Rubrica

Thanks to the intervention of the malignant orange turd, when the Belgian soccer team took to the field in their World Cup match against the USA, they had virtually 100% global support. "Today we are all Belgian", was a popular comment across the social media platforms. The whole unfortunate episode, however, raises some interesting points about political intervention in sport and when it is, and importantly, is not, appropriate. To recap: in the USA's match against Bosnia and Herzegovina two days earlier, US striker, Folarin Balogun, received a one-match suspension after stomping dangerously on the ankle of BH defender Tarik Muharemovic. The referee deemed Balogun's action to be "dangerous foul play" and issued the red card. Cartoon credit: Guy Venables The suspension made Balogun, considered to be the best player in the American line-up, ineligible to play in the final 16 match against Belgium.  Enter, uninvited, Donald Trump. A phone call was made to FIFA...

Jollof rice - not mine. I ate it before thinking to take a pic. I just cooked (and ate) jollof rice. It was delicious and I have added the recipe to my culinary repertoire. Jollof rice is a traditional Nigerian dish made with basmati rice, tomato, chili and a range of spices and it is mentioned repeatedly in Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's latest novel,  Dream Count .  This is not the first time I've read a book that mentions a certain dish and I've looked up the recipe and cooked it. I'm culinarily* curious, I enjoy good food and I also read widely, so it's inevitable that dishes I've never heard of, or never tasted, will be mentioned every now and then and I'll think, hmm, must try that.  Why do I do this? Yes, culinary curiosity has a lot to do with it - I like trying new things - but it's also got a lot to do with the role of food in connecting people and cultures. Indian writers, in particular, use food in their work to symbolise social structure and cult...

This morning's Sydney Morning Herald website featured six separate articles about Pauline Hanson. It's impossible these days to pick up a newspaper or open an online news site without seeing articles, many of them from renowned and respected political journalists and commentators, analysing and discussing Hanson's every utterance and speculating on how many seats One Nation will gain in the next election. Last year's burqua stunt that resulted in her suspension The commercial mainstream media loves Pauline. They fawn over her. She's a walking headline. The right-wing Murdochracy, of course, is championing her cause, but the others also know that she is a novelty who will sell papers. The old media adage, "if it bleeds, it leads", can be applied metaphorically to political reporting. She's loud, makes outrageous and controversial statements, engages in political stunts that no one in their right mind would touch, is openly corrupt and doesn't care w...

After two car accidents in this district within a couple of weeks, both of which resulted in people losing their lives, one local friend posted that despite a profusion of warning signs, camera surveillance and more and more road rules, these fatal accidents keep happening. Perhaps, she noted, authorities should be looking at the current rules and why they're not working, rather than imposing more laws. Fair call. And it got me wondering about signs.     Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (19 June 2026), journo Jo Stubbings took aim at the ludicrous number and nature of warning signs, including one at a lake warning of water (no, really!). She notes that warning signs, telling us what we can, can't and shouldn't do, are most prevalent anywhere that is owned or managed by a local council. There's a couple of things going on here.  The first is that local councils are shit scared of litigation - and with good reason. If a person is injured on council-owned property,...

 King George III was mad. At least, that was the diagnosis in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries when he was occupying the throne of Great Britain and its various colonies and territories around the world. Modern psychiatrists have suggested his "madness" was, in fact, more likely to have been related to bipolar disorder, but at the time he was just insane. Mad. Nuts. The king's erratic and unpredictable behaviour was causing concern to the parliament, his advisors and his family. But he was King, and there existed no mechanism for his removal due to insanity or an incapacity to undertake his duties as sovereign.  (To be fair, George and his wife, Queen Charlotte, had 15 children, which as far as I'm concerned would be enough to drive anyone bonkers. But still.) Eventually, the parliament bypassed the king and installed his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who ultimately became King George IV, as Regent. Which is to say, he effectively took control of the duties o...

 When the brainless orange dirigible and his psychopathic zionist sidekick started bombing Iran three weeks ago, petrol prices immediately spiked. And I mean immediately. It didn't take days for the changes to occur. Iranians were still shaking the dust out of their hair (not to mention burying 165 murdered schoolgirls) after the first missiles landed in Tehran and the oil companies were jacking up the price of petrol.  The petrol for which we had been paying around $1.78 per litre, overnight jumped to $1.98, then $2.19 and, well, you know the rest. But a related phenomenon also occurred. Hardware stores around the country reported that there had been a run on jerry cans. Locally here in Braidwood, the hardware store completely sold out of jerry cans by lunchtime on the first day of Trump and Netanyahu's illegal war. The big city hardware chains were reporting a similar trend.  The videoed footage of some greedy bastard at a servo in Sydney, filling up his 1000litre tank...