The half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl, which is an American football final, included Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga. Bad Bunny sang in Spanish, which is his native tongue, given that he comes from Puerto Rico, as does Ricky Martin. I must admit that prior to this event I had not heard of Bad Bunny. This is unsurprising as most of the music I like is no more recent than Powderfinger and The Church.
Like many people who use computers, I use Microsoft Word for much of what I write for this blog and I also for my scientific papers. In addition, I used to be the editor for a scientific journal from 1996 to 2016 and, when I started that, it was a very steep learning curve using rather clunky software called Pagemaker1. Eventually Pagemaker was replaced by the superb InDesign which was part of Adobe Creative Suite2.
As reported here some time ago, Jillian Segal was appointed Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism by the Albanese Labor government in 2024, and the main aim of her report seems to have been to conflate criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza with antisemitism. This was stated to be untenable by Justice Angus Stewart in a recent Federal Court case against Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad, whose posts it was ruled were antisemitic because he had conflated Zionism and Judaism.
Back in 2017, I wrote a piece about the likely fragmentation of the conservatives in Australia1. Here, most of the conservatives largely belong to what is ironically named the Liberal Party, with a few other small fringe groups soaking up the racist and religious extremists. That article was precipitated by one of the religious nutters in the Liberal Party, spitting the dummy, leaving that party and attempting unsuccessfully to start his own2.
On Substack, which I frequent daily, a German-American writer, cartoonist and commentator, who goes by the name of Oliver Markus Malloy1, is one person whose posts I read fairly regularly.
After a stupid statement by the silly old fart Bob Katter stating that every school should have an armoury in which each child could store their rifles, I wrote a piece about him and the reason he was so keen to sell more guns to Australians. That reason was that his son-in-law owns a large supplier of arms, ammunition and accessories1. Ever the spiv.
I saw a short video where a UK policeman was arresting someone for supporting Palestine Action, an organisation which is all about trying to prevent the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The person being arrested asked if it was because she supported Palestinians, and the copper said that it was. She also asked if she would be arrested if she supported Israel and the copper replied that she wouldn’t.