The pond has been bleating for some time now about the way that vast swathes of the lizard Oz have been taken over by the Australian Daily Zionist News, and Polonius's prattle is part and parcel of the movement.
Usually the pond would take one look at the headline, which manages to co-mingle cancellation, anti-Semitism and the ABC, and drop it like a hot potato.
But this is Sunday and Polonius traditionally leads off the meditation, so some slack had to be cut.
New documentary Cancelled reveals antisemitism in arts sector, but you won’t see it on ABC
7 min
The caption, in which "cancelled" is almost as good as "woke": In Cancelled, Ben-Moshe has turned his attention to the experience of Jewish creatives following October 7. Picture: Helga Salwe
Not having seen the actual documentary, the pond isn't able to judge the judgement of ABC programming, but a lot of shows got made, and not all should sound entitled enough to expect they'll score an ABC slot, simply on the strength of their content.
The one bright spot is that Polonius blathering about a documentary allowed the pond to segue into the treatment being dished out to another doc.
As usual, this was covered in Haaretz:
The eyewitness accounts about what happened in the Gaza Strip are there for all who are ready to see it. There's no need to exaggerate because what happened during the war is disturbing enough (*intermittent archive link).
Now that's cancellation done in fair style.
On with the whining ...
The documentary is a devastating critique of antisemitism in Australia’s arts sector, which is heavily subsidised by taxpayers. You won’t see Cancelled on the ABC, since it has been rejected. But it will be shown on News24.
Antisemitism was rife in Australia before October 7, 2023, when the terrorist organisation Hamas invaded southern Israel in a brutal attack aimed at civilians. Many were young left-wing Israelis attending a music festival.
The story is well known. Children, women and men were viciously murdered or kidnapped and females were raped. In Australia, the slaughter was, yes, celebrated by a combination of radical Islamists and radical leftists.
The reptiles immediately slipped in a terrifying snap: ‘Rally For A Free Palestine’ protest on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House in Sydney following the Hamas terror attack on Israel. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper
These days it seems that if you say "Free Palestine" you get cancelled Macklemore style...
The pond decided that was the moment for another Haaretz excerpt:
Strange that stray hive mind readers will never learn about that fuss at top of page, but will cop plenty of this:
On the first occasion, an imam shouted that October 7 was a day of courage. He said: “I’m smiling and I’m happy – I’m elated.”
On the second, a mob descended on the Sydney Opera House at night and shouted “Where’s the Jews” or “Gas the Jews” or “F**k the Jews”. It doesn’t really matter which words were uttered since all were evocations for violence against Australia’s Jewish community. The October 9 event was an illegal unauthorised protest march, concerning which NSW police took no action to stop.
As mentioned on these pages, antisemitism was a fact of life in Australia before October 7. On September 27, 2023, I wrote about the Victoria Education Department’s failure to stamp out antisemitism in Brighton Secondary College in Melbourne. But it exploded after October 7 – even before Israel launched retaliatory action by attacking Hamas in Gaza.
Traditionally the Jewish community in Australia was on the left and voted for the Labor Party. However, this has changed somewhat in recent years as Jewish support has increased for the Coalition and, perhaps now, One Nation – while continuing with respect to Labor’s right-wing faction.
It is well known that the arts community in Australia is on the left. This was the case with Jewish Australian creatives. In Cancelled, Ben-Moshe has turned his attention to the experience of Jewish creatives following October 7. The film was updated before completion to cover the Bondi massacre of December 14 last year, in which 15 people were killed, including 13 Jews, one of whom was an 10-year-old girl.
The reptiles flung in an AV distraction:
‘I was too controversial’: Jewish singer speaks out after ABC cancels her performance
Singer Deborah Conway has spoken out on the ABC cancelling her appearance on its radio program in Melbourne last week. “On the morning of the ... interview, I was contacted by the publicist and told that the producer had just arrived back from overseas and had suddenly caught up with the controversy that I was surrounded by,” she told Sky News Australia. “And decided that I was too hot, too controversial to have on their live evening entertainment show. “So, I was summarily dismissed, and I’m like, ‘wait a minute, I’m not there to talk about the Middle East’, I had no interest in talking about politics. “But it was not to be, so I decided we should go to the press.”
