A late "my trip to (Chinese) Hell" post

Back in January I made a quick trip to Singapore, because I could, quite cheaply.  I've only posted once about it, but I said I would make a separate post about Singapore's most unusual semi-touristy site to visit, Haw Par Villa.

Wikipedia confirms that it's only moderately famous now - there was an attempt to make it into a "theme park" but that didn't pan out, so now the large grounds are just open for free, with only one paid section, the cheerily named Hell's Museum, which is discussed below.

For the uninitiated,  the grounds are the site of a former mansion and gardens built in the 1930's by the rich family which came up with Tiger Balm - a product still very much associated with  Singapore.

Here's a photo of the mansion which, in a feat of poor timing, was finished in 1937:

The Japanese took it over after their invasion, ruined the place, and it was demolished after the war.  Given it was such a distinctive modernist/art deco-ish design, I wonder if anyone has the internal floorplan: it would be extremely cool to see it rebuilt.   Now, there's just some concrete where it used to stand:

 

The surrounding gardens were filled with a large number of somewhat eccentric looking dioramas  mostly about Chinese and Buddhist folklore and morality - said to have been made to entice the builder's younger  brother to come live with him in Singapore.   So some of it dates back to the 1930's, although other parts (including I think the most famous part - the garish and luridly violent depiction of the 10 courts of Chinese Hell) was built after the war.

It's these weird and wonderful sculptures and dioramas, most of which are in reasonable repair, which people - although fewer over the years - come to see:

 

The Monkey King is at the top of that one:

There are many dioramas showing vices with a 1930's flavour:

Some sculptures (more modern ones I think) are just wacky for the sake of wacky, it seems:

But as mentioned above, the most famous section is the Chinese Hell part, which is now incorporated in the relatively new Hell's Museum, for which there is an $18 entrance fee.

To my pleasant surprise, this smallish but well curated Museum deals in a very erudite fashion with the whole question of belief in an afterlife in history and various cultures.  It was obviously created with detailed input from one or more academics in the field of comparative religion.   This is right up my alley - it felt very compatible with the Youtube content on Religion for Breakfast which I like watching.  It's worth waiting for the free guided tour, which saves a lot of reading of quite extensive notes on the walls.   

The tour ends in the enclosed area depicting various parts of Chinese Hell.  Most scenes are graphically violent, but in such lurid way it's hard to take offence.  From memory, it starts with a preliminary trial:

then the good proceed to Paradise via the Silver or Golden bridges: 

 but for the sinner, it's a look into the Mirror of Retribution:

and onto the various courts overseen by various Kings, with punishments designed for different types of sin.  There didn't seem any particular rhyme or reason for the types of punishment to matching the sin, though:

Some court examples:

I think one of the above was for cheating students, and said to be the most popular for parents to show their kids (!).   Oh yeah, it's in the one involving dismemberment.  

 

 

Here we go - I assume this woman "caused trouble" for her parents?:

After (I think) 3 years of trouncing through Hell, the soul is given a herbal elixir in the Pavilion of Forgetfulness that causes them to forget everything about their past lives before they are reborn, as animal or human (or something else?), again depending on past karma.  

I'm not sure how canonical this depiction is, so to speak.  I think other versions have 18 courts, and I see on some website that the 10 courts are given these titles (which don't match up exactly with the Haw Par version?):

 I'm particularly amused to see the "Office of Fair Trading" in there - although the "Sixteen Departments of Heart Gouging" also sounds amusingly bureaucratic.   

Anyway, it seems clear that the downside of no internet, TV or cinema back in the day was too much time for people to imagine horrors.  Although, I have to admit, there is a high degree of - um - entertaining elaborate adventurousness? about a lot of Chinese supernatural folklore, isn't there? 

I didn't know about this Buddhist character, for example (see the sign following):

 

Yeah, yeah, I suppose Christians have St Michael slaying a dragon, and Jesus himself doing something ill-defined during the Descent into Hell:  but if it were written by the Chinese, it would have been with a glowing sword with which 10,000 demons were slayed...or something more elaborate.

Finally, one of the oddest (and surely most photographed) sculptures is this one, which the guide said was intended to illustrate a folkloric story about the good young woman and mother who forsook her own hungry child to feed breast milk to her ill and hungry mother:

 

Yes, a heroine for filial piety:  but a bit extreme for Western tastes.

So, as you can tell, I was very happy with this visit to a pretty uniquely eccentric, and actually educational (if you go into the Museum) place - I hope it manages to survive well into the future.

Some videos with unusual stories

First, the poor Nepalese have been preyed upon to sell kidneys to Indian surgeons.  (Not sure if the typical customer is a rich Indian - but it wouldn't be surprising if foreigners seeking a fast and cheap option did this too): 

 

Next, Sabine Hossenfelder seems impressed with a recent paper that argues quantum gravity would affect causality.  As she says at the end, some might argue that this means gravity can't be treated that way, after all.  Who knows?

