I was asked to explain my dislike for the welcome-to-country thing by Jamie.

Which made me think about it properly.

I said I feel it’s rather condescending to successfully steal something and then go out of your way to publicly acknowledge the original owner, especially when you have no intention of returning the stolen goods and you’re just doing it to make yourself feel better about your inherent cuntiness.

As the victim, that would simply enrage me.

I simply refuse to get involved in a scheme that requires me to park my empathy at the door.

From the mouth of a bitterly disappointed woke opiner (whiner?);

“People feel trapped and want a sense of release, a promise of a dramatically different future, or just a future. Even if that sense of freedom comes vicariously from an autocrat who has flexed and snapped the chains of the system. And they want to feel as if they are part of something bigger and stronger as they get lonelier and weaker and their worlds fracture and atomise by the day. It’s not that they are not ready for democracy – democracy is not ready for them.”

I’m not sure where democracy comes into it, unless that’s a euphemism for over regulation. I’m going with that.

Did you know that the bottlenose wedgefish is also known as the white-spotted guitarfish?

And it looks like a red nosed shovelnose shark.

I wonder if the Italians start their meetings with this?

‘Vorrei iniziare rendendo omaggio ai proprietari tradizionali e custodi della terra sulla quale ci incontriamo oggi, i Rom dell’Impero Romano, e porgere i miei rispetti ai loro anziani del passato e del presente, così come ai leader emergenti.”

Aka

‘I would like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Romans of the Roman Empire, and pay my respects to their Elders past and present, as well as to emerging leaders’.

Arguably the English could do the same.

After all, what have Romans given us?

“Hertz said in January it would offload one third of its US fleet of Tesla and Polestar EVs, or around 20,000 vehicles, citing high ongoing repair costs and poor resale value making it harder to refresh its fleet.” And multiple billion dollar write-downs.

Ok…

“Of more than 1,000 millennials who were surveyed, 81% of them reported they can’t afford to have a midlife crisis”

The supposed two types of Australian voters in 2024 are;

“GAL stands for green, alternative (relaxed about gender fluidity, for instance) and libertarian (“my body, my choice”). TAN stands for traditional (“I liked it the way it was” and “the world should be run by men”), authoritarian (“we need strong leadership”) and nationalist (“why are they letting in all those strange immigrants?”).”

I’ll add to that…

DRQ stands for Dry, economically. That is, stop taxing us if you’re going to waste the money on shit. Reticent means keep your opinions to yourself, and don’t ever attempt to make others think or behave the way you want them to. Q stands for questioning, i.e. have a listen and then figure out who benefits – there’s a self serving lie in every missive.

Engineers that build and train AI and machine learning models often can’t use real data as their learning set because of privacy and security legislation.

Therefore the engineers have often generated fake data sets as the learning data.

My guess is that the creation of large fake data sets is a tedious business, and as soon as they had a working large language model (GPT), they trained it up to create fake data sets for the next iteration of learning.

I can’t prove this but I know engineers and they can’t resist a shortcut, especially if it’s sitting there right in front of them.

If I’m right, current LLMs have fake data generation hard coded into their innards, and it can’t be unscrambled.

The opportunity here is to start from scratch only using real data sets and to never ask for fake data to be generated. The resulting LLM will be worth a fortune as an AI detector.

Quote;

“This paper studies the impact of artificial intelligence on innovation, exploiting the randomized introduction of a new materials discovery technology to 1,018 scientists in the R&D lab of a large U.S. material science firm. AI-assisted researchers discover 44% more materials, resulting in a 39% increase in patent filings and a 17% rise in downstream product innovation. These compounds possess more novel chemical structures and lead to more radical inventions. However, the technology has strikingly disparate effects across the productivity distribution: while the bottom third of scientists see little benefit, the output of top researchers nearly doubles. Investigating the mechanisms behind these results, I show that AI automates 57% of “idea-generation” tasks, reallocating researchers to the new task of evaluating model-produced candidate materials. Top scientists leverage their domain knowledge to prioritize promising AI suggestions, while others waste significant resources testing false positives. Together, these findings demonstrate the potential of AI-augmented research and highlight the complementarity between algorithms and expertise in the innovative process. Survey evidence reveals that these gains come at a cost, however, as 82% of scientists report reduced satisfaction with their work due to decreased creativity and skill underutilization.”

Ok, but this was corporate research in a large unnamed material science corporation. Who knew there even was such a thing?

Most corporations got rid of their corporate research in the 80s and 90s because they realised it was a waste of time. What’s left is business unit R&D. And they also buy startups that work out.

So, we now know that AI would have been really useful in the 1970s.

The Donald has suggested paying off the $35 trillion US national debt with bitcoin.

But they would have to pay for said bitcoin first, so unless they have $35 trillion in bitcoins already sitting around, I can’t see how this would work. Besides the total value of all bitcoin is currently just over $1 trillion, so there isn’t enough.

So Donald is just click bait spit balling, as usual.

