Weekend update

*   This remains the coldest Brisbane winter I can remember for years.   Pity the rest of the world is burning up (literally, in the case of Europe.)

*   I didn't realise before how much blood pressure jumps around.   I've been taking it three times a day, and have learnt the benefit of doing two readings within a few minutes.   Overall, it would seem my recently concerning BP is dropping down, presumably as a result of the modest increase in physical activity and/or the addition of flaxseed (and natto) to the diet.   I've not really started with walking every day yet, but I get the feeling it will be properly licked if I can get to doing that.   Somewhat warmer mornings will help.  

*  Flaxseed, especially ground flaxseed, really gums up your morning cereal or porridge, if you add a couple of tablespoons to it.   It has no great effect on taste, though, which is good. 

*  I didn't realise that the immediate effect of alcohol can be to decrease blood pressure.  Because it raises heart rate, I would have guessed the opposite.   So I guess one way to permanently decrease BP is to always be under the influence of 2 glasses of wine.  (Just kidding.)

 

That's interesting

As Ben on Urban Rescue Ranch would say:  "Well, well, well, well, well."   (It really is worth watching his eccentric act.)

I had wondering about the long term Fox strategy on the question of support for Trump as victim of the "raid".  They have clearly been edging away from him, but they felt they had to rush in to offer support again because, I don't know, it's what their audience would want, or something.

But clearly, a "higher up" (one of the Murdochs probably) has decided that someone on the network has to run a line that will give it plausible deniability on the question of how much they toed the Trump line if it turns out really bad for the Yellow One.  And Doocy drew the short straw:

As

 

 

Wish I had thought of this...

 

He must be getting close to revealing that Democrats authorised those alien anal probes

This is real:

 Update:  Seeing I've already used "anal" in the post, I suppose I may as well mention it again, in a much more serious context:   

Women in the UK are suffering injuries and other health problems as a result of the growing popularity of anal sex among straight couples, two NHS surgeons have warned.

The consequences include incontinence and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as well as pain and bleeding because they have experienced bodily trauma while engaging in the practice, the doctors write in an article in the British Medical Journal.

 And apparently, the fact that some men have it without apparent long term harm is down to anatomy:

...women who engage in anal sex are at greater risk from it than men. “Increased rates of faecal incontinence and anal sphincter injury have been reported in women who have anal intercourse,” the report said.

“Women are at a higher risk of incontinence than men because of their different anatomy and the effects of hormones, pregnancy and childbirth on the pelvic floor.

“Women have less robust anal sphincters and lower anal canal pressures than men, and damage caused by anal penetration is therefore more consequential.

“The pain and bleeding women report after anal sex is indicative of trauma, and risks may be increased if anal sex is coerced,” they said.

 I think the awful Sex and the City has a lot to answer for.

 

Nutty aggressive woman who likes to scare elderly men on the street foresees the end of America

She lives in such a permanent state of hyperventilation, I think it would be in her (and the public's) interest if someone would volunteer to shoot a tranquilliser dart at her in the street:

 

 

 

I'm outraged that there's not more outrage...

...from mainstream media about the vile "let's throw petrol on the fire" reaction of Fox News (and the even nuttier media outlets) when everyone knows Trump idiots are already bouncing off the walls with ridiculous calls for violence and revenge against anyone involved in investigative action against their stupid yellow leader.  A series of tweets from yesterday:

 

As I said yesterday, it's like the Murdochs want the country to burn, as long as there's a buck to made in the process.

UPDATE:   Oh look, seems like this is the first person killed with the assistance of Fox News.   Wouldn't be surprised if there are more.

An armed man who tried to break into the FBI building in Cincinnati on Thursday leading to a lockdown in the nearby area has been shot and killed by police.

 

UPDATE 2:   let's hope this magistrate sues Fox News for a lot of money:

 

It's dry in Europe

Axios reports:

Drought conditions are affecting about 60% of the EU and the U.K., exacerbated by climate-change driven record heat across Europe this summer, according to new research from the European Drought Observatory.

Why it matters: France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands are facing water shortages and riverbeds are drying out across Europe. Dry conditions are severely affecting energy production, agriculture and river transportation.....

What they're saying: "Droughts have become our summer reality," tweeted Virginijus Sinkevičius, the European Commission's commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, on Tuesday.

• 100 municipalities in France have no running water, the Rhine River's levels in Germany and France are so low the transportation of goods is under threat, and the Netherlands "faces an official water shortage," Sinkevičius noted.
• "Restoring Nature is the best solution to change this," he added.

What to watch: Another searing heat wave was forecast to hit parts of western and central Europe this week into next week.

• The Met Office has issued an amber heat warning for much of southern England and parts of Wales for Thursday through Sunday, on the heels of its first ever extreme heat warning last month. Heat alerts are also in effect across France.
• London is forecast to see temperatures of 90°F (33°C) or above for four straight days starting Thursday, and temperatures will

And in France, nuclear power is affected:

After a major heatwave in 2003, France's nuclear safety agency set temperature limits at 28 degrees Celsius for rivers, beyond which power plants were required to reduce their production in order not to make the water even warmer and preserve the environment.

Temporary exceptions allow some plants to raise this limit by a few degrees during "exceptional situations".

 

 

Social media outrages in context

OK, so in another Washington Post column which I will gift my readers, Megan McArdle writes about the recent on line controversy over an American chain restaurant offering plant based meat (as well as their regular meat menu),  and some MAGA types reacted on social media that this was outrageously "woke" and they wouldn't eat there again.

McArdle argues that the problem is that social media amplifies crank voices - what used to be a stupid opinion never used to have such a public profile, and we could all ignore easily:

Before social media, these people mostly had to share their crankery in person, unless they could get a local newspaper column or a segment on “60 Minutes.” And Americans knew how to deal with it: We nodded and smiled while Uncle Walter explained that he was never going back to Second Federal Bank because the new bank manager was German, and he hadn’t fought World War II to do his banking with a Nazi.

Then we turned to Aunt Irma and complimented her on how pretty her Jell-O mold looked.

We ignored these explosions because when we had to endure these tirades in person, we had a sense of proportion. Yes, Uncle Walter had crazy opinions. But everyone else we knew chose their bank based on where it was located, or who was offering the best interest rate on savings accounts.

Social media concentrates all the Uncle Walters in one place, where they start to seem like an army. But in fact, their numbers are still insignificant, relative to the 325 million people in the country.

This is true, and something worth remembering.

But I reckon her "calm down everyone" attitude leaves out a couple of things:

*   it's a pity she pitches it towards encouraging people to just ignore some extreme MAGA types, as if it is only liberals who over-estimate the number of nuts on the other side of politics.   For example, Right wingers get off on "Libs of Tik Tok" as if every gay teacher on there is representative of teachers as a whole.  Also, as someone said in a comment following the article:

Ok, so if a few dozen students protest a speaker at their college campus, then Megan will exercise the same sense of proportion and won’t claim that these people are threatening the very foundations of democracy. Right?

I think we know the answer to that.

*  More importantly, I reckon she's ignoring the effect of social media in the reinforcement of extreme views, because people who hold them readily a community of the like minded.   And they probably do what McArdle warns about - overestimate the size of that community - but that hardly matters, and they are not likely to be convinced of their overestimate anyway.   What's important is the mutual support in their nutty views, which help entrench them.   That's the bigger danger of social media free speech, especially in the USA, where you also have a media universe devoted to perpetual demonisation of Democrats and liberals.  This was also noted in a comment:

What happens when the cranks are on major media sites like Fox News, OANN, and they are accusing the president and the DoJ with a conspiracy to get Trump? We have a problem in this country of people who can't think in anything but in terms that the opposition is pure evil and their side is purity and light. Meanwhile, that "side" thinks of itself as purity and light is spreading lies and misinformation 24/7.

