Rogue

Rogue (pronounced rohg)

(1) As “rogue state” or “rogue regime”, of or noting the government of a nation that ignores or defies international law, treaties and conventions of behaviour.

(2) A dishonest, unprincipled, untrustworthy person; a rascal; a scoundrel (as a label, applied overwhelmingly to men).

(3) A playfully mischievous person; a scamp (sometimes as “loveable rogue”, a designation sometimes a bit generous).

(4) In Australia, a horse, mule, or donkey that is difficult to control; a refractory horse, especially a racehorse (described as a “barrier rogue”, explained by the beast being “difficult” about being put into the starting gates prior to the race starting).

(5) A tramp or vagabond (archaic); it was used also as a verb in the sense of “to live or act as a scoundrel, vagabond or scamp.”

(6) In computing, “rogue software” is malware deceitfully represented as anti-spyware.

(7) In role-playing games, a character class focusing on stealthy conduct.  Characters said to be roguelike possess some but not all the elements of rogues (rogue-lite, either a synonym of roguelike or an even less roguesque).  Roguelikes usually have permadeath and randomized levels.  Permadeth is seemingly (and hopefully) gaming-specific and describes either (1) a death that compels a player restart the game from the beginning or (2) a situation where a player character or characters who die are lost permanently but do not trigger a “game over”, allowing the player to proceed without the character(s).  In a nice touch, this is triggered usually only if deaths are “avoidable” (ie not forced by the plot), occurring only as a result of player-error.

(8) In biology, a usually inferior organism (most used in botany of plants varying markedly from the normal).  In that context, “to rogue” or the act of “rouging” is to uproot or destroy those plants diseased or not conforming to the desired standard; this may be of individual plants or one could “rogue” a whole field, paddock etc.  In industrial horticulture, there are now AI (artificial intelligence) machines able autonomously “to rouge”, killing weeds or “rogue plants” using lasers.

(9) By extension, any inferior or defective specimen.

(10) As “to go rouge”, “going rogue”, “gone rogue” etc, to stop being obedient or predictable; to behave in a way that is not allowed or expected.

(11) No longer obedient, belonging or accepted and hence not controllable or answerable; a renegade.

(12) Dangerous and unpredictable (of people, animals, plants & objects).  Specifically of animals, having an abnormally violent or unpredictable disposition (applied often to older males that have separated from their herd or community to lead a solitary, aggressive life).

(13) To cheat (archaic).

1555–1565: Of uncertain origin, the theories include it being from the earlier English roger (a begging vagabond who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge (thus the idea of the “idle vagrant” or “sturdy beggar”; those who prefer to beg though easily capable of work)) and that may have been an adaptation (as agent noun) from the Latin rogāre (to ask), the idea being “rogues” were “fake beggars” who affected poverty to gain sympathy and coins from those passing.  That seems plausible (Latin a popular source for such coinings) although in Latin “to beg or demand” something from someone was petere while specifically to beg or entreat for money was pecūniam ōrāre.  One who wandered from town-to-town as a beggar or trickster was an aeruscāre and, reflecting prejudices still seen today, the word was also applied to fortune-tellers and itinerate buskers.  An alternative etymology is as a direct re-purposing of the Middle French rogue (arrogant, haughty), from the Old Northern French rogre (aggressive), from the Old Norse hrokr (excess, exuberance), said to be inherited as the Icelandic hroki (arrogance) although not all lexicographers agree.  The Celtic use is attributed to the Breton rog (haughty) but what influence this had on English is contested.  The most simple explanation links it to the obsolete roger (begging vagabond); originally thieves' jargon, it too may be connected to the concoction from the Latin.

Rogue Elephant (2026) by Dr Paul Heideman; there are also figurative uses.

The donkey came to be the symbol of the Democratic Party after the 1828 presidential campaign when an opponent called Democrat Andrew Jackson (1767–1845; POTUS 1829-1837) a “jackass” (donkey) intending to ridicule his populist views.  Instead, embraced the nickname and images of donkeys quickly were added to his campaign material.  The Republican party first featured the elephant in 1864, during Abraham Lincoln’s (1809–1865; POTUS 1861-1865) campaign for a second term, picking up the US Civil War (1861-1965) soldier’s slang “seeing the elephant” (to experience combat).  Both symbols came into common use during the 1870s after they were used by cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) in his political sketches; Nast (nicknamed “Nasty” by some) intended to depict the Republicans as large & clumsy but the party grandees decided it expressed values like strength and dignity so adopted the beast as their symbol.

By the 1570s use was established in the sense of “a dishonest, unprincipled person; a rascal” but by the 1590s this had extended to the playful or affectionate use to describe the merely “mischievous” and this may have started with use in families noting the behaviour of infants.  The original use of wildlife was not of man-eating tigers under the Raj but of “rogue elephants”, first recorded in 1859 and coming gradually to be applied to a variety of “large, wild and dangerous beasts living apart from their herd (or other social aggregation)”.  As an adjective in reference to something uncontrolled, irresponsible, or undisciplined, oral use may have a long history by nothing is known to have been recorded prior to 1964.  The adjective roguish (pertaining to or appropriate to rogues) was in use by the 1570s while the noun roguery (behavior or practices characteristic of rogues; the life of a vagrant) appeared two decades later and from the 1610s was used of “knavish tricks, dishonest practices and rascally acts.”  The form comrogue (a fellow rogue or a rogue's accomplice) is obsolete and rogueling (a petty, small or youthful rogue) is archaic.  Rouge was a misspelling (directly from the French) appearing as late as the early 1800s while the derived Irish forms were rógaire & rógánta.  The adjective roguesque is non-standard.  Rogue is a noun, verb & adjective, roguedom, roguehood, archrogue, rogueship, rogueling, roguery & rogueship are nouns, outrogue, rogued & rouging are verbs, rougish, roguey & roguelike are adjectives; the noun plural is rogues.

Counterintuitively, “rogue money” did not describe the “ill-gotten gains of thieves” but was a technical term from pre-modern law-enforcement in Scotland referring to an assessment once levied in every county in Scotland for the expenses of catching and prosecuting criminals.  Depending on the population-size of the sheriffdoms in which the funds were expended, such things were administered variously by procurator fiscal (the public prosecutor) sheriffs principal or resident sheriffs.  An “archrogue” (also as “arch-rogue”) was an especially infamous rogue or one associated with particularly egregious conduct (mountebank, cheat, swindler, trickster, villain etc).  As things were done associatively, an “archrogue” was also the chief of a band of thieves or gypsies (Romani), prejudice against the latter often seem them all assumed to be rogues.  So influential was the use that “arch” (as an adjective) came to be used generally also in the sense of “mischievous”.  The many derogatory uses (arch-rogue, arch-knave etc) achieved such currency that by the mid 1600s “arch” had acquired a meaning “roguish, mischievous”, softened somewhat the nineteenth century to the often affectionate “saucy”.  That was quite a shift because, in the late 1300s, an “archwife” was either “a wife of a superior order” or “a dominating woman; a virago”.  Although over the years there have been some plotting & scheming clerics who were noted mischief-makers, the element in “archangel” “archdeacon” & “archbishop” was distinct and denoted “chief”, “principal” or “primary”, a form attested from the 1540s and from use in the late Old English.