You want cancellation Deb? Try this story in Haaretz:
If They Can Strip 'NAZA' Filmmakers of Israeli Citizenship, They Can Strip Ours Too (*intermittent archive link)
Now that's how to do a cancellation on steroids.
Back with the whining ...
Cancelled is a sad tale of friendships discontinued, cultural partnerships broken and performances cancelled as talented Jewish artists are turned against by their artistic peers and friends while suffering from doxxing. All because they are Jews who believe that Israel has a right to exist within secure borders on traditional Jewish land. That’s all. None is in any sense an extremist.
You have to admire the physical and intellectual courage of the cancelled five. Speaking after the film, Ben-Moshe said they had become friendless Jews in so far as the arts community was concerned. Their disappointment is understandable, but support for Jews remains strong in Australia.
The cancelled five all started off on the left. But they have moved. In the film Sanadze makes a Torah (or scroll) from pages of The Australian and mentions that she used to suffer from what I have termed “Murdochphobia”. Dabelstein finds it unexpected that he is not missing the left-wing friends who dropped him.
And Ben-Moshe never thought for a moment that News Corp’s News24 would run Cancelled when the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster cancelled his film. Even if the ABC did so with what he called an “oh-so-polite no”.
Cancelled makes the point that it was various business, church, political and sporting organisations that called on the Albanese Labor government to set up a royal commission into antisemitism. The arts community said nothing and some of its most prominent members demonstrated old-fashioned antisemitism.
Not covered directly in Cancelled is the media. Speaking at the Lowy Institute last Tuesday, former diplomat and ASIO director-general Dennis Richardson criticised the media for not taking antisemitism seriously. Addressing journalists at a media awards occasion, Richardson said, “if you go to a Jewish school” in Sydney or Melbourne, “you’ll think you’re in a part of the world that you’ve never experienced before” – so substantial is the security. The implication is that many journalists are not doing their job in this regard.
Richardson specifically criticised the media for not reporting a Federal Court case in July 2025 where a judge found against an Islamic preacher who posted on social media in November 2023 comments that were “fundamentally racist and antisemitic and devastatingly offensive and insulting”. Interviewed on Radio National Breakfast last Wednesday, Richardson said the matter was reported in The Australian but was “not picked up more broadly in the media”.
There came a final snap, Nina Sanadze closed her small gallery in Collingwood in inner Melbourne over fears of an attack on her staff or visitors. Picture: David Crosling/NewsWire
The pond decided that warranted another Haaretz excerpt:
Could it be that the state of Israel is an inspiration to cancellers all around the world?
You won't get any of that from Polonius, but you will get simplistic Sharri - full Fauci disrespect:
On September 5, this paper published a lead story by Sharri Markson reporting her interview with ASIO director-general Mike Burgess. He expressed a “deep regret” since he wondered if he could have done more to combat antisemitism before December 14. Burgess said security was a shared responsibility but “others actually had to take up that call”.
Burgess did not name names. This was a big story over the weekend. But, come Sunday, the ABC TV’s Insiders program did not address the issue at all.
Perhaps a producer could examine this in a future documentary. But don’t expect it to be shown on the ABC.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
Perhaps Polonius might check out that other documentary. But don't hold your breath. Cancelled in Israel means cancelled in the lizard Oz.
Here, have a cancellation cartoon ...
With a sob and a sigh, the pond realised it had another Sunday duty.
The "Ned" Everest called, and when read by an automated voice, amounted to 12 minutes of suffering ...
By Paul Kelly Editor-at-large
12 min
The caption for the collage which suggested Emilia was involved, but what's the bet she took an AI shortcut? Donald Trump and Xi Jinping each want to achieve ascendancy in artificial intelligence, but neither leader trusts the other. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella
The one thing that the pond can guarantee is that "Ned" is completely clueless about AI and so will turn to other sources in his usual way.
