Back briefly to keep the pond on life support and to memorialise this splash by Crikey ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, a boots and all assault, what were they thinking? Sure, it's all true, but to say it out loud?
Meanwhile, the bad ship the SS Lizard Oz sailed on this day, serene and completely oblivious...
What a dismal and tedious effort, and yet a relief, because it was a reminder of how little the pond was missing while away.
There was the bromancer, with his infinite capacity for blather and inanity, proposing Why a Donald Trump White House spells disaster for Albanese, when he might have spent his time suggesting Why a Donald Trump White House spells disaster for the United Steetz (and the world) ...
The pond briefly thought of memorialising it, but the level of inanity was only worth a few of the bro's closing pars ...
...Despite the differences in our political cultures, the US is effectively adopting a number of semi-distinctively Australian syndromes. Harris, like Albanese and British Labour leader Keir Starmer, is running as an extremely small policy target. She is distancing herself from Biden’s very unimpressive term, even though she is his Vice-President.
Like Albanese and Starmer, she’s also trying to distance herself from her own left-wing past. Albanese and Starmer got almost identical levels of support, but first-past-the-post voting delivered Starmer a landslide, while preferential voting delivered Albanese an extremely narrow victory.
The US election is also likely to be very close. A fascinating new New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump just fractionally back in front. It’s not clear if the poll is an outlier, or signals the end of Harris’s honeymoon.
If Harris does lose, the US will have departed quite radically from its pattern of normally re-electing a first-term president, or, if the president dies or is forced to resign, re-electing his party. Unprecedentedly, the US will have had two one-term presidents, Trump and Biden, in a row. Getting rid of Biden so late in his term was very similar to how in parliamentary systems, especially Australia, governing parties ditch an unpopular head of government as an election approaches.
The US election probably won’t be decisive in Australia, but our election is likely to be pretty close in a lot of seats. A small change could be crucial. Is it double change: Trump and Dutton, or double continuity, Harris and Albanese?
Like Albanese and Starmer, she’s also trying to distance herself from her own left-wing past. Albanese and Starmer got almost identical levels of support, but first-past-the-post voting delivered Starmer a landslide, while preferential voting delivered Albanese an extremely narrow victory.
The US election is also likely to be very close. A fascinating new New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump just fractionally back in front. It’s not clear if the poll is an outlier, or signals the end of Harris’s honeymoon.
If Harris does lose, the US will have departed quite radically from its pattern of normally re-electing a first-term president, or, if the president dies or is forced to resign, re-electing his party. Unprecedentedly, the US will have had two one-term presidents, Trump and Biden, in a row. Getting rid of Biden so late in his term was very similar to how in parliamentary systems, especially Australia, governing parties ditch an unpopular head of government as an election approaches.
The US election probably won’t be decisive in Australia, but our election is likely to be pretty close in a lot of seats. A small change could be crucial. Is it double change: Trump and Dutton, or double continuity, Harris and Albanese?
There was a lot more sanewashing by the bromancer, but Why a Donald Trump White house spells disaster for Albanese transmogrified into The US election probably won’t be decisive in Australia, and by then the pond had completely lost interest.
Are they still offering reptiles a penny a word simply to fill up the space?
As racism got a mention, time instead to turn to Dame Groan and wonder just what inspires her ongoing obsession with furriners.
It was on view again today, yet another obsessive compulsive rant, a creation of mountains out of academic molehills ...
This is territory where there's no shaking the fixation ... as Dame Groan hunches over her spread sheet and clutches her hands and sighs to the sky at the terrifying numbers she conjures up, coming over the wall with Mexico directly to us ...
"I have made this point before..."
Well yes, incessantly, to the point of madness, and it isn't worth repeating, unless you want to establish that your obsession with furriners is even more entrenched and more deeply weird than Polonius's obsession with the ABC.
On and on she rambled, begging serious questions ...
There's something in that talk of toddlers in a lolly shop that suggests Dame Groan's own deep level of weirdness, reminiscent of the level of hatred one corner store owner used to show to the school kids (not toddlers) who flocked to his store for a sugar hit and so kept his business afloat ...so much fear and loathing, a pact of mutual distrust and hate, but what could you do? You needed the lollies, and he needed your money ...
The pond digresses, and so on to the final gobbet ...
Actually the UK isn't a good example, nor a good parallel, because the UK is in the grip of entirely different issues in relation to migration, but why bother arguing with an obsessive compulsive ...
