Some random notes

*   Forgot to say during last week's flood event - doesn't anyone question the number of private pontoons that are allowed on the Brisbane river?  I mean, the last big flood taught us that they need to be super secure or else they cause havoc downstream, but this time there seemed to be dozens nonetheless careening down the river.

*  I couldn't believe some of the stories from Hertz in America, where they report a car stolen if a credit card is knocked back when someone rings up wanting an extension.   Then years later, hapless renters can be arrested even when they know the card payment later went through and the car was returned.   Just hopeless administration, probably worsened by having so many different states with different laws complicating matters further. 

* You want to know about an academic who seems to be a one person grievance industry?   (I think Greg Jericho, who I think is sensible on most things except trans matters, re-tweeted - them? - complaining about the ABC doing something apparently wrong when referring to drag and trans during the Gay Mardi Gras telecast).  Here are some selection from their (I think that's right?) twitter account:

And yet, I still don't think the West is militarily weak and swooning for Putin and Christofascism is the way forward.

*  Speaking as I was of the Brisbane River - it makes no sense whatsoever that my city, with its shallow, flood prone river, and big but shallow bay with one deep channel through it, should be being considered at all for a new defence base for nuclear submarines, as I heard on the radio this morning.

*  Trump, being an idiot, all over again.

*  Helen Dale, writing about the Ukraine war on 28 February, makes some bad calls:

We now know that not only does Nato lack the capacity to intervene militarily on Ukraine’s behalf, but it also can’t even impose effective economic sanctions. Germany is so dependent on Russian gas that, while Western powers work to suspend Russia’s participation in the SWIFT international banking system, Germany has won itself a special carve-out, otherwise it won’t be able to pay Gazprom and German grannies will turn into popsicles next time there’s a cold snap. ‘We are currently seeing the downsides of a sovereign nation constructing a barrel-shaped pipeline and then obligingly bending over it,’ Bond observes drily.

She should stick to esoteric fiction.