In which the pond struggles to get past Brandolini's Law ...

 

For a nanosecond the pond regretted not having given more space to Lorraine Finlay and the shitposters at the lizard Oz, because it would have been a perfect scene-setter for the follow-up story in Crikey ... (paywall) ...

On the other hand, is there any benefit in giving space to shitposters causing a fuss in the lizard Oz?

As the pond was reading the latest diatribe about uncle Elon, fresh down from the attic again to cause trouble - Donald Moynihan's When a Shitposter Runs a Social Media Platform - complete with snap of loon caught in loon flight - the pond at least realised the condition it was suffering from ...

A fair way in, the pond was reminded of Brandolini's Law, which "holds that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."

There was a handy link to the wiki on the law, which produced a fine early example from 1845 ...

We must confess that our adversaries have a marked advantage over us in the discussion. In very few words they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is incomplete, we are obliged to have recourse to long and dry dissertations. — Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, First Series (1845)

Bear all this in mind as the pond looks at the dismal scene offered up by the lizards of Oz today at the top of the digital page ... featuring jolly Joe both coming and not coming ... and other matters ...

There was Dame Slap raging yet again about the Lehrmann matter, this time dressed up as "#MeToo zealotry", and the pond began to wonder if she might secretly be a defender of rape and rapists ...

Then there was the matter of a most unfortunate wording - "took a stab" is reminiscent of Caesar in March more than a legal matter - and there was Rice proposing it was "difficult not to feel some sympathy", and the pond did indeed begin to feel some sympathy for those suffering at the hands of the reptiles, and then to cap it all off there was Fergo deeming that even more bleating about Deeming was of interest ...

It got even worse down below the fold in the comments section ...

 

What a wasteland, and the lizard Oz editorialist doing the hard space-filling yards reminded the pond of the end to that Crikey story about the failing empire ...

Expect any change to be bad news for the struggling Australian media assets — particularly the tabloids and Foxtel. News Corp’s latest quarterly figures (released last Friday) show Australian revenues are down (due to currency fluctuations, the company says).
While the 10-year program to shift newspaper readers to digital subscribers is back up after last quarter’s fall, it’s slowing, still short of the 1 million target. Foxtel streaming subscriber numbers are up, but pay TV is down, along with average revenues per user.
News Corp has said it would continue to cut costs as part of the program announced in February, when it indicated that one in 20 staff on its Australian mastheads would go. March figures show it’s already paid out about US$25 million in employee termination benefits — with more to come. The sharemarket liked that, giving the shares a much-needed edge up.

Well yes, the shares might have edged up, but the lizard Oz is looking more threadbare and hysterical by the day, as if a few rabid reptiles shouting louder might both draw attention and distract ...

And that's how the pond ended up with the unfortunately named Lynch mob this day, even though the pond routinely red cards scribbling about the Voice ...

As soon as the pond caught a whiff of blather about catchy progressive buzzes, the pond almost tuned out ... but it seems there's some in the readership that loves the bullshit posting that the reptiles are selling ...

There was this follow-up to a recent lizard Oz posting which says everything the pond needs to know about the lizard Oz readership, and the letters selection process at the lizard Oz, because it seems there was't a single voice that bothered to scribble a letter of support ...

And so on, there were five letters in all, though not one from Woop Woop or Tamworth, with one lizard Oz correspondent even harping back to SSM and snidely remarking that there "have been a number of high-profile cases where politics became involved in legal cases to the detriment and loss of confidence in the justice system."

Brandolini's Law kicked in hard - no time to brood about the reptiles' ongoing behaviour in certain matters and the subsequent loss of confidence in the legal system - and the pond began to feel an overwhelming sense of fatigue as it returned to the Lynch mob ...

As for the treaties routinely broken? Well you'll have to look elsewhere for that, such as this timeline for Broken Treaties with Native American Tribes ...

Then you could say with heart on Wounded Knee massacre that progressive politics had nothing to do with it ...

Um, perhaps because there is a systemic racism abroad? How often will the Lynch mob run with line that it was just one bad apple in the barrel?

What do you know? There's even a wiki for bad apple syndrome ...

The bad apples metaphor originated as a warning of the corrupting influence of one corrupt or sinful person on a group: that "one bad apple can spoil the barrel". Over time the concept has been used to describe the opposite situation, where "a few bad apples" should not be seen as representative of the rest of their group. This latter version is often used in the context of police misconduct...

