Am I alone in this? When I see pictures of Russian owned "superyachts" that look like this:
or this:
my thoughts run to "why does anyone want to own something that looks a mini cruise ship anyway?"
I mean, they must cost a mint to operate (although maybe that can be charged to a company?), but seriously, who has that many family and friends that they can entertain on it and make it seem inhabited? I imagine most of the time they are far from fully occupied, and feel kind of empty and wasted.
And if you let people you don't know well take a holiday on them, as some sort of reward for hard work, or for sleezy deal making, don't you get problems with bad behaviour?
There are storms and heavy rain passing through Brisbane this morning, but it seems more like the "normal" fast moving storms...so far. Some big wind damage at Beerwah, north of Brisbane, they were saying on TV this morning, but without any images yet.
The news from Ukraine is sort of moving slowly now, it seems, making the doom scrolling feel a bit tedious. (Makes it sound like I'm demanding more disaster so I can be more engaged with twitter - sorry.)
Anyway, on the up side, even if it is sort of taking some pleasure in negatives: seems to me a lot of people are over Stan Grant's weird positioning into some sort of soft-ish left wing contrarian, willing to entertain the "it's the West's fault that they've gone all squishy liberal and can no longer understand salt of the Earth conservatives like Russians". Bernard Keane's been a strong critic of Grant and his fatuous writing:
Gray Connolly has copped a lot of flak for his SMH article too, which I didn't bother reading as I've already decided he way, way over-rates himself as a pretend historian. He's just too full of conservative Catholic biases to be taken seriously.
Oh, and I just looked at Twitter and see this idiot making a deeper idiot of himself:
Update: Bernard Keane mocks John Pilger as a Putin apologist, too. (And from the photo in the article, Pilger could now pass for the decrepit as John Laws now. Not a good look.)
Just noticed this tweet, which I would say is very effective (and super efficient) in explaining to the public that rail services in Brisbane (and elsewhere) are out for good reason.
I also think she presents very credibly during a natural disaster like this.
At least (one of the) fridges got cleaned out. I'm pretty sure that if this hadn't happened, in 30 years time, my kids when dealing with the last of their parent's deceased estate would have have been throwing out egg whites in a plastic freezer bag from 2012.
Update: power's back. Yay. (And ancient frozen egg whites collected in the rubbish today.)
The Bureau of Meteorology has been checking the rainfall data from the floods in south-east Queensland, revealing a string of broken records and a stunning amount of rain.
In the six days from 23 to 28 February, at least 33 places recorded more than one metre of rain,
including an astonishing 1.77 metres falling at Mount Glorious, just
east of Wivenhoe Dam that helps reduce flooding in the city.
Parts of south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales had at least 2.5 times their average rainfall for the month, with some areas getting five times the average.
In Brisbane, 792.8mm
fell into the city rain gauge over the six days to 9am on 28 February,
which is above the previous six-day record of 655.8mm set in January
1974.
For the first time ever, the city had three consecutive days when more than 200mm fell. Before last month, there had only been eight previous days when the city had seen more than 200mm in one day.
The BoM national manager of climate services, Dr Karl Braganza, said this meant the city had received almost 80% of its annual average rainfall in only six days.
In northern New South Wales, several places in the northern rivers
region had daily totals above 500mm up to 9am on 28 February.
Braganza said preliminary analysis of rainfall in Lismore, which is
currently inundated, suggested more rain had fallen in the town than the
previous record in March 2017 when the remnants of Tropical Cyclone
Debbie passed through.
As I've been noting for years - climate change and its effect on rain and floods was the massively disruptive and costly effect that was not discussed enough in early talk about climate change, and just imagine how much worse it may get with another .5 to 1 degree temperature rise.
It seems the estimate for the repair time for power to houses in my neighbourhood has stretched out to Friday! I know this happened to other houses in my area in the 2011 floods (5 to 7 days with no power), but my particular neighbour only lost it for one day. Hence we were not particularly worried when it first went off yesterday morning.
Now, a friend has lent us a generator. Noisy, smelly things they are. But I think the idea is to run them for a couple of hours to get the fridge cold, then turn it off for an hour and don't open the fridge. We have eskys and plenty of ice too. And a gas stove (yah).
Speaking of gas stoves, I know they are getting so much bad PR for their health effects now, but I'll put on my populist "it didn't affect me, so it can't be so bad" hat now and mention that I grew up in a house with town gas and therefore a gas stove top and oven, in a rather small three bedroom house in which I sometimes shared with older brothers who would smoke in bed. (!) I have now lived in a house for nearly 20 years with a gas stove top from bottle gas.
