A few things for a Monday

*  The Netflix historical mockumentary comedy series 1670 (made in Poland of all places) only recently came to my attention.  I was not sure how good it might be from the first episode - but from the second episode onwards, it has become funnier and funnier.   It also looks great (although I am feeling sorry for the actors all of the time, as the mist from their breath makes it obvious they were often filming in very cold conditions.)    So, I am very much enjoying it, and it has 3 seasons, so great!

* I don't think I have previously opined here about how Taiwanese movies are routinely good.   There seem rightly proud of the industry, as was evidenced by one of the waiting areas in the airport at Taipei (when I was there in January) devoted to the it, including playing impressive short films.  One actually made me tear up a bit.   As I have probably made clear before, I have always had something like an allergy to the Australian film industry - the creative types in it just dwell on stories and themes that have next to no appeal to me.   Why is it then that Taiwanese films share the relatively small scale of Australian films, but I find them more interesting and appealing?   

* Onto bigger things - I can't quite work out how worried I should be about all of the US bond market news over the last week.  There are plenty of commentators on Youtube saying I should be very worried, and I do have zero confidence that Bessent knows what he is doing.   (His very manner annoys me plenty!)  But how exactly will it play out, no one seems to know.      

A science anecdote for Friday

A new (to me) "feel good" drug (until it kills you)

An article at the BBC talks about the rise of young people preferring illegally obtained prescription drugs to alcohol:

To enjoy a night out with friends, Matt once had to drink until he felt sick.

If he didn't, the 22-year-old from the north of England would spend the night silent, terrified of saying the wrong thing. The warehouse worker says it felt like there was "just no way into" the conversations everyone else seemed to be enjoying.

Then, two years ago, he swapped pints for prescription drugs he discovered through social media.

As he gets ready to go out on a Friday, Matt, whose name has been changed, now takes a medicine he purchases illegally online that usually treats epilepsy and nerve pain; alongside a beta blocker designed to slow a racing heart and relax trembling muscles (physical symptoms of anxiety).

He says it gives him the effects of alcohol without the hangover.

"The amount of alcohol you have to drink to replicate the effects of these is really unhealthy and it doesn't feel good," he says. Matt says the drugs he takes leave him feeling "euphoric," quietens his anxious thoughts and makes socialising easy, he says.....

 Around the world, evidence shows that young people are turning to medications and experimental substances as alternatives to alcohol. Some of them come in pill form - like pregabalin and propranolol, the ones Matt takes. And some are injected - like peptides, a type of protein that's becoming increasingly popular online.

It's part of an effort to quell social anxiety, which seems to affect Generation Z particularly sharply: more than a quarter (28%) of people in their early 20s in England report high levels of anxiety, according to a study published last year by University College London, which found that serious mental illnesses are far more common among members of Generation Z than they were among millennials at the same age.

The trend is alarming scientists - and prompting them to ask why some young adults feel they can only socialise with chemical help.

As much as I enjoy pondering the moral downfall of England over my lifetime, the article does say that the drug (which I wasn't aware of until now) is internationally popular:

 In Jordan, Ukraine and India, researchers have also noted an uptick in pregabalin abuse.

In China, the government tightened controls of the drug earlier this year by banning most online sales, and setting limits on how much of the drug can be manufactured in each province.

As to its dangers:

A study published in the journal Nature Communications estimated that global consumption of the drug more than quadrupled between 2008 and 2018.

Meanwhile, there has also been a sharp increase in deaths involving pregabalin. Office for National Statistics data show pregabalin was mentioned on 2,360 death certificates for drug-related poisonings in England and Wales between 2020 and 2024, compared with 768 between 2015 and 2019.

One of those deaths was Alex Cottam, a 27-year-old software engineer from Eccles described by his mother, Michelle, as "lovely, clever, and popular". He was prescribed pregabalin to treat his anxiety, but his mother says he "became addicted" and started boosting his supply by buying the drug from illicit websites. "I can't help thinking every day that pregabalin killed my son", she told the BBC in 2024.  

 And, of course, the "soft on drugs" school is hanging around saying "it's not so bad as it seems":

Prof David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London who has long campaigned for looser drug laws, argues that the drugs Matt takes may be less harmful than heavy drinking, even if they carry risks of their own.  

"Propranolol and pregabalin are undoubtedly safer than alcohol, but not perfectly safe," he says.

But he says the picture changes when pregabalin is used in large doses for intoxication (as Matt says he is doing). "If they're using it as a sort of intoxicant to get drunk, then they are at risk of dependence," he says. "It's not a free lunch in that sense."  

I will remain stubbornly old fashioned and argue that, at least with alcohol, it is well understood and (rarely) does the consumer have any good reason to be concerned over the purity of the product being consumed.   Buying tablets on the black market has always got this cloud of uncertainty over it.   

