I was appalled to read an article in today’s The Guardian about a shark attack – and not just to note the awful tragedy ..

Growing up living on the Swan River, we did, from time to time, see sharks – one noted with dread that dorsal that stayed steady above the water, and not coming and going as it was with the fun-loving dolphins. But I have no memory at all of hearing that anyone had been killed, or even wounded, by a shark in the river.

So the photo in the article AND the text are shameful, indicating a total lack of knowledge regarding Perth’s layout and an unwillingness to simply check facts.

North Freo was known as dangerous for sharks, as it’s so close to the Indian Ocean’s exit point for the Swan River: why the young women were riding jetskis there is fairly questionable.

Be that as it may, I did a measurement of the distance between it and the Perth foreshore, finding it to be nineteen kilometres, allowing for the Point Walter spit in Freshwater Bay.

19km is an irresponsible distance for a respectable newspaper to raise terror about the likelihood of sharks, imnsho ..

BUT !

The same newspaper edition includes this super short article by one of my heroine writers, the wonderful Helen Garner.

Same age (almost – she’s half a year or so older ‘n me) and same search: what is happiness ? I wrote a poem on the subject in 1970: she wrote this article. I’m a total failure at most everything, and she’s a roaring success. See ? – we’re soulmates. [grin]

I’ve always been a fan of Arnie’s – he never took himself seriously when he moved into the film industry but just enjoyed himself enormously and made POTS of money.

As he ages with grace (yes, I believe even Arnie can be graceful) he’s become something of a commentator on Life.

Click on the screen-grab above for a truly thoughtful but impassioned address to the Russian people ..

.. but progressed from there.

My morning perusal of the ABC news site and The Guardian’s resulted in several items that made me scoff and click my tongue in annoyance, made me make a face and become annoyed, and eventually made my blood boil.

They’re chefs’ ideas of a good sandwich.  Fer crissake ! Unfortunately,  The Guardian is forever printing recipes of ludicrous things like these ..

And still Texas is proud of being anti-vaxx !! You have to wonder ..

There will never be a time when filthy rich bastards stop claiming that their way – whatever it is – will save the world ..

We have reached the point where our “protections” are likely to kill people.

This was a VERY silly man with a VERY big ego; and he changed Australia – for the worse. He was, in fact, a bloody dangerous little bastard.

Sometimes – in fact, often ! – I wonder why I bother to read the news. I’m in a kind of constant battle with myself: while I believe that the ABC, for instance, is the most reliable free news source, I detest the upward trajectory of its politically correct advances.  As for The Guardian, it’s the only news source I’m prepared to pay for; but its British bits are often infuriating ..

I shall think more about The Saturday Paper—

or then again, perhaps I shan’t .. Maybe The Monthly ?

Well, at least that one tells you the cost of each issue: The Saturday Paper actually costs over $9 !

It seems that I’m going to be thinking more about The Monthly, then: at least that way anyone perusing my blog wouldn’t need to be assailed by my political views very often.

It seems that almost no-one read my last post on this topic. Your loss: it’s bloody HYSTERICALLY funny.

This one doesn’t require any effort at all .. and I love it !  😀

I can’t decide whether this video is actually meant to be funny as well as useful; nor can I work out which branch of the airline industry its producers must come from.

It’s really informative, and I strongly recommend a perusal.

With attention.

“The violence of police officers at protests reveals their true role

The job of law enforcement officers, according to the authorities who have called on them in recent days, is to keep the public safe. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, for example, said in a press conference on Sunday that officers are “here to protect people and property.”

But the police, in many situations, have appeared to actively work against public safety. It’s hard to imagine how macing a child, or driving a car into a crowd of people, could possibly be intended to keep anyone safe.

Instead, the police seem clearly to be treating protesters — members of the public — as adversaries. As Mara Gay writes at the New York Times, “an army of public servants entrusted to protect Americans treated them as an enemy instead.”

This seems to be happening not despite the fact that the protests are about police brutality, but because of it. Previous research shows that police are more likely to use force against protesters when the subject of the protest is police violence, Shaila Dewan and Mike Baker report at the Times. Police are also more likely to use violence against protesters of color than against white demonstrators.

Now “there’s deep resentment on the part of the police that so many people are angry at them, and they’re lashing out,” Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College, told the Times. “Look at what we saw — people sitting on their own stoops getting hit with pepper balls. Anyone who looks at them funny, they’re attacking them.”

{ … }

The protesters attacked on camera by police in recent days have been unarmed. They certainly haven’t been carrying rifles up the capitol steps. Yet the police have treated them not just like a threat but like an opponent.

It’s clear that for many officers around the country, what’s happening in the streets right now isn’t an effort to protect public safety. It’s war.”

---

→ That Vox article shows up one of the great conundrums of our times: society needs a police force, but any police force becomes a body apart from society.

There is no group in the world like police. They have a culture that says hurt, blame, point out, accuse, wound or kill one of them, and the perpetrator is marked for life by all of them. They say this is a necessary attitude in order to protect themselves.

It looks as if that culture is now in play up there in the good ol’. In most places, they’re carrying out their cultural fight. Or, as the Vox article says, their war.

A couple of weeks ago I did something that astounded me – I joined the ranks of the twitterati. BUT ! – it is for the sole purpose of keeping up-to-date with the wonderful antics of Sarah Cooper – I do not tweet and I follow no-one but Sarah. And there is a side effect that’s useful: the online newspaper I subscribe to, The Guardian Australia, and also the ABC’s news site, often reproduce tweets in news articles; and being a member enables me to instantly see the whole thread.

Today I’d been reading something in The Guardian that had caused me to go to a Twitter link, and that led me off to something else, and so on; and then I found this:

Struth ! – Chic’s favourite building in the world, with a small sinkhole (voragine – isn’t it a fantastic onomatopoeia ?) in the ground outside !

Following this up led me to the story in The Smithsonian’s site, with the full story linked to the photo below:

Roma la bellissima, the city my husband loved most of all in our several European journeys, is apparently sinking all over the place. Only when there are cavities below, reporters write ! – that means bloody EVERYWHERE !!

What is going to happen to this fabulous (in the true sense of the word) city ?! Will restorers do the kind of thing they’ve done at Pompeii ? – spero di no ma credo di sì …

Ahimè .. Alas !

I am a bus traveller. I have no car, and am not on a train-line; so it’s buses for me. (When, that is, times are normal.) My bus pass is a ‘Myki’, for which I’ve set an online top-up control and thus is my life rendered painless.

In my Inbox this-morning I found this:

and thought “Hang on .. They sent me a new one, and I’ve even been able to use it !”; so I opened it with trepidation, expecting to be faced with some announcement from Public Travel Victoria that would require yet another series of phone-calls to Customer Service that always end with steam coming out my ears.

Once opened, the email said:

Isn’t that nice ? PTV wants me to know that they like me. Warm feeling all over.

[grin]