 

In other sciencey news, I think I might have seen this aircraft before, but it is deeply weird looking. Apparently, the company is only selling a system for testing hypersonic flying devices - it's not even about launching into space (AFAICT):  

 

And finally, the All Knowing Algorithm put me onto this guy for the first time, who has been taking a decade or so to provide geographical summaries of every country in the world (and as he is up to Vietnam, that's about to end.)   This video is not one of his formal summary ones, but just a tavelogue of his trip to Ho Chi Minh City.   He seems quite interested in the same things I am - he likes visiting temples and considering the nature of local religion and spirituality.   It's very likeable content:

Hot in Singapore

I've noticed some people on Twitter complaining about the heat in Singapore over the last couple of weeks.  Given that it seemed to me every time I have been there that it's a pretty uniform 30 - 33 degrees maximum there, I thought I would look at current temperatures:

 

Yes, they have had good reason to complain.

The government takes very seriously the problem of future climate change.   As they should.

Some notes on Kobe

I never got around to talking much about the days spent in Kobe on my last trip to Japan.

Given that it's a popular port on cruise ship itineraries, I think quite a lot of people have been there on a quick day visit, despite it not exactly being renowned for any "must do" site to visit.   That said, I thought it was a very pleasant city, with interesting geography, being  hemmed in between mountain and the sea:

 

It has quite a few European style buildings, including some old traders' houses, tree lined streets, and a popular Chinatown:

 

But the best thing we did there, and which is probably not so well known by visiting Australians, is to catch the cable train and cable car to the old onsen town of Arima.

The cable car situation there is a little confusing, because there is one that goes up to a lookout that leaves from close to the centre of town (and which we did not visit); the other one is a cable train a bit out of the centre of town that goes up to Mount Rokko, where you then catch a bus to a cable car that takes you to Arima.  Here's the map showing their departure points:

It's the Maya Cable station which is the one to get to Arima.  (We caught a bus to get to the cable station from our hotel in the centre of town, but it wouldn't be too expensive via taxi either.)   Here are a few photos:

And at the top of the ride, you are greeted with a spectacular view back over the city:

The most distant island there (on the left side) is the airport that is built on an artificial island of which, later on the trip, I happened to get a good picture from my flight:

Anyway, you have to catch a bus from the cable train to the cable car station, but on the way there is a small botanical garden which you can hop off and see.  It was rather pretty, being autumn and all:

 

Oh, and look, more odd sculpture:

(In case you can't make it out, it's an upside down peeing boy balancing on a pink figure's foot.)

Anyway, you then continue on the mountain bus to another lookout, when you can see over to neighbouring Osaka, as well as back to Kobe:

Need I say, it's a spectacular view.

Then onto the cable car, which only takes about 12 minutes or so to get to Arima, but the views again are great:

And Arima itself is a pretty charming old onsen town, with some narrow streets and lots of onsen to stay in overnight:

 

And you should stay in an onsen at least one night on any visit to Japan.  They're great.

That temple, unfortunately not open, is very old:  according to the sign, established in 727 and restored in 1191 - with the cherry blossom tree 270 years old.

 

Incidentally, to get back to Kobe we just caught a bus, and given that it can travel through a tunnel or two, the trip is very quick - about 45 minutes from memory - but not nearly as scenic as going via Mount Rokko, of course.

So yes, I would recommend Kobe, at least if the weather is nice and you take the opportunity to make this very spectacular side trip.

Drug issues noted

This story on the ABC this Easter weekend seemingly came out of nowhere.  It's on a topic we very rarely hear about:  people who have persistent perception/mental health issues after the use of hallucinogenic drugs:   

Sheree da Costa lost her son Joey to suicide and believes he would still be alive if he hadn't developed hallucinogenic persistent perception disorder (HPPD) as a teenager.

"That was the actual tipping point for Joey," she said.

HPPD results in disturbed vision, where a sufferer may constantly see visual snow, haloes or trails.

Many also experience out-of-body sensations and extreme anxiety.

It's triggered by the use of psychedelic drugs and has been described as the "trip that never ends".

With the use of illegal drugs on the rise and the emergence of psychedelics in the treatment of mental health disorders, there are calls for greater awareness and more research into the condition.

Sheree said her son's experience of HPPD was "a living hell".

Joey developed HPPD after taking a psychedelic drug at the age of 17 when he was in his final year at school, affecting his vision.

"Where school was concerned words were starting the slide off the page so he couldn't study, he couldn't read, and reading was something that he was very good at," she said.

Joey dropped out of school and eventually told his parents, who tried to help as much as they could.

"But to be honest we were in the dark as well until we started to do research of our own," Sheree said.

"Even to us it seemed hopeless because, where do you go? Especially here in Australia."

Ms da Costa said she and Joey often talked about raising awareness about HPPD together.

Now she is advocating on his behalf to call for more research into the condition.

