Month: May 2025

Fucken bullshit, cunts

Yeah, nah, get fucked with that:

Australians’ proud reputation as a pack of cunning linguists has taken a hit from a study finding they come only third in the swearing stakes online.
The research found Australians were more restrained – online, at least – than potty-mouthed Poms and vulgar Americans.
“What the feck?” as the Irish would say – “feck” being their preferred profanity relative to other countries’ use of the word, according to the research.
For the British it’s “cunt”, and for the US it’s “asshole”. For Australians, disappointingly, it’s “crap”.
“We were super surprised by that,” says Dr Martin Schweinberger, from the University of Queensland’s school of languages and cultures.
“We expected it to be ‘fuck’ or something.” […]
But there is a heartening twist to the tale that shows Australians are not here to fuck spiders.
One is that the Global Web-Based English Corpus (GloWbE) dataset the researchers used did not include blogs for Australia – and blogs are typically more sweary than general online content. But it did include them for other countries.
“If we had blog data for Australia it might have pushed us to second place,” Schweinberger says.

Fairly sure if this blog had been counted I could’ve taken us to the top. Still, now Australia has something to aspire to…

Still not going to Biennale, though, I suppose…

Something’s finally worked for Khaled Sabsabi:

An exhibition featuring works by Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi that was called off by Monash University in March will open to the public next week, with the university announcing it had reversed its decision.
Monash University “postponed” Stolon Press: Flat Earth at Monash University Museum of Art (Muma) in Melbourne in the wake of Sabsabi being dumped as Australia’s representative at the 2026 Venice Biennale. It was the first time a show had been pulled in Muma’s 50-year history.
The exhibition, originally scheduled to open on 8 May, includes large “spiritual” calligraphic paintings by Sabsabi that he has made with Lebanese coffee and draw on his “personal memories of his childhood in Lebanon during the civil war”.
At the time of the postponement, a spokesperson for Monash claimed “consultation with our communities” had revealed that Muma needed “to deepen its collaboration and engagement on this exhibition. Postponing the event will allow this important work to be undertaken.”
Sources told Guardian Australia they feared the timing indicated the decision had been influenced by federal arts body Creative Australia’s cancellation of Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino’s contract to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale. That decision followed days of pressure from The Australian newspaper and Liberal politicians over Sabsabi’s use of footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in old works.
Sabsabi’s participation in a mass boycott of the 2022 Sydney festival over the sponsorship of an event by the Israeli embassy was also singled out by The Australian, amid a wider increased scrutiny of public figures who criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza or spoke in support of Palestine after the start of the Israel-Gaza war.

Monash’s PR people are, per the article, claiming the bullshit with Creative Australia had nothing to do with their bullshit, but I’m going to boldly suggest that’s bullshit too; I can’t imagine the timing was purely coincidental. Anyway, the Oz will be livid now that the forces of wokeness have defied them on this one, so I suppose we’ll be seeing lots of whinging from them on the subject…

This election just keeps getting better

Apparently it wasn’t enough for the Coalition to lose catastrophically to Albo a couple of weeks ago at the election; now it’s ceased to exist altogether.

The Nationals have formally split with the Liberal party, breaking up the Coalition for the first time since the 1980s due to major policy differences.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, said MPs had made the shock decision not to enter into a new coalition agreement with the Liberals in talks at Parliament House on Tuesday, after a breakdown in negotiations with the new opposition leader, Sussan Ley.
Littleproud nominated nuclear policy, a $20bn regional Australia future fund, forced break-up powers in the supermarket sector and minimum standards for communications services in the bush as the key sticking points in the decision.
The minor party wanted each policy locked in exchange for a formal agreement with the Liberals, but Ley has promised a wide-ranging policy review with consultation across the party. She ruled out “captain’s calls” after being elected leader.
Ley said the decision was “disappointing”, insisting she wanted to name a joint frontbench and then allow both parties to work on policy development separately. She confirmed the Nationals also demanded shadow ministers have the right to vote against opposition policy in parliament, a move which would be highly unusual.

As noted, this isn’t the first time the Coalition has fractured, with the last time having been 1987 when that “Joh for Canberra” silliness was going on. However, this time round, coming as it does just after they got comprehensively walloped at the election, looks a lot more ominous. I saw someone on Bluesky wondering what the fuss was about given that the Nats apparently did this in WA ages ago and have done OK since then, but that seems to miss the point to me: we’re not talking about the west, we’re talking about the whole country, and it’s not about how the Nationals will cope without the Liberals, it is very much the other way round. The Libs kind of need the Nats to make up the numbers for them, cos by themselves they almost never win federal elections without them. The Nats will never be serious contenders and I’m sure they know that, they’ll never get anywhere except in coalition… but I’m equally sure they know the Liberals will struggle without them. And I’m even more sure they’ll be back together sooner or later. But right now… OOF. What a day. I’ll bet Dutton’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with this…

Hope I die before… oh. Fuck.

