And it's come to this

Who the fuck d'ya think I am? Huggy Bear?

There are 43 posts tagged: Hasmyback Machine

The Not-So-Great Firewall
30 December 2024

I can't recall how I got there, but this morning I found myself reading a BBC News article from 2017. It concerns a Chinese man who'd been jailed for helping the inmates of President Pooh's fetid shithole gain access to the world out side the Great Firewall, courtesy of VPN programmes. The article included an explanation of what VPNs are and why they might be used. So far, so what? shrug

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Meathead
1 October 2024

It seems that allowing yourself to be used as a punching bag for money is not a path to long-term good health. Or much money either, at least not if you're a woman; or just don't draw the crowds, I guess. Whatever. (shrug)

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Hasmyback Machine
16 September 2024

In days of yore, scribes set down what became the historical record on pages, bound into books, housed in libraries. And thus, we understand some of what happened way back then. At least according to those who did the recording, and those who paid them to do it. As the saying goes, history is written by the victors; but also those with the money.

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Liking lakes
18 August 2024

The BBC seems to have its own correspondent for the Swiss city of Geneva. And she likes lakes. Which is just as well, because Switzerland has quite a lot of them.

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Monday lunchtime
29 July 2024

A man stabbed several people including children in Southport, Merseyside, in what police are describing as a major incident.

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Implied not stated
16 July 2024

Between his recent disastrous debate performance and the attempt on his opponent's life, President 'Pa said during a private donor call that It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye. Strictly speaking, it doesn't make much sense, as one doesn't put someone in a bullseye per se; figuratively speaking, one puts them in the crosshairs or places a bullseye on them. But, semantic quibbling aside, what makes even less sense is the subsequent accusations of him having called for the assassination attempt.

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The sorry ©rapper
20 May 2024

Rapper Sean Diddy Combs has apologised, after he was caught on CCTV physically attacking an ex-girlfriend in 2016.

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Arrogant pollie vs 'arrogant billionaire'
23 April 2024

I have in the past expressed my antipathy for Elon Musk as a filthy-rich twat who makes ugly electric vehicles and interferes in the politics of nation states. But I've warmed to him in his new role as defender of free speech and pricker of hubris. And none so much as him going in to bat against Australia's government and eSafety Commissioner over their nanny state censorship.

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Ranking officer
19 April 2024

On the death of Kenya's military chief, Gen. Francis Omondi Ogolla, in a military helicopter crash, the BBC's newshounds went on to observe that:

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Club Tropicana drinks weren't free
8 April 2024

After almost seventy years, the Tropicana, one of Las Vegas' iconic casino hotels has closed its doors. And one of the more interesting features on the BBC's magazine side of late is Tony Perrottet's exploration of Sin City's seedy past. It's only a little more than 1400 words, to cover almost eighty years of history of gangsters, gambling, and divorce. If it were much longer though, I probably wouldn't've got through it all. (shrug)

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The duplicator
3 February 2024

The BBC's scribes are challenged by the concept of cut/- and copy/paste. It's a fairly simple editorial task, but the hacks at Beeb Towers often find themselves repeating themselves, either verbatim or in essence. I guess that, in the race to publish, some corners have to be cut. Corners like rechecking your work before pressing the CMS's publish button, for example.

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Nom nom nom
24 January 2024

Another BBC report on the Oscars' nominations brings to our attention, yet again, that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were cruelly snubbed for their work on Barbie where it matters most, the big noms that recieve the goodie bag. And its entertainment reporter, Steven I'm really a feminist, please can I have a shag? McIntosh, is all over the inequality. Or inequity. Or PaTriArchY aNd MisOGyNy™. Or whatever the hell.

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The air that I breathe
23 January 2024

Reporting on a novel method of execution, which has been authorised for use by an Alabaman correctional facility in order to dispatch a death row inmate, the BBC's Tom Bateman affords me the opportunity to be a smart-arse, and earn petty points exposing unchecked misinformation at the corporation.