Well, yeah, I knew that some hippy LSD users going nuts and never recovering in California in the 1960's was a real thing (and led to its criminalisation - while others call it a mere "moral panic" that wasn't justified), we all know that in recent years a "pro-psychedelics" push back has been happening.   Yet in this article, we have a couple of researchers (father and daughter, actually) talking about HPPD as a significant issue:

Researcher Anneliese McConnell said HPPD was reported to affect about 5 per cent of hallucinogen users, but she thinks the real numbers are much higher.

"It's not a small population we're talking about," Dr McConnell said.....

Much of the existing research on HPPD is focused on describing the condition.

Psychiatrist Harry McConnell said a lot more research needed to be done into the basic mechanisms of how it occurred, who was at risk and treatments.

He and his daughter Anneliese McConnell — a researcher at the Western Sydney University School of Medicine — have looked into whether HPPD is associated with other disorders such as migraines accompanied by visual auras or tinnitus.

"It's difficult to get funding in this area. I think it's difficult to get funding in a lot of areas related to drug and alcohol use and HPPD is no exception here," he said.

It's seems that while it has been known about for a long time, it's been only gradually getting more attention: 

To get some more detail on prevalence, I'll quote a 2021 review article:

Of the various health issues caused by the steady, worldwide increase in illicit drug use, HPPD is an underreported and still poorly understood condition (UN Office on Drugs Crime, 2019). Sound prevalence rates are lacking, but the DSM-5 suggests that 4.2% of all hallucinogen users experience HPPD-like symptoms (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In their literature study, Halpern and Pope (2003) estimate that such symptoms emerge in <5% of all patients treated with LSD-assisted psychotherapy but in up to 50% of polydrug users. Sometimes two subtypes of HPPD are distinguished based on their severity and comorbidity. Type 1 is considered to be the milder variant, where perceptual symptoms are infrequent and barely affect general functioning, with the experiences being predominantly denoted as pleasant (and occasionally as “free trips”). The prognosis is said to be good, with the course often being self-limiting and not requiring professional help (World Health Organization, 2018). Type-2 HPPD, however, is described as causing significant impairment in daily and occupational functioning, while the prognosis is poor, with symptoms lasting up to years or even decades, albeit that large-scale follow-up studies to back this up are scarce (Noushad et al., 2015).

Although it is unknown what proportion of those experiencing HPPD seek professional help, only a small group manages to procure the help they need. This is at least partly due to a lack of knowledge of HPPD among general practitioners and medical specialists. It is widely believed that pharmacological treatment regimens and psychotherapy have little to no effect on HPPD (Lerner et al., 2014c). Since evidence-based treatment guidelines are still to be developed, patients often receive practice-based interventions with off-label medications such as adrenergic agonists, antidepressants, antiepileptics, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, beta blockers, calcium-channel blockers, catechol-o-methyl transferase inhibitors, and opioid receptor antagonists. The evidence for the effects of these treatments is lacking since they have only been described in case reports and open-label treatment studies.

This seems to be another case where my innate leeriness of recreational drug use finds some evidence falling into its lap, so to speak.  

I also find it a bit odd that the ABC seems to be quite open to running cautionary stories about hallucinogens lately.   (Is there some story commissioning producer there who has a relatively conservative attitude to illicit drug use?)  I say this because don't think I ever got around to noting here this story that appeared on 7.30 in February that highlighted psychiatrists who worry that people are getting entirely the wrong impression from the TGA's decision to legalise the use of psilocybin and ecstasy under strict guidelines:

The Royal College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) says people may be getting the wrong impression about the availability of some psychedelic drugs, following an historic 2023 decision to take them off the prohibited drug list.

"There's a definite risk of patients having significantly elevated expectations," says the chair of RANZCP's Psychedelic Steering Group, Professor Richard Harvey.

"Some of the marketing, what we see on the web … is suggestions that these are treatments or substances that everybody should use, that all psychiatrists should be prescribing — there's absolutely not, by any means, the evidence that is the situation."...

The drugs are only available for therapeutic use in conjunction with intensive therapy carried out by authorised practitioners.

7.30 can only confirm two cases of psychedelic drug prescriptions since the TGA's decision came into effect in July last year.

Dr Cassidy says the process was complicated and expensive.

But the information in the story that most caught my eye was this:

Professor Susan Rossell from Swinburne University of Technology says there's a trend across published psilocybin studies.

"About a third seem to have some very positive effects, a third nothing really, and a third do have some negative long-term consequences about the so-called bad trip," she said.

Professor Rossell's team is trying to find out what are the predictors of success.

"We know this intervention is going to be really expensive, it involves a lot of therapy.

"So if we can make some predictions as to who it's going to benefit the most, wouldn't that be the best way forward?"

About a third can have negative long term consequences!   We don't see that talked about much, if at all.    I mean, I get that people who are going to try it are probably doing so as something of a last resort, but nonetheless, her comments indicate that there is still a very significant risk of making their problems worse.  How many treatments are allowed with a risk profile that high?

