You can’t call me AI

I woke up this morning* to see that both Trump and Musk had posted A.I. videos of themselves as action heroes.

And I’m left wondering: Who the fuck is impressed by this shit?

How is it that two of the most powerful men in the world are so tragically insecure that they feel the need to do this? And how can millions of people still think they’re geniuses and not pathetic?

If you’re middle-aged and your life hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped, and it gives you a little confidence boost to paste your head onto the body of James Bond or an extra from Sparta, I get that. It’s mostly harmless.

But when you’re already more rich and powerful than the actual action heroes you’re pretending to be without having to do any real work, why is that still not enough? Why do they have to play digital dress-up? And why does a culture that considers personal success as the ultimate measure of human value let them get away with it?

I know some of you are going to file this under “haters gonna hate.” You know who you are. But let’s unpack that. I don’t hate them. If they weren’t destroying so many lives, I’d feel sorry for them.

I’m a creative, and have been since long before I realised it. I’m a writer, I’m a musician, I’m a composer. You don’t choose the pursuit, it chooses you.

To me, it would be the ultimate admission of lifelong defeat to have a machine make me look as cool as I’ve always wanted to be. And who would respect me for it if I did?

So the real question is: how does a mediocre, low self-esteem shitkicker like me end up with more self-respect than people who are rich and powerful enough to send the world into a spin on a tweet?

I’m not rich, famous, or powerful and never will be. All I have is the love and respect of those who mean the most to me. Can those guys in the A.I. videos say the same? I don’t think so.

 

* Ba-DOW-ba!

 

Yes Dave, you are an elite

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Yes Dave, you are an elite, and I’ll explain why. 

Firstly, I get where you’re coming from. You still talk like you left school at 12, you still look like the ‘after’ picture on an anti-drugs campaign, but you are an elite now. 

It’s a trap many comedians before you have fallen into. They start out talking about things like growing up in the suburbs, bad dates, their shitbox car, shift work… things lots of people can relate to. 

But if they’re not smart, once they have some success, they’ll keep talking about things that happen to them as if they happen to everyone else; things like hotel service, or air travel, or property taxes. 

Then, if they’re really unwise, they’ll blame their audience when the new material doesn’t land the way it used to, instead of doing what they are supposed to do by reading the room. 

And yes, I know you’re complaining about the government, which is always a rich seam for comedy. The difference is why you’re complaining. 

You could point out that one week’s unemployment benefit is equal to one night’s accommodation allowance for an MP, which they still get whether they spend the night in a hotel room, a share house, or a property owned by their spouse. That’s pretty hilarious, eh?

Or there’s the fact that we subsidise the extraction of minerals and energy when the companies that earn billions from doing it pay bugger all in tax. What’s all that about?

But capital gains tax? Really, Dave? You think the punters are going to come with you on property values? 

You may still talk like a bogan but what you’re saying sounds like it would come from Gerry Harvey - and you can take that any way you like. As a professional, you ought to know what Aussies can spot a poser a mile away, and that’s what you’ve become.

I remember 20 years ago there was a show called The Glasshouse. There was a bloke on there who would have ripped into anyone with the temerity to complain about his lot when he owned more houses than he could live in. It probably would have started with, “Ooh, I’m not happy!” 

But hey, things change, right?

Well, maybe they have for you. And good on you for it. You worked hard, you took that Channel 10 cash for all it was worth, you invested it wisely, good for you! 

That doesn’t mean the rest of us shitkickers - ie your audience - aren’t still wondering if we’re ever going to be able to own one property. To live in! Ever! 

So yes Dave, you’re an elite now. And no-one is saying there’s anything wrong with that. You were born bogan and now you’re an elite. Well done, you! If you’re comfortable with who you are, just own it. If you’re not, then do something about it. 

Oh, by the way, the “typical Aussie bloke,” (as your website describes you) doesn’t usually pose for selfies with the opposition leader while having coffee. Elites do.  

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Confessions of a record store addict

Despite appearances, I am not a vinyl snob. To my ear, CDs sound just as good if they are tastefully mastered. Blu-ray audio is even better!

I’ve been checking in at my local music retailer every day since Thursday to see if they had Paul McCartney’s new album The Boys of Dungeon Lane in. On Friday, they told me they had two copies on the way. On Saturday it was there. 

But they only had it on vinyl. 

Something you need to know for context is that I live in a regional town which until JB Hifi opened in town six months ago, hadn’t had a record store for 15 years. When New came out, I drove an hour each way to buy it on release day. (Actually, two days earlier because the store didn’t respect release day embargoes and would put stock in the racks as soon as it arrived.)