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Andre Braugher: 'im gone…too soon
13 December 2023

Andre Braugher has died too young, at the age of only 61. In my opinion, his deadpan portrayal of grammatically-punctilious Captain Raymond Holt was the standout character performance in Brooklyn Nine-Nine; in itself no mean feat.

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Unimaginative reimagination
15 August 2023

As Disney's reimagining of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, now just Snow White, comes under criticism for tokenised race-swapping of the titular heroine; re-characterisation of the dwarves; rewriting the story for modern audiences; and Rachel Zegler running her mouth in interviews, the BBC's very own entertainment and arts reporter, Emma Saunders asks: Has the fairy tale already gone sour?

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Breaking story…but will it be updated? (thinking)
9 August 2023

Breaking news on migrants' deaths in the Mediterranean is heralded on the BBC's home page, and flagged accordingly on the article page. Interestingly enough though, the article doesn't conclude with a footnote that it's a developing news story, and will be updated.

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Strike two!
14 July 2023

Hollyweird's luvvies are restless. Again. And this time it's not #MeToo, or climate change, or any of that shit. This is a far more noble cause. This is about money dahling!

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ALT(ernative)
26 June 2023

In web code, HTML, objects on the page are represented by tags which have attributes that describe the object and its position. An image is represented with the IMG tag, the ALT attribute of which offers a description of the image. It's an accessibility feature; a visual placeholder for devices that cannot display images, or an audible cue to users who cannot see them. It may be something as simple as woman looking at tablet.

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Stealth edits: only if no one's watching
13 June 2023

A journalist working for Radio New Zealand has been caught out editing articles to make them favourable to Russia. The media outlet's chief executive has condemned the changes as pro-Kremlin garbage, describing his reaction to the incident: It is so disappointing. I'm gutted. It's painful. It's shocking. I think he's quite upset, just reading between the lines.

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Bury the lead
19 May 2023

Breaking news often requires updating. That's a given. Broken news may also be updated; stealthily in the case of the world's most trusted international news broadcaster™. That's also a given.

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Who could have foreseen it?
8 May 2023

A tourist boat in India left at least twenty-two of its around fifty passengers dead when it capsized at night. The double-decker boat was twofold over its capacity.

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All aboard the transtrain
16 April 2023

Rebecca Williams comes in from Austin Journal of Invitro [sic] Fertilization. I may know little about the journal's subject area, but I do know that invitro is in vitro. You'd think that a senior editor would get this shit right.* (SMH)

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0s and 1s
30 March 2023

I don't know why this qualifies for BBC Worklife per se, other than zoomers have to work like the rest of us, I guess; but Jessica Klein seeks to educate us as to How young people are shaking off gender binaries. The relevance of zoomers to work life, I can understand; their gender binarism is another matter entirely. Unless these attitudes are having an impact on the provision of toilet facilities in the workplace. (confused)

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Springtime for Hateler
6 March 2023

Marianna Spring is the BBC's disinformation and social media correspondent. Her role is to seek out problems on teh soshull meejah and whinge about them. This time, it's about hurt fee-fees on Twitter, particularly hers. First World problems, huh? (snowflake)

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Poohan
1 March 2023

Whether the WuFlu originated from wildlife at a market or a laboratory is probably a moot point to most people. We know it originated somewhere in Wuhan, there's a clue in the name, and that's all that really matters.

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Cripes! Trigger warning, or false advertising?
26 February 2023

Reporting on the murder trial of a South Carolinian lawyer, Holly Honderich prefaces her filing with this warning:

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A sting in the tale
27 January 2023

Five black police officers are under investigation for the death of a black motorist in Memphis, TN. Race agitator and grifter, Rev. Al Sharpton, claimed: I do not believe these five black police officers would have done this had he been a young white man.

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What a difference a Dey makes
20 December 2022

Irmgard Furchner has been brought to justice and sentenced to a two-year suspended jail term, for complicity in war crimes during WWII. In her role as a typist at Stutthof concentration camp, she may have been aware of atrocities when she saw papers in the office, or looked out of the window. Yet, as a teenaged young woman, she didn't rise up against the might of the Nazi death machine.

