Horse 3148 - Il Vaticano

Being a nerdular nerd, I have a more than a passing interest in the game of chess. This classic two player board game is known the world over and with a set of rules which have long since been established, you can pretty well much play it with anyone else around the world who also knows how to play. My current streak in this game is 2 losses; which I shall take as a monument to my own spectacular failure; as both of them were lost due to critical and avoidable errors on my part and excellent control of space by my opponent.

The rules and the materiel of chess are known beforehand and unlike rear war, those rules do not change. You can not suddenly invent new pieces with new abilities and this is why I find this subject so fun.

There is a kind of meme going around which features a hoax chess move "Il Vaticano"; which involves the two bishops with two spaces in between them, swapping positions, and then taking the two pieces between them. I have no idea exactly where this hoax chess move started but a quick Google search tells me that there are loads of discussions on a Reddit board called AnarachyChess; which seems to be quite apt. 

This hoax chess move is in response to the other 'special' moves which exist in chess, of Castling which involves moving the king and a rook, and En Passant, which allows pawns to take an opposing pawn by moving into the space behind them if that pawn has move forwards two spaces for its opening move instead of one.

I personally like what is known as either Fantasy Chess or Fairy Chess pieces. These usually involve combining the existing moves of other pieces to create new exotic pieces such as the Elephant, Knightrider, or the Cannon, or changing the board in some way to either allow extra space and/or extra pieces. Il Vaticano is different to this as it merely adds a new very specific power to an already existing piece.

Il Vaticano as a move really happens to tickle my fancy because it is sufficiently interesting enough as to be different but not so outlandish as to be absurd. It already comes with inbuilt lore as "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our Chief weapons are 'Surprise'..."; which makes even more of a fun and rare thing to do. To set up the necessary conditions to even allow Il Vaticano means that no less than three pieces have to be in position and it is really easy to counter.

It wouldn't even take all that much effort for people to agree to allow Il Vaticano as a legal move. Two players could simply come to an agreement and provided it caught on as a chess virus, the move could just extend into regular play. Already the set of conditions required to produce Il Vaticano are sufficiently difficult enough that it couldn't be used a lot and if one of the bishops had already been taken, then it couldn't be used at all.

If you ask the question why shouldn't this Il Vaticano move be allowed and the answer given is that this hoax move is 'made up', then this is a nonsense as all of the moves in chess and indeed all of the rules in every sport ever are in fact 'made up'. Unless we have some kind of law which is based upon obvious morality (such as not killing people), then more broadly, all laws are made up and we just happen to collectively agree that the authority which made them is sensibly just to do so.

Of course the natural objection is that the Bishops would now get a new power and be fundamentally worth more than they used to be; even if that power could only be accessed through a very specific set of circumstances. Likely the value of a Bishop would rise to 4 points, as opposed to the 3 that they currently share with Knights.

At some point, all of the rules in chess must have been decided upon and agreed to. I have to imagine that even though there were regional variations as was the case with football and most card games, that with the invention of the printing press that standardised rules were codified. If Il Vaticano were to be adopted by the international chess federation which decides this sort of thing, then the addition of this one rule with its very particular set of circumstances would actually become real.

...

I like the symbolism that chess is supposed to conjure up: of medieval knights, the clergy, a royal court, and the peasants who are expendable. Chess is supposed to represent war in miniature, while at the same time openly lying by suggesting that war has rules. If this was a genuine war, then the game should be played in a fog with spies, intel being received about enemy positions, and even then it should be only semi reliable.

Of course the mere existence of Bishops on the Chess board does make you kind of wonder what kind of war was going on. It used to be that Kings and maybe Queens would lead troops into battle as originally the basis of all power is derived from who can control the most swords. The royal family is really a fancy kind of dictatorship which has been dressed in shiny hats and ermine. The fact that there are Bishops on the board, is culturally confusing.

Why are the clergy on the battlefield? I can understand chaplains who might act as counselors amidst death and destruction going on but the clergy? On top of this, they are fighting clergy. It is quite a thing to be preaching loving your enemies on Sunday and then hacking them down with a claymore on Monday. I do not know if these bishops are supposed to be wearing a mitre or a helmet either.

I am hideously confused.

Horse 3147 - The Lights Are On But No-One's Watching

I have long been convinced now that Sky News Australia doesn't exist to bring any news to the people of Australia, much less the world. This week I happened to run into a set of viewership figures which kind of confirm my hypothesis. 

These are the Top 20 shows on Foxtel and to be fair, that's absolutely dire.

The highest rated show on Foxtel for the 24th was Rockwiz on Fox 8. With a paltry 40,000 people across the country, Rockwiz must miss the dizzying heights of the numbers of half a million people on SBS. 

Admittedly Credlin got 38,000 people watching it but that may have been because it came on at dinner time. The real proof that Sky News Australia isn't produced for Australians, are the two shows Erin and The Rita Panahi Show which both scored just 22,000 people.

Now 22,000 people watching a thing would be perfectly fine if it was a football team playing at a suburban football ground. 22,000 people at a sporting venue like the SCG, Stadium Australia or the MCG, would feel empty and sad. 22,000 people for what supposedly is a national television station which claims to be the self-confessed cutting edge of news and opinion in Australia, is hilariously sad. I love it.

For a national news station, 22,000 people works out to be less than 146 people per electorate. For every thousand people in the country, that's not even one person watching Sky News Australia for these programs.

Women's Cricket and AFL Practice matches are outrating both Erin and The Rita Panahi Show. A 55 year old movie is outrating both Erin and The Rita Panahi Show. Formula One pre-season testing; which isn't even a motor race, has scored 90% of the viewership figures of Erin and The Rita Panahi Show. The empiric data quite simply, states that Sky News Australia is at best a very very small niche. I love it.

Sky News Australia which draws its hosts and guests from within its own pile of steaming compost (from places like The Australian, Herald-Sun, Daily Telegraph, and Courier-Mail) basically repackages its own corporate opinion pieces as news items, then holds talk fests to drive home the point. Apart from the news bulletins, Sky News Australia has proven itself to be practically unwatchable and the statistics tell the story that not many people do as a result.

The question then, is the most obvious question of all - why? Why bother going to the effort of producing television programs if they're watched by so few people? It depends who is watching and what they do as a result.

In the case of Fox News in the United States, which appears as part of basic cable plans and in a nation where cable TV take up rates were always far higher than in Australia, spewing whatever propaganda they could to make people vote in a certain way, swings elections. The hope is that in Australia, this will also be the case but my suspicion is that that Sky News Australia has a minimal effect on voting intentions.

If it is not that, then the other option is to make people in power think that that's what the people think. My suspicion is that just like The Australian which has an outsized circulation in Canberra (which is almost a zero newspaper town), Sky News Australia exists as a propaganda tool to make politicians think that that's what the people think. If most of those 22,000 people are in Canberra though, then Sky News Australia basically acts as very tiny fence which politicians are too afraid to jump over. 

The other major reason that Sky News Australia exists, is to make the people of the United States think that that's what we think. Sky News Australia looks different to Fox News in the United States and as such, if Sky News Australia is shown via its YouTube Channel or played as clips on Fox News, then it automatically gains a colour of the exotic. Audiences generally accepting that a news program which appears to look genuine, is. 

As for the shows themselves, for me this is commenting on things that I have not seen. The only comments that I can make are based on other things that I have seen these people in. I know that Peta Credlin was former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's secretary but I know nothing of her TV show. Erin Molan is on 2Day FM in the mornings with Ed Kavalee and Dave Huges, and given that I can not imagine that her TV show in the evenings would be particularly hard-hitting. Rita Panahi writes somewhat illogical pieces in News Corp's daily tabloids which toe the company line for the day; and given that I have seen glimpses of her program with Rowan Dean also toeing the company line for the day, I can not imagine that The Rita Panahi Show would be all that informative.

