All perfectly normal...in a fascist state

 

On the Coalition divorce

Blind Nick

This made me laugh on the weekend:

Nick Minchin, as far as I know, has never changed his mind on his climate change skepticism, which is effectively denialism. 

He and his ilk are the reason a large slab of the electorate cannot stomach the Liberals until they repudiate once and fall Minchin's views on that crucial subject.

 

Update:  Sure enough, reading the article that Latika is promoting, there is not a mention of climate change, even in passing.   Just mostly "but women aren't voting for us".

As I was saying...

This is obvious

 

The tweets following do show in fact that there has been some talk in the media about the security risks.  An article at The Hill ends with this:

Trump’s argument that the new Qatari aircraft would save taxpayer dollars is far from sound. The gifted aircraft would need to be retrofitted from the inside out with new power systems, electrical wiring and other technology for secure communications and self-defense — such as in the case of an electromagnetic attack.

That process could take years to complete and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to aviation experts. What’s more, the aircraft would need to be extensively swept for any foreign software modifications or embedded technology.

This article at Defence News has someone saying an upgrade to full Air Force One level would cost "billions".   

It's just a ridiculous idea, let alone emblematic of the laughable openness to corruption of Trump.

Update:   I should have checked the Washington Post.  It has an article about it:

...retrofitting the 13-year-old aircraft to current Air Force One requirements would take years of work and billions of dollars, current and former U.S. officials say. Such a task would be impossible to complete before Trump leaves office.

The Air Force referred comment to the White House, and the Secret Service declined to comment. L3Harris also declined to comment.

Of course they did!  That's how authoritarian regimes work.

More:

The president’s jet has a raft of security, communications and support requirements that are highly classified and have proven costly and cumbersome.

“This is a flying nuclear-hardened command post,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of Air Force One operations. “It has to have secure capability at multiple levels.” The Air Force would have to “rip” open and rebuild the Qatari plane — which has been flown for years in service of other countries and individuals — to bring it up to standard, said the official.

Counterintelligence is also a concern, said former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. “We would have to be sure nobody had planted bugs on the airplane,” he said.

High-end communications have to be protected from jamming, cyberattacks and nuclear blasts, current and former officials said.

“You’d pretty much have to take that plane down to the skeleton and put it back together,” said Mac Plihcik, a retired Secret Service agent who worked on President Barack Obama’s detail. “The security of every individual component is a big deal.”

Paul Eckloff, a former Secret Service agent who was a supervisor in Trump’s first administration, said rigorous inspections are performed after all presidential transport vehicles leave the production line. The gifting of a plane from a foreign government would probably warrant an even harder look, Eckloff said.

 If Trump is given a "free pass" by MAGA aligned commentators to waive the obvious security risks of using this aircraft, it will show how true it is that he is a cult leader.   And that's not even considering the corruption aspect.  But in the tiniest sliver of hope for America - I see that even Mark Levin, amongst other pro-Trump excuse makers, think it is a bad idea.  

Update 2:   Even one of the brown-nosiest of "respectable" blogs for Trump, Powerline, says "...it's a very bad idea", and most of the comments following agree.  This one gets 4 likes:

 

 

Adolescence is overrated

Look, you can probably ignore this opinion as I did try watching Episode 1 after a steak dinner with two (small) glasses of red wine, and starting at about 9.30pm.   I think everyone can guess the outcome for any human male over the age of 60 - sleep after about (I think) 25 minutes.

But, I don't know - I still think that I saw enough to feel it wasn't engaging.   Sure, lots of work and skill in the continuous shot stuff, but I really prefer those to just be a highlight of a more normally edited thing - too much of it dilutes the effect. 

One thing I definitely did  not understand was why the British police would got to such extremes in arresting a 13 year old boy accused of a knife murder.   The scene played more like they were dealing with an adult terrorist who they feared had a house full of home made bombs.  Why didn't this seem a tad silly to TV critics?