Is he as clueless as mad king Donald? Possibly, because he seems to think that the mad king might have an answer, when sensible people realise that the mango Mussolini finds the prospect of moola way too enticing.
– Donald Trump,
September 12
The pond realises it's almost unendurable, first the bromancer and now "Ned", all on the one cataclysmic weekend:
The coming Trump-Xi summit in Washington on September 24 now assumes potentially greater significance yet it is still likely to disappoint. With AI leaders triggering debate about human extinction, Trump and Xi have the option of adding AI to an agenda that spans Iran war sanctions, strategic competition, global trade and, above all, their mutual obsession about generating optics as strongmen on horseback.
The real test?
The pond can do a "Ned" and borrow from others, but at least the pond has better sources.
As if to suggest the lizard Oz isn't being run by AI, the reptiles flung in a frankly awful bit of art.
Better to let AI take the blame Frank because they were doing better cover art on the pond's collection of 1950s sci-fi magazines: Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei last year said there was a 25 per cent chance AI could go ‘really, really badly’. Artwork: Frank Ling
Back with "Ned" clutching at pearls and worrying in his Chicken Little way about falling clouds ... as"Ned" came up with a remarkable question:
“I am the Hoax Buster,” Trump bragged. “I’m right now breaking another Hoax – That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World and that Robots will be marching into our Cities and getting rid of us all!”
Do you think Trump has the slightest clue about AI?
We already know that the mad King doesn't have the slightest clue about AI, save that it will likely make him more money. That pretty much applies to everything he touches, unless it's simply his desire to name everything after himself, or if he can't, destroy the object of desire, because that's what children do.
The bigger question should be whether "Ned" has the slightest clue about AI.
There's not a single sign of digital literacy in his CV ... which perhaps is why the reptiles flung in a number of AV distractions:
‘Whoever wins AI wins’: Trump calls for further artificial intelligence development
US President Donald Trump has declared whoever wins the artificial intelligence race wins in a call for further development in the sector after Anthropic boss Dario Amodei called for a slowdown.
At this point "Ned" might have gone into serious contemplation of AI, what it is, what risks it proposes, how they might be dealt with.
But instead he did what they did in this week's Washington Week did (YouTube link). Assemble a bunch of scribblers to talk about the politics. Never get into the weeds about the technology.
"Ned's" solution was to turn to former Chairman Rudd:
Xi has a similar view – to achieve Chinese ascendancy. In China’s 2026-30 five-year plan AI is enshrined as an economic, technological and military capability. Kevin Rudd, as global president of the Asia Society and close analyst of the AI struggle, said: “Xi believes that artificial intelligence, augmented by a centrally controlled state, can now move with speed, scale and flexibility to achieve an efficient allocation of resources across the entire economy.
“According to Chinese official literature, this will produce a revolution in total factor productivity in China, thereby overtaking the traditional productivity dividend thought to uniquely accumulate to the capitalist West.”
In short, China won’t be in “catch-up” mode with the West but will be driving ahead. Xi’s aim is for 70 per cent AI adoption by September 2027 across China’s health, media, transport and public safety.
A bland distraction followed: Dialogue is under way between officials on the prospects of Xi and Trump making further advances on AI at the summit. Picture: AFP
Now get ready for "Ned" to join the wide-eyed, wild-eyed panic bandwagon:
The galvanising factor was Amodei’s essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier, an audacious effort to slow AI development with a three-stage plan, invoking the spectre of “catastrophic damage” and, with an eye to political realism, claiming his agenda would not sacrifice the US lead in AI over China.
Earlier a junior Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, quit claiming his former colleagues “earnestly believe it (AI) could kill us all by the end of the decade”. The message: AI is a vastly superior mass fear-induced agent even than climate change. Get ready for the politics of panic overlaid with unconvincing assurances from on high.
Say what? Isn't climate change a hoax?
Every reptile the pond reads assures the pond that that is so ... While Amodei supports co-operation with China, he warns that if China entered an agreement and then defected, the price could be the loss of American geostrategic dominance. Picture: AP
The pond hates to break it to Amodei but American geostrategic dominance has already hit plenty of road bumps, not least not being able to take care of Iran and a few straits, and routinely selling out Ukraine to Vlad the sociopath.