No one in my family (6 siblings, and parents) ever suffered asthma or any lung disease*. Neither of my kids (now adults) suffered asthma. Same with allergies to anything (which I mention because of asthma's connection to allergy.)
Is it because I live in a warm climate, where kitchen windows are nearly always open during cooking? But my life experience is not consistent with "gas is really bad for health".
Anyway, back to the floods. This report concentrated mostly on suburbs on my side of town, so I'll put it here.
The estimate of the number of houses affected seems to be about 15,000 to 20,000.
But the Lismore flood is more remarkable - highest known historical flood exceeded by 2m! I mean, that's really incredible.
* Whoops - I forgot that I had included both parents in that explanation, but my father did die of lung cancer. However, he was a life long smoker who gave up only a few years before the cancer was diagnosed. All of my brothers eventually gave up smoking - I think by their 40's at the latest.
Here's a question: why does Murdoch, or anyone with their head on right, consider Piers Morgan a "star". He's always been shallow, and I have always found him instantly dislikeable.
By the way, Morrison did turn up in Brisbane yesterday afternoon, and did an underwhelming TV appearance. I think everyone seeing it probably thought "you're only here because of Hawaii." Amusingly, I didn't see his visit even covered on the evening news, which I'm sure must have irritated his minders a lot.
I'm sick of having to constantly delete Graeme Bird's anti-Semitic conspiracy comments, which are at full blown fever level due to the situation in Ukraine.
So all comments are going into moderation for now.
Well, seems I'll be living through the third major Brisbane flood in my life time. It has been extremely wet in the Western suburbs today, and the promised move of the worst of the rain band to the south of the city just never seems to happen.
More news tomorrow...
Update: Anyone who has lived in Brisbane for a long time would agree the weather yesterday was very unusual. We're used to storms that whip through in the space of 30 minutes to an hour, dump a huge amount of rain, and are gone. What we don't see much is systems that produce thundery slow storms that hang around for, like, 6 to 9 hours? The rain just kept coming yesterday, with only occasional slow downs in rate. Mostly, steady heavy rain with bursts of "torrential".
As with 2011, it's kind of weird. If you can get to an unaffected suburban shopping centre, you wouldn't necessarily know how bad the flood affected parts are going. But roads are cut everywhere:
The flooding in my area (which is close to the river) is not a high as 2011, but there are businesses and houses well under. Unexpectedly, the power has gone off at home due to flood damage. (As per 2011, when it was off for a day.) But other streets not far away still have power, which seems odd.
I have read someone saying that it was a record 3 day rainfall event, but haven't seen that confirmed yet.
Anyway, what a weekend for doom scrolling - floods and the threat of nuclear war....
So, I wonder what made Tucker Carlson start to walk back his pro-Putin performance art? A self realisation it's untenable when images of dead and distressed civilians turn on TV? A Murdoch family member telling him to wind it back?
But of course, he's not the only one now trying to square supporting Putin but not his war.
Of course, Dinesh would be completely on board with the wingnut Right's "moral" panic (actually, it's more like a group psychopathology) about there being no Real Men running the West anymore.
This guy makes the obvious point that no fatuous " but if only the West had shown some strength" complainers never mention:
I thought Helen Dale, self confessed Ukraine expert, would have some bad take related to the war there.
She didn't disappoint:
The photo, she fails to explain (but one of the tweets following does) is from a 2015 article about how there was some consternation that some ROTC members (college cadets) had done this walk event as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, without authorisation.
Yeah, a real crisis of masculinity (and damning evidence that the entire US military is just emasculated weaklings now) on display there.
Why are libertarian types so obsessed with masculinity? Even queer ones like Dale?
Beyond the pathetic culture war take, she seems to also be in on the "let's have my cake and eat it too" camp - juggling "don't get into wars you can't win" with "the West is just so weak now" in her vacuous head.
How depraved is this, from supposed Catholic Currency Lad:
A revanchist pseudo-Czar only gets one
Joe Biden in a lifetime and Vladimir Putin has had his. The two men are
equals, morally, but Putin has an edge – only measurable by micrometer,
granted – for sincerity. I don’t believe the United States can survive
as a recognisable iteration of itself if Biden remains in office till
January, 2024. Compare this situation to, say, 1982. Had Ronald Reagan
become incapacitated in that year, George H.W. Bush was ready to step
in.
In the next paragraph, he says that there is no point in committing Western troops to the battle, as there is no "serious prospect of success".
So, it would have been wrong for any President to go to war over this, but he's sure that a Reagan (or Trump - with actual runs on the card for never wanting to commit American troops to a Euro war) would have just had to puff out their chest and Russia would have meekly left? It's such a fantasy land they live in.
I'm not sure how many on the wingnut Right actually agree with the extremes of the Tucker Carlson line, which is to effectively advocate the West doing nothing at all - not even sanctions - against Russia and Putin. (He declared weeks ago he was "on Russia's side", and is telling his fans to be very, very upset when sanctions lead to more expensive petrol. A real American patriot.)
I mean, we all know many of them admire Putin for culture war reasons, but I still think the majority know it's not a good look to actually shrug your shoulders (or make clear your support) for unprovoked military excursions of this kind.
So I think the more common line is to not offer an endorsement of the invasion per se (Morrow, Connolly, the execrable Brendan O'Neill) but to nonetheless run the line "ha, the West is so weak, decadent and absorbed in identity politics it was like an invitation to Putin", while simultaneously being a supporter of Trump and his America First isolationism.
They want the West (or Europe alone, who knows?) to be both "strong" and sabre rattling, while simultaneously always complaining about how bad the neo cons were for getting involved in unnecessary wars that ultimately failed. Here's the motormouth Brendan O'Neill today, for example:
Weak Western leaders like Joe Biden pose as the saviours of the Ukrainian people while making it clear that they won’t take any firm action to actually defend Ukraine. Putin is picking up on this incoherence, and exploiting it, says Brendan O’Neill
Military interventionists, both of the "neocon"
and "humanitarian" variety, never learn. Over the past 10 to 15 years,
not a single one of their interventions has delivered democracy to a
tyrant-hit hotspot, or liberated a people from bondage. Instead they
have inflamed and intensified conflict and led to the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of people. And yet, blinded by the narcissistic and
deluded belief that they have the power to free people from tyranny,
both left-leaning and rightwing interventionists continue to call for
more "wars of liberation", for one more chance to prove that their bombs
and bloodshed really can spread freedom around the globe.
This is what decades of culture warring does to the brain - it doesn't matter if your political "enemy" actually agrees with you on what to do to a present problem - you just shred consistency and strawman your way into "it's all your fault, always."
PS - another example that is irritating to watch - the praising of Trump for telling Merkel she shouldn't be dealing commercially with the Russians, while ignoring the fact that Trump spent years trying to get a hotel in Moscow, and lied about still actively trying to do so during his first Presidential campaign.
Fox News and the conservative set like Gray "there's always a way to blame liberals" Connolly (and gormless James Morrow) have excitedly been reminding people of the clip of Trump complaining at the NATO summit in 2018 that Germany shouldn't have gone with Nord Stream 2 because it would become too reliant on Russia, as if this shows some remarkable Trumpian prescience.
But, for once, Trump's concern wasn't some completely new (and crackpot) idea. (Although it may well have had more pure commercial self interest at heart than he predecessors had.) Here's the start of an opinion piece in Foreign Policy in 2018 defending the pipeline:
Other articles point out how the project has always been controversial within Europe - and note the Obama administration was encouraging concerns:
“A number of other EU states are getting pretty vocal about the fact
that the implications are much bigger than just Russia-Germany,” John B.
Emerson, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, told POLITICO in Berlin,
stressing political divisions on the project both within Germany and the
broader European Union. “We continue to push our concerns about Nord
Stream both at the EU level and with Germany.”
The Obama administration’s attempt to influence the debate seems to annoy Berlin.
“Some things the Europeans need to decide for themselves,” Peter
Wittig, the German ambassador to the U.S., told reporters last month in
Washington, noting that the Americans have “taken up some of the fears
of other European countries.”
So congratulations, Conservatives, your orange oaf had one legitimate concern that wasn't entirely a fantasy of his own - but it was still irresponsible to threaten to walk away from NATO over it. (Which, if I recall correctly, he did in private, if not in public.) That threat in fact clearly shows why Putin wanted him as President. The Trump election and American culture war is still paying dividends for Putin, if national unity and resolve matter in foreign relations.
I mean, honest to God, we have never seen anything like this in my lifetime - the poisonous stream of continuous propaganda of a major American "news" operation so determined to blame and vilify at every opportunity a sitting US President and his party that it will blame and undermine him for the patently unwarranted military aggression of a nasty dictator like Putin.
While you can never expect complete political unity in terms of American use of military power, this isn't even a case of it being used, or threatened!
I'm just flabbergasted that it seems to be of no concern to those who own Fox News that their top rated "star" is literally repeated on Russian TV as a propagandist on Putin's side.
Now, you might say that it doesn't matter what Russian citizens think, it's not as if they have influence on Putin anyway. But it surely encourages Putin himself - he knows there is an American company so willing to make money by pandering to his side of the culture war that it will propagandise for him and for the return of the President who literally wanted to walk out of NATO completely.
