words matter
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Google search and its AI Overview is killing off the last of the legacy media news organisations. Technology has taken the news from print to the internet and now we can watch the death of the news thanks to AI. If you are one of the increasing number of viewers who simply read what the AI Overview or bot tells them in answer to your query the days of news feeds is over. You are now solely in the hands of an automated AI source for your information. Gee, I hope you can put your unstinting trust in that thing!
Culture Fresh Media
Christianity, like most religions, is a useful fiction to have in the background if you are interested in power. Here you have a collection of arcane stories purporting to be in someways associated with the word of God. People in power, in many places, often, refer to their own faith, as if it is a one size fits all stamp of righteous authority. That their belief in the God of the religion, shared by the dominant cohort, conveys some moral probity within their quest for power. Card carrying Christians wave their bonafides in the face of all and sundry who may question their ascendancy. The illusory nature of religion can be bent into all sorts of shapes.
Culture Fresh Power Religion
I am, by choice, petless in my life. That is, without a furry companion to share my domicile. For four weeks, however, this changed, when I was invited to house sit on holiday in WA. Thus, the title of this post – Doggie Dementia: My month of pet poop and piss in Perth. It was a family arrangement with a sibling, she and partner were off to Bali, whilst I would hold down the fort. Water a few sheltered pot plants, turn on the irrigation system, take out the trash, something about feeding worms, and look after Misty – the Shih tzu Maltese Terrier Cross.
Dogs Fresh Health Life
Day 3 of having no power due to a storm. No service: Profitability is the new power. Yes, this post is written under the duress of being cut off from electricity in my home and work. We live in a time, where being connected to the grid is more essential than ever before. Everything now runs on electricity. My gripe is that despite this clear and present reality, we are still dependent upon outdated and fragile infrastructure. 50 years ago, as I was growing up, I heard about the plans to put the power lines underground. Indeed, this has been achieved in many new suburbs. I do wonder why in this wonderful new world of privatised utilities how so many more established suburbs and towns have not been transformed in this subterranean fashion. Storms wreak havoc to power lines on poles.
The AFL has created a game that human bodies cannot actually cope with. How do we know this? Take a look at the number of soft tissue and knee injuries on the playing lists of AFL clubs. AFL a game unfit for human bodies. The evolution of the game has AFL players running at top speed, suddenly stopping, turning, twisting and being tackled. No bloody wonder that human joints and muscles cannot cope with the stress being applied to them under this kind of duress week in and week out. The physical conditioning experts employed by the clubs would know this but their well paid jobs encourage them to stay silent on this issue.
President Trump, in an obvious act of desperation, is offering every adult American a cheque for $5000 if his Republican party wins the primaries. This would cost some $1.3 trillion in a nation already $40 trillion in debt. Responsible Republican politics? The corrupt nature of populist politics is there for all to see. Now, I know Americans are pretty dumb but Trump has previously failed to honour promises for DOGE dividend cheques and for tariffs he imposed. Compound that with his promise to improve affordability for everyday Americans, which has not been realised thanks to his war with Iran and those many Trump tariffs. Things could not be much worse economically for ordinary Americans right now.
The current shift to authoritarianism in the United States is not about folk with too little, but is being driven by those with too much wealth and power. The thing is that amassing wealth does not make you more amenable to sharing it, rather it has the opposite effect in many. People get very protective about their assets and wish ever greater control over things. A growing number of billionaires are driven by the desire to exert ever more influence and power over masses of people in America. It is disgusting really what we are witnessing in the US at the moment.
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Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power
Psychologically those individuals who back strongman leaders often feel that they need the protection of bullies. Trump voters in America, the MAGA faithful fall into this category. Why do people back the loudest voice in the room? White supremacists and racists are, when you boil it down, fearful of those they perceive as different from themselves. They want the faces on their streets to comfortably resemble their own. Far right political parties like One Nation use social media to emphasise examples of crimes being committed by Australians with dark skin, as if these folk are the only ones doing such things. This misleading propaganda rallies their supporters around key elements of their anti-immigration platform.
Crime Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power
OK, the Trump regime is now live streaming public executions by firing squad. It started with UFC staged fights on the White House lawn and has descended into further barbarism. Did you know that if you criticise ICE on social media and live in the United States, you can expect a visit from DHS to your home? This is fascism up and running in America. ICE continues to shoot and murder American citizens in cold blood around the country. This huge paramilitary force of heavily armed, masked henchmen is spreading fear wherever they go. I wonder for how much longer is the Australian government going to turn a blind eye to the abominable behaviour of its ally? When will Australia say to Trump’s America enough is enough? Will Australia stand up to Trump?
Democracy Economics Fresh Government Media News Politics Power
We are watching a once great democracy falter and begin its fall. Nobody has faith in the American government under President Donald Trump. The re-election of Trump was a very bad sign. The power is in the hands of the Big Tech billionaires and oligarchs. The market is in a blind fever over AI to the tune of trillions of dollars. Greed will destroy America. Here is a statistic for you, half of Nvidia’s employees are worth $25 million or more. The gold rush fever is upon those invested in the AI sector. Trump is recommending self-regulation for this runaway train of an industry. Humanity is crammed up at the back of these carriages and the edge of the cliff is nie.
Culture Democracy Economics Fresh Government Politics Power
A little bird told me, a cygnet perhaps, that the numbskull driving force behind the Sydney Swans Pullman 5 was none other than James Jordan. I wanted to know whose bright idea was it to engage strippers at a prominent Melbourne hotel in season, just a week prior to the AFL Finals. Especially, as your footy team was 2nd on the ladder and in with a real chance to win the 2026 premiership. Remember that the Swans defeated Brisbane by almost 10 goals in the Qualifying Final and that Brisbane went on to claim yet another flag this year. Sydney Swan James Jordon Pullman 5 instigator!
