Catsidhe

Amanda Vanstone¹ and Brendan O'Neill² talk about Greta Thunberg


Oh dear sweet baby Jesus on a topheavy quadbike in a thunderstorm, I don't think I've heard such a load of tendentious, arrogant circle-jerking and question-beggary in my life.

"And we're querying the degree to which Greta Thunberg is being used by other people. It's a serious question."

No it's not, you supercilious twerp. It's not a question at all. It's been a taken as an axiom that she is from the very concept of the conversation, and everything you two have been furiously agreeing with each other about³ is based around that assumption. "Given that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people, and given that it's a bad thing to use Greta Thunberg, is it a bad thing that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people? Discuss."

Then there's a load of "isn't it unfair when the other side keeps using the 'won't someone please think of the children' argument and I look like a monster when I use my usual rhetorical technique of withering, bullying sophistry on them, and that's taking advantage of children, won't anyone please think of the children." Because it can't possibly be that people have opinions and the right to express them before the age of eighteen, it must be because the Evil Social Marxist Conspiracy in teh ABC is putting them up to it in order to make you look bad.

Oh, and pleading for "won't someone please think of the welfare of Greta, who is delicate and fragile and autistic and has mental health issues and let's just go ahead and imply that young people aren't able to have agency, autistic people aren't able to have agency, therefore Greta must be someone's hand puppet, why are you being so mean to Greta."

Brendan O'Neill said that. Brendan. O'Neill. Said that. The Brendan O'Neill who called her a "millenarian weirdo". The Brendan O'Neill who complains about her "monotone voice"⁵ and "dead eyes".

Oh, won't someone think of the children, indeed.


Is this egregious nonsense the best that the Right has to offer as intellectual justification for itself? This ad hominem, petitio principii, ignoratio elenchi,⁶ incompetent sophistry. Because as an English Essay in year 10, this would get a "1/10, see me" in red pen, and an urgent referral to the school counsellor.

And the next Right Wing intellectual gatekeeper who says one word about "Virtue Signalling" on the Left is going to get a lot of tightly focussed anger and no mercy in the slightest, because I have utterly lost my ability to pretend being able to even with that lazy, ignorant, vacuous, hollow, hypocritical sneer.


And also note very carefully where I said "the Right". I do not mean "conservatives", because I know conservatives who are deeply thoughtful and insightful in debate, even where I disagree with them. (You know who you are.) These people are not "conservatives": they are Right Wing Culture Warriors of the first order, each and every one of them worse than any of the examples on the Left they like to point at accusingly. They are hypocrites and sophists, and if I were to say that they aren't even self aware enough to understand the depth of how fractally wrong they are, that's the charitable option, because the alternative is that they do know, and knowingly and deliberately spout this not-even-wrong poison on purpose.⁷


But what really got me furious at this was that in every word, and behind every assumption, they are taking even the possibility of agency away from Greta Thunberg, on the assumption that it is impossible for an autist, let alone a young one, to have any. And that ableist bullshit is something which cannot be allowed to stand.

(And in answer to the strawman Vanstone and O'Neill preemptively raised in answer to this point, no, it's not that you're not allowed to say that an autist is wrong, it's that you two are trying to claim that she's not even capable of putting forward an opinion: you aren't arguing against her argument, you are attempting to nullify her argument: you are trying to make her argument not have to be answered, purely because she is autistic. That is the definition of ableism, and that is the definition of ad hominem, and that's the high point of your exercise in intellectual masturbation.)

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[1] Former Federal Liberal minister for keeping foreigners out, and not the worst Liberal Immigration Minister in living memory but only because all her successors seem to have held a "yeah? Well hold my beer and watch this" attitude to the job, leading to the current incumbent, Dutton.

[2] A sort of Renaissance Horrible Excuse for a Human Being, making him overqualified for the Center for Independent Studies.

[3] including, but not restricted to why adults are right about everything, why people under 18 years old are entitled to their opinions but shouldn't ever actually have the right to express them, why children having agency will lead to them being "entitled"⁴, that and why it's a bad thing that you're not allowed to give kids these days a "clip across the ear".

[4] presumably: entitled to having agency, which is a bad thing if they should disagree with people like Vanstone and O'Neill, but a good thing if they are a member of the Young Liberals.

[5] I dunno, as an autistic 16 year old making speeches to large groups and international gatherings in her second language, I don't think she's doing too badly myself, but then I'm also autistic and presumably don't have the right to an opinion either.

