Mildly ironic seeing this from Thought Slime, cos they’re one of those leftists I myself am annoyed by. But the point is still accurate, and I do find it vexing every time I see one of these “I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me” goons… I mean, I’m hardly a doctrinaire lefty myself (I am particularly cynical about revolutions), but that doesn’t mean I’m therefore going to turn right if I’m still broadly in agreement with the left…
I went to Sydney Boys High School, which was a single-sex school as the name may suggest. So was Sydney Girls High School, obviously, but we were adjacent to each other out there at Moore Park, so there was a fair bit of mixing going on between the two. We managed to coexist.
Unlike these Newington College alumni having a normal reaction to the news that NC is planning on taking in female students…
A Sydney barrister and Newington College old boy leading the fight against the private school’s coed shift has sent an impassioned email to alumni, detailing his plans to fly to Tonga this week to lobby King Tupou VI on the issue. […]
In the email, seen by Guardian Australia, Morgan wrote: “I am flying to Tonga on Saturday, nothing is clear, but I am working on meeting with the King of Tonga to explain we are fighting for a tradition in which they are important.”
Newington’s brother school, Tupou College, is in Tonga.
“It’s hard to keep fighting but myself and a lot of people on this link have worked very hard to fight against the bullshit that is destroying a school we love,” Morgan wrote.
In the email, Morgan also encourages the recipients to “never give up” and to oppose the school’s “strategic direction”.
“We will need to show like at the SGM the silent majority disagree with the ‘Strategic Direction’ aka ‘transgender midgets get free schooling paid for by hard working normal people’. What a joke.”
In the midst of this hysteria, the article includes a photo of Tupou—whose father is apparently a Newington old boy, hence the otherwise baffling idea of getting Tonga mixed up in this nonsense—at the UN, addressing the general assembly in 2019. I feel somehow that, despite the family connection, his majesty might feel that sort of thing is more befitting his position than getting involved with this tedious gang of paranoid reactionary shits. I could be wrong about that, of course, and should be prepared for disappointment.
Anyway, I said SBHS and SGHS engaged in mixing, and that occasionally included classes as well… such as my year 11 and 12 German class where we had an honest to goodness girl in the class with us. I don’t know if I ever knew exactly why this was so, but there she was anyway. And how did the boys react to this situation, this invasion of the distaff into our hitherto all-male gathering? By getting on with things. We had work to do in that class and we all got on with it like adults. Which we weren’t quite at that time, but somehow in 1991 and 1992 we were more adult than Dallas Morgan and these other dickheads. I have my issues with my time at SBHS but I’m still glad I went there rather than Newington…
Saw this on the socials this evening. This is by one Auguste Leroux (apparently no relation to Gaston) and apparently it’s from a 1920 edition of J.K. Huysmans’ A rebours, which is a fairly peculiar book and this is one of its more grotesque moments… A rebours was one of the key texts of the later 1800s’ Decadence and Symbolist movements (and probably the “poisonous French novel” in The Picture of Dorian Gray), it’s about a somewhat etiolated aristocrat who withdraws from society into a world of his own aesthetic satisfaction; nothing much really happens as such, it’s Des Esseintes having sensory and literary experiences of various kinds, including one point where he does notably leave his house (cos reading Dickens inspires him to go to London, but he decides that eating at an English restaurant in Paris was near enough and the real thing would only disappoint him).
But there’s one particular episode that this picture shows, i.e. the one with the bejewelled tortoise. Astonishingly, this actually seems to have been based on an actual thing; the book’s Wiki entry notes that one of the models for Des Esseintes was the real aristocrat Robert de Montesquiou, who once invited the poet Stephan Mallarmé to his house, with the latter reporting that one of the many sights he saw there was “the remains of an unfortunate tortoise whose shell had been coated with gold paint”. Huysmans obviously jacked that up by having Des Esseintes cover his tortoise’s shell in gemstones, which makes the shell weigh so much the poor bloody animal dies as a result. It’s a really kind of obnoxious moment that’s lingered in my memory more than most of the details in that book (I can’t remember how long it’s been since I read it, but it’s probably not since at least the early oughts, possibly even the late 90s), hence how I managed to recognise it immediately even before I read the caption identifying it. I probably should re-read it at some point.
There’s been a lot of grumbling about the US’ support for Israel in its current war with the civilians of Palestine, people talking about refusing to vote for Biden because of it (because the Republicans aren’t going to escalate the situation if Convicted Felon Trump gets back in AT ALL, are they, so voting against Biden is a solid tactic OBVIOUSLY). And I don’t think people are wrong to be unhappy with Biden’s approach to the conflict (and other things), but it does risk obscuring the useful things he has done, particularly student debt cancellation… which, again, not everyone’s happy cos he’s not cancelling all debt in a single hit, but maybe give him credit for the $153b he has written off so far…
…and maybe acknowledge what the other side would do that’s, you know, clearly not the same thing as what Biden’s doing. If the US were a serious country, this would be the end of Trump’s campaign right here, but the US is not a serious country as clearly demonstrated by his victory in 2016, and I imagine a good chunk of his fanbase will be actively fine with this, cos the ones that never went to university get to laugh at those who were pretentious enough to want an education having to pay it off again, and the ones who did go and paid their debt can gloat at other people suffering like they did.
