Bad covid news

I noticed an article at the ABC last week by an Australian professor who developed a heart issue after Covid infection, and it was a bit of a worry:

Last month, US researchers shared the preliminary results of a study looking at the impacts of SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection in a cohort of more than 5 five million American veterans.

The researchers examined the health records of more than 250,000 people who had been infected once; 36,000 people who had been infected twice; and 2,000 people who had been infected three times.

They found that for every health outcome measured, the Hazard Ratio — a measure of how often something happens in one group compared to another — increased with each COVID-19 infection.

The risk of cardiovascular disease, for example, increased after one infection, but doubled in people who had two infections, and tripled in those who had been infected thrice.

The numbers translate into 50 extra cases of heart disease per 1,000 people who've had COVID-19 twice.

Unfortunately, vaccination didn't seem to help: the cumulative risk of heart disease was indistinguishable when the researchers split people who'd received two or more COVID-19 jabs and those who hadn't been vaccinated at all.

The researchers found similar cumulative risks with each reinfection for pulmonary disease, clotting and blood disorders, neurological disease, mental health problems, kidney disease, musculoskeletal disease, fatigue, and so on.

These problems occur most frequently in the first month after infection, but can emerge up to six months later.

Soon after, I checked my own blood pressure (I have a machine at home, but the GP also checked it), and was surprised to see that it was much higher than normal.   Like, 150/95 on few occasions, although more often around 140/90.  (It has also been back in a more comfortable range sometimes - I have been checking morning, noon and night for a few days now.  Before this, and I usually would check once a month or so, I was usually at 120-125/85-90.)

Could this be due to Covid?   Google says "yes":

A total of 211 consecutive COVID-19 patients who were admitted to Parkhayat Kutahya hospital were retrospectively screened. Information was obtained from the electronic medical records and National health data registry. The study outcome was new onset of hypertension according to the Eight Joint National Committee and European Society of Cardiology Guidelines. Finally, 153 confirmed COVID-19 patients (mean age 46.5 ± 12.7 years) were enrolled. Both systolic (120.9 ± 7.2 vs 126.5 ± 15.0 mmHg, P <.001) and diastolic BP (78.5 ± 4.4 vs 81.8 ± 7.4 mmHg, P <.001) were significantly higher in the post COVID-19 period than on admission. New onset hypertension was observed in 18 patients at the end of 31.6 ± 5.0 days on average (P <.001). These findings suggest that COVID-19 increases systolic and diastolic BP and may cause new onset hypertension.

 That seems a pretty small study, but there is at least one other study indicating it  may well be right.

 There is a large American study noting that hypertension went up in a large group during the pandemic, but they talk mostly about whether it was caused by the stress and isolation (and lack of exercise) caused by the pandemic, rather than the virus directly.   But there is still suspicion:

“The disease itself may cause high blood pressure because of the interaction with certain molecules like the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptors. Moreover, many of my patients called to tell me that once they got the vaccines — especially the first dose — their blood pressure went very high, and they ended up in A&E and casualty with systolic blood pressure exceeding 200 in some of them.”

“What is also interesting is that for many of [my patients], the blood pressure did not settle down and remained high — not as high as 200, but higher than it was before. I am doing some research now to look at the effects of vaccination on blood pressure. And I have at least nine patients who had the same reaction: [their] blood pressure went up, and they ended up in casualty at St George’s [hospital].”

“Since then, there have been two publications — oneTrusted Source from Lausanne in Switzerland and the second from Italy — that describe exactly this. Especially with the BioNTech vaccine, the blood pressure goes very high. What we don’t know is why this happens and why it does not settle down,” said Dr. Antonios.

Dr. Antonios also said there could be a connection between long COVID and hypertension. However, this required more research.

 So, this is an incentive for me to actually start getting some exercise.  And drinking beet juice.   (There is a cheap juice mix which is half beet juice.  Can't hurt.)   I'll be watching my readings closely - I've got a blood pressure tracking app on my phone to help with that.

Whose nutty idea is this?

My Twitter feed is full of promoted tweets for some mad person's* idea to build a mirrored city in the Saudi desert that will look like this:

Here are some screenshots for which some graphic artist no doubt made lots of money:

 

You know what it reminds me of?  The over-the-top illustrations for O'Neill space colonies in the late 70's and 80's:

And I would say the chance of it being actually built is about the same...

*  (likely an architect who has gone on a bender after being told by a Saudi Crown Prince to dream up something different in which money is no object)

Pretty accurate

 

Fraud claims fail, again

Interesting article about the latest outcome of investigation into alleged voter fraud in Arizona:

In section 6.6.7 of the “audit” of votes cast in Maricopa County, Ariz., two years ago, one finds an estimate that 282 dead people submitted ballots.

The methodology is offered with a complicated abundance of jargon. Using an “identity and address validation tool” called “Personator,” the team hunting for fraud in Arizona’s largest county cross-checked deaths with votes as indicated in the file “VM55 Final Voted Nov2020 PBRQ” (MD5 hash: 43070bc7afdf40a37cd45092e9733654). And, lo: 282 suspected dead voters were found.

This wasn’t enough to shift the results in Maricopa, where Joe Biden won by 45,000 votes. It was, however, an important part of the narrative: Here was a place where suspect ballots were cast, amplifying questions about the level of confidence one could have in the election results. The report recommended that “the Attorney General further investigate this finding to confirm the validity of this finding.”

Arizona’s attorney general did investigate the finding — and found that the finding had no validity. Of those 282 dead voters, only one was dead. Many of those contacted by his office, Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) said in a letter, “were very surprised to learn they were allegedly deceased.”

The probe was yet another massive waste of state employees’ time and taxpayers’ money. There’s some slight benefit to the state in establishing that the allegation made by the auditing firm, Cyber Ninjas, had no merit. But Brnovich’s probe will not diminish skepticism about election results. Those who believed that the firm had uncovered dead voters solely on the basis of the presented evidence — which, despite all of those complicated numbers, was just a rough match of two lists of identities — will simply shift their assumptions about rampant fraud to one of the Ninjas’ other claims. That’s why the “audit” existed in the first place: to surround the election tally with as much just-asking-questions fog as possible.

It’s very easy to simply wave this away, to shrug at another claim of fraud falling apart. Why even bother covering it?

The answer is simple. As often as possible, we should highlight the fact that despite all of this attention and focus, no more than a dozen or two cases of fraud have come to light. The past 21 months have seen a flurry of allegations of varying complexity, asserting that statistical or circumstantial evidence shows that rampant fraud occurred. And every single time, those assertions crumple under scrutiny. This is not only the perpetual endgame for the claims, it’s the predictable one — as we keep seeing.

 

 

Seems an unhelpful thing to claim at a time of Chinese sabre rattling over Taiwan...

 

Looking old and fat

Trump is really looking physically unimpressive in his recent golfing appearances:

 

Asians and heights

Google made me ponder recently, after making me watch videos from the Youtube channel FlyEast, like this one:

 

that it seems the Chinese have an irresistible urge to build on top of tiny, tiny precipitous heights. I can imagine them looking at the Three Sisters at Katoomba and thinking "why isn't there at temple on top of at least one of them, and stairway access?"   

Not only that, it would seem that a lot of the population is missing the "fear of heights" gene.  I find it hard to imagine the same tourist enthusiasm here for scrambling up near vertical stairs to get to small peaks with little standing space.   Even with bridges, look at the tourists happy on this one, which I would go on too, I suppose, but not entirely without nerves:

  

Youtube is full of examples of precipitous buildings in China, and of course, horrendously scary mountain roads in China adjacent places.   I know there are examples in Europe of buildings on scary heights too, but I still don't think that Westerners have quite the same enthusiasm for building things in such difficult and dangerous locations.  

So why do they want to build structures up on tiny, tiny peaks anyway?   Because of proximity to heaven or gods, I suppose, but I would like to know for sure.

Update:   OMG, look at this video, which is incredibly beautiful, and has only had 23,000 views:

You can view the same temple complex in summer here.

 

Pleasant lunar temperatures

Interesting:

Parts of the moon have stable temperatures fit for humans, researchers find 

The moon has pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63 degrees Fahrenheit, making human habitation a possibility, according to new research from planetary scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Although much of the moon's surface fluctuates from temperatures as high as 260 degrees during the day to as low as 280 degrees below zero at night, researchers say these stable spots could transform the future of lunar exploration and long-term habitation. 

The shadowed areas of these pits could also offer protection from harmful elements, such as solar radiation, cosmic rays and micrometeorites.

For perspective, a day or night on the moon is equivalent to a little over two weeks on Earth — making long-term research and habitation difficult with such extremely hot and cold temperatures.

 

 

I am, and so is Sinclair Davidson

 

Welcome news for colons

As someone who has had to "prep" for colonoscopies maybe 4 or 5 times, and recently got invited to have another:

At last, an easier way to prepare for a colonoscopy

Not just me

 Of course, it is a "honeymoon" period, but still it's pleasing.

Albanese is just coming across as very competent and down to earth,  without the ego of Rudd or some other past Labor figures.   Indeed, all of the new cabinet is doing very well, especially in comparison with the Morrison government.

Just the silliest thing

I complained a week ago about the Netflix series Midnight Mass, but I decided to hate watch it to the end.

I'm not quite there yet (last episode to go), and I did start fast forwarding over scenes where I could just tell there was going to be another tedious monologue, but I have to say I am completely puzzled as to how anyone gave this ridiculous mess a good review.  It's like Stephen King on a complete nonsensical bender (and that's saying something, given that I have read about how more extreme in "suspension of disbelief" elements his novels generally have been compared to their movie versions.)

To me it makes no dramatic sense at all -  and I will say why after this:

SPOILER ALERT 

The whole premise of the story is that a old priest suffering dementia (or perhaps just "Jerusalem syndrome") who is made young and capable of regeneration after being bitten by a vampire he happened to stumble upon in a cave in the Israeli desert (as you do), and his very conservative/zealoty woman parish helper, manage to interpret your classic demonic looking vampire as in fact an angel of the Lord,  and the end times are here, or...something?  And hey, let's ship said demon vampire "angel" back home in a crate, where we'll slip some regenerating blood into the parish's communion wine, so that the character who from the start looked and sounded like a young woman pretending to be old one can actually stop putting on that "old woman" voice, and other regenerative miracles will happen.   Mind you, the regenerated priest (eventually) can't go out in the sun or he fries, and he has an incredible urge to drink blood, but somehow this can still be interpreted as a Good Thing from God and let's keep sharing it with the parishioners.  And nutty conservative woman flunky is happy to go along with it all.  In fact, she's played as the main villain, but I for one never understood why she was so on board so quickly with the priest's plan.

I mean, it's just really ridiculous - especially when said vampire reveals himself to the community at the climatic mass and at least half (actually, nearly all, I think) of the congregation goes all Jonestown and decides to drink the poison being passed around by bad woman, because, hey they know they'll come back to life because a friggin' demon vampire has just appeared and spread his giant bat wings, and of course they would trust him and the excitable priest - who they just realised is the old priest with 50 years off the clock.   (How no one ever said "hey, you know your voice sounds exactly like our old priest" I don't know.)   I didn't even really get exactly why poisoning everyone seemed a good idea - she is shown as having a predilection to poisoning things earlier in the show, but even so.   Her references to Revelation hardly seemed a convincing explanation to me, given a distinct lack of references to vampires in that book. (Not that anything in the show convinced me.)  

Yeah, yeah, they just watched someone drink it and apparently die and come back - but who knows for how long?   "Give me that poison, I wanna die painfully for 5 minutes too."

Obviously, the writer/director is going for a "religion - even in apparently nice sincere Catholics - can turn  into a death cult under the wrong influence" vibe, but the way this happens in this show just makes no sense at all.   I mean, couldn't you at least have the vampire physically look normal and not like a freaking demon from the start?   Stumble upon his true appearance by accident?   Have him speak with charm?   He could be the charming assistant priest, instead of flying around the island looking for random victims sometimes, and other times running around in old priest get up.   Couldn't the effect of being bitten be a bit less obviously vampiric, so that the downside doesn't so patently wipe out the apparent upside?

I mean, the one core story element - the regenerating vampire blood being slipped into the communion wine - is a nice creepy idea - but there is zero plausibility as to how a non talking demon vampire convinces anyone that he's there from God.  

Anyway, I'll watch the last episode, which I hope is really bad!

Update:   watched the last episode, and it continued to be full of bloated monologues, plot points that didn't make much sense, and bursts of ridiculously high quality choral signing from the island's new vampires.   

The priest gets to be regretful, and to explain that he was just trying to give everyone eternal life and avoid death (which, you know, isn't all that common a goal amongst Catholic priests - but I suppose it might have some psychological plausibility if it wasn't via a vampire demon thing you found in the desert drinking your blood.)   

I went over to Reddit to read comments about it.  Again, to my puzzlement, many people liked it, or at least found it creepy, but there are amusing aspects - such as a key plot point that everyone thought we were meant to infer, but one of the writers turned up and said "no, you're wrong, and stop blaming the director for misleading you."   

Some people commented on something I noticed - hardly anyone on the island seemed particularly likeable.   Mike Flanagan, the director/writer, seems to specialise in mopey characters, prone to using 500 words when 50 would do.    

I think Netflix should stop giving him money. 

What a great political ad

 Very effective:

Standing under a nuclear detonation not necessarily such a bad thing

Well, this is comforting to know, if ever an Independence Day style dogfight between us and aliens ever starts happening over our heads.   I hadn't heard this story from the era of nuclear atmospheric tests:

Fascinating!

A sudden burst of mostly good news

Trump is sounding desperate, even for a man famous for saying anything, irrespective of truth or sense:

Former President Donald Trump told ESPN that “nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11” as he defended his decision to host the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series at his Bedminster course.

Trump defended his decision as he faces outrage from the families of 9/11 victims. He told ESPN the tournament’s Saudi sponsors “have been friends of mine for a long time.” He boosted the series as an “alternative” to the PGA, saying “nobody would’ve ever known there was gonna be a gold rush like this.”

On the other hand, Biden has a big win:

Joe Biden has hailed a congressional deal that represents the biggest single climate investment in US history – and hands him a badly needed political victory.

In a stunning reversal, Senate Democrats on Wednesday announced an expansive $739bn package that had eluded them for months addressing healthcare and the climate crisis, raising taxes on high earners and corporations and reducing federal debt.

And it sounds like he dealt competently with China.  (And by the way, can anyone imagine what Trump would have said in a 2 hour phone call with Xi?) 

The Chinese president has warned Joe Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in a highly anticipated phone call that lasted more than two hours on Thursday, as tensions remain high over the House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s potential trip to the island next month.

“Those who play with fire will be perished by it. It is hoped that the US will be clear-eyed about this,” Xi Jinping, according to a Chinese statement. He also urged the US to implement the three joint communiques that serve as the foundation for relations between the two countries “both in word and in deed”. Xi vowed “resolutely” to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity and said this is “the firm will of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people”....

In response to Xi’s comment on Taiwan, Biden reiterated Washington’s policy and said it had not changed and that “the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan strait”, according to the US statement, which was much shorter than the Chinese one.

Sure, there is the matter of whether the US is in a recession or not, but I don't know - it seems hard to find it too recession-y while ever anyone who wants a job can get one, doesn't it?

The other interesting recent thing - polling indicating that the Democrats are looking better placed for the mid terms than anyone expected.  (No doubt, the GOP's excited rush to ensure a ban on every single woman or child from ever getting an abortion is likely the key factor in this.)

Four national polls from the past week have shown Democrats favored by more voters to control Congress compared to Republicans, as many analysts and GOP leaders continue to express confidence that the liberal party will lose control of at least the House and possibly the Senate in the November midterm election.

 And Republicans, for some reason, appear to want to look like complete jerks at the moment:

Why did the GOP reject a bill to help veterans exposed to toxins?

Does Jon Stewart care to comment?

Remember how Jon Stewart went on Colbert's show and did an extended "bit" on how it was obvious that Covid would have come from the lab in Wuhan where they research it?

There are more scientists than ever who beg to differ, it seems:

Scientists say there is "compelling evidence" that Wuhan's Huanan seafood and wildlife market was at the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak. 

Two peer-reviewed studies published on Tuesday re-examine information from the initial outbreak in the Chinese city.

And I think we also have Trump still crapping on about making China pay.

Incidentally, Trump's done I reckon.   He only wants to run again both for vanity (90% motivation for everything he does) and the hope that it scares off prosecution as looking too divisive and politically motivated. 

How to view the body

I watched this Youtube last night (from a channel full of stories of odd or surprising aspects of Japanese history) about how it was quite the thing for a while for Buddhist monks to contemplate artwork of deceased and decaying women as a remedy for feeling sexual attraction towards them (while alive, I hasten to add!) 

 

I presume this tactic did not originate in Japan:  I recall a scene in the movie Samsara, set in Tibet I think, where a monk tried to bring back a fellow monk from abandoning the religious life for a woman by showing him a book which (if I recall correctly) allowed erotic drawings of intercourse to devolve in subsequent pages into corpses having sex.  (!)