As an aside, it’s interesting to note the difference between the CD and the vinyl racks. The vinyl racks say, “You’re a serious music fan who knows their stuff.” The CD racks say, “You’re a basic bitch for whom progress stopped with the 20th century, iPhone or not.”

If they’d had it on CD, I would have happily bought it but now I was faced with a dilemma. Do I wait for the CD to come in, or do I spend 3 times as much on the LP just for the joy of buying it out of the rack in my home town as close as possible to release day?

Well, you know the answer. And yes, I’ve checked my privilege and I’m grateful for it. 

But this led me to wonder if I’m going to buy it on CD too for the convenience, and I probably am. 

Then I remembered that if recent history is anything to go by, there will be a special expanded edition released in six months or so and I can have the best of both worlds.

Some people complain about being expected to buy the album twice for the extra material but having thought about it, I really don’t have a problem with it. 

You see, 20 odd years ago, there were physical singles. 

Any album would have three or four singles released off it. Each of these singles would have at least two, possibly three or four, additional tracks not on the album. 

And we hardcore fans would buy them all because we wanted everything. All together, these singles would cost as much as another copy of the album. 

So what’s the difference? Only less getting up to change the record or CD. 

The one where I agree with Mike Johnson

The speaker of the US House of Representatives has copped some flak recently for suggesting the current salary for members of Congress is not enough for them to support their families, and they should perhaps be allowed to supplement their income by trading stocks.

Stay with me here, but I think he makes a fair point.

If Speaker Johnson is saying that people who work long hours in high pressure jobs deserve to be remunerated in a way that covers their expenses, then I agree wholeheartedly. 

In fact, I’ve been saying that for 25 years. Seventeen years is far too long to go without a cost-of-living pay rise, even for federal representatives.

What I don’t understand is why Speaker Johnson, as a conservative MAGA Republican, does not apply established conservative principles to the problem he has identified.

American conservative economic theory assumes that every individual is wholly and solely responsible for their own circumstances. It is not the government’s place to help them out, be it through education, health care, mandatory minimum wages, or bending the laws in insider trading.

We all know the Republican answer for people who struggle to make ends meet. Say them along with me:

• Get a second job. Or a third one*. Sleep is for the weak and, as we have already established, everyone deserves their lot in life. So if you’re weak, stop being weak. There you go. Fixed!

• Educate yourself so as to get a better paying job. If you don’t have time for that with the three jobs you’re now working, you just have to organise your life better.

• Bring a flask of coffee to work instead of stopping in at Starbucks every morning. You’ll have that house deposit saved in no time**.

• Stop buying the fancy soda.

• Give up the avocado toast brunches.

• Cancel your streaming services and watch free-to-air TV or YouTube instead.

• Take the bus.

There you go, Mike! All fixed. You’re welcome.

…unless you want to tell me that those are all meaningless platitudes which have no basis in the real world.

* As if Congresspeople don’t already have second and third jobs.

** A bit over 19 years at $30 a week for a 10% deposit on a $300,000 home at today’s prices.

Reason #3,547: It’s a cult!

The beauty of mathematics is there will always be a single correct answer, and everything else is WRONG. 

No room for interpretation; no “it depends on what you mean by…” One right answer and nothing else.

Say what you like about Bobby Kennedy Jr, Mehmet Oz and Howard Lutnick. I certainly do. None of them are actually stupid.

 

RFK Jr: "A Democratic senator claimed it's mathematically impossible to have a drug drop by 600%. I said, 'Well, if the drug was $100 and it raises to $600, that would be a 600% rise. If it drops from $600 to $100, that's a 600% savings.'" Trump: "Right"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 24, 2026 at 5:28 AM

And yet look at Lutnick and Oz nodding along as Kennedy – a lawyer by trade, where you can get any answer you want depending on how you ask the question – presents a mathematical argument that wouldn’t pass muster with a 6^th grader, much less your bank manager. Try it out if you don’t believe me.

They all know it’s stupid but they dutifully agree because the god king must not be shown to be wrong.

Tell me again it’s not a cult. 

Update:

The brilliant Stonekettle, Jim Wright, goes further, taking us into Godwin territory and with good reason.

There is a scene in The West Wing (and yes, I KNOW it’s a fantasy – that’s why I like it!) where Bartlett and his chief of staff test a new staffer by telling him something they know is untrue to see if he has the courage to speak truth to power and tell the president he is wrong.

The staffer passes the test. Yes, I told you it’s a fantasy.

If the Trump administration had the wit to apply such a test, the staffer would surely have been fired.

