Dutton gets vocal

In news that surprises no one…

The Liberal Party has announced its formal opposition to the federal government’s model for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, after a party room meeting in Canberra.
Australians will vote later this year on whether an independent advisory body for First Nations people should be enshrined in the constitution.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said while the Opposition supported recognition of First Nations people in the constitution, it does not support a constitutionally enshrined consultative body.
“The Liberal Party resolved today to say yes to constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians,” he said.

Weird how the Liberal Party was in power for nine years and never made any moves that I can remember to actually make that a thing during that time, which I think would’ve been an actually popular move on their part… or is this something they’ve only come up with in the last few days so they don’t look like complete racists? Either way, the party might be OK with the Constitution acknowledging that, yeah, those darkies actually were here before white people after all, but heaven forfend they ever be given the opportunity to determine their future or advise the government on matters that affect them…

Not for the first time, our satirical media nails it succinctly. Also, remember when this cunt had hair? It wasn’t THAT long ago…

As far as the whole Voice thing goes, I will confess to being in two minds about it, insofar as I see no real reason to oppose it in theory (whether or not it needs constitutional enshrinement is something I have no idea about, although, again, I’m not necessarily opposed to it) but I do question how it’ll actually operate in practice… this being the text of the proposed amendment:

Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.

I read that as saying that Parliament will, essentially, define exactly what the Voice even is and what it’ll be able to do, and I have a feeling somehow that might wind up being not much… and I’ve no doubt Parliament will make sure they’ll be under no obligation to actually do anything the Voice might suggest they do if their advice goes against whatever the government was intending to do anyway. I don’t really trust either Labor or Liberal (and especially not the latter) to not fuck it up one way or another. But there’s still no guarantee the referendum will succeed anyway, although the Voice advocates have at least apparently learned from the Republic debacle of ’99; the latter made the somewhat crucial mistake of asking “do you want this particular version of a republic” rather than “do you want a republic at all”… at least the Voice’s advocates are starting from the question “do you think the Voice is a good idea”, so that might actually carry it to success. I suppose we’ll find out some time later in the year…

So I was wrong about something…

The other day when it was announced that a certain former president of the US would indeed be indicted for various naughty things, I said I couldn’t envisage Lord Dampnut just going quietly. To my barely expressible surprise, that wound up being exactly what he did… and I’m damned if I can understand why. Cos he’s so full of bluster in his missives online, but come the big day and he just… gives in? I’m not getting it. News that he had in fact gone quietly came through just as I was finally going to bed last night, so I just did that and decided to see what had happened when I got up again. And, well, nothing much had in fact happened; there was some noise outside the court, but Chump himself seems to have basically just rocked up, gone through the formalities, said “not guilty”, and then pissed off back to Mar-a-Lago, whence he doesn’t need to return until December. Not entirely a non-event, but not far off in the end. Weird.

Oh, but I did like this when I saw it on Facebook:

Greetings from Carcosa

I was browsing Tumblr the other night and came across someone’s post that quoted “Cassilda’s Song” from The King in Yellow, and for some reason I wondered what might result if I ran it through an AI art generator. Here’s one of the results:

This is the first thing that mage.space threw at me, and I find something weirdly evocative about it. I’ve played about with mage.space a fair bit and I’ve occasionally got… interesting results, but rarely good ones. This might be the best I’ve got so far. I mean, maybe if I weren’t cheap and actually paid a bit for one of these AI things, I might get more “realistic” results (like the famous Pope in a Balenciaga jacket picture)… but, like I say, I’m cheap. There’s some things I’m happy to pay for but this AI nonsense isn’t one of those things.

And even this still looks like AI, doesn’t it? I see a lot of this shit on Instagram, it infests some of the hashtags I follow on that, and even the OK stuff is still… obviously AI (even the Pope picture does once you know that it is). It’s not the same as digital art that’s actually had a human hand in it; even if said human hand was just moving a mouse to drag pixels across a screen rather than drawing on a tablet, it’s still an actual person making the ultimate decisions… whereas pretty much all the AI-created stuff has a kind of sameness to it. It’s kind of characterless and dull. And I think that image I posted above wound up being good in spite of itself (the other images I got from that prompt were much less interesting)…

Well that’s just fucking great

We’re not going to live forever but we’re probably going to live a fair bit longer…

Our ability to extend human lifespans is improving dramatically, but whether there is any natural limit to how far we can push is an outstanding question. New research contradicts claims that we’re approaching a maximum human lifespan.
The question of whether or not there is a limit to how long humans can live has fascinated scientists for decades. While answering this question is likely to require a better understanding of the physiological process of aging, researchers have long tried to divine trends in demographic data that could give clues as to what the upper limit might be.
One study predicted that the human lifespan is unlikely to go past around 150 years no matter what medical innovations we come up with. Another came to the even more conservative conclusion of 115 years. But a new study that uses novel statistical techniques appears to show that people born between 1900 and 1950 could live much longer than previous analyses suggest, opening up the prospect that no natural limit is currently on the horizon.

