Uh oh, Native Title is in the news...

I'm going to count myself as still being in my early 60's rather than my mid 60's, but I'm still feeling like an elder who is remembering things that those young'uns in politics seem to have forgotten about: the danger to Labor of looking too gullible on matters of indigenous policy. 

Have people forgotten about Bob Hawke and his attitude to the issue of sacred sites:

In 1991 BHP was pushing to mine a hill in Kakadu that was sacred to the local Indigenous Jawoyn people.

According to Mr Hawke he was angered at the way some members of cabinet cavalierly dismissed those beliefs while accepting the “mysteries” of their own Christian faith.

“I was annoyed beyond measure by the attitude of many of my colleagues and their cynical dismissal of the beliefs of the Jawoyn people and I think I made one of the strongest and bitterest attacks I ever made on my colleagues in the cabinet when I was addressing this issue.

“There is no doubt this was one element in my loss of leadership as there was a great deal of antagonism amongst my colleagues as to the intensity of the remarks I made. But this was something I felt very deeply about.”

And then how the Hindmarsh Island scandal a few years later made non-questioning of claims by all indigenous look like gullibility?

I mention this because the news of a successful native title claim over a large part of the Sunshine Coast is (almost irrespective of its practical effects - which might be minimal, but see my concerns below)  bound to hurt the Labor government in Queensland, which negotiated a settlement.  

Here's an article from The Guardian explaining what this claim has gained:

Unlike other types of land tenure, native title only grants a specific, discrete set of prescribed rights, typically called a “bundle of rights”. Those rights don’t include the right to sell, though the state must compensate the claimant if it extinguishes them. It might do that if it wants to turn part of the area into a coal mine or a housing estate, for instance.

The Kabi Kabi people were granted the following rights:

1. Access, be present on, move about on and travel over the area.

2. Camp on the area, and for that purpose, erect temporary shelters on the area.

3. Take resources of the area for any purpose.

4. Take and use the water of the area for personal, domestic and non-commercial communal purposes (including cultural and spiritual purposes).

5. Participate in cultural activities on the area.

6. Be buried and bury native title holders within the area.

7. Maintain places of importance and areas of significance to the native title holders under their laws and customs and protect those places and areas from physical harm.

8. Teach on the area the physical and spiritual attributes of the area.

9. Hold meetings on the area.

10. Light fires on the area for domestic purposes including cooking, but not for the purpose of hunting or clearing vegetation.

    In order to win these rights, the Kabi Kabi had to prove that their ancestors occupied the area under a set of laws and customs, which had continued ever since.

I reckon if this claim was granted to a group of long term residents of an isolated area (like how the first native title claim was covering Thursday Island),  with modest intentions, no one would worry.

But the danger is that people perceive (correctly!) that indigenous activism has taken a very aggressive form now, and concessions keep being made to the "flexes" of indigenous activists and (let's be honest) their increasingly dilute aboriginal blood.  (God, I feel dangerously Hanson-ite for saying that, but the fact of the matter is that genetics should count for something in claims of indigenous heritage.   And it's still considered a valid thing by many actual American tribes - a point rarely mentioned in Australia.) 

People might recall some push by some indigenous to get people to stop climbing the Glasshouse Mountains - I wouldn't be surprised if that push is renewed after this claim.

And I suspect that there will be even more controversial things pushed under this claim - all pretty much more as a political "flex" than anything else.    

The thing is, people (like Bob Hawke) who argued that indigenous claims to exclusive access to certain natural sites for religious or cultural reasons is the equivalent of the major religions' idea of a scared site were pretty obviously making a false comparison.   You don't have to be a believer to have access to St Peter's in Rome, or most mosques, or Buddhist or Hindu temples.   You might be expected to observe certain modest restrictions in dress and behaviour, but that's about it.   And being able to name any bit of the natural landscape as sacred based on unwritten lore is obviously open to abuse and "flexes".  

In other words, people are right to be sceptical of the claims and the religious reasons given for them.  If any bit of ground can be declared scared, it dilutes the idea of sacred to something pretty meaningless, really.   Let's declare the whole planet sacred, but we all have access to it, OK?

But apart from the issue of climbing mountains, I can see lots of other rights in that list that certainly could be abused and cause conflict.  Is the right to light a campfire in Crown land going to cause issues in fire restriction times?   Will collecting shell fish be done in a way that is commercial and not really about daily sustenance?  (This already causes conflict in other parts of Australia.)

