Have we seen peak gaming?

I noticed this story on NPR:

Close to 1 in 5 American gamers identify as LGBTQ+, according to new research from GLAAD. But LGBTQ+ gamers often face harassment in gaming communities and games with voice chats that anybody can join — common in multiplayer, team-based games.

The research indicates that 52% of LGBTQ+ gamers faced harassment while playing online, and 42% have avoided a game due to anticipated harassment.

"It's difficult when you're trans to hop on voice chat with random people because you open yourself up to criticism or potential harassment," said Veronica Ripley, also known as Nikatine, a full-time Twitch streamer and founder of the Discord community Transmission Gaming for trans gamers.

I guess this feels not so surprising:  it kind of aligns with my expectation that people who identify as queer are likely overrepresented in the cosplay community.  As explained further in that NPR story:

"A lot of folks in our community use video gaming to see that representation and want to see themselves in characters," said Ray Lancione, president of Qweerty Gamers, streamer, and former video game community manager. "Our community [uses] it to find each other ... finding people that are like-minded or similar sexualities, genders."

But it all makes me wonder, too: have we already reached "peak gaming"?   We always seem to be hearing of smaller games companies winding up, and bigger companies laying off staff.  And it feels like a long time since there seemed to be much excitement about forthcoming games.   (Not that I go looking for game trailers or anything.  And also, it does seem that the odd phenomena of Twitch streaming of game play is still very popular - but I wonder if that phenomena itself makes people feel less need to play the game themselves?)   I also wonder whether the rise in queer presence make bro boys question their own interest in gaming?   

This is not an important topic, but just wondering.  

Buzzing away Alzheimers?

This is a rather odd science story:

 How 40Hz sensory gamma rhythm stimulation clears amyloid in Alzheimer's mice

Studies at MIT and elsewhere are producing mounting evidence that light flickering and sound clicking at the gamma brain rhythm frequency of 40 Hz can reduce Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression and treat symptoms in human volunteers as well as lab mice.

In a new study in Nature using a mouse model of the disease, researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory of MIT reveal a key mechanism that may contribute to these beneficial effects: clearance of amyloid proteins, a hallmark of AD pathology, via the brain's glymphatic system, a recently discovered "plumbing" network parallel to the brain's blood vessels.

"Ever since we published our first results in 2016, people have asked me how does it work? Why 40 Hz? Why not some other frequency?" said study senior author Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience and director of The Picower Institute and MIT's Aging Brain Initiative.

"These are indeed very important questions we have worked very hard in the lab to address."

The new paper describes a series of experiments, led by Mitch Murdock when he was a Brain and Cognitive Sciences doctoral student at MIT, showing that when sensory gamma stimulation increases 40 Hz power and synchrony in the brains of mice, that prompts a particular type of neuron to release peptides.

The study results further suggest that those short protein signals then drive specific processes that promote increased amyloid clearance via the glymphatic system.

I just had a look around on the web to see if anyone has produced a page showing what a 40hz light looks like, but the problem is if your screen is 60hz you can't.  (A fancier phone than mine with adjustable Hz rate should make it easy, though.)  

Still, it's kind of hard to believe that this works, but it appears to on mice at least.   

 

 

This seems odd

I don't understand the point of ASIO making this announcement (of a retired politician who had been "cultivated" by foreign spies) without naming him.  Or perhaps more to the point, I don't understand how ASIO would think they can say this without causing political intrigue that will fester away for some time.

Here is what some Labor people are saying:

Defence Minister Richard Marles said there may have been good reasons not to name the retired politician.

"I respect what ASIO have done here in terms of putting this story into the public domain but also maintaining the confidentiality of the facts around this, and there could be a whole lot of reasons why that should happen," he said.

"We've got among the best agencies in the world dealing with this, the specific facts which underlie this scenario for good reason are not in the public domain."

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, a cabinet minister in the Albanese government, said she was not aware of who the compromised politician was and only knew what had been publicly reported.

She said it was concerning to think she may have worked alongside the politician, but it was not for her to know who it was.

"I think that's really a matter for the ASIO boss. I imagine there's a reason they haven't named the person or taken further action, I think the point is to give a public warning this is a risk," Ms Plibersek told Sky News.

"I have to say anybody who works with foreign agents of influence to pass on information to a foreign government is a traitor."

I agree with the view that the Coalition's reaction seems to indicate that they are pretty confident it's not one of their retired politicians, but I would add that this is probably nothing to be too proud of, in that what self-respecting foreign power would think one of their useless retired pollies is worth cultivating?  :)

 

Surely Google has to act on its rapid reputation decline, soon?

It seems that for a good few months now I am forever reading about how bad Google search has become, and how the company is freely fiddling with functionality (such as dropping "news" as a category in search is a recent experiment for some users, I hear).   All with apparently zero concern as to how users feel about the changes.

This latest story in the Washington Post, for example:

People searching Google for airline contact information when they have a problem occasionally find bogus customer service phone numbers listed at or near the top of Google.

If you call, crooks posing as airline reps try to persuade you to pay to rebook a flight or another task. Your money goes poof.

No one knows how often this scam happens. But this airline customer service misdirection is common knowledge in the travel industry and among people who know Google.

In researching this article, I found an apparent scam number highlighted by Google when I searched “JetBlue contact customer support.”

Google has the power to ensure that it shows the correct airline contact information, according to three experts in the inner workings of web searches. In their view, Google chooses not to fix the problem.

I don't really understand how Google can ignore the outcry.

 

On a musical note

I only recently noticed (via Youtube) Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox (it's been around for 10 years now), and while I'm not always in the mood to listen to modern songs transformed into an alternative, older style, some entries really hit the spot.   (It is also easy to imagine going to a concert by them as being a very enjoyable night out for which the word "sophisticated" would seem apt.)

I really like the minimalist approach to the edit free videos, too, and wonder about how many takes the average song needs.

Anyhow, I will post two that I was watching last night, and liked a lot.   The first makes a melodramatic song fun:

 

The second one features a gay American Chinese guy (Kenton Chen) who seems to have a diverse career in LA as an actor and singer in various groupings.  As many people say in the comments (it has 38,000 - all of them swooning over the performance, and the video has had 35 million views) his voice is just wonderful.  I said to my daughter it's very "clean" - by which I meant precise, I guess.  She said "so in tune" which I suppose is a more accurate way of putting it:

 

There are other videos of him (appearing much "gayer") including a funk style cover of Hey Jude which I thought was pretty good, actually. (I'm not the biggest fan of the original.) But in every song, his vocal performance is just so good I feel he ought to be more famous.

Hope this is true

Funniest comment following:

I'm not sure how I feel about this!

Hmmm:

Reddit strikes $60M deal allowing Google to train AI models on its posts

On a related matter, for some reason as I walking between my car and my office this morning, I had an idle thought about how fear of a smarter-than-any- human Artificial General Intelligence that will destroy humanity might have an analogue with the start of fear of God at the very beginning of theism?   If so, are we going to develop an idea of sacrifices to keep AGI on side?   What type of sacrifice might we now perceive a silicon AGI to desire?

[Really, this is a very "thoughts in the shower" line of thinking - but I was fully clothed at the time.]

Update:  It has since occurred to me that it would be funny if the AGI demands that Elon Musk be thrown in a volcano as an act of appeasement.  Can't say I would be too upset.

I can only imagine how irritating this would be...

A somewhat amusing account about what it was like for one audience member at a Taylor Swift concert in Sydney:

The sound of the 80,000-strong crowd were deafening as Swift finally took to the stage for our show. It was adulation bordering on hysteria: Phones held aloft (to capture stunning footage of … the phones held up in front of them), young fans crying, thunderous applause.

But, as Swift began her opening song, the moody ballad Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince, one voice in our area rose above the masses.

A fan in the row behind me, screaming every. single. lyric in a voice that could only be described as heavily indebted to the vocal stylings of Cannibal Corpse singer George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher.

And on it went, for the full three-and-a-half hour show. Our own personal death metal concert (Taylor’s Version). And before you come for me for yucking some poor fan’s yum, I implore you to watch the video at the top of this story. That was the sound we were dealing with for the whole show.

What was weirdest was that these demonic screams were the loudest not during the show’s bigger, singalong production numbers – undeniable bangers like Shake It Off or Ready for It that had every man woman and child singing the lyrics back at Taylor– but during the quiet, sparse piano ballads like My Tears Ricochet or the ironically named Tolerate It.

Nothing but the sound of Taylor, her piano, and a deranged gremlin.

For one brief, beautiful song, death metal banshee took a short break, perhaps to use the bathroom or have emergency vocal chord surgery.

It was then that I could enjoy the concert as it was intended: Cheering fans, singalongs, but also a clearly audible Taylor Swift.

Hearing Taylor Swift sing a Taylor Swift concert – imagine that!

And it seems the fans exhibiting this behaviour are well aware of just how irritating – if not concert-ruining – their screams are to those around them.

Rather than being filmed by other annoyed fans, these concert caterwaulers are posting their efforts on social media themselves, usually with captions joking that they sure feel sorry for anyone unlucky enough to be sat near them. Indeed – if only there was a solution to this seemingly unfixable problem!

 How did he manage to not tell her to shut up, at least after the first 30 minutes....

British decline, illustrated

I really was put off that Bald and Bankrupt guy on Youtube when he did a trip through Vietnam, and seemed to act quite obnoxiously to the locals.   (I figure that he is OK with interacting with locals when he knows some of the language - but when he knows none of it, he's a wisecracking "ugly" tourist.)   He has also always been too much on the "lads being lads" side of things, and I forget who did an explanation about his seedy side. 

However, he has lately taken to putting some videos about visits to some decrepit towns of Britain, and I'm there for that kind of content!   They really, really make the country look like a lost cause.  (Actually, there is another British vlogger who has been putting similar content, visiting "high streets" in many British towns, and decrepit residential areas, and showing how depressing they look.)   

Also, I sometimes watch videos where British migrants (or even tourists) talk about Australia and what it's like to live or visit here, and I have noticed that the great majority of the comments from British viewers are along the lines of "oh my God, it makes Britain look like a third world country".     

So, if you want to see some very awful parts of Britain (which, incidentally, seem extremely easy to find) have a look at this video:

 

To be fair, although I don't want to be, some people in comments after the video point out that you can find decrepit areas in many European cities (and someone said even in Vancouver!)     But there are aspects to the British decline that  are very self-inflicted, and I think that's what makes it "special" (in a bad way).   And also, make me feel how very lucky Australia is to never have developed quite the same level of urban decay, virtually anywhere (except for some smaller outback towns, I guess).

The promising blue pill

I remain a bit puzzled about why the first stories about this, which appeared at the end of 2021 (as a result of a different study), did not seem to result in a plethora of jokes on talk shows or elsewhere.   But here's a detailed article in the Washington Post about a new study with similar results:

Why Viagra has been linked with better brain health

One bit:

The findings are based on a massive study of nearly 270,000 middle-aged men in Britain. Researchers at University College London used electronic medical records to track the health of the men, who were all 40 or older and had been diagnosed with erectile dysfunction between 2000 and 2017. Each man’s health and prescriptions were tracked for at least a year, although the median follow-up time was 5.1 years.

During the study, 1,119 men in the cohort were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers noticed a distinctive pattern. The men who were prescribed Viagra or a similar drug had an 18 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, compared with men who weren’t given the medication.

The researchers also found an even larger difference in men who appeared to use Viagra more often. Among the highest users, based on total prescriptions, the risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s was 44 percent lower. (Men with erectile dysfunction are instructed to only take Viagra before sex, and no more than once a day.)

And yeah, there is a question of causation or correlation, but as the article notes, there is reason to suspect its more than mere correlation.

Update:  well, in more oddball viagra news I just noticed -

A priest in Spain has been arrested for allegedly running a Viagra trafficking operation from his home.

The unnamed clergyman was detained alongside another man on suspicion of selling the medication, as well as "other powerful aphrodisiac substances", according to El Pais.

He was arrested in Spain's western Extremadura region and has appeared in court charged with a criminal offence.

The priest's lawyer told local media the allegations were unfounded.

More "but he's old"

 

Here's a bit of context from the WAPO.

Trust Americans to come up with a new thing to overdose on

I hadn't even heard of the pain relief herb kratom before, but it's causing deaths in Americans:

A Washington Post review of federal and state statistics shows that medical examiners and coroners are increasingly blaming deaths on kratom — it was listed as contributing to or causing at least 4,100 deaths in 44 states and D.C. between 2020 and 2022. The vast majority of those cases involved other drugs in addition to kratom, which is made from the leaves of tropical trees. Still, the kratom-involved deaths account for a small fraction of the more than 300,000 U.S. overdose deaths recorded in those three years.

Dozens of wrongful death lawsuits involving kratom have been filed nationwide — including by Geers’s mother, who in February sued a Nevada retailer. The suits illustrate increased scrutiny of deaths involving products made from kratom, which is banned in six states but remains widely available online and in vape and convenience stores despite health warnings from federal authorities.

Here's a gift link to the Washington Post story.

A bad review noted

You don't often seem to see really bad reviews in The Guardian of theatre that comes from (what might be called) lefty source material, but this is quite a savage one of the musical Rent being staged in Melbourne.

I am not surprised that it sounds like I would really dislike it as a musical, as I was very underwhelmed by the same writer's Tick Tick...Boom which was made into a movie on Netflix.   Yeah, it's sad that he died young and before he could develop more, but still...

They seek it here, they seek it there...

From PhysOrg:

A study recently submitted to The Astronomical Journal continues to search for the elusive Planet Nine (also called Planet X), which is a hypothetical planet that potentially orbits in the outer reaches of the solar system and well beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet, Pluto.

The goal of this study, which is available on the pre-print server arXiv, was to narrow down the possible locations of Planet Nine and holds the potential to help researchers better understand the makeup of our solar system, along with its formation and evolutionary processes....

Dr. Brown tells Universe Today, "This would be the 5th largest planet of our solar system and the only one with a mass between Earth and Uranus. Such planets are common around other stars, and we would suddenly have a chance to study one in our own solar system."

Scientists began hypothesizing the existence of Planet Nine shortly after the discovery of Neptune in 1846, including an 1880 memoir authored by D. Kirkwood and later a 1946 paper authored by American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, who was responsible for discovering Pluto in 1930.

More recent studies include studies from 2016 and 2017 presenting evidence for the existence of Planet Nine, the former of which was co-authored by Dr. Brown.

This most recent study marks the most complete investigation of narrowing down the location of Planet Nine, which Dr. Brown has long-believed exists, telling Universe Today, "There are too many separate signs that Planet Nine is there. The solar system is very difficult to understand without Planet Nine."

He continues by telling Universe Today that "…Planet Nine explains many things about orbits of objects in the outer solar system that would be otherwise unexplainable and would each need some sort of separate explanation."

 

Some very random stuff

*   Hollywood's Edward Zwick (director/producer - and writer?) teased us with tweets about the movie making business for a couple of years, it seemed, while he was writing a book about it.  The book is now released and is getting good reviews.  He also has this interview at the NYT.   He seems a likeable guide to when Hollywood made better movies than it does now.  

You know, one thing that puzzles me a bit about Hollywood is that movies or shows that feature heavily story lines about how awful the acting/production business is - the most recent example that brought this to mind is the series Barry - always seem very convincing, yet the shows are made by Hollywood producers. Every decade we do have movies or TV shows which say "this business is awful and full of awful people", but it doesn't seem to change much regardless.   Isn't that a little odd?

*  I'm old enough to remember when shave gels first came on the market - I would guess the early 1980's? - and I have always liked them for the way they transform.   But I have been using shave soaps for quite a while - they are fun in their own way.  (And a tube of the cheapo Palmolive Lather Shave and a shaving brush is the best for travel shaving.)   

But a certain laziness meant that I have recently starting using gels again, and can now say for sure - Shick's Hydro Gel is better to use than Gillette's equivalent.  

*  Are modern sausages made much saltier than they used to be?  We don't eat a lot at our home, but that is often the impression I get - and I don't buy the cheapest, either.

Generally speaking, buying German style sausages is the best way to go - the brand at Aldi is especially good.  It's the only thing worth preserving about German cuisine, I reckon.

*  I take it as a sign that Elon is having a lot of trouble selling advertising on X/Twitter that my feed has been chock full of advertisements for "toe mushrooms" - nails with fungal infections - for a week or more now.   And it's not just me, I saw someone else say "why am I seeing 50 pics a day of gross toe nails?"

* There's a long, magazine style article from the Washington Post about the losses of Catholicism to Evangelical churches in Brazil - in particular, the isolated parts of the Amazon, where sometimes a priest would only turn up once a year.   All pretty interesting, although I didn't get to the end yet.

Tuck's incredibly shrinking credibility

Well, it was already in the negative range, but now it's in freefall:

 Update:  one of the Right-iest writers at Hot Air attacks Tucker hard.

Powerline calls him "stupid".

PJ Media says he is "wrong".

It's hard to find any right wing outlet that doesn't criticise this pathetic exercise...

Frankenrice

 Well, this is interesting:

Rice has been used as a scaffold to grow beef muscle and fat cells, resulting in an edible, “nutty” rice–beef combo that can be prepared in the same way as normal rice.

The study, published today in Matter¹, uses manufacturing methods similar to those for other cultured meat products, in which animal cells are grown on a scaffold in a laboratory, bathed in a growth medium. Using rice as the scaffold has the benefit of adding nutrition to the rice, with the beef–rice having a slightly higher fat and protein content than standard rice.

The team of South Korean researchers behind the project hopes that the beef–rice will find use as a supplement for food-insecure communities or to feed troops, and will reduce the environmental impact of rearing cattle for beef. “Finding alternative protein sources or making conventional livestock production more efficient is critical,” says Jon Oatley, an animal biotechnologist at Washington State University in Pullman. “It’s probably one of the most important things facing the future of the human race.”

I guess it gets over the "how do we make the texture like real meat" issue with growing a bunch of meat cells in a lab, but it still sounds like an expensive way to increase protein and fats.  And if the rice is sitting in liquid for a week, while cells grow on it, what sort of texture does it end up with?  Mush?  No, according to this, it's harder?   How does that work?

...the researchers found that coating the rice in fish gelatin and the widely used food additive microbial transglutaminase improved cell attachment and growth. After glazing uncooked rice grains with the gelatin–additive mix, the team seeded the grains with bovine muscle and fat cells. Then, the cells sat in the growth medium for around a week.

After the culturing period, Park washed and steamed the beef-infused rice as she would conventional rice. “It was definitely different from regular rice,” she says. “It was more nutty and harder.”

And I'm sceptical about the cost claim:

The team estimates that 1 kilogram of the rice as it’s made now would cost US$2.23, comparable with normal rice ($2.20/kg) and far less than beef ($14.88/kg). And the study estimates that hybrid rice will have a lower emissions footprint than farmed beef.

We will see if this goes anywhere, but I have my doubts!

Too smart to recognise the damage he's causing?

I happened to see that Jon Stewart's reappearance as a (once a week) host of the Daily Show was on YouTube last night, and he put in a disappointing performance.  I agree with most of the takes here:

Yes, he really lost me, and struck me as kinda stupid, when he mocked the answer Biden gave on Gaza at his press conference:  the very answer I praised the other day!  It was in fact another case of editting to hide the big picture - he showed Biden's caution at the start of the answer, while he was clearly thinking how to diplomatically express himself, and painted it as a sign of Biden feebleness.  

Really, that's pretty disgraceful, and Stewart deserves to be attacked for it.

I don't doubt he's smart, but seemingly not smart enough to see the harm he is doing in encouraging cynicism among voters who don't get their preference to see a younger candidate.

Time for some light relief

I thought that this sketch from last week, which was a "cold opener" for an interview Colbert did with director Christopher Nolan, was very witty.  He has pretty great writers:

Why let a lie be repeated so often?

We are at the anniversary of my post saying this, after watching much of Biden's State of the Union address (in which he painted an optimist picture for the USA, and which, economically at least, has been proved correct since then):

But the thing that struck me most is, once again, how utterly stupid the Right wing commentariat looks for their years of claiming Biden is virtually a demented nursing home candidate, all based on brief video edits of no consequence.

As I have complained many times, anyone who has first hand experience of actual dementia decline in a parent, if they are honest, knows that someone with serious issues cannot handle themselves in public speaking in the manner that Biden does. 

But the mainstream media has let the nutjob Right repeat it to itself a million times, and rarely comments how this is pure, offensive, propaganda that, by rights, should remove all credibility on every issue.

And here we are again, with the media frothing about his mental abilities.

AGAIN, so much of this is due to people not watching more than propaganda edits, or mindless media (even mainstream media) repeating of what Right wing propaganda says we should be thinking.   (And then they have the hide to do subsequent reports on "polling indicates voters very worried about Biden's mental health.)

The actual press conference is here, and what is remarkable is:

a.    the screeching, undignified, harassing nature of the press behaviour - by rights he should have walked out until they agreed to ask questions in an orderly fashion;

b.    more importantly, for the purposes of this post, is that  it's from about the 9 minute mark where he takes a completely off the cuff question about the Gaza situation, comes back to the podium, and speaks (off the cuff) in a completely cogent and compassionate and careful manner about what he has been doing and trying to achieve.   This has been completely overwhelmed by the misnaming of a leader - a mistake he been making for decades, according to some tweets I have seen, and which Trump has been doing himself repeatedly, and recently.

It is literally absurd for Right wing pundits to claim this is proof of dementia.   

His answer, as a whole, shows the exact opposite of how it is being portrayed, and it is an appalling failure of the main stream media to be aiding this propaganda rather than attacking it, as the New York Times has been particularly inclined to do (the promotion of propaganda, I mean).  As with "but her emails" and "Hilary is on her death bed" propaganda of 2016, the Right has become so enamoured of telling itself lies and twisting truth into pretzels they just can't stop now.   And MSM helps by not attacking it.

Here's the video: 

 

 

And here are some tweets of note on this:

The reviews are in...

....and they don't sound too good for the Tucker/Putin interview.

That's the impression I get from this summary from Hot Air.    

Of course, lots of MAGA types are still trying to hit their erections with a cold spoon about how brilliant Putin is (compared to Biden) in giving a 30 minute (or was it one hour?) lecture on his version of Russian history.   

But the e-vil Leftists think it wasn't a good look for Tucker:

And this:

 

 

The conspiracy nutters weigh in:

More:

 

Here's the nuance on classified documents

Gee, the Washington Post does some good "explainer" articles on political stories.  Here's one on the investigation into classified documents found in Biden's house, and why it is very, very different from what Trump did.  (It's a gift link, btw.)

Hardly surprising that idiots don't recognise a useful idiot

I should have taken a screenshot of a tweet last night which summed up the wingnut, wetting-their-pants-with-excitement, reaction to Tucker Carlson doing an interview as Lord Haw Haw/Tokyo Rose with Putin:   the Deep State/Left is going berserk over it because they know that if normal people watch Putin being interviewed at length, they will realise what a decent human being he is, only interested in saving the world with decent Christian values (and against the LGTB takeover of the West.)   This wasn't the tweet, but it's similar:

There were several tweets following along the lines of "yes, I have made a study of Putin speeches given over the last few years, and people just don't understand how reasonable and likeable he is."

But I find it hilarious that MAGA, culture war, "save us Putin!" types live in a world where they constantly imagine their culture war enemies as being in a permanent state of terror that The Truth is About to be Revealed and We Must Stop That; instead of the reality that we are simply appalled that so many have gone down a conspiracy rabbit hole and are too stupid to recognise their own manipulation by a murderous autocrat with no interest in democracy or stability in the West.

As has been obvious for years, the reason many of the MAGA Right is in love with Putin is purely due to culture war issues, especially on sexuality and gender, on which the Right has (to a large extent) already lost the war.  (Sure, they are making some ground on trans issues, but there's no way you could say that the recognition of gay relationships is at risk of going backwards in those parts of the world where they have made ground.)     

There are other reasons involved too, of course, as noted in greater length in previous posts like this one, but the depth of oblivious idiocy on Musk's madhouse (Twitter) has become bottomless, all aided and abetted by Musk himself.   

Trump and immunity

I thought this analysis piece in the Washington Post about the appeals court decision that Trump didn't have immunity was pretty good, so I'll gift link it.

You can thank me later. 

Apparently, about the only (formerly) significant lawyer disagreeing is Alan Dershowitz, who has long joined the ranks of "old fools for Trump".  

The giant expanding Liberal/National melon heads

I missed the first episode of the ABC's political doco Nemesis, but caught most of the second instalment last night.  

It was kind of depressing, being reminded of the rapidly increasing lack of charm, intelligence and competence that became the hallmark of the Liberal/National Parties over the last decade.  (I should watch the first episode, to see what was said about the universally acknowledged - except by them - deeply weird relationship of Abbott and Credlin.)

Of course, I still have something of a soft spot for the intelligence and frequent charm of Turnbull, while accepting that his high regard for himself was never likely to inspire a lot of loyalty amongst his fellow parliamentarians.   (Somewhat like Kevin Rudd in that regard, really.)    But the inevitability of his unpopularity with many on his own side just makes it all the easier for me to condemn him for cowardice for not  inciting an actual split in the party between those who deny the reality and seriousness of climate change, and those who, you know, have always accepted science and been vindicated year after year.   (It seems that instead of the conservative side having an actual split over the issue, we just have to wait until the gullible losers within it who backed the wrong horse 15 or 20 years ago die off gradually.  It's a pathetic way to ensure policy paralysis for an entire generation.)   

But one other thing I noticed was that (whether it was the camera lens used, the lighting, or just my imagination, I'm not sure),  the show made it seem that ageing conservative politicians in Australia often suffer from expanding melonhead-itis.  Look at George Brandis, whose head was always large, but now seems close to Moon size, and with flaky skin that makes him look in dire need of not only a diet, but a dermatologist.  (Actually, I think his skin has always looked bad, and it could be a condition hard to treat, so I feel a bit guilty for pointing it out.)  

But Barnaby Joyce - what an unhealthy looking specimen with a huge head and an utterly unapologetic approach to adultery with staff.   (He's just upset that he was the one caught out, is what it comes down to).   Warren Entsch was made to look big headed.   And John Howard's head seems to be expanding sideways.   

There are others I have probably forgotten.  Malcolm Turnbull seems to have escaped the fate, but there is something pretty typical about the physical way a lot of Liberal politicians seem to age (see also Peter Costello) that is pretty unattractive.  Too many dinners on corporate boards probably accounts for much of it.

Sunrise really, really wants a change of government in Queensland

I've been lamenting for years about the swing to Right wing populism very evident on Channel 7's morning Sunrise show.   It seems to me that there must be producers with connections to the Liberal Party now, even though you could say a similar thing from the other direction back when they spent a lot of time priming people to accept political nerd Kevin Rudd as a potential Prime Minister.    (Yes, and what a dubious call that was, too.)

Anyway, the appalling murder of a grandmother in the far Western suburbs of Brisbane (technically, a suburb of Ipswich) on the weekend by an African migrant youth got the full political treatment on Sunrise this morning, with Liberal Opposition Leader David Crisafulli given free rein to score points on it in an election year.   Sunrise itself, in the form of its (relatively new) host Matt Shirvington was completely into helping Crisafulli, with plenty of "this is so outrageous" comments in support.  

Crisafulla went on about a youth "law and order crisis" in the State and gave populist responses about howit was because the courts are being too soft, etc.   But anyone with a brain who has been following the issue knows its not as simple as that - dealing with youth crime is particularly complicated, given that there is obviously the question of family support is involved too, and that criminology research indicates that mere incarceration as a widespread response can lead to more re-offending as youth age, not less.  In fact, Labor in Queensland has been widely criticised from the Left for already taking steps such as allowing kids to be kept in watchhouses meant for adults, and has faced enormous difficulty in getting youth detention facilities adequately staffed so that kids don't have to be locked up in their cells all day when they cause trouble.

Don't get me wrong - I am somewhat sceptical of much of what passes for justice reform commentary from the Left.  (I am particularly struck by the continual lack of detail in how diversionary programs are supposed to work, even if fully funded, when it seems increasingly the case that it is hard to get adults who want to work in the field.  Especially amongst the indigenous, the idea that only fellow indigenous can deal culturally appropriately with troubled youth must surely limit the practicality of such schemes.)

It's also not as if it is always clear what drives crime rate rises and falls - in America, they have arguing about it for a decade or two now.   Criminology just seems an inherently complicated and tricky topic.

So yeah, it bothers me when either side of politics seeks to capitalise on crime and justice issues when we all know that, in reality, they are really difficult problems for any side of politics, and there is virtually never a simple or obvious solution.     

But I do think that, as an issue, it is one on which Queensland Labor is likely (but unfairly) going to lose votes.

One has one's doubts

In an article on the BBC news website entitled:

Neuralink: Can Musk's brain technology change the world?

we get this amusing comment:

The real trick will be developing a system which can interpret or translate the signals coming from the brain with a far greater level of accuracy. If and when that happens humans may be able to communicate with computers and other electronic devices in a way that is difficult to comprehend today.

Imagine being able to order a takeaway with your thoughts, or search the internet, or translate one language to another immediately in your head, just by thinking about it.

Musk himself has already talked about a future where his device could allow people to communicate with a phone or computer "faster than a speed typist or auctioneer". ...

Others are more sceptical: "At the moment, I'm struggling to see an application that a consumer would benefit from, where they would take the risk of invasive surgery," says Prof Vanhoestenberghe.

