Some positive things

*  By and large, I think the ABC still does radio pretty well.   I would mark out for particular praise the overall likeability and competence of Marc Fennell (he's pretty good on TV too, although he does draw some boring shows, like host of Mastermind), Richard Fielder as an interviewer (gosh he's been doing it for a long time now), and I still think Norman Swan is also good to listen to.  Sure, there is a lot of content I won't listen to, and some hosts who are well past their "use by" date (I have complained that the Science Show has been pretty dull for many years now), but I always get the feeling that, for a small country, our government funded radio really punches above its weight.    The best way to get "the best" of it now is to use the ABC Listen app - I find it works well.

*  ABC TV is struggling a bit by comparison.   It seems pretty lazy when quite a lot of bland British light drama/light crime content is still relied upon to fill up empty space.   (Really, who watches shows like Sister Boniface Mysteries and Call the Midwife?  I mean, when I was younger I could say "it's not for me but it's probably popular with the oldies", but now that I am over 60, I can't imagine any of my contemporaries watching it!)    But then again, Australia drama is often completely unappealing too.  It has always been that way, though.  I'm not sure it is getting any worse, so that's a positive.

As for comedy content - yes I think it's main problem is in the innovation department.  But maybe its because I don't like many comedians under 30 any more?   

You still can't beat it for current affairs:  watch the ABC news, 7.30, Planet America, Foreign Correspondent, and sometimes Four Corners, and you'll be pretty well informed on all major topics.  Compared to the absolutely scandalous nature of current affairs programs on Channel 7 in the last couple of years, there is no comparison.

*   I continue to love all videos put out on Religion for Breakfast.   It doesn't matter what the topic (the massive scale of the Daoist "scriptures"), or whether I had an interest in it before (the origins of the Pope's pointy hat), there is a 95% chance I will enjoy it.    

*   This is hard to explain without sounding weird, but I un-ironically like watching the Singaporean National Day Parade.   (This was on last week.)   It starts with military parade stuff, then a demonstration, complete with corny narration, of all their defence and civil services in action (sort of like a souped up Edinburgh Military Tattoo, I guess?), and the last hour or so is a large concert full of songs old and new about the country which always - always! - emphasise the importance of unity of the mixed ethnicities.   The only way to put it is that it is 100% pure propaganda - but when it's for sentiments that are purely positive - well, it's actually praiseworthy, isn't it?  And it's flawlessly produced, with the participants from such a diversity of ages and backgrounds, it indicates that it's propanganda that is taken to heart by the citizens.  Again - it's good propaganda!

So it's not a simple kind of "just the State engendering patriotism for self interested reasons"  (although, of course, the cynical could say it is just that): it's a State that is continuously encouraging its people to get along together, and to be proud of the fact that they do, pretty much, get along.  

Here, you can watch the (pretty decent) National Day theme song for this year, and get an idea of what I mean.

 

  

Twitter madhouse

Musk's play thing formally known as Twitter is absolutely awash at the moment with Right Wing panic and attempts to invent and make slurs against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as a response to their rapid gains in the polls.

Some are gross, many based on typical RW reactions (such as "Tim Walz acts gay and weird"), others are based on "rumours" which are never, ever sourced ("Kamala's got a serious drinking problem - you can tell by the way she laughs").

It's transparently desperate. 

Good news for aurora hopefuls

I had assumed that the recent very extensive aurora, which I would quite like to see but live too far north, would not likely be repeated any time soon.   However, as explained by the Washington Post this weekend, it is likely we are going to have a repeat in the next couple of years:

The displays so far have been quite the warm-up. On May 10, when Pegram saw her first aurora, Earth was hit by the biggest geomagnetic storm in about two decades, with the most widespread aurora in probably 500 years. The storm was rated a severity level of 5 on a scale of 5, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But at least seven other storms have reached a 4 since 2019....

Scientists won’t confirm when the peak month of solar activity is until a few months after it’s passed — like waiting for all contestants of a race to compete before declaring a winner. But they know we’re getting close.

About every decade or so, the sun’s north and south magnetic poles flip, which affects the solar activity seen at the surface. This “solar cycle” means some years are more active on the sun’s surface than others, usually measured by the number of dark blotches called sunspots. More visible sunspots mean more active, magnetically complex regions on the sun that can spawn flares and explosions. Not all of these sun’s eruptions hit Earth, but it’s like adding more darts to a dart board game — there are more chances one will land....

