Kris Ashton

Got your copy yet? getbook.at/DemonDrink

@AlboMP This is the most cringeworthy post you have ever made, which is really saying something.

Eid Mubarak. An honour join thousands for Eid al-Fitr at Lakemba Mosque this morning.

@jonstewart You told your audience puberty blockers were safe, you motherfucker.

@TimWilsonMP You just don’t get it, do you?

Few Australians would feel comfortable about the way the Prime Minister and Minister Burke were disrespected during a visit to a Western Sydney mosque earlier today. One of our goals as a democratic project must be to engage with respect, even when we disagree.

That moment when you realise you’ve been played & they actually want to kill you

@JosephKahn Every time I see a new use of CGI I compare it to Jurassic Park and wonder how the hell the art can be so much worse 30+ years later.

You know why CGI in movies looks bad even though they spend hundreds of millions with infinitely better tech? After 15 years of digital cinematography that takes no skill to shoot, we have a new generation of filmmakers and artists that think flat lighting is the new normal.

@christopherrufo His use (and misuse) of punctuation is unbearably pretentious, as well. Up there with Joseph Heller as the most overrated author of all time.

I read the first hundred pages of The Road last year, and read the first hundred pages of Blood Meridian this year, and in both instances, gave up, because the books never clicked. Lyrical writing, but the characters are reduced to way down Maslow's hierarchy, and the tone is so relentlessly bleak, with almost no humanity breaking through, it was difficult to feel anything besides the flint clicking against the cold steel in the overwhelming darkness. I know many of you love it, but to me, it's overwrought, overstylized, and overhyped.

We definitely* did not “undercount” COVID deaths. What *did* happen was virtually *every* hospital and morgue was testing every patient and body at the time for Covid … and then cross-referencing every death certificate with testing records to find even more among the supposed "negatives." And let’s not forget they were using tests with cycle thresholds high enough to detect DNA from practically *anything*. Oh, and they *had* to do it or risk losing federal funding. And now some “researchers” have gone and trained an algorithm to recognize the “characteristics” of a Covid death under the above conditions — basically turning “Covid-related” into “anything in a hospital” — and then extrapolated that model to deaths in places that weren’t swabbing everything with and without a pulse … and of course they get “undercounting.” Garbage in, garbage out isn’t a new concept. And people still wonder why no one trusts “science” anymore.

Harmony Day is pretty much a tacit admission that multiculturalism doesn’t work.

@SkyNewsAust Seriously, if just one major news organisation decides to tell the truth and start writing “man purporting to be a woman” instead, this whole transgender malarkey will collapse in on itself.

The BBC has been hit with a wave of complaints after transgender woman Raewyn Connell appeared on Woman's Hour to weigh in on misogyny, dividing listeners online. skynews.com.au/lifestyle/tren…

Growing up in the ‘90s, you could get a cultural education from watching classic films and brilliant kids’ TV. Today those have been replaced by illiterate livestreamers & conspiracy-addled tiktoks. They haven’t seen Casablanca; they haven’t heard of King Arthur. It’s bleak.

@therightram Anytime someone posts something thoughtful about film, it gets 14 views.

Watching the film discussion on twitter only cements the idea that social media discourse is the bane of having anything truly thoughtful or interesting to say/discuss about art. I've never seen more reductive takes in my lifetime. Like to talk movies? Go call a friend.

@brianchaley There aren't enough laugh emojis in the known universe to express my derision.

c’mon man

@wrenscarborough As Stan Lee once said, “If a kid has to pick up a dictionary, that’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

If there is one critique from beta readers that I will never accept, it is "readers may not know this word". If the reader is unfamiliar with a word, she may consult the magic rectangle in her pocket. I refuse to assume her to be either ignorant or unwilling to learn.

@tedcruz Green Book was a good movie and for that reason I was frankly astonished that it won an Oscar. I’ve barely heard of any of the others.

Compare the last 10 best picture winners to the list below. Oscars used to go to great movies, watched by millions. Movie-makers used to LIKE their customers. This past decade, other than Oppenheimer, nobody saw any of these movies, made to virtue signal to left-wing elites.

@thewaronbeauty They politicised them in 1999 and it started the rot, simple as that. If you want to ruin something good in short order, introduce politics.

It’s crazy how growing up the Oscars were such a big deal (kids staying up on a school night to watch, people throwing watch parties etc) and in such a short time no one seems to care about them anymore

@matt_horncastle He and Arthur Phillip led remarkable lives of almost immeasurable consequence. Those trying to rewrite their legacies are ear mites by comparison.

I refuse to participate in the modern narrative that James Cook was a villain. Cook was born in poverty in 1728. He was not an aristocrat. He was not handed power. He worked from a young age, taught himself mathematics and navigation, and rose through sheer competence to become one of the most capable captains in the Royal Navy. What he achieved with the technology of the 1700s is extraordinary. He sailed into oceans where most of the map was blank. He charted enormous parts of the Pacific. His survey of New Zealand was so accurate that his charts were used by sailors for more than a century. Many of his coastal measurements were only hundreds of metres off modern satellite positions, achieved with nothing more than sextants, chronometers, and careful observation. His voyages were not just about exploration. They advanced science. One of his first missions was to observe the transit of Venus to improve humanity’s understanding of the solar system. He enforced strict health rules on his ships and virtually eliminated scurvy, something that had killed countless sailors before him. By the standards of the eighteenth century he was known for discipline, order, and attempts to avoid unnecessary violence with indigenous populations. He was operating in a harsh and dangerous era where exploration meant risking your life and the lives of everyone under your command. Was he perfect. Of course not. No human being is. Judging people from centuries ago as if they lived in our modern world is intellectually lazy. What matters is what he actually did. A poor man who rose to the top through ability. A navigator who mapped huge parts of the Pacific. A leader who pushed science, navigation, and knowledge forward. Men like James Cook expanded the known world and helped build the foundations of the modern, prosperous societies we live in today. That is not the story of a villain. That is the story of a remarkable human being.

@Katherine_deves @OcarinaJones Bro’s electorate is nearly 1/3 Muslim. Which only makes his pandering all the more vile.

Only months after jihadis massacred 15 innocents at Bondi and the Australian Government’s reaction is to protect the muslims You cannot hate Labor enough for their betrayal of the Australian people

@JasonClareMP Hey @grok, what percentage of the electorate of Blaxland in NSW, Australia, is Muslim?

Today is the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. There is no place for racism, hate or Islamophobia in Australia. Not today. Not ever.

The Muslim girl in Resident Alien might be the most contrived and unrealistic depiction of a character I have ever seen in film. This show came out in 2021 and I think her character perfectly encapsulates how ridiculous that period in history appears in hindsight.