Passive

(Source)

"This is what motivated the Nazis to find ways of circumventing the existential moral decay they were entering, and allowed them to get creative by using ... passive forms of mass annihilation..."

A supporter of the current murderous assault on Gaza posts this description of the Nazi genocides and misses entirely the obvious echo, being too focussed on praising the deranged supremacism of Douglas Murray. Perhaps if Murray had specifically labelled the people of Gaza as untermenschen as part of arguing their subhumanity, the gentleman who wrote the above would have a better comprehension of on which side of history he currently stands.

Graphic Design

I like the cartoon rocketship and that injuries are represented by a couple of bandages, but what's the symbol for kidnapped supposed to mean?

Caring

The majority of all school book challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people.

Peterson didn’t think about what books were available in schools until two years ago. She had begun attending school board meetings in 2020, first to protest pandemic school closures and then mandatory masking.

Uh huh.

Nomenclature

As can be discerned by comparing it with its mother, this is not a spotless giraffe; it's a gaps-between-the-spots-less giraffe.

Ron S. Peno 1955 - 2023 | Louis Tillett 1959 - 2023

As these two giants fall, I am reminded of why I disliked impresario Harry M. Miller. Back in the early 90s, it was announced that the Harold Park Hotel would host a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar including additional songs by Louis Tillett, with the role of Judas being played by Ron S. Peno. This extraordinary cultural artifact was stolen from us by Mr Miller, who had bought the rights to the rock opera in order to stage it as a concert, where various famous Australian performers stood around in a circle for an hour and a half singing the bits, and consequently he insisted the Harold Park Hotel show not go ahead, rendering it only to be enjoyed somewhere in the multiverse.

Memorabilia

Apparently, Paul Tibbetts did not just sign photos of Enola Gay, the crew, and the mushroom cloud but also of the destroyed city. Personable fellow.

Cut

Mr Murray is having a problem with his insurance.

But consider this. I bought my insurance from comparethe market.com, an “insurance intermediary”, who took a cut. They got it from CETA, an “insurance broker”, who took a cut. They got it from Arkel, an “underwriting agent”, who took a cut. They were acting on behalf of Chaucer Insurance, whose frontmen get a cut from China Re, who ultimately get the profit, which goes to the Chinese State.

It is amazing there is anything left from my £450 to be pooled for the payment of claims. Which is perhaps why any claims immediately go to a loss adjuster – who of course gets yet another cut – and we have weeks of messing around, including drone shots of a roof you can walk on.

For me the worst part of this has been that every individual I have spoken to, in all these companies, has seemed a really nice person, genuinely wanting to help, but stuck there wearing a headset, reading limited responses from a screen, operating within their tiny delimited space in this nightmarish corporate jungle.

As absurd as this is, consider how more absurd is the now standard practise in government of contracting out jobs to companies that contract out to companies that contract out... God forbid the money allocated to a task should actually be spent on it, rather than whittled down in a bizarre game of corporate pass the parcel where every player takes a cut of the prize.

What's your pleasure, young fella?

Sydneysiders consume the most cocaine, Melburnians the most heroin, Darwin ranks highest for alcohol while cannabis is most popular in Hobart, wastewater analysis reveals.

...

The commission ranked findings by capital city and found that – on a per capita, per dose basis – Sydneysiders consumed the most cocaine, MDMA and nicotine while Melburnians had the most heroin, fentanyl and ketamine.

Methylamphetamine was most popular in Adelaide, the highest amount of alcohol was detected in Darwin while the largest amounts of cannabis and oxycodone were found in Hobart.

This tracks so completely with regional stereotypes it feels like the movie version of He Died with a Falafel in his Hand.

(Tangential Little Murders reference in post title in honour of Mr Arkin.)

Unfaithful

As always, people need to be reading their Machiavelli:

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe...

The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.

Casualties

The nuclear war prep pamphlet from the eighties, Protect and Survive, was apparently also a collection of short films, closely following the text of the information booklet. As I own a copy of the Imperial War Musuem reprint, I can attest that the information provided in the clip above, about disposing of bodies, was immediately followed by this paragraph:

On hearing the ALL-CLEAR

This means there is no longer an immediate danger from air attack and fall-out and you may resume normal activities.

Well, that's nice.

(Protect and Survive features prominently in A Guide to Armageddon, of course.)

Where laughing corn luxuriant grows

The Wikipedia entry for The Song of Australia goes a little heavy on the jokes. The lyrics of the song were those of the winning poem in a contest established by the Gawler Institute in South Australia in 1859, set to a tune by Carl Linger, a German expatriate and exiled 1848 revolutionary. From the article:

Publication of Caroline Carleton's poem caused an immediate controversy; that it was nice poetry, but "too tame"; one regretted that nothing more inspiring than the colour of the sky and the prettiness of the scenery could be found for the poem; one wondered "how hidden wealth could gleam in the darkness" and so on, another that it could equally refer to, say, California, while another longed for a time when such a peaceful song accorded with international politics, and regretted that the contest was restricted to South Australians, that the prize was so paltry, and there was no mention of sheep.

…

In 1924, South Australian MP George Edwin Yates proposed in parliament that the song be adopted as the national anthem. He proceeded to sing the first verse, despite the objections of his fellow members.

…

The song features heavily in the TV series ANZAC Girls episode 4, "Love", when the Peter Dawson record is played on a wind-up gramophone in several scenes, and in snatches sung by "Pat Dooley" (Brandon McClelland) while digging a latrine pit.

The lyrics themselves are absurd, as is entirely to be expected in a patriotic song, and were regarded as so at the time, at least by all the people who wrote parodies. The title of this post is my favourite line from the lyrics, but it was a hard pick.

Capital!

Oh dear. I think someone might have been hacked.