Anyway, in other odd drug news this Easter, it was surprising to read that the victims of a drug overdoes on the Gold Coast were a group or women in their early 40's - not the typical age range or gender group you expect to be going on a recreational drug binder.  (Well, unless they are rich and doing cocaine.)    But it turns out that the woman who died was a new age eccentric:

Known as a “Shamanic medicine woman” on her social media, Whittaker proudly worked to “build an army of courageous, empowered, soul driven women who are here to create change and make magic”.

Her work revolved around New Age spirituality.

As to the drugs that killed her (and sent her friends to hospital too), it's not yet known for sure, but:

...early reports have referred to the substance as a "drug cocktail," including ketamine, GHB or fantasy. 

And in yet more drug use news, it was widely reported that Queensland had decided to allow pill testing at a music festival for the first time.   The TV news reports showed it to be a very modern hippy-ish style where the point of being there is to be off their collective faces.

I don't know - I would prefer to deal with the problem by banning festivals I don't like the look of!  But I would say that, wouldn't I...  

 

A distinctive image

Update:  Some context.  This was an artwork that was in a side room at the cable car station at the top of the ride from Kobe to Mt Rokko, when I was there last year.   I never found out the details, but there were artworks (temporarily, I think) around several spots on Mt Rokko, not all disturbing like this one.

I think the photo came out in very remarkable fashion - something about the lighting makes it look artificial, and (to my mind) a bit like the cut out animation artwork that featured in Monty Python. 

I thought, as it gives a general impression of suffering, it was apt to post it on Good Friday.

I must get around to posting other photos taken on the Mt Rokko area.  They have sat on my phone for a long time, but I finally transferred them to the laptop, where I find it easier to post and edit photos.

An odd fellow

So, out of sordid curiosity I did read that profile of Andrew Huberman, who I had briefly watched on Youtube, but only once or twice.  Here's how Daily Beast starts its description of the article:

Andrew Huberman is a straight-talking science podcaster known for his hours-long episodes about biohacking, and for having muscles almost as big as his brain. But the new-media darling has a secret mental asset revealed Monday by New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: the flexibility and logistical acuity to manage multiple concurrent affairs with women spread across the continental U.S.

He certainly seems a very odd man, and the oddest thing in the article was his claim (made through a spokesman, apparently) that the long term girlfriend whose story is the backbone of the article was going through IVF with him not to necessarily have children, but to create embryos together.  What sense does that make?  IVF is no walk in the park, by all accounts, and doing it to only "make embryos" just doesn't make much sense.  (Unless he thought he could sell them via his Youtube videos, or something!) 

There was also a comment following the article (which I can't copy now, as it has gone behind a paywall) from some woman who claimed she had some dates with him, before soon deciding he was such a weirdo that she (a bit facetiously, I think) feared for her life if she slept over at his place.  Seemed to me a bit "brave" of the magazine to leave that comment there.   

Anyway, it's interesting that many on the Right think he is the victim of a "witch hunt" because he has been on shows like Joe Rogan.   Apparently, though, he generally has avoided politics in his podcast career, but it seems he is pretty popular with at least part of the (what?) "self improvement bro community". 

I don't know:  if a person is going to make a career, and a lucrative one, out of self improvement advice (an article says his podcast topics include: fitness, learning, creativity, hormones, fertility, grief, trauma, and happiness) I think there is a legitimate public interest if his own life is something of a complex mess, relationship wise.

I mean, I'm sure a lot of Right wingers enjoyed Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals (I know I did!) which was entirely about (mostly) Left leaning public intellectuals whose personal life was in complete contradiction to their public views.   

Sure, Johnson did only deal with people who were already dead:  but if you are going to try to juggle not just 2 or 3, but 5 girlfriends at once while being media famous, you have to expect public exposure if caught out.

Responsible leadership needed

There is a surge again in news about regional aboriginal lawlessness (particularly amongst youth).  The ABC notes:

• In short: Widespread unrest broke out in Alice Springs on Tuesday, including an attack on a pub by people throwing bricks at doors and windows.
• The incidents occured after a ceremony and funeral for a teenager who died when an allegedly stolen car crashed two weeks ago.
• What's next? The Alice Springs mayor is calling for the federal government to step in to address social problems in the town.

And on 7.30 the other night, they did a story on aimless youth getting into trouble in Moree.

The problem here has been a long time brewing:   the relatively moderate aboriginal leadership figures are ageing and seemingly lost influence.  They placed all their eggs for future change into the one mechanism - The Voice - which may have been well intentioned, but failed due to appearing to moderates as pretty much a mere re-run of a bureaucratic approach that had failed before, and to the young radical activists as insultingly inadequate as a power sharing arrangement. 

And of course, when the Voice failed, it meant that there was virtually uniform criticism within aboriginal advocacy of "the system" - apart from the handful (if that!) of Right wing aboriginal figures (Mundine, Price).

Given that Mundine and Price seem to be too "political" in a self interested way, and don't seem to have much of a following within aboriginal communities broadly, the end result is a real vacuum where there needs to be responsible, moderate aboriginal leadership that should be sending the right messages to aboriginal youth - that their best future lies in getting ahead in the modern world they find themselves in, regardless of historical wrongs, and this means being part of the modern economy, and all that goes with it - get a reasonable education, respect property rights, and other people of all races.  

