The problem with being stuck in the hive mind is that it's a bit like the Hotel California, you can never leave...
Yet as correspondents point out, there's a real world out there, regularly not noted by the pond.
Take Arwa Mahdawi's powerful Where is Joe Biden’s fury about decapitated Palestinian babies?
And for a lighter touch there was Calla Wahlquist's essential reading for reformed Tamworthites, Barnaby Joyce ditched his RM Williams to protest against green energy … Wait until he finds out about his new boots.
The pond reeled away knowing more about boots than it ever thought necessary, including, spoiler alert, the punchline ...
...Joyce’s Ariat roper boots ($450) or the standard shoe of Australian politics or consulting, the RM Craftsman ($649), are too expensive for such use. The latter are sale day boots, fancy boots – that’s the reason the National party started wearing them in the first place. You would never wear your work boots to a livestock sale or a dinner or a political meeting. The well-kept chestnut leather of a pair of RMs that spends the rest of the month sitting buffed clean in the wardrobe is a sign of respect.
Despite the price tag, roper boots don’t really have that cachet. It’s one thing to pretend to be a working farmer, it’s another to cosplay as Clinton Anderson.
But perhaps that’s the point. The Australian right is increasingly importing tactics from rightwing groups in the US, it may as well copy the footwear. As Joyce took to the stage at an anti-renewables rally in Canberra earlier this year, a man shouted into the microphone: “We need someone like Donald Trump to save us.”
He may be a shoo-in. The pond left in that link to Clinton because there's a whole other world right there ...
And then there was the Peter Beaumont Graudian story Israeli journalist describes threats over reporting on spy chief and ICC, Haaretz journalist was warned of ‘consequences’ if he reported on attempts by Mossad chief to intimidate ex-prosecutor.
If you went to the actual Haaretz example, (paywall) you reeled away from gobbets that looked like this ...
Talk about censorship on a grand style, why it put the good old days of D-notices to shame ...
Daanyal Saeed was in fine form and the pond found it irresistible ...inter alia ...
...As of May 30, Morrison has managed to sell 1,991 copies of Plans for Your Good, mostly of the paperback edition. It has worked out to just over $61,000 in sales thus far for the former member for Cook, with only 186 copies in hardback form.
Which sounds impressive… until you compare it to the first-month sales of the man he deposed, Malcolm Turnbull.
Despite being leaked ahead of time (something that eventually drew an apology from a Morrison staffer), Turnbull’s memoir, A Bigger Picture, sold 33,373 hardback editions in its first month on sale, to a value of more than $1.3 million. By our count, Turnbull’s book outsold Morrison’s in the hardback stakes 179 times over. What’s that saying about battles and wars?
What about ScoMo’s best mate, 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame? Tame’s memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, without a good chunk of the publicity associated with a prime ministerial debut, sold 13,138 hardback copies in its first month on sale. Tame and Morrison’s relationship is perhaps best remembered via Tame’s scowl at the awards morning tea, but we daresay these number might bring a smile to the face.
We also looked at Julia Gillard’s memoir, My Story, which sold 31,856 copies in its first month on sale back in 2014, as well as John Howard’s Lazarus Rising, which sold 25,115 copies when it was released in 2010.
BookScan data may not necessarily tell the full story, given its omission of smaller independent booksellers. To that end, Crikey contacted a number of independent bookstores in Morrison’s home electorate of Cook, in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. Only one picked up the phone, but the tale they told us was grim.
This particular bookstore, which asked not to be named, told Crikey it didn’t bother stocking Morrison’s latest works, and had negligible demand for it. Only one person had requested an order for the book since its release.
Crikey was told this was a fairly unusual for such a high-profile book. Apparently Niki Savva’s Bulldozed, which was described by veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes as “the gripping inside story of how Scott Morrison went from miracle man to roadkill,” has proven popular.
This can be a challenge for politicians’ memoirs, we were told: “Either a lot of people really don’t like them or actually stan them.”
It’s not the first flop for Morrison amongst independent booksellers — one former Bondi bookseller, in the heartland of where Morrison grew up, told Crikey they had to return almost 300 copies of Morrison’s 2019 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture oration to the publisher.
But if the pond did all this wandering about outside the hive mind, what would happen to its herpetology studies? Would there be any room at the inn Miranda,
sorry Marina?
Perforce the pond must always return to its studies, no matter how depressing and debilitating they must be, no matter that there's Dame Slap in the extreme far right position of the digital edition, Tingling away, or down below "Ned" getting into Chicken Little mode yet again ...
After gadding about away from the bubble-wrapped hive mind, the pond simply couldn't come at that pair today ... maybe tomorrow.
The pond looked below the fold for something, anything of interest ...
Phew, what a relief, some dinkum climate science denialism from a reformed seminarian.
