Last night Media Watch sent out a moaning and a wailing about the fate of the Ten network, Free-to-air 'death spiral (sic), and it suddenly occurred to the pond that it couldn't remember the last time it had actually watched a program on 10 (or the other two FTA stations). (Instead the pond has been watching with fascination the number of full length, reasonably current major studio feature films that have been bobbing up on YouTube, such that it's become piracy central, but that's another story).
Media Watch seemed to think it was all the fault of vulgar youff, but the pond is of an age, and the result's the same. Zero interest.
In much the same spirit, the pond rarely looks at anything but the headlines in the Nine rags. When the pond does a deeper dive, it's likely to come across the likes of gorgeous George scribbling furiously Ditching Boris sowed seeds of shambolic Tory defeat (paywall):
Those who say that things were already going downhill – that Johnson had become toxically unpopular due to the “partygate” scandal – miss the point. Johnson’s Houdini-like capacity to recover from seemingly unsurvivable political scrapes has defined his career. As the news cycle moved on, he would have recovered from “partygate”. A mesmerising stump orator with remarkable appeal to working-class Britons, he would have given the charmless Starmer a run for his money. I doubt he would have won – the “It’s time” factor for any long-serving government is as irreversible as the ebbing of the tide – but I have no doubt that he would have done much better than Sunak.
At the very least, Johnson would have kept Farage out of the race. Farage (who was initially reluctant to run at all) has always been intimidated by Johnson, whose appeal to Brexiteers eclipses his. Dozens of safe seats lost to Labour or the Liberal Democrats would have been saved had Farage not skimmed a quarter of the Tory vote.
The lying fraud of Partygate and false Brexit promises fame was the solution, not the problem?
How quickly the monarchists forget the depth of the infamy ...
There was at least a bizarre addendum:
George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general. He is a professor at ANU.
He's a prof at the ANU? No wonder the pond holds universities in disdain ... it seems university students must now endure whatever politician the cat or the VC dragged in ...
Media Watch also carried on about deplorable framing of Senator Payman, including this question from a congenital idiot aka member of the Australian media and the inevitable response:
FATIMA PAYMAN: I don’t know how to respond to that question without feeling offended or insulted that just because I’m a visibly Muslim woman that I would only care about Muslim issues. This topic on Palestinian recognition, Palestinian liberation is a matter that has impacted everyone with a conscience, it is a matter that’s not just a Jewish versus Muslim issue, this is a matter about humanity. - 7.30, ABC, 4 July, 2024
This has also been covered in Crikey, with ‘Pathetic’: Muslim journalists slam ‘rabid’, ‘disgusting’ coverage of Fatima Payman and Payman triggers a racist upwelling from deep in the political media psyche (sorry, paywall).
The pond was expecting another day of it from the reptiles, but the lizard Oz had moved on, or more to the point, yet again regressed...
Oh FFS, not the Lehrmann matter for the umpteenth time, with Dudders and Dame Slap both at it and so Payman forced way down the page ...
This left the pond holding a perfectly good First Dog cartoon, with nowhere to go, because damned if the pond will join in the Slappian obsessive compulsion ...
Sorry to leave the First Dog just hanging in the Payman void, but there was no way the pond was going down the Lehrmann rabbit hole yet again.
Other alternatives were equally unappealing ... with the bromancer blathering on about the unfitness of Joe Biden, but apparently unable or incapable of mentioning in the same breath the complete unsuitability of his orange Jesus ...
Instead the aged readership copped asides like this ...
I’ve had a long-term prejudice in journalism for privileging what I see over what I’m told. That’s what first led me to write about climate change policies. The Australian government was telling us 15 years ago that the whole world was decarbonising, yet, spending a lot of time in Asia, it was obvious to me that Asia was doing nothing of the kind. A decade and a half later, the world is still not decarbonising, and still you never hear these inconvenient facts in the Australian debate. When you see an undeniable reality that contradicts the accepted narrative, doubt the narrative before you doubt the evidence of your own eyes. Certainly never be scared to say what you see.
Actually the pond is terrified by what it sees. A sociopathic climate science denialist in the White House and sycophants cheering from the sidelines, and making it all about Asia ... even jolly Joe in a coma and gone dark for four years seems like a viable alternative.
Luckily the pond was saved from all this fuss by a visitation from Bella of the IPA. While these tirades long ago became a ritual done by the numbers, these visitations always make for a soothing distraction ...
Of course the pond blames it all on gorgeous George, ANU prof and BoJo lover ...
And so to the standard serve of Groan ... and again the pond has to do nothing, knowing that experts in the art of deciphering Dame Groan will likely do the hard yards ...