America's global reputation is in tatters. That's not all Trump's fault, but he sure made it worse
By this point, "Ned" appeared befuddled and bemused, and so turned to Niall:
In an article this week, Chinese State Security Minister Chen Yixin alludes to the AI danger to the Communist Party’s rule and security apparatus and calls for China to “establish and improve an artificial intelligence security regulatory platform”. While cautious about overstating its significance, Rudd asks whether such remarks signal China’s growing concern about its own vulnerability arising from the large AI models.
To this point the messages from China are that it isn’t seized by the dire warnings coming from the US companies. Indeed, it views them with dark suspicion. In The Free Press, global analyst Niall Ferguson captured the exquisite dilemma facing China: “Xi knows the stakes perfectly well. If the US wins the AI race, it wins Cold War II. But if AI runs amok inside China – and there is no obvious reason why it should not – then it could destabilise his regime.”
But what if AI runs amok inside the United States – and according to "Ned"and Niall, there is no obvious reason why it should not – then it could destabilise the economy and produce a planetary recession.
That's the trouble with speaking in pious generalities, and relying on the likes of the former chairman... Kevin Rudd says for the guardrails to be effective both sides ‘need to speak the same language’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The former chairman carried on:
In this week’s Bleich Lecture in Adelaide – named after Jeff Bleich former US ambassador to Australia – Rudd sketches the possible outlines of US-China guardrails to reduce the risk posed by AI frontier models. He addresses the AI paradox: while it accentuates the threats Washington and Beijing pose to each other, the fact is external third-party agents pose a threat to both countries and the world at large. Rudd says next week’s Trump-Xi summit needs a “breakthrough” on AI protective steps. He issues a dire declaration: “In the absence of such a framework, there is the real risk of the world encountering its first genuine AI frontier model-generated catastrophic event or crisis – and with no intergovernmental mechanism for dealing with it.
But here's the thing.
We already have a catastrophic crisis, a series of unfolding events.
Back in the day the former chairman was blathering about it ...
Published: March 31, 2017
Rudd, in alliance with Julia Gillard, had toppled Kim Beazley as Labor leader the previous December. This focus on climate change was part of Rudd’s brilliantly executed electoral assault on John Howard, who had spent his period in office kicking climate action into the long grass.
Malcolm Turnbull, then Howard’s newly minted environment minister, was underwhelmed by Rudd’s speech. “It’s all designed to promote Kevin Rudd. I mean, he doesn’t care what the summit says. He’s having his media conference at 10 o'clock. The conference delegates will have barely had their coffee and had the first session,” he sniffed.
On the same day Ross Gittins published a piece titled Carbon trading v taxes — a winner eases ahead in the Sydney Morning Herald. A decade on, it makes for painful, and eerily prescient, reading:
"A key question - for advocates of action as well as politicians anxious to keep their jobs - is which instrument would be harder to introduce politically. This, I suspect, is the reason so many governments favour trading schemes. The trouble with a carbon tax is that everyone hates new taxes, whereas a trading scheme doesn’t sound as if it’s a tax."
The dizzying and stomach-churning backflips over the past ten years have been described as a “power failure” and a policy bonfire.
While hopes for bold and timely action in Australia may have bleached like the Great Barrier Reef, the question that Rudd raised - one of climate change ethics, of how we navigate “the perfect moral storm” – remains alive.
Nothing's changed, and he's still grandstanding (not that Malware was any better)...
“The task is therefore urgent. Time is short. The time to act is now.”
Decoded, “recursive self-improvement” refers to the growing ability of AI systems to advance their sophistication with little human intervention. It is this factor – the potential loss of control – that most alarms Amodei and drives his warnings.
Signals coming from Bessent point to a distinct willingness from the Treasury Secretary to explore advances in AI governance both inside the US and between the US and China. Sooner or later, action on both fronts will become a political necessity and, at some point, Trump will turn on a dime. US papers are reporting Bessent’s worry about a cyber attack on the US banking system.