Then came the question of a bonus, and in turn, the notion of whether it was wise to follow the canine tradition of returning to vomit made rancid by exposure to the sun, before turning into digital fish and chips wrapping, cluttering up the infinite digital void ...
Instead the pond would have celebrated the publication of Mein Gott's latest in any case, and it was a ripper, up to his usual futurist, tea leaf-reading standard, and so it was off to the moon and beyond ...
Mein Gott, then came a snap of that visionary, Uncle Leon, as he's apparently known these days ...
This was a happy coincidence because the other day the pond had received notice of a most interesting referral by Uncle Leon to a most interesting observation...
By golly, the sooner they set up a colony of like minds on Mars, naturally led by Uncle Leon, the better for everyone ...
Sorry, sorry, back to Mein Gott, still wildly excited, terrified and paranoid in the usual reptile way ...
Davos? That explains a lot, not least because the pond always gets triggered and thinks of that Dr Who villain Davros ...
Well it's a more interesting snap than the ones the reptiles offered Mein Gott from their bargain basement graphics department ...
Then it was back to conquering the moon, and after that Mars, and after that to infinity and beyond ...
Is it time for an inconvenient truth?
Nah, let the dreamer dream on, let's abandon the planet, we must colonise Mars to preserve our species in a third world war, and let Mein Gott boldly venture forth to where no Mein Gott has gone before ... even if there's only a gobbet of dreaming to go ...
Oh yes, 3D printing, and that'll sort out strata management in Australia too ...
At this point with the vision splendid outlined in such awesome, inspirational depth, the pond wondered about the wisdom of including the rancid Caterist, but in for a ponging penny, in for a completely rank opportunist pound ...
Okay, bad move. The only way the reptiles can smuggle in that crap masquerading as a cartoon is by putting it at the head of the Caterist gobbet.
If the pond wanted a terrifying caricature, it would turn to a master of the art...
Now there's a genuinely terrifying sight, though to be fair to the lizard Oz graphics department, they know how to get the pond going. Look who turned up in the montage ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, the bottle of wine man, Dame Gladys of Wagga, and the onion muncher, looking at his most stern and climate science denying, Viktor Orbán devout ...
By this point, it should be clear that the pond has absolutely no interest in what the Caterist is scribbling, and is simply standing by for the standard climate science denialism... and whaddya know, thar he blows ...
They'll never give up their desire to nuke the country, though it seems like Muswellbrook might have dodged a bullet ...
On second thoughts, is there any better way to nuke the country than to shove a reactor in an earthquake zone?
Then it was on to the fabulous flood waters in quarries whisperer reminding the world that when it comes to science, only he knows how to sort out scientists ... what with his extensive field work and vast array of peer-reviewed papers ...
No doubt the Caterist feels better for having got all that off his chest, but not so good as the pond feels knowing it has reached the last short climate science denialist gobbet ...
Ah the intellectual foundations, as outlined back in November 2023:
Denialist peas in the same blathering pod ...
And so ends this interim posting. The pond has been quite restrained, no 'toons, no links to Media Watch, though the desire to berate the government took a turn after watching Media's gambling addiction ... (on the other hand, no need to mention Kyle and Jackie O, because the pond wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, and ditto all those enablers and alleged regulators mentioned in the story. At least the pond can boast of never having listened to a nanosecond of their pissing into the radio void).
The pond will allow itself only one 'toon indulgence, and that's to wonder about the chances of one of those recommendation getting up ... the pond suspects it's about roughly even with the chance that the Caterist might actually study some science ...
The Bromancer: "Getting rid of Biden so late in his term was very similar to how in parliamentary systems, especially Australia, governing parties ditch an unpopular head of government as an election approaches."
ReplyDeleteIs he talking about Rudd and Gillard ?
Actually it wasn’t very similar at all, but the Bro never lets such considerations stop him when he’s on a roll.
DeleteUmm, The Groany: "...seem to believe their largely fabricated justifications for brazenly pursuing their own self-interest." There she blows again: typical reptile attribution and projection. They just can't help themselves, can they. Largely because they don't want to.
ReplyDelete"...behaved like toddlers in a lolly shop." And there she blows yet again again - just can't help themselves.