As for the rise of youthful anxiety - kind of ironic that as national comfort has increased, so has anxiety.

Bring back national service!  (Ha ha). 

  

Young women and therapy talk

Another interesting piece from today's NYT is this one:

I’m a Psychiatrist. I’m Hearing Something New From Young Women.

The writer has got a book on the topic to promote, but her basic point is this:

Several years ago, I started noticing something new when teenage girls or young women came to my office for their first psychiatric sessions. Patients used to dread being told that there was something, as they saw it, wrong with them. Now these young women were announcing their diagnoses — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, depression — almost before telling me their names.

They had researched their symptoms on Instagram; they’d taken TikTok quizzes about them; they had cross-indexed their conditions with those of their friends. It was everyone — gravel-voiced film majors and earnest high school athletes, class presidents and girls who skipped school, girls who spent weekends in the Hamptons and girls who had to work for their spending money. The patients of this new wave were talking in therapy-speak, and their therapy hadn’t even started. 

Further down:

In some cases, my patients’ self-diagnoses were spot on. In many others, however, the psychiatric label seemed more like a compromise between uncomfortable feelings and the desire for social acceptance. Are these labels a source of strength or a straitjacket? Are they helping young women find help and acceptance or standing in the way? The answer isn’t so simple.

Adolescent girls and young women aren’t the only ones reaching for therapy-speak, of course. According to some measures, 50 percent of Gen Z-ers have labeled themselves with mental health conditions, and illness identities have taken hold of young people, both online and off. But girls are by far the primary drivers of this trend. They are the main group looking up health information online, talking about their feelings and relationships and seeking labels for what’s wrong.

I guess it's still a thing, so to speak, that we worry about men (especially young men?) bottling up their feelings and emotions and sometimes not undergoing any adequate self analysis, and on the other hand we worry about young women wanting to talk too much (and overanalyse) about the same thing.

I get the feeling that any school education about such things (not that I am sure there is?) needs to try to teach some sort of happy medium here:   some self reflection and recognition is good, but too much can be unhelpful in its own way.   

 

Animal empathy

The New York Times has a charming article about research into animals (or at least, primates) that seem to enjoy treating certain other animals as "pets":

Humans Love Having Pets. Seems Like Some Other Primates Do, Too.

We aren’t the only animals that like to take care of other species. A new study finds that the roots of keeping a pet may stretch deep into our primate past. 

Some people in comments point out that other, non mammalian, animals also can strike up unusual bonds - geese that guard ducks is mentioned, for example.  

The article doesn't seem to address the question of empathy, which certainly seems to be behind a lot of human concern for the well being of their pets.  In other words, do primates showing concern for grooming and caring for other furry things show an evolutionary thing about empathy? 

(John:  I'm probably thinking of this because I think it was you who recommended The Age of Empathy, which I did download, but have not got around to reading yet.) 

Good news (the poll)

Hey, I didn't realise that a Reuters online subscription was so modestly priced (AUD $6 a month, cancel anytime), so I'll give it a go.

It's from there that I read this somewhat encouraging news:

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's approval rating fell to the lowest level of his presidency, ‌with an overwhelming majority of Americans concerned the U.S. war with Iran will last a long time, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Monday.

 

Just 33% of respondents in the four-day survey said they approved of Trump's performance in the White House, while 64% disapproved. Trump's approval rating, down from 35% in a poll that closed earlier this month and ​lower than at any point in his current term, has now tied the lowest level of his prior term reached in December 2017.

Further down:

Reuters/Ipsos polling this month has shown voters prefer Democrats over Republicans as better stewards of the economy for the first time in about a decade. The latest poll showed 38% of voters think ​Democrats will handle the economy better, compared to 35% who prefer the Republican approach. Democrats are also seen ​as better equipped to ⁠manage the cost of living. 

I mean, in a way, it's still depressing that he manages even a 33% approval.  But Murdoch and the other greedy Right wing media outlets have their profitable propaganda networks to run, don't they.  (Seriously, what would happen if Fox News was genuinely a news network that had even neutral hosts?)

 

Good News (a movie)

I finally got around to watching the recent Korean movie Good News, which is probably the only (mainly) comedic film ever made about an aircraft hijacking, on Netflix last weekend.   

The movie is "based on real events", but I think nearly all of the characters involved are invented or fictionalised.  Still, I am surprised to read now how most of the key events were fairly close to what happened in 1970.  (As a newspaper reading 10 year at that time I suspect I would have seen a headline about the real life hijacking, but I do not recall it.)     

The movie is very watchable, but it has flaws.  The characters were perhaps written with too much eccentricity (for the most part), and the main hero was a little hard to understand.   But, I didn't get bored, it is well crafted, and there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours...      

Things I'm sick of

*  Donald Trump;

* Donald Trump's cowardly, dishonest and greedy enablers both in politics and in media;

* the culture wars;

* the way the culture wars suck attention away from little things (sarcasm) like the US executing hundreds of people on the high seas;   

* the entire world feeling economically trapped by dumb, nonsensical decisions made by Trump and his cowardly, dishonest and greedy enablers;

* the rise of anti-science in climate change and medicine under Trump;

* the intense petty and fantastical narcissism of Trump which is completely undeniable;

* tech billionaires being weirdos who can blow away money on stupid ideas and face no consequences;

* earthquakes.   

Buttgate

Plastics to the rescue? A space radiation vest tested

This is new to me - they are evaluating wearable radiation protection for future astronauts:

With preparations underway for extended-duration crewed deep space missions, the health risks of solar particle events (SPEs) to astronauts are becoming increasingly pertinent. To address this hazard, the AstroRad vest, a personal radiation shielding garment providing targeted organ protection, was tested during Artemis I. Two anthropomorphic female phantoms, equipped with internal and external passive and active dosimeters, were flown aboard the Orion spacecraft: one unshielded and the other wearing AstroRad. Inner Van Allen belt transit active dosimeter measurements were extrapolated to simulate SPE scenarios, predicting effective dose reductions of ∼60% for an August 1972–like SPE and nearly 40% for an October 1989–like SPE, varying slightly with anatomical model. Such reductions could spare astronauts the equivalent of up to 193 and 131 days of deep space radiation exposure, respectively. These findings demonstrate that wearable shielding such as AstroRad could serve as a vital element for safe and sustainable human deep space exploration. 

Further down the article:

While coating an entire spacecraft hull with a meaningful thickness of radiation shielding remains impractical due to mass constraints (7), concentrating an equivalent thickness of shielding around astronauts’ most radiation-sensitive organs and tissues in the form of a vest incurs a significantly lower mass penalty. Therefore, while the use of shielding materials such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE) has been extensively explored as environmental radiation protection in space (8–11), StemRad and Lockheed Martin worked to create a low-mass emergency countermeasure solution in the form of a personal radiation shielding garment, termed the “AstroRad vest,” intended to be worn by astronauts during SPEs in deep space, reducing both the risk of radiation-induced cancer and the already low probability of acute radiation syndrome (ARS). The AstroRad vest further minimizes the mass of radiation shielding through a targeted shielding architecture of a spatially variable thickness that is inversely related to the degree of self-shielding provided by the underlying tissue at each point, a technique first developed for personal wearable gamma radiation shielding on Earth (12).  ......

 In accordance with the 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the vest optimizes protection for the red bone marrow (RBM), colon, lungs, stomach, breasts, and ovaries (Fig. 2A) (38). The shielding core of the MARE AstroRad vest is composed of HDPE, which has the largest percent composition by mass of hydrogen atoms of any nonvolatile and nontoxic material, maximizing the shielding efficacy against space radiation per unit mass as determined by the Bethe radiation stopping formula (39). Because HDPE is solid and inflexible, the shielding core consists of thousands of tessellated interconnected hexagonal rods, which behave in a scale-like manner to maximize flexibility, freedom of movement, and comfort (Fig. 2B). This design resulted in a vest with a mass of ∼26 kg. 

Wilful medical science lies as dangerous political propaganda

Yes, even on Twitter/X, whenever this claim has been posted, there have been scores of responses explaining clearly how and why it is untrue, such that to continue to propagate it is an outright lie.   That the likes of Cruz continue to lie, in a way that is going to continue making Fauci a target of extremist rhetoric and threats, is just appalling.

Catering for his escape

From the Washington Post:

The administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8 on the former Air Force One. Trump announced on social media that he would use the “former Air Force One” rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing 747-8 gifted to the United States by Qatar. The security of the Qatar-provided aircraft has been called into question, and Trump said last month after the trip that it would undergo additional upgrades.

In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by The Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.  

The Guardian had put it this way:

Prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, Donald Trump departed on a secret military flight from Turkey to Britain last month when the White House said he was flying aboard ⁠Air Force One, in an extraordinary ruse that involved hiding the president in an airport catering cart, according to reporting from the Washington Post and the New York Times. 

That gave me the pleasurable image of Trump trying to be squeezed into some super sized version of these things:

 

But, sadly, apparently not...

A few comments on the Arday story

*  Twitter/X has been absolutely covered in its general feed with content about this story, in a way that makes you think "I know that this is now dominated by Right wing content, but this still looks like Musk made a call and required that the algorithm promote this story as much as possible."

*  As lots of people have said, significant parts of academic sociology (and the humanities more generally) have for decades (ever since identity politics and analysis became a thing) devolved into pretty vacuous and arcane complaint twaddle with little in the way of substance or remedy to social ills.   And as someone who has several times pointed to the (to be generous) dubious value of the work of Professor Sandy O'Sullivan and her Macquarie University compatriots, I sympathise entirely.

