[Idiots] – Page 30 – INANIMATE CARBON GOD

In other news, the world is still here

Did you notice the world didn’t end last week? I didn’t even know it was scheduled to do so, but here we still are nonetheless. A most curious story indeed…

I kind of suspect that if an entire fucking PLANET was going to smash into the Earth, the pole shift would be the least of our worries and there wouldn’t be much of an Earth left for floods, quakes and fires, or caves to hide in for that matter. I don’t know anything about Michael Buckner beyond the evident fact of either his mind-boggling stupidity or uncontrolled mental illness, but he clearly sees himself as something of a prophet… though his prophecy clearly got fucked by reality:

One lovely thing about Twitter is that other users can add “context” and fact-checking to other people’s posts if they’re spreading bullshit, and this was clearly too good an opportunity for someone to pass up. As for how Michael could’ve been so wrong, well, he thought about it from his cave and a couple of days later said it was because he hadn’t considered that the Earth is flat. JESUS FUCK even Harold Camping agreed he’d been wrong about his whole end of the world thing in 2011. Anyway, brother Buckner’s now more fascinated with the flat Earth bullshit than the apocalypse, and someone else used the “added context” function on that note:

I did indeed find this helpful (it’s introduced me to a marvellous new term) and rated it as such on the basis of “directly addresses the post’s claim”, “provides important context”, and “neutral or unbiased language”. But the best thing about Buckner’s flat Earth pinned post is the map he attached:

Click to enlarge, which you should. I traced its origin via Reddit to here, it was created as a fantasy world-building exercise that takes the common flat Earth line of Antarctica being an ice wall but then extends to what lies beyond the ice wall, and then beyond that. The map is a fascinating piece of work in itself; the idea that Michael Buckner seems to think it’s real is just the icing on the cake of this ludicrous tale…

Do you get it now, Warren?

Via.

Warren Mundine drifted from the ALP to grift instead with the Coalition about a decade ago, and has been a useful idiot for the latter ever since, to the point that he now runs the local branch of CPAC, increasingly one of the worst manifestations of American conservatism, and now one of the worst in this country too. This is what Warren’s side thinks about him. I mean, I have absolutely no doubt that they always have done; the party that welcomed him in 2012 has, I’m sure, always hated him behind his back and treated him like the fool he is. Now they’re not even hiding it. This Marks individual was talking at Warren’s conference about Warren’s people. Maybe it was as this character, but that doesn’t make it better in any way…

Warren let this happen at his own show. Mind you, he also let Gary Johns happen, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised at him letting “Chaim” happen too… Whatever, I don’t have any sympathy for the guy, of course, it’d be wasted on him, and I just hope he got a decent price for his soul. But surely even he can’t deny to himself that his side is actually, you know, on his side any more…

A headline for the ages

Seriously.

Mark Latham seems surprised for some reason

The children are squabbling again:

One Nation MP Mark Latham says he has been ousted as leader of the party in New South Wales.
Mr Latham said in a Facebook post federal leader Pauline Hanson removed him from the job “without consultation or due process”.
“Senator Hanson has installed a new state executive with no leader,” he said.
Mr Latham remains a member of the One Nation party.

Wherein lies the only real surprise in this story; I find it odd that she didn’t dump him entirely, and even more so that he hasn’t stomped off with his ball and gone home himself. (Not yet, anyway; I do expect him to tender his resignation in the huffiest possible way within the next few days.) It continues:

In a statement, Senator Hanson said the party chose to appoint a new leader in NSW “following the recent state election which saw [the party’s] vote drop by 14 per cent”.
“The national executive of the party has also declared vacant the position of NSW parliamentary leader while the review takes place,” the statement read.
Mr Latham, however, said he remained the leader of the “parliamentary team”.
“This is a matter, quite rightly, for me, Rod Roberts and Tania Mihailuk. I remain as the leader of our parliamentary team,” he said.
“Over the past 5 years we have built up into the largest One Nation parliamentary party in the country— so where’s the problem?”

Well, Mark, the problem is kind of twofold.

One, the party is called Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Her name is in the name of the organisation. The Libs don’t call themselves Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party. The party is about her and her ego. You presided over a drop in her party’s popularity in NSW. That’s not a good look.

Two, frankly, you exist. You’re Mark Latham. You’re a liability to whoever you’re working with. Even the Liberal Democrats had enough sense to tell you to go fuck yourself when you offered to run for them. Have you forgotten about being sued by Alex Greenwich for vilifying him with comments that even Pauline criticised you for? (I’d be worried if you had, given that you’re currently engaged in defending yourself in that case…) Legal action is never a good look either.

