Monthly Archives: October 2023

Charitably Mad

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The billboard screamed;

“3000 Australians an hour face homelessness” [Mission Australia]

3,000x24x365 = 26.2m

That’s 26m Australians a year, which just happens to be our entire population at the minute.

That means, at least once a year each of us faces homelessness for an hour, on average.

I’m on the lookout. I don’t want to miss it this time.

Or could it be the same 3,000 people calling Mission Australia once an hour, every hour, hoping for a different result?

MO

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Wait until a problem gets so big that the only viable solution is a tunnel, which just happens to be privately owned and operated, but substantially publically funded.

That’s this country in a fucknutshell.

Israelistine 2

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All sorts of weak-minded Australians have taken it upon themselves to pick a side in the Levant.

The mind boggles.

It would be like your average rugby league fan deciding to care about who wins a Collingwood – Port Adelaide game.

Don’t do it. It doesn’t make sense. And both sets of magpies and their supporters are considered to be cunts for very good reasons.

However, it would be reasonable for NEDS to start constructing a same-year multi on the caper.

Constitution

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The issue with the Australian Constitution is that, written in the context of federalisation, it’s focused on the division of powers between the feds and the states.

It hardly even considers the people it is supposedly “protects”, i e. us.

A good constitution, as any American will tell you, gives the people or a person the legal tools to fight against any government that might have it’s own interests ahead of the people, i.e. all of them.

Possibly that is best argument for the voice. If it had got up, the rest of us could have them clamored for the same rights as the indigenous population.

History

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The only time in life when you have absolutely no concerns is when you’re under general anaesthetic.

No dreams, no consciousness, no concerns, no joy, nothing.

To badky misqoute the French, le petit mort.

I can’t see how you could live your life thus, or whether you’d want to.

Both it does pose an interesting conundrum; the most perfectly amenable goal in life is the reversible absence of life.

Who engineered this pile of dogshit, one wonders?

Economic Aparteid

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Definition: trumped up first world woke movement enabled by weak minded academics working unwittingly on behalf of property developers wishing to build massive apartment blocks in the nice upper middle class bungalow suburbs of Australia on the basis that the government enabled high house prices of these heritage preserved suburbs excludes the poor.

I’m 50-50 on this one.

Life

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Ok, I spent the first 50 years reconciling myself with my existence. Did a pretty shit job too.

Looks like I’ll spend the other 10 to 40 years reconciling myself with my impending lack of existence.

I’d like to think there was this week or so in the middle where, like the eye of the storm, all was calm.

The trouble is I think I blinked and missed it.

Service

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“There are so many issues that still need addressing and it cannot happen now in the most efficient way. One is the high proportion of prisoners who are Aboriginal. The rate at which Aboriginal Australians die in custody is obscenely greater than the white and Asian settler community. Indigenous Australians do not live as long as whites, having an average life span that is eight years shorter. We would have had a federal mechanism for dealing with all that, on good advice from the people themselves.”

Thus whined one Tom Kenneally, when he didn’t get what he wanted.

I suspect the bleeding of the heart has deprived his brain of much needed oxygen.

Otherwise the obvious thought would occur to him; why on earth can’t these issues be addressed without changing the constitution?

In fact, the so called Aboriginal community and leaders could just get together and do something. That would be the same ones that were going to advise parliament.

If needed I’m sure parliament could throw some money their way. Its not as though we need to change the constitution for that to occur. They are the global leaders at giving money away for no expected return.

New fact 1: if your problem du jour requires politicians to be part of the solution, then you’re fucked.

Alchemy

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The Australian Constitution …

115. States not to coin money

“A State shall not coin money, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts.”

So the goal here was that the states don’t print money, so they can’t then pay debts by just printing money, which would be inflationary (unless you’re American).

It’s effectively the states handing over the monetary system to feds when they federated.

But that’s not what it says.

In actual fact the states pay their debts by electronic funds transfer, using money raised by all sorts of nefarious means (stamp duties, speeding fines, etc), which is in breach of the constitution.

They can live in breach because no one is offended by it enough to take it to the high court.

If it were taken to the high court, my guess is the judges would ‘interpret’ the intent of the original clause and let things go on as they are.

Which begs the question, why not just interpret the constitution any way you want, for example to allow for the Voice without having to change the thing?

For fuck sakes, they’re just guidelines, mate.

Recently, in a majority ruling in Vanderstock & Anor v State of Victoria, the High Court found the Victorian Zero and Low Emission Vehicle Distance-based charges are invalid under Section 90 of the Constitution as it imposes a duty of excise.