In short, Fox News works against the security interests of America and Europe and deserves to be shut down. An internment camp is the minimum they should endure. Either that or permanent residence in Russia.
Update: add this Christofascist to the permanent holiday in Russia list as well.
The Canadian government began lifting a freeze on more than 200 bank
accounts linked to recent protests in the country, officials said on
Tuesday.
As many as 210 accounts holding nearly $8 million
collectively were frozen under authorization from the nation's
Emergencies Act, which was invoked in an effort to quell protests
against COVID-19 restrictions, Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister of
Finance Isabelle Jacques told a parliamentary committee, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported...
Some conservative members of Parliament have said constituents
reported that holds were placed on their accounts after they donated to
the protests, according to the CBC.
But the RCMP said it only
provided banks with the names of convoy organizers and the owners of
trucks who had remained in the protest zone in Canada's capital city of
Ottawa, the CBC reported.
According to the CBC, Jacques told the parliamentary committee that
the financial measures in the Emergency Act were designed to put
financial pressure on protesters to go home. She said it was unlikely
people who donated small amounts to the protests would be captured in
the freezing of bank accounts, but not impossible.
"It's not
impossible in view of the order, but in view of the exchange of
information and the focused approach that was taken to stop the illegal
funding of these activities, it would appear to be unlikely that this
occurred, but not impossible," she told the committee, the CBC reported
As far as I know, there was one claim by a conservative politician that a "single mom" had her account frozen over a $50 donation - but no actual proof that this was true. The politician refused to supply her name, and (as far as I can tell) offered no proof.
It would not be at all surprising if it was a lie from a wingnut.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is revoking the use of the
Emergencies Act, the powerful legislative tool that was deployed in
response to protests and blockades that erupted in Ottawa and at border
crossings over recent weeks.
"The situation is no longer an emergency," Trudeau told a news conference.
"We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe."
The Governor General signed off on the revocation on Wednesday afternoon, which formally ended the state of emergency.
Wingnuts will have to find something else to hyperventilate about.
I'm talking about the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial, and imagining the sort of discussions that might be being had between his barristers and him during breaks.
Because, really, it's impossible to believe they would not be wanting to say to any other normal client "this isa disaster, you need to cut your losses now". Instead, what are they saying?
Trump: Hey, brilliant move on behalf of Putin. Really smart, a lot to be admired there.
(Of course Trump then claims Putin wouldn't have done it if he was President - that is just his basic incoherence and lack of self awareness kicking in.)
As noted on Twitter:
True.
I note in the Australian Christofascist Right, the shell of a former conservative who years ago could write well and cohesively confirms his descent into wingnut madness. Currency Lad and his admirers cannot be debated or reasoned with, because facts stopped mattering to them years ago* - and when democracy gives effect to cultural changes they don't like, the problem they perceive is with democracy itself. Hence he's decided the whole of Western Europe is "not my friend". I get the distinct impression he thinks Putin rolling in on tanks over the entire continent would be only mildly regrettable, and overall a good thing for their culture war objectives: after all, like them, he doesn't like the gays, is not keen on abortion, promotes conservative Christianity, doesn't think vaccination in any sector should be compulsory; and and is highly motivated to burn every last bit of fossil fuel.
The only amusing thing about this is that their extremism means they are left without any political party to follow - everyone has failed them - and they can't see that the problem is that they're the ones who have created the problem by moving into a their own fantasy world.
* the list of false or risible factual claims in that post is just so long - and it doesn't matter to any of his admirers.
It is of no surprise to me that Dover Beach, the pro-Christofascist who runs the nuthouse support group New Catallaxy, is into excuse making for Putin:
[I will add further that this is an example of the classic, morally empty, "whataboutism" that is so beloved of the Australia pro-fascist conservative Catholic bloggers.]
I don't follow the intricacies of international politics as closely as some do, but I reckon I follow it enough to know that anyone who takes the line that Biden is the cause of the current situation is an absolute clown. The strawman-ing of the USA (or its media) wanting war is also ludicrous. As is the "under Trump this wouldn't have happened, he kept Russia in its place".
Yes, I must admit I am a little curious to see the Carlson spin on this. How awful will it be?
Update: This, on the other hand, I can agree with:
Update: Hugh Hewitt, uber Trump apologist, will end up with 2,500 tweets telling him why he's wrong. And an idiot.
