulsory' aspect was the result of right wing parties, thinking it would continually benefit them against "Labor". It came in rather late in the states, but early federally:
"Compulsory voting was first advocated by Alfred Deakin at the turn of the 20th century. Voting was voluntary at the first 9 federal elections.
Compulsory enrolment for federal elections was introduced in 1911."
But:
"When Queensland introduced compulsory voting in 1915, it became the first place in the then British Empire to do so.
Victoria introduced compulsory voting in 1926, NSW and Tasmania in 1928, WA in 1936 and SA in 1942."
https://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/voting/index.htm
And let us also please remember that, although not first in the "modern world" to introduce female suffrage (hello NZ) it was South Australia (second after NZ) which was the first to grant women the right to actually stand for election to parliament in 1894:
"This meant that South Australia was the first electorate in the world to give equal political rights to both men and women."
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/womens-suffrage
Ok then, just what was it that made Australia so liberal and progressive compared with the rest of the "civilised" world ?
And what was the oscillating fan raving on about, again ?
"DeSantis is a Socrates of the modern world? You might have had doubts, but surely now you'll have to admit that the oscillating fan is completely clueless." Oh I dunno, DP, just read good old Bertrand's chapter on Socrates in his 'History of Western Philosophy' and appreciate Soc's unfounded belief in his own rightness and righteousness.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, GB, that's too reflexive even for the pond. The OF is too clueless to suggest that RonDesaster is as clueless as the clueless Socrates ...
DeleteDanny Kruger MP, still smarting from having been fined for losing control of his jack russell which caused a stampede of deer in Richmond Park, London? Guess this explains his whine about the 'powers that be'.
ReplyDelete[https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tory-mp-deer-stampede-dog-kruger_uk_60be3964e4b0ea8a1920dd44]
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way that Polonius would ever be happy with the ABC is if he was bad either Managing Director, Chair of the Board or both. Even then, I’m sure that he’d constantly whinge about his efforts to ensure the organisation was no longer a “conservative-free zone” were being undermined from within. But then Hendo is the sort of bloke who is best suited to complaining; one of my older relatives described his type as “he wouldn’t be happy in Heaven” - even a pre-Vatican II Heaven.
ReplyDeleteThe Fan may argue that Meatball Ron is the lesser of two evils, but has he ever considered that it doesn’t matter if an asrsehole is large or small, it’s still an arsehole?
ReplyDeleteIs the Fan still an academic? The next time Our Henry wishes to make allegations regarding the low standard of Australian academia, he might like to start with some of his fellow Reptile scribblers.
Continued from yesterday’s comments - a couple more articles on the sordid legacy of Henry Kissinger -
ReplyDeletehttps://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/may/25/henry-kissinger-100-strategic-genius-or-damaging-diplomacy-held-back-africa
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/henry-kissinger-100th-birthday-bloody-legacy.html
Who was it who said that satire was dead once Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize?
Tom Lehrer ?
DeleteHere, have his very best song:
Deletehttps://youtu.be/nz_-KNNl-no
I suspect you’re correct, GB - and it's amazing that great man (Lehrer, not Kissinger) is still around!
DeleteRobert Thomson's rant about the evil AI systems reminded me of this article The poisoning of ChatGPT - "We’ve known for a long time that AI models can be “poisoned”. If you can get an AI vendor to include a few tailored toxic entries the attacker can affect outcomes generated by the system as a whole." - which mentioned this article The Dutch tax authority ruined thousands of lives after using an algorithm to spot suspected benefits fraud — and critics say there is little stopping it from happening again.. Sound familiar? (And there we were thinking the Dutch were a civilised people.)
ReplyDeleteAnd us too, Joe. And that's the problem, yes ? We're too civilised to suspect our public servants of being a pack of criminals and/or nongs, so they just get away with serious crap - not all of it intentional - for a lot longer than they should.
DeleteMind you, it helps when we remove all our inspectors because they add too much to the pubserve budget. Just think of all the federal cash we saved by contracting PwC instead of employing professional pubserves.
Though of course, GB, we didn’t actually save any cash at all by outsourcing services to consultants. On the whole it cost a hell of a lot more, and generally resulted in quite inferior results (ask any public servant who had the unhappy task of turning the average mediocre-or-worse consultant’s report into something serviceable….). However, because those consultancies weren’t paid out of the same backup as public service salaries and staff levels, the governments of the day were able to bullshit that the APS had been reduced, and the quality of advice / services improved. All lies, of course.
DeleteAll very true, Anony, but nonetheless it wasn't PwC, at least as far as I'm aware, who fostered Robodebt upon us and just went along with it.
DeleteI’m not sure why Robert Thompson is so concerned about AI. Surely the Chairman has a research program underway to ensure that his consciousness can somehow be uploaded or digitally replicated before his physical form finally gives out? Imagine - An immortal Rupertbot directing News Corp forever, with the various heirs frustrated in their ambitions!
ReplyDelete"Australian rental affordability has dropped to its worst levels in nearly a decade, with the average household spending a third of its income on rent, as the impacts of the Covid pandemic continue to be felt on the market."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/may/29/australias-rental-affordability-drops-to-worst-levels-in-nearly-a-decade
So it's been worse than this before without even a Covid pandemic as the excuse. Did anybody notice at the time ? I don't recall that I did.