The pond was disinclined to post today, and thereby add to the wall to wall coverage of the mass murders at Bondi beach.
The aftershocks and analysis will go on for weeks; the situation so dire that the pond woke to ABC News radio discovering that attention to local matters might be a part of its duties, though it only abandoned the BBC World Service to relay a special early morning edition of ABC TV.
The pond has already developed a phobia about reporting which lumped the dead killer in with the victims in the appalling body count.
It should always be x victims and 1 dead sociopath; x wounded and 1 sociopathic fundamentalist killer waiting for a life in prison (and life should mean life).
Innocent victims of mass murder should never be co-joined with their killer.
Some good might come from the carnage, including new gun control laws, though the notion that an "only Australians can own guns" modification would help was in the land of the risible ...
As if being a citizen made anyone somehow immune from madness...though it was a reminder that the pond shouldn't give way to brooding.
Keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, sociopaths and radicalised religious lunatics is surely more to the point. (And donating blood seemed a much more positive way to respond).
It was the pond's partner who came up with a suggestion designed to cure the pond's desire not to blog for the week in memory of the massacred innocents.
"Write about the death of the planet instead. That should cheer up your correspondents."
Indeed, indeed, and WaPo helped out with a story ... (*archive link)
There were graphs too ...
And there was a big interactive, beyond the scope of the archive...
Being parochial, the pond took an interest in the down under portion of the interactive globe...
There's a nice dose of vapour transport in the east ...
The pond felt instantly better. There's nothing like killing off an entire planet to calm the soul.
But what to do for a bonus?
The pond's partner helpfully suggested that the pond look at the matter of dictator Zi and Jimmy Lai, and again WaPo helped out ...
The verdict exemplifies the way Beijing, through Hong Kong’s national security law, has swept away any last remaining press freedoms and judicial independence in the city. (that's an archive link)
Talk about depressing.
The pond's partner might just as well have suggested that the pond look at the ongoing attempts by King Donald and his minions to sell out Ukraine ... and Europe's pathetic inability to do anything about it or find useful ways to help combat sociopathic Vlad the impaler.
What about the death of Rob Reiner and his wife, and his career celebrated in The Atlantic? the pond's partner proposed, while frantically scrolling through the headlines:
Rob Reiner Was a Quiet Titan of Storytelling.The director and actor, who died yesterday, built a remarkable career that went far beyond his comic origins?(that's an archive link)
Are you mad? the pond barked.
Killed by his son? Stabbed to death? More murder and mayhem? And vile King Donald offering this as an epitaph?
How's that helping? That's jumping out of the sociopathic pan into the sociopathic fire.
There's a man with a talent that couldn't fill a thimble taking the pond back to the heart of the problem ...
What to say when others have said it?
And next you'll be saying that the pond should look back at Phil Spector as an example of Hollywood Babylon ...
How about the emergency warning system going down in WA as the bushfire season cranked into overdrive? the pond's persistent partner suggested.
That's news, the pond replied, in reptile approved third person voice, and the pond doesn't do news. Later in the season the pond will be sure to note more bushfires and more climate science denialism in the lizard Oz.
How about a New Yorker story? the pond's partner suggested. You always like to fancy yourself as a New York sophisticate...
Why not give John Cassidy's The Year in Trump Cashing In, In 2025, the President’s family has been making bank in myriad ways, many of them involving crypto and foreign money a go? (that's an archive link).
Spoiler alert, this is the end:
There was the Financial Times (archive link):
There was David Kirkpatrick's piece from August 2025, a litany of looting with much looting done since then, The Number, How much is Trump pocking off the Presidency (that's an archive link).
Just the final words as a sample:
Sheesh, all that just made the pond feel like an American rube, ripe for the plucking.
You know, like the US rustics plucked like a chicken in a Tamworth slaughterhouse ...
Surely that could lighten the mood?
Nah, it just added to the despair, what with it being a reminder of war crimes, and piracy and murder on the high seas ... and other matters ...
"Then pick a reptile, any reptile not involved in the religious wars erupting from the massacre of the innocents", the pond's partner said. "Your correspondents will appreciate the distraction".
So the pond tried, but it was impossible.
All of them were at it, screeching away ...
The pond had no interest in relaying or amplifying the screeching ...
The best the pond could come up with was an anodyne piece by the lizard Oz editorialist ...
It wasn't much, but it was something ... as even the pond's favourite cartoonists struggled to make sense of the madness ...
Thanks, DP - that’s cheered me up immensely!
