Bad behaviour in Queensland

Henry Reynolds is still writing books?   He must be getting on - it seems a couple of decades since he first gained a lot of attention for his aboriginal history work, and I thought he looked to be in his 50's or 60's even then.  (Let me check - yes, I'm right - he's 86.  Quite an age to be writing books.)

Anyway, he has a new book out Looking from the North which is given a generous review and summary at the Conversation.    Some extracts:

In the 19th century, land-taking by white colonising settlers (or, more accurately, “unsettlers”) came late to the tropics. They arrived from Melbourne, Sydney and Tasmania in the late 1850s, settling first, according to Reynolds, in the coastal port of Bowen in April 1861. But surely the first northern settlement began almost three years earlier with the proclamation of Rockhampton (later dubbed the township of “sin, sweat and sorrow” by British novelist Anthony Trollope) right on the Capricornian line in October 1858.

Still, both Rockhampton and Bowen have their origins painted in blood. Reynolds describes “ruthlessly usurping” pastoralists expanding rapidly across Aboriginal hinterlands, seizing traditional territories for vast “runs”, each of them between 65 and 250 square km.

The “reign of terror” this inflicted upon the various peoples of these “ancient homelands” was answered at most times, he writes, by armed, militant resistance from local Mobs. With guerrilla tactics and economic warfare upon white personnel, flocks and herds, they attempted to stem the vast, swelling tide of colonial advance.

Variously described at the time by participants as “a species of warfare”, “extermination” or, in omnibus fashion, “a war of extermination”, this acquisitive process was rigorously sustained by colonial legislatures packed with pastoralists and planters, guarding their economic interests. 

This elite phalanx was basically organising and funding its own violent land-theft, via the state-run Native Police services. Practitioners of British common law, in mostly impotent courts, helpfully averted their gaze from the inevitable slaughter.

Reynolds posits – and I would agree – that North Queensland saw the worst of this and then facilitated its spread across the “top end”. By this point, the killing power of Western ordnance had become increasingly acute, as belief in white racial superiority was also peaking.

Distant private colonists, remote from the southern administrative centre, became very much a law unto themselves. More than 70 Native Police camps covered North Queensland at various times, out of the known 150 or so that have been identified. These camps, conducting monthly patrols and many “dispersals”, were better weaponised, given a freer hand and often persisted far longer than their southern counterparts. 

Reynold's biggest claim to fame is, I think, to try to build "respect" for modern indigenous people by arguing that their 19th century predecessors didn't just passively accept the expanding takeover of land, but fought back in something like a modern, organised, guerrilla warfare type of way.   This has always seemed a bit of dubious exercise to me, and one prone to easy exaggeration; in much the same way that we get very dubious exercises in elevating some pretty basic stuff in indigenous fishing or plant knowledge to being equivalent to modern engineering or science.  (And see Dark Emu.)

Still, I can see value in making the aggressive nature of colonial expansion better understood.   I mean, it is always interesting to read about how colonial expansion tactics were being criticised by commentators at the time they were happening:

Queensland was increasingly seen by British colonial officials in Whitehall as “a rogue colony”, due to its enthusiasm for illegally “exterminating” Aboriginal people and extreme racial policies directed towards Melanesians and Asians.

One sees this clearly upon reading the disquieting reports written by travelling journalists venturing into tropical Australia for such southern publications as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Argus and The Age. As one correspondent noted in mid-1880, “the doctrine of extermination” was widely broadcast throughout the northern towns he visited. In general conversation, he “heard it repeated that the blacks must be exterminated and this is the sentiment of highly educated persons”.

North Queensland, too, is the key to understanding the subsequent frontier histories of the Northern Territory and much of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. For it was largely Queensland cattlemen, with their white and Aboriginal work-forces, as well as fervent gold-seekers from the Gulf Country, Cape York and north-western Queensland, who spearheaded the colonisation of these regions. They took their aggressive ideas, desires and suppressive techniques into new zones of conflict.

By the 1920s an original, pre-contact First Nations population of around 400,000 across the entire North (with perhaps 300,000 in Queensland) had been reduced by over 90% to around 40,000 people (with around 17,000 remaining in Queensland). These had been replaced by almost 500,000 migrant incomers. Yet most of the sequestered lands were now in the hands of only 1500 or so pastoral families, partnerships and absentee companies. 