Here's some of what Wikipedia says on the topic of Buddhism and the body:

Revulsion

Though perhaps less concerned with issues of purity and pollution than the Brahmanist tradition, certain views of the body recorded in Buddhist scriptures do depict the body as unwholesome and potentially an object of disgust.^[1] This is the “unwantedness” of a body in the tradition of Buddhism identified by some scholars.^[5] Reflecting on the loathsomeness of the body is considered to be a particularly powerful method for countering attachment to sensual pleasures, such as sexuality or pride in appearance.^[1] Stories recorded in scriptures and in the biographies of Buddhist teachers particularly focus on the contemplation of the foulness of the female body as a remedy for sexual desire in a male religious practitioner.^[1]

Value

In contrast to views of the body as disgusting or a source of unworthy desire, the Buddhist tradition does speak of the value of the body in the context of the preciousness of human birth, and the value of a healthy body as an aid to pursuing the Buddhist path.^[1] While contemplating the repulsiveness of the body is considered to be a powerful remedy for sensual attachment, this is a therapeutic perspective that is not necessarily intended to be carried over into other areas of life.^[1] In particular, the suitability of the human body for the pursuit of religious practice is praised in traditional sources, comparing favorably with the capacities of birth among the gods or the various chthonic realms.^[1]

 It's quite the balancing act, then.  Just as it still is in India today.  From a story on BBC News today:

"I can be naked in front of a thousand people… It's just that they get uncomfortable," Bollywood star Ranveer Singh told the Paper magazine recently.

That is exactly what happened when Singh recently posed nude for a photo spread in the same magazine. Social media exploded with both appreciation and indignation - but mostly the latter. Memes and jokes making fun of the pictures abounded; and many accused the actor of denigrating men. If this was not enough, a police complaint was lodged against him for "hurting the sentiments of women".

Singh is not your traditional male star. He's endlessly energetic, flamboyant and embraces a frothy fashion style - velvet pants, sequin turtlenecks, jewellery - that Vogue magazine calls a "positive nod to the non-binary fluidity that fashion today is embracing".

In other words, says Paper, Singh has "challenged practically every stereotype of masculinity in a still-traditionalist Indian society".

"He has an ideal kind of male body. But he dresses on the border of androgyny. He is not rigid and openly talks about sex. He doesn't fit in the notion of masculinity in India. That is causing a lot of anxiety, and also making a lot of men uncomfortable," says Rahul Sen, who's doing his doctoral dissertation on literature and sexuality at Tufts University.

The article goes on to note the odd Indian mix of attitudes to the body, where being nude in public as a way of a holy man showing a spiritual disconnect from material things is fine, but for sexual appreciation, is disturbing (despite the temples covered in depictions of sex):

The differing reactions to Singh are illustrative of what some call India's "wild moral confusion", where people harbour a strange mix of conservative and liberal attitudes. The most graphic examples of erotic temple art can be found in many small-town shrines. One of the world's oldest textbooks of erotic love, Kama Sutra, is from India. Model and dancer Protima Bedi streaked on a Mumbai beach in 1974 for a film magazine cover. Nudity is not uncommon: thousands of ash-smeared Hindu holy men belonging to a cult turn up naked at religious festivals like the Kumbh Mela.  

This made me think how it's also a little odd that Judaism has a reputation for being an 'earthy' religion, where the body and food for it are not to be disdained at all: 

In the Jewish tradition there is no absolute division between material and spiritual, body and soul. According to the Hebrew Bible, the human body expresses divine reality and is a key to divine knowledge. As the Bible states, “From my flesh, I will perceive God.” (Job 19):

Before his expulsion from Eden, Adam’s body shone like the sun and was capable of living forever. Only as a result of eating from the Tree of Knowledge did God “place His hand on man and shrink him”. This changed to skin the body of light which en-clothed him, making it subject to death. One of the goals of Jewish spirituality is to reverse this process: to perfect the body and make it shine.

Judaism’s ultimate goal is not to transcend the physical, but to make for God a dwelling place in the lower worlds. This brings the divine into the physical world. Judaism’s ideal is the soul fully inhabiting the body, not the soul liberated from the body.

And yet, it has also always viewed nudity as shameful:

Oddly, I would say that modern secular Japan, and Scandinavia, with their casual acceptance (indeed celebration) of communal bathing in a non sexual context - seem to hit a happy medium towards attitudes to bodies - not to be seen as awful and corrupting, but something normal, if sometimes still a little embarrassing.   I don't think the Japanese can be accused of the over-promotion of female or male bodies either - I don't think they equate big muscles as a masculine ideal still, nor do I think that their female pop stars ever emphasise their sexual features in dress like some Western ones do.  

Anyway, it's not that I have any particular new insight into this topic - I just remain pleasantly puzzled as to how religious and cultural attitudes towards bodies is such a complicated thing.

More for us, I guess, but I still feel sorry for our wineries

It's rare that I would deem a tweet from The Australian worthy of this quality blog, but here we go:

That's...some turnaround.  I guess I don't feel the same sympathy for something like a mining giant that suddenly loses a market; but agriculture (and wine production in particular) feels like such a human scale enterprise that it seems more personal to hear them hit by unexpected geopolitics.

Judaism and personhood

Slate still occasionally throws up interesting articles, between the salacious allegedly true sex/relationship advice bits.

This one, for example:  What We Can All Learn From How Jewish Law Defines Personhood in A.I., Animals, and Aliens.

Cool!

Here are some key paragraphs:

For many rabbis, humans are valuable whether or not they are unique; not only could other beings share some of our “essential” human characteristics, but a few actually do. Rather than protectively shrinking from this expanded notion of humanity, rabbis have historically been very open to the idea of nonhuman sentience and have tended to see parallels between humans and nonhumans as an excuse to treat nonhumans better.

Evidence for this position isn’t hard to find. Take demons, for example. In rabbinic literature demons are not inherently evil; they are mortal beings with agency, sometimes imagined as the unintended offspring of human beings, and their existence doesn’t pose existential threats to human value. The rabbis also record the existence of an animal called “the man of the field,” which so resembled human beings (one modern rabbi speculated that it was an orangutan) that its corpse is afforded some of the dignity of human dead, and medieval German rabbis talked about vampires and werewolves—sometimes even reading them into the Bible—without any concern about what their existence might entail.

As for beings that aren’t imaginary, Jewish thinkers—like many modern animal rights groups—have tended to value them on a gradient, with animals above plants and plants above inanimate objects. The reason for this, in some strains of thoughts, is that all of these creations are ensouled; the human soul has extra pieces, but it shares much with other beings. In both the Bible and the Talmud, people are regularly criticized for treating animals badly, with the critique occasionally coming from the animals themselves....

