Weakness for Bleakness

Wow, what a week for the Liberal party. The Libs' relentless battle with their own sense of ideological identity is confusing, so we talk about it. We also talk about complete non-issue 'Insatiable', the sound and the fury surrounding it, and whether or not any of it is justified (basically not).

In headlines: Fraser Anning is a Nazi for the modern era, Charles Blackman has died, old mate Trumble's getting the hungry eyes from sunbathing-and-insect enthusiast Peter Dutton, and a Musk update! (he's sad :( ). 

Wow, what a week for the Liberal party. The Libs' relentless battle with their own sense of ideological identity is confusing, so we talk about it. We also talk about complete non-issue 'Insatiable', the sound and the fury surrounding it, and whether or not any of it is justified (basically not).

In headlines: Fraser Anning is a Nazi for the modern era, Charles Blackman has died, old mate Trumble's getting the hungry eyes from sunbathing-and-insect enthusiast Peter Dutton, and a Musk update! (he's sad :( ). 

Kieran is away so here it is - a special two-topic non-political episode where we try to make things more complicated than they need to be!

Kieran talks about storytelling in video games, specifically the From Software games Dark Souls and Bloodborne, atrocious nerds' favourite media to get insufferable about. And Darcy talks about comedy as the social conscience of the times and how that whole thing came to pass plus its different visages, from the alt-comedy stuff in 80s UK to now. Don't let that trick you into thinking the boys are funny though! Comedy is serious business.

The Big Question: What is a socialism? Darcy's frustrated by the implication that he's been avoiding taking a firm position, so he takes one and provides a barebones definition for his vision of socialism. Kieran appends to this a doomed attack on the concept of productivity.

In headlines, we talk about the racialisation of violent crime by Australian media, the character-assassination of the Gatwick Hotel, the Nine/Fairfax merger, and a Hot Hildebrand Take on the Super Saturday elections.

Shifting sands! Malcolm Turnbull has decided that he has to be a bit more like 2013-era Tony Abbott and Fairfax Media has decided that it needs to be more like 2008-era Malcolm Turnbull. Truly, are we not witnessing the march of progress?

And in headlines, we have a Musk Update; we have a vast governmental system of data collection and management pushed by the Liberal party, of course; we have news from Israel too bleak to make a joke about here; and we have the revelation that, according to the brains in Canberra, all Melbournians are racistly terrified of the fictional African gang scourge.

No time for our usual topic format this time - there are too many headlines! We got Liberal party infighting, renewable energy, prison villainy, Trump update, Brexit/Boris woes, a baffling child gang story, Daisy on Apu, and the piece de resistance; Elon Musk has melted down in the most satisfying, hilarious way possible - we run through the timeline of rescue dive/pedo-gate.

Opening audio courtesy of some tragic on Youtube.

On this week's episode, we discuss two ways in which the info-pipe is doing you wrong. First, Darcy walks us through the latest senator Leyonhjelm debacle and how the media keeps bouncing off the man's absurdity. Also, Kieran gets on his high horse to talk about the latest Apple ads and their abuse of Daniel Johnston's 'Story of an Artist'.

In headlines this week: Outsourcing gambling and NBN solutions to you, the atomised subject! Local papers are dying in the US and it might hasten the death of society at large! And monsters compete to try on Mandela's skin in a ghoulish opposite-day display of charitable spirit!

On this week's episode, we discuss two ways in which the info-pipe is doing you wrong. First, Darcy walks us through the latest senator Leyonhjelm debacle and how the media keeps bouncing off the man's absurdity. Also, Kieran gets on his high horse to talk about the latest Apple ads and their abuse of Daniel Johnston's 'Story of an Artist'.

In headlines this week: Outsourcing gambling and NBN solutions to you, the atomised subject! Local papers are dying in the US and it might hasten the death of society at large! And monsters compete to try on Mandela's skin in a ghoulish opposite-day display of charitable spirit!

Bleakness indeed! Kieran decides to use his topic slot to drop some omni-directional economic, environmental and existential misery on the podcast for no good reason, then Darcy gives us another Tiny Primer on government debt.

In headlines, we have the slow march of authoritarianism via anti-protest legislation; we have farmers, selfishly whipping Darcy into ceaseless apoplexy; we have the latest overture to GFC 2.0 in the form of the McDouble Mortgage; and we have the NBN, screwing up again, wow, what a surprise.

While we were trying to work out the logistics of remote recording to accommodate Darcy's illness this week, he said "I'll be back in a minute", then came back more than ten minutes later saying "I just had to vomit". We decided to postpone. Return next week, for more bleakness and hopefully a little less bodily weakness.