Via Longtime Reader Andrew T. comes this little bulletin. Here’s how it begins:
1. South Africa has collapsed. US embassy is now informing international travellers to stock up (prepper style) on food and water.
…and it gets worse from there.
As some guy once wrote: Let Africa Sink. Please feel free to take issue with any of my prognoses therein.
…and:
From Insty, his own self:
“A government that feels threatened by these books is a government that deserves to be overthrown.”
And Orwell’s 1984 is doubleplusungood because it’s their proprietary instruction manual.
It always astonished me that while the Israeli government has never had a problem with its soldiers carrying loaded guns out of uniform or in civilian areas, e.g.
…it has always been difficult — almost impossible — for civilians to get a license to own, let alone carry guns. (My buddy Dov, who lives in Israel for much of the year, once told me that it was easier to get a carry permit in 1990s Chicago than in embattled Eretz’ Israel. Go figure.)
Since the most recent unpleasantness in Jerusalem, however, it seems that the IzGov has had a change of heart:
The security cabinet passed a measure to make it easier for law-abiding Israeli citizens to procure licenses for carrying firearms, which in Israel is notoriously difficult.
“When civilians have guns, they can defend themselves,” National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, told reporters on Saturday night.
Ya don’t say, Minister.
Took the Izzies long enough, but there ya go: at some point, sanity had to prevail.
Best news, ever (and read it all for the full flavor):
Laid-off American professionals, who say they were replaced with foreign H-1B visa workers imported from India, scored a $4.65 million settlement against their former employer last week, Indian outsourcing firm Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI).
I’ve ranted on my back porch about this nonsense before (here), so I don’t have to repeat myself.
I’m just glad that this bullshit is being shoveled out of our pickup.
So this is what we’ve come to:
Whatever happened to handshakes? Can tongue-fencing be far off? Can anyone imagine Churchill and De Gaulle greeting each other like this? Girlyboys, the lot of them.
I think my breakfast gin is going to be a double.
In an article so stupid that one would heave the laptop into the pool to escape it, a couple of statements nevertheless managed to stick like burrs onto an idle brain cell.
A successful porn star has shared her expert knowledge – and that includes how men can improve during sex.
Angela White – who has been dubbed “the Meryl Streep of porn” – has 932million views on Pornhub and countless subscribers on OnlyFans.
The 37-year-old is without a doubt one of Australia’s most successful exports, having 95 awards thanks to her performances.
The rest of the article is completely pointless and forgettable, but the last statement was the burr, leading to the tangential thought: what else has Australia memorably exported from its island shores to the rest of the planet?
I’m trying to think of many, or any, Oz exports outside the sporting world (in which area the Strylians admittedly excel). So leaving aside Rod Laver, Greg Norman, Donald Bradman, Margaret Court, Shane Warne, Graham Thorpe and their ilk, what’s left?
Actors Paul Hogan, Nicole Kidman, the Brothers Hemsworth, Hugh Jackman etc. and a few directors (Peter Weir comes to mind)… novelists Patrick White, James Clavell, Thomas Keneally, Colleen McCullough, Neville Shute…
…and that’s pretty much it. (No doubt my Strylian Readers will step up in Comments to chide me, and that’s a Good Thing.)
When it comes to stuff (as opposed to people), the gruel is thin indeed. Of Foster’s Lager and Vegemite we will not speak, and I can’t think of any more Oz exports that come to mind. (There is a list of Oz inventions which is quite astonishing, but a great many of them were developed elsewhere e.g. the U.K. and the U.S.)
As for the above-mentioned Angela White we will say even less, except that if she is indeed “one of Australia’s most successful exports”, the Land Down Under needs to up its game.
Or we need to revise our definition of “successful exports”.
Here’s noted Oz export Isla Fisher:
…who is known principally for her appalling taste in husbands.