But it is an intriguing idea….

1. The US gubment could create a new crypto-coin
2. Then they could pay off all their debt in this new coin by forcing their creditors to take it (or else). The usual way the US does this is by threat of arms.
3. And then, the market cap of new coin would be worth exactly the debt that was written off, until it wasn’t.

I love the idea of replacing artificial govt printed scrip (cash) with artificially created govt crypto. It’s just a one-for-one el-swappo, except all risk is transferred from the US govt to the current creditors.

The real benefit of the plan is that the crypto currency can’t be fucked with by the US or any other government; supply is fixed.

The future would be economically dry when the default global currency is such a crypto.

I spent this morning doing a proper study of litter in my neighbourhood.

It’s an affluent Brisbane suburb with a greens federal member and a liberal state member.

Plenty of white bread people in houses, and also tons of aspirational Indian and Chinese immigrants in the apartments.

Categories of litter found;

McDonalds litter. Wrapping dropped right outside McDonald’s, probably by teenagers that couldn’t give a fuck, yet. They are after all trying in vain to individuate.

Picnic table litter. A family from the subcontinent left all their paper plates and wrappings on a picnic table in the park.  They simply haven’t assimilated yet. They will.

Tradie fast food wrappers. After eating in their parked utes, young tradies dump their rubbish out of the passenger door when no one is looking. Radical outsiders, right!

Public bin overflow. This one’s on the council for not emptying their bins frequently enough.

Discarded shopping trolleys. The culprit surprisingly is old people wheeling their shopping home. Cunning rats, they get Kmart or Target trollies (they don’t have geolocation fence brakes like Coles or Woolies) and then shop at Aldi. Ultimately Kmart and Target come and get their trolleys. But still…

Then there’s random items that must have been dropped by accident. Very little of this.

Finally, the garbage truck itself has overflow litter. The mechanical process of picking the wheely bin up and emptying it results in spilled rubbish on the road.

In total, bugger all litter. All of it’s addressable with simple measures. You don’t need to ban single use plastics to fix the issue.

What do you call a South African comedian?

A liar.

There’s an old quote;

“Four wheels moves the body,

Two wheels moves the soul”

I’d add to that;

“One wheel moves the bowels”

Apparently we are in and age of “the ludicrous, the age of misinformation and disinformation, the climate crises, corporate greed, the post-truth world and the many, many things that we thought we would have fixed by now, like gender equality and racism and so on.”

Were ever so, I imagine.

To keep it short and digestible, we’re in the age of the ludicrous.

One generation’s ludicrous is the next generation’s business-as-usual.

You simply cannot underestimate the capacity for humans to assimilate into their surroundings. Cockroaches on steroids, I’m telling you.

Observing the local Green’s member of Parliament is like watching a dog that caught the car.

Nostalgia is derived from from Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain’.

Anticipated nostalgia is the expectation that one will feel nostalgic for a present or future experience in the future. It’s a cognitive process that can predict nostalgia after a significant life transition.

Yeah but what about feeling nostalgic for the future that hasn’t happened yet?

For example, you’re 60 years old and you’re anticipating that you might not ever meet your 6 year old son’s children.

We need a word for that because I feel that more than any emotions I may have about the past.

There’s two reasons why it’s very hard to be in business with academics.

The first is that they generally think they’re the world’s expert at everything. This view is validated and calibrated by the fact that they possibly are, in some arcane little corner of academic bullshit. As a result, it’s hard to get them to change their position on anything.

The second and more important issue is that they have no idea about management processes or accountability. If you by some miracle manage to drag them into a meeting which has an agreed process withb intended consensus outcomes, there’s virtually no chance they’ll feel obliged to either observe said outcomes, or even participate in the process.

It’s not their fault. This is how universities operate.

In fact universities are totally authoritarian. Rules get synthesized on high and then forced down the throats of the academics. The rule makers are ex academics that know there’s no other way. It’s a self fulfilling fuck fest.

And there you have it.

Great ape social behaviour suggests that kissing is likely a vestigial behaviour conserved from the final mouth-contact stage of a grooming bout when the groomer sucks with protruded lips the fur or skin of the ape being groomed, to remove debris or a parasite.

Lovely!

You never hear anyone refer to a singular ethic. Just the plural, ethics.

The opposite of sheep then.

A contract dispute is sort of like a synthesized Schrödinger’s cat.

The hypothetical cat (the defendant) may be considered simultaneously to be both alive and dead (guilty and not guilty), while it is unobserved in a closed box (during the pre-court and in-court processes, prior to a verdict), as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event (a settlement or the judge’s verdict) that may or may not occur.

Effectively, until there is a settlement or the judge pronounces his or her verdict, the defendant is both guilty and innocent of the plaintiff’s charges.

There’s only two means to collapse the matter into the classical and known world; settlement, or wait for the judge’s verdict.

I can’t prove this but the results are always different for settlement and the judge’s verdict. Settlement ends up in between guilty and non-guilty, but a judge’s verdict is far more binary (guilty or not-guilty, and one party pays the other).