Not only have I not seen these three programs, given the data it looks like not many people have either. Foxtel by nature has everything behind a paywall and with the rise of Kayo and Stan Sport, the biggest drawcard to even get Foxtel is gone. Why would you bother if you could pay less and not bother paying for the things you don't need. Ultimately these ratings figures reflect that position. Foxtel likely knows exactly how many people are watching any given thing at any given time; so with just 22,000 people watching, the benefit to producing these shows must be seen by the corporate bean counters somewhere.

All of this assumes that anyone actually is watching. A pay-TV unit sending data back to the monitors, has no idea if there's anyone actually sitting in front of the screen. It could very well be that a lot of these screens are in places like pubs and clubs where they have just been left on in the background, or perhaps as is the case with a hairdressers' shop across the street from where I work, the screen is left on and playing something, even after the shop has closed and the lights have gone off. 

Maybe that's the saddest set of affairs at all. Erin and The Rita Panahi Show could very well have numbers of 22,000 but there might not be people actually watching. It's not impossible to suggest that there are thousands of screens on around the country, in pubs, clubs, food courts, corporate building lobbies and foyers, and closed shops and premises, where Erin and Rita are actually speaking to an audience of nil. I love it.

Horse 3146 - American National Divorce?

In many respects watching US Politics is like watching two great sporting teams fighting for the most petty trophy in the world. The two teams largely exist for the sole purpose of playing the game and the fame and ovation of the people. The big problem with US Politics, is that neither of the two teams have much of a grand plan for making the country better, other than tearing down what the other builds.

Especially over the past 15 years, US Politics has devolved into an identity outrage shouting match; where both sides of the match have abandoned any and all logic, morality, and sense, in the name of winning the pile of beans.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene appears to want to play the game for no other reason than to cause as much outrage as possible and this week this has included nominating a murderer for the Congressional Gold Medal. If you want to lay any hint of morality aside for the purposes of political point scoring, then already I want to discount anything further that such a person has to say as being worthless.

Nevertheless, I found other comments made by Representative Greene this week to be intriguing:

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1627726254320365569

Impeach Biden or give us a national divorce.

We don’t pay taxes to fund foreign country’s wars who aren’t even NATO ally’s.

We aren’t sending our sons & daughters to dies for foreign borders & foreign “democracy.”

America is BROKE.

Criminals & Cartels reign.

And you’re a fool.

- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 21 Jan 2023

And:

Why the left and right should consider a national divorce, not a civil war but a legal agreement to separate our ideological and political disagreements by states while maintaining our legal union.

Definition of irreconcilable differences:

inability to agree on most things or on important things.

Tragically, I think we, the left and right, have reached irreconcilable differences.

I’ll speak for the right and say, we are absolutely disgusted and fed up with the left cramming and forcing their ways on us and our children with no respect for our religion/faith, traditional values, and economic & government policy beliefs.

With our federal government in over $34 TRILLION in debt and on the verge of default, clearly both left and right have proven that together they both aren’t responsible with hard working Americans tax dollars.

A national divorce would require a much smaller federal government with more power given to the states.

Hence, we would solve our debt and spending problems immediately.

- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 22 Jan 2023

As well as:

Imagine if America decided to just go ahead and have a national divorce.

Hollywood elites and celebrities and all the brainwashed leftists women who watch the nasty women on the View, men who identify as women, and Democrat voters who suffer from the lifelong debilitating disease Trump Derangement Syndrome they caught from CNN wouldn’t have to see much less tolerate deplorables anymore.

They could live in their safe space blue states, own nothing, let their government decide and control everything, and most importantly protect their fragile minds from being shocked and insulted by those of us on the right who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Then Americans could choose which way, left or right, provides them with the best quality of life, and we don’t have to argue with one another anymore.

I am starting to feel like it’s the right thing to do for everyone.

- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, 22 Jan 2023

The commentariat of the United States has gone into overdrive, spinning faster than a rotisserie chicken attached to the prop shaft of a Renault V10 Formula One engine, over the comments made by Representative Greene is the Representative for Georgia and represents a significant proportion of the United States' citizenry who is increasingly unhappy at the state of the nation; egged on by the non-news sources of Fox News, One America Network, and talkback radio.

This wave of blancohysteria comes in the wake of the first black President, the Tea Party, the Freedom Coalition, the return of an openly white President, and metastasised into the January 6 insurrection on the US Capitol Building. This is possibly representative of as much as 35% of the American population, as evidenced by the rusted on portion of the electorate who continued to vote for Donald Trump despite and in spite of him being impeached and having various criminal indictments recommended against him. 

Looking in from the outside, the comments from Representative Greene can either be seen as inflammatory or taken at face value, strangely correct. If this sounds like I want to endorse the comments made by an obvious wingnut, then please do not take away that impression, however, they do represent a distinct undercurrent of thinking and should be taken seriously.

If we accept the stupid as as serious, then what would actually be so bad about an American National Divorce?

It should be taken as a truth which is self-evident, that half the country hates the other half of the country and everything they stand for. The two great political football teams aren't the whole story though. What lies underneath this stupid veneer which is papered over in various wraps of nationalism, are actually several pieces which probably don't actually belong together.

The US Constitution is a bad constitution for a number of reasons and one of those reasons is that although there are mechanisms to allow states to enter the union, no such mechanism exists for states to leave. The most obvious landmark case which reinforces this was Texas v. White (1868) which stated that the Civil War was illegal and that states had no right to leave. This is a sharp contradiction to the principle that the states have a republican form of government because while on one hand the states appear to have rights, the right to self determination is not one of them.

Even the most sensible of Americans will likely agree to the proposition that in reality, there are probably seven nations trapped inside the Union; all waiting to be set free. Although actually letting them free is something which most people would baulk at. As far as I can tell, the seven nation army being held back is made up of:

The South: which includes Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and the Carolinas

The West: which is California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii and maybe Nevada.

New England: which includes Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The North East: which is New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The Wild West: of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana and Idaho

The Rusty Mid-West: of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illiois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio 

Texas: Texas is, was, and will be, distinctly different enough that it doesn't fit into anything sensible, and Oklahoma can join them because those two states are way closer than either of them will admit.

By my reckoning, the United States isn't really one country but maybe seven masquerading as a unified country. If we take Representative Greene's comments as genuine sentiment, with the evidence of what we've seen rumbling over the last 15 years, then it is reasonable to assume that the great experiment, bound by an idiotic constitution, may have run its course. 

Maybe it's best if The Confederacy, Columbia, New England, Ferrousonia, The Plains, Texas and Neptunia should part ways. Uncle Sam, Columbia, Lady Liberty, Rosie The Riveter, Texas Pete, the Mountain Man, and Caliwia'na all hate each other and shouldn't really be living in the same house any more. They don't want to speak to each other and they increasingly do not understand what each other has to say.

Of course undoing the Union would be something of a transitional logistical challenge and most of the infrastructure would still have remain in control but under the control of the new nations but this isn't impossible. Although there is currently a maniacal eejit in the Kremlin, his predecessor reasonably peacefully oversaw the undoing of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Most of the nations of the former USSR are quite happy doing their own thing.

The state of Georgia where Representative Taylor is from, was one of those states which formed part of the Confederacy, lost the Civil War; and then spent from 1865 until 1965 trying to skirt around the basic extensions of decency at law which they were forced to implement. It would appear as though the fissures which drove that split, were never properly mended, if in fact they were ever meant to be mended in the first place.

If the Confederacy wants to be a bunch of -ist nutjobs (pick your favourite -ism), then the breakup of the Union would allow them to do so. So long as people could leave peacefully during the transition period, then the terms of entry would be known. Texas who is forever whinging about the southern border with Mexico would finally have control over its own stuff.

What I find particularly interesting about Representative Greene's comments is that if you replaced key words with different colours and words of identity, then you have something that could have just as been easily said on the other side of the aisle. Speaking as someone who lives in that great portion of the world called "Not America", I have difficulty quite often in looking from left to right to right to left, to red to blue to blue to red, from man to pig and from pig to man, and telling which is which.

Actually granting this strange suggestion would mean that something would have to be done to address the apportionment of the national debt, the transition of various institutions which are currently run Federally to the new smaller nations, the building of internal border defences and walls.

The US Military would cease to be funded to the same degree it was before, which would arguably be safer for the rest of the world; for the same reasons that removing Prussia from West Germany was one of the key drivers of "peace" in Europe for 70 years. Of course it does mean that the United States wouldn't be a superpower any more but Ms Greene clearly doesn't care about that an iota.

It might actually be good news for the other nations though. The Plains would find itself as the new grain and produce Tsar; with Idaho in particular becoming its own potato based paradise. Do I like Wyoming? I do not know as I have never Wyomed. Ferrousonia would retain its motor industry. Columbia would become even more insanely rich without the weight of the rest of the six nations to drag it down. New England might be tempted to join Canada. 

Her own nation of the Confederate States of America, would instantly find itself cut off from the financial markets of New York in the new nation of Columbia, find itself having to negotiate with Ferrousonia for the importation of steel, and Texas and Neptunia for oil.

The whole idea of the modern nation state only really came about after the Treaty of Westphalia. Since them oceans have risen, empires fallen, and France and Britain have sort of dealt with their own colonial past. The United States which manifest destinied its way across a continent, kind of pretended that it wasn't an empire and hid the truth from itself. Maybe Representative Greene's ramblings although nuttier than Whittaker's Nut Slab with Extra Nuts, contain a truth which should be taken seriously.

Horse 3145 - Henge!

For probably about as long as there have been humans staring up at the sky and wondering "big hot shiny thing what makes light and stuff", there have been people wanting to make use of it. Even the animals know that when it is light-time is is time to do stuff and when it is dark-time then it is time to pester the humans for food and warmth. The rotation of the Earth and the transit of the sun across the sky are insanely reliable, for as long as we keep on spinning round we get new days. 

Sundials exist in cultures all over the world and very very sophisticated sundials are even able to make use of and predict solstices and equinoxes. Our rather nonsensical calendar is still sort of able to ring out the four quarters of the year with alarming accuracy.

This brings me onto the subject of henges. Nobody really knows what Stonehenge in Wiltshire (just off the A303 near Amesbury) is for but it likely is some kind of solstice/equinox device, with some hitherto unknown religious overlay. <Insert story about druids, bla de bla de bla... the rabbit of Blaaargh! Insert story about rock and roll et cetera. Insert pun. Insert meta joke about meta jokes and inserts>

One morning as I was passing through Blacktown Station (which is famous for its absolute animals and people who do not return shopping trolleys), as I was tapping on to come through the passimeter gates, I was blinded by the light of the big hot shiny thing what makes light and stuff. It is highly likely that a roughly east-west aligned station is going to have the sun shine through these big windows in the morning and the other big windows on the other side and so it isn't exactly the best candidate to demonstrate this but it does open up the concept.

There are accidental henges everywhere.

To be fair, I don't actually know what a henge is. What I mean by that statement is that because we have a big hot shiny orb which moves through the sky and at various heights, then it stands to reason that there will be by sheer accident, places which align with the sun perfectly. The proper definition of a henge is likely something else but I do not care. The word is so strange that it almost demands its own very specific definition. If you have a shaft of light, shining through a very specific gap, such that it aligns perfectly, then I think you have a henge.

The law of large numbers states that if you perform an experiment often enough, you will get the desired result. This is why an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters should be able to generate the entire works of Shakespeare at some point in eternity. Since as humans it is our wont to build all kinds of everything everywhere and in all kinds of random directions, then we have loads of in situ henge experiments going on. 

I was already primed to look for henges. On January 24, the sun came in through our offices at work and aligned perfectly, such that before I opened the front door at 08:30am, I could see the light peeking in underneath the door. The weird thing is that it only does this on January 24th which is 33 days after the summer solstice and on November 19 which is 33 days before the summer solstice. For reasons to do with inclination, it never does it at any other time if the year. The accidental henge in our offices is created by the light coming in through the window and the very specific arrangement of the alignment of the building and the furniture inside.

Light, as indeed electromagnetic radiation generally, radiates from a transmission point in all directions, and then travels in perfectly straight lines. This is why shadows are crisp, why lasers are straight and why unless there is something in the way you need direct line of sight with a radio transmission object (that thing in the way might be mountains, maybe the atmosphere or a black hole if you want to bend the beam, or perhaps even just raindrops if you are trying to pick up digital TV on a rainy day). 

This also explains why even though the Voyager 2 spacecraft; which is operating on not much more power than a small battery powered torch at this point, is able to point its transmissions back at Earth across the vast empty expanses of space. Space is mostly that - space. 

Really precise henges make use of the fact that sunlight can only come from that particular angle with a really particular set of conditions, such as it being the solstice. Imprecise henges make use of that same fact, which is why verandahs if properly designed will allow sunlight into a room during the coldest of months but not the heights of summer. Really really imprecise henges will allow light in for most of the day; we call that a window.

Our wee henge at Blacktown Station, created by the window frame and the indicator board, must at some point line up perfectly with the tiles on the floor. Someone who is better at maths than I can probably calculate the exact times when this should happen, but already with a few days having past since I took this photograph, it does not line up as well at this time of day any more.

Horse 3144 - The Bird Who Lives At No.8

While waiting in line at the bank, one gets to see far more children's television than one wants too. I for instance have seen Dora The Explorer stare blankly at the screen while children are expected to yell back at her, I have watched in horror as Ryder in Paw Patrol spend has spent millions of dollars on stupid devices for his unholy puppy army of the daytime, I have seen the antics of Peppa Pig, and now I have seen several episodes of Hey Duggee.

Hey Duggee is a show from BBC's Cebeebies, which is narrated by Alexander Armstrong who has deigned to provide his services when he isn't hosting BBC One's game show Pointless. Duggee is the titular character who is a very big brown dog and the apparent leader of the gang in the show.

A curiosity about this show is that while Duggee towers over all of his friends, they have been blessed with the power of speech while he has not. This has the effect of rendering him as more of a blank canvas than the protagonists of other childrens' cartoons; which is arguably why the producers of this show have done this. 

However, this post is not about Duggee, or the fact that he seems to have collected a badge for every single activity in the world; including badges for Pizza, Dancing, Drawing, Bouncing, Jam, First Aid, Be Careful and a host of others. I would not be surprised if he had badges for time appropriate things such as Handwashing, Clapping For The NHS, Insurrection, or Being Prime Minister Longer Than A Lettuce Lasts.

No. this post is about a mysterious character who lives somewhere in the Hey Duggee universe; who has no speaking parts and therefore remains uncredited. This post is about the Bird Who Lives At No.8. Very little is known about the Bird Who Lives At No.8, other than the fact that he is brown, spends most of his day inside, and that he happens to own a pair of underpants for some reason.

Animals wearing clothing is already an acceptable thing within this universe as Duggee is attired in various coats and jackets at various times, some of the other animals wear pants, and the octopus has a headband. Exactly why the Bird Who Lives At No.8 needs a pair of underpants though, is baffling.