Footy News Police Sport
Knowledge is Power. Beat Sticky Inflation, Recession & High Interest Rates. Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom is the new book by Robert Sudha Hamilton. In this collection of his articles on the Australian economy readers can take an investigative journey into the local and global issues facing us all in the current clime. The twenty-first century Western economy is built on the foundation of credit and debt. Credit and debt are intertwined and play a critical role in the functioning of modern economies. Money matters more now than ever before and things happen at breakneck speed in our modern digitised economies.
AFL has been messed with by former players and luminaries of the game to serve up a version their sensibilities are happy with. They wanted to turn the clock back to more high scoring and less ferociously defensive AFL games of the 1980s and 1990s. However, there are always side effects that come with any fixes – just ask the medical/pharmaceutical fraternity. AFL: What s**** me about the game and broadcasts. What we have in season 2023 is the ball carrier walking on water in terms of being protected by the umpires. Holding the ball has just disappeared from the umpire’s rules book it seems. Players must not attempt to fight off the tackle but just hang onto the ball for a ball up to be whistled. The obvious ramifications of this are the spate of dangerous tackles, as the tackler attempts to dislodge the ball and/or incapacitate the ball carrier because he cannot get a free kick for the now obsolete holding the ball rule. Players are getting head injuries and being suspended for dangerous tackles, as a consequence of this change to rule interpretation.
AFL side, the Sydney Swans, went down to Geelong undermanned and got thumped. Swans shellacking by Cats is déjà vu, after the 2022 grand final thrashing was repeated. The Geelong team were mighty and won the contest all over the ground. The Swans were missing their full back, centre half back, and other big man in defence. Sydney was also without their full forward and first choice ruckman. The Swans battled manfully and never gave up but were severely outclassed and outplayed. The result of the match exposed some serious flaws in the #Swans recruiting over the previous few years.
There is talk of the huge cost to Australians of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The NDIS mess is made by bureaucrats. A worthy idea at heart the NDIS has been overloaded with many unnecessary protocols. The fact that individuals on the scheme with lifelong conditions are made to front an annual review panel to prove their disability is the perfect example of this. Who benefits from this? The bureaucrats involved, of course, they create employment and working hours for themselves to conduct these unnecessary reviews. Someone who is blind from birth is not going to suddenly see – no matter your religious beliefs about whether miracles exist. A quadriplegic or paraplegic should not have to prove their status every year. This is red tape wastage that makes the NDIS much more expensive than it need be.
Paranoid, racist, gun-toting society gone mad. This apt description of parts of America is a frightening fact for the world to consider. White people shooting black kids through their locked front door just for ringing the bell or knocking. White people shooting kids dead in cars for driving onto their property by mistake. This is a population out of control and dangerous to those around them. Guns make people, whatever their whim or momentary state of mind into potential killers. Talk about arrested development, the U.S. is stuck in a violent past, which had its day long ago. Corporate greed manipulating the constitution and the country’s elected representatives is keeping this society locked into a disgusting tableau of death and mass shootings.
Sydney Swans’ forward line is letting the team down with inaccuracy in front of goals. Sydney Swans poor kicking for goal costs wins. Lance Franklin has been poor and has missed the few chances he has had. Isaac Heeney is not doing enough and lacks reliability on his set shots. Will Hayward has tried his guts out and done some fine things, but misses too many shots at goal. Logan McDonald has shown some excellent signs and his goal kicking has been pretty good this year. Tom Papley is starting to hit his straps. Joel Amartey has been good but was ineffective in front of goals against Port Adelaide.
When the Liberal Party elected Peter Dutton as their leader what did they think would happen? This is the hard right face of this once broadly representative political party. Peter Dutton: Australia what did you expect? A party shunted out of office after 10 years of doing little more than protecting the status quo. At a time when Australia and the world required real leadership, we got jobs for the boys and heads buried in the sand. The Coalition was a federal government devoid of vision and tightly controlled by vested interests.
The Liberal Party under the leadership of Peter Dutton has moved further right into irrelevance in Australia. This is the party that has played politics over climate change for the last 15 years and bogged Australia into the slow lane on this existential crisis facing humanity. Now, the Liberal Party plays politics with Aboriginal Voice and reconciliation. It is a dreadful shame that our nation cannot move forward on something so important united on the political front. The Coalition parties, Nationals and Liberals, were never going to get on board this momentous recognition of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, as they represent the hard right racist minority within Australia.
The space agency NASA has fallen through the glass floor by announcing a team of socially disadvantaged astronauts to fly to the moon. In this brave bid to buck the decades of elitist expeditionary forces sent into outer space – NASA names first homeless astronaut to orbit moon. Diversity and social inclusion have come to the fore in the selection of these intrepid planetary trekkers. The theme of this team is outliers living the dream. More women, more people of colour, more neurodiversity, more people of all abilities, and from a much wider social circle. Frank Sinatra sang, Fly Me to the Moon, and he, although being blue eyed and white, was not of Anglo origin.
We are in the midst of a housing crisis. A 1000 new migrants are coming into the country a day. Rents are sky rocketing due to the shortage of available housing. Australian government does sweet f*** a** during housing crisis. There is a bill before parliament that if passed may build 30 000 social housing properties over 5 years. This, however, is an emergency and governments are doing bugger all right now to alleviate it. It is not enough to promise better things for the future. We need swift action right now to meet the challenges of this unfolding crisis.
