In which there can be only one reptile given the caps treatment, and it isn't the Weekly Groaner ...

 

The pond has in recent days been using the German-themed issue of Granta as toilet reading (the pond has a secret life rarely exposed on the pond).

So imagine the pond's delight and surprise to see a link at the bottom of John Naughton's rant about AI - ChatGPT exploded into public life a year ago. Now we know what went on behind the scenes - worth the read but not to the point here. 

We've all read stories about how bots are now being used to mark the work of bots, and discovering bots where bots haven't been... (AI-Written Homework Is Rising. So Are False Accusations, Daily Beast paywall).

The Naughton link was to Lauren Oyler's whimsical story Last Week in Marienbad, and even better, instead of the hard copy by the toilet, it was available on line here. 

Back in the day, the pond had a problematic relationship to the film. Film buffs assured the pond that it was deep and meaningful, but the pond couldn't shake off the feeling that it was also incredibly boring. (even worse than Scorsese managing to turn a series of murders of native Americans into a three and a half hour dirge, capped by a radio show routine and a dire cameo). 

A day, a week, a year ... however you cut it, it was too long.

The pond feels no shame - even with spoiler alert - quoting Oyler's very last paragraph:

...The sauna is exhausting, even when you can only manage once a day. On our last night, we hit play on the movie while lying in bed after dinner. When it became clear that the stark shadowy lawns and elaborate interiors were not the same shadowy lawns and elaborate interiors we had been traversing ourselves, that the delight of recognition would not be ours, it became even harder to stay awake. What’s more, the film is incredibly boring, and should not be watched on a computer. I am not against boring movies; I am merely, sadly, a realist. Its themes might have made me sad if Marienbad still carried its associations with loss and memory, but the place has become a straightforward representation of a very specific idea of the past, no longer a site of vague, moody possibility. Is it all in her mind? In his? Might the man pushing the woman to remember him represent a psychoanalyst, a drill sergeant of the unconscious, holding place for some other man she might actually remember, if pressed long and hard enough? Might they all be dead, or in limbo, or in a dream? It will never be certain, but that uncertainty has become certain, obvious, possibly even boring. We never finished the movie, but the trip was great.

Sold, and of course the point isn't the punchline par at the end, but the getting to the end, and Oyler stole the pond's heart with that line "...the film is incredibly boring, and should not be watched on a computer. I am not against boring movies; I am merely, sadly, a realist".

It came decades too late for the pond's feud with film buffs, but as always there's a resonance. 

The pond isn't against deeply boring, backward thinking, regressive journalism, the pond is merely, sadly, a realist, and yet here the pond is, stuck watching the reptiles on a computer ... and lest the pond be thought of as an arty crafty wanker, time to get on with the lizard hunger games.

Hang on a second, there have many many other splendid distractions worth a mention. Speaking of getting to the end, the pond only watched Rish! give evidence because it knew a cracking Crace would surely follow ... and it did ...

Had he noticed anything unusual about No 10? Not at all. Everything looked fine. So the chaos and parties just felt normal. And what about the Spectator interview in 2022? The one in which he had boasted to the editor of not leaving a paper trail and having been anti-lockdowns. Sunak shrugged. He was baffled. He had no idea how Fraser Nelson might have got the idea from an interview with him that he had thought such things. So many mysteries in the Rish! Miniverse.
Ommm. Time to get Zen. Clear the mind with the downward dog. What the inquiry really had to remember was the nature of insignificance. Sunak was a mere speck of dust – we all were – the chancellor no more than human flotsam. He had been at most a conduit. Passing on ideas to a Greater Being. A semi-sentient Ouija board. His contribution to whether the prime minister imposed a lockdown was infinitesimal. Whether he was in favour of lockdowns or against them, whether he was in favour of the science or not, was just semantics. He wasn’t there. Just as he wasn’t here. The Nowhere Man.

That was followed by the perfect philosophy:

Je ne regrette rien. Je ne me souviens de rien.

And what about King Chuck and homeopathy? 

Dixon, who has a penchant for bow ties and a long association with the king, worked in the NHS for almost half a century and is an outspoken advocate of complementary medicine.
He once invited a Christian healer to his surgery to treat chronically ill patients and experimented with prescribing an African shrub called devil’s claw for shoulder pain, as well as horny goat weed for impotence, the Sunday Times reported.

Hmm,  please excuse the pond while it nibbles on a thistle ...

Okay, okay, these can't be contenders, these are just distracting pretenders.

The pond is dawdling,  while the reptile contestants are already at the starting gate ...

Sure there was relief at the news that COP had been a failure, but who cared about tales of toads occupying the far right spot reserved for the best reptiles?

As for the Saudi move, just a short time before, the reptiles had been in a state of abject terror ...

Wasn't it great that the world had been saved, and fossil fuels might continue to help improve the human condition ...

Down below the fold however, there was consternation ...

In the reptile hunger caps game, only one reptile could be a winner, and yet Dame Groan was up against expert climate scientist Greg "Bro" Sheridan ...

The pond did its best to give Dame Groan a sporting chance. After all she'd already won, hadn't she? 

She'd made the government change course with her relentless scribbling ...surely she'd be happy?

Alas and alack, the pond can report that she was deeply unhappy, and the Groaner was urging the adoption of stunningly successful British policies ...

The minister reveals that the overall impact of her policy changes cross four years will be less than 200,000 fewer migrants – a very marginal reduction under the circumstances.