Yet again I find myself confused by a children's show as I ponder the mysteries of the world that has been built for us. Most of the universe of Hey Duggee is fairly self-explanatory and I am even prepared to accept that a bunch of small animals might join the Squirrel Club for fun. Various animals of different species in a television series is a common trope in children's media; including on the aforementioned Peppa Pig. 

However when if comes to the subject of the Bird Who Lives At No.8, I have questions that go beyond this.

Why does bird's house in a tree, get post and need a No.8 on the door? Why doesn't he have a postbox out on the street somewhere? Does this imply the existence of other trees with birds in them, who require postal delivery services? Why is a bird getting post in the first place? I see no evidence that he's connected to the electric, or would be assessed for council rates. Would a bird be called up for jury duty? Does he pay tax to the Inland Revenue?

What is he doing all day long that he always answers the door in his undies? Maybe this bird is nocturnal; in which case he'd ben sensibly asleep during the day, so that makes sense. Is the Bird Who Lives At No.8 not actually nocturnal but unemployed and just unmotivated? What if there is something more sinister and the Bird Who Lives At No.8 is actually hiding from someone like the rent collectors, or someone he has taken out a black market unregulated loan with? 

However that still doesn't explain why the Bird Who Lives At No.8 is answers the door in his underpants. It is already established in this universe that all of the animals wear clothes but even so, it is still rather a bit creepy that the Bird Who Lives At No.8 is answering the door in his undies all the time. It makes you wonder just how safe a neighbourhood for children, that this place is.

Also given that badges seeming exist for just about every single activity, I wouldn't at all be surprised if Duggee had a Collecting Post or Delivering Post badge. Perhaps most mind chilling of all, is the possibility that Duggee knows what's going on. Our big brown friendly protagonist with badges for everything could also have a I Know What The Bird Who Lives At No.8 Does badge. This might go along with his MI5 and MI6 Security Clearance badges.

Aside:

Owing to the borderless graphics of Hey Duggee, it could very well be that the whole show exists within another childrens' television show and has leaked into the rest of the world. I think it not unreasonable that Hey Duggee is actually a TV show within the Blueyverse. Curiously in Bluey, there has been seen on multiple occasions, underpants seen in piles of laundry despite the fact that nobody appears to wear any.

Horse 3143 - Who Are The Savages?

The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart, no one will fine you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart, you gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

The Shopping Cart is what determines whether a person is a good or bad member of society.

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I live in the bogan western suburbs of Sydney. This is where people are and grammar aren't. A couple of suburbs over in Mount Druitt, legend has it that you should never stop at a red light because bands of youths will appear from everywhere and steal all the tyres, the doors, the windows, all of the mechanical electrical parts, all of your clothes; and you'll be left completely naked and sitting in the shell of a car which is up on cinder blocks. 

Blacktown Transport Interchange as it wants to be known but Blacktown Station as it actually is, has as far as I can tell, the most arrests of people in the country for public urination in the lifts.

In terms of culture, Blacktown exists as a massive shopping centre and not much else. In has some cinemas but not really any kind of cafe/restaurant culture, unless you consider the top level of that massive shopping centre to be a cultural hot spot.

Blacktown is somewhere people need to be rather than somewhere they want to be. It exists not as a destination like Parramatta but as a place of function like other suburbs such as Seven Hills or Kings Langley close by. 

Blacktown Bus Station is also used as a place of function; which explains why there are so many abandoned shopping trolleys strewn around. The people who need to use the bus to go shopping, already do not have access to cars to do so. The actions of people abandoning their trolley before they get on the bus aren't necessarily malicious but they are thoughtless and mindless; acting on impulse and necessity.

When I took this photograph, I had 17 minutes to wait for the bus; so I was bored enough to count the shopping trolleys at Blacktown Bus Station.

There were 79.

That's 79 abandoned shopping carts trolleys across four sets of bus stops and more in the commuter car park. I have no idea how long that any individual trolley had been there; nor do I have any idea how often that they are collected but I do know one slightly interesting thing from the available data contained within those 79 trolleys. There were no Aldi Trolleys.

Shopping Trolleys generally had the name of the shop who owns them, printed across the trolley bar. The most common trolleys are those owned by Woolworths, Coles, Big W and Target. There are far fewer which are owned by Blacktown Fruit Market and Tong Li supermarket. There were exactly nil Aldi trolleys.

Aldi uses a token return system; which means that people must insert either an Aldi token or a $2 coin to unlock the mechanism to release the trolley from the shop's own array. $2 is sufficiently enough of an economic incentive that people are either going to miss if they fail to return the trolley, or for people who find a trolley out in the wild to do enough work to return. If it takes four minutes to return a trolley, then the rate of return is $30/hour. 

Aldi have correctly assumed that some people will not return the shopping cart out of the goodness of their heart. I do not think that it is fair to label people as "absolute savages who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law" however, when faced with the problem of taking their shopping home they will tend to act on impulse and abandon their shopping trolley when the bus arrives.

The shopping trolley might very well be the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it but even it is subject to a minefield of circumstance. The other side of this, is how much the supermarket is willing to charge people for the service of delivering their shopping home. 

I remember as a small child in the land of the past where memory is and grammar aren't, that my mum could hand over a $20 note for the entire week's shopping at the supermarket and they would then deliver that shopping home. This was because there was no such thing as plastic bags and shopping would be packed into the big boxes that the myriad of items would be delivered to the supermarket in. The reason why I remember this is because one day, they started charging for the service and the $1 charge which is 5% of the total, was madness.

Supermarkets neither offer such a service any more, nor do they leave out the boxes for people to pack their shopping into, neither do they pay as many people to operate the tills. The abandonment of shopping trolleys is actually a logical consequence of multiple policies by the supermarkets themselves. Will they do what is right without being forced to do it? Absolutely not. Companies do what is profitable. 

Companies almost by nature are unable to do the correct thing because it is the right thing to do. Maybe the analogy is correct. A company is legally a person, who owns things, who acts, who can enter into contracts, and who is subject to law. A person who is unable to do this is no better than an animal, an absolute savage who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it.

Horse 3142 - Nobody Should Ever Say "Menulog"

There is an old adage that you don't want to see how the sausage is made. What rot. Watching sausages being made is not only entertaining but acts as a very helpful metaphor. Before things go into a sausage and into the casing, they are put through the grinder and ground into smaller particles.

So it is with watching the gig economy sausage being made. It is not pork or bread being put into the grinder but people and their time. From my time working in an accountant's office, I have now seen sufficiently enough gig economy sausages to come to the conclusion that I really really want to see how the sausage is made, and then personally cause shame to the owners of those companies. 

Did somebody say Menulog? Ding dong. I want to punch you in the face, Menulog.

I had already pretty well much come to the conclusion that Uber is just a Ponzi Scheme which is actually designed to last just long enough for autonomous vehicles to arrive; so that that way, the trashbag company can chuck off its workers. We have already seen places like Woolworths and Coles, all four of the Big Banks, and even places like K-Mart, Big-W and Bunnings, replace checkout staff with self-service machines and in the case of the big banks, they are so scummy that they can't even be bothered to run their own automatic cash machines any more because they no longer see the worth in paying to maintain them.

The world of food delivery, which only seems to have existed immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic and really took off during it, is not much better. Just like the independent car share services like Uber, Lyft et cetera, which existed by ignoring taxi licences and then 'disrupting' the industry by making existing the value of taxi buttons fall through the floor, the food delivery service business is basically a taxi service for people's food. 

There are four big players in the food delivery service in Australia. Those four being: Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Menulog, and Doordash. All of them run really opaque payment calculation systems; so much so that when someone gave me the documentation so that I could have a look at it, the information was so scant as to be useless. All of them have hidden payment algorithms; which means that it is impossible to know what the value of any given delivery will be. If I as an accountant find this impossible to look at and decipher, then what hope does a poor person at the end of the app have?

Not one of these delivery platforms guarantee that their workers (who are little more than on-demand gig contractors) any kind of wage at all; let along anything that resembles the minimum wage. Their payment schedules which are opaque are like stepping into a casino, where every game is designed to make the house win handsomely. I suspect that the lack of clarity of payment schedules is actually a deliberate tactic because if the workers can't even work out what they're supposed to be paid, then they can't very well mount any kind of legal challenge for exploitation.

What's worse is that the kinds of people who are likely to work for these scumbucket platforms, are likely to be young people, or recent migrants, or students. These kinds of people are less likely to complain about being driven into the ground; which means that they are even more easily exploited than other people and because the workers of these food delivery services are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, they already don't have a lot of bargaining power (ie. nil) when it comes to working conditions. 

In treating people as independent contractors rather than employees these companies likely don't pay sick leave, they don't accrue any other kinds of normal entitlements such as maternal and paternal leave, long service leave, and worst of all they don't cover the insurance, work place safety, or superannuation expenses which the workers should provide for themselves as 'independent' contractors. By severing the chain, they have managed to get out of a bunch of normal obligations.

We have now had to do a number of people's tax returns for 'employees' of these four scumbucket companies and as an exercise my boss though it useful to take all the limited data that we have and generate some kind of general statistics. The average rate of pay in hand, across Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Menulog, and Doordash, as far as our data is concerned is $27.73 per hour. They will argue that they pay much more than that and as much as $40 per hour but this hides the fact that a lot of the time, they actually pay $0 per hour when there are no jobs on.

From that $27.73, they have to find all of their running costs of keeping a car/motorbike in operation; which includes wear and tear on the vehicle, all maintenance and insurance, as well as running the possibility that the general public are also a bunch of brutish knaves who might cause physical violence to them. I suggest that the net rate after factoring in all of these expenses is actually less than the minimum wage.

Assuming that you could actually get 40 hours per week, then that would equate to a yearly wage of $57,875. Is that assumption fair? Absolutely not. People only get paid piecemeal, for the deliveries that they do, and even if they expected amount that they are going to get is less than the effort required to do the delivery, they're still expected to make the delivery because these scumbucket companies also thought it fun to gamify the service and let people rate the drivers.

All things considered, Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Menulog, and Doordash, are utterly horrible and exploitative. I do not have enough expletives to describe them. 

What can you do? Refuse to use them. Okay, there is a general argument that you are doing folks a favour by paying them to deliver your for but if these services didn't exist, then they'd be getting proper employment at a proper company. It is not charitable to hide behind an app and underpay people. What we especially do not want is a tipping culture to emerge because that's also based on a scumbucket set of economic circumstances where employers underpay people.

You can refuse to work for them. You can refuse to use Uber and Lyft services and use actual taxis. Yes, they will cost you more but that's the point. If you consider the dignity of people worth something, pay them. Workers deserve their wages and withholding people's pay via the mechanism of scumbucket gig apps, means that you are just as much of a scumbucket as the companies. 

My mum once said that you shouldn't hate someone or something unless you want them or it dead. I want Uber Eats, Deliveroo, Menulog, and Doordash, dead. I hate them. I want the people who would have worked for them to be paid properly.

Horse 3141 - Top 5 Greatest Athletes Of All Time

There have probably been people making lists of who is the greatest at something, ever since there has been people. People have a great need to want to compete against each other at things and then, after having competed in the things, to make lists about the things. I have no doubt that in some integral of the universe, that there is a list of the greatest of lists. In some second integral of the universe, there is likely a list of the greatest of lists of lists. If there are turtles all the way down, then there are surely lists of the greatest of turtles all the way up as well.

I have to laugh therefore when I see an obviously second hand screen shot of the "5 Greatest Athletes Of All Time". This Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) suffers from the usual biases that you would expect from such a list:

Jingoism: Namely that the country which produced such a list, thinks that it is the best. This is as bad as English football fans singing "Two World Wars and One World Cup: doo-dah, doo-dah." I bet that you don't get Islandic football fans singing about "making it to the Quarter-Finals of a Euro once, and third that one time in the Eurovision Song Context: doo-dah, doo-dah", do you? All of these people are American; and isn't it funny that one country should produce the "5 Greatest Athletes Of All Time"? Also, why is it that three of the "5 Greatest Athletes Of All Time" all played sports which are part of the American fabric?

Recency Bias: With the exception of Babe Ruth, all of these people were plying their trade within the lifetimes of the people whom you would expect to be watching the television. None of these people are a Roman Chariot driver, or a wrestler at the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, neither are they Football players from the year 2374. They are all relatively recent and within people's living memories.

For this reason, I'd like to propose five different athletes for the "5 Greatest Athletes Of All Time"; which still suffer from a degree of recency bias.

5. Chuck Taylor

Charles Hollis Taylor "Chuck" was not really a professional basketball player; yet probably everyone who has ever played basketball or gone skateboarding has heard of him. 

Robert Pletz, then then CEO of the Converse Rubber Shoe Company, hired Chuck Taylor as a semi-professional player for his Converse All-Stars basketball team, which existed to promote the sale of shoes. Pletz hired Taylor as a salesman after Taylor visited the company's offices in Chicago in 1921.

Chuck Taylor lived out of a suitcase and then conducted basketball clinics across the United States, by way of a promotional tool to firstly get people interested in basketball and then to buy the shoes. He was so successful that by the mid-1960s, the Converse All-Star had captured 80% of the market. 

Chuck Taylor promoting basketball predates both the American Basketball League which started in 1925, and the Basketball Association of America which eventually changed its name to the National Basketball Association (NBA) which started in 1946.

It's probably likely that Chuck Taylor going to schools in the 1920s and 1930s, made kids interested in basketball in the first place. When he joined the US Military in the 1940s, he was given the job of training military cadets in playing basketball; which would have furthered the game's popularity.

Basketball lends itself well to urban environments which concrete surfaces, including street and road surfaces. By giving the game to people in cities, Chuck Taylor probably more than anyone else is responsible for the multi-billion dollar industry it is now.

4. WG Grace

William Gilbert Grace "WG" Grace doesn't have the best batting record of all time (Test average of 32.29); he doesn't have the best bowling record of all time. People like Sachin Tendulkar, Don Bradman, Brian Lara, et cetera, all have claims to be better batters than Mr Grace but Mr Grace has one thing they do not. He was however, the first player to achieve the "double"; which of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season.

What he is particularly important for though, is that he is practically the first proper professional athlete.

I know that there are claims in other sports such as football, where players were paid a wage but WG Grace was the first proper professional sports player. In the 1880s, his fame was so great even back then, that promoters could increase their prices if he was playing. Prices to watch a day's play of cricket might increase from the normal sixpence to ninepence if WG Grace was playing. 

The real irony is that WG Grace was usually seen as an amateur because he was not paid by the clubs, counties and national side he played for (beyond expenses). The truth was that thanks to endorsements from advertising products from everything as diverse as mustard, razors, tobacco, coffee, chocolate and what not, he made more money out of cricket than the actual professional players did. In this respect, people like Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi and Roger Federer, are just following on in that same vein.

3. René Higuita

Rene Higuita was a goalkeeper for Colombia who didn't see the 18 yard box as a place for goalkeepers to be confined in. Right from the beginning of his career, he would scare managers by travelling well beyond the bounds of the 18 yard box and on occasion, act as an offensive player. 

He was famed while playing at Millonarios and then Atlético Nacional for taking on attackers, for travelling with the ball, for playing the ball with his feet and for playing with far more flair than is expected from a goalkeeper. He was brought to the world spotlight in the 1990 World Cup, when his attacking plays with the ball, brought excitement to otherwise tawdry affairs. Also infamously, he tried to play the ball in front of Cameroon's Roger Milla well outside of the 18 yard box; which Milla won and subsequently scored from. This absolute howler of a decision, gained him the nickname of "El Loco".