This is important because if the administration is filled with people who don’t have the backbone to correct the president about their own frigging shoe size, if they volunteer to invent a bullshit branch of mathematics as justification for their leader pulling a number out of his arse, who is going to tell him that his justification for attacking Iran was a fever dream? Who is going to tell him his tariffs and wars have led to higher prices, not lower? Who is going to tell him the only golden age America is seeing right now is Trump’s ongoing bedazzling of the White House?

It’s not as if this has all started recently. This is the man who told us in 2020 that Covid would disappear like, and this is a direct quote, a miracle. This is the man who suggested disinfectant or ultra violet light could be applied internally to treat Covid. And people still took him seriously.

The difference then was that there were still a few serious people in the US government who were willing to say it straight. That forced him to save face by claiming he was joking. Because a global pandemic is a big joke, isn’t it? I laughed. Did you?

If he did it today, tomorrow he would push Kennedy and Oz up to the podium to give a made up medical reason why injecting Lysol is just fine. And they would do it even though at least one of them knows it’s bullshit.

Despite some recent pushback from his base, there are still more than enough people willing to believe whatever the MAGA king says despite the evidence of their own eyes and lives. If you disagree and present your reasoning, they will just spew out some waffle about the woke left and legacy media.

 

We are not getting close to claiming the president’s Big Beautiful New Suit is invisible to those not smart enough to see it. We’re way beyond it.

If you have to turn off the rational thinking part of your brain in order for your politics to make sense, you’re doing both wrong.

Jim Wright’s comparison with the last days of the führer is a valid one, because those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.  

 

 

 

The line you won’t cross

When the current US president tried to Trumpsplain Catholicism to, um, the Pope(!) I commented on one post that he has officially entered his Henry VIII phase. 

Well, I was wrong.

You see, when Henry VIII had a beef with the Vatican, his response was ‘Fuck you, I’M the Pope now!’

Within hours, Trump has upped the ante to ‘Fuck you, I’m JESUS now!’ 

And to their great credit, his base are not happy about it.

A lot of people who chose to be on the right side of history from the beginning and follow the Jesus parts in the Bible are looking at the blowback from MAGAworld and saying, “Really? Of all the fundamentally un-Christian and blasphemous behaviour, that’s the line you won’t cross?”

It’s a fair comment but I don’t mind. I say it’s okay to do the right thing for the wrong reason. It would be better to do the right thing for the right reason, but so long as you’re doing the right thing, that’s progress and I welcome it.

If Trump has done anything for the world, it’s to show us exactly where everyone’s line in the sand is.

Be it sexual assault, bankrupting businesses, palling around with a known pdf, felony fraud (x34), refusing to accept the results of a free and fair election, inciting his mob to trash the capitol, stealing classified documents, calling journalists enemies of the state, filling the Cabinet with his favourite television personalities, belligerent expansionism, insulting allies, tantrums over bad press, building monuments to himself, hiring untrained goons who shoot citizens in the streets, starting a new foreign regime-change war after running on a platform of exactly not that, higher fuel prices, or sharing A.I. slop portraying himself as a Christ-like figure…

This will be Trump’s true legacy. Everyone alive from 2016 onwards will be partly defined by when and how they realised he’s a second-rate charlatan. Or if they did at all.

This time, it isn’t just a token expression of disapproval. Between this and the war, many of his supporters are openly wondering whether they’ve been conned, and questioning whether they ever should have believed him against all observable reality. This is fine. Some are even wondering if he’s the Anti-Christ.

And there will no doubt be others who see this as the god king’s genius at 40-dimensional chess. For sure, this is all part of the administration flooding the zone because – as I will expand upon in a future post – stupidity is easier to process than evil.

To those who are belatedly realising it, no shame, no judgement. Welcome back to reality.

All I ask is that you learn from this experience and act on what you’ve learnt.

 

And THIS is why you don’t let a 6x bankrupt run a country

 

Think the bankruptcies and the idiocy over attacking Iran aren’t connected?

Well, let’s think it through…

Okay, so the bankruptcies were technically legal and he used the system to his advantage so that makes him smart.

Whatever. That’s not the point.

The point is this is a man who is used to having someone else come in and clean up the mess he’s made while he wipes the slate clean and merrily staggers on to his next inevitable fuckup.

Look at his history. You know it’s true.

In fact, it’s this very appalling lack of consequences for decades of hubristic malfeasance that makes him a hero to many.

Turns out international relations don’t work that way. Who knew?

 

As that well-known anti-American radical leftist Colin “I’m not reading this, it’s bullshit” Powell said, You break it, you own it.

You wouldn’t drive your car into someone’s house and then expect them to fix the damage for you. Mind you, this numb nut possibly would.

My suggestion to the US administration is to take the advice of one of MAGA’s favourite thinkers: Clean your room!