Quick Sketch: Haven't You Heard There's A Cost of Living Crisis Going On

 My gym plays channel 9. Telstra. Channel 9. Bert Newton. Somewhere, in someone's dictionary, those three things describe quintessential Australia. Real Australia. A colonial Aboriginal Songline. Embodied in Country. That is what Australia became, and that Australia still exists even if it is hard to perceive.

And there's curious phenomena to be observed through the prism of Channel 9, at least if you are a chronic student of marketing. The ads are diverse, in terms of the demographic casting choices. Be it ads for mattresses or malteasers, even the ubiquitous betting on sports that typically target loser "blokes" and now have a regulatory equinox of messaging that must be peak schizophrenic were the ad exists to encourage us to "bet with our mates" before transitioning seamfully into a stark graphic telling us "you'll win some and lose more call 1800 858 858 or visit gamblinghelponline.org.au" encouraging us not to gamble with our mates or anyone, ever.

But the programming, Channel 9's actual content has demographics that, if they do not reflect the nation, reflect their market. It is at a guess 95% white australia, with more recent immigrant ethnicities probably making up the remainder. Channel 9 still looks like it looked in the early 2000s, and like the ABC looked in the early 2000s, whereas ABC being the only channel I was exposed to before joining a gym, now looks like an episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job! but without being funny or particularly informative.

So that's interesting, that Channel 9 itself without sound, and AI generated captions just on an eye-test serves as a datapoint to reject many hypothesis that I feel younger people akin to me have elevated to the status of theory without bothering to do a replication.

Anyhow, yeah, I've joined a gym in a neighbourhood that seems to know that it's customer base want channel 9 all the time. 

My first gym in Mexico, a unisex gym round the corner of my old apartment with a mostly young and possibly un/underemployed client base played movies on their TV screens or the World Cup which was happening concurrent to my membership of the gym, or old Dragonball episodes. Like, dragonball is the body beautiful ideal in a young country like Mexico (that didn't get old, despite being three times as old as the nation of Australia). Until I moved accomodations and found a new gym downtown, one of the cities oldest gyms, a delightful men only gym.

The ground floor had a fairly modernish space with a boxing ring and punching bags and mats where both men and women could take boxing lessons. Beyond that was a screen leading to the locker rooms that once passed one could anticipate an eyeful of old dick stripping down and towling off or about to head downstairs to the sauna. I don't mind saunas, they are not my favorite thing, particularly, and I emphasise particularly in a climate like Mexico, as opposed to wintering in Japan or Turkey. It's why I never quite accepted why my Mexican pals from the Indigenismo scene could never accept that I just wasn't into a three fucking hour Temescal experience, like how can anyone be incredulous that a sweatlodge isn't everyones favorite fucking thing to do on a Sunday afternoon after 5 continous months with no rainfal, lows of 16 at 5am in the morning and highs of 28~35 reached by 11am and persisting until 7 or 8pm. Of course there will be people who are like "you know what I don't feel like? I don't feel like having a fucking sauna." Pinche temescals.

Where was I? Old dick. That's right. Ignoring as much as politely possible, fat old men's wrinkled old ballsacks, you take a left and head up a flight of stairs where this gym, of course, has a bar for fat old men to sit around and eat and drink and be merry in. If you keep heading up the stairs you get to a concentrated extract of true masculinity in all it's glory and shame. A really wonderful space that can never be experienced by women, where there's just wall to wall weights and resistance machines and cardio machines, many of which are not in working order but hey, with a membership base nowhere near capacity, let alone the oversold capacity of most gyms knowing new years resolutions rarely pan out, what were they going to do?

In that gym, the TV screens played rock, or if feeling a little young and particularly vigorous - horrible techno music like most gyms play. The thing was most gyms play horrible techno music over the top of muted television screens. This gym matched it's horrible techno music of horrible jersey shore type dj's attempting to impress teenagers, the easiest to impress demographic of morons, that with enough techno and XTC and pussyass tattoos and metrosexual haircuts they too could pay bikini clad video vixens to hang out with them for a music video shoot one afternoon before they are back dealing with airline staff as they fly to their next awful EDM music festival.

But that was only maybe tuesday's or thursdays. Most of the time it was Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, a fair bit of Nancy Sinatra you might be surprised, Tom Petty, an hourlong supercut of Arnold Schwarzenegger's inspiration from Pumping Iron which would draw old dudes to stop their weight lifting and admire 80s Arnie's body. Then George Harrison, the Rolling Stones, Santana etc. 

Despite being on remote controlled flatscreen TVs, this gym had preserved the 80s tradition of body building on Venice Beach, when people knew so little about martial arts a generation would come to believe that karate could solve every problem, but the older generation hadn't even got that far, they knew Stalone and Arnie and Van Damme and had broadly concluded that you just plain needed to be strong. More strong than people used to bother getting and that would solve your problems. 

That mindset I can tell you, is alive and well in Mexico, and Mexico has a future, unlike Australia.

Okay, young people, I'm figuring mostly rich people's kids, given my gym has a sign banning all school insignia from the gym and I live in private school central (the elite schools everywhere but the UK, where for some reason "public school" is the expensive exclusive one and I don't know what they call poor people's schools, probably just "schools") so the clientele leans old, old enough that I in the dead-bang middle of my statistical life expectancy, would be among the young crowd of this gym. 

The old crowd of my gym, we could also consider the young whippersnappers of my suburb, that has graduated since the pandemic from open-air retirement village, to open-air palliative care ward. The old people in my gym are in the district wide minority of people whose knees still bend at all, and whose spines still straighten at all.

So yeah, my gym is going to play the Channel 9 news. It reflects where my gym is at in this place and time, and I should point out that place in time is one of the few places that voted 60% "Yes" on that last year's referendum. 

Anyway, "A Current Affair" was playing the other night while I was climbing stairs. ACA is a long standing trash tv show under the guise of "investigative journalism" but instead of like Watergate or Spotlight it mostly is like "the neighbour from hell" and "we went undercover to expose this dodgy car mechanic" and "we did an experiment to determine no-brand lamingtons taste just as good as brand lamingtons!" that sort of trash.

They were doing a story on the impact of the "cost of living crisis" on a mum and dad with 10 children. Now, usually it's easy to predict Channel 9's editorial stance, so easy it contributed to the success of 90s satirical programming like "Frontline" which being Australian was probably a cheap but successful knockoff of Brass Eye. 

This one was tricky, usually Channel 9 would beat up on the working class - dolebludgers, welfare queens etc. And it would have an anti-government stance in general, but especially on a government that makes any concessions to the working class.

Inflation though is something piece of shit journalism usually lays at the feet of the government of the day, and the government of the day ostensibly represents the working class more so than the other party in Australia whose constituents are largely working class but pretty much exclusively represent the interests of the asset owning class.

So tonally it had problems, I didn't know whether Channel 9 wanted me to root for this family, or despise them, because it's fucking Channel 9 lauder of diggers and battlers, despisers of leaners and whingers. They love a good whinge about some battlers, it's the stuff Channel 9 leans on to stay somewhat upright.

This seemed to just be explaining pretty basic maths to me though. It was interesting because I hadn't really thought about it. The most successful people I know, my age, in terms of material success can afford two whole children. More than two children often predicts some kind of mental health issue, even a folie a deux mechanic at play, that or good old fashioned Catholicism, not to be mistaken with endearing superstitiously sexy Mexican Catholocism.

Ten kids seemed like the makings of a very short story about the cost of living crisis: "You realize almost nobody has ten kids, because like, that's fucking insane in the 21st century?" "Oh no, we didn't realize. I mean we kind of just kept having them. You think having kids has something to do with having unprotected sex while fertile?" "Yeah. It does." "Oh. Well where was this news two decades ago?" "We didn't think it was newsworthy, I mean, it is very unusual in Australia for a couple to just keep having kids. Didn't you notice all the non ten-bedroom houses for sale? That a family pack and a family pizza weren't enough." "No. It's pretty expensive." "Yeah, and we understand that now it is more expensive?" "Yeah, it's really expensive now."

Right? Right? Am I fucking insane, or is this not a news story. If you have 10 children, as opposed to none, then the cost of living increases are going to hit you harder. It's kind of like interviewing a family that had a variable-rate mortgage when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) had an official cash rate of 0.1%pa and sticking a microphone in their face now that it's at a relatively modest 4.25% to document them saying "yeah, it's pretty hard. We didn't realize that things can change and risk is proportional to exposure. We just thought things would be good forever and we'd never have to deal with hardship."

At the same time, I am sympathetic to the economic illiteracy of the general public. This family of twelve seem like perfectly nice people. On average, much nicer than most of Australia. I don't know, maybe their eldest son pushed his girlfriends head down to pressure her into a blowjob, it's the sort of stone investigative journalism tends to leave unturned. The family however, are somewhat anachronistic, like four generations ago anachronistic for Australia. Like "the pill hadn't been invented yet" anachronistic. 

They aren't exactly representative, is what I'm saying, and I feel the "Cost of Living Crisis" wouldn't be such an issue if it was only hitting hard all 14 Australian households with 8 children or more. I'm given to the impression that it is impeding the pursuit of happiness for millions of households with 1.8 children. It is an issue for for households with no kids, university students that wait tables 5 nights a week and share an ever dwindling supply of multi-bedroom sharehouses for $200 or half if not most of their wages a week. 

And yet...