After this World Cup that FIFA realised the value in having a goalkeeper actually having to play at the ball. Up until Higuita came to the World Cup, there was no limit to the extent that a goalkeeper could pick up the ball within their own 18 yard box. For this reason, the current passback rule which prevents a goalkeeper from picking the ball up after it has been passed back to them by a player on their own team was put in place.

It is not very often that you get a player of a sport who is so very good that they force a rule change. It is even rarer that you get a player of a sport who is so very good that they force a rule change because the people running the sport want more people to be like you.

2. Jackie Stewart

Three time Formula One World Champion Jackie Stewart was already a safety advocate as far back as 1966, following an accident at Spa-Francorchamps when he hit a telephone pole and no proper track marshalls or medical crews were there to get him out of the car. He probably had a lot of time to think while sitting in the rain, while petrol was leaking into the cockpit, before he was finally taken out of the car by Graham Hill and Bob Bondurant who had also crashed.

Formula One was so notorious in the 1950s and 1960s that on average, a driver would die roughly once a fortnight. If guard rails and barriers existed, they were made out of metal, but quite often there were just hay bales and ropes and ribbons which marked the sides of the tracks.

If motor racing drivers are paid professionals, then it makes sense that they should have some degree of workplace safety requirements.

Jackie Stewart was part of the team that advocated for compulsory seat belts usage and full-face helmets for drivers in Formula One; which would be so obvious now as to be unthinkable. He also demanded that places install run-off areas, gravel traps, and proper fuel delivery systems.

Although he'd already made up his mind to quit after the 1973 season, the death of his team mate François Cevert who was sliced in half by the armco barriers at Watkins Glen in a qualifying accident, very much hastened his decision.

After leaving the sport as a professional driver, he continued to push for improvements in safety. As a result of his efforts, track owners and promoters were forced to spend money to upgrade their facilities. Car designers were forced to undergo crash testing and parts testing.

In the week before Dale Earnhardt's death at the 2001 Daytona 500, Jackie Stewart openly criticised Earnhardt's open faced helmet and argued in favour of head and neck restraints in the event of a crash. Those remarks now seem strangely prescient.

Being a three time Formula 1 champion counts for something but taking steps to try to mitigate injury and death of those who have come after, at the risk of unpopularity, is truly impressive. Jackie Stewart is reported to have seen 57 people die while he was in Formula 1. Only 10 people have died in Formula One since; with only one this century. The fact that tracks and cars have got far safer is only the result of people taking deliberate action. Even the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994 reminds us that death does not respect skill or status. I do not know if we would have the likes of Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton if it wasn't for Jackie Stewart. 

1. Serena Williams

Okay. Let's keep her here. She has 23 Grand Slam Titles; which is 1 behind Margaret Court and in January 2017, Williams won the Australian Open while pregnant. Did any of the men in this list do that? No. On top of that, she even didn’t drop a single set on route to winning that Australian Open.

I don't know how these people worked out their lists but to be honest, of these five, Serena Williams makes everyone else on this list just look like little boys playing at games. You think playing at sport is hard? Try doing it while making another person inside you. I can't do that.

Horse 3140 - Senator Lidia Thorpe, Senator For Victoria; Not The Greens

Senator For Victoria and newly ex-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe has caused a stir this week, after resigning from the Greens over its position to support the "Yes" campaign with respect to the First Peoples' Voice and deciding to pursue her own path. 

Naturally this has caused the usual ripples that any kind of political rock throwing would but perhaps the weirdest set of ripples comes not from the right-wing trashmedia who would very much like to kill off The Voice due to unstated racism but from within The Greens themselves. Specifically The Greens' candidate Julian Burnside has been jumping up and down like a rabbit on a trampoline in an elevator.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/hand-back-your-seat-says-greens-candidate-who-lost-to-thorpe-20230207-p5cilt.html

A furious row over former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe has sparked demands she give up her Senate seat because it belongs to the party and not to her, with a key preselection rival rebuking her for defecting to the crossbench.

Human rights activist and barrister Julian Burnside, who sought the Senate position in a ballot against Thorpe two years ago, said she had treated Greens supporters badly when their work had won the seat for the party last year.

- Sydney Morning Herald, 8th Feb 2023

I have but one word for Julian Burnside and it is this: "Tough."

The idea that the people of Victoria voted for "The Greens" as far as politics goes, could very well be true. However, the assertion that the people of Victoria voted for "The Greens" as far as the parliament goes, is quite quite wrong. 

The reason why this is so murky is that rather than by election, Thorpe was preselected by Victorian Greens members to fill the federal Senate vacancy caused by former leader Richard Di Natale's resignation under the rules of Section 15 of the Constitution. Also under the rules of Section 15 of the Constitution she was appointed to the vacancy at a joint sitting of the Victorian Parliament on 4 September and sworn in on 6 October 2020. Thus, under the Section 15 of the Constitution Senator Lidia Thorpe was appointed by the Victorian Parliament for the people of Victoria. That's the end of the matter there. There isn't any more. Mr Burnside's claim at this juncture, is ended.

The unsaid problem for Mr Burnside is that at no stage does the ownership of the vote, change from the voter to the party; at no stage does the ownership of the seat in the House or the Senate, change from the member to the party; no matter what the candidates for that particular party think. This is why I find Julian Burnside's comments that Lidia Thorpe should stand down, so strange. The votes cast by the voters, were never Green Party votes to begin with. They may have had the ability to determine the pre-filling order by which votes were allotted but they never actually gained ownership of the votes.

I know that this is going to sound insane to the majority of people but the various members of both the House Of Representatives and the Senate, are never members of parties when it comes to either their position within the chambers or as far as voting is concerned. Political parties are in fact synthetic overlays; for neither the Constitution nor the rules within the chambers, actually bind the members to their parties. The Constitution doesn't even mention that there even needs to be political parties. In fact, the whole party system in Australia didn't begin until about 40 years after the states were granted responsible government.

Even if a candidate quits the party or is disendorsed by the party which they are branded with, their election or appointment to either chamber is not invalid. Probably the most famous example of this recently was Pauline Hanson who was disendorsed by the Liberal Party after the ballot papers were printed but before the election. She was voted to become member of Oxley in 1996 and despite protestations, the Liberal Party knew that she had won the votes; not the party.

You will of course note that enforcing Section 15 in this case has one distinct point of failure. Lidia Thorpe has quit the party but not resigned from the Senate. Lidia Thorpe's resignation from The Greens is not a resignation from the Senate and as such, it does not create a casual vacancy. She remains as she always did, as Senator for Victoria. The parliament of Victoria appointed her to the Senate and not the Party, despite what the Party thinks.

This is more or less an identical scenario to when Jackie Lambie quit the Palmer United Party or when Cory Bernardi quit the Liberal Party. In those examples, they resigned from their respective parties but neither of them resigned from the Senate either.

I might think that Lidia Thorpe is as mad as a hat full of tacks. I might disagree with what she has to say with regards The Voice to Parliament. I might even see this as very very rude. However, she feels as though she can say what she wants to more effectively without being shackled by The Greens. As an elected Senator, she is fully entitled to do so. We have in the past had a Prime Minister who quit one party, then joined another, and remained as Prime Minister. The machinery of parliament ultimately doesn't care.

Governments are formed by the majority of members who can control confidence and supply. Legislation is passed by the majority of members in both chambers who have agreed that this is what the law shall be. Neither of those statements are dependent on political parties. We the general public do not vote for parties in Australia. We vote for people who will represent us. They just happened to be branded for what essentially boils down to little more than marketing purposes.

