More on psychedelics

Further to my last post, when you go looking for studies on harm from hallucinogens/psychedelics, a hell of a lot of them start with something like "despite the rise in interest in psychedelics as potentially useful therapeutic tools in recent years, detailed and reliable studies about harmful effects have been lacking."    

Anyway, here are some of the more interesting things I have found, so far:

NMURx surveyed 267,268 adults representing 256,742,237 Americans (Table E1; available at http://www.annemergmed.com) over the study period. The prevalence of past year psychedelic use in nondecriminalized US states modestly increased from 2.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 2.33% to 2.54%) in 2019 to 2020 to 2.84% (95% CI 2.74% to 2.95%) in 2021 to 2023. Oregon and Colorado rates have risen from 3.28% (95% CI 2.66% to 3.89%) in 2019 to 2020 to 5.44% (95% CI 4.63% to6.24%) in 2021 to 2023 

The background to that is that Oregon and Colorado " have already legalized and decriminalized the sale, possession, and growth of natural psychedelics for counseling, spiritual guidance, beneficial community-based use, and healing. As of August 2023, 22 states have active legislation on psychedelic medical use."  I don't know, but a state in which upwards of 5% having used a psychedelic in the last year sounds like a state with too many people using them.

 Going back to 2013, one open-access study found that regular users of psychedelics maybe had less mental health issues(!).   But the study itself acknowledges significant limitations.   And I see there is also perhaps a bit of the (many decades old) argument used regarding cannabis that if someone did get psychosis after doing the drug, maybe there were going to get schizophrenia anyway: 

There are very few case reports of prolonged psychiatric symptoms following psilocybin or mescaline [13], [52]. Almost all claims of psychiatric harm caused by peyote have been found on examination of medical records to be due to pre-existing schizophrenia or other causes [53], [54]. 

So, count me as suspicious of that study.

I see that the researchers in that study are quoted in a 2022 study which similarly seems determined to find that the risks are pretty low, and keeps emphasising that how they are used (you know, in a supportive, safe context, like a psych's office) makes it much safer.   Things like "how they are going to be used recreationally" don't get treated in much detail, for example:

 In unprepared individuals and/or in unsafe settings, effects of psychedelics may have the potential to escalate into dangerous behaviour (Johnson et al., 2008). Although very rare, there are reports of individuals jumping from buildings and ending their lives (e.g. Honyiglo et al., 2019; Keeler and Reifler, 1967). While these occurrences are uncommon compared with other psychoactive drugs – especially alcohol – they are widely reported in the media which contributes considerably to public perceptions of their risks.

And:

In Carbonaro et al.’s (2016) online survey about challenging experiences after consuming ‘mushrooms’, 11% of users reported putting themselves or others at risk of physical harm. This was often related to greater (estimated) dosage, difficulty of the experience and lack of physical comfort and social support – all of which can be controlled under clinical conditions. 

A study in Nature in 2023 is of limited use, given the small sample that it involved, but it's interesting that the abstract starts with the observation that a lot of studies seem to be biased towards the positive:

Recent controversies have arisen regarding claims of uncritical positive regard and hype surrounding psychedelic drugs and their therapeutic potential. Criticisms have included that study designs and reporting styles bias positive over negative outcomes. The present study was motivated by a desire to address this alleged bias by intentionally focusing exclusively on negative outcomes, defined as self-perceived ‘negative’ psychological responses lasting for at least 72 h after psychedelic use.  

Here's another questionable self selecting, self reporting, survey study, but it has this interesting part:

Taken as a whole, these studies provide convergent support for findings from clinical trials, including that psychedelic use (either lifetime or prospective) is associated with increased emotional well-being (19–26), reduced harmful substance use/misuse (i.e., illicit drugs/tobacco/alcohol) (27, 28), a tendency toward liberal political views and an enhanced sense of connection with nature (29, 30). These effects are reliably associated with the occurrence of various types of transformative mental states (e.g., mystical, emotional breakthrough, insight-type) during the acute psychedelic experience that have also predicted outcomes in clinical trials (6, 9, 11, 22, 31–33).  

 I can assure the reader that I did not become more Left leaning as I aged due to use of a drug!

 The study does turn up this figure for harms:

...not all participants reported unqualified benefit from psychedelic usage. Thirteen percent identified at least one harm, and these participants reported receiving significantly less mental health benefit from their psychedelic usage than participants not endorsing any harms. 

 OK, so a very recent study from Norway did some more survey stuff, and it's really hard to follow from the paper what they found!   It does have some interesting passages, though:

Adverse events as conceived in the context of clinical trials (e.g. any undesirable experience associated with the use of a medical product in a patient) overlap with the non-medical concept of ‘challenging experiences’ arising from self-experimentation with psychedelics. In clinical trials, the most common adverse events reported after ingestion of psychedelics are headaches, nausea and transient anxiety (Andersen et al., 2021). However, serious adverse events have been reported after the administration of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, such as severe suicidal (Goodwin et al., 2023) and cases of extreme anxiety induced by LSD requiring the use of benzodiazepines to contain the situation (Holze et al., 2023). In clinical trials, high anxiety during the psychedelic drug administration have been associated with worse clinical outcomes (Roseman et al., 2018). Anxiety following a high dose of psilocybin or LSD is also common among healthy subjects, as 30 % of participants in controlled studies experience fear and panic, and 17–34 % experience paranoid ideation (Griffiths et al., 2006, 2011; Schmid et al., 2015). Recently, there has been increased attention to possible negative effects resulting from both clinical and non-clinical use of psychedelics (Evans et al., 2023), and criticism of the field for not properly assessing and appreciating risks (van Elk and Fried, 2023). Challenging psychedelic experiences during acute effects are quite common, but to what extent and through which mechanisms they are implicated in prolonged negative effects needs more research. 