Pete Townshend in flight

Happy 80th birthday to the artist occasionally known as Bijou Drains! What a shame Pete had to spoil his big day by announcing that Zak Starkey had been fired again from The Who’s drum seat, just a month after they sacked him then rehired him a few days later… there was something really odd about that situation, but I never bothered writing about it cos once they rehired Zak that seemed to be the end of it. Clearly there’s been more “communication issues” than Pete was letting on. Zak is evidently and understandably kind of pissed; having been their drummer for nearly 30 years—much longer than the band had been around before their initial split in 1983—and then being let go so close to the end of their apparent last tour, he’s entitled to be. Still, happy birthday to Pete in spite of all that; 80 is a respectable age for anyone to achieve, but especially in his line of business. And in a way it’s kind of reassuring to know The Who is still as dysfunctional as it was 60 years ago…

On Biden

Well, Joe Biden’s not a well man, having been diagnosed with what appears to be pretty advanced prostate cancer. The timing of the news is… interesting, for want of a better word:

The diagnosis’ revelation came as Democrats were publicly grappling with new questions about Biden’s mental acuity throughout the last two years of his presidency, which culminated in a disastrous debate performance and his decision to drop out of the 2024 campaign.
David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic operative and former Barack Obama adviser, said on CNN minutes after the diagnosis was revealed that conversations about Biden’s mental acuity “should be more muted and set aside for now as he’s struggling through this.”
Biden’s aides have been bracing for the Tuesday release of a new book: “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” chronicling what the authors describe as a White House campaign to cover up Biden’s deteriorating condition while in office.
On Friday, audio clips of the former president’s interview with then-Special Counsel Robert Hur — in which Biden occasionally paused for long periods of time and struggled to remember dates — were published by the news site Axios. One of the dates he struggled to recall was that of his son Beau Biden’s death. Beau Biden, the former Delaware attorney general, died in 2015 of brain cancer.

For whatever little it may be worth, I don’t remember offhand the dates my parents died. But then again I was never the President of the US, so apparently that makes me OK. I feel not very good about citing Politico on this matter, because they’ve been particularly active in the last few days promoting this book about Biden’s putative decline without offering similar speculation about the mental condition of the present incumbent and his fitness or lack thereof to be in the highest office in the land, but eh. The point they cite from Axelrod is correct. Here’s Mushroom Cock’s response to the news on Truth Social:

It is, of course, manifestly obvious that Drumpf wrote not a single word of this himself, and someone wrote it on his behalf to prevent him from posting what I’m sure he actually thinks. Whatever. It’s the correct sentiment to publicly express. Compare and contrast, then, with this post by his namesake idiot son:

Now, Dr. Jill Biden is not an MD, which may be why she ddn’t find cos she’s not trained to, but Drumpf the younger’s clearly just exploiting his MAGA audience’s ignorance of the existence of non-medical doctorates here. It’s the latter point, though, that’s causing the stink. I may have appeared a bit cynical above about the timing of the release of the news, but I’m not really; I suspect Biden may not have been in great health for a while—I mean, he was an octogenarian in one of the world’s most stressful jobs, I’d be surprised if he was—but I don’t think they’ve actually been sitting on this news for ages like a lot of people seem to be assuming.

And I definitely don’t think it’s “yet another coverup”, and indeed I’m not sure how it’s supposed to be… I mean, maybe I’m just not as smart as these creeps in MAGAworld, but I’m not sure how revealing Biden’s suffering from one problem is supposed to distract us from a different one? One far more serious health issue is supposed to cover up a somewhat lesser one? Even fucking News Corp found this idea ridiculous enough to produce this headline:

And the article in question further notes that Piers Morgan took to Twitter to say the following:

It’s a truly strange feeling being on the same side as Piers Morgan, but the latter does have a perplexing propensity for being on the right side of some stories instead of just the right wing. I don’t suppose this will be the last time he confuses me like this.

More Samson Pollen

Unfortunately this example of Samson Pollen’s work, which I just sighted on Bluesky, wasn’t posted at larger size, but it’ll still do and you can click to enlarge it. This comes from Male magazine for July 1974, illustrating a story called “The Gun Them Down Bunch”, and this blog post summarises it. This is evidently the scene where the bunch have come to bust an injured member of the gang out of hospital, which apparently ends badly. Curiously, the gang apparently prides itself on not killing people; I presume that cop we see about to hit the ground was an exception.