Instead, the radical aboriginal advocacy which is currently in the ascendancy is emphasising grievance and cultural pride, which is not the messaging needed to stop crime and anti-social behaviour.  

It's unfortunate that its a Labor Party federally that is caught with this problem.   

It's also unfortunate that, as the messaging I am suggesting is easily painted as "right wing", the Right in politics just has a tainted reputation at the moment for sounding reasonable on nearly anything.   

So I think it is from the mainstream Left that there needs to be some bravery here - to try to get aboriginal leadership to break the emphasis on grievance (and cultural re-writing, such as the dubious attempt of academia to try to re-write pre-Colonial aboriginal society as something with equivalence to other technologically advanced societies), and more emphasis on the "join us" messaging.   

Of course, it is also easy to point to Labor Left apologies for past wrongs - going back to Paul Keating - as having encouraged the "pro-grievance, 24/7" style of radical aboriginal advocacy to take hold.   But this is why I say the course correction has to come from the Left too - at least they can argue in good faith that they did acknowledge past wrongs, but now is the time to move past the emphasis on that.  The Right - in figures such as Dutton and other - are easily dismissed due to never having joined the attempt to acknowledge past wrongs.  

Dumb takes noted

 

Update:  on a not so dumb note (because it's me!) - surely I'm not the only person thinking that the protective side barriers (that stop vehicles toppling off the bridge) look unusually low and inadequate for a modern bridge??

Healthier to be with a Democrat, obviously

I don't normally like to post photos of politicians, or people associated with them, looking grim and out of sorts.  I mean, you get no context and it can be quite unfair.

BUT:   it's impossible to resist it this time, given this dire recent appearance of Trump Jnr's girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle:

 

I mean, honestly: having Morticia Addams as a make up and style consultant would give a less disturbing result.   Of course it's not the first time I have noticed her increasingly harsh look in the years since she threw her lot in with the Trumps.   But to my surprise, when I was looking for past photos to compare (many have used those from when she was at Fox News, but I was looking for something different) I learned that she used to be married to Gavin Newsom!   I didn't know that:

 

They were married from 2001 to 2006.

This is like the reverse of what Republicans like to think - that their typical follower is a wholesome Mom from the suburbs, and that trashy woman dressed and made up like a sex doll must be a liberal.  

Weird!

Local politics is often the nuttiest politics

From the Guardian:

Backed by 5G truthers, exiled from One Nation, banned from parliament – now Troy Thompson looks set to be Townsville’s mayor

Pisto and pesto

From "recent recipes successfully tried" files:

a.    hadn't heard of pisto before (a Spanish vegetable stew - although this recipe ups the protein with a chorizo topping), but this came out very nice.  Here's the Guardian's photo:

and here's my real life version:

 

Would have looked better in a smaller bowl, and the egg yolk broke and I flipped it, but it was still runny inside, honest.

Anyway:  yes, I did the cubed pumpkin in the airfryer first to get it a bit Maillard reacted on the outside. I also skipped the sage - it's not a herb I care for, much, to be honest.

As for pesto:   I followed a Youtube short for making a prawn pesto pasta, and I can't even find it again. I've forgotten the exact details, but I think it was prawns fried (with garlic? or was that after the prawns?) with a squeeze of lemon.  Added some halved grape tomatoes too - that wasn't in the video.  Remove from frying pan, put chicken stock in frying pan and cook the spaghetti in that (I used 100 g per person, it worked well.)   Drain spaghetti, add pesto and the prawns and tomatoes and mix around, maybe adding lemon and salt to taste.   Came out a bit dry, but next time I will just add back in more of the pasta water.

 

Is there something like an ontological argument for free will?

Let's kick off the week with something like a shower thought: the kind that is sometimes embarrassing to ask openly, because of the degree to which it can show the writer's unfamiliarity with aspects of philosophy.

But the question in the post title occurred to me this weekend when reading this short interview with Robert Sapolsky, who currently is the most prominent figure arguing that free will does not exist, and (to give him some credit) discussing the consequences of that view.  (I think far too many people - like Sabine Hossenfelder - just shrug their shoulders about the real life consequences of the belief in no free will.)

Anyway, as I have mentioned before, when it comes to the free will argument, I keep on having difficulty with grasping how lack of free will copes with the concept of a mere idea that comes from outside a person changing a person's behaviour in reaction to that idea.   The fact that a person can, for example, be given concepts that may help them climb out of depression seems to indicate that something ephemeral, like how they should analyse themselves and their present situation, does change a person internally because they have accepted the ephemeral idea is true. 

The somewhat novel extension (to me, anyway) of that line of thinking that has occurred to me is this:  "does the mere concept of free will and people's ability to believe in it mean that free will does indeed exist - much like the ontological proof for the existence of God."