Mein Gott: "But, the Bunnings strategy was right, and now it dominates the do-it-yourself hardware market." Dead right, how can anybody compete with the Bunnings weekend sausage sizzle outside its many stores:
ReplyDeleteBunnings says sausage sizzles still on despite new food safety regulations
https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/bunnings-says-sausage-sizzles-still-on-despite-new-food-safety-regulations/news-story/77b0235cf6856357aaa1e478c47cbe02
We get sausages, curriculum and capitalism. Under my rock.
ReplyDeleteYet I must live under a rock!
Because I haven't seen Hanibal.
Is Hannibal related to Sampson?
"Israeli Newspaper Confirms IDF Employed ‘Hannibal Directive’ on October 7
[Links to original whistleblower and reporting]
"The Washington Post ran a whole hit piece on Electronic Intifada and others like The Grayzone back in January. While it’s a positive to see Haaretz finally report on the Hannibal Directive, it’s about seven months too late. And one wonders how the WaPo hit piece was used to suppress the reach of “conspiracy theories.” As Electronic Intifada pointed out at the time:
...
"The Washington Post article is therefore likely to be used by Israel lobby groups to pressure big tech firms to suppress the reach of journalists who challenge Israel’s lies, under the banner of fighting supposed “disinformation.”
...
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/israeli-newspaper-confirms-idf-employed-hannibal-directive-on-october-7.html
Why am I not surprised though?
Our Dame really has been through the Groansworth supermarket, or is that the Salvation Groaners Opshop?, taking vaguely techy items pretty much at random.
ReplyDeleteThere is the invocation from ‘Nature’, but, of course, without a link, about ‘quantum machine learning’ to deflate prospects for quantum computing. It is not too difficult to identify the article. It is by ‘Nature’ staff reporter, Davide Castelvecchi, from January 02 this year. Seems our Dame was too cheap to pay for the full text (and, given that she was not noted for being any kind of member of ‘learned societies’, and we are not sure if she still qualifies to be ‘adjunct professorial fellow’ of a southern university while residing on the Sunshine Coast - she is unlikely to have institutional rights of access even to ‘Nature’) - so she has just recast the introduction, which actually reads -
‘Scientists are exploring the potential of quantum machine learning. But whether there are useful applications for the fusion of artificial intelligence and quantum computing is unclear.’ So - her version is not quite what Castelvecchi wrote, which was about possible combination of ‘machine learning and quantum computers’. In this, and other articles on this work, Castelvecchi does not question the potential of quantum machines to carry out conventional computing - he was inquiring into possible pairing of quantum computing and ‘machine learning’.
But then our Dame has form in recasting alleged ‘quotes’ to suit the case she wants to make, to the completely unquestioning readership of the Flagship, or the near brain dead watchership of ‘Sky’ and ‘ADH tv’. One wonders if she has filed on her laptop Thomas J Watson’s quite unsubstantiated statement along the lines that from his perspective, sometime in the 1940s, he could see a world market for 5 computers at most.
I was going to leave it there, but, as in the best ‘do it yourself’ commercials on late night television - ‘But wait, there’s more!’. Yes, she jumps from the dubious statement from ‘Naure’ to ‘the world may have changed but the economic rules are essentially the same’.
She is quite correct there. She sees no problem with firms, and nations, pumping carbon dioxide out in increasing quantities, in the name of progress and (very) short term convenience. Nor should she, because the effect of that carbon dioxide on the world climate is an externality. The classic ways of dealing with externalities have all been discarded by her side of political ideology, so need not figure in any of her columns. Expanding the firm to include responsibility for the externality? Other forms of property rights (and obligations) on firms and governments, or, gasp - a NEW TAX? Even the thought of having to write about any of that would require her to take a little lie-down for an hour or two, under the air-con, of course, and try not to think of those life forms in India.
Impeccable as always Chadders. Really there should be an * with note "see below" for every Groaning ...
Delete[ smirk*] Yeah, you don't really leave the Groany with anywhere to go, do you. But no prob, that's just 'situation normal' for her.
DeleteAs to TJW's quote about 5 (or was it 6 ?) 'computers' would be enough for the world, I actually worked for IBM for some years (admittedly in the backblocks called 'Australia') but I never encountered anybody who would or could point to a source for that quote. Not that that would worry Groany, of course.
But the thing is, if Groany started quoting 'reality' she'd lose her readership very quickly: they'd think she was ghosting them, or something.
* just a little bit of joy today: after it went completely missing quite some years ago, Bickfords' Cloudy Apple cordial made a return to my local supermarket's shelves again.
Have you ever heard of the "wood wide web"? I certainly hadn't:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/09/wood-wide-web-theory-charmed-us-bitter-fight-scientists