When the cycle does reach the other side of the maximum, it will be good sign for aurora chasers. The biggest geomagnetic storms tend to occur in the year or two after reaching the maximum, a phenomenon known as the Gnevyshev gap, said McIntosh, vice president of space operations at Lynker and formerly the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“The real fun of the solar cycle is not now. It’s what comes in the next few years,” he said. “The storms get more complex, more frequent, and that makes them a bit more impactful for Earth.”

Coming off its solar maximum, the sun becomes a complex, muddy mess. As tendrils of the next solar cycle move in, it can merge with the old solar cycle. McIntosh said the two systems have different polarities and can get tangled with each other. When the systems merge, the pluses and minuses start to realign to make the simplest configuration. But as it goes through this intricate spaghetti rearrangement, enormous amounts of energy are released.

 

 

Biden blows apart an attempted Trump narrative

The one about how incredibly bitter he is over giving up his candidacy, and he might try to take it back at the convention.  He was talking here with Kamala Harris on the same stage.

Update:  meanwhile, in Trump world -  

Also, I find it hard to disagree with this, even though I don't use that language:

 I actually suspect that even the most diehard of pro-Trump types in the couple of Australian Right Wing blogs I look at are finding it extremely difficult to keep crediting Trump as being smart.   He's just providing too much evidence against himself. 

Sabine gives a good explanation about AI

I liked Sabine Hossenfelder's take on Large Language Models and their limitations with respect to advancing AI.  It's a very clear explanation for this topic, I think: 

 

The comments are worth reading too - some saying that the issue is already being addressed.

Astronauts stuck in space - and Jerry Lewis

The story of the two astronauts stuck in the International Space Station for (possibly) an 8 month visit instead of the original planned 8 days reminded me of a Jerry Lewis film from the 1960's.    I really didn't remember much about it, except that it didn't seem very funny when I was a kid, and that it made me a bit uncomfortable  because it was essentially a sex comedy before I was anywhere near understanding sex.

Googling the topic, I see that it called Way...Way Out (a title with an unusual emphasis on punctuation), and the Wikipedia entry about it confirmed the one aspect I could recall - that near the start there were  male astronauts on the Moon who were going crazy because they had been away from women for too long.  Not having access to women drives men nuts, obviously [sarc!].   This did not really compute to my boyhood brain.   It's a curious thing, I think, that as a kid you can understand that something significant happens between men and women, but not really have any comprehension of the physical urge behind it.  But still, I always felt that it seemed in bad taste to spend all your time obsessing over the matter.  (I'm not exactly sure what made me naturally conservative in that respect.)

It is a pretty odd conceit for a film, given that 1966 was not all that long from World War 2 and the lived experience of a lot of men who had to have gone a long time without sex who didn't go nuts (for that reason, anyway).   And now, we have lots of men on long, long stays in the ISS without any reports of insanity breaking out.  I'm presuming that no sex with visiting females has ever happened there - although I guess any astronauts who did so engage wouldn't be telling anyone any time soon.   But the place has barely enough water for decent normal hygiene, let alone additional washing required due to sexual activities.  

Anyway - I've never been a fan of the "male sexual desperation" genre of comedy.  Although, now that I think of it, should I count Spielberg's 1941 as an exception?   I really like that film for a lot of different reasons, and there is one key sex element that is important to the plot.   But it's more about a fetish that is amusingly odd, and it's driven by a female character's desire, so I think that makes it more politically correct than the comedies based all on males doing desperate things to get sex that featured a lot in movies in the 1980's that I had no interest in seeing.  (1941 came out in 1979, in case you were wondering.)  

But back to Jerry Lewis's bad movie - Wikipedia says it make no money and neither critics nor the public liked it.  But someone has put the whole thing on Youtube (surprisingly, it was a Cinemascope film, apparently), so I guess I can go watch the whole thing and cringe again, if I want.  Lots of people in comments say that they still thought it a great film as a kid, so it takes all kinds, obviously.

Can you imagine what he was like as a child?