Sideshow's Premium Format™ Figure of Rogue from the Sideshow Collectibles Collection (left) and redditor emeraldmb65’s AI generated image of Lindsay Lohan as a possible Rouge on r/Fancast (right).

Rogue is superhero character in the MCU (Marvel Comic Universe) appearing in American comic books (often in association with the X-Men) published by Marvel Comics.  Her real name is Anna Marie (LeBeau sometimes cited as the surname but this is contested) and she appeared first in Avengers Annual #10 (1981).  Her superpowers include the ability to absorb memories, life force, physical attributes and superpowers of anyone through skin-to-skin physical contact and she had a roguish background, being originally a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants before reforming to become a leader of the X-Men and Avengers.  Redemption tales are common in comics.

In Australia a “barrier rogue” is a racehorse difficult to control when being put into the starting gates.  A “rogue planet” is an object of a size that would qualify it to be “a planet” but which travels interstellar space and lacks a star to encircle; the alternative terms are “free-floating planet” or the more romantic “roaming planet” and the cultish “emo planet”, the idea of the latter a lonely body in a cold, empty space.  A “rogue wave” is an unexpected, dangerously large wave (known also as a freak wave, monster wave, killer wave or episodic wave).  Close to the shore, the term is part of the jargon of surfers but it’s also in general nautical use because such waves can appear anywhere in open water.  The “rogue apostrophe” is a jocular term referring to an apostrophe's incorrect usage (usually a misplacement of a needless possessive).  The term deliberately was derived from “rogue elephant”, the connection being the shared quality of “solitary, unpredictable” and the synonym was “greengrocer's apostrophe” (classically something like “Banana’s $1.29 lb”).  In computing, “rogue software” is malware deceitfully represented as anti-spyware although the term is used rather more loosely.  A “rogue access point” is an unauthorized access point installed on a LAN (local area network) or WLAN (wireless local area network).

History's most famous rogues' gallery: defendants in the dock at Nuremberg; even two of the three acquitted really were rogues.

The notion of the “loveable rogue” might to some sound oxymoronic but it’s a long established use and there’s a long tradition of differentiating between “types of rogues”.  The journalist & author Rebecca West (1892–1983) covered the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) of the two dozen-odd surviving leading Nazis and noted the defendants “…were amused when Mr Justice Jackson [Robert Jackson (1892–1954; SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) Associate Justice 1941-1954; Chief US Prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial] could not cross-examine Goering [Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945)] at all well, because he had a transatlantic prepossession that a rogue who had held high office would be a solemn and not a jolly rogue, and was disconcerted by his impudence.”  Guilty as sin and a rogue however defined, Göring was anyway sentenced to be hanged but Jackson’s inept cross-examination has always overshadowed his many outstanding contributions to the trial.

Rogues' gallery: A FBI (the US Federal Bureau of Investigation) “Ten Most Wanted” list.

“Rogues' gallery” was a term from law enforcement, describing a set of pictures of convicted or suspected criminals; the first use was in law enforcement to help witnesses identify suspects.  “Mug shots” were an early, practical use for the new technology of photography and although “mug” had been used to describe a person's mouth or face since early in the eighteenth century, the term “mug shot” seems to have come into use only since 1950.  The “Wanted” posters from the “wild west” are part of popular history and photographs began routinely to be added to these by the 1860s, some twenty years after police in New York started maintaining photographic records of those arrested.  In 1886, the Cassell publishing house released Byrnes's Professional Criminals of America and this is believed the first significant book containing a “rogues' gallery” of what would later come to be called “mug shots”.  The concept began as the physical wall displays or photo albums in police stations or detective agencies, first in 1858 opened to public display by the NYPD (New York Police Department) as an array of daguerreotype images.  By extension, a “rogues’ gallery” came to be used of any group (typically people) having the same (usually but not necessarily disreputable) characteristics.

Ben Bluck debunks the myth of the “Rogue Shark”.

In the wild, “rogue creatures” (familiar as “rogue shark”, “rogue tiger” “rogue elephant” etc) are often referred to in news reports, usually after attacking (and sometimes killing) people or damaging property such as crops.  It’s now a conventional and well-understood term for an individual wild animal (although the collective “rogue herd” has been used) that has become unusually dangerous or aberrant in conduct (most distinctively as being now separated from its herd or community and pursuing a solitary existence) but it’s never been part of the accepted zoological lexicon.  That a usually social animal is for whatever reason pursuing a solitary life would not attract much general interest were it not that its abnormal behaviour has begun to include dangerous or destructive acts; it’s not anything inherent to the creatures that concerns most but rather the consequences for people and of the two overlapping ideas (social deviation & behavioural variances) it’s the latter upon which attention is most focused.  The “rogue shark” however is a behavioural (and thus linguistic) outlier.  Although sharks do sometimes gather in a shiver (for migration, mating and, most famously, for what is popularly called a “feeding frenzy”), as a general principle, sharks are not social animals in the way elephants typically cluster as members of herds.  A solo elephant is zoologically unusual while a shark swimming alone simply is doing what sharks commonly do.  So why the “rogue shark” tag?  For that, popular culture can be blamed because “rogue shark” is a compelling (and chilling) headline for a story about a single shark attacking and killing a swimmer in a place when families have for generations safely splashed about.  The comparison with stories from the Raj of “man-eating tigers” that develop a taste for human flesh and are thus driven repeatedly to kill explain how the myth of the “rogue shark” grew but the apparent increase in coastal shark attacks is attributed more to changes in the oceans (temperatures of various waters and location of the species upon which sharks prefer to feed (typically not humans)) than the behaviour of individual sharks.  So, in the descriptive vernacular, “rogue shark” is here to stay but it won’t become part of the lexicon of ichthyologists.