ReplyDeleteIn an increasingly chaotic world, it’s nice to note that some things never change, as the Lizard Oz editorialist repeats, for the umpteenth time, the tired old call for Government spending cuts.such vision and imagination……
Kez! Time for an update to Cows with Guns.
ReplyDeleteRattUS with Remote Weapons. Hmmm....
Spare a thought for the rats (in the ranks).
"only Australians can own guns" is sooo boomer.
Aliens can't have guns?! Risible.
The (tm) "Rats with Guns" gets around the ALIEN gun ban.
** (The cows with guns are jealous.)
Aliens! Breed up your... ratUS MagagicUS. Kill remotely from anywhere with internet, or wifi from any hutch..
Breeding pair of Secretary of War included.
Batteries and amoled wraparound screens not included.
Virtual trigger, real death.
Project 2025 Specie: rattUS MagagicUS
Availability; even aliens - after we get past DOOM.
Reward: we won't put you in a gulag, just pardon you, and dump you somewhere else.
Headline: Pete Hegseth and 'mates' are "war rats now shoot enemies — wraparound AMOLED screen provides virtual environment for neuroengineers' expanded open source project"
"Back in 2021, the internet briefly lost its collective mind over a very particular headline: rats had been trained to play Doom"
...
"What it demonstrates is that the technical platform has matured enough to support richer interactions. The rats can now perform multiple distinct in-game actions, and the system can reliably evaluate and reward those actions, so the limiting factor is no longer the hardware or software. Instead, it's training time and experimental design. Teaching an animal to associate specific physical behaviors with abstract outcomes inside a virtual space is slow, and scaling that training takes patience. The updated system opens the door to more ambitious experiments than the original build could support."
https://www.tomshardware.com/virtual-reality/rats-are-still-being-taught-to-play-doom-now-with-a-curved-amoled-and-a-shoot-button
Worse luck i bet they'd make franken-rats. A major update of... "The explosive rat,[1] also known as a rat bomb,[2] was a weapon developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in World War II for use against Germany."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_rat
From the Can't make this up department...
** Discography
• Cows with Guns (1997) – No. 32 album Australia[7]
"His environmentalist song "Our State Is a Dumpsite",[2] became the subject of a proposal in the Washington legislature during the 1980s to be made the official state song.[3] He went on to perform music for the environmental group Earth First!.[4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Lyons#cite_note-2
" Travelling brothers push anti-nuke message"
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=pItUAAAAIBAJ&pg=3195,2553234&dq=dana-lyons&hl=en
As I have done before, I looked across Sky Noise, that others who come here need not. It is, all, quite predictable stuff, devoid of anything resembling self reflection, from the usual talkers. I should not offer detail, for the reasons our Esteemed Hostess has set out - that just gives recognition to alleged 'reasoning' that has to have been a factor in what afflicts the country now.
ReplyDeleteWell, one 'detail' could be - ignore any wish to look at Sky Noise, for whatever reason. It is the sort of thing for which the word 'execrable' was invented.
ta Chadders, the pond always appreciates updates from the dark side, and necessary too, because the pond has never knowingly watched a Sky Noise programme at any time for any reason, not even to heap full disrespect on the likes of Sharri or the Bolter ...(is he still on air, he seems so long ago and irrelevant?)
DeleteDP - apology that I have to tell you this - not only is the first (I find it difficult to call him 'original') Bolter still appearing, but - one of his offspring, male, also 'presents' through the week. I have not watched more than perhaps three minutes of this one; but enough to conclude that he is a pale impression of the parent, but slinging similar hash.
DeleteI find it a tad disturbing when I see offspring following closely the thinking and ideology of a parent. I have always thought it the natural way that each generation should have their own perspectives on the world.
Dear sweet long lost lord, the pond confesses, in its virginal post-Catholic innocence, to being entirely unaware of the spawn of the Bolter falling too close to the warped tree ...
DeleteThe pond looked up this James and discovered he'd also worked for the IPA as a digital communications manager ...
And yes, how tragic to become a pale imitation of your daddy. Freud would have a field day.
Annony, can't we get back to the real RATS, who do more than...
ReplyDelete"... a lurid gangland hit. His killing at the hands of his own disgruntled militiamen is a clear representation of a policy coming undone.
"For months, Israel stitched together a sordid alliance of convicted felons, former ISIS affiliates, and opportunistic collaborators, presenting them as the embryo of a local governance alternative to Hamas in Gaza, while using them to orchestrate starvation and carry out attacks on Israel’s behalf. Now, this attempt to cultivate a network of criminal proxy gangs as subcontractors of its occupation is collapsing into paranoid infighting and bloody chaos.
https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-proxy-yasser-abu-shabab/