 Yes, it is true that when I was in primary school, Australian history was all about famous explorers as heroes and the new lands they often opened up.   I should ask my kids, actually, if they ever had any lessons about explorers in primary school, but I suspect it is now completely absent.   (I do remember my daughter complaining that the positive lessons encouraging interest and knowledge of aboriginal life were pretty boring.)   

I've noticed that Tony Abbott is trying to rectify things with a reversion to Australia as the land of heroes (with the help of the IPA and therefore, probably, Gina Rinehart - who has never seen a bit of land she wouldn't like to dig up.)  There's a cynical review of his book at the Conversation too.

Despite my dislike of Abbott, I suppose I must grind my teeth and say I am at least sympathetic to his approach - that it's appropriate that both sides of the Australian experience be looked at.  Perhaps there needs to be an emphasis on those "liberals" who saw what was going on with treatment of aborigines at the time and tried to do something to stop its excesses?   That seems something well worth knowing.  

But teaching history from just one perspective does seem, well, less than optimal?   

  

Trump the socialist

The article in Fortune it references paints a bleak picture indeed of the state of the farming sector in the US, struggling under Trump"s grand plan of seeing what happens if a country shoots itself in the (trade) foot.  Link.

Shingles away

One of the few benefits of turning 65 is that the Australian government will pay for anyone to get the shingles vaccine.  I got it at the local pharmacy, which is very convenient; and they didn't even need to see my Medicare card (my name being on whatever system they could access.)

So I got the first of two vaccinations on Friday, and was told it does have a high rate of reactions, which can include fever, tiredness, muscle aches, and possible gastrointestinal effects.  

It hit me with a sore arm (at the injection site) and a lot of sleepiness on Saturday.   Or maybe it just seemed like a good excuse for my mind to say "Finally!  You have a good excuse to go to bed on a Saturday afternoon and stay there"?  (No, I think I was genuinely suffering fatigue.)  

Anyhow, the arm is sill sore today, but not so tired.  My back is hurting a bit though - possibly that's a muscle ache from it?   I also decided to skip my fasting day to help recover from the vaccine effects.

One of the main reasons I wanted to get it, apart from being at risk of shingles, was this association with reduced dementia risk.  Seems worth the side effects...

Nature weighs in on the protein question

Quite a good article to be found here at Nature about the fitness influencer craze for recommending super high protein intake.  Some bits:

“It’s really frustrating because there isn’t evidence to support the claims that they’re making,” says Katherine Black, an exercise nutritionist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, referring to the super-high protein recommendations often shared on social media. What research does show is that protein needs can vary from person to person and can change throughout a lifetime. And people should think carefully about what they eat to meet those needs. “On social media, it’s like everyone’s worried about protein, putting protein powder into everything,” she says.....

This part, explaining how they even work out protein needs, is interesting:

Researchers have been trying to estimate how much protein people need for more than a century. In 1840, chemist Justus von Liebig estimated that the average adult required 120 grams of protein a day, on the basis of a group of German workers’ diets. Later, scientists started to use nitrogen to calculate protein requirements. Protein is the only major dietary component that contains nitrogen. So, by measuring how much of it people consume and the amount they excrete, researchers could estimate how much the body uses.

Since the 1940s, this nitrogen-balance method has been used to determine the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), a set of nutrient recommendations developed by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The latest such recommendation for protein, from 2005, establishes the RDA for both men and women at 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, which it states should be enough to meet the needs of 97–98% of healthy people. European and global-health authorities recommend similar or slightly higher levels.

Although scientists recognize that RDAs are a useful reference point, many say that people could benefit from a higher amount. “The RDA is not a target; it’s simply the minimum that appears to prevent any detectable deficiency,” says Donald Layman, a researcher focusing on protein requirements at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Evidence suggests1 that the optimal range is between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, he says.

That is especially true for older adults, who often experience muscle loss as they age, as well as for certain athletes and people trying to gain muscle.

For example, in an observational study of 2,066 adults aged 70–79, those who reported eating the most protein — about 1.1 gram per kilogram of bodyweight — lost 40% less lean mass during the three years of follow-up than did those who ate the least — around 0.7 grams per kilogram2.

“For older adults, 1.2 grams per kilogram is just giving them a little extra protection,” says Nicholas Burd, a nutrition and exercise researcher also at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Furthermore, older people might experience a decline in appetite, which makes it particularly important for them to pay attention to their protein intake. It doesn’t mean that they need to take protein supplements, he says. “It’s all things we can do with just normal incorporation of high-protein foods in our lives.” 