Now before anyone asks, the Ughmann (you are the walrus) has astonishing scientific credentials, as noted at the ABC here ...
So what's a failed priest, storeman and packer and security guard make of climate science? Well, natch, he treats it as a religion ...
There, you see, scribbled as any failed priest would do ...a fine Latin moment, no need for logarithms or field studies when you've got Latin ...
The pond should note that the reptiles assembled some splendid illustrations, here reduced and merely noted by the pond ...
As for the substance of the argument, the pond won't be making a comment. The pond simply doesn't have the experience, depth or knowledge or Latin quotes to enter into a debate ... but the pond would suggest that zealots love the word "zealot" because they love to get in to a bit of zealotry themselves...
Quite a bold summary by a former security guard, but the pond must keep moving and leave others to engage in the discussion or perhaps employ the aid of actual scientists ...
This is, of course, the art of cherry picking, an article of faith amongst biblical scholars and climate science denialists, and full of liturgical flourishes of the "What of droughts?" kind, whereof the Oz readership might marvel at the parting of the seas of enlightenment ...
Then came a final big chunky gobbet ... beginning, you guessed it, with a rhetorical flourish, "What of bushfires?", though if the pond wanted a real comic touch, it would have settled for "Let's be clear" ... given that the aim is obfuscation, confusion and incoherence ...
Let's be clear, it's a splendid billy goat butt ...
Of course he was going to end with "This is all about faith". That's what failed seminarians do ...and of course "zealots" would get another serve in that gobbet, what with this zealot knowing all about zealotry ...
Want similar fun? Try Factcheck: no, Richard Tice, volcanoes are not to blame for climate change ...
As for rating the Ughmann's piece on the scale, the pond will leave that to others, and simply provide a link to The 5 stages of climate denial are on display ahead of the IPCC report ...
That was back in 2013, though arguably the Ughmann is back in medieval Rome cunningly using his knowledge of Latin to win the argument ...
After that, the pond needed a bonus offer, and bearing in mind there's always Sunday, the pond turned to the grieving bromancer, finally gone full MAGA ...
The pond has already said all it wants to say on the matter in a post late yesterday ...
As for Killer's headline story, some might wonder why the pond went with the bromancer rather than Killer, but Killer attempted a rather boring piece of straight reporting, featuring anonymous experts ...
Legal experts expect Mr Trump to escape jail time as he has no prior convictions and the charges are considered minor – but the threat of incarceration remains.
Legal experts were surprised by the verdict, which relied heavily on the testimony of Mr Cohen, a convicted fraudster who revealed under cross-examination that he had stolen from Mr Trump.
What remarkable legal experts.
Meanwhile the reptiles had kitted out the bromancer with the usual illustrations, including a dark Don ...
Oh dear, that really is an ominous portrait of the Don in the dark ... while the bromancer muttered on darkly ...
It goes without saying that a second felony was specified, it involved a
New York State election-law violation, and the pond does wish the bromancer would occasionally do a bit of reading before scribbling furiously.
There's an easy enough argument to suggest it was pushing the felony boundary but saying felonies weren't cobbled together is a bit much ...
Never mind, the pond is actually here for the 'toons ...
There was Rowe, with a piece entitled ...Time flies ... circa 2017 ...
And another 'toon, circa now ...
By golly, the pond must immediately go searching so it can splash some of it on and inhale deeply ...
Meanwhile, the poor old MAGA-addled, MAGA-loving bromancer was still in a state of hysterics ...
Poor old Killer had to include some Sgt Friday details ... what twelve actual Americans, yes, legal experts advise that New Yoikers are actual Americans, concluded ...
Democrat District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the charges over a year after they were passed over by federal prosecutors and his predecessor, said the verdict reflected an impartial US judicial system and praised the jury for delivering a verdict “without fear or favour”.
“The 12 everyday jurors vowed to make a decision based on the evidence and the law, and the evidence and the law alone,” Mr Bragg said. “Their deliberations led them to a unanimous conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant, Donald J. Trump, is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree to conceal a scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.”
A Biden campaign spokesman said Mr Trump was “running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator ‘on day one’ and calling for our constitution to be ‘terminated’ so he can regain and keep power”.
“A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans’ freedoms and fomenting political violence – and the American people will reject it this November,” the spokesman said.
Oh Killer, Killer ...
And speaking of man babies, is there a bigger baby than an hysterical bromancer heralding, portending the end of the world yet again?
Yeah, yeah, power on, MAGA man ... there's a light in the clouds or a visage in the car...
Will no one rid me of these troublesome seminarians?
ReplyDelete"Legal experts expect Mr Trump to escape jail time as he has no prior convictions
ReplyDeleteand the charges are considered minor"
But there will still be moments of cosmic retribution.