...The bad apples metaphor has been used by pro-police politicians, municipalities, and police themselves to defend police organizations when police officers are criticized for alleged misconduct. The metaphor communicates that the few criticized officers do not reflect the performance and behavior of the rest.

Pro-police officials were first recorded as using the metaphor following the beating of Rodney King and it was used following the shootings of Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, and the murder of George Floyd. U.S. President Donald Trump used the bad apples metaphor to defend police in a Dallas speech in June 2020, claiming that there are bad apples in every organization and there remains a need for police to protect citizens. In his first presidential debate with Donald Trump on September 29th, 2020, Joe Biden used the bad apples metaphor to defend policing when asked about racial inequality in terms of the justice system, claiming that the vast majority of police officers are "good, decent, honorable men and women"...

And so on, and it seems that there must just be a few bad apples scribbling furiously in the lizard Oz, though the pond suspects that the whole crumbling edifice is rotten to the core ...

"To racialise US politics" ...

Note to self, must not mention slavery, the American civil war, or the racial politics embedded in US politics since the days that the slave owners scribbled themselves a constitution and came up with the splendid idea of the three-fifths compromise ...

Strange fruit from this Lynch mob, and the pond vowed not to repeat the experiment, though the pond has been known to wilt with its promises, much like US treaties ...

And so to a bonus, and here the pond decided to turn to The Times, as regurgitated by the lizards of Oz ...

It's easy to see why the pond was tempted. Trained by the hole in the bucket man, the talk of Cannae and Hannibal was incredibly tempting ...

Of course talk of Carthage and Hannibal and the Carthaginian empire might not be entirely happy ...

The fall of Carthage came at the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC at the Battle of Carthage. Despite initial devastating Roman naval losses and Hannibal's 15-year occupation of much of Roman Italy, who was on the brink of defeat but managed to recover, the end of the series of wars resulted in the end of Carthaginian power and the complete destruction of the city by Scipio Aemilianus. The Romans pulled the Phoenician warships out into the harbor and burned them before the city, and went from house to house, capturing and enslaving the people. About 50,000 Carthaginians were sold into slavery. The city was set ablaze and razed to the ground, leaving only ruins and rubble. After the fall of Carthage, Rome annexed the majority of the Carthaginian colonies, including other North African locations such as Volubilis, Lixus, Chellah. Today a "Carthaginian peace" can refer to any brutal peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side.

The pond would prefer not to mention this to a sociopath of the Vlad the impaler kind ...

At this point the reptiles inserted a snap which gave the pond some hope ...

And it also allowed the pond to note that this day the immortal Rowe also strayed into ancient times ...

Why no Twitter link? Well it seems that the AFR now wants punters to report directly to the rag and that's how the pond missed out on yesterday's serve ...

At last they realise that there's click bait gold in those cartooning hills?

The trouble with this is that on Twitter, the immortal Rowe turned up large scale, so that the pond could pay attention to the details. The AFR offers an image size of 620x450, which is measly ...

So there'll be no more attention to the details ...

What's that? The pond should get back to the war and the doings of the sociopathic Vlad the impaler? What a relief it is to find a reptile intent on doing down a sociopath. It's so un-Tucker, so un-Mango Mussolini ...

An unexpected attack? But there's been talk of a counter-offensive for months, so it's hardly an unexpected attack.

Sure there's the matter of fine timing, and the pond wishes the counter-offensive well - the pond has become quite bloodthirsty and cheers every Russian loss - but when it happens, it will hardly be unexpected, though it's to be hoped that the Russians will struggle ... and that the sociopathic Vlad the impaler doesn't take heart from talk of Cannae, because he's already done to Bakhumut what the Romans did to Carthage ...

Let's hope that we won't see Vlad the impaler's minions and lickspittles roaming around the countryside for 15 years or so ...

Well yes, and the Ukrainians are doing well without advice from armchair generals of the western kind, and hopefully will launch an offensive when they deem that the time is right ... and the best thing to do is to give them every means possible to do down Vlad ...

Well. yes, and speaking of those who make themselves vulnerable, to end on a light note, the infallible Pope offered up a doozy this day for a closer ...