As for Tucker Carlson: every bit as bad as you would expect -
And hahahaha, Tulsi Gabbard joins in the wingnut "let's defend Putin" line:
Yeah, apparently Hannity has set himself up in opposition to Carlson on the Ukraine question. As I think someone on MSNBC was saying, it's part of Fox being able to claim they have a range of views - just with all of them anti Biden in different ways.
Yes, this Ross Douthat analysis of the Ottawa blockade as a new kind of "class warfare" is really bad. He starts:
A great and mostly unknown prophet of our
time is Michael Young, whose book “The Rise of the Meritocracy,”
published way back in 1958, both coined the term in its title and
predicted, in its fictional vision of the 21st century, meritocracy’s
unhappy destination: not the serene rule of the deserving and talented,
but a society where a ruling class selected for intelligence but defined
by arrogance and insularity faces a roiling populism whose grievances
shift but whose anger at the new class order is a constant.
This year it’s Canada’s turn to live inside Young’s somewhat dystopian scenario, set in the 2030s but here ahead of schedule....
And throws in:
This last division was not precisely anticipated in Young’s book,
writing as he did before the true rise of the computer, but it has ended
up being a key expression of the meritocracy-populist divide. To quote
the pseudonymous writer N.S. Lyons, the trucker protests have sharpened a
division between “Virtuals” and “Practicals”
— meaning the people whose professional lives are lived increasingly in
the realm of the “digital and the abstract,” and the people who work in
the “mundane physical reality” upon which the virtual society still
depends.
This completely ignores the role of the digital in promoting conspiracy and crank science amongst the "Practicals" - which is surely the key dynamic driving the anti-mandate motives.
He finally does get around to acknowledging this in the second last paragraph....
And the conflicts are also more complex, inevitably, than any binary can
capture: The resilience of reality creates fissures inside the
meritocracy (as lately between parents and educational bureaucrats,
say), while the populist side has its own virtual dream palaces (the
world of QAnon and related conspiracies is not exactly a practical
dimension).
...but I reckon with inadequate acknowledgement that this makes a mockery of his whole earlier analysis.
And then this pathetic last paragraph:
Still, once you recognize the divisions that Young prophesied, you see
them in some form all over, as a novel class war that constantly raises
the old question: Which side are you on?
I guess it's too much for Douthat to just come out on the side of those who live in scientific reality and don't see everything through the Right wing culture war perspective.
Many laughs being had on the 'net at the rank desperation of James Morrow today:
Given Rupert's usual personal interest in who should be the next PM, the only question is whether this is in anticipation of the boss wanting Morrison to return, or actual telegraphing from afar that this is the desired outcome? Because, to be honest, unless he's got the start of dementia, it's hard to imagine Murdoch thinking Morrison has performed well; and as such, it would not be entirely surprising to see News Corp tabloids editorially wind back support for him.
This year, the headline news is that LGBT identification is up to 7.1%, but (as might be expected from watching pop culture), the growth is mostly from younger people - especially women - identifying as bisexual. Here's the two key tables from 2020, and last year:
So "transgender" is pretty steady, and only slow growth in "gay". But "bisexual" is up a whole percentage point (nearly). As for the gender break up between men and women, this table shows the details:
Isn't that split between men and women curious, summarised again in this line:
Women (6.0%) are much more likely than men (2.0%) to say they are
bisexual. Men are more likely to identify as gay (2.5%) than as
bisexual, while women are much more likely to identify as bisexual than
as lesbian (1.9%).
One other thing of note is this:
In addition to the 7.1% of U.S. adults who consider themselves to be an
LGBT identity, 86.3% say they are straight or heterosexual, and 6.6% do
not offer an opinion.
I would suspect that a higher than usual proportion of that group should be in one of the LGBT categories.
Anyway, the results still seem to back the guesstimate I made in my 2013 post that, at least amongst men, the gay and bisexual percentage is probably around 4 to 5%. The article also ends with this:
Given the large disparities in LGBT identification between younger and
older generations of Americans, the proportion of all Americans who
identify as LGBT can be expected to grow in the future as younger
generations will constitute a larger share of the total U.S. adult
population. With one in 10 millennials and one in five Gen Z members
identifying as LGBT, the proportion of LGBT Americans should exceed 10%
in the near future.
However, a large number of bisexual claiming women behind that figure are going to end up in marriages with men, and overall, the growth in alternative sexual identities is not going to be reflected to the same degree in the number of gay marriages (or gay relationships).
Is Gray Connolly, who I consider an eccentric pompous windbag, re-tweeting this with approval?:
Pretty typical Trump-ian excuse making here: everything is supposed to be so bad in the West, who are we to complain about Putin? It's pathetic. Yet Connolly thinks everything was going fine under Trump:
And Gray ends up with this yearning for old world order:
