The Question
Why do sharks bite Australians?
Talking Points
- Nadal out, Kyrgios in, fireworks ahead at Wimbledon
- Russia declared victory in Luhansk — one half of the Donbas
- A dozen climbers died after an Italian glacier collapsed
- Cyber-bullies in Japan now face a year in jail for 'vicious insults'
- Natural gas prices rose 700% in a geopolitical arm-wrestle
- Theranos fraudster Sunny Balwani was found guilty on 12 counts
- James Caan died aged 82 (your weekend viewing is sorted)
- Elon Musk secretly fathered twins with an employee
- A hacker stole the personal data of one billion Chinese citizens
- Floodwaters rose across Eastern Australia, again
Deep Dive
Boris Johnson has gone. He won't soon be forgotten.
A different funeral oration
Like most of the British upper crust, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was raised on rugby and Ancient Greek. It would be uncharitable to say he was particularly fond of the latter; frequently and suggestively name-dropping Pericles. Perhaps, in two millennia, historians will recall Johnson’s premiership with as much caricature fondness as he does Pericles. Perhaps not. All we can do for now is reflect on the present situation: an excruciating, bloody ending, straight out of a Greek tragedy. The stage, a lonely lectern in the middle of Downing Street, was set by one David Cameron. Theresa May followed, with a less-than-virtuoso interlude. But the denouement was up to Johnson.
On Thursday, he resigned. But like the proverbial bad penny, he will stick around for a few months while the Conservative Party chooses a new leader. Call it dry-aged lame duck. The prime minister leant on his record: winning a thumping majority at the 2019 election (indisputable), getting Brexit done (disputable), and “getting us all through the pandemic'' (minus 181,000 of his countryfolk). It was a good speech. The solemnity of the occasion couldn’t stop his natural wit from shining through in parts . But beyond some vague references to the will of the party, it contained almost no information as to why he was resigning. Two dozen empty seats on the front bench, and even more in the ministries, didn’t register a mention.
Over his term Johnson has built an oeuvre of scandals that necessitates the peeling back of several chronological and thematic layers to comprehend. The last six months have been particularly prolific. A veritable modern manifestation of Zeno’s paradox. Every new scandal halved the distance to Johnson's resignation, without actually bringing it closer. And made a mockery of media commentators. We’ve been saying “on the brink” and “hanging by a thread” for the better part of a year. As with Cassandra, no-one believed the predictions. Unlike Cassandra, these predictions were wrong. In the end, it was sexual misconduct that brought him undone. His knowledge of the groping allegations against Chris Pincher was unsurprising. ‘Pestminster’ had already revealed just how such illegalities are pedestrian within the walls of parliament. That Johnson couldn’t stop himself from making witticisms about it speaks to the nature of the man.
The death of a salesman
But none of this is new news. His record is very much public knowledge. A journalist, fired for fabricating horror stories about European Union regulation. A paragon of infidelity, and sire of at least six children (it is telling that there is doubt about whether even he is cognisant of the definitive figure). A notable absentee from meetings, both when he edited The Spectator, and later in the House of Commons as the MP for Henley. All of this has been known and accepted, for Johnson accrued indignities and popularity in equal measure. He is a showman and a charmer. He has the gift of the gab. His speeches are laced with bombast and cheek. He had the sheer bloodymindedness to follow through on his dream to shake off the yoke of Brussels . The cost of it might be the economy and actuality of the United Kingdom; but he won’t personally bear it.
The aftermath made for good viewing . All across the country, people tuned in to hear from ashen-faced Tory MPs trying to turn the page as quickly as humanly possible. They could just be heard over the din: someone had the wherewithal to blast the Benny Hill theme on repeat. The scramble for the top job is going to make for even better viewing . There has been an almighty pile-up on the road to Damascus. Johnson’s staunchest allies are preening on morning television, trying to distance themselves from their soon-to-be old boss. Whoever gets the gig will have to navigate the fast-collapsing legal agreement on Northern Ireland, resurgent Scottish nationalism, and an economy that is, in technical terms, in the toilet. Good luck.
We’ll leave you with an image that may come to define Johnson’s political career. A typically ludicrous snap of him during the 2012 London Olympics. On a tour of facilities at Victoria Park, he leapt at the prospect of riding the zip line. Up he went; trussed up in a harness with a Union Jack in either hand. He got stuck half-way and dangled helplessly above the crowd. In the interim years we’ve been told ad nauseam that Johnson is a Machiavellian genius whose goofy persona is but a tool. But in Victoria Park, on-lookers stuck around for a few minutes to see their mayor hoisted by his own zip line; then they got bored and went back to the pub.
Worldlywise
An assassination attempt in Japan
On Friday morning Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot while on the campaign trail in the city of Nara. He had been making a stump speech on the street as part of his duties as the Member for Yamaguchi ahead of Sunday's Upper House election. In footage from the event, he is approached from behind by a man in casual dress wielding what appeared to be a homemade sawn-off shotgun. The first shot was muted; possibly a misfire. It was followed by a second; a sonorous boom that sent the crowd scrambling for safety. In the confusion that followed, the assailant was tackled and a bleeding Abe was swamped by staff. The former PM went into cardiopulmonary arrest and was swiftly rushed to a nearby hospital. Early reports held that he showed no vital signs, but doctors were still fighting to save his life . Tragically, it has now been confirmed that Mr Abe succumbed to his injuries and passed away on Friday evening.