"You've got to ask yourself, would you risk brain surgery just to be able to order a pizza on your phone?"

Given the plentiful evidence on Twitter of Musk not thinking things through very carefully, the idea of a future version of him making super rapid decisions without careful analysis first sounds more dystopian than anything else... 

So about that Apple headset thingy

Some Tweets:

 

Some nuance:

On that last point, though, I posted years ago about WhatsApp or similar helping promote lynchings  and other panics in some poor countries.  Let me find it.  Ok, here it is.

I watched some reviews of the Apple headset on the weekend.  It's nearly universally greeted with "Well, this is amazing, but you could only use it for an hour or so due to the weight and eye strain, but it shows us the future.  Don't sweat it, it'll be really good when they improve it in the upcoming versions - maybe in 2 or 3 versions time."

As such, I still don't expect it to get a large following.

Right wing insane conspiracy watch. Brought to you by Elon Musk (sometimes personally)

Here's a choice selection from Musk's home for the deranged:

The other war in Russia

From The Guardian:

Russia hands out first convictions in connection with anti-LGBT law

On Thursday, a court in the southern region of Volgograd found a man guilty of “displaying the symbols of an extremist organisation” after he posted a photograph of an LGBT flag online, according to the court’s press service.

The man, known only as Artyom P, who was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 roubles (£8.69), admitted guilt and repented, saying he had posted the image “out of stupidity”, the court said.

On Monday, a court in Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, sentenced a woman to five days in administrative detention for wearing frog-shaped earrings displaying an image of a rainbow, according to Aegis, an LGBT rights group.

The woman was called to the police station after a man filmed himself approaching her in a cafe and demanding she remove the earrings, and posted it online.

A trial will resume next week in Saratov, south-west Russia, of a photographer who posted images of rainbow flags on Instagram, the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona reported.

 

Wall sitting my way to lower blood pressure

Here's the Washington Post story about how wall sitting seems to be remarkably good at lowering blood pressure:

A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that isometric exercises, like wall sits (also known as wall squats), can help reduce blood pressure even more effectively than other forms of exercise, including aerobic activity, weight training or high-intensity interval workouts.

The research is good news for people who struggle to meet physical activity guidelines that recommend at least 150 minutes of weekly moderate-intensity exercise, like brisk walking or bicycling. The new analysis found that about eight minutes of isometric exercise, three times a week, can lead to a meaningful reduction in blood pressure.

This means holding a wall sit for two minutes and resting for two minutes. Repeat for a total of four wall sits with breaks in between. A single session, including rest, will take only 14 minutes.

Given that I'm always up for the quickest and laziest way to keep my health, I might give this a go.   

Movies on a plane

On my recent trip I got to watch two movies and offer my brief review:

Barbie:   Yeah: cute, amusing, "heart-in-right-place" kind of movie, and Margot is drop dead gorgeous and very likeable.  It still felt a little underwhelming to me, but there are many worse movies that have been mega successful, so I'm not going to sweat it.

The Holdovers:   as virtually all the reviews say, it's a character driven period piece (set in 1970) that really feels like the character driven movies that came out in that era (or at least, before the summer blockbuster changed the movie business, seemingly forever.)   As such, it's a refreshing, welcome revival of the type of movie adults used to enjoy seeing.   Nonetheless, I did feel that the ending needed something a bit more cathartic than what we got.  Realism is fine, but sometimes we feel it needs more.  (I'm sounding a bit like Spielberg, perhaps, who obviously felt exactly the same way regarding how he handled Oskar Schindler's departure scene, which is nearly universally seen as a fault in an otherwise devastating film.) 

The future of floods?

I'm not sure how many people in the rest of Australia realise this, but it seems to me to be a pretty remarkable thing that the weather in Queensland this summer has not only been wetter than forecasts suggested (based on the general rule that El Nino summers are more likely to be - but are not necessarily - dryer), but the flooding that has been happening on a frequent basis has been so localised.

In other words, we seem to keep getting examples of intense, but quite localised, rainfall rates, causing flash flooding that only extends over a relatively small area - a couple of suburbs, but no further.

I meant to comment about this a few weeks ago when I woke up to see houses inundated in suburbs to the West of mine, but we hadn't even had any rainfall at all overnight.   

Something similar seems to have happened again a few days ago, where some northern suburbs were overcome with flash floods, but the rest of Brisbane had a pretty "normal" wet day. 

I would not be at all surprised if this is a pattern that continues in future, and it is recognised as a (more or less) unforeseen and problematic consequence of climate change in many parts of the world.

 

Krugman on Europe and the US

Here's Paul Krugman, in his witty style, looking at comparisons between Europe and America:

In my most recent column I had a bit of fun with Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who has ominously warned that President Biden will turn us into Europe. I joked that this would mean adding five or six years to our life expectancy. When I shared Noem’s remarks on social media, some of my correspondents asked whether this meant that we’re about to get good train service and better food.

A note to younger Americans: We already have better food. It’s true that Bolognese remains infinitely better in Bologna than anything you can get here, even in New York, but you have no idea how bad American cuisine was in the 1970s.