Look, the fact that Mark Latham ultimately shacked up politically with One Nation was not really surprising (except in that he joined someone else’s party rather than starting his own); he’d clearly moved so far to the right that PHON was the logical last stop for him without leaving the political mainstream entirely. And the fact that it seems to have ended badly… also not surprising in the least; those two planet-sized egos were bound to clash eventually and Latham was, frankly, always going to be Latham because he’s incapable of doing anything else. Only surprising that it’s taken so long for the shit and the fan to collide.

Why indeed?

This was posted on Facebook:

Now, this is not an instance of Chuckles here saying something stupid and someone else reposting it with an uncharitable re-interpretation in classic Twitter fashion. This is the actual stupid thing he said in the video the tweet was reposting. I know, I watched it myself (at least from the 3m25s point highlighted in the screen grab; he says it a few seconds after that). This is not the Human Events account trying to make Kirk look stupid, that’s the organisation HE PRODUCES CONTENT FOR.

Cos, as I found after a quick search, Human Events actually dates back to 1944, when it began life as a tiny conservative news sheet, and over the decades it moved further right (by the 80s it was all for apartheid and being a bad influence on Ronald Reagan), to the point that professional liar and professional white person Jack Posobiec is now its senior editor. And Charlie Kirk is one of its featured writers on their website, which I suppose is Posobiec paying his fellow professional liar and professional white person back for Kirk hiring him for Turning Point USA.

So what I originally thought was a Twitter account I hadn’t previously encoutered making fun of Chuck E. Cheese for saying something stupid, it was his employer thinking he was making a good point. And I can see the point he and they thought he was making, i.e. Trump must’ve actually been effective if the Dems are trying to stop him happening again, but… that’s not why. It’s because Trump’s presidency was a catastrophe the world hasn’t fully recovered from yet and a repeat performance would almost certainly be even worse. I mean, for all their faults, at least the Democrats still believe in democracy and letting people vote; the Republicans can no longer be trusted to do the same…

Reverse the polarity of the idiot flow!

Found this while going through the archives:

…And I love this as much as I did the day I screenshotted it from Tumblr (which must’ve been nearly ten years ago). It’s such a misunderstanding of the show in general and Pertwee’s Doctor in particular. I mean, yeah, Three did render his services, but it wasn’t out of any sense of duty to the nation or UNIT… what motivates him during his exile on Earth is, in large part, self-interest (alongside his own curiosity and compassion); he says outright in the last scene of “Spearhead From Space” he wants UNIT’s help in getting himself away from Earth again. He takes as much from them as he gives to them (indeed, in “Inferno” him exploiting UNIT’s presence at Project Inferno is what causes most of his troubles in that story). It’s almost like Steve didn’t actually watch Pertwee’s episodes, or only saw something in them that he wanted to see but wasn’t really there… these days, of course, if Steve had any idea about the political and cultural subtexts did find their way into the show under Barry Letts’ aegis, he’d just be whining about the wokeness of the whole thing.

VenusGate?

Via.

In fairness to Guillermo Sohnlein, he hasn’t actually been part of OceanGate for ten years, so he had no direct part in the recent debacle… but he also saw nothing wrong with what Stockton Rush did in said debacle, and has said he would’ve gone on the Titan sub himself if he’d had the chance. This frankly makes me fear for anyone he might convince to try out this Venus thing…

Venus is the warmest planet in the solar system. Its atmosphere is chock-full of carbon dioxide, its surface temperature could melt lead, and sulfuric acid rains down from its clouds. Its atmospheric pressure is crushing — more than 90 times that of Earth, according to NASA.
In spite of this, Söhnlein doesn’t see why humanity shouldn’t attempt to live on the planet. He points to research that suggests there is a sliver of the Venusian atmosphere about 30 miles from the surface where humans could theoretically survive because temperatures are lower and pressure is less intense.
If a space station could be designed to withstand the sulfuric acid in the clouds, Söhnlein says, hundreds to thousands of people could someday live in the Venusian atmosphere.
He says a floating colony could hold 1,000 people in the Venusian atmosphere by 2050, although exactly how this will happen is less clear.

…And why do I feel like it’ll involve similar cost-cutting and refusal to acknowledge criticism from industry professionals to OceanGate? I will admit to finding his vision fascinating, but I’d want evidence that this “sliver” of the atmosphere actually is useable before getting excited about it… and I’d be interested to see if Guillermo’s willing to follow in his old mate’s footsteps (whatever Rush’s failures, at least he wasn’t afraid of getting on the Titan himself even if he should’ve been) and take the risk of going to Venus himself.

I doubt that somehow

Spotted on Facebook:

I think that may have been something other than Allah talking somehow. Still, there’s another date to put in the diary to wait and see if “Allah” was right or not…