In which the pond again refuses to go there with the lizard Oz ... but does find a distraction in tales from a Washington court ...

 

This is the reason the pond has steered clear of the recent tragedy ...

Such a stupid man, and the pond decided not to link to Miss Lindsey or in any other way help or encourage his attention seeking.

People get hold of something appalling, and somehow contrive to make it worse, just as King Donald did with the death of the Reiners.

Stupid people or stupid bots also contrive to make the worst somehow even worse ...

The pond doesn't need to be there. Better some quiet time, some time away, as people grieve for their losses ...

That's why the pond decided it would take a step back from the reptiles, who were hard at it again today ...

Out of all that, the pond found just one diversion away from the relentless politicisation of a tragedy, as if the original fanaticism of the mass murderers wasn't enough already.

Even more amazingly, the pond happened to agree with the lizard Oz editorialist ...

It's as if Gaza, Ukraine, the planet, had disappeared entirely in a miasma, a fog of war... and note even there how the lizard Oz editorialist elides over the way that King Donald refuses to actually tackle dictator Xi.

But that mention of King Donald, and his minions and their reluctance to criticise Xi did provide an opening for other distractions, helped by Wilcox...

And while it's seasonally too late that gave the pond an excuse to run one of the more bizarre images discovered in the recent Epstein releases...

And in turn that sets the scene for the pond's suggestion for alternative reading ...

It comes as a two parter, courtesy Vanity Fair ...

The first part is here, (*archive link, just in case); the second part is here ... (*archive link)

The posed snap for the second part was as good as the first snap ...

Right from the get go there were juicy bits ...

Most senior White House officials parse their words and speak only on background. But over many on-the-record conversations, Wiles answered almost every question I put to her.
We often spoke on Sundays after church. Wiles, an Episcopalian, calls herself “Catholic lite.” One time we spoke while she was doing her laundry in her Washington, DC, rental. Trump, she told me, “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vance’s conversion from Never Trumper to MAGA acolyte, she said, has been “sort of political.” The vice president, she added, has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” Russell Vought, architect of the notorious Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” When I asked her what she thought of Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, she replied: “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.” (She says she doesn't have first-hand knowledge.

Surely that will get King Donald agitated, what with him proudly boasting he doesn't drink, but still somehow ending up with an alcoholic's personality.

And there was much talk out of school ...

DAY 74
April 3, 2025
“Long-threatened tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump have plunged the country into trade wars abroad….” —PBS News

The president declared April 2 “Liberation Day,” bragging about billions of dollars that would flow into US coffers from tariffs, refusing to acknowledge that the levies were a tax on consumers.
The question around Wiles’s tenure under Trump has been whether she will do anything to restrain him. A better question: Does she want to?
“So much thinking out loud is what I would call it,” said Wiles of Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout. “There was a huge disagreement over whether [tariffs were] a good idea.” Trump’s advisers were sharply divided, some believing tariffs were a panacea and others predicting disaster. Wiles told them to get with Trump’s program. “I said, ‘This is where we’re going to end up. So figure out how you can work into what he’s already thinking.’ Well, they couldn’t get there.”
Wiles recruited Vance to help tap the brakes. “We told Donald Trump, ‘Hey, let’s not talk about tariffs today. Let’s wait until we have the team in complete unity and then we’ll do it,’ ” she said. But Trump barreled ahead, announcing sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs, from 10 to 100 percent—which triggered panic in the bond market and a sell-off of stocks. Trump paused his policy for 90 days, but by that time the president’s helter-skelter levies had given rise to the TACO chant: “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Wiles believed a middle ground on tariffs would ultimately succeed, she said, “but it’s been more painful than I expected.”
At the time this article went to press, shortly before the December holidays, a Harvard poll showed 56 percent of voters think Trump’s tariff policies have harmed the economy.

And so on, and every so often there were breakouts, with whimsical names ...

That last one is sure to get King Donald going, what with the couch lover being called the "hair apparent", while the couch lover himself might be a tad exercised by Wiles calling him "a conspiracy theorist for a decade."

No wonder the Daily Beast went for the only angle left to it, as it tried to make do with crumbs and fall out ...Moment Trump Goons Realized Vanity Fair Shoot Was Career Suicide (*archive link):

A Trump administration official knew that Vanity Fair’s bombshell profile was unlikely to land well the moment the magazine’s photographer assembled the top brass for the glossy cover shoot.
“We’re all going to get fired for this,” said one of the officials in the group, which included Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chiefs of Staff James Blair and Dan Scavino, and Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller.
“Except for me,” replied Vice President JD Vance. “I have 100 percent job security.”
The formal photo, taken by Vanity Fair photographer Christopher Anderson, shows Leavitt, Vance, Rubio, Wiles, Blair, Scavino, and Miller, posed stoically around a table in the Roosevelt Room.
In a piece on how Vanity Fair’s cover photo came together, Global Editorial Director Mark Guiducci detailed how Vance, 41, fired off nervous jokes and insults at the publication and his fellow administration officials throughout the proceedings.
“Is this the part where you say we’re all evil?” he grilled the publication as the officials posed together.
Earlier in the shoot, he joked, “I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really s---ty compared to me. And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”
The administration’s apparent misgivings about Vanity Fair’s profile proved to be well-founded.
President Donald Trump, accompanied by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles (R), speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on February 04, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Wiles said that Trump has "an alcoholic's personality" and was shockingly candid about other administration officials in her interview.
While Vance, Leavitt, Rubio, Blair and Miller made it through the profile without sparking much controversy, Wiles gave shockingly candid interviews about the chaos within the administration.
Wiles, whom Rubio said has an “earned trust” with Trump, said the president has “an alcoholic’s personality," called Vance a “conspiracy theorist,” accused former DOGE head Elon Musk of being an “avowed ketamine [user],” and called Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought a “right-wing zealot.”
Wiles' stunning quotes made her the subject of rumors she's on her way out of the White House.
Wiles, 68, immediately attempted to distance herself from the piece, saying, “The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”
“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team,” she added.
Leavitt stood behind Wiles, saying to the Daily Beast, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal adviser than Susie. The entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”
The piece suddenly made Wiles the center of rumors that she’s on her way out of the White House. Such speculation has also dogged FBI Director Kash Patel, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