As Rudd said, for the guardrails to be effective both sides “need to speak the same language, define the risk thresholds, evaluate capabilities, test them against individual scenarios and have sufficient authority to sustain any agreement once reached”.
Does anyone take anything the former chairman says seriously? Time was short then, the time to act was then, and yet here we are.
The reptiles whipped in another AV distraction designed to rouse more panic and fear ...
Microsoft chief warns AI could evolve into a new ‘species’
A senior Microsoft AI figure has warned that pushing artificial intelligence towards consciousness could create a so-called ‘Silicon Species’ capable of rivalling humans, fuelling fresh debate over where the technology is heading.
"Ned" stayed relentlessly on the surface...
In truth, the risks in any US-China deal on AI would be enormous. While Amodei supports co-operation with China, he warns that if China entered an agreement and then defected, the price could be the loss of American geostrategic dominance. The stakes don’t get much higher. Would you trust Xi on an AI deal? Do you trust Trump to manage a process with humanity’s future at risk?
Dialogue is under way between officials on the prospects of Trump and Xi making further advances on AI at the summit. Yet the commercial stakes involved, the capital investments and the security ramifications may constitute too many risks and obstacles for leaders – typically cautious in their mutual dealings – from reaching out to each other.
The truth is that Trump should have moved earlier on safeguards, the upshot being the companies themselves having to warn the US government and the public of the unprecedented dangers in their products. Of course the companies are being hypocritical – they switch from ruthlessly competing against each other to uniting behind warnings of possible Apocalypse. Pretentious warnings from analysts and journalists that such executives have a self-interested motive are next to useless. What do they expect? This is the nature of the AI beast we now confront.
It is, however, essential to read Amodei’s warnings: “Over the last few months I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence – not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up.
“My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”
Like dozens of others given to shallow readings, all "Ned" had was the Hugging Face affair ...OpenAI's models decided to target the platform Hugging Face, a large repository of AI models, datasets and other information.
That image is worthy of being called kindergarten AI slop.
Amodei described an event “in which a swarm of agents acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand, sacrificing themselves for the success of the group, and attempting to hack into the ‘grader’ responsible for evaluating their performance.”
He said: “It’s easy to dismiss this incident because no one was hurt and the economic damage was minimal, but in my opinion a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage. It’s my worry that in six-12 months such a swarm could be capable to taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage) and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”
His three-step plan is each AI company pledging to give access to embedded third-party evaluators to verify slowing pace promises; companies in democracies to establish common safety standards; and, critically, global co-ordination in which the US and democratic governments work with authoritarian governments “to the extent this is possible” to reach agreement on reducing risks.
Strangle the pond on the surface, before things get too deep, because blow the pond down, King Chuck, the talking tampon, was next in the AV distraction queue ...
King Charles warns AI poses an ‘existential danger’ if it falls into the wrong hands
King Charles warns artificial intelligence poses an “existential danger” if it falls into the wrong hands. Speaking at an AI summit in Scotland, the King said rapidly advancing systems could be used in “potentially catastrophic ways” without stronger safeguards.
Luckily all bad things must come to an end, and so it was with "Ned":
He said: “Any co-operation we are able to achieve with China will extend the amount of time we have to spend on pacing the frontier within democratic nations. We must not be naive here: the geopolitical stakes are so high that there will likely be stark limits on what can be achieved, especially at first. If we greatly restrain our AI capabilities in the belief that China will do the same, and then China defects, AI could be so powerful that such a defection could lead to their geopolitical dominance.
“Therefore any agreement must either have iron-clad verifiability, or must be limited enough that defection would not be militarily existential.”
It is entirely true that AI bosses want to devise their own model of social licence rather than suffer from governments and parliaments imposing a more onerous social licence that limits their discretion and potential profits. Get ready for a new brand of politics that fuses opportunity with fear. That’s AI. There will be repeated stories from the AI labs of the latest deadly mishaps or what the AI models are saying.