Section 90 apparently says only the Commonwealth Parliament, not the states nor the territories, can “impose duties of customs and excise”.

See, they just make this shit up as they go. A road user charge is deemed an excise by the high court, because they’ve got special interests to protect. Namely their mates in federal parliament and the electric car industry, aka the car industry.

Not a single lay person in the country would have guessed correctly that a distance based road charge was an excise.

If they really wanted to they could have slipped the Voice into section 90 without bothering us at all. After all it was an excise on common sense.

Concat

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Gambling and advertising are somewhat similar. Both have the intent of extracting all your cash and leaving you with nothing useful.

In one case the carrot is that you might win a lot more cash. In the other the stick is that you will be a loser if you don’t.

Looking at it this way, it’s advertising the wokes need to go after. But that’s getting a little close to the weak-minded bone I guess.

Kids

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Parents that pay for their kids’ schooling should give their kids the money and let them pay the school, or not.

Being a direct customer changes your attitude towards putting up with shit, and getting your money’s worth.

Got it!

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I’ve decided to vote “maybe”.

I’m sure there’s something in the constitution which preserves my right to be rationally undecided on any specific matter. They can’t force me how to think, right?

The problem of course is that it’s a big exercise in forecasting what will happen if we change the constitution. I’m extremely sceptical about the prognostic capabilities of Australians. For example they collectively lost $9.3b to the pokies last year.

So yeah, nuh, maybe.

Quoted from the internet

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“Kellogg’s [have] found that the zipper closures [on ziplock bags] sometimes “do not close properly or food gets caught in the seal,” and that their “current packaging set up just couldn’t cope with the addition of zip locks, as it would make the process much slower and more expensive.”

Diana Twede, professor emeritus from Michigan State University’s school of packaging, confirmed that cereal companies are reluctant to [use ziplock bags] because of the extra costs. So it is not a conspiracy on Big Cereal’s behalf to create a sort of planned obsolescence by making their product get stale (although companies in other industries have certainly been accused of doing so.)

If manufacturing an item becomes more expensive, a cereal company might then pass that cost along to consumers, who in turn might decide to buy a competitor’s product, said David Luttenberger, the global packaging director for market research firm Mintel.

Twede said that if a company decides to take the leap, they have [sic] no competitive advantage against their rivals.”

Proof positive that an oligarchy prevents innovation…

X

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Doesn’t Elon Musk get bad press for his ownership of X?

Of course that’s from the competition, the journalists and publishers, whose profession is at threat from the internet-published opinions of the great unwashed. So we can take that with a grain of salt.

Musk has repeatedly said it’s up to the contributors to put whatever they want on X. He doesn’t want to be responsible for the content. Realistically it isn’t a publisher, it’s a soap box platform or a great big pinboard in the sky.

Too bad for the journalists that it seems most people actually want to be sucked in or titillated by complete bullshit. We’re far better off knowing and accepting that fact.

Australian Defence Forces

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It works for call centres; we should outsource our military to the Filipinos.

It would be cheaper and probably just as effective. Roughly the same work ethic.

Of course, if the Chinese ever took an unexpected hankering for our landmass they’d have to come through the Philippines anyway, where our outsourced military would be ready and waiting to defend us.

PFAS

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Actual quote…

“If you already own non-stick cookware, consider the following while using [the cookware, I guess] to prevent the release of PFAS:
Cook at medium and low temperatures and use ventilation.
Never cook on high heat, as this may release PFAS into food or the air.
Use wooden cooking utensils to prevent scratching the coating of the cookware, as scratches can promote the release of PFAS.”

Retards … literally.

The issues with Academia in the 21st century

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From my perspective, the issue in the sciences and engineering at universities is the seriously low quality of research that is tolerated, across the board. Don’t be fooled by a few supposed highlights here and there – the average is so bad that the whole sector would be better off dead.

This low quality is due to a number of factors;

1. The sheer volume of prior art behind which your lazy or incompetent researcher can and does hide. They don’t know or don’t bother checking the prior art when they embark on a new research program. Gone are the days when an academic had an encyclopaedic knowledge of their own tight little field.

2. Interdisciplinary efforts resulting in neither fish nor fowl, and a distinct lack of excellence in anything. This linked to problem 1.

3. The gap between invention and discovery. Funding has been pushed academics ever closer to invention, which they are universally bad at relative to the private sector. Discovery in the natural world gets ever harder as the shoulders of giants just gets bigger.

4. A general push for the appearance of results as opposed to actual results. Basically anything a university can market to the public will do, and who cares about the actual merit of the thing? Again this is linked to the sheer volume of info – everyone assumes that no one will ever do a prior art search or come back in a year’s time to see if the pronouncements ever came true.

5. University rankings which are based on research outcomes and then used to create education market opportunities. Has no one realised this is illogical? I once heard a plausible argument as to why better research leads to better education but for the life of me I can’t recall the argument. Its especially untrue for the vocational training that now seems to dominate universities.

6. The tyranny of citations, which must be the dumbest measure of quality ever. How has the sector allowed themselves to be enslaved to something so stupid?

7. Also the academic research leaders don’t do any research at all. They write grants, administer and educate and don’t have time for anything else. The role of organising the research groups is left to people who are themselves still in training; poorly managed in other words, with future leaders being taught by future leaders.

8. The unionisation of the places had lead to a situation where many highly paid academic staff take a permanent holiday after they get tenure.

9. The institutions are run by former academics, whose only claim to management capability is a will not to do any research or education, and to earn more money. Generally they exercise power by centralising all decision making upon their own person, because it feels so good to be constantly in demand. Essentially the pigs are running the farms.

It’s no wonder the sector is struggling for relevance.

My solution is to make all universities “for profit”. Not perfect and a few issues to iron out, but its the only option left.

Voice 4

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If you look at the history of this referendum, Labor announced the referendum before they detailed what we were going to be voting for. The voice mate, just the vibe of the thing…

This forced the coalition onto the fence at the beginning. Albo must have known that eventually the coalition would oppose it, because they’re basically cunts who don’t want to give anything away if it might impact what they or their mates have. Plus they harbour old fashioned racists, but so do the other mob.

So, here we are. Without bilateral political support the voice is going down and any political pundit could have predicted this.

If Dutton supported the thing he would have been killed by the nutters in his own party. Now he doesn’t, he’ll lose all the progressive votes that the coalition need to ever get back into power. These being the teals they lost at the last election.

Either way, it’s classic wedge politics at it’s best. Looking at it logically though, Albo threw the indigenous cause under the bus for his own gain.

Nice fellow! I’m sure there’s some sort of justification going on here, like “once we’ve won the next election we’ll do something better with a bigger mandate, like a treaty”. Or something like that.

I’m not a fan. It’s all bad juju and it will end in tears.

What Dutton should have lied is “yes, will back it unilaterally”. Lacking a political goal, Labor probably would have deferred the thing furthermore.

It’s just goes to show that in politics being in power is like moving first in tictactoe. With wedge behaviour you can either win or draw unless you’re completely useless.

The number of times that we change parties just shows how useless they really are, even at their own game.

Voice 3

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“At the heart of the mean-spirited, reality-denying “No” campaign is the seed of a dangerous, yet quickly propagated, idea: that intergenerational trauma does not exist.” screamed the author.

The article finished with this pearler of a nonsequeter that would have made Jane Austin proud…

“Lifeline: 13 11 14”

I was going to vote yes but they’re literally making me nauseous.

Postecoglou

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What worries people isn’t making unusual choices per se. When these weird choices fail, it’s the reputational damage resulting from making such a left field decision that worries most.

You see, in most fields of endeavour we all regress to the mean no matter how smart or trained we are. That is, you can make any choice you want and over time your success rate will be the same as the dumb fucker who lucked into your role, but down the road.

So just quietly the smart ones know that their reputation matters more than anything else. The results, well that’s up to the gods.

So if you see someone eschewing a smart but left field option then you know that they care more about themself than the cause.

Nowist

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Rhymes with Maoist, and it might just be me.

The natural enemy of the Nowist is the political type, either right – the Pastist, or left – the Futurist. Let me explain…

Your Pastist just wants their slaves back, and your Futurist just wants utopia where there aren’t slaves. Of course both want the other completely eradicated, or at least in permanent hell. Nice people…

It’s much easier and nicer just taking things as they are, and not trying to change things. Things will change anyway and you don’t need to be the angry and dissatisfied agent of change.

Besides, in it’s glorious stupidity, the present is bloody funny. Even if it’s not.

I’m not sure what all that’s got to do with hydrotherapy but I do know this: a Nowist sometimes attempts to change the past by shouting at their antagonist, just like your average 5 year old. It never works, and they never learn, because in their hearts they just don’t care.