Abe was Japan's longest serving prime minister . He led Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party to multiple landslide election wins. His 'Abenomics' philosophy helped drag the country out of long-running deflation. Abroad, he took a more combative approach to neighbouring China, and pushed to have Article 9, the self-defence provision of the constitution, struck out. His revisionism of the Second World War, and visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, earned him many detractors in Seoul and Beijing. It's a mixed legacy, though we must wait to see what element of it could have driven someone to murder.
Police have released few details about the would-be assassin other than his age. Japan's extremely strict gun laws mean that in a country of 125 million the annual firearm deaths rarely leave the single digits. There are, however, several notable political assassinations that linger in the public memory. The Japanese socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma was spectacularly cut down with a wakizashi short-sword during a press conference in 1960. In 2007 Nagasaki mayor Iccho Itoh was gunned down by a member of the country's largest yakuza group. His predecessor narrowly escaped an attempt on his life in 1990.
What are the big brains up to?
Critics of inkl's Weekly Wrap argue that we have not once tried to address the longstanding problems in the probabilistic theory of phase transitions. This is true. And it's due, in part, to the fact that we don't know what any of those words mean. Thankfully there are gifted thinkers out there who can help us explore the world of theoretical mathematics. The quadrennial International Congress of the International Mathematical Union was held this week in Helsinki, Finland (the repetition is presumably some kind of math joke). Initially booked for St Petersburg, the event was moved after Russian President Vladimir Putin demonstrated his own ethical calculus.
The main event is the Fields Medal; a prestige shared by up to four mathematicians. Ukraine's Maryna Viazovksa was rather poignantly chosen for her work in solving Johannes Kepler's 400-year-old sphere packing problem in the eighth (and then 24th) dimensions . She is just the second female laureate. Other winners were France's Hugo Duminil-Copin who sampled from the farthest reaches of maths to reinvigorate the shopworn field of phase transitions. He created models to describe how fluids flow through a porous medium — incredibly his work can be used to analyse how diseases, and even rumours, spread. Britain's James Maynard kept counting prime numbers towards infinity . And America's June Huh, a late bloomer in math, won for "using Hodge theory, tropical geometry, and singularity theory" to transform the study of geometric combinatorics (there will be a test on this after class).
Elsewhere, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) turned on its Large Hadron Collider its 'Run 3' of atom smashing. It showed off some "exotic" new particles in the lead-up to the latest near-light-speed demolition derby. There are no signs that it has, as some fear, opened up a Hellmouth , though we'd advise you to be on the lookout.
The Worst Of Times
A massacre in Highland Park
Another mass shooting. This time, at a July 4 Independence Day parade. Seven dead. Dozens wounded. Another young man with easy access to high-powered firearms. There's little that distinguishes these shootings from one another, apart from the personal tragedies of each victim.
It's getting worse
Taken in aggregate we can see that US gun violence is becoming more frequent, deadly , and costs over $810bn per year .
The Best Of Times
Cop an earful of this
We've found an influencer setting unrealistic body standards that we can get behind. Pakistani goat breeder Mohammad Hasan Narejo's charge Simba is blessed with strikingly long ears (54cm). It has recently been recognised as the longest-eared goat in the world. The GOAT.
Candid snaps
NASA has released some glorious new photos of Mars . We'd advise you to soak them up because newsflash: we aren't going there anytime soon.
Highlights
The Image
Just Stop Oil protestors glue themselves to Da Vinci's Last Supper (imitation) at the London's Royal Academy. Life imitates art. Image supplied by The Guardian .
The Quote
"[unintelligible]"
– A study tracking the changing social mores of modern Britain has found that talking with a mouthful of food is no longer considered bad manners . If you have strong feelings on etiquette please do not email us with them.
The Numbers
180,000 hectare rat hunt
- New Zealand conservation authorities are undertaking one of the largest culls of introduced predators in the world. The picturesque Rakiura/Stewart Island is a jewel of biodiversity and unique wildlife. It is also overrun with rats, cats, and possums. Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research will lead the eradication program — no mean feat given the densely forested island is the size of Hong Kong and Bahrain combined .
99% loss of client funds
- Plenty of retail investors lost everything when Terra and Luna entered a death spiral . For all the professionals shorting the unstablecoin it was a very different story. Well, all except UPRISE. The South Korean startup traded its clients crypto assets with the help of its proprietary robo-advisor. It turns out the advice wasn't that good: UPRISE went all in and was burnt badly by when the dead cat bounced. It lost virtually everything.
The Headline
"Could new countries be founded – on the internet?" — The Guardian . No, nyet, nein, la, non, bù, no.
The Special Mention
The Special Mention awards committee members are no slouches. They rigorously debate how best to apply the standards and rules of the accolade to various candidates each week. The dominant school of thought elevates individualised novelty above all else. But this week we present a reverse-utilitarianism: annoyance en bloc. In what can only be described as the banter option, Qatar has banned alcohol in the stands during the 2022 World Cup. The howls of several million empurpled Europeans can be heard all the way down here in Australia.
The Best Long Reads
- The Walrus on a life-changing Tourette's diagnosis
- The Atlantic finds the future of mud is no stick-in-the-mud
- The Financial Times questions who pays for climate change
The Answer...
This project seeks to answer that question. Shark attacks going back to 1791 have been catalogued with great care. Much can be gleaned from the data. Thankfully, these keen researchers have allowed us to sort the entries by "provoked or unprovoked" ...