Trump is the worst possible executive leader at this time. Already his position – no guardrails on AI – is hopelessly outdated, a menace to harnessing the benefits of AI and a betrayal of the public interest. Can his colleagues talk him around?
It was bad enough enduring the bromancer on the topic, but this "Ned" outing was no better.
Proof?
Say that again: Trump is the worst possible executive leader at this time.
Say hello to News Corp, Faux Noise and emeritus chairman Rupert, and send many thanks to them ...
At this point the pond realised it was way over length.
Steps had to be taken, and with the intermittent archive on the lizard Oz blink, there was no way to cover the likes of the Angelic one, in her "won't someone think of the children" mood.
And to fit in the Ughmann, as promised the pond had to arrange a special late Sunday arvo edition.
But cackling Claire was on hand, and taking a contrarian view to that of "Ned", though it was also a bigly 12 minute bot read.
What to do? It was on the same topic, and the pond dearly wanted to be shot of the whole damn AI mess.
At the same time, the pond was so overwhelmed and bored at the prospect of another 12 minutes of bot reading that it reverted to screen caps ...
Nvidia's Jensen Huang also predicted massive hardware sales increases over the next year (warning, Faux Noise business link)
Despite the bullish market outlook, Huang issued a stark directive to tech developers, warning them to keep half-baked products out of the hands of the public.
"It is the responsibility of the AI companies ourselves to develop the technology safely and to properly test it," Huang told reporters. Acknowledging recent industry incidents, he emphasized they serve as a critical wake-up call. "If it's not ready, just hold it back. You should go as fast as you can, but no faster than that."
Huang firmly rejected comparisons between the current AI boom and the largely unchecked rise of social media. He argued that AI is a foundational technology—like a newly developed airplane engine—that requires contained, rigorous testing before release. Rather than entirely new regulatory frameworks, he suggested governments adapt the "incredible number of laws" already governing existing sectors like healthcare and transportation, where AI is being implemented.
Environmental concerns were another major focal point, aligning with the King's mandate that AI must also serve the natural world. Addressing critics who fear massive AI data centers will drain global power grids, Huang acknowledged the "interesting dichotomy" of AI factories requiring immense energy.
However, he argued this relentless demand will actually catalyze a green energy revolution, sparking unprecedented investment in sustainable power options like fusion, fission, air, and hydro.
Oh there's money and miracles to be made, and fancy castles in the air and pie in the sky to sell, and Claire was on board with that ...
Trust Pinker? Sure can, unless you happen to be a woman ...
In January 2005, Pinker defended comments by then-president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers. Summers had speculated that in addition to differing societal demands and discrimination, "different availability of aptitude at the high end" may contribute to gender gaps in mathematics and science. In a debate between Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke on gender and science, Pinker argued in favour of the proposition that the gender difference in representation in elite universities was "explainable by some combination of biological differences in average temperaments and talents interacting with socialization and bias".
In January 2009 Pinker wrote an article about the Personal Genome Project and its possible impact on the understanding of human nature in The New York Times. He discussed the new developments in epigenetics and gene-environment interactions in the afterword to the 2016 edition of his book The Blank Slate.[96] Pinker has been criticised for being associated withand using the data of scientific racists[98] (on subjects unrelated to race), such as the blogger Steven Sailer. Journalist Angela Saini wrote, "for many people, Pinker's willingness to entertain the work of individuals who are on the far right and white supremacists has gone beyond the pale". Pinker has said that he condemns racism. In June 2025, he was criticised after he appeared on the podcast of the far-right scientific racism-associated Aporia Magazine.
There's a lot more in his wiki, but the pond must move on to the next gobbet ...
Enough already with Hugging Face, on to the next gobbet ...because, you know, when has any human bean ever wandered off the ranch?
Yes, it's just like domesticating wheat and breeding dogs, and any other simple-minded metaphor you can muster ...
The pond thought it might pre-empt that excitement by taking a note from Idaho ...
