Warning Signs: A Sinking Heart
You want to know? You want to know the truth of the story? You want to know your own place in it? Let me at him. He was like the Matrix man dodging bullets, an untrustworthy sea, a nature, a species, that wanted to kill each other. That did not care for each other. And yet we were surrounded by love, we love you, that's what they told him, you are not alone, but whether it was true or not, whether the forest cathedrals and the wild, lonely, spectacular outposts along the coast held any more depth than visual reality, who could say? He could say.
There was, then, in this poisoned country, sold off to the highest bidder, with a giant dysfunctional bureaucracy and self serving politicians with almost no credibility, with the price of fuel and doing business rising inexorably, day by day, and I think you should go home and stay there, while the marshes are out, while the birds take off in the dark reaches of lakes and ponds, when all is lost and heard and commented on, and there was no peace, no privacy, no room to move. When, that military mindset, they sought to control everything.
He had been doing happy local stories, battles with developers, a community garden full of excitable, and sweet, children, how innocent, how nice, this next generation as he looked on at a vast river flowing beneath him, complex dreams, derelict buildings, a kind of Mardi Gras Party with lots of psilocybin, a randiness with someone he didn't really want to have sex with, and stepping through those derelict buildings to a yard, a large yard, where the prisoners were kept, and the soldiers were armed and ready. And then the shooting started, the executions, as if they were in Cambodia in the worst of times, just mowed down, those prisoners he had been talking to only moments before.
This craven life, this craven moment in time, where evil really did stalk the globe and words failed us, or failed to provide the full picture. For it was beyond the scope of any one human, even the best and the brightest.
He was experimenting with Grok, the new Elon Musk AI to rival Chat GPT. It's more intelligent, better informed, and as he says, not woke. And it surveys a great deal of data. Fascinating to watch. A fascinating time to be alive.
And he couldn't help but replay that execution scene through his head. Just as the dismembered, badly tortured young American soldier, his shock still vivid in those walls and alleys, haunted him. Just as these intense moments did imprint on time, and in the fabric of things. And out there, a deep dysfunction, a government leading the country into chaos, and manifest, as the problems mounted. A housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, a crisis in faith and confidence. And there were those kids, laughing in delight at their secret garden.
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It has been a big week for the energy transition cheerleading industry.
Three big renewable projects were announced or started amid sunbursts of optimism and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese capped it off by spruiking “A Future Made in Australia”, which was not only the title of his speech, but will actually be the name of an Act of Parliament, designed to compete with America’s cunningly named Inflation Reduction Act.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
The celebrated Australian artist’s Sunlight at the Camp, which was not seen in public for 130 years, surpasses expectations
Australian Associated Press
Wed 17 Apr 2024 14.28 BST
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A masterpiece by Australian impressionist Arthur Streeton not seen by the public for 130 years has beaten expectations to sell for more than $1.875m.
The 1894 oil painting Sunlight at the Camp went on show in Melbourne earlier in April ahead of an auction in Sydney on Wednesday, when it was expected to fetch up to $1.5m.
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Parents of the teenage boy who allegedly stabbed clergymen at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Sydney on Monday have said their son has not been radicalised.
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