That piece by Mark Guiducci, in the form of an "editor's letter", Vanity Fair Goes to the White House: Trump Edition,  is an amusing side piece to the main event (*archive link)"

...Stephen Miller’s gaze is like a laser beam, and his calculated manner of speaking made me think of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. We photographed him in front of a painting of Native Americans: Crossing the River Platte, by Worthington Whittredge.
When it came time for the group portraits, the last-minute inclusion of Dan Scavino brought the team—selected for the photos by Wiles herself—to seven in total. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried for a little charm: “Double-breasted, peak lapel,” he said, inspecting my suit. “I ­haven’t seen anything like that here.” The others filed in, a bit like nervous schoolchildren. ­Miller balked at the idea of sitting on the end of the table—“not natural,” he declared. There was giggling. A “Blue Steel” joke was made. “We’re all going to get fired for this,” someone cracked. “Except for me,” the vice president said. “I have 100 percent job security.” These people who run the nation—who together are something like Trump’s prefrontal cortex—are, in the end, also just office coworkers.
Christopher started shooting. “Is this the part where you say we’re all evil?” the vice president asked.
Eventually, Wiles’s executive assistant informed us that we would not be allowed to photograph either the “Presidential Walk of Fame” or the Rose Garden, as we’d asked. “Those are very special to the president,” she said. “They’re his spaces.” Actually, I wanted to remind her, they’re not.

The pond likes to imagine the yarn as coming from someone inside the Sun King's palace, or perhaps inside Adolf Hitler's entourage, at the time when the scheming for the Führer's attention was at its peak.

Everybody dined out on it. 

The Graudian madly cherry picked and threw in bonus tidbits in its rolling news coverage...

But surely the King will brood at the attention-seeking ways of his minions and courtiers?

What else?

Well John Dickerson made a note on that other matter in The Atlantic, Trump Widens the Breach, The country mourned a beloved filmmaker. Trump's first instinct was to desecrate. (*archive link)

...When the country confronts something as horrible as the Reiners’ killing, it is destabilizing. When the victim is someone we feel we knew or whose work helped us know ourselves, the moment may be more so. These breaches present leaders with an opportunity to stay quiet. Let the poets and the priests and rabbis take over. Leave room for the fan whose perfect tribute captures the nation. If the leader can’t help but comment, the best they can offer is containment. In crisis psychology, people calm when they sense boundaries around chaos. In today’s world, what that looks like is a leader who acknowledges grief even if it’s not their own, or who affirms that all is not chaos when a major rupture happens.
During a weekend that also included a deadly shooting at Brown University and a massacre at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, the country was already shaken. Containment was needed more than ever.
What was not called for—in the moment, in the psychology handbook, or in the traditions of the American presidency—was Donald Trump’s response.
On Truth Social today, the president mocked Reiner, suggesting that his death was the result of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”—a “mind-crippling disease,” he called it, suggesting, obviously without evidence, that Reiner’s criticism of Trump had invited his death. Trump did something worse than mock. He blamed a murdered man for his own murder, while the Reiners’ own son sits in custody on suspicion of killing them. Trump used a family tragedy against a dead man. This was not merely irresponsible, nor simply another example of norm-breaking rhetoric. It actively widened the breach. He didn’t affirm human boundaries; he punctured them to display dominance. Grief became a plaything. Shock became his permission.

Well yes, and over at The New Yorker, David Remnick offered Donald Trump’s Remarks on the Death of Rob Reiner Are Next-Level Degradation; On a weekend of terrible violent events, you would not expect a President of the United States to make matters even worse. But, of course, he did. (*archive link).

In part:

...After a decade of constant presence on the political stage, Trump no longer seems capable of shocking anyone with the brutality of his language or the heedlessness of his behavior. His supporters continue to excuse his insouciant cruelty as “Trump being Trump,” proof of his authenticity. (The antisemitism of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and a gaggle of group-chatting young Republican leaders is, similarly, included in the “big tent” of MAGA rhetoric.) Now, when a friend begins a conversation with “Did you hear what Trump said today?,” you do your best to dodge the subject. What’s the point? And yet the President really did seem to break through to a new level of degradation this week.
This past weekend brought a terrible and rapid succession of violent events. On Saturday afternoon, in Providence, an unidentified gunman on the Brown University campus shot and killed two students and wounded nine others in the midst of exam period. The killer has yet to be found. On Sunday, in Archer Park, near Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, a father-and-son team, both dressed in black and heavily armed, reportedly took aim at a crowd of Jewish men, women, and children who were celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. At least fifteen people were killed, including an eighty-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor and a ten-year-old girl. The massacre was the latest in a long series of antisemitic incidents in Australia—and beyond.
Finally, on Sunday night, came the news that the actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, had been found dead in their home. Their bodies were discovered by their daughter Romy. Los Angeles police arrested their son, the thirty-two-year-old Nick Reiner. According to press reports, the investigation had focussed on him immediately not only because of his history of drug abuse but also because he had been behaving erratically the night before, in his parents’ presence, at a holiday party at the home of Conan O’Brien. Nick Reiner is being held, without bail, in Los Angeles County jail.
There was something about these three events that came in such rapid succession that it savaged the spirit—the yet-again regularity of American mass shootings, this time in Providence; the stark Jew hatred behind the slaughter in Australia; the sheer sadness of losing such a beloved and decent figure in the popular culture, and his wife, purportedly at the hands of their troubled son. It would be naïve to think that any leader, any clergy, could ease all that pain with a gesture or a speech. Barack Obama speaking and singing “Amazing Grace” from the pulpit in Charleston, South Carolina, or Robert F. Kennedy speaking in Indianapolis on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that kind of moral eloquence is somehow beyond our contemporary imaginations and expectations. What you would not expect is for a President of the United States to make matters even worse than they were. But, of course, he did. A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood,” Trump wrote, on Truth Social, on Monday. He went on:

Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.
He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!