 Actually, a couple of Youtube people I have watched on the topic have suggested that 1.2 grams per kg a day, especially for older, so this gives me confidence I am not watching nutters.

 

Conservative makes good case

This tweet is from David French, making the point that always comes to my mind when Trump and MAGA hysterics run around claiming America had never been in a worse state before Trump got elected.  It completely ignores the 1970's.  Continually claiming that the Democrats under Obama and Biden have caused a crisis of confidence that has never been seem before is just self serving fantasy crap, of the "let's invent a different reality and pretend it's real until people believe it" Trumpian kind.

I wonder if Jimmy Carr was able to crack a joke about this

In the New York Times:

Despite a decade of social transformation in Saudi Arabia, unwed pregnancy remains a taboo that exists in a legal gray area. The children of unmarried immigrants face unique perils. They are routinely deprived of birth certificates, medical care and education, in violation of Saudi and international law, a New York Times investigation found.

Kenyan women and children suffer in particular, The Times found, because officials at the Kenyan Embassy berate them, stonewall them or saddle them with years of paperwork to return home. Hundreds of children, and potentially many more, have been left in the lurch — recognized by neither Saudi Arabia nor Kenya.

These children are the victims of an exploitative industry that recruits African women to Saudi Arabia — a pipeline from which Kenyan government officials personally profit through financial interests in staffing agencies. Hundreds of Kenyan women have been killed, and reports of rapes and beatings are common.

For those women who become pregnant, whether from an assault or a relationship, birthing a baby into legal limbo is a final cruelty.

With no path forward, some contemplate giving up their children. At least as wards of the state, they would receive identity documents and an education....

All of this flies in the face of a Saudi law that codifies the rights of children — unequivocally, regardless of their immigration status or lineage — to identification documents, medical care and education.

“The law deems a child born to a non-Saudi mother in an irregular or undocumented manner to be affiliated with the mother and to bear her nationality, and a birth certificate is issued for such child accordingly,” the Saudi government’s Center for International Communication said in a statement to The Times.

But the government offers no public pathway for unmarried mothers to register their births. The kingdom has no birthright citizenship, and a top official at a major maternity hospital in Riyadh said that he was unsure how a single mother could get a birth certificate, but that the process would involve the police.

Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A pregnant Kenyan also can't deal with it via abortion:

Saudi Arabia permits abortions only in limited circumstances. Ms. Kihiu feared that an underground abortion would kill her. She also wanted the baby. She was elated when she found out she was having a girl.

Pregnant women are entitled to medical care, regardless of their paperwork, the Saudi government center said. But when an unmarried woman gives birth, the hospital must notify the police of an “illegal pregnancy,” said Dr. Mufareh Asiri, the medical director of the women’s health hospital at King Saud Medical City.

"Illegal pregnancy".  Huh.   

Oh, and speaking of Jimmy Carr and other comedians performing at Saudi Arabia for (no doubt) large paychecks:  I already didn't like Carr, at all, but I see Jack Whitehall (who has a more likeable comedy persona) was also one who went there.  Shame. 

Weight watch

After eating quite a lot yesterday, I weighed in at 89.3kg this morning.  Still 4kg down from my starting point a fortnight or so ago.  Yesterday morning (after a fasting day) it was 88.7kg.

I wonder how long to break the 88kg barrier.  

I should also note that the loss of just 3 to 4 kg has had a significant effect on my blood pressure, which is giving some very comfortingly "normal" readings after a couple of years of worryingly high readings at times.  And it seems that intermittent fasting itself, rather than just the loss of weight, might have be the reason.  Here's Perplexity:

 Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can result in rapid improvements in blood pressure, particularly in people with elevated or hypertensive levels. Research involving hypertensive patients who fasted for about 15-16 hours daily over 30 days demonstrated significant reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressures. These improvements were not associated with notable changes in body weight or other metabolic markers over the one-month period. Instead, the primary mechanisms linked to the blood pressure improvements involved reductions in angiotensin II and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity, key regulators of blood pressure, as well as positive changes in markers of autonomic nervous system activity (such as heart rate variability).

With alternative day fasting, I think the results are even faster.

Quite a pleasing thing to discover. 