It doesn't take much to Google up an article that agrees with me:

First and foremost Netflix’s Adolescence is a fictional drama that does not claim to be wholly accurate of what would actually happen in similar real-life cases. That being said, even the very first scene was somewhat questionable when it comes to police procedures.

“But if they found the body at 10.30 pm why are they waiting until the morning to arrest him?” Steven told Time Out. “That’s one thing the police are really good at. They move fast. Is the raid realistic? I used to do raids like this and if we’d had firearms officers in this situation, we would have looked at each other and gone: ‘This is a 13-year-old boy, we don’t need two big lads with a shield.’ Yes, a knife is a deadly weapon, but they have baton rounds (rubber bullets). You would have so many things to de-escalate in that situation.”

There was also the lack of “evidence preserv​ation” and situational recordings that could have landed DI Bascombe in legal trouble in the real world.

He explained: “But the search was poor. The police use specialist search teams. You literally do training for it. You get paid extra money. You get brought in at three am in the morning for murders. You don’t throw mail on the floor.

“You don’t pour shit on the bed like it was in the 1970s and rummage through it. It would all be documented with cameras. DC Bascombe has his camera off in the van and the solicitor would say: ‘Why’d you turn your camera off? What did you say to my client?’ Nowadays, a police officer’s word is good for nothing if it’s not recorded.”

 I know the show has been criticised from the Right due to "race-swapping", and no doubt a lot of the criticism from that side of politics is not going to be fair.  However, this person does give a nuanced critique, arguing that the lead character doesn't have the characteristics he has observed in his experience of young gang murderers.   

I don't think I need continue watching it...

Finally, Sabine talks about the future affecting the past

I've mentioned the idea from physics that the future might affect the past many, many times over the years, yet it doesn't seem to get discussed often in online popular science anymore.

 Hence I was happy to see that Sabine Hossenfelder finally did a video that talked about it - included the rarely mentioned transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics by John G Cramer.

 I'm pleased to see that she thinks the whole concept is worthy of consideration and further work. And going by the number of comments, it's an idea that seems to hold a lot of appeal to people who like to follow her.   Is it because it might be a way of incorporating both free will (which, I know, Sabine doesn't believe in) and determinism?   

Anyway, here's the video:

The Entertainer

Lots of amusing online comments on the return of Legend in His Own (and Gina Rinehart's) Mind, Timbo Wilson:

Then Tim himself made a contribution:

Which seems to have to caused one of the fastest cases of buyer's regret ever to be seen, post-election:

This tweeter had similar sentiments:

But for others, it was entirely unsurprising:

Quite a few Labor voters are hoping he runs for the leadership!

Good news for Labor

 They're both awful!

Against assuming the "lab leak" theory has been proven

A bunch of people (mainly on the Right) seem to think that the Covid lab leak theory has been shown to be true, when it hasn't at all.

A new study shows that the first origin story is still very much on the cards:  

In a study published on Wednesday, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. The researchers analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals.

Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study, said that the histories of the two coronaviruses followed parallel paths. “In my mind, they are extraordinarily similar,” he said.

In both cases, Dr. Pekar and his colleagues argue, a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.

“When you sell wildlife in the heart of cities, you’re going to have a pandemic every so often,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and an author of the new study.

You can read the details here.

The article ends:

Dr. Eloit and other scientists agreed that finding an intermediate form of SARS-CoV-2 in a wild mammal would make a compelling case for a natural spillover. Chinese authorities looked at some animals at the start of the pandemic and did not find the virus in them.

However, wildlife vendors at the Huanan market removed their animals from the stalls before scientists could study them. And once China put a stop to wildlife sales, farmers culled their animals.

“There’s a big missing piece, and you really can’t dance around it,” said Dr. Pond.

Stephen Goldstein, a geneticist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new study, said that the research served as a warning about the risk of a future coronavirus pandemic. Wild mammals sold in markets anywhere in the region where SARS and Covid got their start could become a vehicle to a city hundreds of miles away. “The pieces of these viruses exist in all these places,” Dr. Goldstein said.

 

As I have been saying for years...

