Weakness for Bleakness

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!

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.

Oh no! Einstein was a racist! We discuss the implications of the revelation that a German man in the 20s held racist opinions and the dangers of sacralising heroes, but it turns into a narcissistic contemplation of the ramifications of our own inevitable fame. Also, a little primer and debunk of the arse-backwards theory behind trickle-down economics.

And in headlines: We got a political witch hunt, only the witch is a monster, and real, and worth hunting, and Peter Dutton. We got the ABC privatisation vote cockup from the Liberal party peak council. We got more microparty farce courtesy of Clive Palmer and his gormless candidates. And we got Elon Musk throwing his workers into a thresher for the sake of promises he fails to deliver on.

 

What happens to art under socialism? There are scraps of murky conversation across the internet and a body of old theory, but people aren't talking about it a lot, so we do. Then we talk about co-ops, what they are, what they do, and how they might help industry to navigate late stage capitalism.

 

And in headlines: Victoria has socialists, the Libs have failed to launch their anti-charity sedition law Trojan horse, Paul Dacre's been hidden in the attic after several unchecked years of coating the kitchen walls in poo, and good news for s'wits everywhere, another rickety Elder Scrolls game is coming sometime in the next decade.

 

Bonus game: Through fatigue or incorrect word selection, Kieran wildly mis-judges at least three spans of time - see if you can spot them all!

It's all about crime, criminality, criminals and criminy this week, as seen through the lens of the Andrews government's "tough on crime" posturing.

 

And in headlines: recycling is futile, superannuation is impoverishing us, Melania is missing, and the ways in which pro-small business rhetoric from banks might just be an attempt to sell a million-dollar dress-ups costume.