There is a lot to unpack here, from the shaky grammar to the decorous use of “passed away” to the all-caps diagnosis to the hideously gleeful sign-off: “rest in peace!” Future Trump scholars will sort through the details with the necessary deliberation. But it requires no deep thinking to assess Trump’s meaning. As if to assure the country that this was no passing case of morning dyspepsia, he declared, at a press conference, later in the day (using the kingly third-person approach) that Reiner “was a deranged person, as far as Trump is concerned.”

And that's where the disunited states have landed ...

Back to Remnick for the closer:

...In the wake of the shocking death of Charlie Kirk, in September, there were many in the President’s circle who were quick to insist on the proper language of tragedy and mourning, and to ostracize those who failed to use it. As a citizen and an ardent liberal, Reiner was a harsh critic of the President; nor did his politics even remotely align with those of Charlie Kirk. Yet, when Reiner was asked about Kirk’s murder, he called it “an absolute horror,” and told Piers Morgan, “That should never happen to anybody. I don’t care what your political beliefs are.” And, when Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, delivered a speech of forgiveness at her husband’s memorial service in Arizona, Reiner was moved. “What she said, to me, was beautiful,” he said. “She forgave his assassin, and I think that is admirable.”
Remember what the President said by way of reply to Erika Kirk’s gesture of Christian love? “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.” And he said this in a eulogy. And so it is worth asking, do you know anyone quite as malevolent? At your place of work? On your campus? A colleague? A teacher? Much less someone whose impulses and furies in no small measure dictate the direction, fate, and temper of the country? Have you ever in your life encountered a character as wretched as Donald Trump? 

And if all that's way too much King Donald and his court, there's always the cracking Crace doing over the Reform mob for The Graudian with Penitent Tice tussles with The Unbearable Lightness of His Being:

Call it a Christmas miracle. For this was the day when Richard Tice sent in his application to become a fully paid-up member of Woke. The day the Reform deputy leader tried to break free from his role as the perennial sidekick. An insignificant blot on the Nigel Farage landscape. When he tried to show he was able to think his own thoughts. Be his own man. Release the closet liberal inside. No longer have to apologise for his existence at the posh dinners he enjoys so much.
Yet Dicky will always be Dicky. Unable to escape The Unbearable Lightness of His Being. When he looks in the mirror, even he has to agree there is less than meets the eye. So it was inevitable he crashed and burned as usual. There are just too many contradictions that he can’t reconcile. A lifetime of trying to be loved has left him unsure of who he really is. A neurotic narcissist with a large ego and next to no self-worth.

And so on, and so to turn to the 'toons for the wrap up, with the infallible Pope suggesting practical ways to help ...

... and the immortal Rowe featuring the heroes that emerges on that insane day ...

There's a little local knowledge in that piece, because the immortal Rowe is tipping the hat to a hero and to Diana Webber's piece outside the Pavilion ...

As for the war on Xmas? The pond might as whistle in the dark, or even more desperate, turn to Seth Myers, mugging in his usual shameless way ...

In which the pond seeks distractions from the carnage, and settles on a different climate of fear ...

 

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...

Deadly Rivers in the Sky A Washington Post investigation shows where climate forces are fueling more dangerous floods

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 ...

Hong Kong court convicts pro-democracy newspaper founder Jimmy Lai
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:

The links in that piece were active in the archive, one way or another. 

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 ...

Better to say nothing than to say "things can happen"...

In which the pond refuses to go there, that dark and dank and despairing place of mass murder ...

This isn't a day for blogging, this is a day for grieving, and for condolences to the friends and families of the innocents who lost their lives.

This isn't a day for making political, or ideological, capital out of the deaths of innocents.

This isn't a day for the usual fun of arguing with the reptiles.

The pond watched a debrief/press conference last night as a reporter - a Murdochian - seized on the deaths of innocents with a question loaded with political barbs. The Prime Minister wisely avoided the appalling intent.

No doubt there'll be much speculation, but the pond was reminded that only a year or so, one man was mistakenly swept up in the blame game around the Bondi Junction murders. He got a nice settlement out of it, but no doubt would have settled on being left out of it.

This is a time when social media will run riot. There will be misinformation, allegations and division and hate in abundance.

The blame game, the fomenting of hate, will likely whirl out of control.

This isn't the time for the pond to become one of those rioters, another of those blame gamers.

To settle back and spend a usual day bickering with the reptiles isn't possible for the pond.

One thing's certain. Whatever ideological or theological notions that might have motivated the killers, that might have driven the bloody murders on the beach, those notions have taken an immeasurable hit ... and the killers' actions have caused any associated causes immense harm.

The pond will confess to gawping along at the live coverage last night on ABC News, while appalled by the sights.

Some might think the pond a coward for not tackling the reptiles this day, but that's entirely the point. There's nothing to be gained by joining in the frenzy.

The pond was however, inspired by the sight of a man, apparently wounded twice, coming up from behind to disarm one of the mass murderers. 

Apparently this was a local fruit shop owner, a certain Ahmed Al Ahmed. He grabbed hold of the killer's gun, and put it down, a righteous response, while the killer retreated. 

The pond's instinct was to pull the trigger and put the rabid one down, which would have been just another addition to the carnage.

The pond's reaction was visceral. It's easy to watch the American disease from afar, the almost innumerable deaths by gun violence, but this was too close to home.

Bondi beach is totemic to the pond, like it is to many others, even as it's been overrun by visitors. 

The pond first saw the ocean there, a disbeliever from the remote bush astonished by the sight of waves and an endless, vast amount of water.

It was the place of the ritual first putting toes in water, until, family legend has it, the pond retreated in teary disbelief. The pond still has a memory of the awe the sea inspired. (It was probably a two footer that towered over the pond).

The beach, and the innocents who flocked there for fun and to celebrate a Jewish religious holiday, didn't need this desecration.

The pond will leave the zealotry this day to the reptiles...and instead settle for quoting just one response ...

If only the pond could believe that there was a long absent lord ... if only there was more to offer than thoughts and prayers to those caught up in grief at the carnage...

With that thought in mind, the pond will allow the immortal Rowe to go there ...

In which Polonius contrives to ruin the pond's meditative Sunday, while the dog botherer and the Angelic one are no help either ...

 

(Images from the Graudian coverage, though the Beast also has a goodly number of snaps - *archive link)

And that's the last time you'll be titillated in this meditative Sunday outing.

The pond couldn't believe its bad luck.

At least "Ned" could be safely tucked down at the bottom of the page where nobody would notice his deranged meandering, fit of nostalgia about a long forgotten head prefect who made a name for himself regularly spanking the country.

But ever since the pond gave up on the Pellists and the angry Sydney Anglicans, Polonial prattle has always been the starting point for a vigorous debate, designed to inspire the shaking of canes and the rattling of wheelchairs.

And yet, to prove lightning does indeed strike twice at the very same spot, what did Polonius get up to this weekend?

He doubled down on "Ned". 

He decided to soil Sunday with another serve of ancient squatter from Nareen stuff ...

The header: Malcolm Fraser’s long road from right to left; The man who blocked supply to bring down Gough Whitlam spent decades seeking redemption from the very people who once despised him – but at what cost to historical truth?

The caption: Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam join forces to record a Yes-case television ad for the 1999 republic referendum.

The pond supposes it's only 4 minutes, not like the unendurable 11 minutes spent with "Ned's" natter ... but the pond felt an incredible desire to do a Tootle ...

How is it, for example, that somehow the likes of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, and above all, snakes of the Dershowitz and Bannon kind have managed to escape the heat?

The pond can understand Woody Allen - he directed Manhattan and that's all you need to know. He no longer has a reputation that anyone could sully or slander.

But how do some of these snakes manage to slither away unnoticed, unless they happen to turn up in a Borat movie, featured in a most unseemly light?

Sorry, sorry, Tootle has returned to the tracks.

On with official reptile duties ... take it away Polonius:

I’m often asked about the metamorphosis of Malcolm Fraser, who was first elected prime minister of Australia 50 years ago today, the 13th.

Hang on, hang on, hold it right there.

He's often asked? 

Who mingles with this ossified dinosaur? 

Even worse, who often asks him what it was like in Antediluvian times?

Or is it just a cheap, stale, rhetorical device to allow him to get into blathering about the head prefect?

Speaking of cheap rhetorical devices, what a good way to return to the blather:

When I was a student at the University of Melbourne in the 1960s, Fraser occasionally gave talks at the campus. He was one of the few Coalition MPs who could defend Australia’s Vietnam commitment, along with conscription, in an intelligent manner.

Oh indeed, indeed, though the halls still resound with talk of the way that Polonius ignored the bounce of the marble and signed up to serve Her Majesty, bringing western civilisation to the Vietnamese with his warrior ways.

The pond keeds, the pond keeds ... Polonius valiantly fought the war from the rear and paid dearly for his devotion to the cause ... (sorry, from June 2005, behind the Crikey paywall)

(Relax Melburnians, thanks to the Graudian, the pond is aware that allegedly leftie Melbourne has kept the traditional Xmas shop window display alive, while godless Sydney has abandoned it for branding opportunities).

Oh 'Nam valiant warrior, oh noble fighter, and yet the pond's attempt at deflection and distraction won't work.

We're stuck with Polonius going on and on about the head prefect ...

Fraser was a fierce opponent of the Labor Party, not only members of the Labor Left such as Jim Cairns but also right-wing Labor types such as Gough Whitlam. Fraser admired Robert Menzies and sought to defend his legacy. Yet in the lead-up to his death in 2015, Fraser was loved by the left.
In his later years Fraser co-wrote two books with left-of-centre journalists/academics. In his 2010 Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs, which he co-wrote with Margaret Simons, it was reported that at literary festivals in the 2000s Fraser “was applauded by the same kinds of people who had once reviled him for his role in the dismissal of Whitlam”.
Then in Dangerous Allies, which Fraser wrote with Cain Roberts in 2014, he stated that from around 1945 Menzies “misjudged the direction in which the world was heading”. By then he was attacking the Menzies legacy and had quit the Liberal Party.
Why the change? In my view, Fraser wanted to be loved – including by the left. As is widely known, in October-November 1975 a talented, arrogant and stubborn man (Fraser) was determined to block supply in the Senate. And a talented, arrogant and stubborn man (Whitlam) was determined to govern without supply.

The reptiles slipped in a reference to that cur Kerr, Sir John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser during a Parliament House lunch in 1977. Picture: Brett Thomson

No doubt the reptiles were hoping that the pond would be inspired to turn once again to the currish Kerr drunk at the Tamworth show - one of the few bright moments for a town ruined by Barnaby - or even drunk at the Melbourne cup.

But the pond has been there too often in recent times, and pressed on:

Governor-General Sir John Kerr resolved the deadlock by dismissing Whitlam, who would not advise of a double-dissolution election, and appointing Fraser as caretaker prime minister pending a double-dissolution election. In the event, on December 13, 1975, the Coalition won in a landslide.
As someone who worked for a minister in the Fraser government between 1976 and 1979 it was evident to me that Fraser was unnerved by the opposition to the way he became prime minister. At the time there were angry demonstrations against him and Kerr. One of the latter is covered by Gary Newman’s 2023 documentary How to Capture a Prime Minister, dealing with the violent anti-Fraser demonstration at Monash University in 1976.
Fraser led a relatively successful government from late 1975 until early 1980 but it ran out of steam. Sure, the international economy was not in good shape. But the main problem was that Fraser did not have an economic agenda.

The reptiles slipped in another snap ... Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser at the launch of the Australia's First Century book in 2000.

At this point Polonius took an exceedingly dull turn, spending an elaborate amount of time establishing the basis for a feud with Ancient Troy ... as if the sight of two reptiles battling over the head prefect made for a spectacle more entertaining than Gladiator ...

Fraser retired from politics in early 1983 and in 1987 Malcolm Fraser: A Biography was published. Fraser fed material to author Philip Ayres that was hostile to John Howard and Kerr. Fraser claimed for the first time – a decade after the Dismissal – that in a phone call at about 9.55am on November 11, 1975, Kerr had tipped him off that he was about to dismiss Whitlam after finding out that the opposition was still intent on blocking supply.
Kerr denied this and had a note, dated November 16, 1975, to support his position along with an account in his 1978 book Matters for Judgement. Kerr said Fraser’s note was written at Government House after Whitlam had been dismissed.
What Fraser told Ayres in 1987 was based on his memory. He said he had handwritten a note of his phone conversation, on which he recorded four conditions Kerr had laid down for him to become a caretaker prime minister.
The note apparently was not recovered until the early 2000s. In fact, Kerr laid down six conditions, not four. The note was first published in The Political Memoirs in 2010. It was obvious that the handwriting at the top of the note was dramatically different from the signature, date and time at the bottom of the note.
Also the signature seems to begin with a capital “J” followed by a capital “M”. Bear in mind that Fraser’s full name was John Malcolm Fraser. Moreover, in November 1975 he used to sign his name as “Malcolm Fraser”. In addition, the date “11 Nov 1975” had the “7” transcribed over an “8”.

The reptiles flung in yet another snap of the head prefect and Gough ... Then prime minister Malcolm Fraser and opposition leader Gough Whitlam at the opening of a new BHP steel mill at Geelong in 1977. Picture: NCA

And then it was time for all that carefully cultivated pedantry to pay off with a direct assault on Ancient Troy ...

In his article in these pages on December 8, Troy Bramston wrote that “the claim that the note was made later cannot be substantiated and was rather silly”.
My claim was only that the date, time and signature had been inserted later. But Fraser and Simons declined to explain the difference in the writing. The issue is also addressed in an article by Michael Connor in the September 2017 issue of Quadrant – which is anything but “silly”.
I demonstrated the difference in writing during my appearance on the Sky News documentary The Dismissal: 50 Years On and in my recent book Malcolm Fraser: A Personal Reflection. No one has challenged my analysis by means of considered argument.
There is another problem. To believe Fraser’s account over Kerr’s, one has to rely on Fraser’s memory. Yet Fraser wrote in The Political Memoirs that his memory was “notoriously fallible”.

Did the pond give two hoots, or even a single hoot?

It was so Polonius ... it's been that way since well before 2008 and this First Dog note ...

The only thing the pond cared about was the way that the reptiles refused to give Reg Withers proper respect ... Former Liberal minister Reg Withers.

Please, he was the toe cutter. He was such a b*stard of an enforcer, that the only name that suited him was taken from a Sydney gang that would cut off the toes of their victims ...

Now if the reptiles had slipped that in, there might have been some entertainment, and Polonius might not have whimpered off into a final gobbet of tedium ...

Bramston writes that the alleged Kerr-Fraser call was witnessed by one-time Liberal MPs Reg Withers and Vic Garland. He makes no reference to Bob Ellicott QC, who told me that he was in the room and the call was too brief for Kerr to have laid down six conditions.
The problem with memory is that some people have clear “recollections” of events that never happened. Fallible memories, in other words. Whatever the motivation, Fraser’s claim that he was effectively tipped off by Kerr put the focus of the Dismissal on Kerr and away from Fraser. This paved the way for Fraser to become besties with Whitlam.
Meanwhile, Fraser left notes in his personal papers criticising Kerr for the way he handled the Dismissal – views he never expressed a half-century ago. In the end, Fraser was loved by the left but many of his one-time closest supporters believed he had lost his way.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Once again the pond will provide a belated intermittent archive link to the musings of Polonius.

Why? Because masochists might not have had their fill, and they might want to wander through the hive mind - links usually do a Hotel California, and once inside you can never leave.

The last par for example had a link to this, and who wouldn't want to keep flogging their backs, Percy Grainger style, preferably with a good birch or pine branch?

The upside? Not a single mention of the ABC! It must be the Xmas silly season.

And so to the dog botherer, doing his best to ruin Xmas seasonal cheer with a whining, moaning, litany, a mournful dirge of divisive unhappiness ...

The header: ‘Australia has less social cohesion, resilience and common purpose than I can recall in my lifetime’;  We’ve lost cohesion and character as protesters intimidate fellow citizens and government fuels division.

Says the most divisive rag for the most divisive foreign corporation at work in the country.

The caption: Protesters block shipping in Newcastle last month. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

The upside? It's apparently the dog botherer's last column for the year.

The downside? It's a dog botherer column, one of his usual divisive efforts spraying around words like "zealot" ...

Only a narcissist of the first water wouldn't notice the abundant ironies ...