This is, of course, the same Convicted Felon Trump who has declared bankruptcy four times for various of his businesses to avoid or at least minimise debt (and in one case he claims he blamed the bank that loaned him money for doing so cos they should’ve known he was shit), so it’s OK when HE does it, he’s not opposed to debt avoidance. As long as you plebs don’t try it. Cunt.
The video is clear: Nigel Farage, appearing on screen as a gaming livestreamer, is commentating as he plays Minecraft. The Reform UK party leader explains that he has logged on to Rishi Sunak’s server, tracked down the prime minister’s virtual home in the video game, and intends to blow it up.
Farage’s distinctive voice can be heard as he explains what he’s about to do: “I filled it to the brim with TNT. And for everyone’s information there were absolutely no traces of Sky TV services in or around the house.”
A mildly exasperated spokesperson for Farage confirmed that the video was “of course” not real and the Reform party leader had not been spending the campaign livestreaming Minecraft commentary.
“Quite funny though,” the spokesperson added.
Frankly, were I a Minecraft player, I’d be relieved to know this silly thing was fake. The thought that Fartage might be into something I was also into would put me off it forever.
I’d read about the planned coup d’etat in Germany when that came to light in 2022, but to be honest had kind of forgotten about it. However, now the case is coming to trial, and I’m discovering just how… interesting some of the participants are:
Among those on trial in Munich are Hildegard Leiding, 60, a member of the rightwing AfD party and an astrologer, who was allegedly destined to become the group’s “trans-communications minister”.
Together with a welder from the Bavarian rocker scene, Leiding was said to have used “spiritual criteria” to pick out appropriate candidates for the future government, including a celebrity cook from Austria, tasked with feeding the new regime a healthy diet, and a practising GP, described by former patients as “established and respected” in her community.
The woman, who is said to have become radicalised during the pandemic and specialised in a method of predicting the future through reading eggs, known as oomancy, was expected to become the health minister. She had donated €47,000 of her own money to the plot, most of which went towards arms training, prosecutors say.
…Quite. Alas, no word on what the welder was going to do, apart from give Bavaria a bad name. After all, it’s not like Bavaria has a history of far-right coups d’etat or anything like that…
Nudity? HELL YES, and a couple of delightful examples thereof! Also contains Immortal and, er, that Trump character…
And now for the next installment of this podcast thing, going a bit heavier on the electronics and early industrial this time round. Playlist below.
A bunch of online speculation about the big bad in the Doctor Who finale actually turned out to be right after all! And I must also say “fucking hell” to the redesign of the classic Who villain, they got THAT spot on… I’ve actually been quite enjoying the speculation videos I’ve seen on Youtube about who or what the twist (as it were) would end up being, with possibilities including Sutekh, the Gods of Ragnarok, BOSS, even the Doctor himself (in the form of the evil universe third Doctor from “Inferno”), the TARDIS turning evil somehow… but one thing I stopped believing early on was that Susan Foreman would have anything to do with things, cos obviously she’s been talked about for months even going back to the 60th anniversary specials, but when it became obvious the focus was meant to be on this actress Susan Twist appearing in each episode, I began to think that bringing Ms Foreman would be too literal and obvious a “Susan twist”, surely Rusty would have something less blunt up his sleeve. And then for a moment the episode made me think “oh, no he actually doesn’t” but it ended with “oh, no maybe he does” instead. Indeed, I’m also increasingly thinking that the focus on Susan Twist’s various manifestations has been a red herring and Mrs Flood will prove to have been much more important all along.
Also, apparently the Doctor Who Confidential program following the episode apparently had to include a segment explaining what VHS was…
Not a lot actually happened in the episode as such, though, it was basically all setup for the finale proper next week. Still, that means next week should be full of fireworks and shit happening. If Rusty sticks the landing, then I’ll retract everything I said about his return not being a great idea…
A little bit of personal history, if I may. I mean, of course I may, it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want on it, but ANYWAY. This year I will, as I’ve observed before, turn fifty (barring accidents). I’m sad that neither of my parents is here to see that happen, not least because it took them quite some effort to bring me into the world. Mum couldn’t remember exactly how many attempts they made, but she thought it was six before me and two after (why yes, Trek fans, that would in fact make me literally seven of nine if those numbers were right). So I was at least the seventh one, and the only successful one out of the lot. The folks were desperate enough for kids that, in 1965, they adopted one, my late brother Grant, but still kept trying for one of their one, with a string of failures until 1974. (Frankly, the unlikeliness of me having just happened like that used to make me wonder if I’d been adopted too. I never asked and I don’t suppose I’ll ever know now, and do I want to anyway.)
Mum and Dad were both 36 when I was born. I mention this specific detail because I saw this post from a soi-disant “NuTradWife”:
…That’s MY mum you’re having a go at there, cunt. Mine wanted me badly enough that her and Dad kept trying until they got me. And kept trying after that. But then she posted:
So the idea of a woman wanting children at 35 is laughable but you want them to wait a few more years despite that? Hope your mum has regrets about you, Aly.
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