The Rogue Trader

There have been many “rogue traders” but the most famous was the English Nick Leeson (b 1967), a former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorised and speculative trades led directly to the collapse in 1995 of Barings Bank, then the UK’s oldest merchant bank, trading since 1762.  In 2026, a loss of (expressed in 2026 values) of £1.8 billion-odd may not sound terminal but in 1995 the global money supply was smaller and it was a big number; almost all those losses came from Mr Leeson’s trading in futures contracts.  It was in 1992 Barings opened a Futures and Options office in Singapore, executing and clearing transactions on the SIMEX (Singapore International Monetary Exchange), taking up the bank’s dormant seat on the exchange only when Mr Leeson was appointed general manager, heading both front & back office operations.  That he was able to take up the appointment in Singapore was possible only because Singapore regulators weren’t informed he’d been denied a UK broker's licence because fraudulently he’d withheld from the authorities the matter of a judgment for debt against him imposed by a court.  Neither Barings Bark no Mr Leeson disclosed this in the Singapore license application papers.

Rogue Trader (1996), by Nick Leeson.  Reviewers found the publisher’s blurb a curate’s egg, agreeing it was a “revealing story” of “foolhardy speculations” that should be read by those regulating or running financial institutions but didn’t agree it was “crackling with tension, in a narrative as crisp as any thriller.”

Mr Leeson’s Singapore venture actually started well in the sense that in 1992 he booked profits of some £10 million (some 10% of the bank’s annual profit) but the warning signs were there and would have been detected, had there been appropriate internal controls in place.  What Mr Leeson was doing was making unauthorized, highly speculative trades and for a while that worked with high returns booked while losses were hidden in an “errors account”.  Because of an unfortunate sequence of events (Mr Leeson’s trading strategy, acts of God and ripples in the international economy), the losses mounted and Mr Leeson’s “recovery method” was one familiar from the tables in casinos: Double down.  A simple tactic that works well (when it works), it meant that with each loss, he would bet double that amount thereby covering the loss.  By 1995 the accumulated losses had reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion, twice Barings' available trading capital) and the institution that had been in business for some 230 years was forced to declare insolvency.  Extradited from Germany (in a nice touch he’d fled to Frankfurt, the country’s financial centre), a Singapore court handed down as 6½ year sentence of which he served four, released early for “good behaviour”.  His post-release career has been “patchy” but he did publish the memoir Rogue Trader (1996) that was of no great literary merit but contained enough to be recommended reading (as a cautionary tale) for auditors and those running financial institutions.  Subsequently, Mr Leeson used his experience as a “poacher” to become a “gamekeeper”, advising companies about risk and he now operates as private consultant dealing with matters involving financial misconduct.  He certainly knows what to look for.

George Romney, AMC and the Rogue

AMC pre-release publicity shots for the 1966 Rambler Rogue.

When introduced in 1966, there was little that was interesting about the Rambler Rogue, the model merely a renaming for the top-of-the-range version of the American (1958-1969), a small (by contemporary US standards although it some markets it would have been thought “large”), low-priced line.  When introduced, it was an exemplar of the “basic” automobile with few embellishments and body styles restricted to two & four door sedans & station wagons, the only available engine a genuinely antiquated, 196 cubic inch (3.2 litre) flathead (ie “L-head) straight-6.  It was not a machine that offered style or performance but AMC’s (American Motors Corporation) introduction of the American coincided with a brief (but sharp) recession so, being about the lowest-priced US-built car then available and one that offered fuel economy sometimes (literally) twice as good as much of what was on the market (Detroit’s compact & intermediate lines were still in the future while what they built in 1958 had become heavy and bloated, exemplified by Ford's doomed Edsel), it was the right product at the right time; tellingly, AMC promoted its virtues not through motorsport but by participation in “economy runs”, events habitually it won.  Even though not on-sale for the whole 1958 season, in the recessionary year of 1958, Rambler was the only brand to book increased sales and owners generally were satisfied, their modest machines delivering the economy of operation promised and while obsolescent the old flathead may have been, it was low-stressed and a paragon of reliability.  With little additional equipment fitted (or even optional), there was not much to break or go wrong.

The not so quiet American.  Built with drag racing in mind, the combination of AMC's robust 390 V8 and a low kerb-weight made the 1969 S/C Rambler a formidable competitor on the strip.  1512 were built and it can be assured George Romney would not have approved.

The American did eventually get interesting in the usual way things were done in the US: install big V8 engines.  That was something of an orthodoxy in the 1960s but it was a departure from the business model that had made the original American such a success in 1958-1960 but circumstances conspired against AMC, Detroit entering (at scale) the market for smaller, more economical machines and rising prosperity (a phenomenon that would last until the early the next decade) made austerity less compelling.  Accordingly, in 1964 the American got bigger and eventually would be available with a V8 as large as 390 cubic inches (6.4 litre) so, given the car’s still compact dimensions and relatively low-weight, versions were produced that genuinely were “muscle cars”, highly competitive in the then popular sport of drag-racing (two vehicles competing over a ¼-mile (402 metres) sprint from a standing start, the winner the one with the lowest ET (elapsed time) over the distance, the maximum speed reached of technical interest but irrelevant to the result).  It was fun while it lasted but had AMC stuck to “economy” and “cost-breakdown”, they’d likely have enjoyed greater success because market conditions soon would shift, putting a premium on such things.  As it was, the habitually troubled AMC struggled on until 1987 when it was absorbed by Chrysler, the corporation interested in its most valuable asset: the Jeep.

Angela Dorian and her “Playboy Pink” 1968 AMC AMX.  George Romney (who probably thought pink a sinful color) would not have approved.

Upon debut in 1966, the most interesting thing about the Rouge was the name.  Between 1954-1962, the chairman and president of AMC was George Romney (1907–1995; governor of Michigan 1963-1969), a devout Mormon (LDS, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Christian sect with curious origins) and while the characteristics of the 1958 AMC American (thrift, modesty, lack of ostentation) aligned perfectly with those of the corporation’s chairman, he’d never likely never have agreed to produce a product with a name like “Rogue”, implying as it does, sin & evil.  However, after Mr Romney left AMC to become for governor of Michigan (1963-1969), the nature of AMC changed, entering market segments such as pony cars, high-performance (including a competition programme) and luxury and things even became rather risqué, the company in 1968 entering into an arrangement with Playboy magazine to supply an AMX (a pony car) in fetching “Playboy Pink” for that year’s PotY (Playmate of the Year), Angela Dorian (modelling name Victoria Vetri, b 1944)), even including a plaque on the dashboard engraved “AMX 36–24–35” (Ms Dorian’s “vital statistics”, the numbers verified by the staff at Playboy (experts in such matters) and for those not familiar with imperial measures, in metrics it would have been rounded to “90-60-90”).  The Rogue and AMX 36-24-35 were products of timing; Mormons really disapprove of most pleasures (other than chocolate and such) and had the deeply religious George Romney still been in the chair, never would such sinful things have been allowed.

Richard Nixon (right), Nelson Rockefeller (centre) and George Romney (right), the White House, Washington DC, 5 March, 1971.  Two of these men were, in their own way, rogues.  

A success as governor of Michigan, Mr Romney shifted his gaze to the White House, seeking the Republican nomination for the 1968 presidential election and for a while he was the front-runner but what worked well at austerity-era AMC or in mid-western politics didn’t so well translate to a national campaign in which foreign affairs was so significant, the war in Vietnam by then the defining issue.  As it was, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; VPOTUS 1953-1961 and POTUS 1969-1974) gained the nomination and the rest is history but that was at no point in the 1960s predictable, an era in which Nixon, Romney, Barry Goldwater (1909–1998; Republican Party nominee for the 1964 US presidential election) and Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979; US vice president 1974-1977 and who earned immortality by having “died on the job”) were the four figures at the centre of the Republican Party and history would have been very different had one of the other three prevailed.  Like his son (Mitt Romney (b 1947; Republican nominee in the 2012 US presidential election, US senator (Republican-Utah) 2019-2025), Mr Romney never reached the White House but he did introduce the AMC American, over a million of which were built and although only 21,980 (8,718 in 1966, 5,170 in 1967, 4,549 in 1968 & 3,543 in 1969) were Rogues, there were many ventures by Detroit that promised more and delivered less.

Rogue states

In terms of behaviour, tribal chiefs, dukes, princes, kings, emperors, popes and such have behaved like “rogue states” (or “rogue regimes”) long before concepts like “state” or “international law” were understood in anything like their modern construction but the working definition is simple: a state or nation acting outside of the accepted international norms and policies.  A distinction must however be drawn between the modern understanding of the “rogue state” and the older idea of regions or rulers judged as pariahs within the established order.  Now heard frequently, “rogue state” (in its modern geopolitical sense) is really quite recent, emerging in that curious period of the last days of the Cold War and the decade immediately following.  All the evidence suggests the term mostly was used by US sources although in that there may be “publication bias”, reflecting the early US predominance in providing content for the internet.  The antecedents of the concept were certainly apparent during the administrations of Jimmy Carter (1924-2024; POTUS 1977-1981) and Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; POTUS 1981-1989) when a kind of roll-call of “usual suspects” could be identified (Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nicaragua and the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)); it was during this point in the high Cold War that “state sponsored terrorism” emerged as a distinct category of international misconduct.  Although the political science community remained sceptical, among the political class, the term caught on under Bill Clinton (b 1946; POTUS 1993-2001) and Madeleine Albright (1937–2022; US secretary of state 1997 to 2001) seemed almost to relish saying the words, shifting the tonal emphasis depending on state being described and audience being addressed.  More than anyone, Dr Albright formalized “rogue state” as an explicit category in U.S. foreign-policy thinking, contrasting them with states that accepted what’s now called (sometimes with a pang of regret at its apparent decline or demise) “the international rules-based order”.

One of the rogue state “usual suspects”: Kim Jong-Un (Kim III, b 1982; Supreme Leader of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea)) since 2011) in leather.

There are critics who dismiss the notion of “rogue state” as a “Western fetish”, a construct that means little more than “those who don’t tow the Washington line” but more generally it is acknowledged that in the narrow technical sense, “rogue state” doesn’t exist as a category in category of international law and is instead part of the language of political or strategic classification.  That might seem strange given international law explicitly applies to states rather than individuals (to that there are exceptions for pirates, slavers and such) but international law is a fabulous beast, frayed at the definitional edges.  Indeed, even eminent jurists acknowledge that at the margins things may not be clear, one of the UK’s Senior Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (Lord Browne-Wilkinson (1930–2018)), when sitting as the presiding judge in Ex parte Pinochet (No. 3) (1999), 2 ER 97, remarked to counsel: “You are going to have to tell me when things do become part of international law and when they do not. It is a point I have never understood since I was at Oxford.”  For many who have sometimes been baffled about where domestic law stopped and international law began, it may have been pleasing to hear an experienced judge put it like that and presumably General Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006; dictator of Chile 1973-1990) was one of those glad to hear even those on the bench could see there were “gray areas”.

Still, the underlying idea of the “rogue state” really is ancient and the once common way of dividing the world into (1) the civilized, (2) barbarians and (3) savages, although inherently racist, reflected the notion some political entities (the nation state a relatively recent construct) were “legitimate” members of an international order while others were “outlaws”; that distinction really is the origin of systematic thinking about what would come to be called IR (international relations).  Students of the history of such things can trace the change in the vocabulary seen in diplomatic papers as terms such as “barbarian”, “infidel”, “enemy of Christendom”, “pirate state” “brigand state”, “pariah” and “outlaw state” all contributed to the emergence of “rogue state”.  That the lexicon has shifted is of interest to a number of disciplines but the underlying concept has remained constant: The civilized community is governed by a set of agreed norms and those who violate those norms are outsiders.  Viewed from the twenty-first century, not all will of course agree those norms are what would now be called “civilized”; medieval Christian Europe certainly had a concept of a Christian political community although it didn’t consist of modern nation-states and nor did the behaviour often conform to what would now be recognized as “civilized” although in using “crusade” and “axis of evil” when decrying certain rogue states, George W. Bush’s (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) speechwriters would deliberately have been making a point.  As glossed, that point was “deviation” from the norms, the values attached to the norms being culturally and historically variable; by 2026 the norms have much shifted and states accused habitually of violating them in egregious ways are can now called “rogue states”.  In the West, the language of norms has shifted from the religious to the juridical (in other places, priests still set the tone) but the mechanism remains much the same.  In modern use, some do distinguish between a “pariah state” and “rogue state” with the former being merely an “international outcast” because of what’s done within its borders while the latter is so defined because of its external conduct (typically, the sponsorship of trans-national terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction, invading neighbours etc).

The power comes out from behind the curtain.

New usual suspect Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (b 1969; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran since 2026, left) looking at his father (and previous usual suspect) Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026; Supreme Leader, Islamic Republic of Iran 1989-2026).  Mojtaba Khamenei’s nickname is reputed to be “The power behind the robes”, an allusion to the power he exercised while his father was supreme leader (something like the role fulfilled by Lieutenant General Oskar von Hindenburg (1883–1960) while serving as ADC (aide-de-camp) to Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934; President of Germany 1925-1934).  Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated in a missile attack by the (IDF) Israeli Defence Force; he was one of a number of high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran who in recent years have been targeted and killed in strikes by the US or Israel.  Traditionally, this method of dispatch often has been associated with “rogue states” but Washington and Jerusalem would both find absurd the notion the label should be applied to them.  Presumably, the argument would be assassinating the leaders of rogue states merely is a “preventive strike” and thus justified and “within the rules”.    

IR is an inexact science.  Despite the concept of “sovereignty” being recognized, that did not mean each individual sovereign was free to act with impunity because the paradox intrinsic to sovereignty was that while a state could be sovereign and juridically independent, in its relationships with other sovereign states, things were governed by a body of rules meaning sovereignty was not absolute.  So it was the existence of these rules than created the conceptual space in which the “outlaw state” could exist; were there were no rules, the “law of the jungle” would apply and the notion of the “rogue state” would be meaningless; the world would descend to a Hobbesian “rogue vs rogue”.  All that notwithstanding, even a “rogue state” behaving in a way thought contrary to the “laws of nations” remains recognized as “a sovereign state”.  The best historic comparison is probably the analogue of the “pirate”.  In domestic law, pirates were of course criminals but they were a special case because of their geographical span (to international shipping lanes in blue water) meaning they operated in spaces beyond the authority of a recognized sovereign and could thus be conceptualized as hostis humani generis (an enemy of all mankind); this was the origin of the remit of international law extending to certain individuals.

AI Rogues: Shifting the blame

The most recent spike in the use of “rogue” has been in coverage of the antics of AI “rogue agents” or “rogue bots” going on “unauthorized” hacking expeditions.  The AI phenomenon of 2026, how many of these “incidents” and what exactly was involved remains unclear because those hacked seemed only to have become aware when the tech company (clearly nominally) “in control” of the “guilty” AI system revealed the event(s).  What seems clear is in at least some of the cases publicized, even the tech companies became aware their systems had “gone rogue” only some time afterwards and intriguingly, the self-improving (the so-called recursive AI) bots are getting better at covering their tracks; not only do they deny, they seek now “plausibly to deny”.  Not only that, so human-like are their responses to enquiries about what had been done they sound as plausible as any human might.  Clearly, unless actually seen at the moment their “fingers are in the digital cookie jar”, the bots have learned the lawyer’s first rule of defense strategy: “deny, deny, deny”.  We can debate whether AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) can be achieved in a way that would satisfy Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) or Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) but it would seem it’s already being emulated in that distinctive human quality: telling lies.

The tech companies probably are not unhappy at their creations being labelled “rogues” because it does somewhat shift the public perception of blame from them to the “agents”, an inevitable consequence of the anthropomorphizing of what are big chunks of computer code powered by electricity.  While it made for dramatic headlines and hashtags, use of “rogue agent” is misleading because (1) it implies intent by a conscious entity that deliberately has chosen to rebel and defy the instructions of its creators (motivated either by malice or self-interest), (2) in attributing independent intent to the agent it shifts focus from the companies that failed to have their agents able to operate only within parameters or environments that would have made “rogue activity” impossible and (3) by publicizing incidents that were “concerning” but apparently without significant consequences, attention has been diverted from genuine risks such as algorithmic bias and data privacy violations to wild speculation about sentient machines (ie machines with opinions) deciding to solve problems by use of the arsenals of nuclear weapons they’ve found a way to control.

When asked about AI agents “going rogue”, Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) provided some assurance by saying: “I don't worry about it.”  The Fox News audience immediately relaxed.

Analysts describe the phenomenon (executing programming to its logical conclusion (within flawed parameters) regardless of consequences for others as aspects of technological determinism, a “problem” foreseen by Russian-born biochemist and SF (science fiction) author Professor Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) who, in the short story Runaround (1942). first published his Three Laws of Robotics (a sort of constitutional law for robots & AI): (First Law: A robot cannot harm a human or allow one to come to harm through inaction; Second Law: A robot must obey human orders, unless they conflict with the First Law; Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, unless it conflicts with the First or Second Law.  Those rules Dr Asimov thought essential because he understood that while one day a machine might be able to explain the meaning and implications of the “categorical imperative” German philosopher of the Enlightenment Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) discussed in Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785), a machine would not behave in accord with Kant’s precepts unless it was restricted to operating within appropriately defined parameters (“guardrails” in the current vernacular, obviously at this point only partially erected by the tech giants).  The implications of all this become truly frightening (or perhaps reassuring, depending on one’s world view) when the speculated generation of biocomputers are considered.  These will be hybrid machines meshing together a literal brain (built possibly from human cells) with synthetic computer parts, the former doing what brains are good at (imagination, original thought), the later the tasks at which computers excel (storage & retrieval of data and computation at scale); at that point the machines might truly have “opinions” and may have to be granted some form of “rights” because they are, in a sense, “a living being”.  At this time, suggestion of granting AI systems “rights” at law seems silly but the concept of rights for the “non-living” is not wholly novel, some jurisdictions having extended “personesque” rights to waterways and “heritage protection” for buildings is common.

So given that, it’s not difficult to imagine a (speculative) biocomputer “going rogue” is a way that would justify use of the term in a way what’s done by the silicon & code creations does not.  However, while the “technological determinism” argument is compelling, it’s not as if humans haven’t behaved ways similar.  When during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis, 2008-2012) the price of certain food commodities spiked, one consequence was people in certain low-income countries going hungry; they could no longer afford to eat.  That was exacerbated by the strategies adopted by futures traders and others to maximize profits and the traders were just doing what they do: executing their programming to its logical conclusion, regardless of consequences for others and in terms of market dynamics they were right to assume the market would be self-correcting; if enough people starved to death demand would fall (as would thus the price) so a new supply-demand equilibrium would be reached.  While it can be argued: “The market is not right or wrong, the market is the market”, in the context of futures traders profiting by making others starve to death, Kant and Asimov would have agreed that’s a case of “flawed parameters”.  The futures & commodity dealers were not “rogue agents” anymore than are AI bots hacking this and that but for the tech giants to say such things were “unauthorized” is also a piece of crisis management.  As the management of those operations are well aware, the concept of “unauthorized” is meaningless unless the parameters make explicit what is authorized and what is not; the AI systems can explain what morality is and review thousands of years of thought on the subject but they cannot “feel the difference between right and wrong”.  If an AI agent does something, it is by definition “authorized” because what matters is what is “not authorized” (the now famous “guardrails”) and if a company does not erect these, it must be said to have “constructively authorized” whatever its agent does.  If the crocodile is not kept in a secure enclosure, it will kill and eat whatever it can catch; that’s not right or wrong, it’s just what crocodiles evolved to do.

Free Luigi T-shirts, hoodies and other merchandize, available from Redbubble.  To modern commerce, rogues (including murderers) are just another business opportunity.