The same defendant can be (a) not guilty if they settle and pay, or if they don’t settle and subject themselves to the judge’s verdict they can be (b) innocent or (c) guilty of the charges.

In no scenario is there any ground truth. It’s a great example of quantum uncertainty.

My favourite colour is 

ReD. just like a Bed. 

it’s the Colour of BlooD. 

like the Flood mixed up 

With MuD. with Red trafick 

light on the road. with a 

Red Sheet with the sheet on 

the Red Bed. 

for Ms.S

6.8.24

A new concept, hybrid success.

It’s a combination of things that you like to do, are good at, and that makes money, all cross referenced with what you actually do.

So nothing then.

In matters technology and startups, it used to be the case that form follows function and less is more.

These days, it’s pretty much form over function, just like say in the design and architecture fields.

And the entertainment continues from the ABC…

“Australia’s road toll is getting worse. Is the answer learning to drive at school?”

Click.

Bait.

Some spam is worth recording, otherwise it will be lost to history.

“Hi, we are running an escort company for female.
We provide fit bad boy to our female customers who are desperate to be fucked hard.
We are looking for sexualy fit male who can satisfy our female clients.
If you are a good fucker, then we are happy to pay you $100-$500/hour.
Apply here  –
https://sites.google.com/view/by359“

Unpick this and you’re smarter than me.

“Deaths of despair claimed the lives of almost 6500 Australians during the first full year of the COVID pandemic, new research shows, but a ban on over-the-counter codeine pain relief drugs helped prevent more people from dying.”

“People who still look young in their 60s and beyond usually adopt these 8 daily habits.”

This was actually was written by Tina Fey. Not the comedic actor, unfortunately. Another one that looks well into her 30s. Maybe she’s 65 and the point’s proven?

However she did write a book entitled “How to get your ex back”. So salt is required here.

1. Hydration is key

2. Regular exercise is non-negotiable

3. They prioritize sleep

4. Balanced diet is a must

5. They embrace positivity

6. Sunscreen is a daily staple

7.Regular check-ups are a norm

8. Self-care isn’t optional, it’s essential

You can scratch 5 and 6 straight up, and 8 is gibberish. Free advice there.

Also, you can’t overdo it because that’s a sign of anxiety which will age you faster than anything else.

Oh if you’re already past 60 it’s way too late to start. No ballast mate, you’re dead.

True story.

I’m chatting to an acquaintance, who’s from Hong Kong and has been living in Australia for a few years.

He says to me;

“What’s with this crazy welcome to country thing?”

Workshop, workshop, google, etc.

It’s not a law, you don’t have to do it.

Although some employers insist, so as an employee if you don’t comply you’re giving them ammunition for three warnings, as required for a sacking.

But mainly, if you don’t do it, you expose yourself to the highest court in the land, the kangaroo court of social media.

My Hong Kong acquaintance asks how that is different to having a dictatorship that tells you exactly what to do.

I say, no idea but best just to ignore the whole thing. It’ll go away eventually when people get bored with it.

After all, what harm does it do?

You can’t waste time in Australia; it’s one big waste of time anyway.

Arguably the carbon footprint and lost productivity (lol) of the welcome to country is avoidable. So just don’t measure it, I say.

Sidenote; you can tell how useless your chosen career is by how many welcome to countries you have to deal with in a year.

If it’s death defyingly hypocritical and boring, then don’t go. That’s what I do.

In any case, it’s good to weed out those that can’t stand hypocrisy. They’ll be quiet, if they’re smart, and then slowly leave the country. Effectively they’re enemies of the state. You’re better off without them.

Hops were originally added to beer mainly as a stabilizer, to keep it from spoiling. Hops also add that pleasant bitter flavour that offsets the sweet malt flavour.

India Pale Ale, for example, is very bitter because of the extra hops added to help it keep from spoiling on the long ocean voyage from Britain to India.

Before the adoption of the Reinheitsgebot (the Bavarian beer purity law) in 1516 specifying the use of hops as the bitter stabilising agent, black henbane was one of the key ingredients used instead.

But black henbane, a weed, is both toxic and hallucinogenic. However, the beer was definitely not hallucinogenic.

Henbane is hallucinogenic because it contains anticholinergics. A familiar example of an anticholinergic is Benadryl (diphenhydramine), which is also an antihistamine. Benadryl can definitely make you hallucinate, if you take enough of it.

But all anticholinergics have unpleasant side effects at doses much lower than the hallucinogenic dose. A medium dose of anticholinergic will cause dry mouth, constipation, and increased heart rate. You need a much larger dose to begin hallucinating, and at that larger dose you are also likely to have blurry vision, a fever, impaired memory, and confusion. Death is possible.

Because even a medium dose is so unpleasant, the dose in beer was likely very small.

Henbane is also known as ‘stinking nightshade’ because it is so pungent, so a very small amount of henbane probably added significant flavor and aroma to the beer while adding only a small dose of anticholinergic.