Horse 3139 - The Mystery Of The 246 Bus

I work in the Insanic Republic Of Mosman; which I am sure would like to declare itself separate from the rest of NSW, if not Australia (one chap has even declared himself the Prince of Wy). This one suburb, one postcode, local government area, only really has a few choke points in and out of it, with one of them being an actual genuine real life drawbridge at the Spit; so as to let the Lords and Ladies of the Manor a-boating go. 

I am pretty sure that the people of Mosman object to the fact that Spit Road and Military Road form the main arterial passage of way from the Northern Beaches of Sydney to the City and the other side of the harbour. I am also sure that the people of Mosman very rarely stray to the west of Sydney's so-called Red Rooster Line; much less have ever heard of the surburb of Marayong that I live in. 

As Mosman is on that main arterial roadway from the Northern Beaches of Sydney to the City and beyond, it is rudely appointed with many many bus routes; though also given its proximity to the City, they often may as well not exist as it is common (especially on the B1 bus) to see the display "Sorry Bus Full"; which given that it has no punctuation may be read either as an apology of a comment on the state of the bus.

As I went wandering on my lunch break this week, I found two bus stops that:

- I had never seen before

- for a bus route which I had also never seen before.

Now given that I have worked in this part of the world since even before the announcement to send us to war with Iraq under false pretenses of Weapons Of Mass Destruction (we have still never found them), the sight of new bus stops and a new bus route filled me with the same kind of wonder that I'd get upon discovering new uplighters or light boxes at railway stations, or railway indicators with the wrong font.

I am also left with an sense of confusion. The infobox tells us that the only service which operates from these bus stops is the 246 bus. There's nothing particularly strange about 2XX bus in the Area-2 zone but having caught 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 238, 239, 243, 244, 245, I'd never even seen a 246 bus before. As I am a commuter who travels across this swirling metropolis twice a day, I think that I have a good working knowledge of the useful train routes and bus routes to me. The mere existence of 246 is an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a flatbread, rolled, battered, deep fried, then put through the grinder and turned into a sausage of metaphor and hyperbole. 

After putting on my Sherlock Holmes' Deerstalking Hat and collecting my spyglass and Captain Coco Monkey cardboard cut-out space gun, I decided to do some hunting for clues. Investigation, Ho!

I am somewhat unreliably informed that the 246 bus; which only has two services in the morning from Mosman to the City and then two services in the evening from the City to the locality of "Balmoral Heights" which isn't even the name of a suburb, exists for the sole purpose of fulfilling a parliamentary obligation.

Parliamentary Train services are not unheard of, though they are rare. There is one train per day which runs from Penrith to Hornsby via the Y-link to the west of Strathfield and then one train per day which runs in the other direction. There used to be one train per day which ran from Richmond to the City, thence around the City Circle via Town Hall and Wynyard before running back to Richmond; though I can not find evidence that this parliamentary train still exists.

Parliamentary Bus services on the other hand, are practically impossible to find. Buses unlike trains, run on common infrastructure to the rest of road traffic. They also do not need to be synchronised with freight traffic. As such, they don't really need to have parliamentary instruments which precipitate them. What is even more bonkers though is that since the buses are now privately operated, the decisions about timetables and frequency, aren't even handled by government any more. Admittedly I do not know what current procedure is for deciding a particular bus route's timetable but I suspect that they need not seek government approval to add or remove them.

This makes the existence of the 246 bus all the more baffling. We have a bus route which at absolute maximum is only transporting 134 people per day, into the city in the mornings and then back out again in the afternoons but given that this is the Insanic Republic Of Mosman where the citizens not only resent the existence of other people but also certainly would resent having to share a bus with them.

A second baffling aspect about this minor mystery is that there are two bus stops; one for pickup and the other for drop off. Why isn't there one stop? Why are they in a corner of Mosman where the average level of excitement is less than Rookwood Necropolis? 

Theory 1:

This Parliamentary Bus service could very well be an Obligatory Parliamentary Bus service. The likely operator of Keolis Downer might very well be ordered to run a certain number of bus routes. This might be purely an act of providing a headline bus route during the peak hours, in order to fulfil a contact and extract funds from the state government.

Theory 2:

This Parliamentary Bus service could very well be an pork-barreled Parliamentary Bus service. There is a distinct possibility that the 246 bus might exist for the sole purpose of transporting one person either at the Department of Transport or from Keolis Downer. Providing private benefits on the public coin, while pointing and laughing as infrastructure in the outer areas goes begging, is keeping with the modus operandi of the current tory government.

Theory 3:

This Parliamentary Bus service might be a myth. The actual ridership of the bus might be nil as the bus itself might not actually exist. This would be a more advanced version of the Thirty Level Xanatos Chess Pileup that the bus company is running, where the signs exist and payments for the running of the bus exist but because nobody in this part of the world needs the bus, they have no reason to actually check to see if it exists. 

This is where my detective skills have failed. Beyond searching timetables at 131500.com, I have very little idea of how to go about finding out why the 246 bus exists (if it does). Sherlock Holmes could retreat to his little upholstered chair and quietly turn the facts over in his mind while tobacco smouldered away but all I have is a hat, an unanswered question, and a half-eaten an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a flatbread, rolled, battered, deep fried, then put through the grinder and turned into a sausage of metaphor and hyperbole. 

Horse 3138 - Neunundneunzig Chinesische Luftballons!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64507225

The US is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted flying over sensitive sites in recent days. Defence officials said they were confident the "high-altitude surveillance balloon" belonged to China. It was most recently seen above the western state of Montana.

The military decided against shooting it down in case debris falls.

China warned against speculation and "hype" until the facts are verified.

- BBC News, 3rd Feb 2023.

Then:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64515033

An alleged spy balloon spotted over the US is a Chinese "civilian airship" which had deviated from its planned route, China says.

US defence officials said they believed the balloon, seen above sensitive areas in recent days, was in fact a "high-altitude surveillance" device.

But in a statement, China's foreign ministry said it was used for "mainly meteorological" purposes.

China "regrets the unintended entry" of the balloon into US airspace, it added.

- BBC News, 4th Feb 2023

From what I can gather, this "mainly meteorological" balloon, which the Chinese Government has officially claimed is for weather tracking purposes (although that's patently absurd), just happened to drift over the top of nuclear missile silos in Montana. What a coincidence?

The fact that China would use a balloon invites the obvious question of "why?". Why use a balloon if they already have satellites which can photograph every single square inch of the planet? The United States' own U2 spy aircraft were more or less made instantly obsolete once they got their own spy satellites.

The answer is likely one of delivery. For whatever reason, China wants to send a message to the United States that they could deliver nefarious devices onto American soil quite easily. The fact that this balloon has been detected, is by my reasoning, because the Chinese Government wanted it to be detected. Why go to the hoo-haa of sending a very visible balloon over United States airspace if this wasn't the case?

As for the question of whether or not this would interfere with air traffic, again the answer is "no". Most commercial airliners operate between about 35,000-45,000  feet; whereas weather balloons are way way up at 80,000-120,000 feet. The air is so thin up there that aircraft generally can not fly because their engines can't breathe but balloons which have no engines, can happily drift around up there with no problems at all.

This story has gotten decidedly weirder though:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-04/what-we-know-about-second-chinese-balloon-spotted-in-us/101931364

A second Chinese spy balloon has been spotted over Latin America, a day after a similar craft was seen in US skies, prompting the scrapping of a rare trip to Beijing by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

- ABC News, 4th Feb 2023

To lose one balloon may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/03/chinese-spy-balloon/

Another balloon was seen over Latin America on Friday, the Pentagon confirmed, the third suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in recent days.