One time Trump fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen was interviewed on CNBC two hours ago
and gleefully described all the humiliations convicts under go when they are processed.
As he went through them.
Which the ex game show host WILL undergo, no ifs, ands or buts.
Don has already surrendered his passport and must get permission to travel anywhere,
filling out paperwork explaining in detail the reason for a trip.
But the fun part for us - which may cause control freak Good Year boy to stroke out
on the spot - is that in front of witnesses in a room, which may include female
Corrections staff whom almost certainly will be from ethnic groups he doesn't
care for, Don will be handed a cup.
And in front of a two way mirror with more witnesses behind it looking on,
Donnie has to produce little don and provide a sample.
Visions of George Costanza on Seinfeld defensively yelling out
"I was in the pool, there was shrinkage"
leap to mind.
With his uncertain plumbing - the reason he is up at 3 AM tweeting as he
waits to go - those poor bastard civil servants tasked to be there should
bring a checkerboard to pass the time with the Secret Service agents.
Two foreign witnesses are required to observe the proceedings,
I volunteered GrueBleen and Chadwick, no need to thank me fellas.
Bring along a kip for two-up and no matter how long Trump takes
you'll be right.
Okay I made up that last bit.
:)³ Made the pond's morning ...
DeleteMade my morning too, even with that nomination to serve the cause of democracy. Thank you Jersey Mike - so good to have comment direct from the land of the free.
DeleteYes indeed, thanks JM; if ever I had a motive to risk a modern jetliner (hoping it doesn't have to be a Boeing), that would be it. And a pleasant flight with Chad to boot !
DeleteOur Owl-man is still feeling his way on reptile climate ‘discussion’. He has - I’m sure inadvertently - mentioned ‘A paleoclimate proxy reconstruction shows’ - something about cyclones along the coastline across the past 550-1500 years.
ReplyDeleteSo go to the ‘mind-numbing 2391 pages’ of the 2021 report - readily available, at no cost, as such publications should be - and we find that the reconstruction was published in 2014, using oxygen isotope ratios in stalagmites to reconstruct cyclone activity.
Now, Chris - maaate - when will you realise that all of these climate reconstructions are based on all sorts of fanciful, supposedly ‘scientific’ methods, and there is a standard reptile response (the Dog Bovverer will happily give you a tutorial or three - it used to be Dr Marohasy, but she seems not to be in favour these days). Keep mentioning ‘assumptions’ - whatever these scientists publish draw on assumptions; there is a whole lexicon, which includes, ‘dubious’, ‘unproven’, ‘speculative’ ‘cherry-picking’ - no doubt the Bovverer has all of it on his computer for ready access.
You should know also that any referral to paleoclimate reconstruction can lead into areas you should leave alone. From the 1940s, climate reconstruction off California, using ratios of scales of small clupeoid fishes as the temperature index (‘Didja ever read anything more ridiculous? How can fish scales tell ya what the temperature was thousands years ago? I mean - use a bit a common sense!’)
Anyway, that indicator suggested that those waters were steadily warming, at a stage when the known long cycles of temperature on Earth, otherwise attributed to planetary alignments, should have been showing the onset of a cooling phase. So, if the system was warming - what might have been causing that? One prospect was the atmospheric drivers of temperature, because of increasing carbon dioxide in that atmosphere. What do we know of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Not enough, so Roger Revelle and Charles Keeling set up the observatory on Mauna Loa, from 1957, to give us a reliable time series of data, with no need to go to those ‘dubious’ proxy indicators.
Of course, Chris - you really should have checked that proxy reconstruction that you were happy to cite at second hand. You would have found that it has three authors - two of whom come from - James Cook University. Chris - how could you have appeared to approve a publication coming out of James Cook? I mean - you are aware, aren’t you, that just about everything that has come from there over the last couple of decades, apart from what was under the direct supervision of one Peter Ridd, often as not financed by good clean money from industry, is just not worth your time to read. So - rather than take any such risk, just do not cite anything from the charlatan wing of JCU.
Finally, Chris - finally - just because you lift a quote from page 1586 doesn’t mean that some geek won’t go to his own copy and wonder why you mention that the significant point to the publication on the Oxygen isotopes was that the period around norther Queensland had been stable, compared with several other places in the world which show significant increase in storm activity across much the same period. Funny stuff - science.
Yes, Marohasy has kinda disappeared without trace, hasn't she. But anyway, it is rather chilling to recall that the whole 'global warning' mess really got under way with Svante Arrhenius back in 1896 (though several others had been working on it since 1824)
Deletehttps://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicted-global-warming/
Both storm activity and intensity/magnitude seem to be on an overall increase, but it is curious how people (eg Chris) can't understand how independent variables can vary independently and how 'weather' (including the Nino and Nina and Indian dipole) can therefore, from time to time, act to either nullify or intensify climate.
But good summary, thanks Chad.
I wonder what the Owlman would make of this:
Deletehttps://theconversation.com/the-delhi-heatwave-is-testing-the-limits-of-human-endurance-other-hot-countries-should-beware-and-prepare-230866
Don't think I'd like 50+°C, would you ? And we haven't even quite made it to +1.5 yet.
"Even if Trump were guilty" writes Greg Sheridan. Perhaps Sheridan wrote this before he read the verdict by ordinary citizens on the jury, who were vetted by Trump's lawyers, or perhaps he just doesn't understand the word "guilty".
ReplyDeleteUnlike Greg, the jury decided it was not a "mis-recorded" fee. Sheridan was not on the jury, so he did not hear all the evidence, as the jury did.
The jury were not asked to decide on the consensual sex between Trump and Stephanie Clifford, so mentioning that this was legal is irrelevant.
Cohen was convicted of perjury, but it didn't take the jury long to decide who was more believable, Cohen or Trump, did it? Looks like the jury decided Trump wa sthe bigger crim.
If a political candidate uses financial payments to stop information which could influence an election from coming to light, this is not a minor misdemeanor and it is regarded as a criminal offence under American law. But perhaps Greg doesn't support the rule of law.
Greg is aghast that a person standing trial should front court and therefore not be able to run a political campaign across America! Actually, Trump campaigned against both the justice system and the Democrats almost every time he exited the court, but apparently Greg must have nodded off during those press campaigns.
As Sheridan should know, assembling evidence for prosecutions takes time and Trump himself has used all sorts of tactics to impede charges being laid against him.
Sheridan bemoans that the trial has cost the Trump campaign millions of dollars, but the biggest loser is not Trump? So the money doesn't matter, then?!
At best, Sheridan's imputation that the jury were biased because the trial was in Manhattan is insulting to ordinary law-abiding people.
Ah, Anony, there's many more words than 'guilty' that the Bromancer doesn't understand. But yes, that is one of them.
DeleteSome background information on the hush money investigation for you:
Deletehttps://jabberwocking.com/39236-2/
I find it interesting that those who write or talk for Murdoch, but otherwise claim to be 'conservative', are so ready to support the 'side' rather than long-established conservative principles. So - back to Magna Carta - juries were established as a mainstay of the legal system, but I have remarked on how easily the various media contributors had no problem with the High Court of Australia simply setting aside a jury verdict in the case of Pell, and the same contributors so readily sidestep that a jury, has now, unanimously, found Trump guilty on 34 counts. Some even go so far as to assert that the jury could not have done its job properly in processing so many counts in the time it took for its deliberations,
Delete"...the pond does wish the bromancer would occasionally do a bit of reading before scribbling furiously." Umm, hope springs eternal, DP ?
ReplyDeleteBromancer: "This kind of trial would have made prosecutors proud in the old Soviet Union". Given how much present day wingnuts - eg the Bromancer - are clearly proud of the current "soviet union" and its heroic "leader", that's not unreasonable, is it ?
A Bragg via the Bro: "...praised the jury for delivering a verdict 'without fear or favour'." Let's see just how long they remain fearless once they are doxxed. Because they certainly will be, won't they.
Bro: "...the trial should never have been held in Manhattan ... the chance of Trump getting a fair trial there was zero." No, of course it should have been held in Texas, or even maybe Florida, where every little thing is "fair".
Bro again: "...a monstrous atack on US democracy and a clear mis-use of the judicial system." That's funny - isn't that what was said about the prosecution of Al Capone ... and Richard Nixon ?
The Murdoch Maggots, I wonder how cheaply they sold their souls to the Foreigner Murdoch!
ReplyDeleteSupersharers! "Grinberg adds, “but rather a longer term corrosive socio-technical process that contaminates the information ecosystem for some part of society.”
ReplyDelete...
".. in a sample of more than 16,000 Twitter users taken around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 80% of tweeted news from untrustworthy websites came from just 16 users. But who were these superspreaders?
"To find out, Grinberg’s team dove into a far bigger data set comprising 660,000 U.S. X users who used their real name and location, allowing the researchers to match them with voter registration data. About 7% of all political news shared by these users on any given day came from untrustworthy websites such as Infowars and Gatewaypundit, the researchers found. And just 2107 users were spreading 80% of the fake news.
The average supersharer was 58 years old, 17 years older than the average user in the study, and almost 60% were women. They were also far more likely to be registered Republicans (64%) than Democrats (16%). Given their frenetic social media activity, the scientists assumed supersharers were automating their posts. But they found no patterns in the timing of the tweets or the intervals between them that would indicate this. “That was a big surprise,” says study co-author Briony Swire-Thompson, a psychologist at Northeastern University. “They are literally sitting at their computer pressing retweet.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/tiny-number-supersharers-spread-vast-majority-fake-news