Random News Stories

[pietillidie]

^You'll have to fill me in on that one!

[Dark Beanie]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-20/lidia-thorpe-undisclosed-relationship-ex-rebel-president/101553386

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/20/lidia-thorpe-resigns-as-greens-deputy-leader-in-senate-over-relationship-with-former-bikie-boss

[David]

For those who've been following the twists and turns of the 1973 Oscars story (in which Marlon Brando sent a Native American activist onstage to receive his award and John Wayne allegedly had to be restrained by security guards, another widely reported story that appears to be false) this is a pretty eyebrow-raising development:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Sacheen-Littlefeather-oscar-Native-pretendian-17520648.php

[think positive]

she lied. she was right about the abuse. but then she lied again.

John Wayne was my hero when i was a kid! sux that she could make this shit up! but hey, always believe the woman!


"As Nehme observes, that would suggest that in the space of 45 seconds, John Wayne heard her words, decided that they were infuriating, got up to mount an attack, and drew the resistance of six security guards.

It’s worth keeping in mind, as she points out, that nine years earlier Wayne had undergone lung cancer surgery in which two of his ribs and part of his left lung were removed. He was never entirely hale and hearty after that. Indeed, at the closing set piece of the telecast, when Wayne arrives onstage to invite all the winners to come out for a wan mass rendition of “You Oughta Be in Pictures,” he’s noticeably gasping for breath."


but then "John Wayne’s movies often featured him as a cowboy killing Native Americans, and espousing racist viewpoints. Wayne himself said in a 1971 Playboy interview: “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”

so yeah you cant change the past just do better in the future.

but dont tell anyone your doing the review! cos they gunna take it the wrong way!

[roar]

John Wayne was also my hero as a kid, until I realised that he really was a piece of chit.

[think positive]

Most actors appear to be

And the Pom in me says **** you!

[swoop42]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/21/university-idaho-killings-moscow-unsolved

One week on and still no suspect/s identified (publicly at least) or arrested.

In this day and age that's highly unusual given the prevalence of private and public security cameras as well as other modern investigative tools police can call upon like the analysis of mobile phone activity in the area.

My biggest query so far is why the two female students on the ground floor escaped the same fate as the other 4 individuals on the above two levels?

Were those 4 specifically targeted, was it as simple as those two students having their bedroom doors locked so they escaped being killed also or just pure good luck?

If the reporting is correct the other peculiar thing that I read in one article is that upon discovering one of the victims they called friends first believing they were simply unconscious which given they were stabbed you would have thought it was obvious something far more serious had occurred.

I can only assume that the blood stains were hidden under the bedding and hadn't leaked through.

Hard to imagine that one or both of these two female students would be responsible for 4 murders but until a better suspect comes along I'd still term them persons of interest.

[swoop42]

With a bit more internet snooping it looks like we have a decent suspect.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1651413498?t=3h43m4s

He is seen initially entering the view of the surveillance footage alongside two of the victims wearing a black cap and grey hoodie underneath a jacket (top left panel).

Over the next 10 minutes he hovers in the vicinity of the two women, has some small interaction and at approximately 3:53:30 quickly departs the scene after they leave the food truck in the opposite direction.

To me something feels a little off with his body language and at the very least you sense he's hanging around hoping for some meaningful interaction that never came from either of the two women.

Did he feel slighted and was that the trigger for the murders?

[think positive]

That’s a short fuse

[David]

Here's yet another of these female teacher / male student cases that seem to crop up from time to time:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/30/nsw-high-school-principal-investigated-historic-child-sexual-abuse-messages-found-students-facebook

[pietillidie]

The collection of things technically awry on Twitter seems to be growing by the day, which was of course expected:

https://mashable.com/article/twitter-bugs-broken

It's astonishing watching malignant narcississts wreck things, although there will be few tears for Twitter.

Anyone on Mastodon yet?

[Bucks5]

Even worse, Twitter has blocked 3rd party apps from accessing their APIs forcing everyone to use the crappy Twitter app.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/13/23553161/third-party-twitter-clients-apps-outage-twitterific-tweetbot

[pietillidie]

Is this the same Adani with Australian coal mines?

[David]

This is a strange story, though more for how it's being covered than for what actually happened:

https://au.sports.yahoo.com/no-one-perfect-nsw-mp-021733751.html

I think it's wrong that nude modelling and other kinds of sex work are still considered scandalous and potentially disqualifying lines of work for aspiring politicians, but the facts of the matter are that a) these photos were on the public record, consensually taken for those purposes and accessible to anyone with a copy of the magazine – it's not like someone's private text messages or sex tape was being leaked – and b) this is a preselection for an explicitly conservative political party with plenty of Christian grassroots members, where a former career like this, particularly for a right-wing 'family values' campaigner as Preston apparently now is, might lead to justifiable accusations of hypocrisy or be seen to reflect badly on a candidate's character. It's not like Poulos was passing the magazine around to colleagues and sniggering about it behind closed doors, which is basically how the story has been framed; instead, it was emailed out to voters as a political smear exercise. That's not necessarily any more morally defensible, but it's a different kettle of fish entirely.

Party preselection battles are and always have been a nasty business, and it's a well-known fact that any and every piece of dirt about candidates' personal lives will be carefully collated and distributed in order to discredit them. It's one reason why decent and normal people hardly ever enter politics, because they quite reasonably don't want to be put through that wringer. So I don't necessarily see why a nude modelling career would be considered off-limits when nothing else seems to be.

Another odd thing about the story is Perrotet's response, describing it as a "mistake" and saying "no one is perfect". That's the sort of thing you might say about, for example, Perrotet himself wearing a nazi uniform to a party as a twenty-year-old – a youthful brain-fade, or some such. Poulos's decision to share his rival's modelling photos, on the other hand, was clearly a calculating, ruthless and undoubtedly carefully strategised attempt to discredit her. He's right to apologise for it, because it's a shitty thing to do to someone. But this is hardly some clumsy accident; this is the kind of person he is, and he has to live with that.

[stui magpie]

It is interesting on several levels.

1. As you say, the photos were in the public domain, pubished in a magazine, with her consent.

2. He clearly bought them to people's attention when they were battling each other for pre-selection. "Leaking" doesn't really work in that context, but it was clearly an attempt to embarrass and undermine her.

3. That she was not only pre-selected but also elected to Parliament despite the photos is for mine a good reflection of the character of those doing the selection and also of the electorate which clearly didn't hold it against her.

4. As far as the "everyone makes mistakes", I'd say attempting to smear a rival like that isn't exactly a positive indication of his own character.

For a little context, she posed for the January 1980 edition of Penthouse, when she was 22 (she's now 61) using the pseudonym "Kelly Russell"