The most powerful example of all is the golem. The medieval golem isn’t a proto-robot, and it isn’t a parable about uncontrolled power. Instead, it’s something far more radical: It is a person, one who is brought into existence for the sole purpose of demonstrating that humans, like God, are powerful enough to create life. That humans and golems are essentially the same is the whole point; humans, for the rabbis, are also an artificial intelligence; the first being to be called a golem is Adam. Instead of diminishing human value, the possibility of making golems asks that people appreciate their true power and act accordingly.

Discussions about aliens, golems, and animals occupy very different parts of Jewish thought.
What brings them together is the belief that human value is axiomatic, and that it is precisely because of the unassailability of our value that our instinct should be toward expanding the idea of what is human when we recognize it in others. This idea has a very important corollary: because human value is the basis for valuing these near-humans, the latter can never supersede the former in importance. In other words, this model both allows us to be generous with the idea of humanity while resolving concerns that our own status will become diminished in the process.

 

Russian naval history noted

I possibly may have heard something about this disastrous Russian naval expedition before, but this video account of it is pretty amusing, and it seems appropriate to hear the story of historic Russian incompetence in light of its recent, less than stellar, naval performance:

Odd marketing

The oddest thing I reckon about this "Manly gay pride jersey" story is that to me, the rainbow stripes don't even obviously suggest the gay pride flag:

 

The horizontal banding reminds me more of the Centrum vitamin branding, which has been in a use a long, long time:

Ok, well, the colour order is different, but the stripes on the jersey play with the colour order anyway - with for some reason the bottom strips being different to the top strips.  But was that a deliberate ploy of the marketers, to make it look not conclusively like the gay flag?    A sort of "plausible deniability" for players who aren't so keen on being associated with gay pride? 

Maybe I have spent too much time looking at vitamins at Chemist Warehouse recently, but Centrum would still have come to mind if the media hadn't told me first. 

Certainly believes in cementing his reputation...

...as the laziest and worst Prime Minister in recent history:

   

Putting psychedelic therapy in its place

Hey, I like it when Australian public broadcasting takes up an issue and unexpectedly doesn't take (what might be called) the squishy Left line on the topic.  It happened a couple of months ago when SBS did an Insight episode on trans women in sport, which (surprise!) featured a preponderance of people who argued that it was indeed unfair for former men to become women's sport champions by becoming women.   

And last night it happened when Four Corners looked at psychedelic therapy, and actually focused on some pretty strange people who are at the forefront of promoting it in Australia.  (Some Canada therapists came out of it looking bad, too.) 

In fact, one would have to suspect that the people who appeared were more or less ambushed - thinking that surely the ABC will take the sympathetic line that this is a type of therapy that only stick-in-the-mud conservatives are arguing against, only to find they about to come out of their participation looking somewhat nutty and not entirely trustworthy.

In fact, why did the guy who takes people out on 8 hour bushwalks after taking (I think) peyote agree to appear at all, including showing him distributing an illegal drug?  I mean, the worst aspect of his dubious exercise was that he admitted that he (at least sometimes) takes the drug at the start of the bushwalk too - so much for having someone sober to lead them out of the wilderness if an emergency happens.  

Anyway, least I be criticised for my conservativism on the issue, I wouldn't want to stop all research into the therapeutic use of psychedelics.  It's just that I think it needs to be extremely cautious, and not taken over by people with a missionary zeal,  as the use of these drugs has been around long enough to take a reasonable guess that they are going to be of limited use and benefit, and very unlikely to be some kind of mental health universal panacea. 

A complicated movie

I watched No Sudden Move on Netflix on the weekend - the recent movie directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Ed Solomon (Men in Black, amongst many other likeable credits.)

It's well directed, well acted, looks really good, and things are always happening;  the only problem is, it does take too long to understand what the movie is really all about.  I mean, on one level, I did admire the complexity of the screenplay - it  keeps half a dozen balls in the air all the time, and is written very realistically, so that it's like how overhearing conversations in real life often presents a puzzle as to what is being discussed.  But it's a fine line to walk, and at certain points, it does verge towards "this is requiring too much concentration. And can some character just explain to another what's going on?"

In general atmosphere, it reminded me both of Mad Men (which I haven't watched, but by reputation, its full of adultery, smoking and drinking, as is this movie) and some of the Fargo TV series (general gangster world vibe).

It's enjoyable enough, but....

SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT

As this article explains, it is a completely fictional story that is spun around one true life corporate scandal.   That's a little disappointing, because while it never claims directly to be "based on a true story" or even "inspired by real life events", the explanation at the end of the film gives the impression that there probably is some truth to the key crime that takes up, like, the first half of the movie.   It feels like it should be at least an elaboration of some true life event, but it turns out it isn't.

Oh well - I guess if I had known that at the start, it would have saved the disappointment.

The cow problem

I love milk and cheese, and there's no way I'm giving them up, but the issue of how the industry deals with calves does give ethical doubts.

From a recent story at the ABC, which is an odd mix of sort of good, and sort of bad, news:

* Dairy Australia says 300,000 calves were slaughtered at five days of age during the 2021 financial year

• It says that number is down from 450,000 calves

 It is common practice on the majority Australian dairy farms for calves to be separated from cows within 24 hours of birth.

The calves are then taken to rearing facility or another shed and fed milk by farmers.

A percentage of female calves will stay on farm to be used as replacement heifers, and the remaining become surplus and are used for beef production.

Calves under 30 days old are known as bobby calves and must be at least five days old before they leave the farm.

Dairy Australia animal welfare national lead Sarah Bolton said the number of bobby calves going to slaughter in Australia was dropping.

"More and more dairy farms are looking to increase the number of calves raised for mature beef production, as opposed to slaughtering them as bobby calves," Dr Bolton said....

Dr Bolton, who is also a veterinarian, said there were several key reasons to separate calves and cows soon after birth.

"The first is the management of colostrum," Dr Bolton said.

"Dairy calves are born without a functioning immune system and rely on their first milk, which we call colostrum, to receive their immune system."

She said data showed that if left to suckle the cow on their own, at least 40 per cent of calves wouldn't get enough, which left them without an adequate immune system.