Update:  88.0 kg this morning.   Good.  Good. 

Update:  Two days later, after a particularly big eating non fasting day (my stomach did feel overstretched - I overate at lunch), and another fast day - 87.9kg.   

So, still progressing.  I will eat more within carefully today. 

Stop trying to normalise fantasy relationships

From the New York Times:  a sympathetic take on three people who have had "relationships" with chatbots.    

(Arguably, I reckon a Buddhist shouldn't have any problem with such relationships, as their analysis virtually puts humans barely above chatbots.  Or am I being unfair?)  

Update:  oh, it just occurred to me too - maybe atheists don't see much harm in it either, because they can draw a comparison to the way some Christians perceive themselves having a deep and meaningful "personal relationship" with God or Jesus.  (Especially the emotional evangelicals.  Of course, Catholics believe in talking to God via prayer, but that's more of a pure one way street compared to use of a chatbot.)      

Oh dear, it's David Brooks again

David Brooks. I'm not sure that there is any other opinion writer in the main stream media who seems to have the talent of writing views with which I feel I can I can say "Yes...Yes...Yes;" only to then read a paragraph that leads to anti-climatic "Nooooo."

Take, for example, his second most recent column in which, actually, the "Nooooo" came first.  He opens with criticism of the Democrats for shutting down the government because it wants to preserve lower health insurance costs;  only later does he get stuck into Trump and the modern Republicans for trashing all previous "democratic norms".   

But the most recent column (Hey Lefties! Trump has stolen your game!) the "yes's" came first - he makes the point I'm sure I've said before here: that the MAGA movement has co-opted what the Republicans used to criticise in Leftist intellectual circles - such as postmodernism-ly believing that Truth doesn't matter and isn't a real thing, and everything is but putty in the hands of power.    I think it's a really good list of the way the American Right has intellectually debased itself.   But then, at the end, he blows it:

But the left doesn’t get off the hook. Since 1848, leftist intellectuals have been working on a core body of thought, composed, in part, from the ideas listed above. Back in 2020, woke Democrats embraced these ideas with gusto — until Donald Trump utterly co-opted and discredited them. One of the reasons the Democratic Party is struggling so much is that the radical left ideologies that undergirded its cultural stances are kaput, and it hasn’t yet built a more moderate intellectual tradition to fall back on. 

Much wild exaggeration there, me thinks.  He just can't resist turning things around to find a way to blame Democrats, after all. 

Good Lord - Russell Crowe has made a decent film again?

It feels like a very long time since Crowe was in anything decent:  he seemed almost to have descended into late career Orson Welles territory, if you ask me. 

But here you go.  The Washington Post review calls his performance "Oscar-courting".  Huh. 

The never ending working life in Japan (via the New York Times)

This human interest story at the New York Times (about 5 centenarians in Japan who are still working - and happy to be doing so) is very charming, and I really like the design, with the short, clear videos as your scroll down.  It's a really impressive use of the medium, don't you think? 

For my future reference

I like dishes that combine meat and fruit, and here's another one from the Washington Post for future reference:

Sounds too simple, but people in comments like it, and suggest using sweetened balsamic instead of pomegranate molasses.  I have a couple of bottles of rather sweet apple flavoured balsamic from Stanthorpe which are being used up very slowly - I think that could work well.  
 

Rivers in the sky discussed in detail at the Washington Post

Well, they haven't exactly been promoting it highly on their website:  and I can't even see a "gift link" to it, so I don't know if this link is behind a paywall or not.

But - the Washington Post has complied a graphics heavy, but very useful, article on the increased flooding under climate change from increased moisture flow in the atmosphere, and the parts of the world it is affecting most.  (It includes an interactive global map.)   It reads more like a science journal article than a newspaper story, and it's very good. 

I don't understand how stupid old climate deniers can watch the regularly occurring news of record floods (and record rainfall intensity)* and continue to think that climate change is socialist conspiracy.   They are, basically, too stupid to argue with; but unfortunately, they still influence politicians.  

 

* Latest example - Hoi An and central Vietnam. 

Diet tales

The scales have been indicating the weight was still slowly climbing - I once thought 90 kg was a barrier I would settle at, but it reached 93 kg probably a few months ago and stayed there.  In fact, it was one morning's reading last week of 93.3kg that made be decide enough was enough.