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Health warning…or clever marketing?
16 December 2022

It's a story that thankfully doesn't require mathematical dexterity, as Tiffanie Turnbull regales us over toxic spinach being sold in Australian Costco stores. The Riviera Farms baby spinach appears to have been contaminated with a weed that induces hallucinations.

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A promise of things to come
14 December 2022

While pimping Babylon—an upcoming story of Hollywood's licentious past—on behalf of BBC Culture, Christina Newland teases the truth about the scandals of the silent film era. Except I'm not sure whether she actually reveals the true truth, or just that as portrayed in the film, because she may not have written it yet. And, even if she has, we'll have to wait until the end of next week for it to go live. Again.

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Latin(x)
24 November 2022

Diane Bernard is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. She writes for the Washington Post and NPR, among other mainstream media outlets. So, I guess she could be considered to be progressive and right on.

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Hush, not hushed
8 November 2022

A Nigerian scammer, who goes under the Instagram name of Hushpuppi, has been sentenced by a Los Angeles court to 135 months in jail for international fraud. He also received a fine of $1,732,841, which seems a curiously precise amount. But that's the law for you, I guess.

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Pope porn
26 October 2022

Pope Francis has recognised the almost inevitable: nuns and priests are human. And those who aren't taking out their frustrations on choir boys and orphans, are taking it out on themselves. While viewing pornography online, that is.

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Baby steps
25 October 2022

When going back to Rishi Sunak's one-sided leadership victory over Penny Mordaunt, I almost fell off my chair when I noticed this:

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Bookish
11 October 2022

My, doesn't time fly when you're having fun? Another quarter of a year, another best-books-of-the-year-so-far list, courtesy of those BBC Culture vultures Rebecca Laurence and Lindsay Baker.

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The beer necessities
22 September 2022

A pile-up involving five trailer trucks on I-75 in Florida, resulted in the closure of the highway when one of the trucks spilled its cargo of thousands of beer cans.

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Not so manly
26 July 2022

Manly Warringah Sea Eagles, an Australian National Rugby League team, is appealing to the twinks with a pride competition jersey. In doing so, they've lost seven of their players, who were not consulted on the change, and who're boycotting it on otherwise unspecified religious and cultural grounds.

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Developing story: to be stealth updated
8 July 2022

I have previously noted that the world's most trusted international news broadcaster™ is not adverse to stealth editing its articles after they've been published online. An ethical news outlet would make changes clear to the reader, or find another way to update its articles in light of new information. At the very least they would include a last updated timestamp. But the BBC eschews that transparency nonsense.

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Double-down juries
11 February 2022

Rebecca Hogue's plight rests on Oklahoma's failure to protect law, which states that a parent who suspects child abuse by another, and fails to report it, is complicit. In the worst case, this can lead to a charge of murder in the first-degree.

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Skating on thin ice
8 February 2022

Wahey! Weibo's nationalistic shitheads are at it again. The it being brutally castigating their Olympians' performances, when failing to excel at things that they—the nationalistic shitheads, that is—wouldn't have a hope in hell of achieving in the first place. In particular, figure skater Zhu Yi, who fell a lot, leaving Team China out of the medals.

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Hello hardly anyone
4 October 2021

F*c*book and its subsidiaries, WhatsApp and Instagram, have been hit by a severe, global outage. In response, Twitter tweeted, in fun:

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A hard habit to brake
17 June 2021

In my drive to be a better person, by not picking on the BBC's adjectival ineptitude, should I extend that to homophones?

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Uncaged
6 September 2020

A BBC report, on an outrageously pretentious 639 year-long performance of John Cage's composition, As Slow As Possible, which began in 2001 and will end in 2640, led me to an older article about a scam legal row between Cage and fellow composer Mike Batt. Batt had allegedly included a snippet of Cage's meisterwerk 4′33″ in his own, less obscurely entitled, A One Minute Silence.

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