Well, that's a pity, because it's the more prolonged negative effect rate that I'm interested in! 

The next paragraph contains the now familiar refrain - more research needed:

The increased interest in psychedelics from researchers and the public merits translation of validated questionnaires for assessing the qualitative nature of subjective states and outcomes resulting from using these compounds. Epidemiological studies indicate that psychedelic drug use is increasing and that more people report difficulties during acute effects and seek help for post-psychedelic health complaints (Bouso et al., 2022; Miech et al., 2023; Simonsson et al., 2023; Tate et al., 2023). It is therefore paramount that researchers pay attention to negative and complex reactions to psychedelic drugs in the general population, as well as to their possible benefits. Measurements that capture these themes are also highly relevant in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, where processing difficult cognitive and emotional material is core to the treatment modality.

 Another paragraph talks about research that has looked at the adverse effects:

While not affecting most psychedelic users, there are indications that a significant proportion experience substantial distress and challenges with functioning after psychedelic experimentation (Simonsson et al., 2023). The types and precise causes of enduring negative effects after psychedelics are an ongoing area of research. At present there are studies and reports suggesting increases in anxiety, trauma-like symptoms, feelings of disconnection and dissociative experiences, depersonalization and derealization, existential confusion and loss in sense of purpose, and perceptual abnormalities such as Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder (HPPD) (Bouso et al., 2022; Bremler et al., 2023; Evans et al., 2023; Kvam et al., 2023; Vis et al., 2021). In addition, there are credible reports of worsening and triggering of psychotic symptoms and manic or hypomanic states, induction of suicidal ideation, as well as negative impact on traits among people with personality disorders (Barber et al., 2022; Kramer et al., 2023; Marrocu et al., 2024; Morton et al., 2023). Having pre-existing psychiatric diagnoses is a risk factor for challenging psychedelic experiences in these studies, but not a prerequisite as it also occurs without known psychological risk factors and relates to variables such as higher dose, younger age, chaotic contexts, and absence of social support (Simonsson et al., 2023; Vizeli et al., 2024). These contextual factors appear to play a key role in the development of lasting negative effects and likely apply not only during the acute phase of a challenging psychedelic experience but also in the period afterward. In the future, we suggest that it is fruitful to study post-drug trajectories in combination with emphasis on the broad and varied range of mediating factors that interact with the psychedelic experience.  

Well, there's a hell of a lot of links there to go looking at, but I've spent enough time on this for now.  

Hallucinogens worry me

Sure, it's interesting that certain hallucinogens (most notably, DMT) produce similar types of peculiar results with most people (see machine elves), but after having the Algorithm send me to a bunch of YouTube videos from Comedy Central (of all places) in which "cool" people tell light hearted stories of their DMT trips, I am increasingly worried that cultural promotion of recreational tripping is going way too far.   (The videos seem to be 5 years old now, so I am late to notice them.)

In comments on any video about trips, there will be hundreds of people recommending how to do it right, so to speak.   There will be the occasional cautionary one, and there's a Joe Rogan clip of a guy who explains how it took 18 months to fully recover from his DMT experiences; but overall, it seems clear that there are too many people promoting it as an interesting or fun thing to do.

This just doesn't sit right with me.

People's mental health is something to be valued and treasured if it gets them through life on an even keel, so to speak.  To know a person with serious struggles with their mental health is to know how good it is to enjoy not having that problem.  Why risk it for mere recreational purposes?   

And it doesn't necessarily carry clear spiritual truths or lessons, as someone argued on Twitter recently:

Indeed, on that last point, why don't people just listen to what the members of the Beatles had to say about the empty promise of drug induced hallucinations?   

 

I have told the story before:  as a teenager I was impressed by Huxley's The Doors of Perception.   It's a cool idea to think that a drug lowers the brain filter to let you see a numinous world as it really is.  But it also becomes clear when you read more about the experiences of drug users that it is not really what is going on.

 

That said, I am not totally against the experiments in use of certain drugs by properly trained psychiatrists to see if they can help certain traumatised people.  (Although I am also already convinced that there is a great deal of hype around that topic,  too.)   

 

But I do have more and more sympathy as I age to taking the old Republican line on "this is your brain on drugs - just don't do it"  than the soft "do them, but just carefully, it will open your mind, man" experimental lines of the likes of Joe Rogan and whoever owns Comedy Central.

A new book on capitalism

A review here at the New York Times on the kind of book by an academic that sounds interesting, but which I can tell would take too much devotion to read in full:  "Capitalism: a Global History". 

A couple of extracts:

Previous histories have usually treated capitalism as a European invention, but Beckert, as ambitious as he is erudite, shows how capitalism arose as a global phenomenon, the peculiar behavior of a few merchants in places as far apart as Cairo and Changzhou.

By mapping the diverse origins of capitalism, Beckert reveals its protean and resilient character. Over hundreds of years, merchants created small enclaves of capital within port cities and elaborate networks of trust that stretched over long distances. Such connections, Beckert observes, helped them outflank and survive resistance from above, by landed aristocrats who thought “making money from money seemed closer to sin, sorcery or plain theft,” and from below, by “cultivators and craftspeople” who were loath to give up their local conceptions of prices set by “a shared sense of morality.” 

So far, sounds like it supports the generally conservative idea that capitalism is a more-or-less natural evolution arising out of how groups of people like to manage their lives.  But there are wrinkles, to put it mildly:

In these remote corners of the world European investors conducted a kind of civil experiment, extending the logic of the market to all aspects of life. Everything, especially human labor, was commodified and could be bought and sold for money.

And:

He offers an especially devastating critique of earlier mythologies of capitalism, showing how the “invisible hand” of the market does not peacefully guide world affairs, and how the development of capitalism was in no sense “natural.”

Like many books before it, “Capitalism” is not only a history but a moral indictment. The metaphor of monstrosity runs throughout Beckert’s pages. In his telling, the hand of capital is visible, cold, hard and vicious, and capitalism is a promiscuous creature, drawing on different kinds of labor, from enslaved to free and many in between, within various political frameworks, from democracy to dictatorship.

Two leading thinkers of the 18th century, the French philosopher Montesquieu and the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, argued that world trade promoted peace and harmony because it advanced mutual interest and interdependency.

What actually happened, and indeed was happening during the lifetimes of both men, was that trade was often militarized and violent. Armed fleets pointed their cannons at harbors to open markets for trade, and kings relied on bankers, when they weren’t trying to rein them in, to raise silver to outfit soldiers with guns and swords. Montesquieu was born in 1689. As Beckert points out, “between 1689 and 1815, Britain and France were at war for 64 years.” 

 

Goodbye to Tom Stoppard

I was always interested in Tom Stoppard, who seemed to be a clever, humane, and curious man.   (I am reminded in his obituaries that he supported Margaret Thatcher and called himself a "small c conservative" or "timid libertarian" - but this was back at the time before big C conservatives went all culture war nuts on science and immigration, so I don't hold it against him.  Besides, he had worked with Spielberg, so he can't have been a pain politically.)   

I actually saw his play Arcadia in Brisbane - one of the relatively few times in my life I have been to the theatre to see a drama instead of a musical.  I don't remember too much about it, to be honest, apart from recalling that I found it interesting and clever at the time.   (I do remember a discussion with my companion about how I thought it could have made one thing clearer, and she disagreed.)

Obituaries also note that he was married 3 times.   But people in the arts, you know?   If they have been married only once, they were probably an artist failure!

Anyway, I wish we had someone prominent like him now, in theatre, but I am not sure we do... 

 

How goes it....

I've been writing things here for so many years now that I think I start feeling a little, uh,aimless/lacking purpose?, if I don't update it for more than a few days at a time.   Unless I am travelling at the tie, I just start getting get the feeling that something is missing.

 So, let's rectify that.  

*  The bad luck with my car:  it seemed to have been fixed by a visit to the cheap mechanic (found via my son with the inflammable car) who said it was a faulty ignition coil, which he replaced for relatively little money.  The only problem: the car started doing the same thing again on last Friday, barely 3 days after the repair.  Either the coil he put in is faulty, or he should have just replaced them all, as someone who knows a lot more about cars told me is the usual practice.  Oh well, a telephone call will be made tomorrow.

*  I've been really busy at work, but not in a very satisfying way.   I have had an unusual  string of really annoying people to deal with in the last month or two.   

*  On the self improvement upside:  after the shingles vaccine, I moved to trying the "restricted hours" method of fasting, which I've implemented by just making lunch my first meal of the day.   I think that I may still be losing weight, but very slowly now.  One thing is certain:  this whole fasting thing has made my stomach capacity feel smaller.  I can feel surprisingly full for surprisingly long after lunch in particular.    I get the feeling that it might be easier to go back to a week of alternative whole day fasts, to drop the further 1 to 2 kg I would like to see go.  But we shall see...

*  The dog is back to her usual, happy, barky, self.

*  The weather bureau says that, after a hot day tomorrow, temperatures will moderate for the rest of the week, and no storms.  I am glad.

*  As a (relatively) small indulgence, I went looking for the Black Friday sales and found a Lenovo Tablet that comes with a battery powered pen and a matt finish, all for $228.  Actually, at The Good Guys, I got it for $218 - because even on their online shopping site it gave the price, but then has a button that was something like "want to get the best price?" which when pressed, automatically dropped $10 off the already cheap sale price.  

Do I need another tablet right now?  Not really.   But I am keen to see how a matt finish one is for reading (and doodling); and I mean, that price...

But let me make one minor gripe:  when iPads and tablets first came out, there was a lot of publicity given to their use in making digital art.  Remember the videos you might see of, say, someone doing a faux oil portrait on the iPad with their finger?   But that use of tablets doesn't attract much attention any more, and I also get the impression that the drawing and painting apps now are actually worse in many ways than the first versions that came out.    

I blame Elon Musk.  Or one of the other useless tech billionaires. 

Anyway, it's not out of its box yet, so I will report further when its opened.            

*  I have been saving some clips from Bluesky and Twitter to talk about, and my next post might deal with some of them.

*  Oh, on a completely unrelated matter, the All Knowing Algorithm of the Mighty Google (Youtube version) brought to my attention a category of product which is very cool:  the extraordinarily cheap and easy to use digital mini telescopes that make astrophotography a breeze.   And they can cost well under a $1,000.   

Have a look at the video below to see how ridiculously easy they make taking photographs of galaxies and nebula.  And then bear in mind that this year, we are barely 100 years from even definitively understanding what galaxies are!  I've made this point before, but this is a very, very short period of time in which to expect humanity to have fully processed this knowledge of the age and vastness of the universe into its intellectual, philosophical and intellectual framework.  As the Smithsonian Magazine site explains:

On a snowy New Year’s afternoon in 1925, on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., astronomer Henry Norris Russell read a paper submitted by Edwin Hubble. 

It would change the universe. 

For several decades, astronomers had been debating the nature of spiral nebulae—pinwheel-shape objects twirling across the heavens. One view held that the spirals were clouds of gas and dust that were part of the Milky Way galaxy (then thought to constitute the entire universe), with our solar system at the center. Others argued that spiral nebulae were so-called island universes: separate systems of stars much like the Milky Way. The truth about spiral nebulae would determine whether the universe spanned a few hundred thousand light-years—or millions. 

Hubble’s paper provided the best evidence to date of the more expansive view. According to Hubble’s calculations, the only two spirals visible to the naked eye—the Andromeda Nebula (also known as Messier 31) and the Triangulum Nebula (Messier 33)—were more than 900,000 light-years away. 

“Finding the scale of the universe and our Milky Way’s place in it was a fundamental challenge,” says Barry Madore, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Chicago. “Identifying island universes as individual galaxies of enormous size and great distance was a major paradigm shift.” 

It wouldn’t be the last time Hubble would shift the paradigm. In 1929, he reported that all but a few galaxies are moving away from us, with more-distant galaxies moving faster than nearby ones. The discovery led to the realization that the universe is expanding, and that it must have had a beginning: the Big Bang. “Hubble is known as a titan in astronomy, especially American astronomy,” says Samantha Thompson, the Phoebe Waterman Haas Astronomy Curator at the National Air and Space Museum. “He was successful at pulling things together and getting us over the big hump of acknowledging two things: the Milky Way is one of many galaxies and the universe is expanding.” 

“A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble started the race to the edge of the universe,” says Ray Villard, news director for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which oversees both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. “He fired the starting gun, and the past 100 years have been a marathon to go as far across the universe as we can go.” 

Can you imagine how Hubble would react to seeing what images people in their backyard can take now?, for not with an expensive bit of kit, but with a device bought for half a weekly paypacket that you can carry around in your pocket????: 

 

I do wonder a bit about the software added colours to the final image, but still...it's extraordinary compared to how much money and effort used to be needed for hobbyist astronomers to come up with similar results.  (I used to go to public meetings of the Queensland Astronomical Association sometimes 45 odd years ago, so I have an idea.)

I guess I am rambling now - in the same way I like to about the way people should spend 10 minutes of every day marvelling at the extraordinary technological achievement that is the mobile phone/computer that they carry in their pocket but mainly use to watch cat videos.

Maybe that is what I should do in retirement:  be a placard wearing, semi religious zealot begging people to appreciate technology in their pocket. 

A run of bad luck

There seems to be a run of bad luck going on in my family at the moment.

Last week, our dog's fondness for certain fertiliser in pots seems to have been the cause of a serious bout of vomiting and diarrhoea which required a day at the vet and many dollars.  (Well, $1,160.)   She did recover, though.

On the weekend, while driving a rental truck to help move my son back from his independent studio apartment living experiment of a year to home, I misjudged its turning circle and scrapped a bollard at a petrol station, causing just enough damage to require repair.  Maybe will cost less than a $1000?  Probably more, but the excess is $1,500 so there is an upper limit.

And yesterday, in other petrol related news, my son tried to avoid hail on his "new" second hand car by driving onto the footpath at the former apartment to try to get under a tree (a dubious exercise in itself, given Australian trees propensity to drop large branches in storms), overlooking that there was a electrical connection box there (one of the smallish green ones that sit about 40 cm high).  Driving over it got the car stuck, sparks ensued, and up the car went in flames.   Complete write off.  His excess is $2,000.   He wasn't hurt, though.

Then, when driving to pick him up and survey the damage, my car started running very rough and a generic warning light "see a Toyota dealer urgently" came on.   I don't know exactly its problem yet.

I'm getting the feeling of a general curse affecting the household at the moment.

Anyone wanting to contribute to the family's financial welfare is welcome!    

Bear panic in Japan

So, the news has even reached the New York Times:  Japan has had a year of many bear attacks, many fatal:

Akita Prefecture, home to about 880,000 people, is on the front line of Japan’s bear crisis, which has penetrated the national psyche and drawn an all-out response from the government. Across the country, nearly 200 people have been attacked by bears this year and 13 have died, a record. Bears have been spotted in northern ski towns and southern villages, and on the outskirts of cities like Tokyo and Kyoto. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have recently issued travel warnings about bears in Japan.

As it happens, I have been to Akita in Akita prefecture, for a day trip.  There's not a lot there, to be honest; but it looked interestingly isolated on the map, and it was a pleasant enough trip from nearby Morioka to wander around a very good fish market with lots of things to eat, and a park where there once stood an old castle.  I guess people would be very cautious about a walk through that park now (although with winter, I presume it's safe.)

As for Morioka:  even in its centre, it is seeing bear activity.  This video was slightly amusing, the way the police fairly uselessly followed the bear around (and beat a retreat when it turns towards them):    

 

In fact, I have to say, Nippon Television News Japan seems to love reporting dangerous bear stories.  They even have a story about to air about the shortage of "bear prevention gear" - such as bear spray, I guess - which I would actually be pretty keen on carrying around on my belt if I walked around anywhere in Akita.

The slightly worrying thing is that in the comments to any of the videos, the public (presumably many Japanese) as really keen to call for culling as the only way the problem can be stopped.   And you get videos of (often old) men out with their rifles or other weapons to take them on.   I think that Japanese men my age and a bit older might often have a fantasy of being a bear hunter and living off the land as a romantic thing to do in retirement! (Well, I know one Japanese man who has so opined!)  

Still, it seems to me that a country that is very high tech in some ways should be able to come up with some better ideas.  Perhaps bear tagging expeditions (tagging with some extra long life Air Tags or similar) then set up a perimeter watch around town, with warnings of bear in the vicinity on people's phones?

Or give long lasting contraceptives to female bears, as part of the problem is a booming population, apparently.

Maybe I'm too soft, and some of the bear attacks do seem pretty mean!: 

 

Anyway, I expect to be in Morioka in January, but hopefully, they will all well and truly be hibernating by then.

Bad behaviour in Queensland

Henry Reynolds is still writing books?   He must be getting on - it seems a couple of decades since he first gained a lot of attention for his aboriginal history work, and I thought he looked to be in his 50's or 60's even then.  (Let me check - yes, I'm right - he's 86.  Quite an age to be writing books.)

Anyway, he has a new book out Looking from the North which is given a generous review and summary at the Conversation.    Some extracts:

In the 19th century, land-taking by white colonising settlers (or, more accurately, “unsettlers”) came late to the tropics. They arrived from Melbourne, Sydney and Tasmania in the late 1850s, settling first, according to Reynolds, in the coastal port of Bowen in April 1861. But surely the first northern settlement began almost three years earlier with the proclamation of Rockhampton (later dubbed the township of “sin, sweat and sorrow” by British novelist Anthony Trollope) right on the Capricornian line in October 1858.

Still, both Rockhampton and Bowen have their origins painted in blood. Reynolds describes “ruthlessly usurping” pastoralists expanding rapidly across Aboriginal hinterlands, seizing traditional territories for vast “runs”, each of them between 65 and 250 square km.

The “reign of terror” this inflicted upon the various peoples of these “ancient homelands” was answered at most times, he writes, by armed, militant resistance from local Mobs. With guerrilla tactics and economic warfare upon white personnel, flocks and herds, they attempted to stem the vast, swelling tide of colonial advance.

Variously described at the time by participants as “a species of warfare”, “extermination” or, in omnibus fashion, “a war of extermination”, this acquisitive process was rigorously sustained by colonial legislatures packed with pastoralists and planters, guarding their economic interests. 

This elite phalanx was basically organising and funding its own violent land-theft, via the state-run Native Police services. Practitioners of British common law, in mostly impotent courts, helpfully averted their gaze from the inevitable slaughter.

Reynolds posits – and I would agree – that North Queensland saw the worst of this and then facilitated its spread across the “top end”. By this point, the killing power of Western ordnance had become increasingly acute, as belief in white racial superiority was also peaking.

Distant private colonists, remote from the southern administrative centre, became very much a law unto themselves. More than 70 Native Police camps covered North Queensland at various times, out of the known 150 or so that have been identified. These camps, conducting monthly patrols and many “dispersals”, were better weaponised, given a freer hand and often persisted far longer than their southern counterparts. 

Reynold's biggest claim to fame is, I think, to try to build "respect" for modern indigenous people by arguing that their 19th century predecessors didn't just passively accept the expanding takeover of land, but fought back in something like a modern, organised, guerrilla warfare type of way.   This has always seemed a bit of dubious exercise to me, and one prone to easy exaggeration; in much the same way that we get very dubious exercises in elevating some pretty basic stuff in indigenous fishing or plant knowledge to being equivalent to modern engineering or science.  (And see Dark Emu.)

Still, I can see value in making the aggressive nature of colonial expansion better understood.   I mean, it is always interesting to read about how colonial expansion tactics were being criticised by commentators at the time they were happening:

Queensland was increasingly seen by British colonial officials in Whitehall as “a rogue colony”, due to its enthusiasm for illegally “exterminating” Aboriginal people and extreme racial policies directed towards Melanesians and Asians.

One sees this clearly upon reading the disquieting reports written by travelling journalists venturing into tropical Australia for such southern publications as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Argus and The Age. As one correspondent noted in mid-1880, “the doctrine of extermination” was widely broadcast throughout the northern towns he visited. In general conversation, he “heard it repeated that the blacks must be exterminated and this is the sentiment of highly educated persons”.

North Queensland, too, is the key to understanding the subsequent frontier histories of the Northern Territory and much of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. For it was largely Queensland cattlemen, with their white and Aboriginal work-forces, as well as fervent gold-seekers from the Gulf Country, Cape York and north-western Queensland, who spearheaded the colonisation of these regions. They took their aggressive ideas, desires and suppressive techniques into new zones of conflict.

By the 1920s an original, pre-contact First Nations population of around 400,000 across the entire North (with perhaps 300,000 in Queensland) had been reduced by over 90% to around 40,000 people (with around 17,000 remaining in Queensland). These had been replaced by almost 500,000 migrant incomers. Yet most of the sequestered lands were now in the hands of only 1500 or so pastoral families, partnerships and absentee companies. 

 Yes, it is true that when I was in primary school, Australian history was all about famous explorers as heroes and the new lands they often opened up.   I should ask my kids, actually, if they ever had any lessons about explorers in primary school, but I suspect it is now completely absent.   (I do remember my daughter complaining that the positive lessons encouraging interest and knowledge of aboriginal life were pretty boring.)   

I've noticed that Tony Abbott is trying to rectify things with a reversion to Australia as the land of heroes (with the help of the IPA and therefore, probably, Gina Rinehart - who has never seen a bit of land she wouldn't like to dig up.)  There's a cynical review of his book at the Conversation too.

Despite my dislike of Abbott, I suppose I must grind my teeth and say I am at least sympathetic to his approach - that it's appropriate that both sides of the Australian experience be looked at.  Perhaps there needs to be an emphasis on those "liberals" who saw what was going on with treatment of aborigines at the time and tried to do something to stop its excesses?   That seems something well worth knowing.  

But teaching history from just one perspective does seem, well, less than optimal?   

  

Trump the socialist

The article in Fortune it references paints a bleak picture indeed of the state of the farming sector in the US, struggling under Trump"s grand plan of seeing what happens if a country shoots itself in the (trade) foot.  Link.

Shingles away

One of the few benefits of turning 65 is that the Australian government will pay for anyone to get the shingles vaccine.  I got it at the local pharmacy, which is very convenient; and they didn't even need to see my Medicare card (my name being on whatever system they could access.)

So I got the first of two vaccinations on Friday, and was told it does have a high rate of reactions, which can include fever, tiredness, muscle aches, and possible gastrointestinal effects.  

It hit me with a sore arm (at the injection site) and a lot of sleepiness on Saturday.   Or maybe it just seemed like a good excuse for my mind to say "Finally!  You have a good excuse to go to bed on a Saturday afternoon and stay there"?  (No, I think I was genuinely suffering fatigue.)  

Anyhow, the arm is sill sore today, but not so tired.  My back is hurting a bit though - possibly that's a muscle ache from it?   I also decided to skip my fasting day to help recover from the vaccine effects.

One of the main reasons I wanted to get it, apart from being at risk of shingles, was this association with reduced dementia risk.  Seems worth the side effects...

Nature weighs in on the protein question

Quite a good article to be found here at Nature about the fitness influencer craze for recommending super high protein intake.  Some bits:

“It’s really frustrating because there isn’t evidence to support the claims that they’re making,” says Katherine Black, an exercise nutritionist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, referring to the super-high protein recommendations often shared on social media. What research does show is that protein needs can vary from person to person and can change throughout a lifetime. And people should think carefully about what they eat to meet those needs. “On social media, it’s like everyone’s worried about protein, putting protein powder into everything,” she says.....

This part, explaining how they even work out protein needs, is interesting:

Researchers have been trying to estimate how much protein people need for more than a century. In 1840, chemist Justus von Liebig estimated that the average adult required 120 grams of protein a day, on the basis of a group of German workers’ diets. Later, scientists started to use nitrogen to calculate protein requirements. Protein is the only major dietary component that contains nitrogen. So, by measuring how much of it people consume and the amount they excrete, researchers could estimate how much the body uses.

Since the 1940s, this nitrogen-balance method has been used to determine the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), a set of nutrient recommendations developed by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The latest such recommendation for protein, from 2005, establishes the RDA for both men and women at 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, which it states should be enough to meet the needs of 97–98% of healthy people. European and global-health authorities recommend similar or slightly higher levels.

Although scientists recognize that RDAs are a useful reference point, many say that people could benefit from a higher amount. “The RDA is not a target; it’s simply the minimum that appears to prevent any detectable deficiency,” says Donald Layman, a researcher focusing on protein requirements at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Evidence suggests1 that the optimal range is between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, he says.

That is especially true for older adults, who often experience muscle loss as they age, as well as for certain athletes and people trying to gain muscle.

For example, in an observational study of 2,066 adults aged 70–79, those who reported eating the most protein — about 1.1 gram per kilogram of bodyweight — lost 40% less lean mass during the three years of follow-up than did those who ate the least — around 0.7 grams per kilogram2.

“For older adults, 1.2 grams per kilogram is just giving them a little extra protection,” says Nicholas Burd, a nutrition and exercise researcher also at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Furthermore, older people might experience a decline in appetite, which makes it particularly important for them to pay attention to their protein intake. It doesn’t mean that they need to take protein supplements, he says. “It’s all things we can do with just normal incorporation of high-protein foods in our lives.” 

 Actually, a couple of Youtube people I have watched on the topic have suggested that 1.2 grams per kg a day, especially for older, so this gives me confidence I am not watching nutters.

 

Conservative makes good case

This tweet is from David French, making the point that always comes to my mind when Trump and MAGA hysterics run around claiming America had never been in a worse state before Trump got elected.  It completely ignores the 1970's.  Continually claiming that the Democrats under Obama and Biden have caused a crisis of confidence that has never been seem before is just self serving fantasy crap, of the "let's invent a different reality and pretend it's real until people believe it" Trumpian kind.

I wonder if Jimmy Carr was able to crack a joke about this

In the New York Times:

Despite a decade of social transformation in Saudi Arabia, unwed pregnancy remains a taboo that exists in a legal gray area. The children of unmarried immigrants face unique perils. They are routinely deprived of birth certificates, medical care and education, in violation of Saudi and international law, a New York Times investigation found.

Kenyan women and children suffer in particular, The Times found, because officials at the Kenyan Embassy berate them, stonewall them or saddle them with years of paperwork to return home. Hundreds of children, and potentially many more, have been left in the lurch — recognized by neither Saudi Arabia nor Kenya.

These children are the victims of an exploitative industry that recruits African women to Saudi Arabia — a pipeline from which Kenyan government officials personally profit through financial interests in staffing agencies. Hundreds of Kenyan women have been killed, and reports of rapes and beatings are common.

For those women who become pregnant, whether from an assault or a relationship, birthing a baby into legal limbo is a final cruelty.

With no path forward, some contemplate giving up their children. At least as wards of the state, they would receive identity documents and an education....

All of this flies in the face of a Saudi law that codifies the rights of children — unequivocally, regardless of their immigration status or lineage — to identification documents, medical care and education.

“The law deems a child born to a non-Saudi mother in an irregular or undocumented manner to be affiliated with the mother and to bear her nationality, and a birth certificate is issued for such child accordingly,” the Saudi government’s Center for International Communication said in a statement to The Times.

But the government offers no public pathway for unmarried mothers to register their births. The kingdom has no birthright citizenship, and a top official at a major maternity hospital in Riyadh said that he was unsure how a single mother could get a birth certificate, but that the process would involve the police.

Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A pregnant Kenyan also can't deal with it via abortion:

Saudi Arabia permits abortions only in limited circumstances. Ms. Kihiu feared that an underground abortion would kill her. She also wanted the baby. She was elated when she found out she was having a girl.

Pregnant women are entitled to medical care, regardless of their paperwork, the Saudi government center said. But when an unmarried woman gives birth, the hospital must notify the police of an “illegal pregnancy,” said Dr. Mufareh Asiri, the medical director of the women’s health hospital at King Saud Medical City.

"Illegal pregnancy".  Huh.   

Oh, and speaking of Jimmy Carr and other comedians performing at Saudi Arabia for (no doubt) large paychecks:  I already didn't like Carr, at all, but I see Jack Whitehall (who has a more likeable comedy persona) was also one who went there.  Shame. 

Weight watch

After eating quite a lot yesterday, I weighed in at 89.3kg this morning.  Still 4kg down from my starting point a fortnight or so ago.  Yesterday morning (after a fasting day) it was 88.7kg.

I wonder how long to break the 88kg barrier.  

I should also note that the loss of just 3 to 4 kg has had a significant effect on my blood pressure, which is giving some very comfortingly "normal" readings after a couple of years of worryingly high readings at times.  And it seems that intermittent fasting itself, rather than just the loss of weight, might have be the reason.  Here's Perplexity:

 Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can result in rapid improvements in blood pressure, particularly in people with elevated or hypertensive levels. Research involving hypertensive patients who fasted for about 15-16 hours daily over 30 days demonstrated significant reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressures. These improvements were not associated with notable changes in body weight or other metabolic markers over the one-month period. Instead, the primary mechanisms linked to the blood pressure improvements involved reductions in angiotensin II and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity, key regulators of blood pressure, as well as positive changes in markers of autonomic nervous system activity (such as heart rate variability).

With alternative day fasting, I think the results are even faster.

Quite a pleasing thing to discover. 

Update:  88.0 kg this morning.   Good.  Good. 

Update:  Two days later, after a particularly big eating non fasting day (my stomach did feel overstretched - I overate at lunch), and another fast day - 87.9kg.   

So, still progressing.  I will eat more within carefully today. 

Stop trying to normalise fantasy relationships

From the New York Times:  a sympathetic take on three people who have had "relationships" with chatbots.    

(Arguably, I reckon a Buddhist shouldn't have any problem with such relationships, as their analysis virtually puts humans barely above chatbots.  Or am I being unfair?)  

Update:  oh, it just occurred to me too - maybe atheists don't see much harm in it either, because they can draw a comparison to the way some Christians perceive themselves having a deep and meaningful "personal relationship" with God or Jesus.  (Especially the emotional evangelicals.  Of course, Catholics believe in talking to God via prayer, but that's more of a pure one way street compared to use of a chatbot.)      

Oh dear, it's David Brooks again

David Brooks. I'm not sure that there is any other opinion writer in the main stream media who seems to have the talent of writing views with which I feel I can I can say "Yes...Yes...Yes;" only to then read a paragraph that leads to anti-climatic "Nooooo."

Take, for example, his second most recent column in which, actually, the "Nooooo" came first.  He opens with criticism of the Democrats for shutting down the government because it wants to preserve lower health insurance costs;  only later does he get stuck into Trump and the modern Republicans for trashing all previous "democratic norms".   

But the most recent column (Hey Lefties! Trump has stolen your game!) the "yes's" came first - he makes the point I'm sure I've said before here: that the MAGA movement has co-opted what the Republicans used to criticise in Leftist intellectual circles - such as postmodernism-ly believing that Truth doesn't matter and isn't a real thing, and everything is but putty in the hands of power.    I think it's a really good list of the way the American Right has intellectually debased itself.   But then, at the end, he blows it:

But the left doesn’t get off the hook. Since 1848, leftist intellectuals have been working on a core body of thought, composed, in part, from the ideas listed above. Back in 2020, woke Democrats embraced these ideas with gusto — until Donald Trump utterly co-opted and discredited them. One of the reasons the Democratic Party is struggling so much is that the radical left ideologies that undergirded its cultural stances are kaput, and it hasn’t yet built a more moderate intellectual tradition to fall back on. 

Much wild exaggeration there, me thinks.  He just can't resist turning things around to find a way to blame Democrats, after all. 

Good Lord - Russell Crowe has made a decent film again?

It feels like a very long time since Crowe was in anything decent:  he seemed almost to have descended into late career Orson Welles territory, if you ask me. 

But here you go.  The Washington Post review calls his performance "Oscar-courting".  Huh. 

The never ending working life in Japan (via the New York Times)

This human interest story at the New York Times (about 5 centenarians in Japan who are still working - and happy to be doing so) is very charming, and I really like the design, with the short, clear videos as your scroll down.  It's a really impressive use of the medium, don't you think? 

For my future reference

I like dishes that combine meat and fruit, and here's another one from the Washington Post for future reference:

Sounds too simple, but people in comments like it, and suggest using sweetened balsamic instead of pomegranate molasses.  I have a couple of bottles of rather sweet apple flavoured balsamic from Stanthorpe which are being used up very slowly - I think that could work well.  
 

Rivers in the sky discussed in detail at the Washington Post

Well, they haven't exactly been promoting it highly on their website:  and I can't even see a "gift link" to it, so I don't know if this link is behind a paywall or not.

But - the Washington Post has complied a graphics heavy, but very useful, article on the increased flooding under climate change from increased moisture flow in the atmosphere, and the parts of the world it is affecting most.  (It includes an interactive global map.)   It reads more like a science journal article than a newspaper story, and it's very good. 

I don't understand how stupid old climate deniers can watch the regularly occurring news of record floods (and record rainfall intensity)* and continue to think that climate change is socialist conspiracy.   They are, basically, too stupid to argue with; but unfortunately, they still influence politicians.  

 

* Latest example - Hoi An and central Vietnam. 

Diet tales

The scales have been indicating the weight was still slowly climbing - I once thought 90 kg was a barrier I would settle at, but it reached 93 kg probably a few months ago and stayed there.  In fact, it was one morning's reading last week of 93.3kg that made be decide enough was enough.

My famously sedentary lifestyle obviously is not helping, as is living in a household of only 2 adults again leading to eating larger size servings of leftovers.  (Both my wife and I are having trouble adjusting cooking sizes from "enough for 4, with some leftovers" to "enough for 2".)   

Anyway, I've dieted before, more or less successfully, using the old 5:2 diet, but I usually ended it because of getting sick of trying to work out how to make 500 to 600 calories on a "fast" day as tasty and as filling (and varied) as possible.  

So, I commanded Youtube to tell me what other system to try, and one that works pretty quickly too.

It seems that the various types of "fasting" diets other than 5:2 are now getting the most attention:  the restricted hours one; or alternate days; or even more extreme stuff.  

I went with alternate days. The advantage that appealed to me is the simplicity of just not eating on the days that is my duty, and not calorie counting at all on any day of the week.   I also ignored the advice of some to ease into it by things like skipping breakfast, or lunch, for a while, or whatever.    I just stopped eating for a day at a time, and eating what I want on the next - although I have taken the universal advice of not having a high carb breakfast and having (for example) a nice two egg omelette with ham, cheese, spring onion and little bit of diced tomato in it, on one piece of wholegrain toast.  That really is a very filling breakfast on a very empty stomach.   And later during an eating day, I really don't find a desire to eat any substantially larger size portions.   Even if you do take a particularly rich meal, as the people on Youtube say, there's no way you're likely to eat anything close to the calories you missed the day before.

The first few fasting days were pretty hunger inducing - although it's not hunger pangs as such that bother me, it's more the general "off", slightly headachy, feeling of knowing your body would like some food now but can't have it.   But yesterday - fasting day 5 since I started just over a week ago - I felt fine all day.  It really didn't feel at all like the earlier days, and came with a clear and non distracted mind (as lots of people claim fasting provides) and I really only started to feel a tad hungry when I went to bed late last  night.

So yeah, I hope I have reached the point that the body has just accepted the fasting days and stops complaining about it.  Curious to see how tomorrow goes.

And how has the weight gone?   Surprisingly quickly - in fact I'm starting to wonder about the scales.  After 5 fast days (alternate days only), the scales showed 89.2 this morning.   I do weight myself the same time each day, before breakfast, and after toilet, which no doubt means it's the lightest I am all day.   But from 93.3kg (or even if that reading was not quite right, let's call it 93) to just over 89kg is more than I expected.

I know that the first few kilos can drop quicker on any diet than the later ones, so I shouldn't get too excited.   I think, ideally, a weight of 85kg would be OK to reach and maintain.  Depending on my exact height, it looks from BMI calculators that 84 would put me just under "overweight" by a tiny fraction, and 85 puts me a tiny fraction over.   But depending on how my trousers are fitting, which have been bought for a weight closer to 90kg, I think a long maintained 85kg might be fine.  If I can fit comfortably into the suit pants I bought - I dunno, 9 or 10 years ago? - I would be happy.

So, we will see how we go.