Now, I certainly don't believe the ontological proof of God is convincing, but the idea that an idea can indeed change behaviour seems more plausibly like a possible proof that the idea itself is real.

Don't come back at me and say "of course believing in a false idea doesn't prove the false idea is true."   Yeah, sure.  I guess I would try to get around that obvious argument by saying this is an idea about reasoning and ideas themselves.   Not about factual matters like (to use an example) "Trump won the last election", or for that matter "God is real".  

A quick Google hasn't shown up an exact replication of my suggestion - but it would have to be likely someone has run at least something close to this argument before.  (I have thought briefly about how similar it is to "I think therefore I am" - and I'm not sure that it's quite the same.)

I don't mind this guy's post on the whole subject of free will (who is he?), but I will have to keep looking.     

Musk on your mind

Here's a lengthy article at Vox about what Musk is trying to achieve with his Neuralink implants.  (A technology which, I reckon, is not going to go far because of its invasive nature.)

Not many articles are free at Vox anymore (such that I barely check it), so I hope this one stays free.

Seems under-reported to me

I was watching video of Biden promoting a new semi conductor plant to be built in Arizona this morning, and as usual, he gave a prepared speech flawlessly and sounded completely engaged and sensible.  (And again, when he walked off, it was with his stiff gait that seems common now.)   Once again, I felt the twinge of infuriation that mainstream media has let Right wing media (both corporate - Fox, Newsmax,  and smaller scale operations) brainwash (I don't know) 30%? of the population to genuinely believe he has dementia and barely knows where he is until an aide gives him his drugs.   If you ignore nonsense, nonsense grows, I reckon.

(I also again wondered how much of the Biden frailty meme is based around video of his stiff gait - if there is an explanation for that, I reckon they should be giving it.)

In any case, this is the story, and it seems pretty big, really; but also not given the attention it deserved in US media:

Biden administration awards $8.5 billion for computer-chip manufacturing

A massive grant for Intel will support factory construction in Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon. The award is the largest yet from legislation aiming to re-shore manufacturing.

"Acting out" dreams is a really bad sign

Here's a surprising bit of health news:   people who start "acting out" dreams (physically moving in bed as part of a dream) can be on the way to Parkinsons.  As explained in the Washington Post:

In 1986, Schenck and his colleagues first described RBD in four men and one woman, ages 60 or older. Most had long histories of injuring themselves or their bed partners with aggressive behaviors while asleep. One patient had attempted to strangle his wife while dreaming of fighting a bear, while another knocked over furniture during his dream of being a football player. The researchers noted that RBD is distinct from sleepwalking, which originates from non-REM sleep.

Dream enactment behavior has also been documented in severe obstructive sleep apnea, as it causes people to abruptly stop breathing for brief periods during sleep and partially awaken. Since these breathing cessations are most common and severe in REM sleep, they may act out their dreams, mimicking the symptoms of RBD, Schenck said.

About 39 million U.S. adults have obstructive sleep apnea, according to the National Council of Aging, but how many of these adults enact their dreams is not known.

Similarly, those with PTSD may show signs of reliving their trauma through dream enactment. Approximately 70 percent of patients with PTSD report sleep disturbances, and up to 70 percent have recurrent nightmares. However, no data exists on the prevalence of dream enactment behavior in PTSD, Schenck said.

For those with RBD, the risk of Parkinson’s is staggeringly high. Individuals ages 50 and older with idiopathic RBD — that occurs spontaneously with no other health complaints or recent medication changes — have a 130 times greater likelihood of developing Parkinson’s disease compared with someone without the sleep condition.

“There’s nothing like this. … 80 percent of people who have this condition develop Parkinson’s disease 15 to 20 years later,” said Ronald Postuma, director of neurology at McGill University Health Centre.

RBD is 10 times better than any other clinical marker — for example, abnormal motor exam or loss of sense of smell — at predicting the eventual onset of Parkinson’s. RBD is strongly associated with other synucleinopathies, too, a group of diseases that includes Lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy.

Remarkable.

I woke myself up moaning due to a nightmare sometime in the last 6 months, but that's about the closest I've ever got to this behaviour.  Let's hope it stays that way.

 

I'm imagining Elon Musk with a headache all the way to Mars....

The list of health things for which hanging around in zero G seems to be bad continues to grow.  I hadn't heard of this before:

In a study tracking astronaut health, 22 of 24 International Space Station (ISS) visitors suffered headaches almost three times as frequently as when on Earth. Even some astronauts with no history of headaches may experience migraine and tension-type headaches during stays of 10 days or longer in space, reported a new study published in Neurology....

The astronauts from the European Space Agency, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency underwent health screenings prior to their missions. They also completed questionnaires documenting their headache history. Once in space, they completed the questionnaires for the first seven days and weekly thereafter.

The contrasts were striking. Before their ISS trip, nine astronauts reported no headaches over the past year. Only three mentioned experiencing a headache that interfered with their lives during that period. None had a history of recurrent headaches or had been diagnosed with migraines.

