The inscrutable sympathies of Helen Garner

    Helen Garner is one of Australia's most revered writers; an elder stateswoman of the Australian literary scene, with her true crime writing in particular praised for its empathy, realism, riveting explorations of the mysteries of human behaviour;  "a profound understanding of human vulnerability, and of the subtle workings of love, memory and remorse." 

    But it is a strange understanding, an empathy that stretches to murderers and sex abusers - but not to young women who speak up against the men in positions of power who do the abusing. 

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The Sikamikanico Hottest 100 Australian Songs

Now everyone is so sick of debating, discussing and denigrating the Triple J Hottest 100 Australian songs you'd rather be Trump's personal trainer for six months than contemplate any copycat song rankings in that period, I figured it was just the time to post my own personal top 100 Australian songs. 

So if you're taking a break from reading how the courts made Erin Patterson seem like she's only about mushrooms when her poisoning oeuvre was so much broader than that, or live coverage of the eighth straight week of Anthony Albanese deciding if he should go slightly less mild in his concerned mutterings about Gaza, thank you. 

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Those tech illiterate kids

Is it ironic that kids these days, born to a society so saturated with technology it could not otherwise function, have no idea how any of it works? 

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Cooking spaghetti at 3am because Milton Friedman was a bastard

It was a night like any other; me reading in bed before going to sleep. I'd finished the longer novel I was reading earlier that day, and at bedtime wanted something I could easily dip into, so I flicked through 50 Years of the Playboy Interview. I settled on the 1973 interview with Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist whose fault it is that everything is terrible today. 

This was a mistake.

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Trump takes break from fascism: Plays Stalin on race

  

Trump isn't merely a fascist. In the purge to remove DEI and wokeness, Trump is embracing Soviet Totalitarianism with a vigour Stalin would envy.  

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Link Wednesday: I wish I had better news

From Queensland, renewed calls to end the use of character witnesses when sentencing those convicted of sexual offences.

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Sky News marks Australia Day by killing history and logic

 At the end of a Catholic Mass, the priest bids the congregation farewell by telling parishoners "go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" to which those in the pews respond "thanks be to God."*

Now, imagine that a member of said congregation in attendance at Mass the previous Sunday was accused of committing a brutal murder the following Thursday. Under police questioning, the lead investigator tells our chruchgoer, "you can't account for your whereabouts at the time of the murder, your DNA was found under the victim's fingernails, and a bloody hammer was found in your car. How do you explain all this?" 

Our devoutly Catholic murderer explains "I couldn't possibly have done it. I was in church last Sunday, and the priest told us all sorts of things about loving our neighbours and told us to go in peace. No one could disobey such Godly commands!" 

Homicide detectives would roar with laughter at such a ridiculous turn of logic, but that's the logic of Sky News. 

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