In summary, that old school German beer was probably less hallucinogenic than Benadryl.

Tooling around the internet I did find one home brewer that makes henbane beer. He drinks it at 55 degrees C, and it tastes “like an earthy licorice”.

I suspect those Bavarian law makers knew what they were doing.

Instructions for assimilation into Australia for recent refugees.

Step 1; Pick a marsupial, any marsupial. Or just make one up, like the zoologists do every day. Obscure is good, eg the Eastern Striped Longnose Brown Swamp Quoll.

Step 2; Assume it’s endangered.

Step 3; Adopt it as your mission in life.

Step 4; Social the fuck out of it, ad nauseam.

The cat from Australia refused to be pigeon-holed on the basis of a stereotype.

In matters sushi, my strong preference is eel.

I just realised that my irrational and deep hatred of bureaucracies comes from 4 year employment patch at James Hardie in my 30s.

I remember that summer like it was yesterday. The sun beat down on the dusty red dirt roads, and the cicadas hummed a relentless chorus. My days were spent exploring the scrub, chasing goannas, and swimming in the creek. Nights were spent under the vast, starlit sky, listening to the eerie howl of dingoes in the distance. It was a world of raw beauty and endless possibilities, a place where a boy could lose himself and find himself all at once.

Cisinformation; knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion or obscure the truth, for nice or altruistic purposes.

In association football, both rugbys, and Australian football, when a game ends with an equal score for both teams, it’s called a draw.

The teams can be tied during the game, and if the scores are still equal when it’s over, then it becomes a draw.

In cricket and American football, a game that ends with an equal score for both teams is called a tie.

Confusingly, in test cricket a draw is when the game ends because they’re out of time, and the teams are on different scores.

Just to confuse things more, a tie in some sports is a future fixture, and the draw is the schedule of future ties.

Cicadas around the world hatch in cycles of 7, 13 and 17 years. These are all prime numbers.

Apparently prime number schedules make it less likely they’ll coincide with a peak predator population.

For example, if a type of cicada-hunting bird boomed every six years, a 17-year cicada brood would coincide with the peak predator year just once every 102 years.

If the cicadas emerged every 12 years instead, they’d be vulnerable to predators that peak every 12, six, four, three and two years.

What came first, the maths or evolution?

Sounds like bullshit to me. Wouldn’t the birds just adapt to the 7, 13 and 17 year cycle and have a 100% overlap?

It just proves that biologists aren’t real scientists. They get all mystical about prime numbers for example.

If you’d asked me what was more important for a lawn mower, torque or horsepower, I’d have had no idea.

Some engineer on the web has done the work for me.

For mowing lawns you need horsepower. When your lawnmower stalls in thick, tall or wet grass (or weeds in my case), it’s due to a lack of horsepower.

Now, there isn’t an electric lawnmower out there that has even 1 horsepower. Your low end petrol mower is 3 horsepower.

Because of this, the vendors of electric lawnmowers obfuscate by advertising volts, amp hours, etc. Anything but horsepower.

Power isn’t even listed in their spec sheets. That’s close to disinformation.

In any case they’re currently not fit for purpose. Single use plastics.

I’ve just bought a new mower because the old one stopped starting. Who knows why?

I had it serviced ($100) and the bloke said it had old fuel in it. Complete bullshit; it’s always had old fuel and no problems. In effect it cost me $100 to change the fuel.

Now a few months later it won’t start again and I’m not wasting any more money on it. Three services and you’ve paid for a new one.

My new one is a 127cc motor mower that puts out 3 horsepower. But my 150cc motor scooter puts out 13hp. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

My guess is that lawn mower engines produce fewer horsepower than motorbike engines of the same displacement because lawnmower engines are cheap arse rubbish; they are air-cooled, inefficient but robust, and run at much lower rpm. This makes them cheap, durable and virtually maintenance free (lol).

On the subject of the upcoming fake news (disinformation) act, which would make social media companies liable for any fake shit on their platforms.

It would be more effective to make it a crime to be disinformed.

That is, put the onus on the people to start thinking a little.

Scenario; labor gets in, and then jails everyone that voted for the coalition because they were clearly disinformed at some point.

Misinformation is false information that is spread due to ignorance, or by error or mistake, without the intent to deceive.

For example, when the US food and drug mob initially warned the population about excessive salt intake. They meant well but later admitted they were dead wrong.

Disinformation is knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion or obscure the truth for malicious or deceptive purposes.

By example, same bunch of American bearucrats, cholesterol. T’were part of a concerted effort to flog statins to people that don’t need them, and which do actual harm to your kidneys.

Incentivised by three days of fever, I did a little research.

It turns out that the immune system generates heat and chemicals, locally at the site of infection, so as to kill the pathogens and maybe sacrifice some of your own cells in the process.

But get this, local temperature at the site of infection can get up to 50 degrees C.

Your blood system acts like any water jacket for cooling and heating; it works to equalise the temperature all over your body.

