wednesday newstrip

DoNuts T.®ump has rejected Iran’s proposed ceasefire & expects to resume bombing after the November midterm elections, according to US officials · engineers alter magnetism by shaping & shrinking light · Angelina Jolie sells LA compound after signaling US exit · White House reinstates access to CNN, MS NOW & Politico following judge's order but then blocks CNN from Air Force One in latest escalation with news media · Manchester City have found themselves in hot water following reports suggesting the club has been found guilty of all but one of the 115 charges relating to financial breaches in the Premier League · OpenAI said Friday that its AI agents had gained access to private images belong to ChatGPT users & posted them online, the latest in a string of alarming incidents in which technology developed inside leading AI labs has gone rogue & acted in unintended ways · US Army Reserve headquarters sent an internal message last week asking its commands whether they could hand six types of units over to Southern Command, which oversees American forces in Latin America & the Caribbean, CBS News reports. The memo does not mention Cuba, but multiple US officials said the planning is aimed squarely at that island.

eggsistential

He confused paltry with poultry;
was surprised when he went

looking for chickens in the fields &
found only a few scrawny weeds.

wednesday newstrip

Former NFL star’s penis lawsuit against influencer ex-wife thrown out, ruled a 'legitimate public concern' · DoNuts T.®ump says he has banned CNN, MS NOW, & Politico from White House over 'fake news' & later added there was 'something wrong with a country that allows people to write purposely negative stories' · investigation reveals Chinese 'smart sex toy' company supplied microelectronics to Russia · RFK Jr tells anti-vaxxers he is investigating 'chemtrails' · Aussie women predicted to live until nearly 90 by 2066 · the Iran war has cost American taxpayers $236 million per day throughout the first five months of the conflict · Gemini hacked three companies in first known breakout by Google's AI · Australian music legend John Farnham’s health deteriorates, singer unable to attend Melbourne tribute.

recently at Series Magritte

Le Paysage de Baucis


I have discovered how to paint the emptiness between a hat 
& a man’s suit without suggesting ‘the invisible man.’ 
— René Magritte, letter to André Bosmans, 19 February 1966
Let's face it, the face isn't
there. Well, not completely.
The major aspects — eyes,
nose, lips — proportionate,
in place, posed & poised 
between a starched collar & 
a hat — no, not the usual 
bowler but a fedora this 
time around. Nothing there
to suggest the mythic con-
nection that the title implies
except perhaps disguise. Un-
less the emptiness of the suit
might be intended to conjure 
up the image of a landscape 
after a major flood has swept 
everything away. Which may
be a way to bring the myth be-
hind the title into the picture, 
though it won't be included in
this poem. Instead, a reference: 
Ovid, The Methamorphoses, Book
VIII, lines 611 through to 724.

wednesday newstrip

The real toll of 9/11 are the 9224 people who have died & the more than 150,000 police officers, recovery workers, plus residents & workers in the surrounding neighborhood who have come down with illnesses since the attack on the Twin Towers · DoNuts T.®ump claims that he "was building a big building in New York & took the whole crew down there right after this happened & they had no hesitation (in joining the rescue effort). Everybody went down with me." PolitiFact worked to fact-check his claims, & were unable to verify them · OpenAI’s post-mortem after one of its artificial intelligence models broke out of its testing environment & hacked another company described the hack as a "warning shot”, adding that without proper safeguards, highly capable AI agents are now able to “work around technical controls, collaborate through unapproved channels, & take dangerous actions that no human directed" · DoNuts T.®ump says all American citizens will receive $US5,000 if the Republicans win the upcoming midterm elections. He did not say how the money would be paid or where it would come from, but said it would be called the "T.®ump dividend" · DC Reflecting Pool now drawing tourists to see the repair effort on an 'unmitigated mess' · South Park creators say they will rename the show 'South America' in apparent dig at YouKnowWho.

From the archives

9/13

This written for the future, 
something to look back on, to see 
what my thoughts were
at the time. A commentary on what
is now before me, how you feast
on the dead, play replay after replay,
from different angles, rewritten
as choreography, a Hollywood blockbuster
with the producers wanting to make sure
the audience gets its money’s worth. It is 
what you’ve come to expect; but most
movies are cleaner, have stars that are
paid more for their one performance
than this whole episode would have cost
to carry out. Think on it. Brood on the
implications of what you’ve learnt
in the two days since. The stand-in pilots
had work visas, lived next door,
supported themselves & contributed to
the economy of the country 
they have just put on notice. The airlines 
paid for & provided the bombs. 
The extras paid for their own parts. 
There was no need for rehearsal.


9/13/01
Originally published in the Muse Apprentice Guild
Included in Sun Moon's Mother

wednesday newstrip

Africa bigger, US smaller as UN votes to adopt a new world map to replace Mercator. US the only country to vote against it · DoNuts T.®ump has threatened to shut America’s doors to most of the world’s goods to force his own central bank to lower interest rates · Australian housing affordability hits lowest rate on record despite recent falls in property prices · Aryna Sabalenka, the four-time major winner, halted play in the first set of her third round match in the US Open to complain about the smell of cannabis wafting onto court · the Justice Department accidentally stopped working with Canada after a division chief misunderstood instructions to reschedule a meeting & sent out an email with the subject line, "Pause on Canada", The Wall Street Journal reported · ICE's recruitment practices attract certain types of candidates, with DHS doing minimal vetting. The agency's recruitment materials have been found to use language & imagery that appeal to extremist ideologies · the widow of an airman killed on a combat mission in the Middle East has shared her outrage after it took a viral social media post to get issues related to her husband's benefits & basic pay months resolved. She was told by a military officer assigned to support her after her husband’s death that he was ineligible for those benefits because “we were not at war” · DJ Vancealot uses the same playbook saying "I wouldn’t call it a war" even as strikes continue · President T.®ump said the conflict, which has resulted in the deaths of 18 US service members & a spike in global energy prices, is “small potatoes”.

The future of creative writing?

wednesday newstrip

Alarm swept the Kennedy Center's defenders hours before a hearing to consider a threat by President DoNuts T.®ump's board to tear down the center if his name was not added to the building · a man who smashed his head through the windscreen of an ambulance while naked on a public street in Western Australia's Goldfields has been handed a suspended sentence & $100 fine · T.®ump says the US doesn’t need Canada. The economy says otherwise · Meta, the corporation founded by Mark Zuckerberg that includes Facebook & Instagram, reached an agreement with 47 states & the District of Columbia to pay nearly $18 billion in damages for harms caused by its social networks · President DoNuts T.®ump's Department of Education (DOE) has been forced to delete a social post in which it appeared to inadvertently compare his administration to Nazi Germany · the Himalayan flash floods that killed at least 489 people & left over 900 missing across Nepal & Tibet were not triggered by an earthquake, contrary to initial reports, but by a glacier collapse so violent that it produced its own seismic signal, the United States Geological Survey said · President DoNuts T.®ump reportedly plans to skip a 9/11 commemoration in Manhattan after he was barred from delivering a speech.