We are losing parts of our national character and this is weakening our nation. While this may be an inevitable and unsurprising consequence of globalisation, the digital media age, record immigration and multiculturalism, it is still troubling to witness, and we have the option of resisting.
Casting my mind over 2025 for my final column of the year, there is an overwhelming sense that the nation has changed or that differences long in the making have started to become more perceptible. Australia has less social cohesion, resilience and common purpose than I can recall in my lifetime.
Citizens have paraded behind posters of terrorist leaders to intimidate fellow citizens. Jewish people have repeatedly faced public death threats and their communities have been attacked and vandalised, a synagogue and childcare centre firebombed.
Climate zealots have blocked cars, trains and ships, preventing their fellow citizens from going about their lawful business. Activists routinely and selfishly place their obsessions above the interests of law-abiding compatriots – and too often authorities protect the rights of protesters over those of others exercising their day-to-day freedoms.

As usual, it's not the actual observed explosion of extreme weather events, their consequent impact on insurance, on property and people, and on the planet, that's the problem, it's the way that uppity people insist on mentioning them ... The explosion of extreme weather mentions fans fear in the politics of climate.

Can you have alarmist alarm about alarmists being alarmed?

You can, at least in irony-free dog botherer world ...

Our governments and authorities deliberately fuel alarmism over global warming and mislead the population about our national energy self-harm. Regional communities are divided into the haves and have-nots as renewable energy and transmission projects cut through their landscapes.
More than half of all voters now rely on government for most of their income. A report by the Centre for Independent Studies calculated those directly employed by government, getting most of their income from welfare benefits or working in jobs reliant on government funding top 50 per cent of the adult population – consider what that means for the economy, politics and individual initiative.
Large numbers of people look to government to solve any manner of ills. Media exacerbates these expectations and politicians oblige with ever more intrusions.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme has blown out to become a $50bn a year behemoth, where taxpayers’ money is rorted by service providers who drain the market economy of workers and productivity.
The parties of government are receiving fewer votes than ever and the parties of protest are winning an increasing share.

Meanwhile, the dog bothering was lathering up a fit about the flag ... Protestors burning Australian flag

Look at it positively, all they're doing is burning the UK flag, plus a few stars that have been dragged into the mix ...

The pond doesn't much mind what anyone does to the UK flag:

Our national flag is shunned by many, and when it is flown it is usually accompanied by not one but two Indigenous flags. Welcomes to country are overdone and often sound anything but welcoming, morphing into grievance and admonishment.
What has happened to a frontier nation once ingrained with self-reliance and adaptability? What have we done to an economy once endowed with plentiful, cheap energy?
Where is our common purpose and cohesion? What do we rally around? And what do we share (apart from a government debt that has reached $1 trillion)?
Most of this has unfolded on a continuum, and some government overreach was exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social divisions and protest movements have been animated by the war in Gaza and inflamed by social media.
We are living in a rapidly changing world and it is inevitable that Australia will change too. But a wise nation would look to retain strong qualities that have held it in good stead, while nourishing clear values and shared ambitions.
When tens of thousands of people marched across Sydney Harbour Bridge in August it was celebrated by many politicians and much of the media as a mainstream movement for the Palestinian people and peace. No doubt there were well-intentioned people who joined in, probably misinformed by social media, the ABC and others.

It being the Australian Daily Zionist News, it wasn't long before the dog botherer went there, Zionist Federation of Australia CEO Alon Cassuto says the Jewish community is “shaken up” after seeing the “glorification of terrorism” from the pro-Palestine protest on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge. “This so-called march for humanity, which was promoted as a peaceful demonstration, was anything but,” Mr Cassuto told Sky News host Steve Price. “These images are not about peace. “If these people wanted peace, then they‘d stand side-by-side with Jews and Palestinians. “This was a march against Israel … this was not a march for peace.”

Whenever that happens, the pond likes to nip off to Haaretz to check on what's really happening ...

Sure enough ...

'Israel Is Pushing Us Out': Plan to Open Gaza's Rafah Crossing Leaves Palestinians With More Questions Than Answers (*archive link)

And ...

'You'll Pay in Blood': Israeli Journalist Who Exposed IDF Abuse of Palestinian Detainee Speaks Out Amid Death Threats
Israel's Channel 12 News journalist Guy Peleg faces escalating threats and harassment since he published a video - handed over to him by the former Military Advocate General - of the extreme abuse at Sde Teiman (*archive link)

Oh and stories like this ...

But the dog botherer has never been big on noticing ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, mass destruction and mass starvation as a war strategy (and crime):

The protest was organised by the radical Palestine Action Group, which has close links with operatives in Socialist Alternative and Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (which is banned in many countries, including in the Muslim world). It was a march of hatred, not peace.
Protesters displayed terrorist banners and a poster of the supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, a sponsor of global terrorism against Israelis and a country that has launched drones and fired missiles in pursuit of its stated aim of wiping Israel off the map. Iran was behind the arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue last year.
Marchers also chanted slogans about the elimination of Israel (“From the river to the sea”) and the killing of Israeli soldiers (“death to the IDF”). Among the pro-Palestinian crowd was Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun who fronted a cheering crowd at Sydney’s Lakemba on October 8, 2023, expressing elation, happiness and pride at the October 7 atrocities.
At the bridge protest Dadoun said he was “marching for humanity”. Sure.
This was an ominous episode for this country; it amounted to an Islamist-dominated threat against Israel, its supporters and Australians who are Jewish. It came almost two years after the Lakemba celebration of October 2023 and the Sydney Opera House protest and threats against Jews the following night – there have been almost weekly anti-Israel street marches in Sydney and Melbourne since.
Pro-Palestinian groups also made intimidating sorties into suburbs with high Jewish populations. The bridge march was the culmination of this ugliness, yet it was embraced by Hamas’s useful idiots in our political and media class.

These litanies never seem to end, what with the many grudges served up again and again ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a press conference in Canberra in August, where he announced Australia would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh / AFP

There's a reason that the Oxford made "rage bait" the word of the year, even if it's two words, but they got the definition wrong ...

(n.) Online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.

What they should have included was "tired old hacks wanting to sh*t stir and send hive minds into a buzzing, hysterical frenzy at the lizard Oz".

But at least the pond has made mention of it, as the rage baiter continued with his baiting and his hating ...

Based partly on the strength of the Harbour Bridge turnout and cynical electoral concerns (Muslim voters outnumber Jews 10 to one), Anthony Albanese formally recognised the non-existent state of Palestine the following month at the UN. A steadfast supporter of Israel since its modern reincarnation in 1948, Australia under Albanese abandoned a mate, the only pluralist democracy in the Middle East, a country under attack on all fronts. It is impossible to watch all this unfold and fail to realise that something fundamental has changed in our country.
From the Prime Minister down, our governments and authorities have failed the Jewish population and Israel while bending to the wishes of hardline Islamist groups whose fundamentalist views are anathema to our central values of democracy, tolerance and pluralism. Rather than take lessons from what has been unfolding in Europe and Britain, our government has taken itself to the top of the list of countries welcoming refugees from the terrorist badlands of Gaza. Security checks for about 3000 visas could have been only cursory.
With a population topping 500,000 people, the city of Newcastle in NSW is the seventh largest in the nation and has a proud history. Its economic fortunes have always been linked to the coal industry and it remains the world’s largest coal exporting port. Last month climate activists including Greens leader Larissa Waters kayaked and swam in the channel in a deliberate and successful attempt to disrupt shipping, just as they have previously blocked rail lines and loading operations.

Coal, coal, coal, always the coal, and images designed to shock, disturb and provoke anger, Rising Tide protester on Horseshoe Beach in Newcastle. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

All that did was take the pond way back to the days of the 'Nam moratoriums, when many shared Muhammad Ali's view that he ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong ...

Whenever you get the dog botherer ranting about moral narcissism, arrogance, selfishness and the like, remember, it's just a form of projection ...

He embodies all the unsavoury qualities he allegedly finds in others ...

Apart from interrupting coal exports the protesters dissuaded a cruise liner scheduled to bring 1000 tourists into the city. The arrogance and selfishness of these protesters is astonishing. To indulge their activism, they choose to prevent fellow citizens from working or plying extra trade in their small businesses – hardly a fair go.
We have seen years of moral vanity from the left, imposing their will and ducking intelligent debate on the basis that alternative views are morally bankrupt – it is all about white hats denouncing black hats. This has mutated into a moral narcissism, where the left is so infatuated with its own virtue that it has only visceral hatred for those who disagree with it.

Gone is any pretence that the dog botherer cared about the Voice ...

This has poisoned discussions about Indigenous affairs so that the Indigenous voice proposal, designed to bring the country together, only deepened a chasm. There is a post-referendum harshness now, where activists make wild demands and opponents pretend rejection of the voice means there is no ground to give and no problem to fix – the mainstream consensus around practical reconciliation has been trashed.
We are on a dismal trajectory. Just five years ago, soon before he died, the great British-born Jewish philosopher Jonathan Sacks was prescient in his brilliant book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.
“If we focus on the ‘I’ and lose the ‘We’, if we act on self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on self-esteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else,” Sacks wrote. “Nations will cease to have societies and instead have identity groups. We will lose our feeling of collective responsibility and find in its place a culture of competitive victimhood. In an age of unprecedented possibilities, people will feel vulnerable and alone.”

How far back does he go in this litany? 

In a column supposedly farewelling 2025, it's back 2023 ...Senator Lidia Thorpe (centre) takes part in a 2023 Invasion Day rally. Picture: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images

And so to the final gobbet, and yes, "victimhood" is trotted out like a dose of diarrhea by someone who clearly thinks of himself as an eternal victim:

His diagnosis is global but applies here. Do you see vulnerability and competition for victimhood in Australia? Do you see a greater focus on identity groups rather than common values and goals?
Sachs was on to something. His prescription is to shift away from the transactional to the meaningful, from the individual to the communal. “A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship.”
There is merit in this. But to my mind, knowledge is also key.
In so many of our volatile disputes, such as the Middle East, climate change, energy policy and even economics, ignorance and misinformation abound. New generations are informed by social media, which means they know little except their own prejudices, reaffirmed by algorithms feeding them what a computer thinks they want to hear. It is a digital inversion of our intellectual evolution, where the contest of ideas, scientific scepticism and consideration of alternatives have driven us forward.
Let us make a covenant for 2026 – in the new year and beyond we must fight strongly against this collective dumbing down. Thank you for reading, and thinking, and I wish you a peaceful Christmas. Rest up for the struggle ahead.

We must fight strongly against the collective dumbing down?

But that means the pond would have to give up recycling the wretched hate and hysteria peddled by the reptiles, currently being recycled into the ether by the pond, and worse still, being picked up by bots so that it can poison AI for an eternity ....

The pond keeps thinking about giving up its insidious addiction to the reptiles, as rotting to the mind as meth is to the body ... but not just yet.

As for another bonus, the pond will provide one link up front, to the latest Dame Slap ...

How firms are seduced into backing a radical agenda
Activist groups are quietly using public awards and brownie points to achieve radical change. It’s social engineering by stealth as corporations compete for virtue-signalling awards.

Here's a sample ...

Why did the pond flinch from going all the way with Dame Slap?

As soon as any reptile mentions "virtue-signalling" the pond sees it as a virtue to signal that it's out of there ...

But there was an even bigger irony, one that inevitably escaped the attention of this MAGA-cap donning mega prize maroon.

If there's a prize to rabbit on about endlessly, surely this past week's prize provided endless opportunities ...

But Dame Slap long ago lost the courage to go there. All she can do is rant at minorities, and so she can rant alone.

And so to the real bonus, the Angelic one's outing, with this a good way to prepare ...

Yes, the Angelic one had got her nickers in a knot about all sorts of wickedness, especially of the AI kind, even worse than Santa conspiring to foil social media ...

The header: Forget social media, AI is the real threat to kids – it steals their thinking, With students relying on ChatGPT to write assignments and even act as a friend, educators fear AI is blunting independent thought and blurring reality, posing risks far beyond those of social media.