 

An interview with a very high disaster potential

It may have just started, but this was my feeling too:

Update:  Ha!  I did just try to watch it, but seems the streaming is not working on Twitter.   Good one, Elon.

Update 2:   I've started listening to a recording - so far, been about 30 minutes of Trump talking excitedly about the assassination attempt (which he claimed at the convention, with fake solemnity, he would never talk about again because it was too traumatic.)   

Continuing:   Wow, Trump's really motor-mouthing this "conversation".   Are we sure he doesn't do coke, or some other stimulant?   Elon is pathetically agreeing with everything, for the sake of not being "confrontational".   

 

More:   Elon is really pathetic, opining that the international community "respected" Trump as leader, and so ridiculously excited by Trump's post shooting theatre performance that he thinks world leaders will think it proves Trump's "don't mess with me" machismo. 

Now - Trump doing his "they're bad, Putin, Xi and Kim, but I really admire their toughness and success and I got along fine with them" dance.

And more:   Such childish attacks on Biden as "low IQ", "low IQ 30 years ago, no IQ now, can't even measure it", said "stupid things from his stupid face".   

What the heck?:   Musk opines that he thinks we have plenty of time to deal with reducing CO2, which he doesn't want to see get to 1,000 ppm because you start to get headaches at that level.   (In other words, seems to completely dismiss the IPCC work to estimate maximum "safe" temperature we should aim for.)  

And now:  Talking about high speed tunnels as an alternative to high speed trains???  Because Musk dug a couple of pretty useless, small tunnels in Vegas??

Oh thank God, it's finished....

Reverts to "very peculiar"

Recently, Noah Smith a couple of other mostly sensible people on Twitter noted that Richard Hanania seemed to be making some reasonable posts on the current state of politics.  (He has made so many bad or peculiar posts on all sorts of things I had to stop following him, it was too much.)   

Today, I see we are well and truly back to "very peculiar": 

 

The "Raygun" mystery

I'm not at all sure that it is worth spending 5 minutes on this topic, but the mystery around what exactly was going on in the heads of both (shall we say) "low quality" breakdancer "Raygun", and the collective heads of those who selected her, seems very deep.

I even saw a tweet by old blogger Mark Bahnisch criticising her from the Left (although it seems most of her defenders have been on that side):

Further down he even said this: 

 which is pretty remarkable coming from a sociologist!

Anyway, it may well mean no breakdancing next Olympics, and I'm not going to shed a tear over that.

No wonder dictators love Trump - he's so gullible

Trump falsely accuses Harris campaign of fabricated AI crowd photos  

I mean, everything points to Putin, Xi and Kim just needing to say "we really think you're doing a great job as President, Donald - the best President there's ever been. As for that question about whether we did X, no of course not.  We wouldn't lie to you."   And Trump would go out and announce to the press that there's no way they did it, regardless of the evidence his own officials are waving in front of his face.

Update:  the other story that should be being pressed harder in the media is Trump's helicopter story. It is looking very, very likely to be either a deliberation fabrication, or a result of a completely muddled memory.  (The key element and reason for telling it, that Willie Brown told him some terrible things about Kamala Harris, looks especially invented.)

We all know how the press would treat it if it had been Biden telling it.  

Funny

Interesting talkback call

I don't know the politics of James O'Brien - never heard of him before, to be honest - but the takedown in a calm manner of someone who rang him to defend "Tommy Robinson's" role in starting riots in England on the basis of a lie is something pretty awesome to listen to.  (Also pretty rare that the caller would keep his cool and keep on the line while he continously loses credibility in his initial position:  

Walz seems a good choice for VP

Of course, all I know about him is what I have learnt in about 12 hours, but he certainly presents as a likeable "regular guy", with good experience in life and politics.

Not weird at all.

A gruesome way to die

When I hear of someone being taken by a crocodile in North Australia, my initial reaction is usually to think they were probably doing something dangeroous that they shouldn't have been doing.  Going for a swim in a dangerous spot, fishing close to the murky water's edge - something like that.

But the latest victim - wow, I feel for his wife - and it's like it's out of a movie:

Police say Newcastle man and GP David Hogbin, 40, was with family members when he fell into the Annan River near Cooktown and failed to resurface on Saturday.