So what are the changes being proposed to reduce the migrant intake and thereby relieve the pressures on housing and infrastructure, more generally? Seeking better standards in English for incoming international students sounds like a good idea but the devil will be in the detail. There is evidence that testing for English proficiency is widely rorted; without significant changes, this will continue.

Reducing the duration of post-graduation visas should have some impact, but note in Britain most graduates are able to stay for only six months. This short period is not being mentioned here.

The vast majority of international students in Britain also cannot be accompanied by family members, a restriction that does not apply here. (It is estimated that about 15 per cent of international students in Australia come with other family members.)

There is some discussion about international students jumping from one visa category to another; the government has some vague intention to limit this.

Again in Britain, a second education visa can be granted only if the second course is a higher status than the initial one. This is a change that should be implemented here. Slowing down visa processing time also can have an impact. 

Again in Britain ... 

So what about the perfect Rwanda solution?

It's an extremely safe country, because the government has legislation that says so ... (yes, yes, the UK government still has its travel advice saying "levels of health and safety in Rwanda are lower than in the UK", but they'll catch up eventually. What's the point of a deterrence if you actually wanted to go to the place?).

As for Dame Groan, she was on fire and giving it her all to be made the hunger games winner of the day ... it wasn't just a matter of stopping the pesky, difficult, uppity furriners, it was how to get ride of the buggers ... how soon might she import The Rwanda Ultimatum, The Rwanda Supremacy, The Rwanda Identity, from plucky little England?

...A major challenge is to ensure that those on temporary visas actually leave the country, even though the department doesn’t have a great deal of information about where the migrants actually are or what they are doing.

New migrants are not even required to apply for a tax file number as part of the visa application process, something that would be a useful compliance measure.

It’s entirely possible for temporary migrants to string out their stay here using the administrative appeals/court system. There is also a significant uptick in those on international student visas applying for asylum. The rate of deportation is extremely low even though most of these applications for asylum are rejected.

The reality is that the Labor government is not really inclined to reduce the migrant intake significantly because of the sectional pressures being brought to bear to maintain an open-door approach on the large uncapped part of the migration program.

Think here universities, big business, property developers and the like. The trade unions, which you think would oppose a massive migrant intake, are staying mum as they achieve their preferred industrial relations changes.

There will have been close to 900,000 migrants entering the country during Labor’s first two years in office and it has taken until this month for some fairly minor changes to be announced to slightly reduce the intake.

Of course, there is a world of difference between merely setting targets and actually achieving them. But if we are to have any confidence in the new targets, targets that actually are still far too high, the government needs to act with much stronger policies.

Capping the large temporary programs would be a start and imposing a significant levy on international students also would defray some of the external costs that the large migrant intake imposes on locals. Making sure temporary migrants go home – and that they get this message – would also have an impact.

Just don’t expect a Labor government to have the courage to implement these measures.

The pond even had a cartoon to hand to celebrate her winning the day ...

But there can be only one caps winner in each day's reptile hunger games, and this day the bromancer won in a canter ...

Yes, the bromancer is having a great chortle. All those silly climate scientists and their silly carry-ons and their dire warnings, fossil fuels are still what's best for what ails the planet ...

And don't you worry about the bromancer. If the planet should happen to burn, by that time he'll be soaking up the pleasures of hellfire for his many sins and crimes against humanity ... (unless that last confession trick really does work for tricky tykes).

Talk about an epic serve of climate science denialism ...

What's that? Australia exports a little coal, a small trickle? Why it's just helping out the best users in a humble and modest way ...

Remember, it's all the fault of those bloody Chinese, and nothing to do with sweet, innocent, dinkum clean Oz coal ...

Meanwhile, there were the usual breaks for snaps ... climate science denialism can be extremely tedious unless you can juxtapose an image of a Satanist with a man with a deep care for the planet and an even deeper love for fossil fuels ...

Then it was back to the bro boasting of how he'd mightily smited and smoted the climate alarmists, full of religious passion ... yes, go Donner, go Blitzen, back to the days of dinkum clean Oz coal used in dinkum hi-tech coal-fired power plants ...

Now there's a cunning ploy, the bromancer dissing Dame Groan and her groaning, while throwing in SMRs (or at least nuking the country), and doing his very best to obfuscate and confuse, worthy of a Saudi or UAE PR rep ...

At this point the pond can hear a little whining and whingeing and moaning off. This was judged the best of the reptile offerings for the day? This relentless, tiresome rehashing of ancient bromancer scribbles?

But that's the whole point of being a reptile, full of incessant, inane and endless recycling of ratbaggery, and to be fair, it's a shallow pool ... 

The pond did look high and low for a rival to the bro, the pond even considered the lizard Oz editorialist ...

That blaming the victim strategy would have allowed the pond to go off on a tangent and talk about the WaPo report and the immense damage Israel was currently doing itself and its cause ...

... handily summarised in the Beast ...

Meanwhile, in Amnesty, way back on 31st October 2023 ...

But what's the point of brooding about war crimes when you've got an entire planet to trash?

And so, as a worthy Saudi fossil fuel publicist, the bromancer is the day's winner ... with astonishing calculations and mind-boggling insights ...

There's nothing like a condescending bromancer, with his head so far up his bum that there's no possibility of light or sunshine or sanity escaping ... and meanwhile, on another planet ...

And so on, but at least the lizard Oz editorialist did provide some sort of excuse for ending with the infallible Pope of the day ...