Adam whips himself into a frenzy

Update:   And in an article we can be safely assume Adam would not read, or at least, let influence him, Science magazine notes the vexed issue of lingering effects of infection:

“Everybody talks about a binary situation, you either get it mild and recover quickly, or you get really sick and wind up in the ICU,” says Akrami, who falls into neither category. Thousands echo her story in online COVID-19 support groups. Outpatient clinics for survivors are springing up, and some are already overburdened. Akrami has been waiting more than 4 weeks to be seen at one of them, despite a referral from her general practitioner.

The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.

The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow survivors for different lengths of time. One group in Italy found that 87% of a patient cohort hospitalized for acute COVID-19 was still struggling 2 months later. Data from the COVID Symptom Study, which uses an app into which millions of people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden have tapped their symptoms, suggest 10% to 15% of people—including some “mild” cases—don’t quickly recover. But with the crisis just months old, no one knows how far into the future symptoms will endure, and whether COVID-19 will prompt the onset of chronic diseases....

For Götz Martin Richter, a radiologist at the Klinikum Stuttgart in Germany, what’s especially striking is that just as the illness’ acute symptoms vary unpredictably, so, too, do those that linger. Richter thinks of two patients he has treated: a middle-aged man who experienced mild pneumonia from COVID-19, and an elderly woman already suffering from chronic leukemia and arterial disease, who almost died from the virus and had to be resuscitated. Three months later, the man with the mild case “falls asleep all day long and cannot work,” Richter says. The woman has minimal lung damage and feels fine.

 In one respect, the article reports something that's not as bad as it could be:  it seems that COVID 19 causes less lung lesions than SARS did.  Seems like the range of other effects outweigh that, though.

Trump on how to make enemies with every American high school student

Banning Tik Tok seems a pretty ludicrous idea to me;  so naturally it's appealling to the Orange One.  Nevermind:

Extraordinary heat

While the world frets (rightly) about COVID-19, terrible temperature records are being set:

Record high temperatures have been plaguing the Middle East, the mercury soaring to extreme levels during a blistering and unforgiving heat wave. Baghdad surged to its highest temperature ever recorded Tuesday.

Tuesday’s preliminary high of 125.2 degrees (51.8 Celsius) in Iraq’s capital city shatters its previous record of 123.8 degrees set on July 30, 2015, for any day of the year.

On Wednesday, Baghdad followed up with a temperature of 124 degrees, its second-highest temperature on record. On Monday, it had reached 123 degrees.

The crippling heat forced many residents indoors, and street sellers had to seek whatever shade they could find. With the state electricity grid failing, many households were relying on generators to power fridges, fans or air-conditioning units, the machines adding a guttural hum to the city’s already-noisy streets.

Yes: the failure of a power supply in heat like that is surely an invitation to death.

Surprising tech news

On re-watching Goodfellas

Last weekend, I re-watched Goodfellas on Netflix for the first time since I saw it in the cinema, waaay back in 1990.

To be honest, not much had stuck with me about it over the years.  I remembered thinking Ray Lolita was good in it, and for some reason I could recall the bit near the end when he felt the authorities finally closing in on him as he kept looking up and suspecting a helicopter was following his car.   While nominally handsome, I always felt there was something about Lolita's face or gaze which made him look like he was not being sincere, and that you were dealing with a personality mask rather than a genuinely open person.   Not sure why he always gave me that feeling, but it works a treat for a character like the one in this movie.   (I get the same vibe about Eddie McGuire, as I have mentioned before.  I need a supercomputer to analyse the faces of men I feel are inherently untrustable to tell me what it is that is causing this reaction.)

On re-watching it, I realised I had forgotten how much humour and nostalgic music was in it, given that it was about mob gangsters.   My son said it might be accused of glamorising the criminal life somewhat, which is something I am often sensitive about in watching this genre.  But when they start eating their own, I think it's hard to say that's the effect of the movie overall.  (I still argue that glamorisation of the criminal underworld is a huge problem with Tarantino, however, despite his movies' body count.)  

Speaking of violence, it shows how far normalised movie and television depictions of violence have become.  Now whole effects studios seem to be engaged in adding blood sprays from bullet shots to the head in every show under the sun on Netflix;  whereas just one graphic blood spray in 1990 was enough to get an R rating at the cinema.   I long for the days when depictions of violence had more impact because it was genuinely considered shocking to show the graphic effect of violence for entertainment purposes. 

Anyway, I certainly could understand the praise for the direction, and overall, I would say I had forgotten how good it was. 

Libertarians say the stupidest things

According to Sinclair Davidson, cultural and political polarisation are the result of Leftists telling exactly the sort of extremely sexist, often racist, gay appalled, extremely rude, science rejecting, think-they-are-experts-on-everything commenters at his very own blog that they are being extremely sexist, often racist, rude, homophobic, etc.

He has this to say about a Jack the Insider column this week:

I actually laughed out loud when I read:

There is no sense of community, no looking after others.

Like, no shit Sherlock.

No sense of community? What? Not in the most left-wing state of Australia under the most left-wing government in Australia? After decades of lefties telling us that we’re all racists, and bigots, and there are haves and have-nots, and insiders and outsiders, and rich and poor, there is no such thing as a uniquely Australian culture, and definitely no such thing as western civilisation, and whatever other bullshit story they are capable of pulling out of their backsides,  what do you really expect?

Jack – I left my sense of community at the Tax Office.

I don't even know what the last line means.  It seems too stupid to take it at face value.  (He also fits in at the end of the post a "all taxation is theft" jibe.)   So does he really think that higher taxing, European style social democrat countries have less social cohesion than the tax minimising, gun toting, "we don't let government tell us to wear masks", conspiracy-rattled USA is displaying at the moment?

[Once again, I will also note that he seems to take COVID 19 as a serious health risk - how can he deny that the commenters at his blog - not to mention his nutty mate with fully paid up membership in Cult Trump (Steve Kates) - have always and continue to be in full denial of its seriousness?   How serious can he be that it's the Left being mean to them has made them reject expert evidence and prefer conspiracy theories and any demon seed theorising doctor's opinion on how easy it is to defeat the pandemic?] 

The explanation is this - libertarians and small government, minimal tax ideological types are in denial that the more their ideological views are enacted into policy it leads to greater entrenched inequality and worse social cohesion, and hence they have to try to deflect blame to someone else for the apparently deteriorating state of the community.   So they chose to demonise the Left as the source of all evil, because, you know, communists and Hitler (a cryptic Lefty, of course) killed people and still want to kill people and crush out all that is Goodness and Light in society.  (Hence they tend to also attract the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" support of religiously inclined social conservatives who hate the Left for its social progressiveness and see evil behind it, such as happens at Catallaxy.) 
  
It's not exactly sophistry - it's too transparent for that - it's just culture war, ideological driven attempt at deflection. 

Why California?

Can't say that I have seen a good explanation of why California, which I understood to be pretty aggressive in its shut down for COVID precautions from the start, and not one of the States considered to be politically inclined to rush to re-open, is doing so badly with COVID at the moment.

The New York Times had a go at explaining it about a week ago, I see.   Some extracts:

California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order this spring, helping to control an early outbreak. But after a reopening that some health officials warned was too fast, cases surged, leading to a new statewide mask mandate and the closure of bars and indoor dining again. With more than 420,000 known cases, California has surpassed New York to have the most recorded cases of any state, and it set a single-day record on Wednesday with more than 12,100 new cases and 155 new deaths.

And as California struggles once again to contain the virus, the multitude of challenges playing out across America have collided in every corner of the state, as if it were a microcosm of the country itself....

It is in some ways California’s sprawling nature, with 40 million residents spread across urban downtowns and rural areas, liberal strongholds and conservative alcoves, that has aggravated the feeling of back-and-forth. What applies in one area may not feel necessary in another, even as residents live under statewide orders. And the sense of confusion is often made worse by conflicting political messages from local leaders, the governor and the White House...

Gov. Gavin Newsom is wrestling with how to convey a consistent message, while dealing with local officials who have resisted both new shutdowns and enforcing a mandatory mask order. Some rural areas of the state remain relatively unscathed with low case counts, while cases in Los Angeles are skyrocketing. The city’s mayor, Eric M. Garcetti, has warned that a new stay-at-home order could come down in the coming days...

In Los Angeles and San Diego, classrooms will be empty this fall, after public school officials decided they were unwilling to risk in-person instruction. But in Orange County, a recommendation by the Board of Education that children return to school without masks became political fodder for debate, even as the governor announced that most California schools would not be able to teach in person.

The contradictions span the state, creating a sense of regional dissonance. In Imperial County, on the southern border with Mexico, hospitals have been so overwhelmed with virus cases that patients have had to be airlifted elsewhere. But in the northernmost tip, the virus has yet to hit Modoc County, an agricultural community of around 9,000, where there were zero known cases as of Thursday.

In Los Angeles — which has seen the most cases in California, and where hospitals are filling up — parts of the city feel under siege and in other areas, there is little palpable sense of the severity of the situation. Unlike in New York City during the height of the outbreak, most Angelenos have not had to absorb the piercing wail of ambulance sirens at all hours, a sound that came to define the pandemic there.

Unusual hobby noted

Well, I like to have a craft beer at West End in Brisbane every now and then, but it is a pretty bohemian suburb, and if I had to pick an area in Brisbane where this activity was most likely to happen, it would either be there (or the sleazier Fortitude Valley, I guess):

Police went to the West End flat of electrician Ryan Andrew King, 27, in inner city Brisbane while investigating a bizarre mutilation last weekend.

Police and paramedics were called to a city backpacker hostel last Saturday night where they allegedly found a 26-year-old Sydney man with his genitals partly removed.

It is alleged the man had arranged to be partially castrated by Mr King in one of the rooms, after meeting online.

Mr King, who works as an electrician at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and has volunteered in the SES, is not believed to be medically qualified but allegedly taught himself castration from online research.

It is alleged he may have used a Cryopen, a device for removing lesions such as warts and benign skin spots with nitrous oxide under high pressure.

After finding the allegedly mutilated man at the hostel, police searched Mr King’s West End apartment and allegedly found a human penis and set of testicles in his freezer.

Here's an abstract from a 2004 study in Archives of Sexual Behaviour (sounds a fun journal) about this weird fetish/interest: 

We used a survey posted on the Internet to explore the motivation of men who are interested in being castrated. Out of 134 respondents, 23 (17%) reported already having been castrated. The 104 (78%) individuals who said they had not been castrated were asked why they wanted to be castrated and why they had not actualized that desire. They were given multiple-choice answers to select from. The major reason (selected by 40% of respondents) for desiring castration was to achieve a “eunuch calm” and freedom from sexual urges; however, a large proportion (∼30%) of respondents found fantasies about being castrated sexually exciting and a similar percentage desired castration for the “cosmetic” appearance it achieved (which we interpret to mean scrotal removal along with an orchiectomy). This high interest in castration as either a sexual stimulus (a fetish) or a cosmetic enhancement was unexpected and contrasted with the more classically stated motivation for voluntary castration in the psychiatric literature, i.e., libido control and transsexualism. Internet discussion groups that serve these men may encourage them to act out their castration fantasies. Alternately, Internet discussions may give them a displacement outlet for their fantasies and decrease the risk of castration by nonmedically qualified “street-cutters” or by self-mutilation. Forty percent of our respondents claimed that they would have an orchiectomy, if it were cheap, safe, and simple. A quarter wanted to try chemical castration first, but 40% were embarrassed to talk to their doctors about their interest in castration. Information now available on the Internet provides these men with increasingly easy access to street-cutters and directions on how to perform surgical castrations, putting them at risk of permanent injury and disability. Physicians need to be aware of these risks.

The French and their drugs

Huh.  I didn't think that France under Macron would be keen to crack down on marijuana, but there you go.  More reason for me to like the country:

Spot fines of 200 euros ($233) have been tested in several French cities in recent weeks and will now be applied nationwide, Castex said, ruling out a decriminalisation of cannabis.

A French law dating back to 1970 allows for illicit drug use to be punished with up to a year in prison and fined with up to 3,750 euros, but few users actually do jail time.

French people are Europe's leading consumers of cannabis and hold the number three spot for cocaine use.

The new measure would simplify police procedures by "inflicting punishment without delay", Castex said during a visit to the southern port city of Nice, and would be an efficient tool against sale points run by drug dealers "which are eating away at neighbourhoods".

If paid within two weeks the fine will be reduced to 150 euros, but will rise to 450 euros unless settled within 45 days.

The move honours an election campaign pledge by President Emmanuel Macron, who said spot fines should be used to deter petty crimes that often end up unpunished in overloaded courts.

Will submarines ever be designed to not feel claustrophobic?

I fell asleep last night half way through this recent video, but I should go back and finish it:



I have to say, it's a tad disappointing to see how cramped even a modern nuclear attack submarine seems to be.    Just watching the confined and cluttered spaces (and apparent low ceiling height) of most of the spaces started giving me claustrophobia vibes.   (Oddly, I don't get that when watching images from the ISS or spaceships.   Maybe its the thought of the crushing pressure outside a sub that helps contribute to it?)

Ban trout pout entry

Thank God I have a teenage daughter who agrees that "lip enhancement" is just the stupidest, most unnatural looking thing ever, and agrees with me that in 30 years people will be looking at photos of this fashion and saying "what were they thinking?" 

Hence, I would bet that it's this aspect of these two quasi Typhoid Marys which is immediately noticed in the media attention they are receiving:

 
As I said to my daughter:  of course you can't trust the common sense of 19 year old women with "trout pout" (I had to Google a derogatory slang term for lip enhancement - I thought it might be "duck lips" but that seems to be more a pose than a permanent feature), and it would simplify Queensland border protection to just ban any woman with that feature trying to enter. 

Anyway, the question will now be debated as to how fair it is for the media to get on board with a good social media pile on.   In a way, I suppose it isn't.  On the other hand, this is just what young people should expect if they want to promote their image on social media, and do really stupid and dishonest and dangerous stuff.

Crank

Probably most of my readers have already read about the crank doctor/Chistian minister and her pro Trump PR stunt about HCQ for COVID.   But I thought one of her theories sounded pretty unique:

Some of her other claims include blaming medical conditions on witches and demons - a common enough belief among some evangelical Christians - though she says they have sex with people in a dream world.

"They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm… then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves," she said during a sermon in 2013.

She's from Nigeria: is it rude to say it sounds like an African bit of demon folklore?

Also amusing to read about the sort of pro-HCQ company you keep, isn't it Graeme?

This be true

Pass the lithium

Yes, I have posted on the topic before, but another study seems to indicate the link between higher natural lithium intake (via the water supply) and lower suicide rates:

Professor Allan Young, Chair of Mood Disorders at King's College London, said: "This synthesis and analysis of all available evidence confirms previous findings of some individual studies and shows a significant relationship between higher lithium levels in drinking water and lower suicide rates in the community. The levels of lithium in drinking water are far lower than those recommended when lithium is used as medicine although the duration of exposure may be far longer, potentially starting at conception. These findings are also consistent with the finding in clinical trials that lithium reduces suicide and related behaviours in people with a mood disorder."

Professor Memon added: "Next steps might include testing this hypothesis by randomised community trials of lithium supplementation of the water supply, particularly in communities (or settings) with demonstrated high prevalence of mental health conditions, violent criminal behaviour, chronic substance abuse and risk of suicide. This may provide further evidence to support the hypothesis that lithium could be used at the community level to reduce or combat the risk of these conditions."

Hmm.  Somehow, I can't imagine those who freak out about fluoride in the water supply are going to take well the suggestion of adding lithium for its psycho-active benefits.

Update:  from a short article elsewhere, a brief history of lithium as an additive:

Until 1950, popular soft drink 7-Up² contained lithium citrate and even beer³ was brewed with lithium-heavy water and promoted for its mood-enhancing abilities.

However, both the real and perceived health benefits of lithium were overshadowed when lithium was prescribed to patients with heart disease as a replacement for salt.⁴ The resulting overdoses and deaths led to the US banning lithium as an additive in 1950.

It seems there is nothing to stop people buying a lithium supplement in Australia, but I would be pretty cautious about it. 

First, would be good to know what the lithium level in the local water supply is, but Googling doesn't turn any pointers towards that information.  I mean, I did find this:

but no entry for lithium.  :(  That puts me in a bad mood, and in more need of lithium.

Big in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million (US$49.38 million) on Tuesday (Jul 28), following a guilty verdict in his first corruption trial involving millions of ringgit linked to state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The charges include abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

High Court judge Mohamad Nazlan Mohamad Ghazali said when reading the judgment: “I find that the prosecution has successfully proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I therefore find the accused guilty and convict the accused on all seven charges."

From CNA.

Fish problem

Someone like Lomborg or his new best buddy Schellenberger might respond to this story with "so what, we now farm heaps of fish", but I suspect this is a much bigger problem because of the role such fish apparently play in fertilising the great forests surrounding the rivers.  (Something most of us probably only ever realised via David Attenborough pointing it out in one of this relatively recent series):

Populations of migratory river fish around the world have plunged by a “catastrophic” 76% since 1970, an analysis has found.

The fall was even greater in Europe at 93%, and for some groups of fish, with sturgeon and eel populations both down by more than 90%.

Species such as salmon, trout and giant catfish are vital not just to the rivers and lakes in which they breed or feed but to entire ecosystems. By swimming upstream, they transport nutrients from the oceans and provide food for many land animals, including bears, wolves and birds of prey.

The migratory fish are also critical for the food security and livelihoods of millions of people around the world, while recreational fishing is worth billions of dollars a year. The causes of the decline are the hundreds of thousands of dams around the world, overfishing, the climate crisis and water pollution.

 

A clear case for that "Why not both?" meme

Spotted at Twitter:

Jeez, Jason - there's no need to chose between either Carlson or glibertarians in the credibility stakes.  Both are terrible.

On Carlson in particular - he has been sending out contradictory messaging on COVID and masks, just as Hannity has, and both would clearly be responsible for a large percentage of the Fox ageing audience not taking COVID precautions seriously. 

Of course, he is also escalating, for political purposes, the sense of a national security crisis and encouraging Trump to use his heavy handed response which polling would indicate even most Americans think is hurting the situation rather than helping.   (See this article in Washington Post today.)  

I think there is room to criticise a lack of effective Democrat leadership on trying to get protesters to de-escalate too (Biden should be taking a higher profile on this), but any President should be taking a de-escalation approach.   (Yeah, I know, Trump is constitutionally incapable of being a figure of unifying appeal - but it's still a scandal that a "news" network works to goad him into being even more divisive than he needs to be.)

Capitalism in transition to...something?

What's the movie meme with the woman shouting "What's happening?!" ?  Oh yeah - one of my all time favourite Spielberg related movies - Poltergeist.   Disappointing that I had to Google that to double check.

Seems to me that those in the field of economics ought to be doing more of that, because I've been increasingly suspecting over the last few years that there is a crisis of confidence going on with respect to the understanding of some of the very basic concepts in the whole field. 

I don't know that John Quiggin would agree, but I take support for my gut feeling from his recent post:  The End of Interest.  Some extracts:

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen below zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk.

If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism. In case it isn’t obvious, I’ll make the point in subsequent posts that there is no reason to expect the system that replaces capitalism (I’ll call it plutocracy for the moment) to be an improvement.....

In thinking about the future of the economic system, interest rates on 30-year bonds are much more significant than the ‘cash’ rates set by central banks, such as the Federal Funds rate, which have been at or near zero ever since the GFC, or the short-term market rates they influence. These rates aren’t critical in evaluating long-term investments.

The central idea of capitalism is, as the name implies, that of capital. Capital is accumulated through saving, then invested in machines, buildings and other capital assets to be used by workers in producing goods and services. Part of the value of those goods and services is paid out as wages, and the rest is returned to capital, as interest on loans and bonds or as profits for shareholders. Some of the return to capital is saved and reinvested, allowing growth to continue indefinitely. Workers, on this account, can become capitalists too, by saving and investing some of their wages. At a minimum, they should be able to save enough, while working, to finance a decent standard of living in retirement.

I await his further posts with interest.

Still surprising to be reminded of this...

More information on this topic:

The national exit polls have broken out their survey results by racial group since 1976, and since that year, the Republican nominee for president has received, on average, 54.8 percent of the white vote, while the Democratic nominee has garnered an average of 40.6 percent. In 1980, 1992, and 1996, third-party candidacies affected the distribution of the white vote. The highest percentage secured by a Republican was the 66 percent won by Ronald Reagan in his landslide re-election in 1984; the lowest Democratic number was Walter Mondale’s 34 percent in that same election. Jimmy Carter received the largest percentage of white votes for a Democrat with 48 percent in 1976; George H.W. Bush received the lowest at 41 percent in 1992 when Ross Perot ran, splitting the white vote and dropping Bush from the 60 percent white share he received in 1988.

Singapore builds a COVID ward

There was a lot of scepticism about the quality of the Chinese COVID hospital built from scratch in ridiculously short time, but if you want to see a country doing something similar with a high quality outcome, watch this video about Singapore building a COVID ward in a hospital car park:



Once again, I will swoon over the technocratic success story of Singapore, and Homer will complain I am supporting a disgusting authoritarian regime.