As with the prevous example of Pollen I posted here a few months ago, I’m struck by the incidental details, but I’m even more struck by the thoroughly odd angle from which we see the action… it’s so strange that it actually took me a moment to properly read it and work out what was happening in it. Look at how the ambulance doesn’t sit completely on the ground as if it’s tipping a bit, to say nothing of the odd posture of the gang member apparently emerging therefrom… which I presume is actually accurate to how someone in motion would actually look from whatever the hell that angle is, but damn it looks peculiar. And I daresay this picture is far better than the story it was made to depict…

Five

Laurence Fox is a right-wing cunt, noted (by himself) for having become one under the malign influence of other right-wing cunts on Youtube, and enough of a right-wing cunt that even GB News—whose current on-air “talent” includes such enlightened individuals as Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg—stopped employing him. That’s how much of a right-wing cunt Lozza is.

And him being that has landed him in legal hot water a number of times, including right now… a couple of years ago, around the time GB News let him go, he made some comments on Twatter encouraging the vandalism of ULEZ cameras in London, for which he was arrested and for which he’s now been charged, because in UK law encouraging or assisting in a crime is an inchoate offence, or just as bad as the crime itself. So, because he’s been slowly going bankrupt from losing defamation cases and losing his deposit money whenever he stands in some political election and gets soundly beaten (he apparently continues not to learn from these situations), he started a crowdfunder to pay his legal fees…

…and thus far he’s raised exactly five pounds.

Laurence Fox has embarrassed himself once again after only managing to raise a fiver in an attempt to crowdfund legal fees.
The former actor is facing a charge of intentionally encouraging or assisting the commission of an either-way offence, after allegedly encouraging people to damage ULEZ cameras in London in posts on X.
On Friday, he appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where he pleaded not guilty to the charge.
To try and fight his case, Fox has set up a crowdfunding page to try and raise money to pay for his legal fees. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s gone to plan for him, with only £5 donated towards his target of £10,000.

I was howling when I saw this on Bluesky; as the poster there said, the fact that he got five pounds is somehow even funnier than if he’d got none. Five pounds. This really is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in ages. It probably could’ve happened to an even more deserving person, but I won’t say no to it happening to this prick…

I’m sure they’ll come around to the idea, though

DHS Slams Report on Citizenship Reality Show Pitch, Calls Daily Mail Story ‘False’

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pushing back strongly against a widely circulated Daily Mail report that claimed the agency and its Secretary, Kristi Noem, were involved in a proposed reality TV show that would allow immigrants to compete for American citizenship.
The story, which stirred controversy online, alleged that DHS had entertained a pitch for a show titled The American, produced by Rob Worsoff — a veteran of unscripted television with credits including Duck Dynasty, Alpha Dogs, and The Millionaire Matchmaker. According to the Daily Mail, Secretary Noem had even “backed” the show, which would reportedly feature immigrants participating in challenges across the country, ranging from civic quizzes to physical tasks, for a shot at U.S. citizenship.
In a statement released Friday, DHS refuted the article, dubbing it “Fake News Friday” and accusing the Daily Mail of pushing a “media hoax.” The department said unequivocally that Secretary Noem was neither involved in, nor even aware of, the show’s pitch.

So news about this putative show broke yesterday, and I think the general reaction online was basically “this is fucked up but also in character for TrumpCorp”. Cos let’s face it, a reality show contest for this sort of thing is EXACTLY the sort of thing this hideous regime should be into, it’s an idea that speaks Mushroom Cock’s language. And the idea was perfectly real:

In an interview with the New York Times, Worsoff, a Canadian-born producer who is now a naturalized U.S. citizen, confirmed that the reality series idea was very real. He emphasized that the show was intended as a celebration of the immigrant experience, not a punitive spectacle.
“We need a national conversation about what it means to be American,” Worsoff told the paper. “We need to be reminded of how proud and how much of an honor it is to be American. We’re going to get to know these people and their stories and their journeys, and we’re celebrating them as humans.”
According to a pitch deck reviewed by both the Times and the Daily Mail, the show would be called The American. Contestants would participate in various challenges focused on U.S. civics and history, with the winner being granted citizenship. Importantly, Worsoff noted that contestants who did not win would not be penalized or deported.

Glad that he clarified that last point, because you can’t trust TrumpCorp not to do that. Indeed, if the regime were to actually come on board with this atrocity—and, whatever their protestations now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they wound up actually doing something like this—I can easily imagine them making it a punitive affair. Cos the US right now is not even remotely about celebrating immigrants, unless they’re white South Africans…