We haven't reached the stage of a cost of living crisis where a solitary occupant doesn't drive an SUV to their local supermarket. I mean, yes I live amongst affluent Australia, "yes" voting Australia, but I've been to Ballarat, I've been to Geelong since I returned. Those people drink coffees and they don't order the Big-Breakfast/Full-English/Fry Up at a cafe for Brunch. Those people have avocado toast too. They have Crust, they have Road Bike events that are televised. They see physiotherapists for tennis elbow, they have waterfronts and their supermarkets probably have sushi-bars.

Don't people know there's a cost of living crisis? I'm not sure you can have a cost of living crisis when there is so much superfluity to obviously give up. 

I am reminded of Tobias Funke's charity for Graft vs Host, where doctors informed him if he just got rid of his hair plugs he would make a full recovery.

Poor Australia exists, I know it does. Poor Australia who are likely really, genuinely suffering, not fretting over how to pay the increased water rates for the sprinkler system that waters the garden of their beach house, but like how to feed and clothe themselves and their children. 

The economy is fucking confusing, I can totally believe that in Australia a parent that just bought their shitfucked kids a nintendo switch for xmas could also get into a fistfight with a stranger at a community co-op over tomatoes. 

It is hard to discern what is goin on, and I am inclined to not rule out the possibility that Australia isn't so much experiencing a Cost of Living "Crisis" as a dead end social contract. We just need to backtrack a bit. Not everybody gets hoverboards.

Quick Sketch: Sausages and Salchichas

 There's a lot happening in sports right now, so sports is on the mind.

Today the NBA on it's official youtube channel presented a 58 minute stream of the unveiling of Kobe Bryant's statue, what delightfully turns out to be one of three. I of course skipped most of the 58 minutes to just see the statue. I did not have the fortitude to listen to Vanessa or Phil speak. It was hard enough just seeing what I wanted to see.

Ultimately, it is just a statue, but the emotions overwhelmed me. I had a cry. I had the exact cry I have at the end of "Life Is Beautiful" when that movie culminates in punching you right in the heart with a little boy who thinks he's won when in fact he has lost more than he can ever know, but ultimately knows it because he told us the story and that it was a sad one. A sad story that ends in triumph.

Grief is a product of enrichment, the easiest way to beat grief is through poverty. To lack value to which to be attached. Buddhists have it right. That's why it's great to feel so bad to have a reminder of Kobe's lost greatness.

Far away, on the other side of the world are indescribable little warm bags of organs on cute little legs with wet noses and fur all over that I miss. It's amazing that I care so much about little moving shit factories. They are sausages/salchichas. I want little more in life than to hang out with them.

Obviously I want more, but much of the more I want, like stimulating my brain by making stuff I can do while hanging out with them.

There are a million dogs their equal, but much as I miss those two, I don't resent my poverty in regards to all other dogs. I found them, and they are enough. They are half a world away, I miss them sorely, and they are enough.

I can feel them, that's my conceit, through the whole globe, across the whole pacific ocean, like phantom limbs curled up being bored or alternately excited.

I like to run at night, at night because I might see foxes, I like to pretend that those two little dogs are dreaming of being foxes and seeing me out running at night.

Magpies have Usma's eyes. I see Magpies, and protective as they are, particularly in spring, they watch me with Usma's eyes and I feel like Usma is watching me.

The other week, I dreamed I was in the bush, with all the rotting foliage on the ground, and that sodden mass was filled with rats, and to take care of the rats we had the foxes.

After that dream, I felt like making offerings to the wild. A strange irrational urge that morons would call spirituality, and I would call imbecility. Curiosity. Grief. Hope.

I enjoy leaving meat, be it a sausage bought from the wrong market stall to save a few bucks that tastes just plain bad, or a bone from a roast that just has the meat left my dentist says I shouldn't gnaw off anymore. I put it on an outdoor table and leave it, like carrots for Rudolph, but this is meat for the wild. Unlike Rudolph, the wild comes.

I find Myna Birds funny, the way they are always running scams. They have one myna perched as lookout, while another myna tries to eat as much of my offerings as possible. If they see me, they are all "quick let's scram boys." even though they are probably girls. I like that. 

It reminds me of the kinds of scams and schemes my dogs would run to try and trick us into taking them with us on holidays. Having to push them back through the front door, or lift them off the case we must have forgot to pack them into.

Fauna is delightful. No matter where you go.

Quick Sketch: Cities and Roger Moore

 she's always tell me how angry I am
you're telling me how angry I am of
course I'm angry. All these morons out
there people think Roger Moore's a
better James bond than Sean Connery of
course I'm angry ~ Bobby Slayton

I've been trying to use my attention span and it's been going really well. I'm like just ignoring messages pinging and dinging and notifying me while I read a book. I'm capable of writing thousands of words in one sitting. All that good shit.

 I gave a friend a piece of my writing to look at and he recommended Italo Calvino's "The Castle of Crossed Destinies" probably because I'd used a gimmick and that book probably used that gimmick well.

The thing was, reading is an investment. I probably at some point should come out and say "listen, if you recommend me something, I'll read it, but I'm going to judge you. You only have so much credit to recommend me shit, and if there isn't an occasional pearl among the turds, I'll stop taking your recommendations."

But you know, this has been going on for some time, so even though it was really the first time this friend had recommended I read anything, I've become sceptical, cynical, too jaded by life and its book recommendations.

For example, one of my dearest friends, he just wants to eat meat. Lots and lots of meat. I've known him for longer than I haven't known him and I remember going to central square in Ballarat which had a subway when he was convinced that different blood-types thrived on different diets and his blood type happened to commend eating a bunch of meat and he literally asked the sandwich artist which sub had the most meat, the most red meat and then he ordered that with extra bacon. Two decades on, he's asking me to watch a two hour interview about nutritional science and how the sugar industry dragged animal fats name through the mud and I am warning him that there are few subjects in the universe I am less interested in than nutritional science but he was all worked up because he wants to eat pretty much an all meat diet and I needed to watch it.

So he's done. 

Another friend I get in arguments with all the time. Quite heated arguments and it is often the case that she will end the argument by suggesting I need to read something. Obviously I'm a cunt, and one is not supposed to read onerous texts to understand another person's point of view, to mix metaphors it is a classic dick move. Almost without exception, I can't think of an exception, the books I have read to enlighten myself as to the argument we were having prove to be complete non-sequiturs. I think it reasonable for someone who reads probably 2~3 books in any given year, to implement a six recommends and you're done rule.

So she's done.

But this guy, he's nowhere near done. I plan to read the book he recommended and would have a copy in greasy little mit but for the local bookstore not having it in stock. But I did presearch his recommendation on the suspicion it would be crap.

I mean here's the thing, and it is relevant to the stimulus of this post. My impression of tertiary humanities courses, is that they are populated by morons in teaching positions that think there is an "it" to get.

An alarming number of people also clearly operate under the heuristic that if they don't understand something, it couldn't be because it is stupid, things you can't understand have to be intelligent.

Of course people operate on this heuristic. Because sometimes people don't understand something that works. I am fairly dazzlingly untalented at mathematics. I know people who could look at a quadratic equation, just the equation and tell the class where the stationary points were. I can't do that, I have no intuition for numbers, I really only know mathematics by rote, I have no idea how division works if I don't already know the answer from some mental table and all my mechanisms for surviving maths exams are well and truly rusty.

Our education and social system is going to produce a bunch of people that survived it by trusting that the teacher had a reason to be teaching them something and pretending to understand it while instead passing selection by simply memorizing what the teacher wanted to hear. These are the kinds of people that mistake a curated class about the subject of physics they don't understand, for some fucking knobjockey stressing it is essential they read Infinite Jest or they've never lived at a house party in Coburg where they are doing magic mushrooms.

And I know this friend was studying writing. A non-expert domain (or to use NNTs distinction it teaches episteme "know what" rather than techne "know how", only techne can be said to have experts) that is ripe for literary snobbery. The kind of institution that can inculcate a deep and abiding love for James Joyce and his books almost nobody has read because in some very real sense, while celebrated, they suck and to turn one's nose up at Dan Brown's canon, despite it being entertaining and highly readable.

So of course, I have to treat anyone who has gone to higher ed to study humanities somewhat like an ape that has broken quarentine, and in researching the recommendation I decided Italo Calvino while probably a writer's writer, might be a writer's writer of the good kind.

Furthermore, through serendipity I discovered that he'd written a book "Invisible Cities" that is right up my fucking alley such that it would likely tickle my prostate in a pleasing way.

Bringing me to the stimulus of this post:

I was reading and enjoying this book. Some of the prose is kind of dense, can get impenetrable or is easy to read without absorbing and needs must be reread. But it's easy because it is broken up, sometimes there are only one or two paragraphs on a page. But it's similar still to my experience of reading "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, where I can enjoy it while having no understanding of what is going on because the mood comes across and that is sufficient.

Because I knew I wanted this book when I bought it, I didn't bother to read the blurb until it was sitting on my desk face down. This blurb is dogshit intended for the consumption of morons. I found it so offensive I actually bowlderized it with a sharpie, which feels like the height of literary snobbery. The excised words in the blurb read:

gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city Venice.

Spoiler alert, this is not a spoiler. These are the words of a pretentious knob thinking they are doing other pretentious people a favour by giving them a thing to say at the next dinner party gathering of pretentious douchebags. This is somebody saying "there's an it to get so you can sit in smug satisfaction that you are breathing that rarefied air of people who have climbed the mountain of getting it."

One could certainly arrive at this conclusion. But it's probably the dumbest of the conclusions available in so far as it is not even just the literal interpretation of the text. It's almost a conclusion drawn from not reading what is literally said.

"Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

That's probably the quotation that the blurb is derived from. But unless they literally mean actually figuratively, whoever wrote this blurb fails to notice that many if not most of the descriptions of invisible cities with women's names bare little to no resemblance to Venice. This quotation comes in an exchange between Marco "McChicken" Polo and  Kublai Khan that opens with Kublai taking Marco on an imperial boat through a newly conquered city in China that Italo describes exactly as one would be tempted to describe Venice and when asking if Marco has ever come across a city resembling this one Marco replies:

"No, sire...I should never have imagined a city like this could exist."

I get frustrated that people just cannot abide the idea, that something is open to interpretation, no matter how often life confronts us with this fact.

I like this book, thus far, because it speaks to my experience. I've done two exhibitions on cities - Melbourne and Genova, and this book speaks to my direct experience of trying to explain both the city I and the attendees of my exhibition were in, and a foreign city most of my attendees had never and will never go to.

I think in Kublai-Khan, Mongolian ruler of China, and the Mongolian Empire inherited from his father Ogedai and his uncle Genghis the conquerer is a very relatable character to me. And Italo's attempt to reconstruct the lost exchanges of two long dead historical figures also speaks to me.

That's why I like it. I am experiencing it as very good. Such that if on the last page it turns out Marco Polo says something as ham-mouthed as "actually Kublai, every city I described is Venice" I would say Italo Calvino as author is patently wrong in the characterization of his own work within his work. 

To the point that while not a review, I would recommend it. 

Like there's so many people who cannot fucking cope with pointlessness and futility and a lack of meaning, sure they can consider Jordan Peterson, David Brooks, Tom Holland, Michael Shellenberger et al. hypothesis that dumb-dumbs need Christianity to give their lives meaning, but so long as you are trying to make sense of an incoherent, unintelligible special anthology about the will of sky daddy; here's a well written highly readible incoherent and unintelligible book written by a mere mortal that might introduce you to the beauty of pointlessness, of meaninglessness.

There's also sports. If you get sports you are doing fine, and there is something to get with sports. 

Gradually one comes to realise that the "it" to get in getting sports, is "sports".

Quick Sketch: Infantalism

 I dress like I dress when I was 16. Basically. Every day.

Yet one of my concerns for society is infantalism, or infantilization or whatever. Basically, all of society baby-boomer down being in a holding pattern, denied real responsibilities and therefore real maturity.

That's why I generally feel in a land of little children, I as an adolescent am king. I walk around in the costume of a big kid who does big kid things, who scrapes his knee and sucks it up, mummy doesn't rush out to kiss it better and delicately cover it with a mickey mouse band aid and take me for icecream.

I don't have to run my fucking ice cream preferences by anyone because I buy my own icecream and I live with the fucking consequences.

Anyway, last week "The Natural Confectionary Company" who make confectionary out of fructose instead of glucose to the indifference of my blood sugar levels, was on special. One of the few cost of living effects I with my crappy tastes have experienced is noticing bags of gelatinous snakes, gelatinous frogs, gelatinous babies and gelatinous beans are like fucking $5 now, not $3 and that's not too upsetting because I'd rather be priced out of bad habits and self medicating than have to overcome it with willpower. 

I'm not going to steal some old ladies pension cheque to finance a sweet tooth.

But they were $3.50 on special and I was like "okay" it will give me something to do as I walk home.

Anyway, I as someone who dedicates cognitive energy to the wicked problem of how to maturate a population that has been under the thumb of a generational cohort for like half a century saw this guy on a scooter coming up the footpath toward me.

Thanks to poorly planned housing extentions, it wasn't a footpath where if I stuck left, he'd pass by my right and that would be that, but given this dickbag was scooting along the footpath I measured him up as unreasonable and ducked into a gateway or driveway to wait for him to pass.

It must have been a driveway because this cocktard stopped as he passed me and said:

"How good are those lollies."

Not quite a question, not quite a statement. An Australian rhetoricalism I haven't experienced in quite some time.

I said:

"They're alright. They're on special at the moment."

And just like that, I'm in a street eating from a bag of lollies talking to a guy on a scooter. Of course I should be worried about infantalism.

He probably asked how much and I probably told him and which supermarket chain I got them from. He told me his plans for the day:

"I think I might buy some today."

I forget how we wrapped this inanity up between us. But I left with some chagrin and plenty of ambivalence.

Something that definitely needs doing, I feel, is conversing with strangers in the street. That's what community is made from and smart phones are how to be an arsehole everywhere you go.

But, like, it is humbling to have a conversation about lollies with another grown ass man, possibly with mental issues but possibly not; on a scooter.

Fuck man. Shit. 

 

 

Quick Sketch: Silo Walls

 Every time I hear an add for "Ground News" on a podcast and it's "blindspot" feature, I think of digging your way out of a hole. A problem that likely does not require a technical solution, one theoretically should be able to observe that if the news they consume leaves them frustrated and angry then it is likely because it doesn't do a very good job of explaining the world one lives in and the simplest solution is to stop consuming news.

Indeed: "If the map disagrees with the ground, the map is wrong."

But you know, and I know, that I at least am conceited. I'm currently on like day 5 of not checking The Age headlines (I don't even read the articles) to actually stimulate negative affect in myself. It's not so much that I don't need to because I'm on the ground, it's that I have this really good solution to the problem I always had with a factually accurate centre-left broadsheet paper ie. the least bias most professional news source operating in my home turf. It didn't keep me informed in Mexico, just aggravated me there, the best that could be said is that it vaguely reminded me that I had come from somewhere.

I get addicted to getting angry, so that's an obstacle to trying to find the best case presented for a position I'm not sold on, not necessarily even one I disagree with.

I could pluck out a myriad of examples, but as a quick sketch, just the last stimulus of something I put on anticipating I would dislike it so that I could fight the closing in of silo walls. Something I really struggled with, a video titled "how liberal feminism turns into fasc*m" I can't be f**ucked embedding it in this post, but to describe my problem, essentially one of tolerance ironically here's the link with a timestamp of when I gave up on a video whose title sounded dubious but intriguing.

Without reviewing just yet the transcript to make any specific point, I don't know why my algorithm threw this video up for me, again through conceit I feel some vanity that Youtube recommends me content I like and dislike, but it probably has determined via supercomputing that it can hook my attention with content I dislike.

But it's not like this video had to fail with me. Feminism is many things, it has many waves, I'm not poli-sci enough to know really what liberal feminism specifically and explicitly means and is meant to mean to people and I certainly don't know what the alternative is.

So the bad start, was that I think this video presumes knowledge on the part of the viewer. I don't need a "Crash Course Political Science" animated infographic explainer of the history of liberal feminism and its alternatives (male chauvinism?) I just need some statement of what someone is standing for, and preferably upfront, like you know from me that I think being in a silo is a bad thing, I'm pro connection and community despite acting like a cunt in prose.

Which meant I was basically sprawling as the video host launches straight into how a Roman teenage girl went to some all-male Italian Fascist meeting and it caused bemusement and derision, and now all grown up that teenage girl is now poised to be Italy's first female prime minister. (In fact she is Italy's first female Prime Minister).

Then I was already kind of tuned out, but I next noticed the video host referring to Richard V. Reeves book "Of Boys and Men" being well received, and a few examples of how it was well received and then the host gave me the first clue as to what she might actually stand for because my inference was that she thinks it is bad that the Overton window has made it okay for Richard V. Reeves to publish a book employing the principles of feminism to look at social issues effecting boys and men.

At which point I gave up and switched out, according to my history, to a video (that wasn't very good) about how the Los Angeles Clippers re-activated elite Russel Westbrook again.

This brings me to one of my most persistent peeves: the misunderstanding of "open mindedness"

One of my youtube heroes, someone capable of persuading me out of my own positions on things is a youtuber by the handle of "Theramintrees" an honest, thoughtful qualified psych-counsellor of some kind that produces one or two in-depth animated videos on subjects of significance once, maybe twice a year if we are lucky.

Once he recounted attending a training session where he was asked to be open minded, and he stated that an open mind wasn't a bucket that catches everything thrown in it, but a sieve that filters all the beliefs thrown in it to retain only knowledge. The instructor said "well, I'm a bucket."

In my experience, people who implore me to have an open mind, are telling me to suspend my critical faculties (a sieve, a funnel - pick your metaphorical sorting device) and accept uncritically what I am being told (a bucket). An open mind is to give up on making sense of the world, the idea that something is and therefore something must have happened.

There was a very interesting exchange between Alex O'Conner and the host of "Unbelievable" Justin Brierly. I can't find the exact one to link, and I'm not supposed to be investing time doing research on these sketches, so I'll advise you not to take it on trust what I'm relaying, before you accept my conclusion. 

Justin (a theist) wanted to ask Alex O'Conner (a lapsed Catholic atheist) about "free will" and reason, with the very interesting position that reason requires free will. Alex attempts to explain, that reason actually denies free will, for to be reasonable means you are compelled (ie. not free) to accept the conclusions reason shows to be true.

Alex demonstrates this to Justin, by provided a reason to believe that god doesn't exist just glibly pointing out that animals suffer unnecessarily and challenges Justin to freely will himself to no longer believe in God. That may appear to demonstrate experimentally that reason is at least compatible with free will, but actually even though the case is poorly made, unnecessary animal suffering is a compelling reason to reject the hypothesis of an omni-benevolent (all loving) and certainly a tri-omni classical god. The experiment while methodologically insufficient is probably sufficient to demonstrate that Justin is irrational, he irrationally believes in whatever god he believes in.