The astronauts reported 378 headaches while in space. Of the total headaches, 170, or 90 percent, were tension-type and 19, or 10 percent, were migraine. Once back on Earth, none reported headaches the first three months after their return.

It's a pity that early science fiction optimism about the fun of being in zero G just isn't really reflected in reality.  Although low gravity, like on the Moon, might still be a lot of fun.   I have a hunch that the first extensive use of the Moon might be more for the money to be made from a low gravity sports arena than from anything to be manufactured there!   

Ketamine explained

An article in Nature about the use of ketamine to treat depression.  (Written because of Musk's disclosure of how he uses it.)  

A minor bleat: can the commissioning producers at the ABC please stop funding Miriam Margolyes content?

I find it hard to believe that Miriam Margolyes has found yet more queer and eccentric Australians to hang out with and hug as a fellow queer and eccentric (and very unhealthy looking) character.

But according to promos on the ABC, yes, there is yet another series of the same stuff.   

Look, she can be a mildly amusing raconteur, but there is such a repetitive sameness to this type of content (she has done the same in visiting Scotland, and America) that it really is pretty tedious. 

While I am in the mood to criticise the love affair that a certain social class (I don't even know how to categorise them) has with queer comedy, I have been meaning to note that Hannah Gadsby has been running a short season of a new stand up stage show, and I have seen exactly one review for it (in The Guardian, of course) that seemed to be struggling a bit to be encouraging.  Here, for example:

Woof! is a mixed experience, partly because Gadsby is chasing their new topic of interest and working out bits onstage; there’s even standard comedy gear still waiting for their Gadsbian spin; at one point, they actually do compare their recent misfortunes to a country song. Gadsby’s shows are typically written to tight narrative complication and subversion, seeding setups for punchlines an hour later, and that keen narrative structure and craft isn’t fully developed here.

But maybe that’s the point. For a show built on resistance and refusal, there’s a surprising amount of openness to form, structure, and play. They’ve been microdosing testosterone, and their voice has changed; we’re seeing them find new ways to experiment with tenor and tone and cadence. And for a show about worry, there are clear attempts to combat the gloom.

As a long term skeptic of the quality of Gadsby's work (so I would say this wouldn't I?), it does seem to me that she has "peaked"; but also, she seems such a clear example of the "stand up comedian who does stand up as a form of public therapy that doesn't actually help in the long run" that I feel a tad sorry for her. 

Singaporean defence: "Just do it"

Here's a shortish video about the huge effort Singapore puts into defence:  8 submarines; F 35s; highways designed to be back up runways; secret code on the TV to call up the reserve. 

It made me think about all the faffing about that goes on in Australian defence acquisitions and planning.  The Singaporean attitude in comparison is "Just do it".   Love it.

 

Trump and "bloodbath"

A pretty good summary here of why it's ridiculous to argue that Trump was just innocently using the word "bloodbath" in the context of tariffs.

Excuse making for Trumpian rhetoric is just pretty pathetic, given the events of Jan 6.   

Of course he uses violence encouraging rhetoric, regularly.  

As someone else explains:

Yanis and technocapitalism

To be honest, I have never quite understood Yanis Varoufakis - on some interviews he has seemed to sound reasonable, but nothing much about what he says has ever stuck in my mind for long.  I'm not sure why.   I mean, I "get" the basic  messages of some other high profile economists - say, Krugman,  Stiglitz (or even Piketty) pretty easily - but the details in what Varousfakis argues end up somewhat opaque to me.

Anyway, I'm writing about him because of a Washington Post review of his new book "Technofeudalism - What Killed Capitalism".   I also see that he touched on its themes in a very wide ranging talk at the National Press Club, and the transcript is here.

He still confuses me.

  

Mold for dinner

An article about gene editing certain molds that we already eat, or use, to make them tastier:

 It’s hearty, it’s meaty, it’s mold

Hacking the genome of fungi for smart foods of the future ....

In their recent paper, publishing on March 14 in Nature Communications, Hill-Maini and colleagues at UC Berkeley, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability studied a multicellular fungus called Aspergillus oryzae, also known as koji mold, that has been used in East Asia to ferment starches into sake, soy sauce, and miso for centuries. First, the team used CRISPR-Cas9 to develop a gene editing system that can make consistent and reproducible changes to the koji mold genome. Once they had established a toolkit of edits, they applied their system to make modifications that elevate the mold as a food source. First, Hill-Maini focused on boosting the mold’s production of heme – an iron-based molecule which is found in many lifeforms but is most abundant in animal tissue, giving meat its color and distinctive flavor. (A synthetically produced plant-derived heme is also what gives the Impossible Burger its meat-duping properties.) Next, the team punched up production of ergothioneine, an antioxidant only found in fungi that is associated with cardiovascular health benefits.  

After these changes, the once-white fungi grew red. With minimal preparation – removing excess water and grinding – the harvested fungi could be shaped into a patty, then fried into a tempting-looking burger.