Labor is going to lose the Queensland election big time for a variety of reasons, with one significant issue already related to aboriginality - the rise in youth crime, especially in in regional areas.   Add to the electoral ill will that issue has generated a vaguely defined set of Native Title rights in a prime tourist area of the State and it's going to go over like a lead balloon. 

Paging Dr Musk

 

Musk's wrong headed and obnoxiously stated views on this (which I had forgotten he has been spreading for years) were very thoroughly fact checked here.  

Yet, of course, on Twitter, thousands of Covid conspiracists have flooded in to support their cult leader.

Honestly, I can't wait for Musk to lead his cult followers to the promised land of Mars (or even the Moon - I don't care.)   He'd be dead within the year, either from internal rebellion, or something he thought he knew the answer to better than anyone else.   

A difficult problem

From an article at The Conversation:

It’s relatively common for perpetrators of family violence to threaten suicide to control a victim-survivor’s actions. A study by the Australian Institute of Criminology suggests 39% of women who experience coercive control are subject to perpetrators’ threats of self-harm.

Suicide threats can be related to mental health issues, a tactic of family violence, or sometimes both. As a result, victim-survivors may feel pressured to remain in an abusive relationship.

Men who kill their partners are 2,000 times more likely to experience suicidal ideation than the general population. For example, the man who killed Hannah Clarke and her children had threatened suicide multiple times in the lead-up to their murders.

It can then be tricky for police responding to these situations. Victoria Police officers who participated in my recently published research were concerned that when they prioritise suicide prevention over responding to family violence, victim-survivors are sometimes left without protection.

I really do feel sorry for the police, who are expected to make a "nuanced" decision:

All ten police officers who participated in my study specialised in family violence. They all indicated suicide threats were a commonly-used tactic of coercive control.

Most participants said when they attend a family violence incident where a perpetrator has threatened suicide, they are likely to address the perpetrator’s mental health as their priority. The perpetrator often then goes to hospital for assessment and treatment, when required.

When a person is under the care of a hospital, police cannot issue a family violence safety notice. Police can request notification from a hospital of when a person is released if they are a risk to others. However, this does not always happen, according to police.....

 

Some police stations are developing processes to change the way they address perpetrator suicide threats. One of the participants suggested family violence safety notices should be issued first, before hospitalising a perpetrator.

Improvements within policing could prevent further violence from occurring. A nuanced approach is needed to train police to balance the mental health needs of perpetrators, as well as the safety of victim-survivors and the community at large.

 

 

Can't quite work out how creepy this is...

He has cancer — so he made an AI version of himself for his wife after he dies 

Michael Bommer likely only has a few weeks left to live.

A couple of years ago, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. The doctors told him it was terminal.

"A year ago, I sat with my wife in one of these more teary-eyed exercises, talking about what comes. And my wife said, 'Hey, one of the things I will miss most is being able to come to you, ask you a question, and you will sit there and calmly explain the world to me,'" he said. 

He posted online, telling his friends it was time to say goodbye. Then his friend called him up, saying he had an opportunity at his company Eternos.Life for Bommer to build an interactive AI version of himself.

Bommer immediately said yes, and his wife, Anett, was all in, too. They shared with Consider This host Mary Louise Kelly the journey they went on with this project.

This reminds me a bit of the thing I only learned from watching the Pixar movie Coco - that the Mexicans (carrying on an Aztec belief) say you die twice, the last time being when no one remembers you anymore.   (Some accounts seem to say 3 times - the first being when you learn you are mortal.)  

Well, in future, I guess it may be when no bothers activating your AI version - or wipes it from the hard drive, I guess!

In popular entertainment news

This Netflix movie seems to be attracting a lot of commentary along these lines:

Many, many people seem to be completely puzzled by the glowing professional reviews, and even suspect some sort of chicanery.

Similarly, the new Disney Star Wars series The Acolyte is attracting truck loads of amusing ridicule from former Star Wars fans (and in particular, those "bro" type reviewers who have been complaining - not without some justification - about its obvious feminisation ever since the last 3 movies).   This latest show apparently features a coven of lesbian witches who use the Force to procreate without the need of men, which genuinely does sound like some sort of extreme lesbian fever dream.  And apart from that bit of weirdness, is said to have terrible dialogue, charmless leads, and generally makes no sense.  

I have not cared for the Star Wars universe in any great depth for decades - it peaked at The Empire Strikes Back, after all - although I did keep seeing the movies, except for the last one which it seemed absolutely no one liked much.   None of the Disney TV content based in the universe has impressed me enough to keep watching it after a few of episodes. 

Anyway, the point is that the professional reviewers have generally been praising The Acolyte - and the disparity with audience reactions is pretty huge.  Once again, it seems lots of people don't understand why.  

The only thing that will resolve this will a diminishing audience, I guess.    

 

Trump and the normalisation of his BS

An opinion piece in the Washington Post:

It is irresponsible to obsess over President Biden’s tendency to mangle a couple of words in a speech while Donald Trump is out there sounding detached from reality. Biden, who is old, at least makes sense. Trump, who also is old, rants like someone you’d cross the street to avoid.

We in the media have failed by becoming inured to Trump’s verbal incontinence — not just the rapid-fire lies and revenge-seeking threats, but also the frightening glimpses into a mind that is, evidently, unwell. In 2016, Trump said outrageous things at his campaign rallies to be entertaining. In 2024, his tangents raise serious questions about his mental fitness.

His rally on Sunday in Las Vegas offered a grim smorgasbord of examples, but the obvious standout (and not in a good way) is the story he told about being aboard a hypothetical electric-powered boat. He posits that the battery would be so heavy that it would cause the craft to sink, and he relates his purported conversation with a knowledgeable mariner about this scenario.

You can go to the link to read the whole transcript of this part of his rally.  The article continues:

The White House press corps would be in wolf pack mode if Biden were in the middle of a speech and suddenly veered into gibberish about boats and sharks. There would be front-page stories questioning whether the president, at 81, was suffering from dementia; and the op-ed pages would be filled with thumb-suckers about whether Vice President Harris and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. House Republicans would already have scheduled hearings on Biden’s mental condition and demanded he take a cognitive test.

The tendency with Trump, at 77, is to say he’s “just being Trump.” But he’s like this all the time.

Also during the Las Vegas speech, Trump tried to deny the allegation by one of his White House chiefs of staff, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, that he refused in 2018 to visit an American military cemetery in France, saying it was filled with “suckers” and “losers.” Trump told the crowd on Sunday that “only a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person” would say such a thing while “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery.”

But he wasn’t “standing there” with anybody. He never went to the cemetery.

As someone in comments (there are over 9,000 of them) says:

Trump is always posing as the sharpest mind around who asks a critical question that nobody thought about it. Remember bleach as a treatment for COVID? He heard that bleach kills the COVID virus and proposed bleach as a cure without thinking for even a second that doctors and microbiologists are perfectly capable of making that connection. And, without even thinking that if bleach wasn't actually used to treat humans there may be reason --a reason that he never bothered to find out.

He says lots of things about everything but he never has time to check whether he has made an stupid claim because he is to busy making the next stupid claim.

 

 

My own conspiracy theory

An article at the BBC talks about the rapid rise in Chinese manufactured electric vehicles:

With China accused of selling electric cars at artificially low prices, the European Union is widely expected to hit them with tariffs this week.

The BYD Seagull is a tiny, cheap, neatly styled electric vehicle (EV). An urban runabout that won’t break any speed records, but nor will it break the bank.

In China, it has a starting price of 69,800 yuan ($9,600; £7,500). If it comes to Europe, it is expected to cost at least double that figure due to safety regulations. But that would still be, by electric car standards, very cheap.

For European manufacturers that is a worrying prospect. They fear the little Seagull will become an invasive species, one of a number of Chinese-built models poised to colonise their own markets at the expense of indigenous vehicles.

China’s domestic auto industry has grown rapidly over the past two decades. Its development, along with that of the battery sector, was a major component of the “Made In China 2025” strategy, a 10-year industrial policy launched by the Communist Party in Beijing in 2015.

The result has been the breakneck development of companies like BYD, now vying with Tesla for the title of the world’s biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles. Established giants such as SAIC, the owner of the MG brand, and Volvo’s owner Geely, have also become big players in the EV market.

Last year, more than eight million electric vehicles were sold in China – about 60% of the global total, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual Global EV Outlook.

Here's a conspiracy theory I have been thinking about for months:   maybe the Chinese government requires all electric vehicles made there (and especially those destined for foreign markets) to have a software kill switch - so that once they have flooded the Western market with reasonably priced electric vehicles and they want to do something controversial (*cough* invade Taiwan), they can punish the West (if it fights back) by remotely killing all electric vehicles in a software update.   (And they will be clever - the update won't be an immediate kill - otherwise those who first lose their vehicle could warn others not to update.  No, it could just be set so that they all stop working on a certain date.   Perhaps an anniversary important to the Chinese.)   Or, now that I think of it - could the update make the explode-y batteries actually explode?  