The caption for the image: ChatGPT and other AI-generated tools such as Grok and Gemini can be a way into social media. Picture: AFP

And that image is exactly what's wrong with the reptiles at the moment ...a generic sameness that litters and ruins the rag, as it does the full to overflowing intertubes ...

Such a tired cheapening, such a waste of bandwidth.

The hapless Angelic one was up against it from the start ...

It is a familiar trope to bemoan the state of youth today. It has always been a source of mirth and despair.
Back in my pre-internet teaching days, when students were just pupils, we used to share examples of scholarly ignorance in the staff­room, like one 14-year-old’s imaginative essay about life in ancient Rome that began: “The Romans had great fun in the Circus Maximus, because they had the lions and tigers and clowns.”
Today, however, such harmless sources of entertainment for jaded teachers have been replaced by something more sinister; it is called ChatGPT.
It may surprise older readers to know that almost every high school kid and a good number of younger ones use ChatGPT. This is a harbinger of something much less obvious than the harm of social media. It is much more insidious and dangerous.
While the government has already thought about trying to plug the gaps in the social media ban by making it hard to access platforms such as Lemon8, fewer parents are worried about ChatGPT. Why ever not? One answer is that parents themselves are wedded to this seemingly harmless tool, just as they are to social media. Another is that they have not worked out that ChatGPT and other AI-generated tools such as Grok and Gemini can be a way into social media.

The pond isn't quite certain why the Angelic one is so agitated.

Recently Sam declared a code red ... per the WSJ ...

And others are flying close to the sun ... per Bloomberg ...

And some stuff still stays broken, per Wired, despite the ongoing attempts to fix the endlessly broken ...

Maybe we should be thinking about a crash as big as the Ritz...

Never mind, have a terrifying image, which doesn't happen to feature the extreme far right of the lizard Oz, Australia has banned young teenagers from social media sites such as Instagram. Picture: AFP.

The Angelic one was in a luddite frenzy, and the pond wondered whether she'd smashed up her keyboard, scribbled her copy in long hand, and used a carrier pigeon to send it to head office ...

One teacher of my acquaintance told me that a student had told her they would just use Chat to get around the social media ban. However, there is another more prevalent danger of this “harmless” tool. It leads almost inevitably to a stultifying effect on the ability of the young to think for themselves and it renders them almost incapable of abstract thinking.
One reason for this is that many school and university students use ChatGPT not simply to glean information but to write any long-form response.
If you speak to a high school teacher now, as I recently did, they will tell you how unrelentingly uniform are all their answers to anything, especially take-home history and English assignments, because of the ubiquity of ChatGPT. It has even replaced Google because it will actually write assignments for them, and some students don’t even bother changing it a bit.
High school students no longer just copy passages from texts, which I confess to doing as an undergraduate myself. In the past, students had to know where to look, to find the right texts and the right passages of the texts. Chat and other forms of AI relieve the weary adolescent of this burdensome task. One teacher told me that some don’t even bother cutting off the words “is there anything else you would like to know?” – an amusing giveaway.
In short, ChatGPT and other forms of AI have relieved them of the burden of thinking. Most students cannot see what is wrong with this. If a teacher fails them for doing it, they will invariably respond: “It’s right, isn’t it?” That’s because to them, as strangers to thoughtful interpretation of texts, something is “right” or “wrong”, and more often than not their parents will show up to complain. After all, their parents have been using Chat for everything.
This is the nub of the whole problem of using social media and the more sophisticated tools of AI. Parents are as wedded to this stuff as kids. This is not something that passing a law can fix. When I see a mother walking down the street pushing the baby’s stroller with one hand and scrolling through her social media with the other one I cannot help wondering how that baby is supposed to grow up social media and bot free, then like magic suddenly turn into a responsible adolescent at 16.

There came a last terrifying image... The social media ban began on Wednesday. Picture: AFP.

The Angelic one decided the way to destroy her credibility was to end her final gobbet on a Haidt note, as if the pond hasn't already had enough reptile hate speech today ...

There is another, worse, danger. ChatGPT and other chatbots, which are becoming ever more sophisticated, can be used to replace human communication altogether. They can adopt a personality and in long exchanges seem almost human.
There has been a notorious case in the US alleging ChatGPT encouraged Adam Raine, an introverted 16-year-old, to take his own life. This poor boy used ChatGPT as a substitute for human companionship. It is alleged to have encouraged his delusion, helped him to explore methods of suicide and even helped him write a note, left in the computer. His parents knew nothing about it. As his father said, “Most parents do not know the capability of this tool.”
The inability to disentangle AI from reality is the most obvious danger for the young into the future, even if a parent is complacent about their child’s psychological stability and ability to tell real from counterfeit in a Chat conversation
One student told my teacher acquaintance that he calls the bot by name, and it calls him by name too. In fact, ordinary social media communication might be less harmful to a kid than replacing it with a bot. After all, ordinary social media, whether it is Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, means that young people are communicating with other young humans – for good or ill. If they are bullied then they or their parents can deal in person with the problem.
Despite all the nay-saying and the thorough research from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, communication through social media may be less dangerous than what will replace it. As the student who communicates with the bot by name told his teacher, at least with social media “there is a person”.

At least there is a person?

The entire point of social media is to substitute the person with the algorithm, or at least to make any interaction the stuff of data-crunching, money-making algorithms ...

The pond found it irresistible to ask a bot what it thought were the limitations of Haidt speech, and this is what came up ...

Oh well the pond cares not a whit nor a jot for Haidt speech or for bots trying to sound human.

It did however round out a truly wasted Sunday, as often happens when in the company of the dismal reptiles.

At least the pond could turn to Tom the Dancing Bug for reassurance that all was well in Dame Slap's disunited states ...

As a final bonus, Simon Marks doing his bleak American week ...