In terms of risk, with the rise of Omicron, we are right back where we were this time last year when there were no vaccines available at all. The same uncertainties, the same supply problems, the same confused & ideologically delusional messaging, the same incompetent Liberals.
The difference is there is now no appetite left - no political wiggle-room - for lockdowns, curfews, mask mandates, or border closures that might help prevent an Omicron surge...
Meanwhile, the booster rollout is patchy and confused. The numbers don't add up. GPs are in the dark. The official messaging is blasé and unconcerned. Because of when I got my 2nd AZ shot, I can't get a booster for another month. By then, millions will be fighting to get it.
I would like to travel to Nelson Bay in early January, probably unboosted, but the anxiety around the risks is exactly as it was a year ago, when I postponed my trip because of the imminent border closures, the prospect of catching Covid, and/or being trapped there for months.
Don't forget, just as a bonus, as we sensationalise and headline the latest Greek letter variant, the original Covid and Delta are still around... lurking...
I'll be posting some random memes from the extensive back catalogue of the #MemestreamClassics collection, apropos of that being what everyone does, this time of year, yeah? Recycling tat? Here's a little taste of Tony... (Not my meme!)
The ICAC revelations are as nothing compared to the unseemly hagiographies for a disgraced premier who CHOSE to quit BECAUSE SHE MAY BE SOON FOUND GUILTY OF CORRUPTION! The suckhole bourgeois elites who trade blandly mediocre uni degrees for careers in media are a dumb joke.
Historian Peter Turchin theorises cleverly, with abundant historical data, how a glut of over-educated elites eventually begins to sap social integrity, this happens when too many qualified but self-serving individuals, all of a type, form cliques and cabals of opinion...
This homogeneous identikit elite faction eventually can do no more than unconsciously conspire to spin discourse in ever decreasing circles. They almost don't mean to do this, but as their careers depend on assimilating a dominant paradigm of - let's call it mediocrity -
@MrKRudd "This smug bloke made a political career of rubbishing Labor’s world-beating GFC response, which avoided recession & saved livelihoods. Now his budget figures have 5-times the deficit and 5-times as much debt, he is seeking to erase his past. Not if I can help it."
4 Feb 2009. "Opposition to vote against Rudd's $42 billion package" SMH
@KevinRudd ...with Murdoch’s blessing, [Morrison] expects Australians will simply forget how [Liberals] tried to wreck the economy by opposing stimulus back then [in 2008-9]. They won’t.
KEVIN RUDD: 4 Feb 2009. "I'm not going to haul up the white flag, the Libs have said recession is inevitable, I'm not in the defeat game, I'm in for throwing everything at this."
He's having a laugh.Keynes used the term pejoratively: "decisions to do something positive...can only be...the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits..."
The emptiness of the political urge to just "have a go," is derided by Keynes as rash, "there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations."
Just lay that Keynesian template over any of Morrison's plans and it fits. Compare the bungled vaccine rollout, a triumph of agitated animal spirits over carefully weighted assessment of benefits and probabilities.
Détournement ("rerouting" "hijacking") was a 60s subversive strategy invented by leftist Situationists, essentially to rewire an idea or art form, rendering it meaningless, or disrupting its message.This ad is alt-Right culture jamming, hijacking & mocking the message.
Space for a clear message on harassment, personal safety, respect and knowing boundaries has now been polluted and cheapened by this effort. That seems like a deliberate strategy. "Look, we tried. Made a vid," will be the refrain from right-wing men, keen to shed the "issue."
"Look," sleazy old men of the #YoungLiberals will say. "We even got down to 'their level.' The youth are so ungrateful." But are "young people" the "problem?" Would Andrew Laming watch this and change his upskirting ways? A YoungLib staffer refrain from hot icing the furniture?
Let's discuss empathy. Empathy is hard wired into human beings. It's the result of our evolved societal bonding where we survived because we recognised mutual advantage in pair bonding, cooperative child raising and forging close interpersonal connections.
"Scientists recognise two kinds of empathy -- affective empathy and cognitive empathy -- and studies strongly suggest that babies experience both." parentingscience.com/do-babies-feel…
Newborns routinely become distressed when they hear other newborns cry. "Babies cry more when they hear the cries of a real infant" (Martin and Clark 1982; Sagi and Hoffman 1976; Simner 1971).