So, if they have (say) 20% of the total American vehicle market, that's potentially an awful lot of disruption for a country so reliant on vehicles.   

I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has come up with this idea, but I haven't read it elsewhere - yet.   So, for now, I'm claiming it as a original conspiracy theory.

Romanticising the avoidance of reality

I think it was last week that 7.30 on the ABC ran a story about a 68 year old woman who, while obviously having had a hard life, was also pretty patently nuts on the matter of thinking she could ignore legal actions and (well) reality.

The story is set out at length here, but to cut it short, she had lived in a low cost social housing house in Melbourne for many years when it was part of a managing co-op on which she was a member.  After it got transferred to a different co-op, a move which she didn't agree with, she stopped paying rent to the new owner (claims she kept paying it to the old co-op?), got into arrears for nearly $10,000, got evicted, lost on appeal, got evicted a second time.  After the new co-op sold off the house to a private owner, the house was half demolished, and she still returned to an obviously dangerous house with no utilities and slept in it.  When it was being fully demolished, she was running into the yard and putting herself in danger in front of the machinery until the police intervened.

She had a hard life by the sounds, but it was also clear that she had been given alternative social housing to live in (a one bedroom unit), although it was shown as so crammed full of her furnishings and stuff from the old house that she has made it virtually unliveable.   "Downsizing" is a concept she apparently is unfamiliar with - or rather, which she has obviously avoided "on principle".  

Look, I find this type of journalism that tries to play on heartstrings when it's a person with obvious  "issues" quite irritating, especially when they paint it from one side only.  (There was not a single attempt to have anyone talk about the institutional perspective of running a social housing system when someone refuses to pay the reduced rent, even after losing repeatedly in court, because of "feels", or something.)   It is an example of (dare I say it) the type of Left-ist idealism that is so extreme it becomes divorced from reality - like the posters you will see at any indigenous rally that talk about "Australia" as an invalid concept and suggest you can just hand the country over to the indigenous.  

Let's try to keep it real, hey?

 

Now I'm definitely not going to the Greek Islands

The death of Michael Moseley, who always came across on TV as very likeable and reasonable, was sadly premature.   

But one other thing that came out of that coverage:  am I the only person to think that Greek island didn't look the least bit attractive?  And I have to say that, apart from the startlingly geography of the likes of Santorini, whenever I've watched travel vloggers in the Greek Islands I'm rarely impressed.  Rocky, dry islands with so-so beaches and some scrubby bushes here and there (OK, and the occasional olive tree), just don't do much for me.   

And the food - it's ok once in a while, but it's basically too dull.  I joked to someone recently that it has about 5 national dishes and that's it.    (And they are basically all the same at every cafe or restaurant that makes them.)

The most repulsive billionaire?

So the very week that Fauci testifies about real and continual death threats against him and his family, the ketamine addled brain of a top contender for "most repulsive billionaire" decided to throw his support publically behind the MAGA idiots.  

 

Still here

I had a couple of days off this week, in celebration of a wedding anniversary, and used points to pay for the fanciest hotel at Noosa (now the Sofitel - it used to be the Sheraton) which is right on Hastings Street.

I've never stayed there before, and I was suitably impressed.  (Mind you, if we were paying cash for it, it would want to be good for the very high price for a night with breakfast - about $600.)   The hotel is in good condition - it's been there a long time, but I would say its had an upgrade no so long ago.  The room was huge, and we chose the one facing the Noosa River at the rear.  (I don't think you can see the beach from the other side anyway, due to the rows of apartments across the road.)   It's a nice view at the back:

 

And a late sunset shot:

And the beach itself was in fine form, with a couple of fantastic 21 degree sunny Queensland days:

 

I honestly think this is probably the best beach in the world - facing north, the headland to the East means it's rarely too rough or windy, yet there are usually at least some worthwhile waves to make a swim more interesting than still water.  Nor is it prone to erosion, and the water is nearly always clear.  (Occasionally it will have a temporary issue with some seaweed/algae that blooms naturally, but excessively - but it is very infrequent.)  Dolphins are often to be seen - and koalas in the nearby national park.   And the water temperature isn't too warm in summer, like it can be a bit further north.  It's in the sweet spot of water temperatures off the Queensland coast - not too warm, not too cold.  (I think it was 21 or 22 degrees the other day - which still feels cools when the air is the same temperature, but is way better than typical Sydney beach temperatures.  A few degrees makes a lot of difference.)