[6] and just, I don't know, look up a list of logical and informal fallacies and check off the ones which aren't present in that discussion.

[7] Which is to say, I have in mind a list of people who I very much suspect to be exactly that sort of populist authoritarian⁸

[8] Some people say that "populist authoritarian" is a good start for a definition of "fascist". (When followed by such details as public subsidy and support of citizens in good standing; no support for and arbitrarily punitive measures of severe strictness against unpersons non-citizens or citizens not of good standing; a restrictive and shrinking definition of who counts as a person citizen of good standing; expanding militarism and militaristic fetishism; and the manipulation of elections to ensure a predetermined result, up to and including bribery and threats of violence. So at least we're safe on that last count. Guess there's nothing to worry about, then.) I couldn't possibly comment. That name you're thinking right now, I didn't say it.

What the politician said:

"Fines such as these for publishing blatant untruths or misleading news reports, or temporary suspensions of the right to publish or broadcast, would lead to a major improvement in the accuracy and fairness of our media."

(My emphasis.)

Which seems clear enough: if you lie, if you say something blatantly untrue, if you make shit up or don't bother checking, then you should be punished for it. That's not "Oops, we spelled this witness' name wrong", or "we were honestly misinformed," that's talking about Andrew Bolt-ian levels of disingenuity and agitprop.

How was this reported?

MP wants journalists fined for mistakes.

THAT'S NOT WHAT HE SAID AND YOU FUCKING KNOW IT YOU GODDAMN HACKS!

But thank you, nameless ABC journo, for proving his point. I have no doubt all the other sources will be similarly misquoting and mischaracterising Steve Gibbons MP from now on in, and squealing that they're the aggrieved parties the whole time they're shamelessly pretending he said something he didn't.

Churches have the right to publicly opine on matters of public policy. Even when such opinions happen to have startling alignment with certain political parties' platforms.

But here's an idea: when a religion starts actively campaigning for one party or another, they lose the right to be recognised as a tax-exempt entity. Squared if they're doing it by lying.

You want to play partisan politics? You get to pay tax on your property and income, like the rest of us.

1. Set a problem for homework.
   
2. Provide a suggested method for finding a solution of, essentially, "randomly shuffle these numbers until it kinda looks right".
   
3. ...
   
4. Profit! End up with children who are frustrated and angered by the sight of numbers, and have little to no idea that there are ways in which this sort of problem can be approached, let alone relatively simple and rigorous ways to prove them correct, let alone that the solution raises all sorts of other questions, which can themselves be answered...

The actual problem was "Take the nine numbers 2 to 10, and arrange them in three groups of three so that each group adds to the same number."

The suggested approach was to "write the numbers on pieces of paper, and arrange them into the right groups."

No, seriously, the suggested approach was to randomly shuffle the numbers until they (magically) come out in the right order. Personally, I'm wondering if there is a worse possible approach to the problem.

When I sat down with Miss A to approach this, my first question was: so, what is the number they have to add up to?

What you're looking for is

x = a + b + c
  = d + e + f
  = g + h + i

So the first thing to notice is that

a + b + c + d + e + f + g + h + i = 3x

The sum of 2..10 is 54, so the answer to each group of three must be 54/3 = 18.

So then we need an algorithm to fill in the blanks. Start with the biggest number, so

18 = 10 + b + c

b≠9, because that is already too big. And while 10+8 = 18, that only works if c=0, which isn't an available value. Neither is 1, so b≠7. So by elimination, we have a=10, b=6, c=2. Then do the same with the remaining numbers (d=9, e=5, f=4), and the remaining three must be g, h and i. Luckily, when you check, they are.

There was a secondary part to do the same thing with the set B = [3..11]. And yes, we showed that the algorithm still works. Only now the sum to each group is 21.

Hang on, 21 = 18+3, and we're dealing with groups of three... that can't be a coincidence, can it? It turns out, if you compare the ordered sets, then you see that each number B_x is just A_x+1. So if each number has 1 added, then each group must have 3 added to the total for it to work out.

And if we've just solved this problem for the set N₂ = [2..10], and for N₂₊₁, then we've demonstrated that the solution will work for N_x, where x is any positive integer. So for the set [1..9], the sum to each group should be 15... and when you check, it is.

But wait... what we've got can be drawn in a grid

10	6	2	=18
9	5	4	=18
8	7	3	=18

If we re-arrange the numbers within each row, then we get

10	6	2	=18
5	4	9	=18
3	8	7	=18
= 18	= 18	= 18

And if you do a bit of matrix manipulation, then you get a Magic Square, where the rows, columns and diagonals all add up to the same magic number.