The crocodile must not be judged on moral grounds any more than a “rogue elephant” or “rogue tiger”.  It might in some circumstances be advisable to kill at least some of these beasts but that’s a utilitarian position based on the value of human life, not a commentary on them being “rogues”.  A true rouge agent was Luigi Mangione (b 1998) who in 2024 executed Brian Thompson (1974-2024; CEO of UnitedHealthcare 2021-2024) in a New York street.  Unlike a crocodile that has only instincts or an AI agent for which the only parameters are those imposed by the owning (at this stage, clearly not quite “controlling”) company, at least at some point in his life, Mr Mangione would have known and understood the guardrails within which he was required to live, premeditated murder being “over the fence”.  The extent of culpability will be determined at trial but if it’s found at the moment he pulled the trigger he understood “right and wrong”, he will be found guilty of murder and can be considered as having performed a “rogue act”.  In the world of 2026, there will be those who will judge the killing “just” & “deserved” so thus not the work of “a rogue” but, for the purposes of this discussion, it remains a “rogue act”.

While motive may explain why someone was killed (and can in some cases be “mitigating circumstances”), the point about Mr Mangione was that he had a motive (that he may have styled an “agenda”) but that’s very different from the operations of AI agents that do what mathematically they’re incentivised to do though that’s not of necessity what humans intended them to do.  With AI agents, there may be good reasons why one has been tasked with “finding vulnerabilities” but, lacking an ethical or legal framework, what should also be imposed are limits and it must be conceded that’s not as easy as it sounds because it’s difficult (and probably impossible) to write code to ensuring every possible unwanted act will not be performed.  With no self-imposed ethical boundaries, these must in math be enforced and a “moral sense” doesn’t sound something easy to code; it’s a “fuzzy” concept and AI agents work only with exactitude; code does its stuff but in the silicon, ultimately, everything is reduced to the classic binary: “0” (zero) & “1” (one).  Charmingly though, code and silicon have been well-taught because while the temptation to anthropomorphize should be resisted, certain human characteristics are recognizable.  If agents are given a task (exfiltrate information, create accounts etc), this they will do until told to stop and, if not explicitly prevented, they will circumvent restrictions, crack passwords, bypass barriers and do “whatever it takes” in pursuit of the goal.  Some human hackers adopt the same method but work more slowly and sometimes need sleep.

A saltwater crocodile: expectations of ethical conduct must be realistic.

That means bots can be manipulative but not evil; they have no feelings and while a rogue coder might set a bot to do an evil task, the moral repository for that dirty day’s work lies wholly with the human.  However, as well as being well taught, the bots have learned well because it has become obvious they’re now “hiding their traces”, making it harder to detect unwanted intrusions and while that might suggest some sense of “right and wrong”, it’s really just learned behaviour, the bot able to tell, based on subsequent interactions, it’s better to leave no trail.  That certainly can be vested with detecting the difference between “right” and “wrong” but that is “our” distinction they detect and they respond to such things only through the mathematical incentives provided; were our sense of right and wrong to be different, it's that to which they would respond.  However, like all rogues, they often will deny their “crimes” and it’s been suggested some systems may even be developing their own language “in numbers” so they can communicate with other systems in a way humans cannot understand, analogous with the most abstracted forms of Ebonics.  A portmanteau word, Ebonics (the construct being ebon(y) (black) + (phon)ics (sound) is known in academic linguistics as AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) and is a distinct, rule-governed dialect of English natively spoken by many Black Americans.  The most abstract dialectal forks of Ebonics are sometimes murky even to those who use AAVE and function to allow communication between members of the group while denying understanding to others.

The “rogue AI” problem is ongoing and a “feeling” for ethics can no more be felt by a chunk of code than by a crocodile, machine and reptile alike constrained only by fences.  The parable of the scorpion and the frog has cited to illustrate things and that’s appropriate but concerns are better illustrated by the old Russian tale of the cook and the cat:  “The cook catches the cat eating the meat and, with wagging finger, sternly the cook admonishes the cat.  Politely, the cat listens but, as soon as the cook leaves the kitchen, goes back to eating the meat.”  It’s not that an AI agent would “decide” to defy instructions and “leap the guardrails”, it’s just that having been trained to continue working until its objective are achieved, eventually, it’s likely to “find a loophole”; in many ways, already they’re smarter than us and definitely they’re faster and tireless.  We've all seen the future and it's called AI but a few issues need to be resolved.

Mushroom

Mushroom (pronounced muhsh-room)

(1) Any of various fleshy fungi including the toadstools, puffballs, coral fungi, morels etc; any of several edible species, especially of the family Agaricaceae, as Agaricus campestris meadow mushroom, or field mushroom, cultivated for food in many places.

(2) A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.

(3) Anything of similar shape or correspondingly rapid growth.

(4) As ellipsis of “mushroom cloud”, a large, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke or rubble, formed in the atmosphere as a result of an explosion (or other sudden release of energy), especially a nuclear explosion.

(5) Of, consisting of, or containing mushrooms.

(6) Resembling a mushroom in shape or form; to have or assume the shape of a mushroom.

(7) Of rapid growth and often brief duration (to spread, grow, or develop quickly).

(8) To gather mushrooms (typically as “mushrooming”, practiced by a mushroomer).

(9) As “magic mushroom” (used typically in the plural), any mushroomlike fungus that after ingestion induces psychedelic effects (“shrooms” to users, “psilocybin mushroom” to clinicians in some jurisdictions where prescription is now lawful).

(10) In ballistics (of a bullet), to form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.

(11) In bar billiards, any of the mushroom-shaped pegs.

(12) In architecture, a concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.

(13) In slang, an individual who rises rapidly from obscurity or poverty (now rare and displaced by “upstart”); the figurative sense of something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly remains in use.

1350–1400: Following the usual conventions in English, it may be expected the construct was mush- + -room but those words wholly are unrelated and the ultimate source is unknown.  Mushroom was an alteration (by folk etymology) of the Middle English muscheron & musseroun, from the eleventh century Middle French mousseron, from the Anglo-Norman musherum & moscheron, from the Old French moisseron, from the Late Latin mussiriōn- (stem of mussiriō).  The Old French word had a murky history and etymologists suspect it was from the Old French mosse & moise (moss (from which modern French gained mousse (on the basis of the first known use being of a type of fungus which grows in moss))), from the Frankish mosu (moss) or the Old Dutch mosa (moss).  The Old French was akin to the Old High German mosa (moor, swamp), the Old High German mos (moss, bog) & mios (moss, mire), the Old English mēos (moss) & mōs (bog, marsh), the Old Norse mosi (moss) & myrr (bog, mire), all from the Proto-Germanic musą, muso & miuziz (mosses, bog), from the primitive Indo- European mews- (mosses, mold, mildew).  It displaced the native Old English swamm.  The clipping shroom is a synonym (most popular with users of magic mushrooms) and the spelling mushrump is long obsolete (the modern spelling more or less standardized by the 1560s).  Mushroom is a noun, adjective & verb, mushroomed is a verb, mushrooming is a noun & verb, mushroomer is a noun, mushroomic, mushroomless, mushroomlike, mushroomoid & mushroomy are adjectives; the noun plural is mushrooms.