By the way, from my dim memories of it from some, ugh, 48 years ago, the introductory sociology subject that I did as a small part of my degree was actually pretty solid and interesting.  It's not an inherently valueless subject; it is just what academia has decided to do with it.   Basically, if this scandal results in Universities (and the bodies that fund academics) taking a harder look at what is being produced by who in their Humanities schools, it's not a bad result.

* I am somewhat puzzled as to how long it is taking for journalism to turn up comments from family or fellow students (or therapists) who knew Arday when he was young and allegedly unable to talk or read.  As one would think that if his claims were not exaggerated, there would be people willing to confirm it's true.   It is making it look more likely that there is no one who wants to defend the background story.

*  The New York Times has published some "Takeaways" from his (just published?) memoir, and man, I can just imagine the embarrassment of the person or persons who decided to fund it.  I like this little bit:

When he decided to go to college, his girlfriend “wrote out the entire application for me — including my personal statement.” At St. Mary’s University in London, he scored just 9 percent on his first exam. He worked hard, raising his grades so quickly that a professor at the school accused him of cheating.

“When you succeed against pretty much insurmountable odds, it weirdly makes people question your credibility,” he writes.  

 Actually, when you make claims that sound wildly implausible and an exaggeration that even Donald Trump would hesitate to claim, that's when people question your credibility.  

A venue can be too big

Yesterday was Singapore's National Day, and as a dutiful fan of the country, I watched the National Day Parade live on Youtube.   (I've explained before why I enjoy viewing it.)

Unfortunately, this year they moved it from the outside site of recent years to inside the National Stadium, which I thought might be a good idea, but turns out it isn't.   (A decade or so ago they held it there, but I wasn't watching at that time.)

The venue is simply too large for this kind of performance.   I've seen the stadium from the outside and did not think it looked gigantic; but the interior shots, even allowing for different lens focal length, made it look enormous inside.  It seated 42,000 apparently, but the centre floor area looks so big that it was never filled up satisfactorily with performers.  They always seemed to be surrounded by too much empty floor, and a repeated camera view kept showing how far away the centre stage must have felt to the attendees, too.     

The songs this year were bland and more like simple pop songs.  (Mind you, I sympathise with song writers trying to find a new way every year to come up with novel lyrics on the same theme.  I guess people do it with love songs, though?)  

Anyway, people on Reddit seemed underwhelmed too.   And now I see that someone said on CNA that it wasn't a great venue in 2016.    The only thing it helps with is people can rehearse out of the sun, I guess.  I think someone died from the heat during rehearsal last year, so it's not a minor problem.  

I'm curious if it will return to the parade ground setting next year.... 

 

Republican numbskulls and Fauci, again

There was an opinion piece at the NYT a few days ago by a guy who thinks Fauci should have answered some questions (I don't agree), but nonetheless, the best part of his piece is how he detailed the nonsensical contradictory positions MAGA and Republicans hold in their empty heads:

But it is also politically convenient to make Fauci the sole villain in the lab leak morality tale, because so many of his haters have already taken to blaming him for everything else about the pandemic, no matter how contradictory their complaints.

You can’t think we overreacted, for instance, and at the same time think that Fauci was indifferent to ongoing American deaths during the period when pandemic restrictions were strictest. You can’t charge him with a million murders while doubting the mortality statistics or insisting that Covid was actually a “scamdemic.” (“It’s deadly and it didn’t matter and millions died, but it was fine,” as “The Daily Show” joked.) You also can’t pin the whole thing on Democratic safetyism when Trump was president through the most restrictive phase and pointedly criticized governors who wanted to reopen too soon. And you can’t really fault liberal hysteria on social media when some of the most vocal early advocates of aggressive mitigation were figures like the libertarian crypto entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan and the reactionary neo-monarchist Curtis Yarvin. National Review was slamming the case against lockdowns as “absurd”; Tucker Carlson was reportedly lobbying the president to take the virus more seriously.

Back then, support for aggressive mitigation measures was pretty close to universal: In May 2020, one survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that at least 80 percent of the country was on board with social distancing, stay-at-home orders and business closures. Even so, by the end of the next month, all states but one ended their stay-at-home orders. And if you think that early near-unanimity was the result of irresponsible fear-mongering, you may be surprised to learn that in 2024, when asked whether they would support any similar measures again if faced with another pandemic, Americans answered in the affirmative by a margin of 81 to 19.

And people (including me!) forget this:

In retrospect, it is especially striking that Fauci initially downplayed the risk of the virus, suggesting that it was sufficiently low-risk that Americans need not worry about it in February 2020, and implying that they should worry more about the seasonal flu. When Fauci did come out as a relative alarmist the following month, offering what were seen at the time as worst-case scenarios, he predicted 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths — about one-tenth as many as the country eventually endured.