At last the full, unvarnished, startling truth is starting to emerge ...
Sceptics, doubters and neighsayers should eat their words, because truly the pond saith unto them, eating comes from faith, and whatever is not faith is the sins of the wicked.
Unvarnished, free flowing, utterly transparent truthiness aside, the pond's problems with the lizard Oz carried on into the Sunday.
An Anon correspondent summed up the diabolical situation:
As well as providing every Reptile, both major and minor, an opportunity for self-righteous “We was right and it was all Albo’s fault!” rants, last Sunday’s tragedy has also allowed them to avoid less attractive topics. There appears to be little to no comment on such matters as the “Vanity Fair” interview, Grandpa Trump’s televised Christmas ramblings and the ongoing controversies of the Epstein files. It would have provided some welcome light relief to see the likes of the Bromancer twisting himself into knots trying to provide a Trump-positive spin on such events.
Indeed, indeed, so it would, and in that spirit usually this Sunday meditation starts off with Polonius kicking his usual bee in bonnet cans down the road ... but this weekend he too was part of the jihad.
Polonius was determined to make a massacre of the innocents political...
From the Opera House anti-Semitic chants to beach massacre, John Howard first warned about Australia’s downward slope two years ago. (archive link)
That's way more than enough already.
The only pond duty here is to note the references by Polonius to the ABC ... because surely the massacre was entirely the fault of the cardigan wearers.
Here Polonius disappointed, with just two references ....
Speaking on the ABC Politics Now podcast on Tuesday afternoon, Laura Tingle said the actions of the terrorists 'have got nothing to do with religion'.
Earlier, on Monday, academic Greg Barton (who presents as an expert on Islamic politics) told ABC TV’s News Breakfast that the alleged Bondi Beach shooters “were one or two gunmen acting alone”. How would he know?
That's the best he could do?
Nothing to see there.
Meanwhile, in another country ...speaking as Polonius was of catastrophic descents ...
The pond has no doubt the current reptile fever will pass, though likely there will be long Covid-like symptoms for years to come.
There will surely however be some reptiles who will revert to ancient, familiar lizard Oz sports, but unlikely before the pond heads off on an Xmas break, travelling down to the deep south.
In the interim, what to do in this self-induced reptile famine?
Perhaps pander to the pond's Queensland-based correspondent. They're always barking mad up there:
Chooks 1 (archive link):
Chooks 2 (archive link):
Proud party of street protests, standing up for workers and sticking it to capitalists? More like close-bosom'd companion to Orwellian overlords and property developers. They know the key hate preacher behind much of the ugliness, take it out on him.
Enough already, it's nice work if you can get it, but that's more than enough time wasted on deep north and local small time grifters.
The pond always knew that toads were a little weird, but what about some genuine industrial scale grift?
Screw it, after the Kennedy Centre, they need to rename the moon as Trumplunarlandia ... or at least give his name to the big monolith to the solid rock plinth the aliens left behind. Instead of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1 (TMA-), it could be called the Trump Narcissist Anomaly (TNA). Then when the aliens come back, they can speak directly to the King, or perhaps to the worm in RFK's head.
Now, what to do when nasty files hover through the air?
Still, a great excuse for a few Sunday 'toons ...
Subway systems around the world are struggling to cope with flooding as the planet warms. (*archive link)
Not the subways! The planet's warming? There's surging moisture in the skies above?
Oh to be back in the blissfully ignorant world of lizard Oz climate science denialists...
Meanwhile, as the pond's Anon correspondent mentioned King Donald, why not go there, in the spirit of Xmas?
Susan B. Glasser sent a letter in The New Yorker, * archive link:
Glasser ended up this way ...
Which brings me back to Wednesday night’s Presidential address. When Trump was done speaking, the press pool observed the handful of staffers who had gathered in the room, praising him for a “great” and “really good” job. Wiles, for her part, remarked not on what he had said but on the fact that he had stuck to the timetable. “I told you twenty minutes, and you were twenty minutes on the dot,” she told him. If what he says is wildly untruthful, enraging to millions of his fellow-citizens, or just outright bizarre, what does she care? It’s not her fault if he can’t close the sale. “I don’t think there’s anybody in the world right now that could do the job that she’s doing,” Whipple quoted Marco Rubio as saying of Wiles. And maybe he was right.
That's fair, and worth a 'toon ...
And so to close with TT, with the pond having previously missed out on this week's instalment ...
Is it a sign of the times that the tedium of Polonius’ latest column seems almost normal? Like most of his offerings these days it’s primarily a mixtape of his greatest hits - in this case praising John Howard, rehashing the October 2023 Opera House protests - but compared to the frothing at the mouth hysteria of most Reptiles this week, it seems comparatively sane. He doesn’t even bash Albo, or directly criticise the ABC other than noting it hosted views with which he disagrees. Strange days indeed.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks, DP, for the nostalgic glimpse of Joe the Gadget Man - a highlight of my youthful Sunday viewing. I think there are a couple of brief clips of the great man on YouTube.
Seconded on 'Joe the Gadget Man'. Our Esteemed Hostess again selecting such an appropriate piece of local culture to sharpen our perspective on the current president, and his, um - ways.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qld7KYNVwbc
DeleteQuote: "This is a montage of hilarious bloopers of Joe The Gadget Man from Nock & Kirby. In this video Joe Sandow loses his cool when he gets zapped by an electric iron, cannot start a lawnmower, soda dispenser malfunctions and the push sweeper drops its dust back on the floor after sweeping."
"Subway systems around the world are struggling to cope with flooding as the planet warms."
ReplyDeleteOoh, just think of all those rail and road tunnels being dug and entrafficed in Melbourne. And many more yet to come.
Well at least those NSWelshmen have at least partially returned to trams - though the Paramatta light rail isn't outstandingly well patronised, it seems.
"An Anon correspondent summed up the diabolical situation:
ReplyDelete"As well as providing every Reptile, both major and minor, an opportunity for self-righteous “We was right and it was all Albo’s fault!” rants, last Sunday’s tragedy has also allowed them to avoid less attractive topics."
Such as...
AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie
"Burnie is lying here, for the record." from...
"The Australian Israel Lobby Is Flat-Out Saying They Want A Ban On Criticism Of Israel"
Caitlin Johnstone
Dec 19, 2025
"Those two terrorists were motivated by what was going on in Israel, and that’s what motivated them to come and kill us. So if they had Israel on their minds why are we acting as though it has nothing to do with the vitriolic binary nature of the pro-Palestinian advocacy movement?”
Burnie goes on to say that he wants a complete government ban on protests against Israel’s abuses throughout the nation:
“So overnight what we want immediately if you ask any Jew, what do you want, what do you want? No more protests! No more protests! No more no-go zones for Jews. I can’t, for two years, cannot take my kids to downtown Melbourne for two years on a Sunday, because of the pro-Palestinian marches, because of the violent nature of them. No more! Because that is an acceptance of the connection between the two. And until the prime minister is willing to do that, this is gonna happen again.”
"Burnie is lying here, for the record. Anyone who has gone to the pro-Palestine demonstrations in Melbourne as I have will tell you that the protests are not even slightly violent in nature, and that there are Jews among the demonstrators who actively make their presence known. Those demonstrations have never been “no-go zones for Jews”; Joel Burnie doesn’t want to take his kids to downtown Melbourne on a Sunday because he doesn’t want to expose them to ideas and information which reveal the depravity of his Israel-supporting worldview.
"Australians would probably benefit from watching the entire hour-long video of the conference, whose contents I first saw spotlighted on Twitter by Information Liberation’s Chris Menahan."
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-australian-israel-lobby-is-flat
Andrew Jakubowicz said paraphrased; you'd have to be crazy as a country to be beholden and make decisions based on two mad men.
Delete"After the anti-Semitic Bondi massacre the challenges for reconciliation and cohesion"
PROGRAM:THE RELIGION AND ETHICS REPORT Wed 17 Dec 2025
"Andrew Jakubowicz, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Technology, Sydney, agrees Australian multiculturalism is under strain after the Bondi massacre, but says it can survive if governments focus on curtailing violent behaviour rather than religious condemnation. Andrew Jakubovicz is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Technology Sydney - his research areas include new media and social change, racism and ethnicity, public policy and marginalised minorities."
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/religionandethicsreport/the-religion-and-ethics-report/105872076
Well, thousands of years of trying and humanity has got "curtailing violent behaviour" down to a fine art, haven't we.