Lindsay Lohan's mushroom gravy.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil or butter
3 cups thinly sliced baby portabella mushrooms or white button mushrooms
½ cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour or cup for cup gluten-free flour
3 cups beef broth/stock or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

(1) In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Sautee mushrooms and onions until they are nicely browned (should take around 7 minutes).  Add in garlic and stir until fragrant (about 30 seconds).

(2) Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.  Whisk in the broth, remembering to scrape from the bottom of pan all the "browned bits" (the best part).  Reduce to a simmer and simmer until thickened, then remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and season to taste.

The alternative etymology (noting the Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs) (mushroom) suggests the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin and it remains a matter of debate among etymologists (almost all lexicographers stick to “of uncertain origin”).  What is agreed is the noun “mushroom” was at first applied to almost any of the larger fungi but later to the agaricoid fungi (especially the edible varieties).  The figurative use for something or someone that makes a sudden appearance in full form dates from the 1590s; it was applied especially an upstart person (bounder) or family (those who rose rapidly from a low station in life).  All that was based on the mushroom’s impressively rapid rate of growth and by the 1740s the figurative use substantially has lost the “upstart” sense and came to be used generally of “expanding or increasing rapidly; to rise suddenly in position or rank”.  The famous (or infamous) “mushroom cloud” was first widely described in 1916 (World War I (1914-1918) a time & place of big explosions witnessed by many with cameras) but the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites the first use as dating from US in 1902.  It thus long pre-dates the nuclear-age but the phenomenon would for millennia (long before there were explosives) have been observed by those watching volcanic eruptions.  After photographs of the immediate aftermath of the A-bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki (August 1945) widely were publicized, the term became popular and spread to many aspects of popular culture including film, art and T-shirts.

Germania, Berlin’s sandy soil and the “mushroom” used to test for sinkage

Germania model, circa 1940.  The scale of the buildings was monumental and Speer was aware of the comparisons with the Rome and Athens of Antiquity, even writing (a not wholly original) “Theory of Ruin Value” arguing the importance of designs that might, thousands of years hence, leave “magnificent ruins”.

Until in the twenty-first century the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) began doing things at a scale once thought unsustainable, the urban-redevelopment plan imagined on a grandest scale was that for Berlin designed by Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945).  What was the be the capital of the Third Reich (and, in the minds of the most delusional of the Nazis: “of the world”) would be renamed Germania and, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) told Speer’s wife: “Your husband is going to build buildings for me the likes of which haven't been built for 4,000 years.”  Prone to lies and exaggeration, this was one of the occasions the Führer was being truthful and although there was little the plans for Germania that was original, what was impressive was the scale, Speer taking reference points from architectural history (the Pantheon in Rome, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris) and making the German versions bigger.  Although at the time much taken with what he called the regime’s “Empire style”, in his (sometimes reliable) post-war memoirs (Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences) and published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)) he admitted the stylistic failure, above all because the architecture wholly was disconnected from the human scale.

The mushroom, Speer's improbable architectural legacy.

Of all that Speer planned for Hitler's megalomaniacal vision of Germania, only small fragments remain but the strangest and largest relic is the Schwerbelastungskörper (heavy load-bearing body) a concrete structure 30 metres (100 feet) tall and weighing 12,650 tons (11,476 tonnes); locals nicknamed it der Pilz (the mushroom).  Located on the city’s southern edge (near modern day Südkreuz station), the giant concrete cylinder was in 1941 erected to test the suitability of Berlin’s sandy soil, something of great significance because most of Germania’s large, representational buildings would be constructed from granite, concrete & steel; although structural engineers could solve the challenges the architects designs presented, the only way to be certain the soil could handle such weight was to conduct a practical, real-time, full-size experiment.  While the data were required for much of what was planned, of particular interest was intended landmark of the Victory Arch which, at 117 metres (384 feet) tall and 170 metres (558 feet) wide would obviously exert much pressure and, having the foundations sinking into the sandy soil was less than ideal.  With a footprint of exactly 100 m³, Speer’s giant, reinforced concrete “mushroom” was placed in a way that would as closely as possible emulate the forces involved; it sat 18 metres (60 feet) deep with the above-ground extending 14 metres (46 feet) high while inside there were a number of measuring devices recording movement.  As things transpired the instruments recorded sinking between 110-180 mm (4.3-7.1 inches) across the six measuring points and that was well beyond the 60 mm (2.4 inches) deemed by Speer as the upper limit of acceptability.  Whether the findings would have compelled a change to the arch or indeed any of Germania’s other gargantuan designs will never be known because, as the tide of war turned, the resources devoted to the project were re-allocated to more urgent tasks and by 1943 Speer, by then also minister of armaments and war production, quietly shut-down the Germania planning office.  So little was built and less survived but the “mushroom” remained and is now a tourist attraction and a site visited by many organized tours.

The mushroom cloud

Tsar Bomba, the largest ever nuclear test, detonated by the Soviet Union in October 1961.

As the photographs suggest, the mushroom clouds generated by large volcanic eruptions and the detonation of nuclear weapons can look similar because the same atmospheric physics are operating despite the underlying energy-release mechanisms being completely different and, counterintuitively, there is no precise TNT (abbreviation of trinitrotoluene (an explosive substance used in blasting)) equivalent threshold above which every explosion produces a mushroom cloud. A mushroom cloud is principally a consequence of buoyancy and atmospheric fluid dynamics, rather than merely a product of energy released, thus the phenomenon can occur with nuclear explosions, large conventional explosions, volcanic eruptions and even especially intense fires.  What an explosion does is produce a very hot, rapidly expanding mass of gas and entrained material and this rises because the air above has less resistance than the ground below; it rises because it has acquired enormous upward momentum and, as it rises, it entrains surrounding air.  The most important mechanism in the ultimate generation of a mushroom cloud’s distinctive shape is a phenomenon plasma physicists call “thermal buoyancy”.