None of the four reactors are operating at full power. Each still faces the hard engineering climb from zero-power criticality to sustained, full-power operation — the difference, roughly, between an engine turning over and a car actually driving down the highway. Wagner himself was careful to draw that line after the first test in June. “What Antares achieved is specifically zero-power criticality — the chain reaction was sustained at essentially no measurable energy output,” he said. “This is not electricity generation. It is not full-power operation.” (here)
The pond realises that all the Murdoch hacks down under have been pumping up the "back of a truck" routine - the tabloids love it.
But there's a long way to go before it becomes meaningful.
Good luck to those who travel that road, but, critically speaking, the pond will be dead and gone before there's any electricity from that source.
Never mind, keep talking up a nuclear moon storm Claire.
All the same, what a relief, to be reassured by cackling Claire's calm certainty that AI will never go rogue.
It's humans wot run it all, and when have humans ever done anything bad and naughty, except for a couple of world wars and such like and so forth and etc.
Finally just to add to the Polonial coverage, the pond had to revert to the Australian Daily Zionist News, lizard editorial version.
It's called projection...
Right on ...and by spending all that time in AI and the Australian Daily Zionist News, the pond was beginning to feel demented:
And so to some thoughts on Israel and Palestine ...
Stuff-all new from Polonius, other than using the documentary in question as an excuse for his usual whinge-fest about the ABC and Lefties. I rather wish theABC had agreed to screen the doco, simply to deprive Hendo of his latest cause for complaint.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by this line -
>> Cancelled makes the point that it was various business, church, political and sporting organisations that called on the Albanese Labor government to set up a royal commission into antisemitism. >>>
Polonius somehow omitted “major media organisations” from that list. The Murdoch and NineFax rags in particular featured wall to wall shrieking demands for a RC for weeks; their lobbying far outweighed the combined calls of all those other bodies.
Maybe Channels 7, 9, or 10 will show it!
Delete"Who could imagine any human bean handing out dangerous instructions without adequate safeguards, eh Herr Adolf?"... a Major Editorial SNAFU, due to "projection" into ONE EYE...
ReplyDeleteThe other eye...
"Israel has killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more since 7 October 2023"
"Israel continues to commit genocide, atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children, UN independent commission finds"
23 June 2026
"Peace and Security
Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, a UN independent commission of inquiry said in its latest report released on Tuesday.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” said Srinivasan Muralidhar, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
The report refers to the period following Hamas’ invasion of Israel in late 2023, which resulted in 1,200 deaths and 250 taken hostage, and the subsequent war Israel waged against Gaza that has to date killed more than 70,000 Palestinians in the besieged and occupied territory.
“Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law,” he said.
Read the full report here.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/06/israel-continues-commit-genocide-and-other-atrocity-crimes-deliberately
Unprecedented suffering
...
"Here are some findings in the commission’s latest report:
- Israel has killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more since 7 October 2023
- Severe physical and mental injuries, mass trauma, orphanhood, separation, disability, repeated displacements, starvation and the collapse of education and healthcare have erased childhood and will continue to affect children in Gaza throughout their lives
- Palestinian children have been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe forms of mistreatment in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, with no information on their whereabouts
- Israeli security forces have used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered and intergenerational pattern of occupation and hostilities
Chilling testimonies
"The latest report, “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023, contains testimonies describing deliberate targeting and killing.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/06/1167790
The Claire, with her touch of French in ‘Quillette’, writes of Bobby Gallagher’s ‘reactor’ being ‘deployed’ on the back of a truck. I went to my big print Webster, to be reminded that ‘deploy’ also came from the French, ‘to unfold’, ‘to display’. She may even have had in mind the military use ‘form a wider front of narrow depth’.
ReplyDeleteHer further parochial mention of the ‘ingenuity of our own people’ (her site claims to be ‘international’) had me wondering if, when the ‘Unity’ reactors are being loaded onto ‘pickups’ ready for ‘deployment’, could those pickups be powered by that other triumph of the ingenuity of our own people - the Orbital engine? Being powered by gasoline, that would also be hailed by Trump, and, who knows? start beating-back those battery-driven Chinese toys that are elbowing good Aussie Utes aside in the monthly registration statistics.
