Game of thugs

Hayden Ballantyne offers an interesting insight into the tactics of a football thug (How to be a footy pest, 25 April). Most important, he writes, is to not get caught.

His style of play is, he writes, to annoy players on the other team. And when another player annoys him in return, Ballantyne brags that he won the exchange -- by belting the other player.

This thug seems to enjoy physical confrontation. Like every other bully, he is extra tough when he has his bigger bully-boy "friends" to back him up. And like other sociopaths, he believes that he is unfairly targetted by the people who manage the rules of the game.

Nick Lethbridge  /  consulting dexitroboper
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"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." … Isaac Bashevis Singer
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28apr20: The above rant was published in The West. Then -- there is a letter in reply! I'm both pleased -- and embarrassed. In justification... the original article (by Ballantyne) made me shudder. If that is an acceptable attitude, football is far too nasty. For me, anyway.

   

food for thought

Crikey! What was it our soldiers fought for? Certainly not Anzac cookies. The recipe in today's paper should be for Anzac biscuits. Or simply Anzacs. Strewth, we're not bloody Septics.

covidUnemployed

"Let's use this time to grow." It's the slogan on a large ad, accompanied by a picture of a man working -- at home -- on his laptop. So?

It's an ad for Ashley & Martin. Very clever :-) An entertaining ad in a time when their business may be suffering.

Are you covidUnemployed? What business are you currently in?

Our rubbish is still collected each week. Mail is delivered. Water, power & gas supplies are uninterrupted. All of these are essential services. Things which we "need".

Food shops are open. Cafes and restaurants are closed. We "need" food, we only "want" to have our food served with the added atmosphere of a crowded restaurant or cafe. The hospitality industry is suffering. Fashion is out of fashion. We get by without beauticians and barbers.

Are you unemployed because your company satisfies a "want" rather than a "need"?

If you get the choice, work to satisfy a "need" rather than a "want". The work is just as satisfying. The future will be more certain.

Nick Lethbridge  /  consulting dexitroboper
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"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." … Isaac Bashevis Singer
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it all becomes clear

First up I have to state my position: I like Donald Trump. Doesn't mean that I agree with him. He's the President that America wants and deserves. He's better that the alternatives. He's far better than our own Clive "the Trump-alike" Palmer. Still...

I have a theory:

He is really a Deepfake character. "Deepfakes (a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake" ) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepfake, April 2020)

Trump is an anonymous actor with the Trump face superimposed. The face was created by GAN, generative adversarial network (https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/). On a day when random variables were particularly unfortunate.

Trumps speeches are written by a politicised version of https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/. His tweets are sent directly from a variant of https://theselyricsdonotexist.com/ -- the Rap version. Try, for example, a topic of "coronavirus".

Finally, it all becomes clear.

I almost typed, It all makes sense... but no, it's politics, no sense involved.

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway." … per Ginger Meggs
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Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

Re: photo sharing

Actually, I think there are captions... the caption for that one is "Of course walking home alone was always uphill", yes?

I think possibly the issue, which did trick me the first time, is that you have to click on the photo so that it brings it up properly.  The first screen is the 'thumbnails', which is a bit misleading because, since there's only one, it's huge.

When you click on the photo itself, it moves it to the centre and then the caption appears in the bottom-left.

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 7:56 PM Nick Lethbridge <nickleth@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm trying to share some photos -- so that Mum can share them with friends -- now that actual meetings are out of fashion. fyi here are the photos on Google Photos:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/QpN6Ti4RkXzkrWv37

Trouble is -- there are no captions. So whoever looks at them has no idea why the photo is (to me!) interesting. I've added "info" for each photo but it's not obvious that the info is there. (If it's even possible to see it.)

==> Do you know any package that allows photo sharing -- with obvious captions?

I tried Instagram, couldn't see any option to actually load a photo. I tried Flickr, no captions but it did come with a virus. I'm reluctant to try Facebook since I could never understand it...

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

hmmm... I may go back to a Powerpoint slide show, stored on Dropbox or Drive...

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"Metaphors be with you" … Ginger Meggs
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Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

--

******
Tim

so *that's* the truth!

I've finally and suddenly realised: 

The person we know as "Donald Trump" is really an actor using Deep Fake. The "Donald Trump" face was created by https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/, possibly after a bad day of random variables. And all of his speeches are written by a variant of https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/

Suddenly, it all makes sense!

Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper

...        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved

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"Metaphors be with you" … Ginger Meggs
===

Dying for you to read my blog, at https: // notdotdeaddotyet .blogspot. com. au/ :-)

airlines, no competition

Just before the corona closedown we flew from Perth to New Zealand and back. We flew across Australia with Qantas and back with Air New Zealand.

Qantas crushed us into seats where my knees were pressed into the seat in front. No space to move. No comfort. Sardines longing to escape.

Air New Zealand provided knee room. Footrests. Spacious comfort.

Qantas are worried that Air New Zealand may move into domestic Australian flights.

Bring it on, I say.

Nick Lethbridge  /  consulting dexitroboper
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"We must believe in free will -- we have no other choice." … Isaac Bashevis Singer
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