That's it? A serve of "Ned" asking questions? What, no Barners? No Uncle Elon? Where's the laffin', reptiles of Oz?

 

The pond woke up late, chilly and grumpy, and nothing in the lizard Oz helped ... there was absolutely nothing of interest, no Uncle Elon carrying on like a ratbag, the current US kerfuffle disappeared, Ukraine merely a dream, the Gaza genocide removed from the top of the page...

All the pond was left with was a serve of nattering "Ned", Dame Slap rabbiting on about Aboriginal leadership, and the Prof, JC, in a state of ecstasy about the Olympics ...

Luckily Francesca Ebel and Mary Ilyushina had provided the pond with a dose of culture yesterday in WaPo in Artists say Putin’s push for patriotism is killing Russian culture (paywall):

MOSCOW — Not even the famed Bolshoi Theater has been spared President Vladimir Putin’s wartime push for Russian culture to prioritize patriotism over artistic freedom.
Several Bolshoi stars have fled the country. The theater no long tours in Europe and America. And its longtime director resigned last year and was replaced with a staunch Putin loyalist, after publicly admitting that its repertoire was censored to remove works by directors or choreographers who criticized the Ukraine invasion.
The Bolshoi is hardly the only iconic Russian institution under pressure. The longtime directors of Moscow’s Tretyakov and Pushkin fine art museums were also replaced.
Musicians, actors and writers who oppose the war are being hounded into exile or driven underground — while artists remaining in Russia are compelled by the government to echo a new nationalist zeal in their work. Those who actively voice support for the war are rewarded with fame and fortune. Movies or music glorifying the army or upholding patriotic values receive hefty government subsidies.
President Vladimir Putin’s push to re-engineer his country as a militarized superpower in conflict with liberal Western values is sterilizing Russia’s once-vibrant cultural landscape, artists say. By demanding that the new turbocharged patriotism pervade everything from fine art exhibits to rap music to ballet performances, the Kremlin is stifling creativity and squashing free expression.
The changes represent the starkest shift since the 1930s, when the Soviet Union, under Joseph Stalin, adopted socialist realism as its official cultural doctrine — requiring artists to depict and promote Marxist-Leninist ideals in every form of their work.
“I am afraid what we are witnessing now may be the end of Russia as we have known it, the end of the cultural phenomenon that is associated with the term ‘Russian culture,’” the acclaimed Russian detective novelist Grigory Chkhartishvili — better known by his pen name, Boris Akunin — said in an interview from London, where he now lives.
A prominent theater critic said that a Soviet relic — the assignment of a curator from the KGB to control what gets onstage — has made a comeback, and major theaters now have minders from the FSB, the KGB’s main successor.
A department within Russia’s Interior Ministry, known as Center E — named for its official task of countering extremism — plays a crucial role in the state’s control over the arts and often sends agents to sit among spectators at performances, according to musicians and directors.
At the Bolshoi, home to the storied ballet company, the longtime director, Vladimir Urin, was replaced by Valery Gergiev, a Putin loyalist who also runs the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. Urin had supported Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 but signed a petition opposing the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Gergiev, by contrast, has long been an unequivocal supporter of Putin and had an engagement at La Scala in Milan cut short when he refused to condemn the war.

And so on, and the pond knew this despicable Gergiev character as the man who ostentatiously, and pretentiously, conducted orchestras with a toothpick ...

Yet again "Weird", the word of the week and possibly the month ...but enough pleasure, needs must, and so it was off to "Ned" for a bit of domesticity designed to induce a power nap ...

Amazingly "Ned" will offer up this rumination without a single mention of Barners ... yet the lad has been in astonishing form ...

The pond would have been better off reading John Hanscombe in yesterday's Canberra Times' The Echidna newsletter...

To borrow a few of Mr Hanscombe's insights before continuing to purge with "Ned" ...

Barnaby is sorry. Sorry for using a terrible analogy at an anti-wind turbine rally in the Illawarra on the weekend. Sorry for likening votes to bullets, ballot boxes to magazines. Sorry for comparing the democratic act of voting to loading a gun and shooting it to be rid of three senior members of the government.

