Who is this woman, and why does she seem to make so much sense:
(I feel like those are impliedly sexist questions - but this video has been very popular and I have never heard of her before. Seems she's an American living in Germany now, and her channel is mainly about less than flattering takes on America in light of her European experience?)
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Jordan Peterson makes the news again over his peculiar health issues:
Controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is expected to take time off from “everything” after being exposed to a “particularly moldy environment,” his daughter says.
Mikhaila Peterson took to X on Wednesday afternoon to reveal the 63-year-old influencer-academic has been forced to postpone his podcasts and move his European tour after a “severe” flare-up of symptoms she said is connected with chronic inflammatory response syndrome.
The elder Peterson has openly discussed his experience with CIRS, a condition allegedly linked to mold exposure and immune system dysfunction, and claimed he was diagnosed in 2018. It is not an officially recognized medical diagnosis or considered a distinct disease by any significant public health agency.
I read the daughter's tweet about it, where she went on about the carnivore diet even not being enough to defeat the mould!
I guess its not impossible for some people to have serious reactions to mould: its probably next to impossible to tell which are really suffering from it, and which are psychosomatic.
I also saw a brief bit of Jordan going off on Joe Rogan's show about climate change being a grand Leftist conspiracy to control all people who are Right and Good in the world. It was this (pretty great!) video, which proves that Rogan is a dangerously ignorant influencer who is so dumb he can't be bothered reading an article to understand a graph it contains. He is truly awful.
As someone in comments says:
I'm so tired of the dumbest people on earth having the most popular shows
Another interesting NYT piece - this time about 75 year Republican Rick Perry going all in for a new hallucinogenic I hadn't even heard of before.
As usual, I remain deeply skeptical that the positive experiences of the few who become evangelical is a sound guide to its more widespread use. (And this one sounds particularly dangerous, not to mention unpleasant):
Objects flew past him. Some of them appeared to resemble Maya hieroglyphics. He saw an arm reaching out for him, and attached to it was a figure with horns. “Satan, get behind me,” he heard himself say. The figure instantly disappeared.
Mr. Perry’s hallucinations, induced by the powerful psychotropic drug ibogaine he had taken about 45 minutes before putting on his eye mask, continued for more than 12 hours. The experience was an ordeal. He vomited intermittently and lost much of his body coordination. It took all of Wednesday to recover.
But on Thursday morning, Mr. Perry recalled in describing his experience publicly for the first time, “I woke up very clearheaded, with this very warm feeling in my body. I was as calm and as happy as I’d been in memory.”......
But the powerful drug, which is illegal in the United States, comes with risks. Because ibogaine lengthens the time between heartbeats, a user who gets the wrong dosage, is taking other drugs, or whose heart rate is not being monitored during treatment, can go into cardiac arrest. Even under the most scrupulous of circumstances, ibogaine therapy is a long and grueling inward journey that Ms. Sinema described as “the opposite of a pleasant experience.”
It is because of the drug’s potency that Mr. Perry, Ms. Sinema and other ibogaine advocates have adopted a baby-steps approach. Rather than promote wholesale decriminalization, or even widespread availability, they are seeking public funding for the development of an ibogaine compound in the United States, with the initial aim of treating military veterans.
Probably because it is a conservative promoting it, there are a large number of skeptical comments after it:
To have credibility with me, this article should explain the actual mechanisms( even if not completely known), the actual treatment process (does the dose of the substance magically transform specific memories in one sitting or is there a therapeutic conversation with a real therapist , or 12 weeks of therapy or just exactly what) and how is improvement measured, validated, followed up . How long does the identified benefit last? And how is that defined and measured— hours of improved sleep, fewer arrests or car accidents , less domestic abuse phone calls or more steady employment, less drug and alcohol and other self medication abuse. Only quoting some people who say they are better is as meaningless as if they were describing the therapeutic benefits of shopping, ice cream or racing fast cars, what about all the people who have not had a positive effect- they will never be assessed in an anecdotal narrative. Show me the facts , the mechanisms, the double blinded assessments—not just because Kirsten Syenema says so.
Also, funny how its often the military veterans lining up for something to cure their mental ills and PTSD.
A simpler solution might be: stop putting your military into pointless conflicts with no real moral justification. Maybe then the relived horror of the killing they have implemented will not happen in the first place.
A New York Times background piece on "stablecoins" is well worth reading.
Sounds like a whole lot of trouble brewing, if you ask me:
Stablecoins work like a digital i.o.u. Their value is pegged to the U.S. dollar, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which have no such constraint and thus can swing wildly in price.
Here’s how they would work at scale: A bank customer places his or her cash with the bank and gets a stash of stablecoins in return. The consumer can then use these coins, for instance, to send money overseas or make international payments less expensively than wiring money.The funds that a customer exchanges in return for stablecoins is, to the bank, the equivalent of a guaranteed profit.