Indeed.       

The history of Trump disparaging the FBI

Philip Bump in the Washington Post (I'll gift the article) summarises the history of Trump attacking the FBI for patently political purposes. 

You know what's really sickening:  that most of the GOP politicians (even Pence, the pathetic figure still following the lead of the former boss who thought it was understandable that people wanted him to hang) see this as a good tactic too.  That's what 30 odd years of paranoid conspiracy mongering does to your judgement.  

And what about Fox News?   The Murdoch family never misses an opportunity to encourage the country to burn, presumably because there's money to be made that way.  (What other excuse is there?   Mental illness?)

As Bump writes:

Of course, there’s no reason that any Republican would need to weigh in immediately on Monday’s Mar-a-Lago search. They could simply wait and see, wait to learn why the search was executed and offer an assessment at that point.

But that’s not the culture of the modern Republican Party. Instead, there are rewards to be earned from moving quickly in casting the probe as suspect. Following an example set in part by Trump himself, GOP officials rushed to offer up products in the robust marketplace of social media commentary. The most outrageous denunciation of the search could earn more attention and more followers — and perhaps more clout. A number of people hustled to raise money off the news, including GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who suggested that angry donors contribute to the party’s Senate nominee in Georgia; J.D. Vance, a Senate candidate in Ohio; and Trump himself.

One reason that the Mar-a-Lago search might “unite [the] different factions in the party,” as a Trump aide told Politico, is that it isn’t pro-Trump but anti-FBI. Republicans from both the pro- and less-pro-Trump segments of the GOP get to express outrage at a group that Republicans are primed to distrust. Outrage at a government department that can be cast as the swamp or the Deep State or even the Elites, depending on who’s doing the casting.

Update:  Look at this.  Utterly disgraceful, how Murdoch and Fox News are basically begging the country to become ungovernable because half of it is consumed by conspiracy belief and complete demonisation of the other main political party:

Update 2:  Ah yes - the poisonous feedback loop between Murdochian media and the Republicans, who has resulted in the American Right turning into wannabe totalitarian conspiracy mongers:

 

 

 

An unexpected lead in eggs story

Gee, I would never have guessed that this was a potential issue for home gardeners in our big cities:

Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs, research finds

Our newly published research found backyard hens’ eggs contain, on average, more than 40 times the lead levels of commercially produced eggs. Almost one in two hens in our Sydney study had significant lead levels in their blood. Similarly, about half the eggs analysed contained lead at levels that may pose a health concern for consumers.

So how do you know whether this is a likely problem in the eggs you’re getting from backyard hens? It depends on lead levels in your soil, which vary across our cities. We mapped the areas of high and low risk for hens and their eggs in our biggest cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – and present these maps here.

Our research details lead poisoning of backyard chickens and explains what this means for urban gardening and food production. In older homes close to city centres, contaminated soils can greatly increase people’s exposure to lead through eating eggs from backyard hens.

Tim, I thought you might be interested in particular...

Short notes

* Olivia Newton John's singing and movie career was hardly something I personally found terribly exciting, but there never seemed any doubt that she was a likeable and decent person in real life, given how well people who knew her spoke about her.  (She also came across very well in interviews, and celebrities who do a lot of charity work get a big tick from me too.)    So yeah, sad that she didn't get to live longer.

* Ron Howard's dramatisation of the Thai cave rescuse - Thirteen Lives - has got good reviews.  Hope I can deal with the claustrophobia aspect though.  Watching people in tiny caves can actually make me feel very uncomfortable.  