And we've proved that this pattern is a Magic Square whether you pick your nine numbers starting from 2, 3, 1, 512, 100473, or whatever. I wonder if it works for other progressions? Say, N⁵₅ = [5, 10, 15, ..., 45]? (It does, but proof is an exercise for the reader.) Or for negative integers? What would we have to do to the algorithm to make it work? What about magic squares of order 4, 5, 19? What about...?


Just look at all this number theory we got from a question where the suggested approach was to "fiddle randomly and hope you trip over the right answer."

I'm sure there's some sort of pedagogical approach which calls for the systematic frustration of children, and the comprehensive murder of any potential joy of mathematics, but for the life of me I can't think what it is.

Shorter Rick Perry (at the end of the article): Gay people don't have Human Rights. My Invisible Friend said so.

Not only every project manager in the building shouting their conversations at each other as they pass by my desk, but right behind me is a very loud speakerphone conference going on.

This is why I'm not allowed to keep weapons at my desk.

'Rewriting of Act' puts offshore deals in doubt.

Well, yeah, duh! That's the whole point! ONOZ, go the media, what an embarrassment for Julia and her government! Maybe they have to fall back to Nauru or Manus island!

Um... no, no they can't, because Nauru and Manus are not legal dumping grounds for exactly the same reasons Malaysia isn't, namely, our international treaty obligations forbid us from dumping refugees in a country which isn't a signatory, or which is a technically a signatory but has ‘reservations’ (ie., “except this bit”) for all the sections which matter.

And no, it's not “rewriting the Act”, it's a finding that the Act is, and always has been, incompatible with an international treaty, and therefore basically nullified. It is not a lawful law. It never was.

And you in the media? Yes, you. Do you think you might see fit to mention that these offshore dumping laws were just as illegal when Little Johnny was doing it, it just didn't get tested. The treaties and obligations haven't changed in the meantime. The only reason this didn't happen to
Johnny and his happy gang of smug sociopaths is the vagaries of the legal system (ie., the refugee advocates pushed harder this time). If this had been pushed to the High Court then, it's really difficult to see how they could have come to any different conclusion: the law which allows demands offshore refugee dumping is an illegal law.

If they really want to pass a law to allow it, then they're going to have to, one way or another, repudiate the International Treaty on the Rights of the Refugee. Let's see if they have the testicular fortitude to plainly and openly do what they so badly and obviously want to: go backwards in our adherence to international Human Rights Law.

What do you do when your much-vaunted rally to show the ‘deep’ and ‘widely shared’ feelings of the astro-turfing lunar-Right demagogues, racists, and neo-MacCarthyites only attracts the usual core crowd of Useful Idiots, hangers-on and other such sad desperate wanna-be Liberal candidates loonies? (Ask for thousands of ‘Real Australians’, get a handful of LaRouchites, “Fuck off were full” stickers, and truckies who may or may not have been paid to go... do you think that might say something, right there?)

Simple: make shit up. As usual.


But that's OK: Tony Abbott still like to pretend he's the True Voice of Hardworking Average Aussies, and will continue to do so until just before the next election when he'll will be thanked for keeping the seat warm and very firmly dumped from the leadership for being a gross embarrassment to the principles which the Liberal Party are supposed to stand up to, or even to Howard's perversions thereof.

Barnaby Joyce will probably continue in Parliament, but he will also continue to laugh when everyone else does, not quite able to understand that we're not laughing with him.

And Alan Jones? He will continue to be Alan Jones, and I can think of no worse punishment.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3268730.htm

Executive summary: Monckton is an arrogant lying fraud. Every word out of his mouth is a lie, including articles and conjunctions. If you find yourself on the same side of any argument as him, it's time to seriously consider your position.

And the people who cheer him on (literally mindlessly chanting slogans of hatred) are hypocrites and idiots. "The ABC are fascists for daring to print anyone who disagrees with me! I don't think there should be censorship, but anyone who disagrees with Monckton will be locked up when we take over, and any media who published them will be broken up and sold. Because they're fascists."

For fuck's sake. Do they really not see their own jackboots?



If you quote him, or anyone who approvingly quotes him (yes, his obnoxiousness is contagious), for any reason other than to point and laugh at the logorrhoeia of lies falling continuously from his mouth, then you have just lost whatever argument you were participating in, as you have just given up the right to have any opinion you hold taken seriously.

Andrew? Are you happy yet?