So yes, it was a great time.   I could happily retire there, I think; although I do know from living around the corner at Sunshine Beach for a couple of years in my thirties  that you do get too used to beautiful views too quickly.  Anyway, winning the lottery would be required first...

PS - I forgot to mention the lorikeets that were nesting in the planter box on our room balcony.  Very charming.

A movie review, with no swearing

I watched the movie Fall on Netflix on the weekend, and was somewhat impressed.   (I only knew of it because I remembered that Critical Drinker reviewer really liked it - despite it being based around two female leads.)   

I would describe it as generally well made, B Grade melodrama with a massive hook - fear of heights - that keeps you in until the end.   A bit like how I enjoyed that first mega shark movie  as B or C grade material but with fantastic production design and imagery.   (What was it called?  oh yeah - The Meg.)

For those who don't know - two young women, both into "free" climbing (or whatever they call going up sheer cliffs with minimal ropes) - decide (for melodramatic-ish reasons I won't go into here) to do a climb up a needle-thin abandoned TV tower in the middle of the desert, and manage to get stuck on top on the tiniest of platforms. The rest of the movie is about their efforts to be rescued. 

It's one of those movies where you can be pedantic and pick apart many, many details; but I think for most people, the details don't  matter much because of the near constant queasy feeling that comes from so many shots that look convincing (or convincing enough) with respect to height and danger.  (And I say this as a person with an "average" fear of heights:  my personal fear of most note is around claustrophobia in caves.  I actually can't watch films or documentaries which spend any more than a very short time showing cavers crawling through spaces so tiny that they might get stuck.)

Now, it's clear, given the state of movie magic, that the actors would never have needed to be on top of a real 2,000 foot tower to make the movie.   But I was keen to see a "making of" video about it, and there is indeed one on Youtube.

You can skip through the first 10 or 15 minutes of the director and writer talking of their inspiration, etc, until you get to the part where they show how they made it, using a tower that was (I think they said) a hundred feet high, rather than 2,000 feet.   Quite amazing how well it is all spliced together in the movie.

But the other thing that amused me from the "making of" video is that the original script had a lot of swearing in it, and after seeing the rough cut of the movie, the studio told the director they had to change that, because the film would lose too much potential audience with the restrictive rating it would get with the amount of swearing.

(I actually had notice the unusual lack of swearing in the film - it felt like it was a film deliberately aiming for an age range of around 12 to 22.  As it turns out - it definitely was!)   

So, how did they solve the problem of removing so many swear words from a film often shot in relatively tight close ups?   They used "deepfake" style computer graphics to change the speaking mouth shapes to convincingly remove the excessive use of F's and M-F's, and change them to something milder!

That's pretty funny - and just goes to show that they could have saved themselves a lot of effort if they just knew from the start that the studio would not be happy with too much swearing.

Anyway, if you watch the movie, be aware that I know there is a lot you can have issues with - I don't consider it an A grade screenplay by any means.   And there is one technical aspect that I thought was laughably silly - wait til you see the lightbulb at the top of the tower.    But the actors do well enough with the material, and did face a challenging shoot outdoors stuck on a 100 foot tower for most of it.  And it made me feel very queasy, so it's worth watching!

I'm more convinced by the "jail him"! side

A gift link to the NYT:  Should Trump Be Sentenced to Prison? Two Opposing Views.

Rupert likes to live dangerously, apparently

I didn't know these details of Rupert's new wife:

Rupert Murdoch tied the knot for a fifth time Saturday, marrying Elena Zhukova, a retired scientist from Russia.

The couple got engaged in March after they reportedly met at a family event hosted by one of Murdoch’s ex-wives in summer 2023, according to the Guardian. Photos of Murdoch and Zhukova on a yacht soon followed, adding more fuel to the relationship rumors.

There are few details about Zhukova’s history, though multiple reports suggest that she is the mother of Dasha Zhukova, the ex-wife of former Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, who has been described as a well-connected Russian oligarch.

Whaaat?

Did we ever establish whether Wendi Deng was actually a Chinese spy?   Not satisfied with that possibility, sounds like he decided to go to bed with a possible Russian spy.   I would love to know her views of Donald Trump.

Update:  Lulz -  

 

Tweets of note