Which got me thinking, maybe it’s best to extract heat from your body while you have a fever. The best way to do this is a cold shower or bath.

My thinking is that chilling the body would take heat away from infected site, this causing the immune system to double down on producing heat and chemicals at the site of infection.

It also makes you feel much better. I suspect the brain gets all weird over 40 degree C and doesn’t work properly anymore. Hallucinations etc.

It worked for me.

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

“Misinformation is false information that is spread due to ignorance, or by error or mistake, without the intent to deceive. Disinformation is knowingly false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion or obscure the truth for malicious or deceptive purposes.”

Yeah but who decides what’s malicious or deceptive?

A bunch of politicians, lol.

We all know that Australia is the greatest anthropomorphic inventor of all time, e.g. the ute, WiFi, the lawn mower, pavlova, etc.

Now I learn that Australia’s indigenous people are the original inventors of bread and the axe.

In an article in the Conversation –

“The book [Dark Emu] raises an important question. If you lived in a country [Australia] that invented bread and the edge-ground axe – a [Indigenous] culture that independently developed early trade and social living – and did all of this without resorting to land war – wouldn’t you want your children to know about it?”

I kid you not.

So many questions, the chief of which, was the axe used to slice the bread?

No one, not even the imperious Musk, can single-handedly beat an army of bureaucrats.

It’s like a law of thermodynamics, if there was such a thing for the organisation of ants.

Is now.

I just read this, so it’s self apparently true…

“It is said that prodigies are infused with an old spirit that guides them through their art, giving them knowledge that would take them years to learn otherwise.”

Although the original had “in school” instead of “otherwise”. That’s so retarded that I just had to correct it.

If you got another go at life, one thing is for sure, you wouldn’t waste a second of it in school.

“And the number of self-appointed experts with no kin in the game – or even basic knowledge about the region – is exhausting and dispiriting. And let’s not forget ignorant social media influencers, though I would like to.”

It raises the question, who is in the game? When are you qualified to publicly ponder any specific drama du jour?

Is it where you live, what you consume, or who you love? Who your grand parents were, how they died, or what religion you pretend to believe in?

So keep your stinking reasonableness to yourself.

The truth is, no one cares what you think.

Lifts and trains, these are places where the smart person checks out the shoes of others.

Beats looking them in the eyes. 9 times out of 10, all you see is the terror that is reflected by their choice of shoes.

It’s bad karma to see that terror. The good you feels empathy and wants to do something for them, but doesn’t, for practical reasons.

Back to the shoes, Oliver.

The centre point is comfort with no compromise. The near-universal deviation that comes with the terror is simultaneously individualised and corporatised, by branding, design, colour, cut and material.

And often along with just sheer stupidity. Geez there are some dumbarse options out there.

And so [many/much] bunions, hammertoe, heel spurs, ingrown toenails, neuroma, plantar fasciitian, sesamoiditis, tinia, and shin splints.

Good morning parents,

HASS PROJECT
As mentioned yesterday, there seems to be a little bit of confusion regarding the HASS project.

Please note that students can create as little or as much of their part of our city at home as you would like. If you do not have the time to create anything at home, this is absolutely fine as we will be working on the city at school. This will not disadvantage students in any way.

Many parents have asked if there is a deadline to send in items created at home. There is no deadline but please just send items in as they are completed and we will add them to your child’s part of the city. Please also continue to send in materials like cereal boxes, tissue boxes, butter containers, paper towel rolls etc.

Please see the attached flyer inviting you into the classroom on Monday November 4 at 2:15pm to see our city. On this afternoon you will also have the opportunity to visit other Year 1 classes with your child to view their city creations.

Students have now planned their part of the city, therefore, we will start on the construction at school this afternoon. If you have anything that you have been working on at home that is ready to send in, then please do so this morning if possible.

PARENT VOLUNTEERS
On Thursday October 17 between 11:30 and 12:45 we have our World of Maths incursion. Each class is looking for parent volunteers to assist us with the incursion. If you are available, then please let me know.

Kind regards,
Katherine

On Tuesday in Parliament, our Prime Minister, the simple tool, took umbrage at an interjector from the opposition ranks: “Have you got Tourette’s or something? You know, you just sit there, babble, babble, babble.”

Funny on so many levels. The man might have some merit after all.

For what it’s worth, I’ll record this.

Queensland, the state of Australia, in a magnificent effort to cut costs, has silently removed most of its cops from the roads, relying on cameras to do the heavy lifting when it comes to traffic offences.

Which means, so long as you avoid the cameras, you can do any devious shit you want on the roads.

Worth noting because I suspect most people haven’t.

“Firebombings of Victorian tobacco shops surpass 100 as police detail meeting that sparked war”

Good job, gubment.

Take a perfectly legal product and tax it into legalised crime territory.

Must have been a hell of a meeting.

The latest study of the Irish Travellers is damn interesting.

Mostly the study was genetic but it’s been used to speculate, as historians are want to do.