- Washington Post, 4th Feb 2023

What does losing three spy balloons look like? Incompetence? Aggression?

What exactly is going on here?

I suspect that China doesn't want a physical war with the United States in the same way that the United States doesn't want one with them. Not only is the United States too powerful to take for China but China is also too powerful for the United States to take on. On top of this,  China needs the United States as a ready market for their goods. The United States is effectively one giant cash cow. Probably in the same way, the Chinese economy is as dependent on the United States as the United States is on them.

I note that neither Xinhua nor Pravda have made any mention whatsoever about these Chinese balloons over American airspace; which is weird considering that if this was some kind of propaganda weapon. they've made no domestic capital of this at all.

I do not think that this is preparation for the testing of some electromagnetic pulse device for the simple reason that such a device would require the transport of a lot of power up in the air; far too much to be hauled up by balloons this small.

Also, right-wing nut job media telling Yosemite Sam in West Kickastick, Montana to shoot at the balloon to bring it down, is monumentally stupid. At 77,000 feet in the air, and 5280 feet in a mile, those balloons are more than 14 miles up. You can't shoot something 14 miles away with small arms fire and especially not 14 miles due up.

I think that the Pentagon and by extension President Joe Biden has made the best decision to simply do nothing and let these balloons go by. They will likely burst and crash into the Atlantic Ocean; which is miles and miles and miles of sea in every direction and certainly the safest option.

Wo sind die anderen zechsundneunzig?

Stecken In einem kasten neuneckig?

Wie Hielten sich für Captain Kirk

Es gab ein großes Feuerwerk

Dabei schoss man am Horizont.

Bei Neunundneunzig Chinesische Luftballons!

Horse 3137 - SUVs v THE STATE OF BEING COOL [2023] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

SUVs v THE STATE OF BEING COOL  [2023] - Judgement

H3134/1

It has been brought to the attention of this court by means of application, that an appellant whom we shall call Appellant V wants a case quantified.

Appellant V:

I have just bought a new VW Touareg. How cool is it?

The question before this court today, is that Appellant V wants to ask this court how cool their VW Touareg is. However, it is the opinion of this court that this is the wrong question. The state of how cool a thing is essentially an epistemological one. We do not ask how Wednesday today is, as if the state of how Wednesday is is something that can be quantified. Either it is Wednesday or it is not. Likewise, the question of how cool a thing it is irrelevant because either the thing is cool or it is not. If you remove the word "how" from the question, then we are left with the question of being - is?.

Before we even attempt to answer the question. We need to look at what is being brought before it. The VW Touareg is an SUV from Volkswagen. It is reasonably biggish and a perfectly reasonable, rational and sensible choice for the prototypical nuclear family to have. This is pretty much a perfect fit for Appellant V's family of husband and wife and two sprogs aged 9 and 6. It is adequate for adding one more sprog.

We need to lay out some basic facts before we get anywhere within the domains of argument that help us answer the question.

Firstly: People like what they like.

There need not even be any objective reason why people like something or do not like something. Personal preference is like looking into a black box within a black box within a black box... ad nauseum ad infinitum ad hoc ad nigrum arca. C'est diabolique! The reason why people like what they like and do not like what they do not like, sometimes defies all earthly description; so it's best not to even question why.

Secondly: Uncool things can be cool because they are uncool.

If you ask a website like Jalopnik, or Reddit's r/cars, or some equally strange open forum, the general opinion is that the coolest car is a Brown Manual Station Wagon or a White Van. Do not question why. This just is. 

Thirdly: Cool things can be uncool.

Cars like BMWs, Porsches, Ferraris, Mercedes-Benz, et cetera should be cool. In practice, the kinds of people who drive them tend to be knaves, achieved their means to buy them through advanced knavery, and then have an outsized practice of knavery when they drive on the road. It is unknown to the world as to whether or not BMW's indicator lights are actually connected to the cars' electrical systems because no BMW has ever been observed using their indicators in the real world. This may or may not be true but if it is true, then BMW drivers are up there for the biggest knaves on the road.

An SUV is basically a jacked up station wagon. The reason that they exist at all was to make use of United States' taxation regulations, which at the time classified them in the same categories as commercial vehicles and that meant that the sticker price could in theory be lower. In practice it meant a marketing opportunity and in time the SUV ate the market for station wagons and family sedans by holding out the dreams of going off road (despite very rarely doing so) and the utility of being able to hold a lot of stuff.

Now then, having laid out some basic facts we can attempt to answer the question. Are SUVs cool? And by extension, is this VW Touareg cool?

Final Judgement:

Are SUVs cool? No.

Is this VW Touareg cool? No.

Of course in making a blanket judgment like this, it is necessary to spell out the reasons why SUVs in general and this VW Touareg in particular are not cool.

SUVs are bought by dads. Dads are mostly never cool. I am sorry to burst your bubble but dads can be a lot of things but buying an SUV is admission to the world that they have given up being cool and have decided to be practical. SUVs are bought by mums. Mums are also mostly never cool. I am sorry to burst your bubble but mums can be a lot of things but buying an SUV is admission to the world that they have been forced to give up being cool by their sprogs and have decided to be practical. A single person who buys an SUV is either mad, or has dogs. Buying an SUV in that case is admission to the world that they were always as daft as a brush but have decided to be practical.

An SUV is like buying track pants, or overalls, or a nice cardigan. They might be comfortable places to be in but they are not cool. Sorry. They don't even follow the second of our basic facts that we laid out before because although uncool things can be cool because they are uncool, this is only an admission that exceptions exist. Uncool things are generally uncool.

The VW Touareg in particular is one of many SUVs; which we have already determined are uncool. If you are driving an SUV, then welcome to Squaresville. Population: You.

The cool cars are in order from coolest to luke warm: Monopostos, Coupes, Ute Cabriolets, Shooting Brakes, Hatchbacks, Sedans, Wagons. SUVs, Vans, and Trucks, are not cool.

Addenda 1:

Can a person who drives an SUV still be cool despite driving an SUV? Absolutely. A person who drives an SUV still be cool while driving an SUV. While that sounds like a paradox, the reason is this.

Cool doesn't care what you or I or anyone thinks; much less the opinion of a fake internet court. Cool doesn't need to acknowledge the court of public opinion; not because it needs to laugh in everyone's faces but because the amount of cares it gives, is nil. Cool doesn't need to tear down the establishment, as it would rather simply ignore the existence of the establishment. Cool by definition writes its own rules and does not need the approval of others.

If you are driving around in an SUV because you have given up being cool and have instead decided to be practical, then the paradox of cool is that while you are driving an uncool car, you can still be cool by simply ignoring what anyone else thinks about it. If you want to think you are driving a cool car, you might be delusional but you can tell people where to go and help them get there by dropping them off. 

Addenda 2: 

Mrs Appellant V drives a Mazda Miata ND. Although this falls into the bounds of cliché, the reason why this does so is because it is unqualifiable cool. There is a reason why Miata Is Always The Answer even though 2 People Have A Better Answer. Miata = Cool, every which way ever.

Also Appellant V, that's good dadding. Thumbs up. Knowing that Mrs Appellant V is cooler than you is an admission of reality.

The fact that she has a Mazda Miata ND is also an admission by her that she knows that she is cool. 

Directions:

This direction is for the auto makers, who in chasing profits have openly sold the great general public a lie and consistently done so. You know that SUVs aren't cool; so you try and tape over this festering boil of a lie with cool looking people and cool music in your propaganda. Stop it. Auto makers, you have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court. Stop it.

As for you Volkswagen, you're still in trouble. You have the Polo, Golf, Scirocco, Passat et cetera. You know how to make cool cars and yet you're just as guilty as the other auto makers. For shame. I wag my finger at you. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3137/1 - Ed)