But he's not sorry for the bizarre turn of phrase he used after trying to deflect criticism of his heated rhetoric on morning TV before turning on wind farms: "It is like saying the fertilising capacity and the beauty of dog turd on your lawn in the middle of the morning works as well ... absolutely disgusting. Nobody wants them."

There's colourful language and there's incomprehensible language. Barnaby does a roaring trade in both. And that begs two questions. After so many years - so many faux pas, scandals and drunken misadventures - why is he still in parliament? And why is is he still on the frontbench, even in opposition?

To answer the first question, one has to assume the people of New England love him and are prepared to forgive the embarrassment he must rain down on the electorate. You can imagine them in the pub after the planter box incident: "Yes, he's Barnaby, but he's our Barnaby." And, of course, voters have every right to elect - and re-elect - the yokel of their choosing.

The second question is a little more complicated. It might seem counter-intuitive for the Coalition to keep Barnaby on the frontbench where his frequent naps and apparent disinterest are highly visible. But keeping him there means he can't make mischief on the backbench, where in an attack of relevance deprivation syndrome while unsupervised he might launch a plot to unseat the current Nationals leader David Littleproud.

The decision to keep Barnaby front and centre is entirely up to the Coalition but the rest of us should be worried. What happens if the Coalition wins government next year? Even the remote possibility Barnaby might once again become a minister should send a shudder down any spine still attached to a brain.

Even sober - as he reportedly has been since the planter box episode - Barnaby still suffers from acute foot in mouth disease. Trying to cosplay as a friend of the environment by opposing wind and solar farms, while using violent analogies about guns and ballot boxes, was bound to get him into trouble. Bound also to see him once again saying sorry for his stream of unconsciousness that came out as words.

By way of contrast, the reptiles did the usual trick of inflating "Ned's" piece with assorted snaps, shrunk here to a more decent and fitting size ...

Then it was on with enduring the unendurable ...

Speaking of the onion muncher, he'd been out and about in his usual way ...

If only he'd stayed in Hungary worshipping Viktor Orbán or perhaps dining in little England with Nigel, but instead he poked his fingers in some local pies ...

How the keen Kean sticks in the guts of the old climate science denialist mob ...

There was a snap as usual ...

...and then in the final line the real level of delusion became apparent ...

Cold on nuking the country to save the planet? Naturally he can't be a member of the cult.

Sorry, the pond took an elaborate side tour there, an enormous leap to the right, but be calm, "Ned" is still here, still rabbiting on in his very unique way ...

The pond is lucky that it kept a few infallible Popes to hand in the case of a dire emergency, and this one will do ...

Poor Gladys, poor pond, still trapped with "Ned" and not a washing machine or clothesline in sight ...

Sheesh, memories of Gough, ancient times from an ancient reptile living in the land of lost past glories.

It was lucky the pond had this clip of Barners (left over from before the journos went on strike) which could help celebrate real leadership ...

Now that's entertainment, sadly lacking in "Ned's" tiresome and tiring piece ...

Oh sheesh, more of the JAQ routine, and yet not a single question about the nuking of the country to save the planet ... what a relief to reach the end ...

"Ned" asks about capturing the imagination, but all he captured was the numbing sense of being trapped in the members' bar with an epic bore ... memo to "Ned", you need to weird it up a little.

Luckily the pond had kept another infallible Pope to help wash the taste from the mouth ...

As for the rest, the pond decided to call it quits early ... the Prof sounded like Leni Riefenstahl on a bad hair day ...

If the pond wanted a serve of this sort of nonsense, it would head off to watch Olympia, available in various versions on YouTube.

It started with all the usual pieties and shots of tastefully nude Germanic bodies ...

Spoiler and nausea alert, the Prof emeritus kept up his dribbling and drivelling to the bitter end, showing an inclination to devour sentimental movies ...

It goes without saying that the Olympics is a deeply corrupt business, wandering around the globe, looting countries and leaving little but medals and waste behind ...

If you want to celebrate sport, try some of the world championships that are held outside that corrupt body, that band of international pirates, or at least celebrate the merde in the Seine ...

And that's it for the day. Sorry, no Uncle Elon, no low comedy, though there was plenty to hand ...

Back in the day, uncle Elon was some kind of extinctionist himself ...Elon Musk: we must colonise Mars to preserve our species in a third world war

Humans must prioritise the colonisation of Mars so the species can be conserved in the event of a third world war, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk said on Sunday.

“It’s important to get a self-sustaining base on Mars because it’s far enough away from earth that [in the event of a war] it’s more likely to survive than a moon base,” Musk said on stage at SXSW – just days after Donald Trump announced plans to meet the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in an attempt to defuse rising nuclear tension.

“If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages,” Musk said, responding to questions from his friend Jonah Nolan, the co-creator of the TV show Westworld...

...Musk said he was now kept awake at night by the threat posed by unregulated artificial intelligence, which he has previously warned could lead humanity into a third world war – another the reason to go to Mars.

“Mark my words,” he said, “AI is much more dangerous than nukes. So why do we have no regulatory oversight?”

He suggested a public regulatory body would need “insight and oversight” to confirm that everyone was developing AI safely and in a way that is “symbiotic with humanity”.

However, even coming up with the safety parameters would present all sorts of insidious and unexpected risks, Musk said. If the utility function of artificial intelligence is to maximise happiness of humans, a super-intelligent AI might decide that the best way to do that is to capture all humans and inject their brains with dopamine and serotonin.

Musk proposed that digital intelligence should instead be directed to maximise “the freedom of action of humanity”.

The Q&A session ended on a surreal note as Musk, his younger brother Kimbal and Nolan all donned stetsons and sang a snippet of My Little Buttercup, a song from the 1986 movie The Three Amigos.

“This is going to be real bad,” warned Musk. He was right.

And now here we are ...Elon Musk defends posting a deepfake video of Kamala Harris with a vulgar dig

You see "Ned"? This is how to do weird ... Elon Musk Attacks Gavin Newsom in Phallic Online Rant: ‘Deeznutz’

And so on and on, endlessly on ... and all the pond could do was end mourning what was missing this day in the lizard Oz headlines ...

It's a splendid day ...with the bromancer in a state of transcendental rage and Dame Groan once again fearful of furriners ...

 

It's only a gut feeling, but the pond suspects that there's been an uptick in excitement and scribbling about the Murdochians, thanks to that impending Succession-style September trial.

Will Hutton was on about it in the Graudian (Observer edition) in Rupert Murdoch’s secret succession drama is a warning to rein in the super-rich

...It is, as the three children (James, Elisabeth and Prudence) to be stripped of their rights recognised instantly, a naked dynastic power play that makes the hit series Succession look tame. Murdoch, at 93, did not want to end up in court: he tried to use all his guile, dressing up the move as “Project Harmony”, to persuade his daughters Prudence and Elisabeth at a private meeting in London that it would be in their interests – and so not to contest it. The apparent ploy was to isolate James, the son who most openly disavows the maxims of the new conservatism – he is neither a climate change denier nor a supporter of the Donald Trump lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen – and so create a voting majority for the change.
He underestimated his daughters, who reportedly were livid. They have combined with James to challenge the change, which under Nevada state law must be done in “good faith” and for the sole benefits of all the trust’s beneficiaries. The most expensive lawyers in the US will face each other to try to prove Murdoch’s good faith on one side – and bad faith on the other. This more than rivals the most dramatic scene in Succession.
All four children are convinced capitalists and uncomplaining billionaires; that is not the bone of contention. But the trio neither agree with Lachlan’s strategic direction and how the companies have been run, nor with his political judgments that have been so sorely tested by Trump’s political rebirth, after the storming of the Capitol on 6 January. What is at issue is corporate probity, journalistic integrity and the direction of rightwing politics in the US, Britain and Australia.
James Murdoch as CEO and then chair of Sky between 2003 and 2012 was a leading champion of sustainability. A Joe Biden donor, he resigned from the News Corp board in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election citing strategic and editorial differences. He is no Trumpite, and surely will have agreed with his father’s email in the wake of 6 January that Trump should become a “non-person”. But that was then.
His father’s current attempt to ingratiate himself with Trump – though embarrassingly consigned to a mere balcony seat at the Milwaukee Republican national convention – by organising his affairs so his influence will extend beyond the grave must be resisted to the last. It is all part of a rightwing universe in which billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are reported to be organising massive campaign contributions for Trump, while Musk plans to use his own expensive bauble – X – to churn out a tsunami of pro-Trump propaganda.

There's more, but the pond will just note that Hutton provided a splendid link to the FT, reminding the pond of the Chairman Emeritus's recent downgrading, From kingmaker to spectator: Rupert Murdoch consigned to Republican sidelines.

Generations of politicians have been willing to fly thousands of miles for an audience with Rupert Murdoch. But last week it was Murdoch, 93, who travelled to Milwaukee to witness Donald Trump accept the Republican party’s nomination for president, watching from a box in the arena.

Murdoch watchers say the media baron had not been to a US political convention in decades, if ever. Some saw it as a conciliatory gesture towards Trump — a man Murdoch has known for many years but never viewed as the best presidential material.

Others, including former executives, saw the trip as highlighting a more fundamental shift: Murdoch’s diminished influence, not just over a Republican party that has been wholly remade in Trump’s image, but across the other strongholds in his conservative media empire.

David Folkenflik, author of Murdoch’s World, said the mogul’s appearance in Milwaukee was an act of “obeisance” to a politician who remains a huge draw to Murdoch’s Fox News network. “What we’re really talking about here is Murdoch making peace with Trump as still the defining figure of the Republican party — and therefore his audience.”

Murdoch may control the most profitable, powerful media voice on the American right. But nothing seemed to go his way in Milwaukee. Trump selected JD Vance as his running mate on the first day of the convention — a pro-regulation, anti-Wall Street senator opposed by Murdoch, who preferred North Dakota governor Doug Burgum.

The Trump family then appeared to revel in ignoring his advice. “There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican party, you had to bend the knee to him or to others,” Donald Trump Jr told a side event at the convention. “I don’t think that’s the case any more.” Fox declined to comment...

There was more, but the image of the Emeritus Chairman in the bleachers in company with that cat man (you know the embittered childless men who are ruining America) made the pond's day ...

But enough of fun, there's the usual herpetology studies to be done, though it required sifting through the Olympics to get to something truly engaging ...

Hold on, hold on, the bromancer's been triggered, and that's always fun ...

The pond must confess - always the confessing - that it didn't watch the opening ceremony and indeed hasn't watched a single Olympics event, but it seems that the French putting on a show did some good, if only by triggering the bromancer and other bigoted Xian fundamentalists.

The pond was so pleased that it followed that reptile link in red, only to discover it stayed inside the reptile hive mind, with another serve of the bromancer ...

It did show the bromancer was ahead of the times, because "weird" has become the word of the week, and the bromancer was fashionably and deeply weird a long time ago ...

Allies of Harris are shifting gears to emphasize not the danger they think Trump poses to the country but instead how “weird” he sounds when he makes outlandish claims.

“Listen to the guy,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” of Trump. “He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter, and shocking sharks, and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just give him way too much credit.”

Calling Trump and Vance “weird” helps “ratchet down some of the scariness,” Walz, a potential vice presidential pick, said. He went on to add that Trump is rarely seen laughing.

“If he has laughed, it’s at someone, not with someone. That is weird behavior. And I don’t think you call it anything else. It’s simply what we’re observing,” Walz said.

It is certainly true that Trump rarely laughs. CNN’s Gregory Krieg wrote about it in 2016. The magician/comedian Penn Jillette, who spent time with Trump during “The Apprentice” years, has talked about how Trump does not laugh. And so has former FBI Director James Comey, who Trump controversially fired back in 2017. (CNN)

At this point the pond should note the illustrations and visual distractions deployed by the reptiles, including a huge one of the pope defaming a koala, it now being deemed wise and caring to avoid clutching at the creatures for a cheap photo op ...

Meanwhile, the triggered bromancer raged on ...

The pond wishes that the bromancer had demeaned and attacked Islam - let's face it, the whole pack of idolators are ruining the world in their usual way. The bro might even have spared an unkind word for fundamentalist Jews and barking mad Hindu nationalists ...

As for men wearing frocks ...

Beyond caricature, beyond comedy, beyond Priscilla...

Never mind, again the pond followed the link, and stayed inside the hive mind, but somehow the Xian leaders had gone missing and the pond landed on a hole in the bucket man piece ...

Back to the bromancer, still in a state of wild-eyed high dudgeon ...

What's interesting here is that apparently this Barron chap is completely barren when it comes to having the first clue about French history, and how French secularism came to be ...

An even bigger problem was the way that the bromancer apparently consorted with selfish childless people who really should have no say in how the planet is run ...

At this point, the pond should confess ...so much confessing... its logarithms have been throwing up assorted atheist tracts, including Stephen Fry (the pond hated the jumbled cut) and only the other day, She put a copy of Christopher Hitchens' God is NOT Great, How religion poisons everything, in a street library, and what could the pond do but rescue it and give it a good home? (Yes, he was on YouTube too).

At this point the pond should note a few more snaps, including one of the man who had helped triggered the bromancer ... and another of a selfish apparently childless man who really shouldn't have anything to say about anything ...

On the bromancer raged ...

The pond dutifully followed the link and began to feel like Alice, because instead of First Things, the pond ended up on a Comrade Dan story, with the bromancer in yet another frenzy of fear and loathing ...

Then it was back for a final gobbet of gospel bro ...

Indeed, indeed, there's much good energy in fundamentalist Xianity in the USA ...

Before moving on to today's groaning, the pond should note that there's nothing like observing the deep fear that frock wearers experience when confronted by other devotees of frock wearing, but the pond isn't wanting to do its usual atheist thing, because the pond's logarithms threw up a splendid example of the best of Xianity, and with 16 million views, it was probably past time to give it a run ...

And so on to Dame Groan, groaning in her usual way about pesky, difficult furriners ...

This is such familiar turf for a groaning that the pond didn't know what to say, except to note that the reptiles went all in on some huge snaps, perhaps as a way to distract from the tedium. 

Naturally the pond reduced them down to size ...

Eek, he seemed to be clutching a bible ...

There was also a video clip, carefully neutered by way of screen cap ...

All these visual distractions just get in the way of a jolly good, deeply heartfelt Groaning about the way furriners keep on ruining the country, not least because of all the Groaning they cause ...

At this point, the pond would usually have introduced a cartoon, but things are a bit tricky with the current strike, so an undiluted Groaning it had to be ... with the Dame incredibly agitated ...

The pond suddenly realised there was one visual that would fit... if you can imagine that instead of cards, you're seeing furriners, and instead of Alice, there's a besieged Dame Groan ... sure, it's a real stretching of the imagination, especially the Alice bit, but it can be done ...

It's roughly akin to the bromancer being assaulted by drag routines ... and then there were just two short gobbets to go ...

Bloody families, why can't we have childless cat people coming into the country? And what deluded possum thinks a furriner has the skills to replace Dame Groan doing a damned good Groaning?

So humble, so modest. Pesky, difficult furriners have been the number one obsession of Dame Groan for years ... only matched, but never surpassed, by her deep fixation on the weevils of renewables ...but if she has her way, it might shift the electoral dial ... 

See if you can spot Dame Groan in the picture ...

Never mind, there's nothing like utter predictability to make for a quiet life...

As Mr Pooter once noted ...

After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What’s the good of a home, if you are never in it? “Home, Sweet Home,” that’s my motto. "Get lost foreigners" is another one. I am always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may drop in without ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite, and thankfully they're not bloody foreigners. My dear wife Caroline and I are pleased to see them, if they like to drop in on us. But Carrie and I can manage to pass our evenings together without friends... because who needs foreigners? There is always something to be done: a tin-tack here, a Venetian blind to put straight, a fan to nail up, or part of a carpet to nail down—all of which I can do with my pipe in my mouth; while Carrie is not above putting a button on a shirt, mending a pillow-case, or practising the “Sylvia Gavotte” on our new cottage piano (on the three years’ system), manufactured by W. Bilkson (in small letters), from Collard and Collard (in very large letters). It is also a great comfort to us to know that our boy Willie is getting on so well in the Bank at Oldham. We should like to see more of him... if only the foreigners hadn't clogged up the transport system and the education system and ruined the banks ...

And so to an Olympics-themed 'toon to wrap up a splendid day ...