For me, the value of theological debates, is the vast data set, and I bring it up to point out I know how one can appear closed minded. Just the fact that atheists exist, is evidence that there is no argument for god, produced in Millenia that can compel a reasonable person to believe in god. The probability that anyone will come up with such an argument, at this stage of the game is so low that it might appear if you encounter an atheist that they are completely closed to any argument. But the fact is, you are probably just making one of the same 13 fallacious arguments for god that are always made. It's just that you are in fact not open to the possibility that you are wrong about this, so you believe a valid and sound and compelling argument must exist, despite having access to the internet.

Let me put it this way, if you flip a coin, catch it and cover it up - I am 100% open to the possibility that that coin is either tales or heads. Once you reveal that the coin is heads, that is I've examined the case for the coin being tales and found it wanting, my open mindedness has done its job, I cannot be faulted for being closed to the possibility that something that demonstrably isn't may in fact be.

So in trying to escape my silo, I am and remain open to the possibility of being convinced by a compelling argument. What I'm closed to is this:

I want to start this video by reading you a tweet
that was published by Politico Europe in September 2022.
So in 1992, a 15 year old schoolgirl went to join her
local branch of the far right Youth Front in Rome.
The all-male group of radicals met her with bemusement.
30 years later, Giorgia Meloni is on course
to become Italy's first female prime minister.
I could end the video here, to be honest, ~ transcript by youtube algorithms, emphasis mine

 I read "I could end the video here, to be honest" as "boom! case closed." as in the video host, or at least script writer that I'm assuming are one and the same, thinks this tweet essentially determines or maybe overdetermines the case that liberal feminism turns into f*scism. Where I assume f*scism is an expurgated "fascism".

I watch stuff like this, because I am not capable of persuading myself of the premise, I actually need someone to make a sound, valid and compelling argument to persuade me. My silo is probably shaped by the limits of my knowledge, intellect and imagination eg. I can't imagine how decreasing freedom of speech on political subjects can be a good thing for human flourishing, or I can't imagine how tolerating paralegal processes arbitrated by enthusiastic activists of no particular qualification is preferable to a flawed and inefficient due process that bends over backwards to protect the innocent.

The walls are built out of fait accomplis, blatent assertions, lack of definitions and clear positions, fallacies and cognitive distortions. This is what I cannot get purchase on.

So as a layman, not a trained rhetorician, not a trained sceptic or philosopher or logician, if I were to attempt to put this opening barrage into the form of a syllogism it would be something like this:

1. First premise, under liberal feminism women are permitted freedom of association.
2. Second premise, Georgia Meloni is a woman and therefore a going concern of feminism.
3. Third premise, far right groups are bad and therefore people should not be permitted to join them.
4. Fourth premise, Georgia Meloni is the prime minister of Italy.
5. Conclusion: Liberal feminism caused Georgia Meloni to become prime minister of Italy. 

 This may not be a fair representation of why the host thinks this is such a mic drop video ending argument. Hopefully it illustrates my confusion as to what liberal feminism is, and my inference that the host at this stage believes that feminism dictates what a teenage girl such as Georgia Meloni can do.

Like who are the liberal feminists in this story of a tweet? Is it the Roman chapter of Youth Front circa 1992 who through their embrace of liberal feminism accepted with bemusement Georgia where if not but the inroads made by liberal feminism into fascist youth groups, we would not have Georgia Meloni as the first female prime minister of Italy, but a male fascist prime minister of Italy?

It is frankly in my estimation, not just not a mic drop, case closed, dead to rights, smoking gun. It's nonsense; predicated on the assumption that fascism is bad and therefore anything that permits it must be terminated with extreme prejudice. I'm not saying fascism is good, but I could be convinced that say Leninism, Trotskyism, Stalinism, Maoism, Xi-ism, Putinism etc. can create fascist free places that are terrible if not worse than Italy at any point in its post war history including the present day.

Furthermore, to say you could end the video here, without bothering beyond telling an anecdote about a far right woman existing and coincidently winning an Italian federal election in a country famous for changing governments as often as it changes pasta water, where Mussolini's daughter was a member of parliament, where the previous government was a party formed by a comedian, where Bologna is communist and in Sicily you can be arrested for mentioning the Moors, this anecdote and opener is a better case for Italy's problem being that it is democratic, voting produces fascist governments. The same can be said of Brazil, where people can vote for the Socialist Lula (incumbent) one election, throw him in prison the next, vote in the fascist/trumpist Bolsonaro or whatever the next election, then vote Lula back in the next election. 

Shockingly, voters in Brazil and Italy, (and France) have choices more substantial than picking between a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel goes to far and a candidate who thinks his opponent's 2% tax on nickel doesn't go far enough.

I care about Italy, I may if I lived there be pulling my hair out over Giorgia's election. But what it definitely doesn't do, is make the case that liberal feminism, what I still don't know what that is and can't infer it from the anecdote that she feels is sufficient to make the case, is; is to blame. Like maybe a complete bungling of a pandemic response is to blame, including long standing structural problems with Italy's ability to inform and educate its public. I don't fucking know. Opening this way, makes me feel that I'm not watching a video intended to make a persuasive argument, but to appeal to an audience that already agrees with the video's premise likely for insufficient and prejudicial reasons.

In collapse feminism,
I write about
liberal writer Richard Reeves,
who wrote a book on the plight of the modern man.
Maybe you've seen his face already.
He's been interviewed on various YouTube channels and
the videos have gone viral.
So in the book,
he argues that we have reached a point in history
where gender inequality
may not be as black and white as he used to be
or might even be reversing itself.
To make this statement, he used data
showing that boys are underperforming at school,
that they don't go to university as much as girls do,
that men, black men specifically
are more likely to go to jail, etc., etc..
Now, while
all these facts are true and verified,
Reeves decision to group them all
and analyze them as part of a bigger phenomenon
of reversal of gender inequality is a choice.
In fact, the idea that gender inequalities
reversing itself or that
matriarchy is on the rise has emerged a long time ago
in men's rights movements.
It remained a niche idea, a sort of conspiracy theory
shared by small groups of men
until the manosphere grew online
and spread this idea in the media.
And now Jubilee makes middle ground videos about it.
So that means that we are now in the Overton Window.
This idea is now deemed acceptable
from now on
to believe that matriarchy is on the rise
became a valid framework from which to think,
to write, to theorize.
And that's how you end up with this book.
Written by a respectable liberal,
praised by establishment media
giving credit and a liberal aesthetic
to an idea that emerged and remains
manospheres conspiracy theory.
This idea is precisely about how this phenomenon
expands in feminist spheres.
How liberal feminism turns into fascism
and what we can do about it.

So that's a large excerpt, and I share it because while it started to lose me in my initial attempt to find an intriguing path out of my silo, on reading the transcript from the video...let me resist a temptation to get ahead of myself.

This section I began after the offputting opening start to form an impression as to what the video actually stood for. Because it seemed to me that what it views as a problem, is that the Overton window is not under control - ie. society determines the Overton window, the Overton window is not dictated by some illiberal form of feminism. Hence someone like Richard Reeve's is permitted to make a sound and valid case for an idea that emerges out of disreputable male rights activists (ad hominem and genetic fallacies). 

Those are the two pieces I highlighted. So it seemed to me, this is essentially an argument for nationalizing a resource so it can be rationed out - essentially dictating the ideas the public can be exposed to.

So now rereading it, I'm starting to wonder if the video creator isn't advocating any alternate form of feminism but in fact hates feminism and is pro some kind of Stepford Wife Jordan Peterson characature. I'm genuinely confused. Because this attempt to explain the technical concept of the Overton window comes across as incoherent. 

I mean it has to be incoherent, because statements like "matriarchy is on the rise" don't fucking mean anything. Matriarchy if used demands explaining because there is no shared understanding of what it means. If you look up matriarchy on wikipedia we can see that there's a general consensus that a matriarchal society has never been observed in human history anywhere, but that depends on your definition of matriarchy. Generally it means something like a society where women enforce property rights.

In my experience though, if someone invokes the term "patriarchy" they are not referring to the historical patriarchy of pre Roman republic which was pre Roman empire but post Roman monarchy, and they may say that patriarchy simply means that societal outcomes favour men over women (ie. inequality favoring men is a fact) but often context suggests patriarchy is being employed as a conspiracy theory ie. men are conspiring to keep women down. This is a common Motte-and-Bailey strategy, because the banal interpretation of patriarchy suggests emotionally it is an equivalent statement to "giraffes are taller than elephants" like there's just something about the ordinary operation of human society that means on many measures it is better to be a man. There's no suggestion that giraffes are greater in dignity than elephants or have more intrinsic worth, and men and women though unequal in whatever - retirement fund balances eg. - this is something we've noticed happening and needs redressing. Nobody should be getting upset or distressed by observing this patriarchy. But in my experience people do and make enemies out of giraffes for being tall because they seem to have the impression that giraffes dedicate their lives to being taller than elephants.

If I strike you as incoherent and frankly insulting psychobabble then I have failed to describe the Motte and Bailey rhetorical strategy of dishonest argument. 

I'm not going to escape my silo via incoherent arguments. If someone decides to group a bunch of statistical categories together to establish that the patriarchy exists and persists in existing and is a problem. Like you take victims of crime vs. perpetrators of crime, net-unadjusted income, asset ownership, political offices, representation on boards of governance, etc. stuff we know has disparities between men and women and use that curated list to say "okay Patriarchy exists" which either does or doesn't mean "the Patriarchy" actively is producing these disparities (ie. how efficient is the patriarchy?) and say this is valid, and then someone says okay, using that exact methodology here are statistical categories that go against men - victims of crime, education, workforce participation, life expectancy, suicide, homicide, incarceration, pattern baldness, erectile dysfunction etc. that has to be as valid for saying "Matriarchy exists" because it is the same methodology. 