"We also have good data that shows the longer we leave a calf with a cow, the more stressful it is when we do separate them," Dr Bolton said.

Hmm.

That colostrum story sounds a bit suspiciously convenient for farmers who just want to get the calves separated and off to the slaughterhouse as soon as possible.

The story featured a small scale Victorian dairy farmer who says she doesn't separate the calves from the mothers,  although doing so seemingly halves the amount of milk that can be taken by the farmer.

Dr Bolton goes on to explain:

Dr Bolton said the industry was always looking at the issue of calf and cow separation and early life slaughter as public values evolved.

"The practice of culling calves at five days of age hasn't been undertaken because dairy farmers want to, or because it's particularly appealing for anyone," she said.

"It's been largely motivated by the fact those calves have historically not been seen as economically viable for beef production as a result of their genetics being selected for milk production.

"But the great news is as a result of research and innovation we are getting better at breeding dairy calves for beef production.

This article at The Guardian talks about "ethical dairy" methods:

The calves still need to be separated after weaning at around five months, a process Finlay and his new herdsman Charles Ellett have learned to manage by starting off with overnight periods of separation first.

“That first day we don’t open the gates in the morning though there is a huge outcry from the calves and cows,” says Finlay, who has got round it by introducing a surrogate mother – usually an older cow not producing much milk. They then use this cow to lead all the calves into a field on the other side of the farm to settle them.

The initial period of overnight separation helps create social bonds between the calves, says Finlay, making the final separation easier. The female calves will then stay on the farm to become milking cows, while the male calves are sold after five to seven months to produce veal.

And there's an argument that the early separation is actually less stressful:

Academic researchers say early separation within 24 hours has been found in some cases to reduce distress for both beef and dairy cows and calves, although the evidence for dairy calves is still inconclusive. “The faster you break the bond [between cow and calf] the fewer vocalisations you are going to get from calves,” says Marina Von Keyserlingk, a professor in animal welfare at the University of British Columbia.

Helen Browning, dairy farmer and CEO of the organic trade body the Soil Association, separates her calves and cows within 24 hours, but then keeps them with a surrogate mother cow who has been retired or rested from the dairy herd. Under organic standards, calves are separated from their mothers after birth, but are always kept in groups and must be given cow’s milk for their first 12 weeks.

“Calves hate being weaned and cows hate their calves being taken away, whether after one day or five months. But it is better to do it before a bond has developed. In nature cows would live together as a family with cows and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so we are already interfering a lot with that family process,” she says.

I don't know - killing animals within days of birth seems a waste of pregnancy and birth.  Same as I don't care for baby roosters going straight into the grinder at an egg farm.   Seems you should let something that has gone through birth at least a chance to see what life's about.   Is 6 months enough?  I guess they are being killed while they're cow teenagers.   Is that better or worse than being killed as a 7 day old calve?   This is complicated.  But if the calves are with their mother for 6 months, then that's better for the mother.  Isn't it?   

I wish someone would get on with making lab milk - not plant milk, but something pretty much identical to dairy milk.   They're working on it, but it seems to be taking too long...

 

Happy Friday thoughts

*  I'm not at Splendour in the Grass.   Never seen the appeal at being at a massive outdoor music festival where you stand a good chance of either sunburn or being in a mudbath.  Each to their own, I guess.

*  Someone on Twitter posted about this dress this morning, and it is very stylish, and very old.  (Apparently, the string was mostly gone, so it is a restoration of how it is believed to have originally looked.)  But were there any undergarments at all?:

*  Lots of publicity being given to the claim that in fact, low levels of serotonin in the brain are not shown to be the cause of depression.   While I haven't read much about it yet, I would have thought that proper blind trials would have been done to show that selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors are of benefit for some people, and if can rule out a placebo effect, they must be doing something?   Is this happy news?   No, not really.   But it's interesting, at least.

Electric bus type things coming to Brisbane

I don't know who this guy is who has made this video, which is obviously very supportive of the Brisbane Council's plan for improving public transport with electric long bus things (the first of which is apparently currently undergoing testing), but I do have the say, the whole system and idea sounds pretty impressive: 

 

I like the way the "buses" recharge themselves, too (see at the 3min 50 sec mark in the video). Another video indicated they are made in Switzerland. We can trust the Swiss not to use batteries that blow up, can't we?

When the Holocaust came to Paris - updated

It surprises me a little to realise that there are people still alive with cogent memories of World War 2, but this article from France 24 has interviews with 6 people who were kids when this terrible incident occurred:

Over two days in the summer of 1942, French police carried out Western Europe’s largest wartime roundup of Jews, acting on orders from occupying German forces and their French allies in the Vichy Regime.

On July 16 and 17 of that year, a total of 12,884 Jews – men, women and children – were snatched from their homes in Paris and in neighbouring suburbs. Some were taken directly to an internment camp in Drancy, northeast of the capital. The rest were crammed into the Vélodrome d’Hiver, a stadium located on the banks of the Seine in the 15th arrondissement (district) of Paris, which would give its name to this sinister chapter in French history.

This reminded me about a book I mentioned back in 2007:  a biography of a French sleazy character who profited greatly out of adopting Nazi anti-Semitism.   I don't think I ever fully finished the book, actually, but I think I got through most of it.  I should find it on the shelf and check it out again.

An interesting way to fictional success

At the Washington Post, a story about how fictional stories that have started on Reddit have met with success.

America has some problems (part 1,000)

I keep saying that, like Noah Smith, I am basically optimist about America eventually getting over its current problems, but news like this makes you wonder:

And this:

Takeaways: Overdose rates were highest in areas with the most treatment options available, in 25 states and the District of Columbia, where data was available, the report found.

• "Just because there's availability of services doesn't meant they're necessarily accessible," Mbabazi Kariisa, a CDC health scientist, told reporters.
• Systemic racism, income inequality, and lack of reliable housing, transportation and health insurance all play a role in why drug overdoses are disproportionately affecting Black and Native American people, CDC officials said.