And this:

I fairly often encounter people who believe that Europe suffers from mass unemployment and has lagged far behind the United States technologically. But this view is decades out of date. At this point adults in their prime working years are actually somewhat more likely to be employed in major European nations than in America. Europeans also know all about information technology, and productivity — gross domestic product per hour worked — is virtually the same in Europe as it is here.

It’s true that real G.D.P. per capita is generally lower in Europe, but that’s mainly because Europeans take much more vacation time than Americans — which is a choice, not a problem. Oh, and it should count for something that there’s a growing gap between European and U.S. life expectancy, since the quality of life is generally higher if you aren’t dead.

 A key point:

In real terms, the U.S. economy grew a lot more over those two decades — 53 percent versus 31 percent. But almost all of that difference is explained by the fact that the U.S. working-age population (conventionally, if somewhat unfortunately, defined as adults 15 to 64) grew a lot, while Europe’s hardly grew at all (and has been declining in recent years). Real G.D.P. per working-age adult rose 31 percent in the United States and 29 percent — basically inside the margin of error — in the euro area.

 

There be dragons

I'm back from a quick trip to Singapore, where Chinatown is all lit up for Chinese New Year, and the upcoming Year of the Dragon. 

 

 

 

 

As I have had to explain to many people, despite having been there probably half a dozen times before, I blame the sweaty weather for meaning that my sightseeing has always progressed slowly, given that you really don't want to be outside and walking around between about 10 am and 6 pm.   So visits tend to involve a lot of middle-of-the-day time spent in single airconditioned locations, be they shops, back at the hotel, museums, etc.

I've also been slow to try some popular food and drinks.  (I don't think I have ever had chilli crab there - it is pretty expensive, and I think you can get a decent version in Australian chinese restaurants at similar cost.)

Anyway, here's a list of "long delayed, first time" things from this trip:

*    kaya toast set for breakfast (twice, and nice - it's the soy sauce on the eggs that makes the difference);

*    sugar cane juice with lemon (I always thought it would be too sweet, but it isn't);

*    the Night Safari (the personal highlight of which was touching the rhino's nose while it was being hand fed);

*   seeing wild monkeys (on the boardwalk at Rifle Range Nature Park - not a particularly well know park for tourists, but worth visiting)

*   visiting Yishun in the north, the suburban area which Singaporeans joke about as being the place where weird and dangerous things happen, and of course, it was completely fine.  (I was there to visit a particular shop - more about that later.)

*  visiting the highly eccentric Haw Par Villa park and its Hell's Museum.  That will definitely get its own post.

Things I did that I (nearly) always do when visiting Singapore:

* shopped at Uniqlo (even with the currency conversion, it still works out cheaper than buying in Australia for most of their products);

* shopped at Chinatown for belts and other bits and pieces;

* ate stingray with chilli;

*  got completely bewildered when trying to navigate my way between different terminals at Changi.  Look, I think it is just impossible to hold in your head the layout of this massive airport, with its 4 terminals and the Jewel shopping centre and connecting Skytrains, and this time I found that even Google maps seemed to get continually confused about where to direct my walking to catch a bus towards the city.    I mean, I both love it and find it completely exhausting.  [And by the way, I am convinced that they have deliberately put the office at which to get the $10 refund on the Singapore Tourist Pass in an odd position in the Changi MRT station in the hope that most people won't bother tracking it down as they arrive to depart.  Why they can't automat the refund, when everything else about using public transport in Singapore is so easy, I don't know.  I suspect it's to discourage it being claimed, though.]

 UPDATE:  For my future reference, this chain of stores, often in shopping centres - Nam Kee Pau - makes very delicious (and modestly priced) steamed buns.

       

I mean, I may be ageing myself, but still...eew

From the Washington Post, in an article noting that STDs have increased amongst over 65 year olds, the second sentence here sounds a tad creepy:

It’s healthy to be sexually active as an older adult, and it correlates with greater enjoyment of life. My patients tell me that nursing homes can present really exciting opportunities to make new friends in this regard.

The following paragraph made me laugh, given that I don't know much can be extrapolated from Sweden:

In fact, 40 percent of adults aged 65-80 are sexually active and about 10 percent of people older than 90 are sexually active, though it bears noting that the latter figure is based on a survey limited to one municipality in Sweden.

Placebos considered

Everyone loves hearing about placebo studies, don't they?   Here's a cool article at The Conversation about them, with some new aspects I hadn't heard of before:

When a doctor prescribes ibuprofen for back pain, the effects are due to the ibuprofen and the patient’s beliefs and expectations, which can be influenced by the doctor’s communication. Doctors who offer positive messages in a warm, empathic manner will increase the effect of the drugs.

The size and colour of the pill can also influence the effect. A large, orange pill can reduce pain more than a small, red one.

By contrast, blue pills generally have a sedative effect – except for Italian men, for whom blue pills have an excitative effect), probably because their revered football team wears blue.

Doctors’ ethical duty to benefit patients suggests it is an ethical duty to maximise the placebo effects of all treatments they provide.