My famously sedentary lifestyle obviously is not helping, as is living in a household of only 2 adults again leading to eating larger size servings of leftovers.  (Both my wife and I are having trouble adjusting cooking sizes from "enough for 4, with some leftovers" to "enough for 2".)   

Anyway, I've dieted before, more or less successfully, using the old 5:2 diet, but I usually ended it because of getting sick of trying to work out how to make 500 to 600 calories on a "fast" day as tasty and as filling (and varied) as possible.  

So, I commanded Youtube to tell me what other system to try, and one that works pretty quickly too.

It seems that the various types of "fasting" diets other than 5:2 are now getting the most attention:  the restricted hours one; or alternate days; or even more extreme stuff.  

I went with alternate days. The advantage that appealed to me is the simplicity of just not eating on the days that is my duty, and not calorie counting at all on any day of the week.   I also ignored the advice of some to ease into it by things like skipping breakfast, or lunch, for a while, or whatever.    I just stopped eating for a day at a time, and eating what I want on the next - although I have taken the universal advice of not having a high carb breakfast and having (for example) a nice two egg omelette with ham, cheese, spring onion and little bit of diced tomato in it, on one piece of wholegrain toast.  That really is a very filling breakfast on a very empty stomach.   And later during an eating day, I really don't find a desire to eat any substantially larger size portions.   Even if you do take a particularly rich meal, as the people on Youtube say, there's no way you're likely to eat anything close to the calories you missed the day before.

The first few fasting days were pretty hunger inducing - although it's not hunger pangs as such that bother me, it's more the general "off", slightly headachy, feeling of knowing your body would like some food now but can't have it.   But yesterday - fasting day 5 since I started just over a week ago - I felt fine all day.  It really didn't feel at all like the earlier days, and came with a clear and non distracted mind (as lots of people claim fasting provides) and I really only started to feel a tad hungry when I went to bed late last  night.

So yeah, I hope I have reached the point that the body has just accepted the fasting days and stops complaining about it.  Curious to see how tomorrow goes.

And how has the weight gone?   Surprisingly quickly - in fact I'm starting to wonder about the scales.  After 5 fast days (alternate days only), the scales showed 89.2 this morning.   I do weight myself the same time each day, before breakfast, and after toilet, which no doubt means it's the lightest I am all day.   But from 93.3kg (or even if that reading was not quite right, let's call it 93) to just over 89kg is more than I expected.

I know that the first few kilos can drop quicker on any diet than the later ones, so I shouldn't get too excited.   I think, ideally, a weight of 85kg would be OK to reach and maintain.  Depending on my exact height, it looks from BMI calculators that 84 would put me just under "overweight" by a tiny fraction, and 85 puts me a tiny fraction over.   But depending on how my trousers are fitting, which have been bought for a weight closer to 90kg, I think a long maintained 85kg might be fine.  If I can fit comfortably into the suit pants I bought - I dunno, 9 or 10 years ago? - I would be happy.

So, we will see how we go. 

Loose thoughts

*  It's funny how Noah Smith told the world a few months ago that he had re-gained his libido (after many years of mysteriously having none, and he had checked it out medically), but this seems to have coincided with his become more right wing.   He's never been 100% reliable in his takes (and tends to be more reasonable in his substack essays than on Twitter/X), but he is saying more sillier things lately after (presumably) resuming a sex life.  Curious!

* That Zohran Mamdami is causing a MAGA freakout, and Noah Smith and some Democrats are wary of him; but he clearly has plenty of charisma and, who knows, maybe he will do good for the city of New York.  It will be a curious experiment, at least.

*  Was Prunella Scales the only person in the world with the name "Prunella"?  It was an very distinctive name.   (For what it's worth, I think Fawlty Towers was a bit over-rated, though.)

*  The storm in my suburban area on Sunday was very bad.   I was in a shopping centre with water coming out around light fittings, again.  This seems a very common feature of heavy storms in Australia - the number of times you see video of water leaking into a mall around light fittings.   I wonder why this is such a common problem.

 

 

What if this whole "humanity" thing was a mistake?

I'm being facetious in the title:  but it's just that the dropping birth rate everywhere, no matter how conservative or liberal the society appears to be, can be used to suggest the zeitgeist is not too far from that. 

Actually, I should take that back.  I don't want to sound like Elon Musk, who has taken it upon himself to try to impregnate any (barely) willing woman as a way of keeping humanity going.   

Anyway, here's the reason for the post:

Finland's stubbornly low birth rate shows why a population shift may be inevitable 

And in the big picture, let's remember Africa.   It's a curious question as to how long it will take for them to catch up.  

 

 

 

Impermanence

I think I commented earlier this year about the abrupt disappearance of long time conservative blogger Currency Lad, and see that (as some people predicted in the comments thread which they continued to inhabit after he stopped posting) the blog itself has gone, as (I think) the domain was up for re-registration in October, and it was expected that if he had actually died (or had lost mental capacity), it would disappear.

Hence, the only record that seems to exist of his years of writing is on Trove or the Wayback Machine, and they tend to go back to his earlier blogs.  (For whatever reason, he changed blog hosts).

Now, while I had initially liked some of his takes when I first starting blogging and was more conservative, and then later found he was a dislikeable and dishonest person in debate on Catallaxy, and he ended up going full right wing nutter in his last blog, I still find it disheartening that the internet is such an impermanent place for records.

Even in this blog, the number of dead links in my older posts seems to be climbing rapidly.

I keep getting the feeling, perhaps under the influence of science fiction or Twilight Zone episodes, that we are going to one day get to the point where people are sure some vital piece of information for the survival of humanity was once to be found on a defunct website, and no one can find it anymore.   Or am I worrying too much?   I mean, the same story could be run about a lost book.   I guess it's just that the internet is more accessible to everyone, and the impermanence of information on it feels worse for that reason?  

I even lost courting emails to my wife when a free email service I used at the time went belly up.

On the other hand, who needs crap kept forever?  There are obviously billions of photographs saved online now that no one is ever going to look at again after the owner dies and their account disappears.

I don't know - the current haphazard situation of what gets preserved and what evaporates seems unsatisfactory to me. 

 

The modern problem

This is a rather interesting article at The Guardian, all about how even in relatively conservative (and Catholic) Poland, the birth rate is in free fall.   

As Noah Smith has said many times, no one has a "solution" to this issue. 

I can never quite decide how much it should be worried about.   I mean, I think it a great pity that more people don't get to enjoy child rearing - and seemingly don't realise how good it can be - but if the world as a whole wants to settle on a smaller long term population, that's probably a good thing from an environmental point of view.    

 

Hard to believe what is going in the US

The New York Times:

Since early September, U.S. forces have carried out eight strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing at least 34 people. President Trump says the strikes are legal, and that the boats were trafficking drugs, but he has not offered evidence to substantiate the claim. Nor has he explained how the deliberate, premeditated killing of civilians — what Colombian and Venezuelan leaders and some jurists have called “murder”— can possibly be reconciled with domestic and international law. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has reportedly deemed the strikes lawful, but its analysis hasn’t been disclosed.

A quarter-century after the Sept. 11 attacks, then, we find ourselves in a familiar place: Our government is once again committing grave human rights abuses on the ostensible authority of a legal opinion that is being kept secret. 

The Washington Post:

Why the demolition of the East Wing is so shocking

The speed of destruction, and the projection of power, are part of the strongman playbook. 

The White House:

 

Talk about your "get a life" stories

The Guardian says that Interstellar is Nolan's  "most loved" film.  The article starts:

Every Saturday, for the last 18 months, Shane Short has watched the same film: Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space epic Interstellar. He’s not even sure how many times he has seen it now, though he does know he saw it 31 times in cinemas when it was briefly rereleased for its 10th anniversary in 2024. This year he has flown from his home in Hawaii to Melbourne to watch Interstellar projected on 1570 film at the city’s Imax – twice – where the regular screenings of Interstellar, even those held midweek and during the day, can reliably sell out in minutes. 

I wonder if he is in a relationship - of any kind.

Maybe he is?  Further down in the article:

 Even Short, 38, wasn’t that impressed with Interstellar when he first saw it in 2014; the ending confused him. But now he credits the film as having fundamentally changed who he is.

“A lot of things in Interstellar are very emotional for me,” he says. “I never really connected with that part of myself, and the movie has helped me. Like, I wasn’t on board to have kids at all. I wasn’t against it, I was on the fence. But after seeing the relationship between Cooper and Murph, I wanted that. It definitely changed my mind.”

 OK...

I feel I'm being mean to him, but to my mind it remains a terribly written, uninterestingly executed, and dull bit of silly science fiction (even allowing for the relativistic bits being realistic.)