That’s because a federal law passed this summer with bipartisan support requires banks to take the money they receive for stablecoins and invest it in government bonds and other virtually risk-free assets. Those bonds generate interest, which the bank keeps. Unlike traditional bank accounts, these savings don’t earn even nominal interest for depositors.
Another big change: Stablecoins eschew the century-old practice of automatic federal deposit insurance. If they fail, there is no guarantee of a government backstop.Bankers say stablecoins, if widely adopted, could bring a radical change to the nuts and bolts of their industry, and they have the potential to upend a century of accepted banking practices.
One reason is that the money that a customer places with a bank in exchange for a stablecoin cannot be lent out in the same way that money placed in a traditional checking and savings account can be.Any dollar that goes into a stablecoin and not a consumer’s traditional bank account essentially shrinks the size of a bank’s lending book and the bank’s deposit base overall. This means banks could have fewer deposits to make home or business loans with, which the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City last week warned could carry unintended consequences for the economy.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” said Mike Cagney, a former chief executive of SoFi and now the head of the digital lender Figure. He predicted that the rise of stablecoins would come at the expense of bank deposits. “You don’t need a lot of deposit flight to really buckle the banks,” Mr. Cagney said.
Trump, of course, would understand none of this. He just seems crypto bros throwing him money, and he's all in.
I was reminded this morning that Singapore's name allegedly comes from an apparent misidentification of a tiger as lion. (See Wikipedia for a full explanation.)
Now, while lions were never native to Singapore or neighbouring regions, tigers certainly were. Which led me to think "when was the last wild tiger seen in Singapore?" I knew of the story of a tiger being shot in Raffles Hotel, but now that I check it, it wasn't a wild one, and it was in 1902.
This website tells the real story of how big a problem wild tigers were in the 19th century:
The earliest newspaper report about the existence of tigers was published on 8 September 1831 in the Singapore Chronicle. It was reported that a male Chinese national had been killed by a tiger, and that the same tiger probably had also killed a local shortly after.5 In 1835, colonial architect G. D. Coleman and some convict labourers were attacked while they were laying a new road through a swamp in the jungle near town, but no one was killed.6 In May 1839, The Singapore Free Press reported that two Chinese had been carried off by tigers near a newly built road called Rangong Road (today’s Serangoon Road).7
When the cultivation of gambier and pepper took off in Singapore in the 1840s, plantations extended beyond town and encroached on jungle areas. By the late 1840s, the number of plantations had peaked at 600.8 Chinese plantation coolies became easy targets for tigers. Reports of encounters with tigers increased in the 1830s and 1840s.9
Tiger attacks grew so intense that, by the middle of the 19th century, tigers were rumoured to claim one life every day.10 Governor of the Straits Settlements William Butterworth, upon being questioned in the House of Commons about the tiger problem, stated that the figure was probably 200 deaths a year due to tiger killings – which was nonetheless alarming in a population of 50,000 people.11 In 1859, one village near Bukit Timah was abandoned due to overwhelming tiger attacks.12
It was believed that tigers in Singapore killed 300 humans in 1857, but only seven deaths were reported to the police. The actual figure could be higher as many tiger attacks were unreported. Plantation bosses often did not report the deaths as they did not want to scare away potential workers.13 During the 1860s, more than 350 lives were lost because of tigers.14
They would swim across from peninsula, apparently. I wonder how big a problem they were over there (the Malay peninsula). Presumably, pretty big!
Anyway, the government set a bounty on hunting tigers, and their numbers diminished.
The last one was apparently in 1930. Here's how the Straits Times reported it:
Well, they got a beer named after them. So not completely forgotten...
Apart from the egregious open corruption that was Tim Cook's suck up visit at the White House, one thing I noted from the video:
was that I reckon there is no way the "24 carat" gold base is solid gold - it does not have the weight in Cook's hands that a lump of gold that size should, I reckon. (Even the weight of the box with it inside looks light.)
In theory, as I understand it, you can gold plate in 24 carat, but it's soft and not often done because of that. But I reckon Cook wanted to give the impression Trump was getting a lump of gold, when he wasn't. Which would be a little amusing to know, if I am right...
Singapore's National Day Parade was (as acknowledged by most Singaporeans on Reddit too) really good this year. As I said to my son who (rather dutifully, but I appreciate it) watched the whole thing with me, Brisbane ought to just subcontract the Olympics opening ceremony to Singaporean creatives - they do these stadium style shows fantastically well.
I wonder if I can convince anyone reading to watch the whole 3 hours!
OK, well if you don't want to watch the military parade and flyovers , the entertainment show starts at 1 hour 53 min.
But you should watch the military bits, because it shows how absolutely pathetic Trump's little Army anniversary march was!
And if you don't have the time to watch this, I was even impressed with the "pre parade" segment - singing, dancing, some jokes, and cameo appearance by their Prime Minister.
All so good...
Much to my surprise, I see that Blogger has greeted me this morning with a new beta feature, which will add links to terms in a post that it thinks might be useful for readers who want to dig deeper, so to speak.