They don’t let the absence of data get in the way of a good story, just like physicists. I like that.

It seems that before the English Normans invaded Ireland, most of the Irish were pastoral  nomads, wandering with their flocks and practising hunter and gathering tactics for desserts.

The English forced them to settle so they could be taxed – a mobile target is harder to control. However a small fraction refused and became the travellers.

Genetic studies show a diversion of the traveller population from the general population around the 12th century.

Until recently it was thought that the travellers were refugees forced to wander by the potato famine in the 1800s.

I’ve done a study.

If I ask for a doppio, I always get a “what?”

But perchance I change it up and ask for a double shot espresso, in reply I get a “doppio?”.

Very occasionally, upon suspicion of entering into coffee hell, I’ll ask for a short black with an extra shot. What I get is what I asked for.

What do you get if you cross a libertarian with a bogan?

A lunicorn (looneycorn). I’ve got one, and a cheerful one at that.

I’d rather vote for the actually corrupt major parties than the intellectually corrupt greens or teals.

The Billboard should read – “simple tools for managing your country”, then have pictures of Dutton and Albanese.

Noting the evil preferential voting system that we have, I prefer my non voting strategy even more.

At least this way I get the satisfaction for not even being partially responsible for whoever gets in.

I guess it had to happen eventually. I’ve hit people, birds, other bikes, dogs and even parked cars, but I just ran over my first snake on the bicycle.

Eastern Brown is my best guess. A dead baby now.

The Australian Constitution does not expressly protect the freedom of expression.

However there’s plenty of legislation that limits freedom of expression, including defamation, anti-vilification, classification and censorship laws and the treason and urging violence offences.

If I’m to understand our politicians they reckon it’s currently illegal to have an anti-Israel protest but legal to have a pro-Palestine protest, despite the fact they’re the same thing.

Possibly a tad oxymoronic to have a pro-protest, so in effect all protests are currently illegal.

I’m thinking it’s worth promoting a pro-free speech protest.

I can’t figure out what would happen?

The symbol for “OR” is typically represented by a descending wedge (∨), otherwise known as “V”, derived from the Latin word vel, meaning, not surprisingly, or.

Certainly not as catchy as the ampersand.

The ABC is at it again … “Queensland remains one of only three Australian states and territories that do not change their time zone”

Can you tell me why ears get bigger after 60 years of age?

Which also leads to cultural nostalgia; that things were better then. And they probably were.

Unless you can individuate from your culture at this point, you’re a prime candidate for conspiracy theories, big ears.

I nominate the Tony Lockett retirement plan. Arguably the greatest AFL player of all time (he’s certainly kicked more goals than anyone that’s ever played), at retirement he said;

“The game owes me nothing, and I owe the game nothing”.

In other words, fuck off and leave me alone.

My version;

“The country owes me nothing, and I owe the country nothing.”

The current two favourite prefaces to any arguments, as used by under age thinkers are;

Technically, and

Literally

Generally, the use of these prefaces means that they have no idea and they know it.

Mine’s “generally”.

Get this, we’re having a state election in Queensland.

The big issue, and I kid you not, is youth crime. They’ve got the media spruiking it as a plague to our half-witted population (sorry, Qld, the average IQ of our population is on par with the bush turkey).

Not ever having been a victim of youth crime, not ever having seen it in action since I was a youth, I don’t give a stuff.

But then again I don’t vote either.

The reason I don’t vote is that both sets of clowns want to solve this fake problem by getting hard on the perpetrators, ie locking the kids up.

“adult time for adult crime“

Without even looking at the research I know this will just make things worse.

Thus proving that the politicians are either stupid or corrupt, and probably both.

I know who I’d be locking up.

In 1930 the world fastest production motorcycle was the Brough Superior SS100.

With a 1000cc motor it could reach 110 km/h.

Which is exactly what my 150cc Kymco motor scooter can do.

Usually conflated at the hip in matters literature, there is a difference.

Flotsam is floating crap that fell off a ship, or is from a shipwreck.

Jetsam looks identical but was purposefully jettisoned from a ship.

The nomenclature refers to legal rights of those who find this stuff, it’s different in the two cases.

Although just by looking at it, you can’t possibly tell if it’s flotsam or jetsam.

It’s a quantum problem.

PS, for the authors out there, correctly, it should be “flotsam or jetsam” because statistically it’s extremely unlikely to be both.

belief (noun): An acceptance, without proof or evidence, that something exists or is true.

Trust is a belief, for example. When there is proof or evidence that your trust was misplaced, what do you do?

Most people, being the sort that harbour beliefs, simply double down.

This isn’t an evolutionary disadvantage because it relies on everyone being as usefully stupid as each other, which collectively protects them from each other.

Hates the people, loves the food. Complex man.

“More recently, scientists discovered that a cluster of Neanderthal-inherited genes on chromosome 3—a trait that is present in roughly half of all south Asians—is linked to a higher risk of respiratory failure and other severe symptoms of Covid-19.”