In a fine example of Reptile vision, Mein Gott appears to be drawing inspiration from a stack of 1970s issues of “Analog - Science Fiction / Science Fact” magazine, with his advocacy of space mining and industry. Those ideas were all the rage in SF in those days, particularly amongst the large subset of “Hard” SF authors who were enthusiastic promoters of Libertarian / far Right political and social views. Several of these didn’t just use the ideas in their fiction, but produced articles and books seriously promoting the concept, calling it “The Third Industrial Revolution”. Trouble is that for all the talk of the riches sitting out there in orbit, on the moon or in the asteroid belt, none of this enthusiasm was able to develop any sound economic arguments for such developments. The movement probably reached its height in the early 1980s when some of its proponents helped promote the concepts that eventually became the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” program, but these days it’s much more of a fringe community, even within SF. Many of its notable supporters died off (Heinlein, Pournelle, Stine), those annoying economic barriers persisted and Libertarian fantasies of rugged, individualistic space miners living on remote rocks having to pay for their air and live on algae don’t really appeal to most folk - with the exception of the Elon Musks, who see themselves as visionary pioneers who wouldn’t actually be the ones doing all that grunt work.
ReplyDelete(For an amusing read on the subject, try SF writer Charles Stross’ essay Tech billionaires need to stop trying to make the SF they grew up on real” -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/
But hey, let the Gottster indulge in retro-fantasies. It’s just a bit odd coming from somebody who presumably considers themselves an economist.
I must admit, the idea of marooning Dame Groan on an asteroid does have its attractions.
For Stross tragics...
Deletehttps://crookedtimber.org/?s=Stross
Anaolg, as we know, started life as "Astounding Stories of Super-Science" and it would have taken truly incredibly super science to make any of the inventions of back then ever even remotely happen. And it still would, Musk notwithstanding.
DeleteBut hey, making "the SF they grew up on real” is just one of those wonderful daydreams, isn't it - like Musk and his self-driving vehicles.
Dorothy - our thanks again for churning through the Groanomics for this day, so we do not have to. The Dame’s thing about furriners is now so unhinged that it is difficult to offer comment further to your own. While the Dame has been reticent to spell out a personal ideology, the pattern of her rants suggests she broadly advocates for the myth of ‘free enterprise’ of the kind promoted by ‘business leaders’ through the 20th century. Which makes one wonder when she lines up the modern business of a university, and chides its leaders for not behaving ‘ethically and in terms of restraint.’ Perhaps she was a secret advocate for that on the several boards to which she was appointed during that previous century.
ReplyDeleteThe more amusing attempt at economics came this day from the Cater. Not quite nickonomics, because it has been influenced by earlier writings from Dame Groan, particularly on the GenCost studies. Nick tells us that the cost of nuclear reactors should be amortised over a century. In the very next paragraph he tells - should that be LimitedNews ‘reveals’? - that ‘private investors make assumptions of an asset’s present value’ by discounting future benefits for the delay in seeing those returns.
Quite true; so, Nick, mate - if you have been able to crib some $, safe from the obligation to pay the Wagners that disconcerting amount the court told you to transfer to them - find yourself an investment adviser who specialises in assets being discounted over a century. You are unlikely to live to 2125 to realise all the value in that ‘investment’; nor, as far as we know, do you have offspring, for your great-great-grandees to reap that benefit. So just how do you see ‘private investors’ being attracted to the nukes?
Chadwick you said..."While the Dame has been reticent to spell out a personal ideology, the pattern of her rants suggests she broadly advocates for the myth of"... aka the lies of...
Delete...The Dame's reading list..."...saving Exxon $4.5 billion"...
"In total, Exxon supported a third of the published papers. That is to say, the company underwrote a third of the entire academic knowledge base on this subject, for a span of fifteen years.
"Furthermore, the corporate-funded articles were twenty-five times more influential in real court cases. Corporate-funded research was cited in twenty-five separate cases, whereas ordinary university-funded research was only cited in one.
“As I reflect on it now, funded punitive damages research poisoned the pool,” Barday tells me. “It created this idea that the juror is incapable of determining punishment in any rational way.”
"...saving Exxon $4.5 billion"..."one of the ten worst Supreme Court decisions of all time."
"The Insidious Elitist Upshot of Behavioral Economics
BY GORDON KATIC
"Behavioral economics dangerously denigrates the rationality of ordinary people."
https://jacobin.com/2024/08/behavioral-economics-exxon-valdez-elitism/
Not much left to say after you've basically covered the ground Chad, but just this one thing: NickC gives us this: "...until Labor can outline a creditable path and tell us how much it will cost." Never, not even once, has the Cater or any of his fellow-travelling reptile mates ever thought to ask the single most important question: how much will it cost not to do it.
DeleteAs always, in their stupidly vacuous minds, there is no cost whatsoever to not doing it. But then, maybe to them the only cost they can see will be maybe a few billion premature deaths* and a significantly changed world, and that's just - as their behaviour during the serious Covid pandemic attests - no cost at all.