By the numbers: In 2020, there were 91,799 Americans who died of a drug overdose, according to HHS, and from 2019 to 2020 overdose rates increased the most among teens and young adults.

• Black youths and young adults ages 15 to 24 years old experienced the largest overdose death rate increase at 86%.
• Native American people ages 25 to 44 years old saw an increase of 49% in the rate of overdose deaths.
• White people ages 15 to 24 years old had a 34% increase in overdose death rate.

Foolish old people watch

areff says:

July 20, 2022 at 3:39 pm

Daughter-in-law is pregnant and due in September. Just heard from my son that the baby, as revealed by sonogram, has an aortic stenosis. It’s apparently a mild case and, if surgery is needed, it’s a tried and true procedure.

So I ask the fruit of my lines when his wife got her COVID jabs.

Pause on the line, then this:

“Yeah, I thought of that and I figure she was jabbed around conception time.”

Another pause.

“And then she got another about three months later on doctor’s advice”

Jeez.

Which was followed by this supportive comment:

Old bloke says:

July 20, 2022 at 4:01 pm

areff says:
July 20, 2022 at 3:39 pm

Serious question, why aren’t we seeing people hanging from the street lamps yet?

Meanwhile, neither of these geezers, I am sure, think anything is significant about England having its first 40 degree day yesterday. 

Yes I know, cranky old fools who think they know better have been with us always.   The problem is, the internet now lets them find each other and mutually reinforce their dangerous and obnoxious beliefs.  

And what's worse - people like Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson make a worldwide career out of pandering to them.    I honestly don't think there is enough daily outrage about this pathetic and dangerous man:

Update:  a bitter truth - 

 

The problems of cannibalism

From a story at Science, handily listing the main problems with cannibalism:

Eating your own kind is fairly common throughout the animal world, from single-celled amoebas to salamanders, he and his colleagues report in a new review in Ecology. But not as many species snack on their brethren as one might expect—and the team has detailed the reasons why.

First off, cannibalism is risky. If you’ve got dangerous claws and teeth, so do your comrades. Female praying mantises are notorious for biting the heads off of much smaller males during mating, for example, but they also occasionally go toe to toe with an evenly matched female. “I’ve seen one female chew the leg off another,” Rosenheim says, “and then the female who lost the leg somehow manages to kill the other one.”

Cannibalism is also dicey from a disease perspective. Many pathogens are host specific, so if a cannibal devours an infected companion, it risks picking up the same disease. Different populations of humans have found this out the hard way multiple times. One of the most famous examples is the spread of a rare and fatal brain disease called kuru that ravaged the Fore people of New Guinea in the 1950s. Kuru raged across the Fore community through a cannibalistic funerary ritual in which families cooked and ate the flesh—including contaminated brain tissue—of deceased relatives. Once the Fore phased the ritual out, the spread of kuru was stopped in its tracks.

Finally, cannibalism is a terrible way to pass down one’s genes. “From an evolutionary perspective, the last thing you want to do is eat your offspring,” Rosenheim says. That’s a major reason big-eyed bugs limit their population sizes by snacking on their own offspring. If they grow too numerous—as happened with the aphid experiments—they deposit eggs all over the place. And because they can’t recognize their own eggs, they end up devouring their own brood.

Oh, so there's a cannibalism hormone?:

Although cannibalism is far from ideal, certain conditions appear to make the risky behavior worthwhile. Even if you’re eating a friend—or an heir—if you’re starving, you’ve got to protect your survival, says Erica Wildy, an ecologist at California State University, East Bay, who was not involved with the study. In her own work, Wildy has found that hunger makes long-toed salamander larvae more likely to nibble on—and occasionally eat—one another.

In their review, Rosenheim and his colleagues pinpoint specific hormones—octopamine in invertebrates and epinephrine in vertebrates—that appear to be linked to increasing rates of cannibalism. As conditions become crowded and food becomes scarce, the amounts of these hormones spike and “hangry” animals attack whatever they can snatch with jaws, legs, or pincers.

Huh.

Political comedy considered, again

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey notes that Stephen Colbert ran with Biden age jokes (and attacked him for the Saudi visit) the other night.   He starts:

Has Joe Biden become so unpopular that late-night comics might actually move away from their clapter production and start being funny again? Bill Maher made this transition months ago, but the rest of the late-night comics have been as loathe to target Biden for pointed political jokes as they were with Barack Obama. Or so it has seemed, anyway; late-night TV comedy has been pointless for well over a decade as it went from being funny to being didactic.

Now, this raises something I refuse to believe - that comedians who move to support of the current American Right are actually capable of being funny.   I know, I know - I can readily be accused of suffering from the same problem as conservatives - letting political views influence what I allow myself to find funny.  But I'm certain any objective observer would have to agree with me - with my main evidence being the absolutely woeful "Gutfeld!" on Fox, which I have watched sometimes recently on Youtube.  

Despite getting some attention not so long ago for apparent ratings success (which I think has diminished again), he and the show is painfully unfunny.  And weirdly, I noticed, he seems in his monologues to often try to do self deprecation of the "maybe I'm gay" kind, only to have it fail utterly.  Why would he even try that with the type of audience he has? 

As for Bill Maher - I had been meaning to say that his segments (increasingly frequent) where he just wants to attack the Left for wokeness and political correctness, and not talk much about the Right turning the country into Christian fascism (because that doesn't annoy him as much), have also been poorly written and pretty painful to watch.   I was never a big fan, but he has become much, much worse.

It's not just a current thing - over my life, even when I voted Liberal, I knew that comedy sympathetic to Right wing politics has very, very rarely worked.   I mean, I don't like all Left wing comedy either - I was never a fan of Max Gillies, for example, and more recently, I couldn't stand Tom Ballard's shows.  But Left leaning comedy at least has the capacity (in a way Right wing comedy virtually doesn't) to be funny, even if it didn't always work for me.  Right wing comedy especially doesn't work now, when the worst of the Right (and that's a disturbingly large part of America) has developed clear sympathy to religious fascism.   