Given that people have been saying for years that they would not be surprised if Google suddenly said it was going to stop supporting this free blogging platform, it's surprising to see they are actually still making changes to it.
How useful this one is, though, remains to be seen! I'll hit the button and see what it does with this post. Any links will be put in by some AI in a dessert somewhere, presumably!
Oh, it seems to not want to insert any links now. It did before, but I deleted the text and now it's not reappearing. Odd.
If I wasn't so busy at work lately, and the plane seats were a bit more certain, I would have headed off to Singapore to be there on its 60th anniversary National Day this Saturday.
Instead, I will just watch the National Day Parade live on CNA via Youtube - and I would encourage anyone with a curiosity about the way nationalism and social unity can be "done right" to do the same. I mean, I am generally leery of patriotism; but in the case of Singapore, it had to make a big effort from the start to ensure the multicultural society would work, and tying it to a patriotic appeal to take pride in making a poor tiny country rich, secure and safe has really worked.
So, the National Day Parade (which I have watched in previous years) has elements of pure self soothing propaganda, about which I sometimes have a bit of a cringe laugh because it can be so unsubtle. But mostly, I find myself deeply impressed, and quite often somewhat touched, by the intensity of the effort towards promoting unity, especially in the slickly produced songs and dance, which can feature a multicultural cast of scores of people, if not hundreds. Perhaps you have to watch to understand. Technically, my almost sentimental admiration for the country can't be because I was a Singaporean in a past live - I was here before it existed!
The day ends with a very "you will be patriotic!" kind of thing:
SINGAPORE - The public warning system will sound at 8.19pm on Aug 9, as a signal for Singaporeans to recite the pledge and sing the National Anthem, wherever they may be on National Day.
The “all clear” signal will sound for 10 seconds, said the Singapore Civil Defence Force on Aug 6.
This marks the Majulah Moment at the end of the National Day Parade,which will take place at the Padang and Marina Bay
Again, I find that a little bit funny, and a little bit impressive.
Such a shame I won't make it...
It was at the very top of The Guardians website this morning, but has since moved down the page. It's still given a very large space, though:
It ends with these examples of grievance mongering:
James Fitzgerald, a legal consultant for the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, said companies had an obligation to confront the “evils of the past”.
“Just creeping along as though nothing happened is moral cowardice, particularly when it’s an enterprise that’s making money off dispossession,” he said.
“The more a company’s wealth is built on that sort of dispossession, I would have thought, the greater its obligation to take account of that as a decent corporate citizen in 2025.”....
The AACo spokesperson said the company had built “trusted relationships” with many traditional custodians across the properties managed. “We recognise their culture and deep connection to Country and work with them to ensure we engage respectfully,” they said....
Fitzgerald said the 1992 Mabo verdict, which recognised Indigenous peoples’ rights to their land, raised complex questions for Australian companies that had built their wealth on land taken from and cleared of Aboriginal people.
“If you keep pulling at the thread long enough, it implicates the entire basis of our sovereign state and economy,” he said. “We are all the beneficiaries of these actions in one way or another, whether as real property owners, shareholders or super fund members.”
So, let's see - the company hasn't hidden anything, is respectful of the current "cultural custodians", and there are some academics and lawyer types making a living out of keeping the grievance alive...
As I have complained recently, such intense concentration on victim status in aboriginal advocacy is not a good way to move forward - and it irks me that The Guardian spends so much time promoting it.
It's fascinating, and makes me feel somewhat emotional, to read the first hand accounts of what it was like being on the Enola Gay when it bombed Hiroshima, 80 years ago. The Washington Post provides a good service by publishing this.
I'm sure I have mentioned this before, but the short explainer videos that the Wall Street Journal puts out now, often as a corrective to Trump and MAGA views, are actually pretty good (and non-partisan). The latest one is about how it is an utter nonsense to blame the head of the bureau for jobs numbers that Trump didn't like:
An interesting idea here: check if there is any correlation between pre-space age "transients" caught on astronomical sky survey plates from Palomar observatory (in the period from 1949 to 1957), and nuclear tests and/or UFO sightings.
Seems there is, although I don't understand the statistical significance bits of the paper. (Really, it would be good if researchers always explained that aspect in a clearer way for those of us who never studied statistics.)
An article summarising the paper is here.
I note that the transients are star like points of light; not streaks like satellites in low Earth orbit would make.
I also note that other research thinks the transients are just faults in the emulsion. But a secret government organisation that doesn't want us to know the truth would tell us that, wouldn't they...!
It seems that the people who wrote the current paper have been out to prove something is odd about the transients for quite a while. Mick West is very skeptical.
I am too. I have a dim memory from a UFO book - probably one of Hynek's - about a 50's or 60's sighting which started as apparently two star like satellites moving together, but then doing a very un-satelitte thing of starting to spin around each other. I've always been curious if there were more sightings like that which went unrecorded...