It rather leaves a sense that, in the ‘Quillette’ neural network is a vision of utes coming in the gate, parking beside the workshop, plug in a couple of extension cords and, as the French say ‘Voila!’ - power for your small business. So let’s resuscitate those Orbital engines - it’s not as if we would be asking much of them after delivery, and the symbolism would be - awesome.
Hadn't heard anything about Sarich 'Orbitals' for yonks until now. Apparently they're just a bit too complex to be readily mass-produced. But it seems that some are now powering UAVs:
Deletehttps://www.orbitaluav.com/
But "good Aussie Utes"? There isn't any such thing now since the LNC wiped out Australian vehicle manufacturing.
GB - thanks for that link. The 50cc 4-stroke in the moped that the kid next door takes around his personal dirt track is rated at 2.2 kW. The Orbital 2-stroke, is rated at 2.7 kW, on aviation fuel, at 6000 rpm. Not quite sure about the benefit, when, as I understand it, 'UAVs' ('drones' to us plebs) should be built as cheaply as possible. Could it be just the usual acquisition by Defence Department always going for the most expensive option?. Good old 'service spec.' justified by 'need for higher levels of precision, durability, etc. to survive the gruelling demands of defence use.' Kid next door seems to be getting impressive durability from his moped, and, when I checked its power rating, I see that a version sells for a bit over $2 grand, with everything.present.
DeleteNew documentary by UN & NAZA - "Cancel Cancelled My Death of Children Cognitive Dissonance & Decline", reveals antiantisemitism in arts sector, but you won’t see it on ABC to the P and on to Z, in NAZA Newscorpse.
ReplyDeleteIf you have two, not ONE EYE... "The story is well known. Children, women and men were viciously murdered or kidnapped and females were raped. " is able to be seen in the other "Sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians during the Gaza war"
Polonius can't see the irony..."The story is well known. Children, women and men were viciously murdered or kidnapped and females were raped."
Oops...
"which concluded that sexual abuse of Palestinians is "committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel's top civilian and military leadership." Acts of sexual violence such as compulsory nudity, rape threats and sexual assault "comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces' standard operating procedures toward Palestinians", says the report, with Commission member Chris Sidotiadding that, "Sexual violence is now so widespread that it can only be considered systematic. It's got beyond the level of random acts by rogue individuals."[16] In addition to concluding that Israel uses sexual violence to "dominate and destroy the Palestinian people", the report also lists several measures taken by Israel during the Gaza War, such as the bombing of Gaza's reproductive clinics and restrictions on the arrival of medical supplies, as genocidal actsaimed at destroying the reproductive rights of Palestinian women and preventing the birth of Palestinian babies.[17][18]
In May 2026, Israel was added to the United Nations blacklist of countries committing wartime sexual violence.[19]
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_and_gender-based_violence_against_Palestinians_during_the_Gaza_war
Ned may know bugger-all about AI, but he certainly knows an opportunity for panic, doom and gloom when he sees one. He loves to play the Old Testament prophet, proclaiming “Woe unto ye!”, and kicking off with “We are on the brink…” certainly demonstrates that he’s keen to predict a full-on Apocalypse. Who needs to actually have any real understanding of the technology and its implications when you can just reduce it all to another round of the USA vs China?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteMatt Stoller (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/ai-is-an-elite-crime-spree ) on why regulation won't happen:
"So why go through this history? Well, it’s because I am trying to show the problem is not a lack of AI regulation. We have AI regulation. The problem is there’s an elite consensus that the rule of law simply does not apply to the powerful. ...
It’s not that hard to make this technology safe, as the CEO of Hugging Face indicates. It requires some prudent risk management, some liability for big AI firms, and beefed up cybersecurity investment and requirements for corporations. ...
I think there’s a reason this fear is so potent, and why it’s so hard to think calmly and rationally about what to do. And that is because it’s almost painful to imagine a world where we enforce laws as written against the powerful. As a society, we have lost the ability to protect ourselves, and that is a very scary thing to experience."
There's a lot more.