   

 

Not convinced

That's a co-incidence:  The Guardian has a very positive review up of Midnight Mass, the (sort of) horror series which has been out on Netflix for maybe 6 months, although I have only recently started watching it.

I'm 3 episodes in, and I'm not convinced.   It's way, way too talky, and the dialogue is often very "stagey" - it feels unnatural to me a lot of the time.  And now that I have seen the apparent explanation for the mysterious young priest appearing on the (admittedly interesting as a location) small island, I admit it wasn't exactly a normal supernatural trope, but it was so novel, I didn't know what to make of it.  I'm probably going to go with reading a synopsis of the rest of the show, rather than devoting time to finding out more about what is going on.  

It's a weird show, and I don't think it's very good. 

That's odd: having Covid has made me want to post really unimportant stuff

 

Back to Lost in Space

While I was convalescing at home with Covid, Youtube kept insisting I watch a series of interviews of the old Lost in Space stars Bill Mumy and Jonathan Harris (aka Will Robinson and Dr Smith).  

Mumy seems a particularly nice person, and a (seemingly unusual?) case of a child actor (he really did a lot of work I wasn't aware of) who grew up normal and not scarred by the experience.  Or maybe by the 1960's, there was enough care of child actors in the studio system - I mean, I guess Ron Howard turned out fine too.

Things I learned from watching these interviews:

*   Jonathan Harris was given carte blanche to re-write his lines.  This meant that Mumy would have to visit Harris's trailer to go over the re-written scripts and re-learn his cues from those in the original.  (I feared for a moment that there was going to be some shocking incident of abuse while alone with him, but no.  In fact, I checked Harris's Wikipedia page to check about his sexuality - I mean, it would hardly be surprising to learn he was gay.  But he was married and had a son, and there are quite a few websites noting that he counts high on the list of actors you thought could be gay, but apparently wasn't.)

* Mumy is an excellent voice mimic.

* Mumy worked for Alfred Hitchcock on a few episodes of his TV show, and really disliked him.

* He explained how he felt sorry for Guy Williams, his fictional father, who was given less and less to do in the show, while the Dr Smith character more or less took over.  And after the show, he went and retired in Argentina, where he was considered a hero because of his role in Zorro (!).

* His first serious girlfriend, when he was old enough to drive, was his co-star Angela Cartwright (Penny).  They remain good friends.

* I thought the anecdote in this clip was pretty funny:

*  Jonathan Harris paints a funny picture of Irwin Allen as a blustering, old style cranky Hollywood producer.

Not much charm

It might just be me - it's not like I watch sport to any significant degree (although last week's State of Origin was very good) to assess the degree of charm of individual sporting champions.  But after watching Cameron Smith's bit of media after winning the British Open, it occurred to me that golf seems to have trouble attracting champions who have any particular charm.   Perhaps people used to think that about Tiger Woods, but then his personal life became a mess and I don't think people like him much anymore?

I wondered if this is more the case with individual sports than team ones?  Maybe - but while there have always been jerk tennis champions, it seems a sport which has always had a reasonable number of seemingly likeable personalities.

Golf, though...

(People used to like Greg Norman, I guess, but he became increasingly weird as he aged.  He is perhaps a symbol of the Right wing character of the sport.  I mean, it is considered a rich person's game in many countries, I guess - although not as much in Australia, perhaps.)  

A familiar refrain, but this time it's deserved: waiting for the next new, cool thing to replace the stale old thing

I'm talking movies and TV.   And yeah, every year or two there's a journalistic burst of "Everything at the cinema/on the streaming service is a sequel and/or a superhero movie.  Where's the mature cinema/TV for adults we used to enjoy?  Why can't Hollywood give us more original stories? etc etc"  Perhaps the Covid break from cinema going cooled down that talk for a while, but now that we are out of that, I get the feeling we genuinely are in a particularly clear "stale idea" crisis.

I don't write this out of particular disappointment with current movies - I still haven't even seen the Top Gun movie, or the new Thor.   The latter is definitely suffering a bit of a Marvel fan backlash (it's too jokey for many, apparently, and feels more like a parody.)  

But more generally, based on watching quite a few Youtube reviewers, it's safe to say that:

a.   it's clear that Disney has milked the Star Wars universe dry. The critical reception to their series is just getting worse and worse, and as I didn't even care for the Mandalorian, it's not like I'm hanging out for anything new from that world.  The universe, as I have written before, has a fatal flaw:  no consistent view of the Force, which was the key appeal of the first couple of movies.  The TV shows are not fixing that.  It's incapable of retrospective correction, probably.

b.  Similarly, the same can be said of their Marvel content, with general dissatisfaction growing with the way the movies and series are messily dealing with a multiverse.   (I also watched a long Youtube video by someone very keen to explain that the Endgame movie, and subsequent stuff, has dealt with time travel inconsistently.  I never did like the Endgame explanation.)

c.  The Jurassic franchise is dead - there are so many terrible reviews for the current one.  

d.  Hard to believe the (not Spielberg directed) Indiana Jones movie will be good. Due out next summer.

e.  Honestly, who cares that there are at least two Avatar movies coming out.   Had no interest in the first movie, less in any sequel.

f.  People went to see (yet another) dark Batman.  But I don't get the feeling it re-started any particular new enthusiasm for the character.  DC based movies, few of which interest me, have a very high "miss" rate.

g.   Has their ever been more knives sharpened to attack a series than those waiting for the Amazon Tolkien prequel-ly show to start?   

It just truly feels that everything has been sucked dry, and everyone can see it.

Sure, there will always be a couple of exceptions such as the surprise quality, apparently, of the Top Gun sequel - although it is not like that is going to be a franchise as such.   There's a good chance the next Mission Impossible will still be good, too.  (Although I found the last one underwhelming.)

But overall, at no time have I have felt that the complaints about lack of creativity from Hollywood were ever more deserved.  

Is it the fault of the culture wars, perhaps?   It probably does have something to do with it, as even allowing for Disney and other studios being super keen to have "representation" of women and gay or trans, it is hard to imagine stories now that are unifyingly appealing to the extremes of politics now.  The world views have become so divergent.