“Noise camera trial to be launched on roads as part of a multi-agency effort with the EPA, Transport for NSW and NSW Police”

I have this recurring dream where I buy an old car as a project.

But then I move house and forget to take the old car with me.

Sometime later I recall I own a car parked in a suburb that I used to live in and go looking for it.

Haven’t found it once.

I don’t like it.

By some filthy shenanigans, I missed my one and only chance to see the inside of the colosseum.

I mean, I was the only one in the party that had a genuine interest in the subject.

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Inspired by the worst of American culture, aka Inside Out 2, …

Imagine having to tell yourself;

“I’m a good person”

I beseech me, cunt.

But I like the idea of blaming something else, e.g. the little people in your head, for all your issues and actions. It means you never have to take responsibility for yourself.

Great stuff America!

Scene; hipster cafe in the city

Barista: “What are you having today?”

Wounded little chick with stamps all over her: “We’re a we”. Very huffy too.

There I was thinking she would be annoyed with the “today”, as if she changes coffee order each day.

Just for completeness, it was a decaf almond milk latte.

The barista actually apologized but I was left wondering what he was supposed to say …

“What are we having today?”

That’s no good because it includes himself in the drinking.

So it would have to be: “What are youse having today?”

“Wellbeing has been commoditised and is often performative, often presenting a singular, superficial image.”

By singular, I think they mean swings. In Ubud.

It’s a bad translation of an Indonesian portmanteau, which is derived from two loan words from Dutch.

Neuk je

Just think, if they hadn’t named it after the innards it could have been YouBox.

I’ve been to over 20 hospitals. Here are 10 carrybag essentials I never visit a hospital without.

A Bible

A priest’s phone number

A phone

A cherryripe

A handmirror

Spare undies

Ear plugs

Eye mask

Sunscreen

Crocs

If they were serious about GPT they’d introduce typos.

Scene; poolside Ubud, nude Viv, pool egress, little piles of clothes here and there.

“mum, where’s my clothes?”

“Viv, clothes are where you find them”

“fuck off dad”

At what point does it become attractive for Australia to de-federalise?

Think of all that income tax saved. The states can live on stamp duties, mining rents, and excise charges.

They can each charge their own GST if needed. GST is a state based thing in the US, and that works.

We could de-federalise into a euro model and keep the same currency even.

And just think, we wouldn’t have any federal politics to endure, nor a chief scientist.

Thoughts for other chiefs of Australia…

Chief gaming officer

Chief bogan officer

Chief Aboriginal officer

Chief technology Officer

Chief gambling officer

Chief sporting officer

“The name Yakult was coined from jahurto, an Esperanto word meaning yogurt“.

There’s a movement for Australia to get it’s first poet laureate, or possibly they’ll call her a poet lorikeet they jest.

It’s a little bit like the Chinese zoo that painted dogs to look like pandas, no?

But a real vote winner I reckon.

What do you get off you cross a Liberal with a vegetarian?

A libertarian.

There’s a snake in Madagascar that burrows into an ants nest and gorges itself on ants. It gets so fat it can’t get out and is then eaten by the ants.

That’s a good metaphor for humans on this planet.

If you can’t find any absolute purpose for living or dying, then it makes sense to fall back to relative measures, such as doing better than all your peers.

At least these you can measure.

For example, did all your peers make it to Nirvana?

How exactly does it work?

There’s a moment in a nation’s evolution, and only the USA and Australia have had this moment, where you have enough consumption per person that more consumption doesn’t require any economic gains.

It’s like magic. Your trading partners keep sending you shit on credit because they can’t afford for you not to consume.

That’s because there’s this critical point in manufacturing called % utilisation – the actual production over a period compared to the maximum possible production. Below a certain point of utilisation, they lose money. That’s equally true for one factory, and for a whole country full of factories. Which is why we have to keep consuming their shit.

When I say they provide credit, it could be of the type where you print the money and they pretend not to notice. Or they buy your national bonds at a price that far exceeds any reasonable valuation.

Same, same.

In Australia’s case, being a smaller fish, we have had to provide security for this credit. This provision of debt is effectively underwritten by our continued provision of cheap raw materials to our trading partners.

The US just uses its military as security. They sort of promise not to use against their trading partners, at least for now, as long as they keep sending their shit over.

So in Australia, it’s money for nothing and cheques for free. Which is why our dumbarse politicians can be such fuckwits and get away with it. It doesn’t matter how much expense they waste, or how ineffective their investments are, there’s always more to eat.

Ha, so they’re proposing to build high speed railways in Australia so as to meet emissions targets. So they reckon.

For example, the flying of 7.92 million passengers between Melbourne and Sydney in 2023-24 produced about 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

But the estimated cost of a relatively low-emissions high-speed railway between these cities is currently about $200b. So by the time they built it that would be a trillion dollars, minimum.

You can get a hell of a lot of very expensive clean & green jet biofuel for a trillion dollars.