In both cases, it need not be a conspiracy, just systemic patriarchy and systemic matriarchy coexisting.  With those systems not just being legal systems, economic systems, educational systems producing gender disparities, but biological systems, physical systems too.

It becomes super incoherent if, for example the pay gap in 1977 was greater than the pay gap in 2024 to conclude by this methodology that Patriarchy is on the rise. And then, if someone pulls out verifiable, factual data that boys are going backwards in education to conclude that "matriarchy being on the rise" is a fringe conspiracy theory...

It's incoherent to the point of being unintelligible. 

If your approach is to say, an argument is sound and valid if it reaches my conclusion, an argument is not sound and invalid if it doesn't reach my conclusion. That is an egregious form of confirmation bias. A failure to identify that if disparity is sufficient to conclude that there is systemic oppression, then that the justice system is matriarchal, the education system is matriarchal, the economy is patriarchal, sports are patriarchal and black supremacist but not as anti-white as they are anti-asian and anti-latin american, education is both a Jewish and Asian conspiracy etc. these are all your conclusions you are obliged to accept. It's not a conclusion pick and mix if you are going to waste peoples fucking time with arguments for your prejudice.

If that is your approach, I'm not going to escape my silo.

Okay, let's go.
So earlier this month,
journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer
interviewed Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti
and talk TV over the war in Gaza.
And this is what she said: “time for this.
Oh my god, for the love of god,
let me finish the sentence, man.
Maybe you not use to women talking
I don't know.
But I'd like to finish the sentence.” Anyway.
So as many have already pointed out,
the journalist's behavior is completely inappropriate.
She utilizes feminism for racist purposes
because she claims that Barghouti won't let her speak
because she's a woman.
If you watch the full interview,
you see that
Barghouti struggles to put just one sentence together
because he's interrupted all the time.
This final attack, an attack on his character, is racist
because it is based on the assumption
that all Arab men, including Mustafa, are misogynist.
In fact, Mustafa didn't say anything sexist,
is not known for his sexism.
So this assumption is solely based on racist biases.

This follows from the Overton window section, which followed from the tweet about Giorgia becoming president. I am no closer to understanding what the video's position on feminism is.

She highlights an incident where someone tried to look cool and wound up looking dumb, and trusting in her evaluation, that appears to be the consensus. This news anchor was overconfident.

It's probably reasonable to infer that when the anchor said "Maybe you are not used to women talking I don't know." that it comes from a racist place. It is however no matter how reasonable, just an inference. I don't know the content of this news anchor's mind. It may just be sexist, like she is always engaging in her mind with a cartoon stereotype of a man that is always mansplaining shit to her.

What would help me out of my silo, is if she were like "here she is engaging with a non-Arab man who she also has a different editorial position on, and see how polite she is letting this guy get out full sentences and not caring when she interrupts her."

Now, mind-reading, when people are like "I know why you do what you do" which is a recognized cognitive distortion, like if you had a stalker that knew that you didn't invite him to your party because you can't admit you are in love with him, you'd say that guys nutz, but when people know that the reason they became a school crossing supervisor is because they are nazi sympathizers trying to bring back fascism - that's not nuts because studying the humanities everyone knows, gives people super powers.

So the confidence with which the video began to assert what it cannot know, without yet making its point. I mean it was either going to continue to fail to convince me that the problem with feminism is that it is too liberal and tolerant, or it was going to land squarely in my silo by pointing out that this news anchor doesn't understand feminism. 

Something I would whole heartedly agree on, is that across the spectrum we have a distribution issue. We say one thing, and people hear another. The author of "Men explain things to me." from which "mansplaining" is derived is on record saying "I don't think you fight condescension with condescension."

Many people, I infer, appear to have been told the concept of mansplaining (explaining to an expert their area of expertise by a non-expert, ie. a man explaining to a woman what it is to be a woman) and heard "it is illegitimate for men to explain anything to a woman ever." and you can generate a situation where a journalist, almost by definition a non-expert on the myriad topics they have to cover any given day, they are merely a presenter, feels it is illegitimate for a male expert on say, Palestine to interrupt her to make a point, explain or correct something she got wrong.

Equally, "virtue-signalling" was a potentially useful psychology term for the behaviour of being "all talk" ie. people who are trying to garner esteem for virtuous character without the inconvenience of taking virtuous action. But many, too many who had the concept explained to them heard "it is illegitimate for anyone to express a position in favour of any social good ever." So to them someone who lives sustainably off the grid in an earth ship made of garbage running their internet off a combination of solar and wind posting "climate action now" is doing the same fucking thing as someone who fly's from Perth to Los Angeles for two weeks to post photos of themselves eating In and Out Burger and Barbacoa and Birria and posts "climate action now".

If her thesis is, activism is bad because there's no quality control to ensure progress. She would resolutely be in my silo.

I honestly have no idea where she is going, and her video at least has lost my attention despite how stimulating the first fiveish minutes proved. I have no interest in waiting to see whether she eventually makes an argument as opposed to a procession of non-sequiturs of things she doesn't personally like.

In conclusion, I may appear to be in a silo, my mind closed to other ways of thinking. But alas every time I try to venture outside my silo, my impression of the world outside the silo gets reinforced.

The world outside my silo is truisms, from which nobody needs actual arguments because if you aren't already convinced by truisms, clearly you are simply defective. Fascism is bad, it's perfectly true, you don't need a whole video essay on why fascism is bad (but maybe one on what fascism is) but therefore liberal feminism is bad? What? I don't follow. "Well don't you understand that fascism is bad." Yeah, I do. Do you? "Did you hear me when I said that fascism is bad?" Yeah. I agree. I just don't understand what that true statement says about liberal feminism. "Okay, now I'm getting confused. You heard that I said fascism right?"

And so on. That is my enduring impression of literally everything the world has to offer me, outside my silo. I'll keep looking, because it is hard to be afraid when people keep doing the thing that hasn't convinced me yet.

Quick Sketch: On Stroads, Losers, Confessions and Candour

“Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker,” ~ Miyamoto Musashi.

I'm enjoying riding again. Decades ago I went to an optometrist because my job and lifestyle was making me myopic and I'm still to this day annoyed that the lady that showed me my frame options remarked "as a cyclist you are taking your life in your hands." or some shit like that.

That is not a general statement to be made with confidence, and it being back in Melbourne riding a bike through her streets again, fucking her as it were, much as I enjoy it; it doesn't take long to be reminded a) of my own mortality and b) that the culture is very much against cyclists.

I could write at length. I as a cyclist get my patience tested by unassertive cyclists. For some reason in my own mental shorthand pejorative "Safety Petes" I don't know why Pete, one could predict that female cyclists with female names will be on average more timid. But I can get why sanctimonious know nothings with empathy deficits would see a lot of what I do on a bicycle and be as angry at me as they are at everyone and everything at inflation.

Much as George Carlin said, and is a documented psychological phenomena - everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac and everyone who drives slower than you doesn't know what they are doing. However we ourselves calibrate becomes by self-proclaimed fiat "how to be a good driver."

I'm calibrated how I'm calibrated and yes, I brake a metric fucking tonne of road laws every time I ride my bike. Perplexingly for you, I break almost no road norms. I have been injured on my bicycle, I've been doored and I've been bounced off a bonet. I've had massive stacks, I've had my wheel caught in a tram track and faceplanted. I've had catastrophic mechanical failures, I've ordered KFC while openly bleeding from a classic scrape. 

I look at what skateboarders do and think "no way man." I think none of my collisions have ever really constituted a big deal, even though, like the dooring one, it could have very much been the end of me but it wasn't because you are reading my typing. I've never fucking injured anyone else in all my cycling. I think that would make me seriously rethink my mode of transportation and not much else. That's how I'm calibrated.

Anyway, as I said, I do like riding my bicycle. I love to ride my bicycle. Bicycles are probably the greatest mechanical invention of civilization. The only thing that would make riding my bicycle better is if I could ditch the helmet that mostly protects me from fines, but I know where I am. I'm not in Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Germany yadda yadda yadda. I'm in Melbourne and now I can describe Melbourne because Melbourne is fucking riddled with stroads. 

What is a stroad? well you could click on that link and fucking educate yourself but I guess I can't risk you not doing that, so shall avail myself of the opportunity to carelessly misinform you. A stroad is not quite a road, not quite a street. A street is a destination, it's where you park your vehicle get out and walk through a doorway to pick up or drop off fabric samples, order a skinny decaf latte, sit down and debate how authentic some kim chi is or catch up with a friend and complain about cyclists.

A road is a way to get from A to B, where A and B are probably streets. It isn't a destination but an "arterial" if you will, transportation. 

Sydney "Road" is a strode, because while once upon a time you would have hitched your wagon to some horses and taken Sydney Rd to of all places Sydney in the hope that young Mary-Ann-Clementine-Rosemary might recover from her tuberculosis in a warmer climate, now it is four lanes, parallal parking, shops, cafes and pubs and the number 19 tram line.

It is at once an iconic cultural hub with its own gravitational pull and one of the shittiest pieces of infrastructure imagineable. 