* that's human deaths, of course, there'll be trillions and trillions of premature non-human deaths and species extinctions, but the Caters won't even notice any of that.
Quoth the Dame - “Immigration has never been a policy strength for Labor”. Hang on - who introduced the post WW2 immigration program? Or is that, in the Dame’s view, when the rot started to set in?
ReplyDeleteWatch out DP!
ReplyDelete"Microsoft Bing Copilot accuses reporter of crimes he covered
"Hallucinating AI models excel at defamation"
"Microsoft Bing Copilot has falsely described a German journalist as a child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric institution, and a fraudster who preys on widows.
"Martin Bernklau, who has served for years as a court reporter in the area around Tübingen for various publications, asked Microsoft Bing Copilot about himself. He found that Microsoft's AI chatbot had blamed him for crimes he had covered
...
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/26/microsoft_bing_copilot_ai_halluciation/
DP re "The pond will allow itself only one 'toon indulgence, and that's to wonder about the chances of one of those recommendation getting up ..."
ReplyDeleteI submit for loonpondians approval, the worst case of "No names No pack drill"... to protect the Lying Rodent...ever... the coversarion but without names...
"The commissioners recommend the new body should monitor and continually report back publicly about progress on tackling the high rates of suicide among military personnel.
"A similar recommendation was made by 44 senators in the 2005 inquiry. It was rejected and vetoed by the then prime minister, minister for defence and chief of defence.
...
https://theconversation.com/didnt-care-enough-heres-what-the-royal-commission-into-defence-and-veteran-suicide-found-238419
Lying by omission, conversation style. As opposed ro Crikey!
"...even with the chance that the Caterist might actually study some science...". But the Cater has already studied all the science he'll ever need and he knows that water-cooled nuclear reactors have at least a century of useful lifetime - though he doesn't actually make any attempt to tell us just how much it will cost to keep them up and running for that length of time. Good to see he doesn't think they'll be superseded within that timeframe - eg by the mythical nuclear fusion power units or by actual working CCS allowing us to continue burning dinkum Aussie coal
ReplyDeleteBut hey, that's ok; any cost will be vastly cheaper than chewing up millions of acres of rural land to plant wind turbine generators and lay out many tens of thousands of kilometers of conducting web to deliver that electricity into homes, offices and factories.
Anonymous - quiet night, nuthin' on TV, so I made the acquaintance of the polygons. Thank you for that link; it does invite more 'runs', which I will do, rather than comment now.
ReplyDeleteWe've not had a decent 'newspaper' in Australia since Nation Review died in 1981 after but a brief near decade. I don't think there's been a decent 'news service' in the USA for a very long time. The bit where Solnit says "The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” really says it all.
ReplyDeleteBut then, it seems that the people supposedly "reporting the news" are just exactly like most of the people reading it.
And here's a fine example:
ReplyDelete"We still haven't figured out how to cover someone who lies and blusters the way Trump does. When he says that tariffs on China are paid by China, he's either lying or he's a moron. That's it. Those are the choices. But you can't say that in the New York Times."
https://jabberwocking.com/tariffs-are-not-as-nuanced-as-the-new-york-times-says/
Crater of Cater soon to flood making him homeless - in the quarry.
ReplyDelete"While the new paper focuses on the likelihood of rapid change, the authors emphasize that the results have important implications for climate adaptation.
"In the best case, we calculate that rapid changes will affect 1.5 billion people. The only way to deal with this is to prepare for a situation with a much higher likelihood of unprecedented extreme events, already in the next one to two decades," says Dr. Bjørn H. Samset at CICERO Center for International Climate Research. Samset contributed to the newly published study.
"Extreme weather to strengthen rapidly over next two decades, research suggests
by University of Reading
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-extreme-weather-rapidly-decades.html
Carley Iles et al, Strong regional trends in extreme weather over the next two decades under high- and low-emissions pathways, Nature Geoscience (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-024-01511-4.
www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01511-4
The SMH has an interesting article on the numerous interactions between Walter Sofranoff and Dame Slap prior the delivery of the former’s report on the Lehrmann and enquiry to the ACT Government. Paywqlled, but well with trying to get around - https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/texts-to-high-profile-journalist-about-bruce-lehrmann-trial-revealed-20240911-p5k9t4.html
ReplyDeleteDoubtless it will be reported elsewhere - but what are the odds it will be ignored by the Lizard Oz?
The article continues the unfortunate practice of referring to Dame Slap as a “ journalist”. Surely that term has already been sufficiently debased?