* Schrodinger believed there was only "one mind" in the universe?  I think I had probably read that before, but I'm not sure:

In 1925, just a few months before Schrödinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he would later develop more thoroughly in “Mind and Matter”. Already then, his thoughts on technical matters were inspired by what he took to be greater metaphysical (religious) questions. Early on, Schrödinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

Inspired by Indian philosophy, Schrödinger had a mind-first, not matter-first, view of the universe. But he was a non-materialist of a rather special kind. He believed that there is only one mind in the universe; our individual minds are like the scattered light from prisms:

A metaphor that Schrödinger liked to invoke to illustrate this idea is the one of a crystal that creates a multitude of colors (individual selves) by refracting light (standing for the cosmic self that is equal to the essence of the universe). We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality. He also referred to this as the doctrine of identity. Accordingly, a non-dual form of consciousness, which must not be conflated with any of its single aspects, grounds the refutation of the (merely apparent) distinction into separate selves that inhabit a single world.

 

This will send Trumpers into a frenzy (or, an even deeper frenzy)

 

The Mexico question

Noah Smith has written about why Mexico economic growth is not doing better, and as usual it sounds reasonable and interesting (as are the comments following.)   

I kind of get the feeling he ought to be working in government - although I guess government is always free to subscribe to his substack and consider his analysis anyway.   (The Mexico post is free to view, by the way.)

Some American political tweets

Stuff like this makes me grind my teeth when people go on about Lefty identity politics and "cancel culture" being the real seriously dangerous ideology around at the moment.

Yep.  

I do think the way Democrats have turned the "Dark Biden" idea on its head is pretty amusing:

Slate explains it here.

For a President who millions of dimwitted Rightwingers have convinced themselves is so mentally feeble he doesn't know what's going around him, he's suddenly making serious inroads into the Jimmy Carter style impression of paralysis.    

Axios explains what the legislation achieves:

The bill includes:

• $370 billion for climate change.
• Allows the federal health secretary to negotiate the prices of certain expensive drugs for Medicare.
• Three-year extension on health care subsidies in the Affordable Care Act.
• 15% minimum tax on corporations making $1 billion or more in income. The provision offers more than $300 billion in revenue.
• IRS tax enforcement.
• 1% excise tax on stock buybacks.

The significance of the climate portion: The bill is the largest investment in clean energy and emissions cuts the Senate has ever passed, with the climate portion totaling about $370 billion, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.

• This includes tax incentives to manufacture and purchase electric vehicles, generate more wind and solar electricity and support fledgling technology such as direct air capture and hydrogen production. 
• Independent analyses show the bill, combined with other ongoing emissions reductions, would cut as much as 40% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, short of the White House's 50% reduction target. However, if enacted into law, it would reestablish U.S. credibility in international climate talks, which had been flagging due in part to congressional gridlock. 

• As part of Democrats' concessions to Manchin, the bill also contains provisions calling for offshore oil lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, and a commitment to take up a separate measure to ease the permitting of new energy projects.

 And why would the Republicans think it's a good idea to keep insulin ridiculously expensive?   How are they going to sell that to the voting public?   Can't say I have even seen any attempts to justify it.

Just call it "Christian Fascism"

Max Boot in the Washington Post:

Republicans, once suspicious of government power, are now eager to use it to impose their agenda. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, next to Trump as the most likely 2024 GOP nominee, is establishing his culture-war credentials by, most recently, suspending an elected prosecutor who vowed not to “criminalize personal medical decisions,” such as abortion or “gender-affirming healthcare.” DeSantis even threatened to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows.

These Republican extremists are often described as the “New Right,” but the term doesn’t fit. The New Right was the movement in the 1960s-1970s that produced Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. You can argue that the New Right helped lead to the present imbroglio, but it’s hard to imagine Goldwater or Reagan flashing Viktor Orban a thumbs-up, as Trump did.

Some other term is needed. “Christian nationalism” and “nationalist conservatism” have been bandied about, but the most apt phrase for this American authoritarianism is the New Fascism, and it is fast becoming the dominant trend on the right. If the GOP gains power in Washington, all of America will be in danger of being Orbanized.

Why does he resist the term "Christian Fascism", when the  most prominent Trumpers are talking about their Christianity all the time?