It's incredibly dangerous for cyclists, basically forcing them right into the car dooring strike zone, not to mention the people heading to and from the Northern Suburbs are endearingly shit in all the rainbow colours of human and animal bowel movements. Beloved scum of the Earth as opposed to the just plain shit people of the Eastern and Southern suburbs who generally enjoy better infrastructure in exchange for any semblance of or attachment to culture.

Trams make stroads worse, as does parallel parking. 

Since I've been back riding, I've reflected and appreciated that impatience is not necessarily or even most often, a function of needing to get to point X by time T. I think it is far more a product of bad design, a niggling feeling that things don't have to be this way. Cyclists of course in the late 20th century and early 21st century betwixt the advent of red-light and speed cameras and the advent of facial recognition tech being rolled out, do not have to sit around waiting for nobody because a dumb blind robot says so (aka a traffic light). 

Drivers have far less leeway. They have numbers that make the owners of cars relatively easy to find and face repurcussions for trying to implement what they feel are viable solutions to the product of poor road design. 

One such "viable" solution, is overtaking on the inside of a tram in a street with parallel parking. Drivers can get stuck behind trams in Melbourne. It's a terrible and frustrating predicament, but I have sufficient cognitive empathy to understand that trams, as public transport, have to deal with the public and annoying as they are, they make Melbourne Melbourne so the obvious solution of scrapping them or getting rid of routes is not so viable.

I suspect getting stuck behind a tram, is made more an irritant because they are spaced out enough that if you take Sydney Rd one day, you may not see a tram let alone get stuck behind it, and you have a "good" commute, and another day, you fucking try and fail to play leap frog with one and you arrive at your destination willing to kill someone.

Trams accelerate just long enough to hit the fucking breaks as they make frequent stops. Basically every intersection with a light, they stop to disgourge passengers and pick up passengers. They stop of course when a light is red, and they also stop when the light is green.

Because people are fucking morons, trams and tram doors being opened create a red light of their own to protect the public getting on and off. So a driver can zen out and bliss out sitting and watching a green light turn to red and give them extra whole minutes to zen out and bliss out waiting for the tram to move as they wait through an extra blessed red light, as a decrepid Granny painstakingly dismounts a tiny step up and down onto the tram with her zimmer frame, and then takes a whole light sequence to painstakingly trek three meters to the sidewalk during which the tram driver is obliged to sit there and keep the doors opened and the traffic stopped for her safety. These are the laws.

So of course, cars ignore those laws as they speed past a stopped train with doors opening, risking the lives of moronic and oblivious representatives of the status quo who would step blithely out of a tram with no awareness of their surroundings, all to liberate themselves from the tyranny of trams.

Now, this is necessary because intersections in Melbourne are the only areas where a four lane street has four lanes to use, because otherwise the inner lane is filled with parked cars. This leads to drivers not just flirting but going for penetration - with the idea that their f-series Canyonero SUV can go from stationary to fast enough to overtake an accelerating 34m tram in the space of 100m before if they don't make the window colliding with either the side of a tram or the back of a parked car.

Of course, it is rare for this commonly attempted manoeuvre to result in a collision with a tram or parked car, much rarer than it is attempted which would probably be equal to the number of tram services that run every day in Melbourne. The other day while jogging I witnessed a lady in an SUV attempt to overtake a tram tail to snout on the inside and she had to come to a halt behind a parked car...her gender is relevant because I want to call her a pendejo and my spanish isn't good enough to understand why some nouns are masculine but women can have them (como manos) and vice versa (como cabesas)...so drivers undertake this piece of bad driving because they are frustrated by poor infrastructure design, then if they fail they face the result of not even being stuck behind a tram, but stuck behind the car that is now behind the tram.

So of course this pendejo wasn't having that and cut in and cut off the car that was now behind the tram she had failed to overtake, resulting in a piece of valid feedback which was a car horn, to let her know she is a fucking shit driver.

Now the thing is, overtaking on the inside line is I assert a product of stroads like Melbourne where trams and parallel parking frustrate and subsequently incentivise bad driving. Like many four lane stroads, if a driver wants to turn across traffic (turn right in Australia, left would be the equivalent in Europe and the Americas) they can block the entire street if a clearway is not currently in force on the parking in the inner lane.

And sure enough, eventually you just get fucking loser drivers that want to overtake any traffic by switching to the inside lane at the lights knowing they have to beat the driver in the lane next to them and switch back into the middle lane.

I have empathy for impatience, even for frustration with less assertive drivers, though as a cyclist I have to take a short walk cognitively, operating a vehicle that weighs somewhere between single and double digits, offers no protection to it's driver and faces no consequences from robotic law enforcement devices and untraceable via witness testimony is fundamentally different from operating something between a half tonne and a tonne, can accelerate to lethal momentum in a matter of seconds and insulates it's occupants from the real world particularly their ability to perceive the real world and hence why they have to wear number plates so responsible parties can be held responsible.

So last week on my way to work, I was sitting on my bike in that little box marked with an esoteric symbol that around the world, in all my travels carries one unified meaning:

Universal symbol for "free parking space/pedestrian walkway for having mobile phone conversations"

You can even see the tram lines that make Melville Rd one of Melbourne's many dangerous stroads. I was heading northward away from the city which means culturally I was transiting from "bicycles are a necessary evil for food delivery" through "poor students need their piece of paper so they can buy a car and stop depending on bicycles and trams" to "why would anyone ride a bicycle?" to my eventual destination of "what's a bicycle?/how do you go through a KFC drive thru on that?" country.

I used to cycle commute so far north it took me months to figure out that drivers weren't always honking at me for no reason but they were attempting to alert me that I was riding a bicycle, that's how alien the concept of getting anywhere under your own power was.

But I digress, you can see that it's a subject that gets me hysterical. 

Word to anyone planning to get into a verbal altercation with a cyclist, all road-rage is generally ill-advised I would feel remiss if I suggested there was a safe way to voice your displeasure at another person on the road, you are always gambling with your life when you lose your temper behind the wheel - beyond that disclaimer though, you cannot hope to educate a cyclist by yelling something at them - the window is too small, we barely have time to realize you are talking to us before you are gone let alone absorb what you are trying to say.

And look, I don't want to suggest that people should never talk to cyclists from a vehicle. One of the most delightful things to ever happen to me while riding a bike was having a guy yell at me "real men ride women!" as their vehicle passed. That's hilarious, even if it was meant to be disparaging, I can't in good conscious say never yell anything at a cyclist after that.

What was noteworthy about this loser, was that he yelled something like (again window too small for me to absorb message) "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" over the head of his I'm going to guess 5-10 year old daughter in primary school uniform.

Right so if you lost track of it, this guy yelled at me after I was sitting in that box with the symbol in it painted on the road at the intersection, and the lights turned green and I cycled forward across the intersection.

You may have noticed, that I referred to this loser as a loser. I do this with confidence using what dubious science communicator Malcolm Gladwell calls "thin slicing" in his dubious book "Blink". 

You may also have lost track of the Musashi Miyamoto quote I opened with about the observing eye being stronger and the perceiving eye being weaker. 

I know this guy is a loser because he was incredibly angry because he was completely wrong. He was telling me how he perceives the world, in a manner where I can objectively determine he doesn't understand it.

I am well familiar with this. I worked in a call centre for 8 years where sporadically losers would tell me at 5.45pm their local time that I was calling during dinner and as such this was an illegal call to which eventually I would enthusiastically encourage them to take down our details and report us to the police because I romantically envisioned some down-on-their-luck cop having to man a desk that explained the laws regarding cold calling to losers who perceive the law to be whatever they intuitively feel it should be such that they are always right and everyone else is always wrong.

As an argument for progress scepticism (which for the record, I believe in progress) as cycling infrastructure is improved, I suspect research might find driver intolerance for cyclists on the road increases - creating a kind of risk homeostasis. Because if a local council builds a luxurious bike and pedestrian path that wends inconveniently in the most circuitous route between points A and B via F with frequent stops and duckling crossings and gaggles of middle aged women taking up the entire path and a legal obligation for cyclists to slow down and warn each and every pedestrian that they are passing even if I am jogging alone on the left extremity of the path with no-one else in sight for hundreds of meters and a group of old guys in lycra have to inform me of the coming and going of their insignificant existence as they peddle around awaiting a long and drawn out death via dementia or prostate cancer with or without being forced into a recumbent bicycle via stroke, just fuck the law you geriatric Safety Petes with your fucking stupid cable ties on your helmets because you get startled by magpies and plovers and ride by me without bothering me because that law was designed to protect gaggles of middle aged women who lose awareness of their surroundings and infer nothing from a broken line running down the middle of a path they are walking along no matter how much a city council visually implies it might operate like the very distant and distinct concept of a road because we can't have people being startled by an unanticipated fast moving object on a bike path when they have the important and consequential task of being fully absorbed in a discussion of the latest episode of "Married At First Sight" which will proceed whether or not they did actually see the latest episode of "Married At First Sight"; drivers are prone to assume that if purpose built bike paths exist, then it logically must be illegal for bikes to be on the road, even with that mysterious esoteric symbol that clearly means "free parking/stand here and have a phone conversation" is painted onto that stroad where bikes logically must be illegal now.

Tom Hardy allegedly says:

"Please stop thinking just because you have a college degree it makes you smart. I know a lot of people who have drivers licenses and they can't drive for shit." ~ Tom Hardy, as alleged by the internet, I cannot verify the attribution.

With sufficient clarity for me, he is clearly talking about the inherent problems of certification in general and using drivers licenses as a relatable example to point to that general problem. Too many people it seems were persuaded by the Wizard of Oz that a degree is as good as a brain for the Scarecrow who suddenly understood a geometric proof upon being handed a piece of paper. The satire is hard to get in Wizard of Oz.

