Liam Hogan @liamvhogan@aus.social

If I had to describe the Australian way of life to a foreigner it would be ‘intense aggressive bureaucracy pervading every aspect of life’

At night
Rave near
The guard’s
Compartment
Naked with
A blue light

Congratulate me, I’ve just carried out an unaccustomed and new task as a volunteer, and it went well

You love to see it

I'm gonna develop some 35mm and a 120 film this evening

🍸

On the LEP maps of local government areas in NSW, LGA boundaries are indicated in black, while items of heritage significance are shown in tan.

[tin whistle and drums intensify]

Let's to a count of how many reports every year are written in 'plain' Indian English vs. 'plain' Australian English, and also, the notion of 'Plain English' is ideology in its rawest form

On one hand, I am becoming very angry for being made to make completely pointless and superficial changes to a document to satisfy a bureaucrat. On the other hand, I am becoming angry on my former coworker's behalf, because most of these changes are stylistic and come from her use of Indian English habits of writing. It's pure snobbery!

When I finish this I'm going to send it back and ask my correspondent to respectfully please do the necessary

When in doubt, ask lots of disingenuous questions that you know are difficult to answer!

Work toot: Bureaucracy wins again!

Shit pitch: remake of Dr Strangelove in which all the roles are played by a single person. Preferably Scarlett Johansson

'5. They are ignorant; they are ashamed to ask anything; they exaggerate and they lie; they are very false; they attribute errors to people; they attribute merit to themselves; they swindle the central government; they deceive those above them and fool those below them; they conceal faults and gloss over wrongs. This is the dishonest bureaucracy.'

Mao Zedong describing McKinsey and other consultants, 1970

Once, there was a dream that was McKinsey. You could only whisper it

Worst knuckle tattoo:

BOTH / SIDES

I read this earlier today, which is a story about a crew loading a thermonuclear bomb onto a plane, then watching its pilot accidentally fall over the side of an aircraft carrier into the sea

https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/december/skyhawk-down

Ministry's _Jesus Built My Hotrod_ is a Christmas Song

Read this you muppets: Assymetry is killing me

https://katz.substack.com/p/assymetry-is-killing-me

Read this you muppets: gravy

http://orangejuiceandryvita.com/117/gravy

That's why older cohorts generally skew more conservative, it's because the poor don't live to become older cohorts

The problem with the 'we just have to wait for all the Boomers to die' theory of change is that the most conservative members of Gen X will also live longer, and the poor will die, and so on

The modern incarnation of the Billy Graham Crusade, right down to the people asking you to sign to support

My theory is that march-rallies from point a to b, with speakers, are now only another form of secular public worship and quasi-religious gathering, and have about as much political potential. Which is not zero! But at this stage they’re really only about the self