A police spokesperson said it was understood Mr Hogbin was not fishing at the time of his disappearance.

Friend Alex Ward, who started a GoFundMe fundraiser for the family, wrote that the family was walking on an "established path" on the riverbank when it gave way under Dr Hobkin.

He said his wife Jane heard the splash and tried to help him out.

"Due to the steepness and slipperiness of the bank Jane was able to grab his arm but began slipping into the river herself," the post reads.

"Dave's final, decisive act was to let go of Jane's arm when he realised she was slipping in, an act that likely saved her life."

It was then he was taken by the crocodile.

"One small consolation is that none of Dave's children witnessed this event," the post reads.

 

 

Extreme weirdness

Even apart from the weird original story - what the hell is he doing talking to Roseanne Barr on the video??

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, confessed on Sunday that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.”

Mr. Kennedy posted a video detailing the bizarre story on social media apparently ahead of an article in The New Yorker.

“Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” he said, tagging the magazine.

In the video, Mr. Kennedy appears to be seated in a kitchen as he casually tells the actress Roseanne Barr about the ordeal. He says that he was driving through the Hudson Valley when he saw a woman in a van hit and kill a young bear.

Full story from the NY Times here (gift linked.)

Update:

Ceramics noted

I have always liked this noodle/soup bowl, which I am sure was purchased after I was married, and while my wife may remember where we bought it, I have forgotten. Must ask her. (It wasn't expensive, but I just like these sort of colours and patterns on bowls and plates. I did post before about how much I like Peranakan examples.) 

I took this photo for no particular reason yesterday, then Youtube came up with this interesting story about China recovering nice ceramics, many with a not dissimilar look, from a 500 year old shipwreck. I had the feeling that China's interest in this (and the reference to where the wreck was found) has a subtle tie in with their ridiculous expansionist claims of territorial rights in the ocean, but I was still impressed with the quality of some of the ceramic pieces. Here's the video: 

 

Longevity does not run in the Waugh genes

This is a surprise:  I went to Quadrant on the off chance of finding some laughable fanboying of Donald Trump, and instead found something well written and not cringeworthy - an obituary for Alexander Waugh: grandson of Evelyn, son of Auberon.  He recently died at the age of 60 (prostate cancer - ugh), and as the article notes:

Alexander’s death on July 22 sadly mirrors the early demise of Evelyn at 62, and Auberon at 61.

It's written by Mark McGinness, a name which sounds a bit familiar but maybe I'm imagining it.  It reads like it was for a better publication than Quadrant, but there is no attribution, so I don't know.

Anyway, eccentricity and writing talent seems to have been in his genes, if not longevity.   It's an interesting read.

Be Perplexed

Nearly a year ago, I posted about how I was very impressed with the AI tool Perplexity - and since then I have seen it increasingly mentioned on line as what a lot of people use instead of, or combined with, Google for searching the internet now.

(There was an interesting thread on Twitter yesterday started by Noah Smith about how the internet has become a lot worse for finding certain information - he blamed it on people and institutions now not putting stuff up on simple web pages like they used to.   Many people agreed, complaining about how bad Google search has become, and how you sometimes find an answer faster by searching Youtube or Reddit.  But of the AI search tools that got mentioned most often, I think Perplexity was the top one.) 

I have used Perplexity at work a few times recently, and yes, the results were startlingly good and accurate.  I also used it on (what I thought) a rather obscure matter local to Brisbane and someone I know who lives here, and the detailed answer was, once again, just great. 

Once again, therefore, I recommend it to any reader.   I usually use just the "quick" search but there is a "pro" search available that I haven't tried.   There are limits on the number of pro searches you can make in a day, but you can subscribe (not so cheap - about $34 a month) to get a lot more Pro searches per day.  

I have told both of my university educated kids about it, and neither had heard of it.   Yeah, the ageing Dad felt boastful about knowing something new and valuable in the online world that they didn't.  

Krugman on the puzzling world of crypto

Good to see that Krugman is still a complete cryptocurrency skeptic, but he admits being surprised at the fact it is still a thing.  

I really hope that the rumours I have seen sometimes on Twitter are not true:  that someone acting on behalf of Harris have been making approaches to crypto world to try to convince them that Democrats can support their vapourware idea just as Republicans can.