 Because this is a thought sketch, I'd like to consider societies culpability in illusioning (opposite process of disillusioning, even if spellcheck doesn't like it) loser drivers like this loser that drove by me. 

A society has to make a decision about how hard or easy it is to obtain a license given the population it governs. In Victoria around the time I obtained my license that I don't think I should have, to go from a Learner's permit (can operate a car with a fully licensed driver's direct supervision) to a Probationary license (Basically a license but easier to lose via blood alcohol tests and traffic violations than a full license) involved passing a test.

There was a written component to demonstrate knowledge of road laws, probably multiple choice. When I got mine there was a touch screen component where you watched dashcam footage on a monitor that you had to touch when you observed something for which you should reduce speed (basically any change you observe) and then an actual driving test out on the streets where you would be asked to drive around a bit and make turns and complete one of something like six manoeuvres to pass the test.

So you could be asked to do one of either an angle park, reverse 30 meters in a straight line, a 3 point turn or a parallel park. Right. Right? I would say that would give the average 18 year old victorian a one in four chance of failing their license examination straight off the bat. If you luck out and have to do a fucking parallel park, particularly if you want a license that allows you to drive stick, the chances of failing are high.

Conversely, if all you had to do was pull into and out of an angle park, or reverse 30meters in an approximately straight line, there's a really good chance that like me you have a license but really shouldn't.

Someone using their stronger, observing eye, would probably come to the same conclusion Tom Hardy allegedly has. 

So I knew this guy was a loser, almost instantly by his conduct, and I knew he was a coward. Like, I can't be confident that he yelled "GET TO THE SIDE YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" precisely, but I'm not so far off that he could have been yelling "I CAN'T SEE YOUR HAIRCUT IF YOU WEAR A HELMET WHICH IS A SHAME BECAUSE YOU SEEM LIKE A GUY WITH A COOL HAIRCUT JUDGING BY YOUR SHADES AND BRAND JORDAN BASKETBALL SHORTS WITH POCKETS!!!" 

He definitely called me a fucking idiot, I'm reasonably confident he was trying to convey that I was a fucking idiot for obstructing his ability to overtake on the inside at an intersection. 

To steel man his case, he may have been so self-entitled that he knew he was speaking purely from personal preference, but occam's razor obliges me to attribute his sentiment to using his perceiving eye over his observing eye that could have derived a reasonable inference from say, the headstart box painted in the lane with the universal symbol for "free parking/stand here and talk on your mobile phone".

I can reasonably infer, that while there's a one-in-four or less chance that he obtained his license without being able to competently parallel park, he likely has no idea about vehicular cycling and despite his constant frustration that the world does not work as he perceives it, would, like every driver frustrated with cyclists, never have looked up what considered, informed minds have legally determined to be the community standard road rules.

Now, he, like me might disagree with the conclusions of those legal minds. The difference is, when I don't stop because a tram has stopped at a green light in the CBD and despite no passengers getting on and or off just sits there not closing the doors allowing me to proceed so I ignore the law, break the law and injure nobody ever, or even startle anybody, I don't yell at the driver "CLOSE YOUR DOORS SO CYCLISTS CAN PASS YOU FUCKING IDIOT!!" over the head of my child daughter.

I would agree that the streets are poorly designed stroads, what he doesn't realize is that a big part of why they are poorly designed is because they have encouraged him to think he is so important and significant by his own self-diagnosis that he has the right to switch lanes to try and overtake all the cars in front of him on the inside.

That bike box is put there because society determined that that's where they want bicycles to be for the red light, in front of all the motor vehicles (often cyclists get a head start cyclist only green light) and out of the way of the lane dedicated to left-hand (right for right side drive) turns. Society doesn't want someone who's all "this 60kmph speed limit is fucking bullshit I can drive faster than that through a residential and commercial area" using that lane to overtake cars adhering to the speed limit.

So that's just one reason this guy I'm confident to the point of knowing, was a loser. But another fact was the whole being wrong and yelling that over the head of his child daughter. I mean he could have been a loser because he was abducting some kid to fuck her, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't a nonce, just a loser dad.

Of course, it is an inference that if he is willing to yell that at me, while being wrong, in front of his daughter, he will probably yell at his daughter that way one day soon. I'm pretty confident of that, because clearly in this scenario his emotional distress was that I had impeded him in some way in his delusion that he in some significant way contributes to the turning of the world and needs to get back to that as soon and sooner than all the other people on the road, as possible. It is one thing to lose your shit because somebody endangered your daughter, it is another thing to lose your shit because somebody impeded you from executing a piece of shitty driving in front of your daughter. 

Overtaking on the inside, is actually dangerous, as in he was frustrated at me because I was impeding his ability to endanger his daughter. 

I want to believe in the human race, and subsequently I wish I could be confident that if she didn't realize then, she will in time realize her dad is a loser and subsequently never has to take seriously anything he says and look instead for better more qualified role models to follow the example of. But I don't know that. I've met a depressing number of people who admire loser parents and are determined to make those losers proud by becoming losers themselves.

And beyond confessing to me and his daughter, that this loser was indeed a loser, he also confessed that he was a coward. Right. This guy saw me, must have sat there fuming in his own impotence, too afraid to honk his horn so I could turn around while my bike sat on the universally recognized symbol for free parking/stand here and use your mobile phone that strangely resembles a bicycle and give him an uncomprehending glare and a shrug before turning back around, but he saw me and waited.

He waited for the lights to change so he could drive past and yell at me, call me a fucking idiot before driving away. What he chose, was the scenario where he could yell something and I couldn't respond. Probably because he didn't want to endanger his daughter as a result of me in full compliance with the law obstructed his ability to endanger his daughter, which of course actually endangered his daughter because for a moment there was a very real possibility that I would catch up to his vehicle at the next set of lights. Fortuitously we were both spared that confrontation, because I know cowards are incredibly dangerous. I know this from stories and histories, Villains don't kill heroes anywhere near as often as cowards do. Heroes don't kill villains nearly as often as cowards do. 

For the record, I wouldn't hurt an innocent child because she happens to be the daughter of a loser, I would be sorely tempted though for the childs sake to tell her her dad is a loser, because it's probably never too early to hear that, even if it's way too soon to accept that. But who knows, when she is 16 and in an abusive relationship with the guy at school that most reminds her of her father, it might help it click just that bit sooner that her esteem is low because her dad is a loser and she needs to stop caring about what he thinks and how she feels about him.

C'est la vie. It's horrific out there.

You might have read this far and thought "gee tohm, angry much. You sound like a bitter loser, filled with impotent rage." ding ding ding. I'm as prone to impotent rage as the next human experiencing the human condition. But like Bill Russell says:

"It's the difference between being broke and being poor. Being poor is a state of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation."

When I lose things I feel like a loser, and this coward imposed a loss upon me which was the opportunity to impose my social dominance - to tell him what I know deep in his testicles he already knows or at least suspects.

My personal shortcut for short circuiting useless, anxious, rumination - rumination beyond the point of productivity - is to ask myself or others "who would you rather be?"

It's a bit cheap, because almost nobody would be somebody else, because you know it's hard to maintain your preferences while being someone else with their preferences. 

This guy had a daughter, and it would be nice if I had a daughter. He has that on me. I'd be quick to point out though the horror of having a daughter or son, loving them and not knowing by word and deed you are actively destroying their chances at happiness and emotional stability by your own bad example.

Which makes the rest fucking easy. I choose to cycle because I enjoy it. Not enjoying bad drivers yelling at me does not detract from cycling around on even a beaten up bike like mine, under my own power on one of humanities greatest inventions. I fucking love cycling. Much as I love living in Mexico even if my risk of dying via homicide spikes dramatically by virtue of just living in that land of freedom and opportunity.

I also as a cyclist more often feel empowered by my higher or equal to average speed as all other vehicles on the road. I'm fairly confident that most people's antipathy toward cyclists is generated by envy as they observe cyclists moving with the freedom that breaks the social contract that says winners get a car and losers ride bikes because they don't work hard enough to achieve a sedentary lifestyle. 

And speaking of social contracts, this incident, this one way altercation where a guy thinks he yelled something at me, and will go on thinking so never realizing he yelled at his daughter "I'M A LOSER AND A COWARD AND I'M A BAD FATHER" and she may realize nothing bar the consequences of that statement that I'm sure was not iterated for the last time.

I don't know how far it goes, but Australian's want for candour. This nations growth, perhaps even GDP is stunted because Australia cannot take it's lumps. I feel it strongly. 

This is why in the spirit of candour I want to impress upon you, that I know in my bones that this guy is a loser. It's not political, it is totalitarian - not up for debate. The sky god, in so far as He can be called Physics says so. That loser has to lodge his appeal with respect to the Laws of Physics.

It reminded me of an existential question that has plagued me for decades now:

If losers win, are they still losers?

Like the great philosopher and undisputable GOAT of pre-modern era basketball Bill Russell, it is a question of whether being a loser is a state of mind, or a temporary circumstance.

Twice in my life, I have been proximate enough to an event (actually in both cases I attended the event) but the point is, I had cause for my attention to review photographic documentation of an event and notice what I had not in my own direct experience of those events.

Two different losers appeared in photos gratuitously displaying splayed out wads of cash. Like probably tens of hundred dollar notes. In both cases, this was long before Youtube ads pushed fake gurus/con-traprenuers with fake wads of cash and rented hypercars all for the purpose of luring losers into transferring wealth to them, one was like a party, like just an ordinary party and this loser kept cropping up showing off his stack of bills.