Ah, just what the world was needing. Assuming, of course, that these Methuselahs actually have a world left in which to grow old, cos the older generation currently running the joint seem disinclined to do much to save it for them…

Physician, heal thyself

Fascinating viewing from the Holy Koolaid channel. I don’t think I’d heard of Jack Coe until now, and certainly didn’t know anything about him and his somewhat short life story, and, well, I’m sure I’ve said before that I don’t like celebrating people’s deaths, but Coe deserved something bad to happen to him. And what happened was not only bad, it had multiple elements of irony to it; it was the sort of death that, if I were inclined to believe in that sort of thing, I’d have considered it a sign that God was kind of pissed at me for the sort of life I’d lived. And frankly, I’m ten years older than he was when he died, and with all my issues I look a lot better at 48 than he did in his mid/late 30s…

RIP uncle Doug

Doug Mulray has left us. I was one of those who actually watched the infamous Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos show when it half-aired, and I still remember it going to an ad break around the halfway point, and then we got the Channel 9 station ID, an apology about a “technical problem” and an episode of Cheers suddenly coming on instead… I mean, the program was hardly subtle but neither was Kerry Packer’s response to it; to be honest I remember almost nothing of the program, but I remember what happened to it, Kerry ensured its immortality… and despite giving an order to hide the tape so it would never be seen again, it was in fact found in the Nine archive about fifteen years later and actually broadcast in full, except they edited some of Doug’s comments rather than the animals fucking; remarkable how that was considered OK by 2008 but Doug’s jokes weren’t…

We begin bomba in five minutes

In other Trump news…

DONALD TRUMP IS asking for a plan to wage war in Mexico, and the Republican Party is eager to give it to him.
As he campaigns for a second White House term, Trump has been asking policy advisers for a range of military options aimed at taking on Mexican drug cartels, including strikes that are not sanctioned by Mexico’s government, according to two sources familiar with the situation.“‘Attacking Mexico,’ or whatever you’d like to call it, is something that President Trump has said he wants ‘battle plans’ drawn for,” says one of the sources. “He’s complained about missed opportunities of his first term, and there are a lot of people around him who want fewer missed opportunities in a second Trump presidency.”
Trump lieutenants have briefed him on several options that include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments on a sovereign U.S. partner and neighbor, the sources say. One such proposal that Trump has been briefed on this year is an October white paper from the Center for Renewing America, an increasingly influential think tank staffed largely by Trumpist wonks, MAGA loyalists, and veterans of his administration.
The policy paper — titled “It’s Time to Wage War on Transnational Drug Cartels” — outlines possible justifications and procedures for the next Republican commander-in-chief to “formally” declare “war against the cartels,” in response to “the mounting bodies of dead Americans from fentanyl poisonings.”
In a nod to Mexico’s status as a sovereign nation, the paper calls on the U.S. to “conduct specific military operations to destroy the cartels and enlist the Mexican government in joint operations to target cartel-networked infrastructure, including affiliated factions and enablers with direct action.”
However, that “enlistment” of the Mexican government comes with a massive caveat: “It is vital that Mexico not be led to believe that they have veto power to prevent the US from taking the actions necessary to secure its borders and people,” the paper reads.

How very DARE a sovereign nation think it can tell the United States not to interfere in their business, eh… In saying which, I don’t know that the Mexican government would necessarily refuse such an offer. Depends on whether Trump expected them to pay for it, like his fucking wall…

Indict to excite

OK, I wasn’t expecting this news today, indeed I’m not sure I was expecting it at all…

A grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump in New York over a hush money payment made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
No former US president has ever been criminally indicted. The news is set to shake the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, in which Trump leads most polls.
“This evening we contacted Mr Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan DA’s Office for arraignment on a supreme court indictment, which remains under seal,” said a statement from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s spokesperson. “Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected.”
Trump was expected to appear in court for his arraignment on Tuesday, Trump’s lawyer Susan Necheles said. At that point he would enter a plea on the charges. New York’s police have been told to all report for duty on Friday and be prepared to deal with “unusual disorder”, according to a memo seen by NBC.

Well. After Trump’s prediction about being arrested failed to pan out last week on the day he claimed it would, I suspect more than a few of us were thinking “well, so much for all of that” and wondering if anything would come of it after all; turns out Bragg and co were just waiting for us to think that and then carry out the plan when we’d stopped expecting it… As for “unusual disorder”, well, that’s already started by the look of it…

A Donald Trump supporter protesting the Manhattan district attorney’s probe of the former president pulled a knife on a family with two small children Tuesday outside Manhattan Criminal Court, according to a court official.
The man and woman with two children in strollers accidentally bumped into the Trump supporter while crossing the intersection of Hogan Place and Centre Street just after 4:00 p.m., three bystanders told POLITICO. The female protester, who held a sign that read “I support Trump, do you?” began arguing with the couple before she pulled out a blade approximately 6 inches long and waved it at the family, according to the eye-witnesses.
“Angelica Rucker pulled a knife from her right side belt hip area and began menacing one of the complainants with the knife as the verbal confrontation pursued,” a court spokesperson said.
Court officers, who were standing outside the building, rushed over, pulled out their guns and ordered the woman to drop the knife, the bystanders said. She was arrested without incident.

“Without incident” indeed. Only surprising that she had a knife rather than a gun; I feel she may have done more than just wave the latter around if she’d had one. The next few days could be interesting, depending on whether or not the people who think Trump doesn’t have the support he used to have are right about that, certainly at least one person was willing to cause trouble in the name of Glorious Leader today; I suppose it depends on how willing the rest of the cult is to do the same… Either way, I can’t see Trump surrendering himself like some commentators think he will; he’s made such a racket about the injustice of it all that I simply can’t envisage him going quietly or willingly. Which means they’ll probably have to take him, and I fear that’s where the real fun might happen. Interesting times, etc…