Tansy

Barnaby is probably best known for being the reason a "bonk ban" was introduced to Australia's Parliament house, making it illegal for politicians to have sex in the Capital, after it was revealed he had gotten his Parliamentary PA pregnant while on the job. This was problematic on two fronts given:

a) He was already very married at that time and

b) He was campaigning against gay-marriage on the grounds of "protecting the institution of marriage"

Needless to say, he was clowned out of office for this (and also clowned some more when he went on TV with his mistress and tried to claim it could be anyone's baby - despite knowing it was his kid)

Barnaby proceeded to dump his wife and move in with his PA Vikki, only to walk into another PR disaster when it was revealed his new digs were being provided rent-free in what most would consider to be "a giant fucking bribe". Also his former wife responded by becoming a professional bodybuilder.

Despite losing his job as Deputy Prime Minister over this - Barnaby regained the role a few years later, by rolling the acting Prime Minister in the middle of a Covid outbreak crisis, while the actual Prime Minister was out of the country and powerless to stop Barnaby's dumbass colleagues from temporarily putting him in the top job.

Here's a pic of Barnaby pushing over a small child at his swearing-in ceremony (the real Prime Minister had to Zoom in):

To give an idea of how much the public still hadn't forgiven him, a few days later Barnaby was fined by police after a member of the public dobbed him in for going into a petrol station without wearing a facemask, as was required at the time.

Other than that you might also know Barnaby from the time he tried to murder Johnny Depp's pet dogs 'Pistol and Boo', after he said Depp would only be allowed to leave the country with his pups intact if the Hollywood actor uploaded this bizzare hostage video about Australia's quarantine rules to an official Government youtube channel:

This is not the first time Joyce's drunken antics have gotten him into trouble, with the man having previously also fallen asleep in parliament in what many suspected to be a drunken stupor:

Anyway we'll leave you with this last pic, reminding you that this man has on many occasions been in charge of an entire continent:

Such is the volume of this man's batshittery that we completely forgot the other time he was kicked out of parliament, after it was revealed he was a citizen of another country!

New Zealand even nominated him for New Zealander of the Year just to take the piss out of him during this incident:

“I can’t believe this aired” (the worst plot you’ve ever seen on tv)

“I can’t believe this aired” (a piece of media so beyond its time and still relevant to today’s discussions, that I’m surprised it didn’t got censored at the time it went on air)

Though I’m still on a social media break, I HAD to log back into tumblr, specifically to share the link to this Podfic.

I never thought anyone would want to/be able to/have the time to transform the 209,000 words of “And Like The Cycle Of The Year, We Begin Again” into a Podfic. And indeed, it took this talented crew of people a few years to manage this amazing task. But here it is. Amazing, and heart-warming and oh. My goodness. I have no words.

The link is below for your listening pleasure. It’s multi-voice, and being posted regularly. Be sure to kudo, and/or comment, to thank the creative team who spent so long to create it.

The Herculaneum papyri, ancient scrolls housed in the library of a private villa near Pompeii, were buried and carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. For almost 2,000 years, this lone surviving library from antiquity was buried underground under 20 meters of volcanic mud. In the 1700s, they were excavated, and while they were in some ways preserved by the eruption, they were so fragile that they would turn to dust if mishandled. How do you read a scroll you can’t open? For hundreds of years, this question went unanswered. That is until Luke Farritor, a contestant of the Vesuvius Challenge, became the first person in two millennia to see an entire word from within an unopened scroll this August. For that, we are thrilled to award Luke a $40,000 First Letters Prize, which required contestants to find at least 10 letters in a 4 cm2 area in a scroll.

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO

Shortly after that, another contestant, Youssef Nader, independently discovered the same word in the same area, with even clearer results — winning the second place prize of $10,000.

#the caesar/nicomedes iv of bithynia epistolary fiction that’s on fucking jstor

The British should put a time limit on the Monarchy.

Not like declaring a republic tomorrow, but deciding on a date in the future that ends the British Monarchy.

And there's a perfect date for it coming up!

October 14th, 2066.

A thousand years since the Battle of Hastings. A thousand years of this one specific bloodline ruling England.

Call time on the Monarchy after exactly one thousand years. Nice, and neat.

Even better: Charles isn't living 44 years. He'll be gone in about twenty. Now William? He's what, 40? Yeah, he can live another 44 years. His great grandmother was over a hundred, his granny was 96, William can make it to 84 barring accident or assassination.

So on October 14th 2066, William the Last steps down a thousand years after William the First won the crown.

Nice, neat, and fair. William gets the crown he's been waiting forty years for already, but ten-year-old George grows up without expectation of it.

Dangers of working on a set.

he would spend multiple days walking overland to locations in full pack, sword, & armour when everyone else was travelling in trucks

refused to use any prop swords that weren’t actual steel

basically lived in the forest in-costume, sleeping rough under the sky, even fishing & foraging for his food when possible

often spent hours in the barn just bonding with the horses. He adopted the horse he rode, Uranus, after filming ended

repaired all his own gear by hand, which was often since he never took it off

had a tooth knocked out during filming but had the crew simply glue it back in place so they could keep filming

the instructor who taught everyone swordplay said Viggo was the best swordsman he had ever trained

carried his sword literally everywhere & practiced non-stop, resulting in the cops being called when locals reported “a wild man swinging a sword around his head" outside a gym in Wellington

an orc actor fucked up & accidentally threw a dagger directly into Viggo’s face, but Viggo just deflected it with his sword. They kept that shot

infamously broke 3 toes kicking that helmet but stayed in-character & sold his very real scream as part of the scene. They also kept that shot

Viggo insists on doing his own stunts; in The Two Towers where Aragorn is unconscious & floating down the river, the strong current pulled him underwater for so long that a rescue team had to go in to save him. Viggo survived by grabbing a boulder on the riverbed and pulling himself to the surface