Hill-Maini’s next objective is to make the fungi even more appealing by tuning the genes that control the mold’s texture. “We think that there's a lot of room to explore texture by varying the fiber-like morphology of the cells. So, we might be able to program the structure of the lot fibers to be longer which would give a more meat-like experience. And then we can think about boosting lipid composition for mouth feel and further nutrition,” said Hill-Maini, who was a Fellow of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at UC Berkeley during the study. “I'm really excited about how can we further look at the fungus and, you know, tinker with its structure and metabolism for food.”

I have no problem with this...

Americans and their drugs, again

Here's another chapter in "American capitalism seems particularly prone to encouraging the rapid spread of illicit drugs for recreational use":

A national survey of more than 2,000 high school seniors across the country found that more than 11% used a drug called delta-8 THC in the past year.

The psychoactive compound is derived from hemp, and often called "diet weed' or "weed lite." It's milder than its cousin, delta-9 THC, the main intoxicant in marijuana, but has similar effects on the brain and the body.

The percentage of teens using the drug is higher in the 19 states with no regulations around the compound and in states where marijuana has not been legalized....

Products containing delta-8 began to be marketed after the 2018 Agricultural Improvement Act (commonly known as the Farm Bill) included a provision legalizing the sale of hemp-derived cannabis products, containing less than 0.3% of delta-9 THC. This led to the "de facto legalization" of hemp-derived psychoactive delta-8 products," writes Johnson.

But the problem is the lack of oversight around delta-8 products – often sold as edibles or vapes – in many states, says Johnson.

"What is sold is unregulated," she says. "In most states we don't know the potency [of the drug]."

Delta-8 products are made by processing hemp-derived CBD, which can concentrate the drug, she adds. "We're getting higher concentrations of it than we would have ever got in an actual cannabis plant."

Preliminary studies show users reporting adverse health effects, including "cough, rapid heart rate, paranoia, anxiety, breathing problems and seizure," says Johnson.

 

 

 

 

Big (animal) problem

Well, I didn't know this:

Thailand's national animal has become a national problem, as the country deals with an increasing number of deadly encounters between elephants and humans.

Once on the brink of extinction, elephant numbers have now rebounded.

They increased from an estimated 3,000 in 2018 to more than 4,400 in March 2023, according to the latest survey.

But the expansion in numbers has also resulted in more human deaths.

In the same period, 137 people were killed by elephants across Thailand. The Department of National Parks said 12 people have already been killed by elephants this year.

 

Why aren't certain factors in the US Presidential election apparently being reflected in polling?

The current puzzle (beyond the meta puzzle as to why anyone in their right mind has ever voted for him) is that there are clearly certain current factors which should be reflected in Trump's polling, but for some reason they aren't there yet: 

*  I think (I'm having trouble finding the exact figure quickly - thanks Google :( ) the Haley primary vote ran on average at about 30%, for a candidate who had taken to sounding pretty much like a "never Trumper".  (Given the jellyback that it takes to be a Republican politician these days, whether that will hold is an open question.)    

*  Trump's takeover of the RNC and immediately sacking a bunch of people must surely create animosity amongst some formerly loyal and influential party members.

*  Trump is clearly making more verbal fumbles in his speeches than before, and appearing "low energy" at times.  His "greatest hits" style of rambling before cultists (including reverting to patently childish insult) for an hour already feels old, and its wildly unlikely that he is going to change.   

On the Biden side, you have the nutty Left who are swearing they won't vote for him over Israel/Gaza, preferring to sit it out and risk having a president about 300% worse on the issue.  But really, I get the impression that this group is much louder than its actual numbers - much like the whining Bernie Sanders bros who didn't end up being all that influential.

I think - and this is just a hunch - that the anti-Trump wing of the Republicans must be larger, and knows to be discrete if they don't want to be harassed by family and friends - and as such should be much more influential in the final election vote.

But - this doesn't seem to be being reflected in polling.

I wonder why?

Update:  here's an article (not from Nate Silver) looking at the uncertainties in polling at this stage of election cycles.  It's pretty good.

Incidentally, I remain confident that Trump won't win - not only will the "anti Trump" faction of Republicans be important, continuing court battles will be a constant distraction for his campaigning, and if the polling remains close before the election, Democrat motivation (particularly amongst women) to prevent his return should be very high.

Off to the B Ark with these "you too can get rich with AI Youtube content" spammers

There is an annoying quasi-industry of content creators who have set themselves up as content creation "get rich quick" advisers on Youtube and Twitter.

The worst of these are those who claim you can make a lot of money by setting up "faceless" Youtube videos using AI to generate the script (and much of the imagery), and how to "spam" Youtube with such content to make the algorithm push it.   (Typically, you see a thread on Twitter about this, with 50 spammy "great idea, thanks for the advice" comments following.)

The thing is, Youtube content with AI generated content is awful and a waste of everyone's time.   It's recognizable almost instantly, and I find it very hard to believe that most viewers continue watching it once they cotton on that the bland commentary is from ChatGPT or its ilk.  

This is my "the internet has taken an unexpected turn for the worse" bleat for today.....