Now, of course, you could argue that climate change fence sitting has not stopped the public going for the Liberals before over the last 15 years - but the apparent success of the Teals in two elections now does strongly suggest to me that it has become a key issue for well off Australians based in the capital cities - who would formerly be seen as the Liberal's natural constituency.  

As I'm sure I have written before, Malcolm Turnbull is the one who should have dragged the party into facing reality on this issue.  He should have demanded that those who are going to continue casting doubt on the matter being a real, scientifically verified, issue should leave the party, and make any continuing coalition also dependent on the Nationals not undermining him.   Maybe the Queensland melding of the parties would have made that difficult/impossible - but he should have acted decisively on it, instead of allowing the alternative to Labor to continue looking disingenuous in their strategy of "we believe in it - don't listen to our MPs and Senators who don't - but to keep the doubters happy we will nag continuously about renewables and undermine other action for political advantage."

Update:   it seems still unclear if Tim Wilson will regain Goldstein, but you know, him being one of the few Liberal "wins" out of this generally disastrous election would actually amuse me, given that he is so ambitious that it will be funny to see how little he can achieve by being in such a diminished and talentless Opposition.

Child nutrition in Indonesia

Watching a bit of evening commercial TV in Indonesia last week, one thing that really struck me was the amount of advertisements dedicated to kid's nutrition.  Not just baby formula, but those toddler formula, and other foods, often with emphasis on health and development.

It reminded me that I had read before about the extent to which children in that country were considered to have "stunted" growth due to poor nutrition.  I thought I had posted about it before, but can't find it in my blog search.

 Googling it certainly brings up the stories, though:

The World Bank Board of Executive Directors on June 26, 2023,  approved a program to provide additional support to expand Indonesia’s efforts to improve the delivery and quality of health and nutrition services for adolescent girls, pregnant women, and young children to accelerate the reduction of stunting among children under five.

Stunting, caused by undernutrition and frequent infections, can result in slower growth, cognitive damage, and impaired learning. The World Bank’s Human Capital Project identifies stunting reduction as crucial for countries to reach their full productive potential. Concerted efforts by Indonesia have lowered stunting rates from 31.4 percent in 2018 to 21.6 percent in 2022, and the country’s goal is to cut stunting further to 14 percent by 2024. The World Bank’s Investing in Nutrition and Early Years (INEY) Phase 2 Program will extend the duration and scope of World Bank support to the Government of Indonesia’s National Program for the Acceleration of Stunting Reduction.

This article at the ABC from 2019 has this surprising fact:

The country is classified as middle income by the World Bank, but its stunting rate is higher than those in South Sudan and Somalia. 

The government has responded by implemented a massive free meal program for schools and elsewhere:

 Indonesia has launched a transformative free meal program designed to combat malnutrition and support underprivileged communities.

Championed by President Prabowo Subianto, the initiative aims to provide nutritious meals to almost 83 million Indonesians by 2029, focusing initially on school children and pregnant women.

However, logistical challenges, budgetary constraints and feedback from beneficiaries and experts highlight the complexities of implementing such a large-scale program.

 But, the program is not without its problems:

Nearly 80 students across two high schools in Cianjur, south of the capital Jakarta, fell ill after eating the meals this week. Most of those who ended up in hospital have since been discharged.

This is the latest in a series of food poisonings that have been linked to the programme, a signature policy of President Prabowo Subianto.

Authorities investigating the case say the suspected cause is negligent food preparation. Samples from the vomit of students have been sent for lab testing, and police say they have questioned people handling the food, from cooks to packers to delivery workers....

Across the world, programmes offering free meals to students have proved to be effective in improving health, academic performance and attendance.

But Indonesia's $28bn (£21bn) version - shaping up to be the most expensive of its kind - has become the target of food safety concerns and heated anti-government protests.

In February, when thousands took to the streets to protest at budget cuts, they aimed their ire at the hefty price of Prabowo's free school meals: "Children eat for free, parents are laid off," read one of their protest signs.

 So, I guess it is no wonder that I saw kid's nutrition featuring on TV ads often...