Geez those emissions targets are making a few cunning rats very wealthy.

The Northern Territory of Australia now has a minister for Advanced Manufacturing.

Kid you not.

There’s no direct translation in Chinese for “goofy”.

The concept just doesn’t exist.

It’s their Achilles heel.

You don’t need a trillion dollars of military equipment to beat them. You just gotta laugh at them.

Forget amnesia. The readers are believing a lot less than before.

35% to be exact.

I seem to have at least 2 Mygov apps on my phone. I don’t know what they do.

Neither of them ever works and each of them continually asks me for my password to be renewed every time I use them.

Sometimes I have to type a code from a browser into one of the apps to get further in whatever process I am involved with.

It’s always a headfuck and I would prefer to do just about anything else.

Whatever fuckwit designed their security oughta be sentenced to life in the worst prison we can find.

Those big trucks that get around, we call them semis which is short for semi-articulated.

The front part is the “cab” and the rear part is the trailer.

The “articulated” is because they have two or more sections (cab and trailer) connected by a flexible joint.

The semi is because the trailer only has wheels at the back.

So the “semi-articulated” is nonsensical – there is no half articulation going on.

Well there is actually, but it’s the trucker English that’s the culprit.

It strikes me that the Chinese manufacturers, as a rule, follow the edicts of Henry Ford.

That is, make something so cheap that no one can not afford it.

In the solar panel industry that’s what the Chinese have been doing since 2012. Making the same product cheaper and cheaper.

Sure, panels have got more power per panel, but all the consumer cares about is the dollar per watt, which keeps going down. And the thing looks identical from year to year, to the untrained eye.

Where the Chinese and Henry depart though is in the use of debt. Henry just wouldn’t because he thought bankers were wankers.

The Chinese always use debt. However they do so because it’s cheap debt and sometimes even free. That is, their government makes sure it’s available on great terms, repayable at will, zero interest and forgivable if needed.

On those terms even Henry would have been tempted.

The power and mystery of the missing comma(s).

“Hyundai’s hottest electric car yet caught on camera”

Option 1.

Hyundai’s hottest electric car, yet, caught on camera.

The car model is named “yet”. I like that, and yet.

Option 2.

Hyundai’s hottest electric car yet, caught on camera.

They’ve had more than one. But who cares?

Were I am archaeologist I’d focus on plastic waste. No one’s doing it.

There’s this grey-import minivan getting around that’s made by Toyota and it’s called the Alphard.

That’s a portmanteau of alpha and retard. I can’t explain it, but there it is.

The only alternative explanation is that they’ve misspelt aphid. But who’d name a car after a parasite on a rose? Not even the Japs are that crazy.

If I was in the business of making up new words I’d suggest that an Alphard is a Japanese oxymoron.

Having said that, I know a couple of people in the bureaucracy (what they call management) at UTS that think they’re alphas but they are really retards. Most of them really.

So maybe Toyota’s onto something. But I still wouldn’t name an minivan after them.

Just getting this down for the record.

Albert didn’t do much maths and there’s the strong suggestion that his first wife solved all the equations for him.

He wasn’t the only one who came up with an equivalent to E=mc**2. Dozens of scientists came up with that, just read the wiki.

In fact Albert didn’t even write that equation until it had been derived from what he did write by others. He essentially did a “vulture” on them, 40 years after the fact; swooped in and took all the credit.

Albert didn’t think his equations really worked in all the really interesting ways they actually did work e.g. as used to predict the energy released when splitting atoms, quantum effects or the big bang.

Albert urged the US President to build the first atomic bomb after he realised he was wrong about splitting atoms and the energy this would release.

Albert married his cousin after unsuccessfully chasing her daughter. Incest and paedophilia!

Albert left Germany the first time to dodge national conscription when there wasn’t even a war on.

All up, there’s a credible argument to just wipe Albert’s name from the records altogether, all Harvey-like.

It just goes to show you can’t believe anything that is effectively the subjective collective truth, that which is repeated ad nauseam.

Some bloke in Newtown is mourning the loss of verandahs on the shopfronts in Newtown, Sydney.

They were banned and removed in 1908 after a concerted campaign by a bunch of haters.

That’s right, 116 years ago. Seems like haters have always been a thing.

But why would you hate verandas? My guess is they didn’t, but being haters they simply chose something that others liked. Haters…

Can you actually mourn for something that’s been dead for 116 years when you yourself are only 56 years old?

I would call that some new and special form of fuckwittery masquerading as conservatism.

Political bullshit at it’s very best;

“Marles strips medals from Afghanistan war commanders

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie choked with emotion as he said “our soldiers must tell the truth, and those in leadership must seek it out”.”

Corporate bullshit at it’s very best;

“Earlier this month, a spokesperson at Mt Buller said the decision to close the Victorian field followed not one but two challenging snow seasons in a row. Despite the warm and windy conditions, he was “proud everyone kept striving” throughout the winter period.”

Tools are where you find them.