DeleteAfter all, it only takes 1 in a million to actually practise violence and Australia would already have about 15 or so (not counting very young juniors) on a par with the Bondi pair.
Or on the other hand, check the incidence of teenage violence - especially with blades of various kinds - just to see how very successful we are at that "curbing violence' trick.
Transparency.
ReplyDelete■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■ ■ ■■■■■■■
▪️▪️▪️▪️ ▪️▪️▪️▪️▪️!!
DeleteJobs... n degroaf?
ReplyDelete"The invisible hand screws up your regression
Markets, diff-in-diff, and "The Missing Intercept" problem
Brian Albrecht
Dec 18, 2025
"You’ve probably heard the claim: “Chinese imports destroyed millions of American manufacturing jobs.”
Most likely, that number comes from the famous “China Shock” research by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson. It’s become a fixture in trade debates. In that original paper, Autor, Dorn, and Hanson compared regions with different exposure to Chinese import competition. Some areas manufactured goods that competed directly with Chinese imports. Others didn’t. By comparing employment changes across these regions, the researchers identified how relative employment shifted; high-exposure regions lost jobs compared to low-exposure regions.
"In a benchmarking calculation, they estimate that Chinese import competition accounts for approximately 21% of the U.S. manufacturing employment decline from 1990 to 2007, corresponding to roughly 1.5 million manufacturing jobs.
How seriously should we take that number? Answering that question is actually quite informative for answering many issues in empirical economics.
...
https://www.economicforces.xyz/p/the-invisible-hand-screws-up-your
Does Mrs Parker concur DP? Therapy for you. Perhaps not Mrs P.
ReplyDeleteBur Longevity it seems is increased by book reading, not periodicals...
"The Therapeutic Power of Writing
"The scientific study of writing as therapy largely began with psychologist James Pennebaker at the University of Texas at Austin. In his groundbreaking 1986 study, Pennebaker asked college students to write about traumatic events [ most reptilian 'news [ for just 15 minutes per day over four consecutive days. The results were remarkable: writing about traumatic events was associated with fewer visits to the health center and improvements in physical and mental health. [A plus [
...
" A 2020 study found that increased gray matter in the left superior temporal cortex } and I thought my goyter had slipped up ] was associated with better reading performance in children, demonstrating how reading literally reshapes our brain structure.
- Reading and Longevity: Perhaps one of the most striking findings comes from research on reading and mortality. A study published in the Health and Retirement Study examined over 3,600 participants and found that book readers had a greater likelihood of living longer than non-readers. Quoting from the study itself:
“A 20% reduction in mortality was observed for those who read books, compared to those who did not read books. Further, our analyses demonstrated that any level of book reading gave a significantly stronger survival advantage than reading periodicals. This is a novel finding (in both senses of the word), as previous studies did not compare types of reading material; it indicates that book reading rather than reading in general is driving a survival advantage.”
- Stress Reduction and Mental Health: Need to unwind? Research from the University of Sussex discovered that reading can slash stress by as much as 68%—more effective than listening to music or taking a walk. The mechanism is straightforward: reading requires concentration and focus, leading to reduced muscle tension and a slower heart rate. Read more here, here, here.
"For older adults, the benefits are particularly pronounced. A 2022 study in China found that reading had a positive effect on the physical and mental health of older individuals and also provided a social outlet
Building Empathy Through Fiction.
[a core Reptile axiom ]
Reading literary fiction does more than entertain—it enhances our ability to understand others. A 2017 study revealed that people who read literary fiction show a heightened ability to understand the feelings and beliefs of others, a skill researchers call “theory of mind.” This capability is essential for navigating social relationships and building meaningful connections.
Bibliotherapy: Prescribing Books for Healing. The formal practice of using books therapeutically, known as bibliotherapy, has roots stretching back centuries. Research shows it serves six clear functions: demonstrating that others have faced similar problems, presenting new solutions, helping readers understand motivations, providing factual information, encouraging realistic problem-solving, and allowing emotional release. See more here, here, here, here.
[And HERE ]
...
https://scilight.substack.com/p/reading-writing-and-healing
Via amediadragon
Thanks DP & Mrs P for putting up with us.