When The Great City Arrives

 



I'm not conceding anything, they said, those strange watchers on the watch who had endured relapse and fall into the barren ordinary, who he had so dutifully avoided and distrusted, who preserved the entre into outer worlds, who were nowhere near ordinary. 

The planets line up. 

Will you listen to me? Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? 

The eagle fledglings stirred in some high tower. 

We are all like salamanders, about to become something else after a long time of dormancy, or development. Like the human race itself. About to become something else. 

He could hear them in the high tower and yet little of it made sense. 

Out of a cyclone, out of a giant swirl of millions of voices; imprints of memory from the Middle East, date palms, palaces, triumphant returns, adulation. Fear. Most of all they feared him. 

Out there in the giant swirl. 

The ancient whale was moving slowly up the coast as the humpback migration began on the East Coast of Australia, one of the greatest animal migrations on Earth, evolved over millions of years. 

And here we are. On the precipice. 

The Australian election seemed very dull indeed; and that undertow of dread, or doom, well nothing would take it away now. Nothing. The die had been cast.

AI Overview

"The die is cast" means that a decision or course of action has been made and is irreversible, signifying a point of no return. The phrase originates from Julius Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon river in 49 BC, marking the beginning of a civil war. In Roman times, "casting the die" referred to throwing dice in a game, signifying the finality of the throw and the ensuing outcome.

Alea iacta est

Or in another version of historical events: Let the game be played.

MAINSTREAM HEADLINES

SKY NEWS

Coalition ramps up defence fight, promising bigger budget

The Coalition has pledged to outpace Labor’s long-term military spending goals as national security becomes a key battleground ahead of the May 3 federal election.


Albanese and Dutton turn to ‘personal abuse’ in third election debate

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton were caught in a heated clash during the third leaders debate, accusing each other of “lying”, “personal abuse” and “desperation”.

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA

Dutton declared narrow winner of third debate – as it happened

ABC

Feral cats killing more native animals than previously thought

SBS

'You couldn't lie straight in bed': Leaders clash over election lies in third debate

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition leader Peter Dutton faced off in their third election debate on Tuesday night.

NEWS

Protesters gather after police shooting of Somali man in Footscray

Chaos erupted amid a protest in Melbourne’s west after police fatally shot a Somali man during a confrontation.

It came after Abdifatah Ahmed, 35, was shot by police in Melbourne’s west after allegedly rushing at police with a knife on Thursday night.

His death ignited widespread community outrage, prompting vigils and rallies across the city as demands grow for answers and systemic change.

The peaceful protest unravelled when a man took a swing at officers.

Chaos ensued with footage captured by the Herald Sun showing about 30 protesters clashing with officers.

THE NEW DAILY

Vatican reveals Pope Francis’s cause of death as world mourns

MACRO BUSINESS

Australia’s media finds a new housing scapegoat

I have read some poor housing analyses in my time, but few are as awful as the Daily Telegraph’s Taylor Troeth, who blamed “stubborn empty nesters” for fueling NSW’s housing crisis.

In 2023-24, NSW’s population grew by 143,200, with virtually all of this growth (142,500) coming via net overseas migration.

This century, net overseas migration has accounted for 81% of NSW’s population growth.


In number terms, NSW’s population has increased by 2,074,400 since the turn of the century, with 1,687,000 coming via net overseas migration.

These 1,687,000 net overseas migrants that have landed in NSW would have required around 700,000 homes based on average occupancy rates.

In summary, the number one cause of NSW’s housing shortage is excessive migration, given that it is the sole driver of the state’s population growth— i.e., immediately as migrants step off the plane and subsequently as they have children.

SPECTATOR AUSTRALIA

Last Friday the White House launched, without warning (which is how they like to do things), what is essentially a truth and reconciliation inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. While this somewhat vanished into the fog of President Trump’s ongoing battles against the post-Cold War liberal order, it’s still a significant political event.

Dial your browser to covid.gov, and it takes you to a White House splash page, with the words LAB LEAK in all caps, and “The True Origins of COVID-19” below to the right. The letters “Covid-19” are in cursive, as though a baseball player had signed it as an autograph. A very serious-looking Donald Trump, wearing a very serious blue suit, strides between the words “LAB” and “LEAK”, as if to say, “I’m comin’ to get you, Dr. Fauci.”

CRIKEY


Theatre of the absurd: Labor and Liberals on a unity ticket on every key issue — and guess who benefits

Run through the big issues facing Australia, and you’ll find extensive bipartisanship on how they should be addressed — or ignored. That’s the way some powerful interests want it.


THE NIGHTLY


Why a six-figure salary ain’t what it used to be in Australia


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It Began

Image
  It began in cyclonic circumstance, with the wind whipping off Bondi Beach as he struggled through a gale up and down the beachfront. There was no life. The bars were all closed or closing. There were few people about. The gale was a dark force, or remained dark within him, as he fled sanity and constellations of connected intelligences and instead buried himself in the ordinary, a collapsed individual seeking abnegation.  It was hard to know what brought it on; although the Sense8 style hiding from other operatives was always a part of it.  He could hear them echoing in the land beneath the escarpment, propelled from the deep spirits of the forest, caring for what he did not know.  He really did not know. He moped around the house and lamented getting older, more ordinary, more convinced of deceit and abnegation and ordinary things; longing for purpose or confidence or identity, or just youthful determination. He prayed for courage, strength and determination, and ...
Read more

Fraud: Clamouring Dissent

Image
  Foul beasts stalked the Earth. Australia became the kingdom of liars. Dissent was quashed. Fraud was everywhere. The government lied, the politicians lied, the intelligence agencies lied, and deceit permeated every aspect of everybody's life. Taxed into oblivion, taxed into servitude, modern day slavery, overwhelmed by strangers, forced out of affordable accommodation, he'll be lucky to afford a van by the time we're finished with him, the cruel hoax these people represented was literally everywhere. A sharp dagger rammed up through their guts and disembowelled them. A sharp bird flew overhead, squawking with piercing eyes, knowing too much and avenging strangers.  The sacred and the profane. We are all guilty, chanted the Christians, while the spirits swirled in indifference, and time flowed over all of them. It was the injustice, and it was the dishonesty, it was the deceit, and it was the blatant fraud perpetuated by taxpayer entities, that's what got to him. MAINS...
Read more

Alone in a Front Row Seat On History

Image
  They had been and they had gone. That cluster. Imploring. Imagine you could abandon your youth, when you had scribbled repeatedly, "I am the only one", "I am the only one". But it was not so. There are millions of us now, they told him.  And he pretended not to hear.  No one had the decency to come and speak to him. They just watched. They were not there for his benefit.  They were there for the evolution of man, the theft of technology, the arbitrary growth of a destiny they did not understand.  And so, he had resisted their blandishments, drowned his own talents, pretended to be madder, more deranged, more dissolute than he was. And in the meantime, an ever sinking Albo, faced his own stinking, putrid, stale demise at the hands of the electorate, the country, he had so profoundly betrayed. A weak man made weaker still by the blandishments of office.  And so here's Grok's summary of his chances.  The statistical chances of Anthony Albanese losing at...
Read more