Colin Bruce Milne

“Cameron Slater: he is a very silly man, because I could stop the people who are going against him. But now, he is just going to get double. Judith Collins: you know the rule. always reward with Double. Cameron Slater: i learned the rule from you! Double it is. Judith Collins: If you can’t be loved, then best to be feared.15”
― Nicky Hager, Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand's political environment

“The prime minister had abused his position as minister in charge of the SIS to embarrass another politician only months before an election.”
― Nicky Hager, Dirty Politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand's political environment

“New Rule: Death isn’t always sad. This week, the Reverend Jerry Falwell died, and millions of Americans asked, “Why? Why, God? Why…didn’t you take Pat Robertson with him?” I don’t want to say Jerry was disliked by the gay community, but tonight in New York City, at exactly eight o’clock, Broadway theaters along the Great White Way turned their lights up for two minutes.

I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but I think we can make an exception, because speaking ill of the dead was kind of Jerry Falwell’s hobby. He’s the guy who said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality and that 9/11 was brought on by pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and the ACLU—or, as I like to call them, my studio audience.

It was surreal watching people on the news praise Falwell, followed by a clip package of what he actually said—things like:

"Homosexuals are part of a vile and satanic system that will be utterly annihilated." "If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being." "Feminists just need a man in the house." "There is no separation of church and state." And, of course, everyone’s favorite: "The purple Teletubby is gay."

Jerry Falwell found out you could launder your hate through the cover of “God’s will”—he didn’t hate gays, God does.

All Falwell’s power came from name-dropping God, and gay people should steal that trick. Don’t say you want something because it’s your right as a human being—say you want it because it’s your religion.

Gay men have been going at things backward. Forget civil right, and just make gayness a religion. I mean, you’re kneeling anyway. And it’s easy to start a religion. Watch, I’ll do it for you.

I had a vision last night. The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me—I don’t know how she got past the guards—and she told me it’s time to take the high ground from the Seventh-day Adventists and give it to the twenty-four-hour party people. And that what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don’t say you’re life partners. Say you’re a nunnery of two. “We weren’t having sex,officer. I was performing a very private mass.Here in my car. I was letting my rod and my staff comfort him.”

One can only hope that as Jerry Falwell now approaches the pearly gates, he is met there by God Himself, wearing a Fire Island muscle shirt and nut-hugger shorts, saying to Jerry in a mighty lisp, “I’m not talking to you.”
― Bill Maher, The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass

“as the AI researcher Pedro Domingos so memorably put it, “People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”21”
― Melanie Mitchell, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans