Mid-Week Whinge

At this point, it's become customary for me to have a whinge about ANZAC day, around about this time of year. Well, this time, I've decided to mix things up a bit, by not only having a whinge about ANZAC day, but also having a whinge about a bunch of other things as well. Two birds with one stone and all that. So anyway, here's a run down of all the things that are getting on my tits at the moment:

ANZAC DAY

(I thought I'd get the formalities out of the way early.)

When I was a wee lass, ANZAC day was a day of solemn remembrance when we were supposed to reflect on the horror and absurdity of war. The ANZAC tale was the story of a bunch of young men who sailed half way around the world on some grand adventure, only to find themselves being ordered, by an incompetent and uncaring foreign command, to pointlessly charge up a hill, into a fucking meat-grinder. The lesson you were supposed to take away was "The sacrifices of war are immense. So don't fucking get into it lightly, okay?"

As I got older, I noticed more and more of this shit started creeping in about the ANZAC spirit, mate-ship, bravery, and the heroic exploits of our forebears. Watching the ANZAC day coverage yesterday, I lost count of the amount of references I heard to the ANZACs fighting for "freedom, democracy, and the rule of law". At one point, I turned to my dad, and asked him:

How many blokes did you serve with who joined up to fight for freedom, democracy, and the rule of law? ... None I can think of. Menzies had us all shit-scared of a communist take-over. Wasn't much more to it than that. ... alright. And what about them world war one fellas? How many of them d'ya reckon? Hmmm, probably none. ... right. So, d'ya reckon they're just dribblin' shit on the telly then? Well, that wouldn't be anything new, would it, matey?

The icing on the cake was this dopey looking woman who came on to talk about how we spend too much time celebrating the stories of white men at war, and need to spend more time celebrating the stories of women and coloured people at war. Jesus Christ, if we're actually at the point of debating which stories we need to celebrate more or celebrate less, on our big "war story celebration day", I think we need to have a good hard fuckin' look at what ANZAC day has become.

Of course, there's always the possibility that we take a good hard look and then decide that we like what it's become. Anyway, if you want to hear this exact same rant again, come back next year. In the meantime, on to my other gripes-of-the-week.

The InCel Movement

MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) is a movement. MGTOW is an online community of blokes, most of whom have been made bitter by bad relationship experiences; experiences often involving expensive divorce settlements and messy child-custody battles. However, this alone does NOT make them a movement. What makes them a movement is that members aspire to a lifestyle in which they have as little to do with women as humanly possible. It's this unifying philosophy/aspiration/course-of-action which is crucial to defining them as a movement. Otherwise every fucking Facebook page and forum on the internet would constitute its own "movement".

In contrast, InCels (Involuntarily Celibate) are an online community of blokes, who get together to whinge about the fact that they can't get a root. InCels have no guiding philosophy or course of action they are trying to adhere to. Yes, they're all united by a goal that they're trying to achieve, but none of them have any idea how to achieve it. If they did, they wouldn't be part of the community.

In short, InCel is not a fucking movement.

Also, a bloke who drives a van into a crowd of people because he's frustrated by the fact that he can't get a root is not a fuckin' terrorist. A terrorist is someone who spreads terror in order to further a political agenda. All this bloke is is a wretched cunt.

The Whipsaw

The term "whipsaw" was coined by a bloke on one of the American political podcasts I listen to, but it's something I've been noticing more and more on local news. See, there's this common formula in TV and radio news, where the newsreader will make an assertion, and then play a short clip that backs up that assertion. As an example:

Today, the leader of the opposition condemned the prime minster for treating people with disabilities as a political football. cut to a clip of the leader of the opposition The prime minister should be ashamed of the way his party has acted on this issue. People with disabilities deserve better than to be treated like some sort of political football.

A "whipsaw" occurs when a newsreader makes an assertion and follows it up with a clip that does nothing to support said assertion, or actually undermines it. Another example:

Today, the leader of the opposition condemned the prime minster for treating people with disabilities as a political football. cut to a clip of the leader of the opposition I think what the Australian people want is for both parties to put their political differences aside and come together to sort this issue out once and for all.

If you weren't paying attention, you might not notice anything wrong with this report, and you'd probably come away with the impression that the leader of the opposition had condemned the prime minister, because, after all, that's what you've been told happened. However, if you were paying attention, you'd have noticed that no evidence was provided of any such condemnation having taken place. The clip you heard did not actually support the claim. This is a whipsaw.

The worst example I've seen of this recently was during the Russian election:

There's no doubt that the poisoning of the Skripals has boosted Putin's popularity. Many see it as a strong act of defiance against the oppressive forces of America and the west. cut to a clip of a Russian voter being interviewed I don't believe anyone was poisoned. The west are always making up stories to make Russia look bad. It's fake news.