Okay, if you don't understand my philosophical question, and because I'm not going to name the losers that were flaunting modest sums of money that did admittedly exceed any practical need to carry that much cash to an event where you would be drinking at; consider the difficult case of Floyd Mayweather Jr. someone who is definitely worthy of a place in the almost impossible GOAT debate of professional boxing with all it's weight divisions, eras and I assume at the time of writing 7 bodies that certify a champion of the world, and all the various ways a champion can accumulate title defenses or win other divisions while avoiding genuine competition and of course the ambiguity brought by performance enhancing drugs and the limited ability to enforce their prohibition.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired with a perfect 50-0-0 record, he fought big names for big purses and stopped bothering with belts and titles because he didn't want to pay the fees for the privilege of holding them and fought and beat numerous noteworthy opponents, I'm aware of Canelo Alvarez and Pacman who cannot be said to be weak opponents, Conner MacGregor exceeded expectations but wasn't really a strong opponent because he's an MMA champion and most expected him to get disqualified because he forgot he couldn't kick in boxing.

Mayweather is a winner, one of the winningest winners this side of Julio Cesar "El Campion" Chavez and his 72-0-0 win streak. 

But.

But...when Mayweather posts pictures on instagram of his stacks of cash what it says to me is "on the inside I am really poor."

This is behaviour to impress loser teenagers. One could rejoin me by saying "you don't get black culture. You don't listen to hip hop. You don't know how to hustle white boy. You wouldn't last a minute down in Baltimore, Killadelphia, South Side Chicago..." all that's true.

I'm asserting, and maybe I'm perceiving rather than observing, but that Mayweather, 2018's top earning athlete as perceived by Forbes, and estimated 6th wealthiest athlete of all time adjusting for inflation - his instagram behaviour might impress horny teenagers of low social status, but it also retrodicts this:

It was common for the young Mayweather to come home from school and find used heroin needles in his front yard.[34] His mother was addicted to drugs, and he had an aunt who died from AIDS because of her drug use. "People don't know the hell I've been through," he says. The most time that his father spent with him was taking him to the gym to train and work on his boxing, according to Mayweather.[35] "I don't remember him ever taking me anywhere or doing anything that a father would do with a son, going to the park or to the movies or to get ice cream," he says. "I always thought that he liked his daughter [Floyd's older sister] better than he liked me because she never got whippings and I got whippings all the time."[33]

Mayweather's father contends that Floyd is not telling the truth about their early relationship. "Even though his daddy did sell drugs, I didn't deprive my son," the elder Mayweather says. "The drugs I sold, he was a part of it. He had plenty of food. He had the best clothes and I gave him money. He didn't want for anything. Anybody in Grand Rapids can tell you that I took care of my kids".[36] Floyd Sr. says he did all of his hustling at night and spent his days with his son, taking him to the gym and training him to be a boxer. "If it wasn't for me he wouldn't be where he is today," he maintains.[33]

"I basically raised myself," Mayweather says. ~ from wikipedia all sourced.

This is how people made to feel like a loser by circumstance, and who internalise it behave. Just an observation. Of course I wouldn't say it to Mayweather's face, although I've written it on the internet and he has the resources to track me down and say "say it to my face." and I hoping not to get physically assaulted even though, provoking Mayweather into attacking me and the subsequent charges, lawsuit and settlements would set me up for life, would not and probably apologize and it would prove that Mayweather on the inside feels like a loser, if he has to worry about some nobody's opinion despite being a billionaire, and one of the greatest pro boxers of all time.

So do you get it? When I look at a photo, and someone who had previously impressed me as a loser, someone of low social status is flaunting wads of cash and no taste, I feel sad. I feel pity. Not the impotent rage of my traffic encounter with a coward, this is someone who thinks they are saying "SEE! SEE!! I'M NOT A LOSER I'M A WINNER!!!" and doesn't understand that that says "YOU, YOU PROBABLY BARELY EVEN SPARED ME A THOUGHT, YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T EVEN THINK ABOUT ME WHEN YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHO WAS GONNA BE AT THIS PARTY AND IT GOT TO ME, IT REALLY WENT RIGHT DEEP DOWN INSIDE. SEE THIS CASH! I THINK I'M A LOSER!!!" 

I suspect, the brutal reality we live in, is that there's no pile of trinkets so high, no shiny dragon's hoard, no list of accolades so long that will ever convince me a loser has blossomed into a winner.

Another application. Fan-fic. Fan fic can get big, it can get influential. It can get a fan fic writer a community, a sense of belonging and much positive feedback. But the very fact of having to take someone else's work, be it Harry Potter, LOTR, Twilight, Percy Jackson, Naruto, Inuyasha and Bleach, be it from the mind of JK Rowling, Pendalton Ward, Stephany Myers or Steven Moffat and write your own story into it...

Like I get an argumentum ad populim that so many people are sad in this same way that we shouldn't be ashamed and maybe it isn't sad and we can gather around and discuss what relationships we'd like to see between Hermione and Legolas or whatever...

Like I don't see why that is okay, and writing a story about the popular hetero-normative kids at your school (and let's make it real and say that you teach) you know are actually representative of your intersecting minority identities is not okay/something worthy of shame and embarassment if discovered. I'm inclined to think that even with solidarity in numbers, this is the product of the mindset of a loser.

Don't get me wrong, great writers often start off with works of shear incompetent rip-offery, George Orwell, one of the finest in his essay "How I Write" recalls ripping off "Tiger, Tiger" as a child with a phrase he still rated at writing of "chair like teeth" but like, he grew out of that and wrote his own stuff. George RR who has been vocal about his dislike of fanfiction, I recall talking about sending terrible writing in to some zine that was like a star trek or LOTR ripoff and getting feedback as a kid, before he grew out of that and started coming up with his own ideas.

And yet...

There are people who completely destroyed their own lives, or reputations that I would regard as winners. 

Like if an alcoholic loses everything but achieves sobriety and forgives themselves, they aren't a loser in my eyes. If they take responsibility and come to terms with themselves, even if they've caused damage that cannot be repaired and incurred losses they can never recover. I'd be all like "good job, winner."

Most notably, I don't know how to feel about Kobe Bryant. Because he probably raped a hotel maid, of which he's definitely responsible if he did so, and it was one of the two dumbest decisions he made in his life - the other being getting on a helicopter with his daughter during wildfires - something I don't know how similar it is to Stockton Rush's final Titan expedition.

The major injustice, regarding his victim settling I lay at the feet of greater society. It is what the system allows, and even if she used her own agency to settle, part of it was having a very powerful institution try to preserve its interests - keeping Kobe on the court and out of jail. 

But on the other hand, based on how Kobe at least, turned out on and off the court, in hindsight I look at it and see another systemic injustice because I doubt sending Kobe Bean Bryant to jail for a crime he actually committed (if he did) would not have produced the best outcome for society. It would have cost us Kobe Bryant's frankly glorious NBA career, an asset for humanity.

I don't know, it's a head scratcher. But to me what is clear, is that Kobe someway somehow transitioned from loser mindset to winner mindset and maybe it was fucking up so bad that it forced him to mature - he says during the trial he created the Black Mamba persona as a psychological necessity and I would suggest that his book "Mamba Mentality" is perhaps the finest work of anti-prison literature, a philosophical work as valuable as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, the finest work of prison literature, at least that's what I've heard and I'm just going to bet that it shits all over Gramsci's notebooks from prison.

To conclude this long and rambling sketch, when I think about how somepeople are losers, to speak candidly and indelicately, I'm not suggesting it is their fault, whereas other people lose but are not losers - what I think is going on is newton's first law of motion - people will remain losers unless a force acts upon them.

The dire situation I feel the world is in, is probably actually a problem of surplus democracy - a demeritocracy where a government cannot tell its people 'no.' for fear of reprisal and this trickles down into the culture and gives everyone pussy-feet that require pillow soles so everyone can pussyfoot around everyone else.

This is just a sketch, so I can get back in the habit of publishing stuff. That means I'm not going to do the required research to make my position bulletproof. The easiest thing to do is conclude yourself that you don't like me. I'm going to assert that the opposite of candour is flattery, and I haven't done the required reading of Plato thru Pieper, and I strongly suspect I wouldn't like Pieper if he's the guy who resurrected interest in Thomas Aquinas, a pain-in-the-arse intellectual to rival Foucault and Derrida, but we flatter people in order to use them.

There is a denial of fundamental human dignity to lie to people who want to be lied to, and I think where Mayweather's instagram behaviour tells me he's in some deeper way a loser contrary to what his boxing record in the beautiful science suggests - those conmen using those levers to try and gain something from the very losers Mayweather seeks to and likely succeeds in impressing seek to flatter and exploit.

To tell people that if you hate yourself, that if you spend your days in a quiet impotent rage, only expressing it when cowardly instincts concoct a seemingly inconsequential way to let a stranger know how desperately impotent you are (forgetting your daughter can hear you), that if they get fat stacks of cash then strangers will tell them they are great and then they will feel great I'm sure is all about enriching yourself.

At the same time, I think Australia's leadership is flattering Australian voters with the idea that they are going somewhere, when in reality for all Australia's achievements, most of which were achieved by the time Keating got into office, Australia is and has been going nowhere slow. 

The confessions are everywhere to be seen, just have to switch from perceiving eye to observing eye. Melbourne is still riddled with stroads. Candour is harder to observe than a symbol of a bike painted onto a stroad.