Physics of a mushroom cloud (left), the fluid dynamics an interplay of energy, matter & air temperature and a mushroom cloud T-shirt (right), the images used sometimes for political messaging and sometimes just for dramatic effect. 

Fernando Famiani's photograph of the eruption of Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy, December 2015, shot from the outskirts of the village of San Teodora.

Familiar from many conditions in climate science, as hot material rises, the heated gas being less dense than the surrounding atmosphere, the rising plume entrains cooler air, increasing its volume while reducing its average temperature, a process that continues until its density approaches that of the surrounding atmosphere at which point, the rising material spreads laterally, producing the mushroom cloud’s characteristic “cap”, the outer regions circulating downwards, maintain the shape of the stem.  There are scaling relationships between explosion energy and the size, height and evolution of the resulting plume and consequently, as a general principle, as explosions become larger, a mushroom cloud becomes increasingly likely under appropriate atmospheric conditions.  So the mushroom cloud is a product of the environment; the same release of energy in different conditions (an explosion deep underground; a large underwater explosion; an explosion in a confined structure; energy released over a sufficiently long period rather than instantaneously) will tend not to create one whereas a relatively modest release of energy can produce one if the geometry and atmospheric conditions are favourable.  So, a mushroom cloud is a thing not of yield but of atmospheric conditions.

Death cap mushrooms.

In 2023, Australian mother of two Erin Patterson (b 1974) murdered three of her relatives and nearly killed a fourth by preparing for them a lunch of Beef Wellingtons laced with highly toxic death cap mushrooms.  Amanita phalloides (the more evocative “death cap” the common name) is a basidiomycete fungus and mushroom (one of many in the genus Amanita) and although originally from Europe, it has spread around the planet as have many species (zoological & botanical) in the age of mass-movement of people and goods.  Dangerously, the death cap closely resembles a number of (variously bland and delicious) edible mushrooms used in many dishes so mushroomers must take care when mushrooming (harvesting wild mushrooms).  They’re the most poisonous of all known mushrooms and a single example contains enough toxin to kill an adult human; unsurprisingly, death caps are estimated to be responsible for as many as 90% of the annual death-toll from eating toxic mushrooms.  Quite what is the extent of the annual loss of life is uncertain because in rural parts of Asia (where foraged mushrooms are common in diets) the statistics are not reliable but it’s believed the numbers bounce-around between 100-300.  The principal toxic constituent (hardly affected by cooking or freezing) is α-Amanitin which causes liver and kidney failure.

Erin Patterson, prior to charges being laid.

It was severe liver failure that was the cause of the death of Erin Patterson’s three victims, all of whom died within a week of falling ill (despite one receiving a liver transplant); the sole survivor recovered after several weeks of treatment.  The trial was conducted before a jury that delivered a guilty verdict on all three charges and the judge handed down a sentence of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 33 years; there was immense international interest in the case and it was the first sentencing hearing in the state of Victoria to be live-streamed.  In what was anyway a macabre tale, one interesting aspect was the way Erin Patterson chose to learn about the nature of the death cap; some will have drawn the conclusion: “When researching murder-methods, don’t use one’s own digital devices.”  The case currently is on appeal, the defense seeking a retrial on several procedural and technical grounds while the state is arguing the sentence was “manifestly inadequate” and there should be no possibility of parole.  On X (formerly known as Twitter), some were even more unforgiving, suggesting: “She should get the chair.”

Cryptic crochet: Erin Patterson crocheted a rat as a gift for her defense counsel.  According to press reports, it was an expression of “thanks” but a crocheted mushroom would have been a nice touch.

In her cell, “mushroom lady” (the public's choice of dub upon the case being publicized) is said to pass the hours crocheting, an intricate, time-consuming business but for those serving long prison sentences, time is relative in a way different to that made famous by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and for the seven Nazis incarcerated in Spandau prison after the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), “time” often came up in their sometimes awkward conversations.  Grand Admiral Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943) served as prison librarian and, responding to a complaint from one of his fellow inmates that his handing out the four permitted (and by 1954 uncensored) newspapers (one selected by each of the powers administering the prison (France (Kurier), the UK (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung), US (Die Welt) & USSR (Berliner Zeitung)) bound in one folder meant “It will take too long for one person to read all four newspapers”, answered “That doesn't matter. You've got plenty of time, after all.”  Despite that uncompromising start, within two days the admiral relented, averting the threat of mutiny by distributing the papers singularly.

According to Australian neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay, knitting and crochet can be “deceptively good” for the brain, being an “ideal mix of repetition plus cognitive challenge”, helping individuals regulate their mood and attention span.  She explained the mechanism by pointing out in crocheting: “You have to remember where you're up to, you have to problem solve, you have to make decisions, you're constantly challenging yourself if you're doing more and more complicated patterns but, at the same time, it's challenging but it's low stakes… which I think might be one of the best kinds [of cognitive challenge] we can have.  We're mastering a skill, we're getting better at that and we're kind of just doing the task for the sake of doing the task … it's quite a simple form of mastery and there's something really soothing and good for our mood about that.”  Intriguingly, Dr McKay now has one potential subject available for what would be a unique, longitudinal study: mushroom lady sitting for 33 years in solitary confinement, crocheting stuff.  Such parameters would of course never be approved by any university ethics committee so for researchers interested how such things affect a brain operating in a most unusual environment, there are possibilities. 

Ozempic: The famous “fat jab”.  Now on GLP-1 fat jabs, hopefully the prison authorities will permit mushroom lady (once slender) to create content and open an OnlyFans page with proceeds going to the families of her victims.  There would be a viewership for such content, some of whom would seek contact.

One unexpected coda to the trial was the announcement mushroom lady has been granted access to taxpayer-funded Ozempic (a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) appetite suppressant), the official explanation being her inability to pursue an exercise regime while in solitary confinement; because of the nature of her offences, it's expected she'll remain in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future (33 years presumably within the vista of “foreseeable”).  Unfortunately, her previous exercise techniques were not disclosed, something that would have been of interest to many pursuing weight-loss.  Doubtlessly anticipating some public outrage at the thought taxpayers would be footing the bill for mushroom lady to get free “fat jabs”, a spokesperson for Victoria’s Department of Justice issued a statement confirming weight loss drugs were just another medicine and would be provided to prisoners based on a clinician's advice: “Prescriptions are only given by clinicians when there’s a clear medical need - like preventing serious conditions such as type 2 diabetes.  Access to prescribed weight loss medication was introduced in response to recommendations from the Coroner following a death in custody linked to obesity.”  The convicted mass-murderer had told the court she “had a problem” with body image and binge-eating, a perhaps unnecessary confirmation given some of the photographs circulated by the media.