Acne

I've complained before about the fact that recently, I'm suffering the worst acne I've had since I was a teenager. And it's not even so much that I've been getting a lot of pimples, it's that they've been coming up in really weird and uncomfortable places. I've had them up my nose, in my ears, on my elbows, knees, shoulders, and arse, under my armpits and in my thigh/abdomenal crease. I've even had a couple inside my mouth. Yesterday I had a pimple come up inside my left nipple. Not on my areola, but actually inside my fuckin' nipple. Hormonal changes or not, this is getting beyond a fuckin' joke.

Russia, Russia, Russia

Another busy week this past week, and I've got the folks arriving tomorrow for another week-long visit. At this point, I'm struggling to meet my goal of checking in once a week. Hopefully things slow down again soon. Anyway, while I've got a few minutes spare, I thought I might actually get around to putting down my thoughts on this whole Russia deal.

ROUTERS

I've spoken before about the problem with the proliferation of cheaply made (and easily hacked) gadgets appearing online. While it's true that these devices are being probed by every intelligence agency on the face of the planet (Russian, Chinese, US, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, Israeli, etc, etc), few if any of these groups have anything to gain by attacking random people in foreign countries (unless you're a high value target, in which case, beware!). The bigger danger comes from the regular criminal element (again, coming from Russia, China, USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, India, Israel, etc, etc) who have much to gain from attacking random people in foreign countries. The three most likely scenarios are:

1. They take over your device and use it to attack online businesses, often as part of an extortion racket. If this happened, you probably wouldn't even notice.
2. They take over your device and use it to mine bitcoin, or other crypto-currencies. If this happened, you may notice your device running slower or hotter than usual.
3. They take over your device and use it to get into your computer, where they encrypt your files and then demand a ransom to unlock them. If this happened, you would definitely notice and I would hope for your sake you are thoroughly backed up.

As for singling Russia out in all of this, that's just politics. If North Korea was firing off rockets at the moment, no doubt we'd be blaming them instead. That's the great thing about cyber-warfare, you can blame anyone you like for anything, and there's no way anybody can prove you wrong.

As for what you can do to protect yourself, well, if you don't know how a router works, unfortunately about the only thing you can do is start learning how a router works. Once you've got that sorted out, the best things you can do, are:

1. Buy a decent router with updatable software.
2. If your router has an option for logging in from the internet, make sure that option is turned off!
3. Make sure UPnP (Univeral Plug 'n' Play) is turned off.
4. Set your router to drop all packets not coming in over an established connection.

As a start, you can head over to Steve Gibson's website and run through his suite of router tests. They should be easy enough to navigate through, even if you don't know what you're doing. Also, you can come back here and ask questions if you're having trouble.

SYRIAN GAS ATTACKS

I haven't had a lot of time to follow this story in detail, but I would like to point out a few things:

1. Assad is winning. He has absolutely no need to use chemical weapons.
2. The one thing he could do to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory would be to provoke US/EU to take direct action against him.
3. The one thing he knows would provoke them, would be to use chemical weapons.
4. The last time the UN sent specialist into Syria to investigate a chemical attack, they concluded it was most likely carried out by the rebels.
5. If the US/EU was really worried about stopping atrocities, they would be intervening in Yemen. Instead they are helping Saudi Arabia carry them out.
6. The US still wants to build a gas pipeline through Syria, so they can compete with Russia in the European energy market.

THE SKRIPAL AFFAIR

Again, haven't really had time to follow this, but here's my thoughts:

I originally said I thought it was likely that the Skripals had been poisoned by Russian operatives because:

1. It's the sort of thing the Russians do when they want to make an example of someone.
2. I can't imagine the US or UK poisoning someone on UK soil JUST to make Russia look bad.

However, there are a few things that don't really help that case:

1. If the Russians believed Skripal was dangerous, they would have killed him sooner; like, before they handed him over to the UK.
2. If they just wanted him dead, they would have made it look like an accident or a random criminal act. The only reason to do it this way would be to send a message to someone else.
3. Personally, Putin had nothing to gain from this. He was always going piss the election in, and all this does is cast a shadow over the soccer world cup.

So, what are the other possible scenarios?

1. The Skripals were poisoned by a rogue element within Russian intelligence who either had a personal vendetta against them, or is working to undermine Putin.
2. The Skripals were poisoned by a third party. Maybe Russians NOT working for Russian intelligence (private mercenaries). Maybe Ukrainian or Israeli intelligence. I single them out, because they're two countries that have a beef with Putin, and that I suspect wouldn't think twice about murdering someone on UK soil.
3. The Skripals were never poisoned or they were poisoned with something non-lethal, and the whole thing's been an elaborate hoax. This one's really getting into conspiracy theory territory, but if they both make a full recovery, you've kinda gotta wonder, don't you?

What The Fuck Happened?

After Brexit, Trump, and the return of Hanson, I wrote a couple of posts where I bemoaned the number of lefties in the media who were whinging about racism, sexism, and (insert)phobia, rather than addressing the economic and social pressures driving low-income people away from mainstream politics.

So, tonight I go to ABC online to catch up on the news (it's been a few weeks since I've seen anything outside the tech sphere) and I find roughly eight million articles on class division, where people are talking about exactly the things I said they should have been talking about eighteen months ago.

What the fuck happened?

"This Sporting Life" or "I Need A Holiday From My Holiday

Hey there, long time no see. Sorry about that. Here's what's been going on:

You may have heard that there's been some legislative changes in the US and the EU, which have caused some wide-spread ripples. First of all, Europe has new privacy regulations which apply to any company that stores the data of EU citizens, whether that company is located in the EU or not. How this is going to be enforced, I don't know, but obviously, most people who do any sort of business across European borders would do well to make sure they're in compliance. Secondly, the US has passed laws that can more-or-less compel any person (or company), located on US soil, to hand over data on any computer system that they have access to, regardless of where in the world said computer system is. Obviously, this is a big deal for non-US citizens who don't want their data seized by a foreign government. And lastly, the US has also started to dismantle its "safe-harbour" laws. In case you don't know, the essence of safe-harbour is that if somebody was to post illegal content in the comments section of this blog (threats, defamation, links to copyrighted material, etc), the person who posted the comments would be legally responsible; not me, and not the Blogger blogging platform. To be clear, they haven't gotten rid of safe-harbour altogether, they've just chiselled a bit off the side, but there are already rumblings of more to come.

"But Alex", I hear you say, "surely the social-media giants like Google and Facebook would never allow such a thing to happen". Well, Facebook is kinda in the doghouse at the moment over this whole president Trump fiasco; plus, they're in a bidding war with the likes of Disney; plus, even if they lose, there's kinda a silver-lining, in that the lawsuits that will inevitably follow will probably sweep a majority of their small-fry competitors off the internet, leaving only the handful of giant corporations that have pockets deep enough to absorb the cost.

So, all this shit has come down the pipeline and caused a bit of a last-minute scramble before the Commonwealth Games, when everyone is taking time off and things have effectively gone into holiday-mode.

Speaking of which, Brother #1 has had the bright idea to rent out his house to a bunch of foreign tourist, so we have essentially had a week-long family get together at Brother #2's house. It's actually been quite fun, but also very tiring. On top of organising outdoor activities with the kids, I have also been tasked with multimedia management. Basically, we have one room set up with a screen for watching live telly, one room set up with a screen for watching live internet streams, and one room set up with a screen for watching replays of things that people wanted to see but couldn't watch live. I've had to rig up a system to pull replays off the internet in the middle of the night, since B2's internet connection isn't that wonderful. Amongst the adults, swimming, cycling, and athletics have been the big winners; whilst amongst the younger generation, it's been netball, basketball, hockey, and now rugby. Triathlon, and surprisingly, weightlifting, have been universally beloved. Lawn bowls has been watched by no one. Personally, I enjoyed the gymnastics (of course), but also found myself getting right into the squash. I think having good commentary helped a lot.

In any case, it all ends tomorrow. Then it's back to normal life again. *sigh* As much as I've enjoyed spending the games with the family, I think I'm looking forward to taking a break from being immersed in sport for a couple of months. At least until the first season of the women's rugby league kicks off, anyway.

Assorted Asides:

1) I'd like to say that Ch7's online coverage of the games has been fantastic. For a single payment of $20, we've gotten unlimited streaming of pretty much every sport we wanted to see, plus unlimited replays of anything we missed. The only real complaint I've got is that, while infrequent, the commercial breaks sometimes seem to be inserted via algorithm rather than by hand, meaning they can happen at really inappropriate times. Also, sometimes the ad breaks will cause the picture to freeze up, requiring the stream to be restarted. All in all though, I've been really quite impressed.

2) Unfortunately, the weightlifting ended on a bit of a sour note, and if you've read the post where I outlined my objections to letting trans-gender women compete in women's sport, you'll understand why. The trans-woman who won the +90kg snatch, started the competition by lifting a heavier weight than any of the regular women could lift on their final attempts. The contest was on the road to becoming a farce until, in an attempt to break her own record, she injured herself, and had to drop out.

It was unsettling, listening to my nieces cheer for her injury. But I get why they did. The push is on to let anyone who identifies as female compete as a female. No surgery, no hormones. All you'll have to say is "I'm a woman" and you're in. Which will be great for male athletes who aren't good enough to compete at the top level. Not so much for actual girls.

3) In other sports news, The Brisbane Lions managed to lose the AFLW final by one kick. Again. Kids were gutted over that one. Also, Seven & Fox have stitched up the rights to the cricket for the foreseeable future, meaning there's going to be slightly more women's cricket and considerably less men's cricket on free-to-air from now on. Somehow, I don't see this being a positive thing for the game in the long run.

4) I have come to the realisation that what Australia needs is a female version of Roy & HG, who cover female sport exclusively, and mock it in a way that male comedians couldn't in this day and age. I think women's sport has reached the point in this country where it can withstand a bit of ridicule, and quite frankly, I'm getting sick of hearing nothing but overly sincere fawning praise for our female athletes. I think it's about time we got back to being a country that takes the piss out of the things we love, and women's sport is ripe for the taking.