May 2024

lol, a mystery! We're so stupid.

One of the amusing things for me about the modern obsession with cash is that it's the LEAST safe way to handle your money. You can easily lose it. And once you hand it over, it can be impossible to get back if you're ripped off.

I can’t really talk about Council business, but a couple of important general points about Mount Panorama. Council doesn’t run the racing events, and therefore isn’t entitled to a huge share of the revenue from those events. Like when Elton John came to Bathurst, he hired the Council stadium, but that doesn’t entitle Council to a huge percentage of his ticket sales. Just a fee for venue hire. The same applies to the Mount. The main revenue from the races at Mount Panorama is to the businesses and residents in town, not to Council. Tens of millions.

Exactly what needs to happen here. In the UK banks have to pay victims of online scams involving losses from their bank accounts. It forces banks to take online scams seriously. In Australia banks are a protected species.

How social media is distorting and destroying society. 28 women have died from intimate partner violence this year. We got this ‘crisis’ action this week, nearly a billion dollars. I shared earlier in the week that this category of violence has also been in steep *decline* for decades. Over TEN THOUSAND women have died of Covid in Australia, in less than 3 years. Nothing AT ALL is being done, for Covid. The greatest hubs of Covid infection are in women-dominated workplaces, like primary schools. Nothing AT ALL is being done there to prevent infections. How did social media do this? Gender wars are some of the juiciest team sports on there. It’s the State of Origin of public policy.

I don't like travel very much. And when you read this, you may still love it, no amount of reality shifts the travel obsessed. But it might make you nervous. https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/01/boeing-boeing/#mrsa

This sanctimonious drivel will haunt him and many others, one day.

I’ve criticised the use of social media as a personal space over many years. It’s not a personal space, though that’s overwhelmingly how it gets used. Peoples’ social lives are now transacted on these platforms. They’re not just sharing here, that’s the wrong concept. The platforms are shaping their lives. Their lives get swept into games of imitative rivalry. Endless comparison with the personal lives of others, often without even realising it’s happening. This is toxic, high school culture. Their lives are then monetised by the platforms and shaped by the businesses who use it. Everything blends and merges, even the tiniest intimate details of your personal life attract targeted ads and shape what you actually see here, through the algorithms. Peoples’ bodies are transformed through the same process, as they play the imitation games, sometimes as far as having themselves surgically transformed. More simply, why don’t we see that a platform that networks us with the rest of the world shouldn’t be about ‘me’? Why can’t we do anything except talk about ourselves? Understand that and you understand what these platforms are doing to us individually, and to society as a whole.

In a week dominated by the question of violence against women, the Council of Europe provides an excellent summary on the topic. “There is no single factor that can explain gender-based violence in our societies, but rather a myriad of factors contribute to it, and the interplay of these factors lies at the root of the problem.” Social media is trying to force societies to see only one of these factors. Models of masculinity, what the Council puts under ‘cultural’ factors in the 4 bottom boxes. It’s only one tiny part of the story. Social media LOVES gender wars. Before we go out and try to deprogram boys and men of their toxic masculinity, something the majority of them don’t even have or support in any way, we need to assess this issue, like all issues, with calm attention to the actual specifics.

Yep. By diluting the effort and resources across the entire male population, nearly all of which exhibit no ‘toxic masculinity’ at all, we’ve ended up achieving almost nothing. Toxic masculinity as a characteristic of all masculinity is an artefact of a gender war.

You don’t ’identify’ as a sexual preference. It makes as much sense as saying you identify as a chip flavour, like salt and vinegar.

Good on the Irish for now publishing comparisons of costs of fuel. And you can get the electric cost as low as zero, if you charge from your own solar.

This is where the current universally approved narrative on violence against women leads. Nothing in the actual experience or research of people working with this violence agrees with it.

Happy Birthday🎈🎂 A milestone birthday!

Old people want the world to be the one they already know. True grace is making way for the young.

BYD’s plug-in hybrid ute is due in Australia in the second half of this year. It’ll be called the Shark. Rumoured to have full-electric range of up to 150km, and total range of 1000km+. With fuel stuck at well over $2/litre, let’s see how it goes. For everything except long distance travel, you’ll have zero petrol costs. And much lower petrol costs for those very long trips. It will also have much better low-end torque for carrying and towing than a petrol or diesel ute.

A litre of petrol contains 8.9 kWh of energy. A standard petrol car might use 7-10 L/100km. So 62.3 - 89 kWh of energy, for every 100 km travelled. A good EV will use 14-20 kWh of energy to travel 100 km. While a petrol car will carry 534 kWh of energy in a 60L tank, the EV only needs to carry 70-80 kWh of energy in its battery, to do the same distance. The ‘range’ of a petrol or diesel is bought by wasting hundreds of kWh of energy, in every tank. 80% of it goes straight out the exhaust, unused. They’re rubbish.

Good. But much simpler to just cancel all HECS debts. If a person earns more because they have a degree (something quite rare now), they already pay more tax. Ridiculous to tax them twice, it’s a tax on education. Around the world birth rates are in terminal decline because the young can’t afford to even live, let alone breed. Other countries are showering the young with money and cheap housing right now to try to get them to have babies. We’ll be next.

There’s enough energy in a standard tank of petrol to power an EV from Sydney to Perth, and back again. The petrol car is so inefficient that it won’t even get out of NSW on the outwards-trip, on one tank. Some chuckle when EVs use petrol, diesel or coal as a generator for electricty. But if all petrol and diesel vehicles were switched to EVs, with the electricity generated using coal and petrol/diesel, we’d need a huge amount less coal and petrol/diesel.

I call Gen X the sandwich generation. Sandwiched between the boomers and millenials, taking the worst financial hit of ageing societies while having to plan and fund much of their upkeep as the population ages. Massive wealth transfer from boomers to younger generations will also mostly pass Gen X by during their key working years while raising children. As the chart says, they took the brunt of these massive demographic shifts. It will be largely Gen X who determines whether our societies survive, and it will be mostly invisible work happening right now.

There’s the (meat in the) sandwich generation. Gen Zs and Millenials often call Gen X ‘boomers’. Gen X is the true forgotten generation. Oh and if you’re old, as I’m becoming, these numbers show that you better be nice to young people. They’re outnumbering you now, in elections, for the first time in a LONG time.

Damn these too-quiet cars! lol https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2024/05/05/electric-vehicles-avas-australia?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240506&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

Alan Kohler today. All the more reason to re-nationalise public housing, and make the work more secure and affordable for builders. My dad came to Australia to build public housing after the war. The model works.

Penrith Solar are as good as it gets. If anybody wants $200 off an installation, let me know.

Delighted to see the BYD Seal already making inroads into Bathurst. A beautiful car with kickass grunt, great range and low price tag. Some lucky person now has zero fuel bills to boot. Aren't those recessed door handles sexy?

A technical guy I know recently bought a BYD Seal. A no-nonsense bloke. His review below (note he uses standard grid power to charge at home, you can get much cheaper rates again than what he's using). I got a BYD Seal Performance. The middle of the range. 62K onroad – 7K the govt gave me back in Stamp duty and EV rebate. So 55K all up. Overall A+ Craps all over my Lexus IS 200…and I loved that car. I'm shocked how good it is at the price. Its 69K Euros in Europe! And they love it too. Normally have to pay 150K for what it has. 650kms range (btw BYD have a new battery that will go 1,000kms) Charge off my normal power point in the garage. 40-60$ to recharge from empty (Lexus was 100$ -120$ in fuel for the same range • Features of a 150K+ car • Battery is blade tech…only BYD has atm. Can't catch fire, if one blade reduces you replace it for 100$ not 10K • Battery is part of the body so protects…safest car on the road • Looks great • Good boot/Frunk space • Screens drive by android. Same a your phone • Big inside: Lots of storage space + lots of room to sit - 5 people 6 ft 4 with comfort ……more than I can list…VERY happy! I drive 200kms per day to Sydney and back….just charges over night in the garage for 10$

I don’t live in Bathurst. But I grew up there, and I work there. Come September people need to decide whether they want Facebook groups to run the town. I know how I’d vote.

Still a classic. Rock stars are usually full of shit, not super bright. But often the songs are great.

All fine and good until something needs to be done with a spider.

Sad to hear Barry Otto is battling Alzheimers. Though always difficult to know how much the sufferers suffer, Otto apparently is enjoying a new childhood, with hot chip sandwiches and strawberry milkshakes, and delight at simple things like rain. The dementias should make us think a lot harder about memory. Losing memory can seem like a tragedy, and it makes ordinary life very difficult to live. But just maybe you access a completely different way of being. An eternal present. Bergson pointed out that time doesn’t pass. The past never actually leaves us, it just becomes dormant. You experience that in moments of deja vu, or with smells or tastes that transport you instantly to a past time. How many days of your life do you actually remember? For example, do you remember being 5? Or 13? Or even 30? You might remember particular events. But I bet you’ve forgotten what you did on most of the days of your life. There are mysteries here.

Happy Birthday 🥳🥳🥳

April 2024 was the wettest month ever recorded in human history, across the planet. Mostly caused by rapidly heating oceans. Heating water produces evaporation, and then rain. The heat in the oceans is like a planetary-sized bomb.

It'd be worth a bet that Lithgow/Wang will be on Peter Dutton's list of nuke options, given neither town tends to vote for the LNP anyway, so they're less likely to lose important votes. Which is all any of this is about. Votes for the red meat loons who think windmills and solar panels are more dangerous than nuclear reactors. There will be no nuclear power stations in Australia. https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/a-big-risk-voters-wary-of-nuclear-replacing-coal-fired-power-20240506-p5fp9d

When you hire somebody from Venezuela, and they say 'so, who likes paella?' That's a good hire.

Was slowing down for a red light next to a big semi the other day, listening to it change down through about 10 gears to come to a stop, and then up through about 10-15 to get moving again. Electric trucks are a dream for truck drivers. They don't need gears. Gears are gutless combustion engines' way of keeping revs high, to get any power.

Mum went to hospital nearly 2 weeks ago for serious heart and lung issues. Was to be discharged tomorrow. Not now. I don’t think people really understand that viruses travel in networks. And it’s all the people who don’t give a shit, who get a ‘mild’ case, who then breed it and pass it on to the people who can’t defend themselves from it. Hoping for the best. Fed up with the stupidity and selfishness of it all. All so people can ‘live their best lives’.

Brilliant series, watching him stuff everything up on a farm, but with help struggle through. What makes it compelling is Jeremy confronting some of the realities of the environment and climate change, things he’s famous for making fun of, in keeping his own farm going. It’s redneck culture meets reality. And reality winning, and changing Jeremy. And it’s very, very funny.

The latest front in the transgender wars in the UK is gender-neutral (i.e. unisex) toilets. Transgender activists want school toilets to be unisex. Many women and girls understandably don’t. And are now called ‘transphobic’. Every woman I’ve asked about this graphic made the same point about a missing element, instantly. It doesn’t show boys sticking their phones under cubicle doors to take photos. Extremely common behaviour.

Ah travel. Fucking up the world one location at a time. Actually that's not fair. It can fuck up many thousands of locations, all at the same time. https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/travel-stories/overpopulated-st-fight-government-says-something-must-be-done-about-idyllic-queensland-spot/news-story/3270619ceb8e35e0776b115a55f8a6d8

Obviously unhinged. But there is also something here that’s important, for violence against women. Ask any police man or woman how many women are actually attracted to violent men. How many plead with police not to arrest the bastard beating them up, because they ‘love him’ and ‘he doesn’t mean it’. The joke phrase for it is love of the ‘bad boy’. It’s real. Women have their own Andrew Tates, here’s one of them. They’re much more numerous than we want to believe. And no this isn’t to make women to blame for the violence against them. It’s to understand all of the dimensions of the problem, rather than the social media team sports version of it.

Saw a 50-minute video demonstrating somebody's full-autonomous Tesla driving yesterday. The driver still has to supervise, but this is now like aeroplanes, or even trains. Much safer with a machine in charge. Anybody who thinks humans are better drivers hasn't spent much time on a road.

A window into the damage caused by social media to our societies. Mum is being treated for hospital-acquired Covid, in hospital. Yesterday a neighbour visited. Mum rang me afterwards, very upset. The neighbour had told her the treatments are poison, and that she should remove the IV lines to save herself. And get some ivermectin, and avoid the Covid vaccines. All the anti-vax Covid cooker Trumpian BS. I assured her she's on the best treatment. This is the society we now live in. Where social media makes everybody think they're an expert, on everything. I've ended multiple long-term relationships with previous close friends with beliefs like this. They're a danger to me, my family and society as a whole. It's time to draw a line.

“I can’t take Michael Bublé seriously. He’s got absolutely zero original to offer anything, so why does he even exist? Just re-rehashing songs in a big band style, exactly the way that Sinatra or Dean Martin or whoever else did them originally anyway, and who gives a damn, you know? To me, that’s the epitome of a pointless career.” Most wankers in the music business are obsessed with 'original material'. Which is usually pretentious crap when you hear it. Symphony orchestras play nothing but covers. Rock/pop is a whole industry devoted to living as a perpetual teenager. 'Original' means 'not like everybody else', usually an obsession for teens who didn't fit in. https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/may/10/mick-harvey-five-ways-to-say-goodbye-album-interview

This sets the locals off. Like Council puts the algae in the dam, or something. Welcome to climate change, blue-green algae in mid-autumn. The dam had only just reopened from the last algae alert. Quite a beautiful green. Deadly, but beautiful.

War graves are extra poignant when the guys who were alongside the dead sometimes only days before come to visit them. WW2 shot.

The solution is there already. Saw another BYD Seal in Bathurst yesterday. There are at least some smart people out there.

In the next 14 years the number of people aged 85 and over in Australia will double, from about half a million now, to nearly 1.2 million. The boomer demographic blip working its way through the population age profile. If you want to see that tidal wave coming, go to town at a lunch time now. Or even at breakfast, or afternoon tea. Restaurants, cafes and shops are increasingly overrun, with retirees. Like peak tourist season, but all year. The highest risk group for Covid too, but mostly oblivious to that. Dining out and socialising must take priority. There are no young workers to look after them. And they will demand gold-standard care. Nobody is having babies. The young can’t afford to have families.

I shudder watching pregnant women at work walking amongst people coughing, almost certainly with Covid, with no masks or other protections. Or them bringing in their newborns for dozens to breathe all over.

Sting once said a band is a way to avoid growing up. It’s why he left The Police, because he didn’t want to be a teenager forever. When you read the history of most bands, you’ll find the same thing, how for members it was a way to belong, socially, in teenage life. Also why there’s often an anxious hierarchy of ‘cool’, amongst musicians. Being in a band gives them a way to belong, in wider society. But that also places them in competition with other bands trying to do the same. So they end up having the same problem, within the industry itself, competing for status. It’s why I never went into music as a career. Can’t stand the culture, I’m happy to be free of teen life. Any musician who tells you this competition for status isn’t a burning part of the industry is lying.

An obsession of a rapidly ageing society.

Fuel bills getting to you? How does free fuel during the day, and $5 per tank overnight, sound?

Pre-1950, fresh air in schools was prioritised in many places, to prevent disease. Look at those windows. Now the air in schools is filthy. Unflued gas heaters, windows closed year-round, a Covid and flu and RSV soup. Research shows schools are the engine rooms of infectious disease in society. If we did this one simple thing, not only Covid would be gone. Also most flu and colds and RSV. We have contempt for children. That contempt is making us all sick, and the few young workers we have left to look after our rapidly ageing societies are now being damaged by disease as well.

Armidale. Applied for a special rate variation (SRV) of 58.8% last year. This was on top of a 10.5% SRV it had approved in 2021-22. It was approved because the independent regulator saw that the Armidale Council had nowhere near enough money to continue to provide basic services to the town. This is happening across the State. Decades of underfunding of public infrastructure are coming home to roost. Social media goes to war against councils, but our culture has to ask some serious questions about its priorities. You can see the long list of variations from just last year, here: https://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/Home/Industries/Local-Government/Reviews/Special-Variations-Minimum-Rates/Special-Variations-Minimum-Rates-2023-24#

I’m hearing from a lot of people getting Covid right now, the next wave is on. These waves won’t end, unless we end them. Smallpox created continuous epidemic waves of infection for several hundred years.

I don’t use social media to transact my personal life. But a happy Mother’s Day to my mum Janet, hopefully to be released from hospital tomorrow. On this day 56 years ago, she was also in hospital. Giving birth to me and Mike. I think we made the local paper.

Really nasty people have deliberately confused the public by mixing together two fundamentally different things. What’s called the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, where it is genuinely good for babies and children to get into the dirt, to build up a supply of microbes from there for their health. Having pets is good for this too. And the idea of doing the same for pathogenic organisms, like SARS2 (Covid). Where it’s absolutely NOT good for you to be infected, any number of times. It doesn’t strengthen your immune system, it attacks and weakens it. Politicians mixed these two stories for the obvious reason that they wanted to stop doing anything about Covid, and this way they got nearly everybody to think that getting Covid is actually good for you. 9 out of 10 people I talk to now believe this nonsense, that getting diseases over and over builds their immune system, like working out muscles. Somebody even asked if I was worried that wearing a mask was damaging my immune system. Ffs, stupid is winning. Thanks to everybody for birthday wishes yesterday! Had a very quiet day. My favourite sort.

This photo was taken 122 years ago, in 1902, by German scientist Adolf Miethe. We expect pictures of times long past to look old. It’s quite jarring for the people to look as alive and fresh as the people we see every day.

In politics a libertarian is somebody who thinks regulation and government oppress peoples’ freedom. It’s a dominant force in politics now. For example Trump is a libertarian. Opposition to Covid action is libertarian, saying it’s a restriction of our freedom. The term ‘lockdowns’ is libertarian, to make people think they were being locked up. The ideas have been tested to run a full community, in the US. Read and laugh.

This is Johnny McEntee. One of Trump’s closest acolytes, and likely to be responsible for a purge of thousands of government officials if Trump wins again. Several millennials and Gen Zs at work have told me they like Trump. Social media is destroying the world.

Our maple. One of the reasons coastal living isn’t for me is that you don’t get the same colours that come with the genuine 4 seasons at higher altitudes.

This is Johnny McEntee, one of Trump’s closest fanboy staffers. Responsible for hiring and firing Trump’s staff during his presidency, and predicted to head up ‘Project 2025’ if Trump wins again. Project 2025 includes the plan to sack tens of thousands of government officials who fail a ‘loyalty test’ to Donald Trump. North Korea is increasingly looking saner and more democratic than the US. Alarmingly many young and even older Australians think Trump is the bees knees. Social media is doing this, and will to us as well, if we don’t act. Our own local government elections this year are already dominated by social media candidates.

DIfferent times. ‘Spastic’ also a common term in those days. ‘Moron’ as well. Actually all terms that had specific scientific meanings, then weaponised by society.

Third world countries use wood for heating. Everyone else burns it recreationally. Like shitting in your neighbour's water supply.

This one got the petrolhead mind midgets hot under the collar too. Anything that does that is a good thing.

For a moment I thought they were referring to children without gender dysphoria being butchered and drugged to conform to a social media fad. But apparently not. Up to 90% of teenagers who apply for transgender corrective surgery and hormone therapy are same-sex attracted. Or in other words, they're gay. The true conversion therapy happening here, which the UK has just outlawed, is transgender activists convincing these teenagers they're actually the wrong sex. Many in the gay community are rightly angered by this conversion therapy by stealth, something they've had to fight against their whole lives.

Underneath fame and celebrity is often a prodigious talent that people forget is there. There’s not a popular younger artist today I can imagine being able to do this. Well, Jacob Collier obviously. But not many others. There’s a wonderful little known doco from Elton’s earliest years, where he did a tour of Russia with only a piano and percussionist (Ray Cooper). Lots of this sort of spontaneity on that, again, a prodigious talent.

Hmm, every Australian to get energy bill relief in the budget. Now I need an energy bill. Maybe it’s cash.

First long-term study of the new weight loss drugs, in this case semaglitude. Sustained weight loss. No new side effects.

Russell Davies, producer of Doctor Who, chose a black, gay doctor this season, and made one of the arch-villains a prominent US drag queen. Which of course set off the woke/anti-woke team sports online. That’s the point. It’s just another move in the same team sports. There’s of course nothing wrong with being black, gay or a drag queen. But it’s tedious and destructive of peoples’ lives to always make a team sport out of it. I also think JK Rowling is right here again, that men pretending to be women is not a victory for women. Pantomime dames, as Germaine Greer presciently called them. Misogyny’s ultimate victory is to have men now policing the very definition of a woman.

Happy Birthday🎉🎊

Happiest of birthdays!

Thanks to @[1257795447:2048:Christine] for the heads-up. BYD launch its hybrid ute tomorrow. 100 km full-electric range, up to 1000 km if you use the petrol and electric together for longer trips. The US now looking at 100% import tariffs on Chinese vehicles, to save its (useless) car industry. Australia may actually benefit, by not having a car industry, we can import brilliant cheaper Chinese vehicles for us. Unless, like AUKUS, we fall in behind the US with import tariffs, in our great Judaeo-Christian battle against the Yellow Peril. The country that builds everything we use and keeps our entire economy afloat. https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/byd-shark-ute-revealed-in-full-145850/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3d7rvd3LtPffCoFKL0rTSTy-XmrC9Ag5n7JwNPSZKhgoIDyup-_ORakxM_aem_Afv0voiPhrjPoLEAZLaGzn4Q48U3ivEVc3yE_0ehEsyQe6Dhck3mf8b2RC_TanUYhIueOrYSN3yuEpHiMmXl3PJr

This is the first of 2 mid-size SUVs BYD will launch in Australia next week too. Another plug-in hybrid for those with 'range anxiety'. (By the way there are much cheaper ways to be rid of range anxiety. Like reading a book.) Then a larger full-electric SUV later in the year. https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/byd-seal-u-becomes-byd-sealion-6-145849/?__source=editorialArticle&driver_crosssell=editorial.in.article.link

I am aware some who see my posts about transgender issues probably think I've lost the plot, siding with rednecks and bigots. But I despise them as well, a pox on all of the teams in these debates. These ideas are wrong, and extremely dangerous. Gary for example is Professor Emeritus at Rutgers, Lincoln and Oxford, and sees exactly the same thing happening. We don't THINK. We join a team, and bash away at the other teams.

Apparently has sold 1003 copies in total.

I’ve been talking about Covid for the entire pandemic. Here’s a good example of why. I posted that mum was in hospital, for serious heart and lung issues. About 10 days later she was due to be released, but had a bad cough. The family asked that she be tested for Covid (the hospital hadn’t). She tested positive. Picked up in the hospital. There were no precautions being taken in the hospital by staff, as I’ve repeatedly posted about, the NSW Government is determined to pretend Covid is over. She’s in a very high risk group for Covid. 5 days of IV antiviral treatment later, she was released. The hospital didn’t test her for Covid before release. I assume getting the bed empty was the priority. She got home and tested herself the next day. Still positive. Meaning her partner was exposed for the entire night. He tested positive today. My sister is also positive, picked up while visiting mum in the hospital. Their GP has now prescribed an antiviral drug for my stepfather that GPs were told to stop using in 2022. This is ’living with’ Covid. We treat dogs and cattle better. There is no excuse for infecting already seriously ill people with an avoidable lethal virus, while under care in hospital. I’ll be taking this further.

As @[585851453:2048:Adrian] explains so clearly here, the relationship between your head, neck and back is a central indicator of how well you are functioning as a human being. If you are chronically tight there, you’re not functioning well. Your entire body is led from this area, it’s the ‘primary control’, as Alexander said, drawing upon the work of Magnus. This is something I retain from the Alexander Technique. What I do with it is different though. For example, you will never ‘free’ the tightness in this area, by focusing on this area. Just as you will never free tightness anywhere in your body, by stretching or massaging or doing anything else to that tight area. You can waste many $$ at a physio or chiro by not understanding this. What you can do is just add an awareness of this area, to whatever you’re doing. And then notice what tightens it, and what makes it not tight, in what you do with your *whole* body, inside the activity you’re engaged with. Most generally it will tighten when you are out of balance, as a way to protect you from falling over. You may only be slightly out of balance. Because your body follows your head, if you’re out of balance these muscles will tighten to stop your head from moving further out of balance, which would then make your whole body move out of balance, and fall over. This region of your body is therefore an excellent guide for you, for optimum breathing and circulation and everything else. But a trap if you focus on it alone. You have to feel it within your wider activity, as an indicator of your balance, in what you’re doing. Ultimately you ‘free’ this area by freeing your attention from your body entirely, and allowing your attention to be out in the world. Your head, neck, back and the rest of you will then upon up, and follow your attention, releasing you elastically out into the world and your activity. You will still be aware of your body, but you won’t be attending to it, to try to get it to do anything. It will do it for you, you need to leave it alone. You will just be aware of it opening up and elastically supporting you in your activity in everyday life.

What happens when you use social media as a platform for your actual life. It’s alarming when you think about it that tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are now providing the infrastructure for ordinary peoples’ social lives, invited into peoples’ most intimate inner sanctums, and then monetising it for commercial gain. They are literally owning our everyday lives now. This is doing terrible damage to people individually, through being plugged into an online culture of constant imitative comparison, with algorithms then feeding it into retail sales. And also to society as a whole, by re-routing all of our necessary adult decisions through the popularity contest of social media. Imagine mixing with people off social media who did nothing but talk about themselves all day. Each to their own.

Happy Birthday 🎉🎊🎂 Bull Lady!

Bigger than a Hilux or Ranger. Uses much less fuel (none at all for around-town driving, where it can do full electric for up to 100 km). 1000 km on a tank of fuel for longer trips. And more powerful/faster than a twin-turbo petrol V6 Ford Ranger Raptor, currently Australia's fastest ute. The BYD Shark will do 0-100 in 5.7 seconds. That's 4 seconds faster than equivalent other utes. Game on.

Ultimately the federal government needs to stop using taxation revenue to buy useless things, like nuclear submarines, and give it back to towns. Or even a fraction of it back to towns. In the meantime people spend more on their personal recreation, including dining out and take away, and travel, than they do on their public infrastructure. Shift the framing. Investing in your town is an investment in its future.

This company does not muck around. Mid-sized SUV hybrid now available too. A larger full-electric SUV to come this year too, I believe. Driveaway price just over $50K for the base variant. Premium version $55K.

The Tesla Roadster in matte black - tell me you wouldn’t like it in the driveway.

If I felt that the people who ask me why I still wear a mask could actually read a graph, I might share this one with them. The relative risk of neurodegenerative (A) and cerebrovascular (B) disease, after being infected by Covid. Alzheimers and heart attack/stroke, amongst others. The young have a *higher* relative risk than the old. The more times you get infected, the higher these relative risks go. You can’t infect your way out of infection. Imagine having to even point that out, but here we are. So many sick people again right now.

I know many are thinking about EVs for their next car. To share my thoughts on the relative merits of the two biggest options right now, Tesla and BYD. Other makers like Kia, Toyota, Subaru and European brands make excellent EVs too, though they’re usually more expensive (for now). BYD. Pros: Cheapest high-quality EVs available, with the most features. Excellent and long warranties. Cons: require annual servicing, which for regional people means a trip to the city mostly for now. Not as efficient an EV as the Teslas i.e. use more electricty per km, though not hugely. Don’t have their own charging network, for long trips, though there are many fast-chargers out there already. TESLA. Pros: the most efficient EVs by quite a margin i.e. use the least electricity. Funky design and best software of any EV. Their own super charging network (with the best chargers). No servicing required, and any that is required, they'll send a technician to your home. Cons: warranty a bit stingy. Personally I find it difficult to choose between them. Living in a regional area the Tesla may just win, because of no need for servicing, and the supercharger network for longer trips. Remember EVs rarely have issues that need servicing anyway, they have next to no moving parts except the motor, and electric motors are extremely reliable and mostly maintenance-free.

You can try to bullshit reality. It always wins.

It's more than 2 years since we were told Covid was over. Have people figured out yet that we were lied to?

Now you can pay extra to get a Big Mac the size it used to be, before they downsized it. Ain't shrinkflation grand. Grand Big Mac even. Still, less than half the cost of a Matt Moran burger. As Rumpole said, you have to be rich to afford small portions.

Interior of the new BYD Shark plug-in hybrid ute.

One of the last refuges for anti-social bastards is driving. I have to drive a lot of kms every week, and nowhere in society do people behave more appallingly than on the roads. Few follow a speed limit. They don’t understand that the main function of speed limits is not even safety, it’s to space out traffic, to allow it to flow. Vehicles increasingly force their way into moving traffic rather than wait even a few seconds. Road rage is a genuine epidemic. And all the while, people will claim to be magnificent drivers. But…they’re just not. They’ll tell you ‘good driving’ is being able to get the car erfectly into the apex of a corner, smooth the throttle application, use fancy up and down shifting etc. All things racing drivers have to do that are mostly irrelevant on public roads. Good driving is driving in a way that makes the road better for others. 94% of serious accidents are caused by bad driving, often by the same people who claim they’re magnificent drivers, ‘driving to the conditions’ (i.e. ignoring the rules, using public roads as a racetrack). This is the context for the rapid introduction now of more automated driving. The anti-social bastards hate it, because it will force them to drive socially and not anti-socially. Let them whine like the babies they are. You just can’t drive as well as a machine, for most driving. It’s why commercial aeroplanes never let pilots fly for most of their flights. Nothing is as relentlessly ‘on-task’ as a machine. Human attention is puny and easily distracted, and human emotion is a lethal addition.

The Beatles playing a dance hall of 19 people, in 1961.

‘Living with Covid’. You may think, hang on, that’s whooping cough. That’s what Covid does to your immune system. Turns it off to let other infectious diseases in. It’s why everybody is now so sick, with everything.

Salt has been a staple in foods forever. But its close partnership with pepper on every table only began in the 17th century, at the advice of the chef to King Louis XIV of France, Francois Pierre La Varenne. You have to get the proportions just right for them to really become magic as a combined flavour. Salt and pepper squid territory. Salt and pepper chips are amazing. Salt and pepper schnitzel a sensation.

The brutal reality of adult life is that it’s just high school life, hidden behind fancy words. Take any major issue facing societies, and history shows that no change occurred without disaster or catastrophe. Nothing else will break social hierarchies. Housing just one more example. The only thing that has ever driven prices down is disaster. Without that, everybody just protects their own turf. Their own ‘team’.

Musicians only become billionaires in societies where adult life has been replaced with adolescent life. Just a social fact. Not a judgment about musicians. Definitely a disaster for societies, where adult life disappears. That’s what we’re living right now.

When even the Financial Review is calling BS. This is Dutton’s new attempt at ‘Stop the Boats’. But the majority of voters now aren’t oldies terrified of migrant invasion. They’re younger. Without migration there are no workers. Australia needs to understand that, fast. All this policy would do is slash the only migrant intake with minor political kickback - university students. None of whom build or buy houses. Foreign students are also Australia’s second-biggest export earner.

Dick was a Professor of Infectious Disease and Chief of two Canadian hospital systems. I thought of his advice while scrolling through photos on social media of people happily spreading Covid. Living their best (short) lives.

Can you do everything you do, as all of you? To explain what I mean. See here a child picking something up. And an adult. The adult ‘bends down’, meaning using their hips like a hinge, and the lower half of their body becomes frozen by tight muscles, doing nothing. They’re only using about half their body. (If those muscles didn’t tighten by the way, the person would roll head-first into the ground. The body is smart, it always looks to protect your balance.) The child on the other hand uses their whole body to pick the thing up. There’s no ‘bending down’. They don’t have to think about it, it takes years of NOT using your whole body, as an adult, to learn to only use bits of it at a time. Try using your whole body, in everything you do. Sitting, standing, walking, playing an instrument. Anything. Like the child you don’t have to ‘do’ anything, to do that. No need to think it out. Just shift your perception of you to include your whole body, rather than just bits. It will do the rest, no need to ‘bend the knees’ or other rubbish people say. The body will figure all that out. It will change your life. Your entire body will be ‘worked out’, by everything you do. You won’t need a gym. Your breathing will be effortless, as will your circulation.

Crimson Snow apples are back, after most were wiped out locally by hail last year. Amazing apples.

The blue and green line is what we're told Covid is. But Covid is the RED line. Those epidemic waves will go on indefinitely, unless we slow the virus down. Smallpox infected and killed for centuries, in epidemic waves. Covid will not go away on its own.

Listen to the bitchiness of it. Obsession with status. Artists who ascend the status hierarchies of the industry to the level of ‘cool’ could shit in a cup and people would swear it was the best thing they’ve ever seen or heard. Nothing like being in a band to avoid growing up.

In Asia this cartoon would be met with disbelief, or incomprehension. They wouldn’t be able to imagine a culture making fun of being educated. It’s why they’re taking over the world, while we build nothing except vastly overpriced houses.

With the September local government elections hurtling towards us and candidates beginning to campaign, just a reminder how the last notable election decided by social media turned out.

I almost felt sorry for the guy in the WRX this morning, as he disappeared rapidly behind me in the rearview mirror when the lights went green. It might damage him emotionally, to have this done to him by a Toyota Corolla hybrid. A COROLLA. Hybrid! He might lie awake at night. If only he had a proper motor in his car.

Our education is now hopelessly fragmented. You find very few who study both the sciences and the humanities, for example. Or even study either of them. For most of my lifetime Einstein has been suggested as a type of pinnacle of human genius. Einstein is a mental pygmy next to Shakespeare.

A lawyer friend is collecting the data for NSW hospitals, through freedom of information laws. NSW is extremely secretive. People should be in jail.

If you’re over the age of 50 and you still give a fuck what anybody thinks about you, get on with adulting. You’re running out of time.

Why anybody going to an election promising to slash immigration is lying to you. We desperately need every worker we can find. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2024/05/22/michael-pascoe-renewables-construction-inflation?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240522&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

Gina wants another tax cut. The subsidies to her industry would be enough to fund free child care for the entire country. https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/gina-rinehart-tells-anthony-albanese-to-cut-fuel-excise-migration/news-story/bb84ef69e8a19506e7e3ae3e1f678e7c

I worked at Oz's only nuclear reactor. And still every day somebody tells me on social media that I don't understand the nuclear thing, and I should watch some guy they like on YouTube.

Remember how bad 2023 was for temperature of the oceans? We have a new winner.

The sun up close. Plenty of room for travellers.

The idea of using AI to re-create another artist’s voice. Some are horrified, but how is it different to millions of guitarists all using the same Fender Stratocaster? All AI is doing here is make a famous voice into an ‘instrument’ other musicians can then play.

Lithgow had two coal plants. One was smack bang in the middle of Wang, and only a few minutes away. Now shut down. Mt Piper is not far away. Local doctors have tried to raise awareness for years that the health of the town is alarming.

Somebody asked me the other day how long I was going to keep wearing a mask. I asked them how many times they were willing to get Covid. Another asked me if I was damaging my immune system by not allowing myself to be infected. Rank stupidity is killing people.

To give a flavour of the dumb times we live in. In the UK they’ve had a blood infection scandal, where in the 1980s and 90s unscreened blood was used, resulting in tens of thousands of people catching diseases like Hepatitis B and C, and HIV. 3000 died. The UK government has now apologised, and is offering billions in compensation, saying ‘this should never happen again’. The same UK government’s Covid policies have killed over 230,000 Brits. Nobody blinks an eye. They don’t here either.

Happy birthday 🎂🎈🎈

Happy Birthday🎂🎉🎊

Many diehard EV-sceptics are clinging to hydrogen as an alternative. It's almost as appallingly inefficient as current petrols and diesels. And it costs a fortune to produce, and is even more technically complex than petrol and diesel engines. Electric motors are beautiful, far superior technology, older than combustion engines too. Unbelievable the crap the modern world puts in the way of the obvious.

Blue asphalt in Doha, to reduce heat generated by the roads.

It seems the local member was excited about the prospect of nuclear power, until somebody told him Mt Piper and Wang are on the list of possible locations. How many Lithgow folk know that? Good morning Springfield! There are two enormous elephants in Peter Dutton’s nuclear room. Firstly he will need to build more coal-fired power stations to cover the gap while it takes decades to build nuclear stations, the existing ones won’t last. So he’ll need to build two lots of power stations, and the taxpayer will have to pay for both, the industry has zero interest in either. The same man who said renewables ‘have to stand on their own two feet’, without government help. Secondly nuclear power stations use a LOT of water. Where they exist overseas they’re often near the coast, to use seawater for cooling, to protect against drought shortages. (Solar and wind farms don’t use a drop of water, are super cheap, and fast to put together.) The fact this is even a discussion shows just how stupid society now is.

I can’t talk about Council business. But I can comment on FB fun fairs. I notice the main FB French Revolution team has now split into two warring factions with visceral hatred for each other. I think that symbolises the sort of stability any town can expect if it elects Facebook to run it.

SO many people are sick right now. I’ve heard from so many schools in particular who are struggling to even function. The things is, there’s a pretty simple way to make this a lot better. Put 2 or 3 purifiers in each classroom. There’s an upfront cost, but it pays for itself many times over with reduced illness for staff and students. Have your hand sanitiser there for things like gastro outbreaks, but washing hands is USELESS for Covid, flu, colds, RSV etc. They’re *airborne* diseases. The IKEA Starkivinds are great - cheap, and the filters are super cheap. You can even configure to act as a table in the room. You need them to run at a fairly high rate, so there’ll be fan noise, but we run ordinary fans in the heat and nobody even notices the noise. And OPEN THE WINDOWS in the classrooms, follow Florence Nightingale. In winter there’s cold, but you can still have them open a bit, with heating still running. You MUST get fresh air into the rooms.

From November in NSW this year, you can get up to $2400 from the NSW Government to add a battery to your solar installation, as part of their Peak Demand Reduction Scheme. They should have been targeting households a long time ago, but better late than never. https://www.energy.nsw.gov.au/nsw-plans-and-progress/regulation-and-policy/energy-security-safeguard/peak-demand-reduction#:~:text=The%20Peak%20Demand%20Reduction%20Scheme%20is%20NSW's%20new%20initiative%20aimed,electricity%20retailers%20and%20large%20users.

The 'natural beauty' of a monocultural crop of European pines will be interspersed with some European windmills. The humanity.

Rock stars are so full of shit. Remember how in the 1960s they were ushering in a new world? Horseshit. Those same 60s stars are now some of the richest people on the planet, with about a dozen houses each and private jets. Today’s rock stars could have been a real force to end this pandemic. Instead they retreated to their luxury estates while the rest of us worked to support them, getting repeatedly infected. And waited until they could get gigging again. Gigs where their audience often now pick up a lethal virus. The rock stars can afford to live forever without working again, if they get really sick. Their audience can’t.

Talk to a Millennial or Gen Z. The anger is white hot. And the old remain largely absolutely clueless and dismissive about how the young are being screwed. Both major parties are still heavily wedded to a world now gone, to the older voter. Their primary vote has been in free fall for years.

Don’t believe what you read on social media.

The Unsatisfactory Husbands Club. Thought this was very powerful, I’ve posted a lot about love and how little I think we understand it, thinking of it as a feeling. The stories of these couples shows what happens when that initial rush of feelings unfolds in actual life, over years. Loved the phrase that we are mostly incapable of seeing the ‘icebergs’ waiting for us in a relationship, in that first flush of emotions. And that a person can be ‘swooped up’ too young - couples who met while very young are often riding a totally dysfunctional train, the article points out. What is love? I think it’s absolutely not a set of feelings, and relationships prove this. No relationship will last long based on feelings. Love is two things - firstly recognising the absolute difference of each person, as an individual. And then living the sparks the clash of those differences between people create. It’s how a person is different to you that attracts you to them in the first place. That excites you like nothing else. And yet in relationship mode we move Heaven and Earth to try to be the same person. Often out of the necessity of trying to organise a joint life. But it’s those differences and the sparks they cause, not always happy sparks, that are love. And sometimes they’re the wrong differences and wrong sparks, and the relationship can’t work, or will be always dysfunctional. We’re born alone, we live alone, and we die alone. Even in friendship and relationship. That’s not a contradiction, it’s that aloneness that generates the sparks. We don’t understand that it’s respecting that aloneness that generates real love. Many have such a weakly developed sense of their own self that they substitute an idealised idea of friendships and relationships, to avoid their essential, unavoidable aloneness. It makes them co-dependent on others, using them to provide their sense of self-worth. And as the article says, they then live their entire lives as teenagers. They don’t mature, they have ‘besties’ into middle and old age. Mass schooling transformed our adult lives into adolescent lives, so our emotional immaturity actually meets no correcting obstacles in adult life, which is increasingly just high school. Social media pours petrol on this fire.

Jimmy Fallon is part of a new breed of talk show host where everything is about him, the host. And part of the spreading culture of commercial radio too, where everything is about cutesy pranks and stunts. Imagine being a celebrity rocking up to these shows and being constantly asked to be a bit player in one of their cutesy set ups. Incredibly tedious. ‘Can’t we just have a chat?’ is what I’d say.

The best current estimate is that nearly HALF of the country have had Covid this year. Are people sick of the fairy tale of ‘living with Covid’ yet? Notice this continuous infection isn’t stopping Covid, or turning it into a cold or the flu, as people were told. That was a lie.

Have a look from 9:30, when the NZ Education Minister is asked about teachers getting continuously sick now from Covid, and their very high risk of Long Covid. The government’s solution? More sick leave for teachers, and more funding for casuals! Imagine any other workplace where a lethal WHS danger to life was dealt with by offering more sick leave and casual staff. ‘Yes, there’s asbestos here, but if you get a bit breathless just take some time off and we’ll get some casuals in to breathe it in instead for a few days’. As the interviewer says, the more you let people get sick, the worse the whole problem gets. Politicians won’t touch this, because the health of an entire generation of children is much less popular than peoples’ recreational lifestyles. Their travel, entertainment, dining out etc. Kidults.

Social media is a class act.

Every generation learns painful lessons, that the passage of time then makes later generations forget. Again, we once knew that the way to fight infectious disease in societies was to ventilate schools. In fact kids were sometimes even taught outside, to avoid things like TB. We need to open the windows in schools. Always, year-round. In winter this is cold, yes, we need to run the heaters at the same time, and have the windows open even just a bit. And use air purifiers to help clean the air. This doesn’t just protect kids. Schools drive infections deep into communities. They’re the hubs of most infectious disease. They’re the main reason we’re all always sick with colds, and flus. And now with Covid. Florence Nightingale revolutionised health care in the same way. She designed hospitals where the windows could be always open. You won’t find a hospital now that has an opening window, anywhere.

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. W.B.Yeats

Children whose mothers had Covid while pregnant have up to 10 times higher neuro-developmental delays than other children. Just another joy of living with Covid that isn't immediately apparent, when it doesn't kill you straight away. I see zero protections for pregnant mums and their babies from Covid, anywhere. Even in hospitals.

When Chaplin died in 1977 (same year as Elvis), he was buried in Switzerland. In 1978 robbers dug up his body and demanded money to return it (!!). They were caught and the body found, 11 weeks later. Chaplin was reburied in a vault, under several feet of concrete.

A Judas Goat. Trained to lead other animals (sheep, cattle) to slaughter. The goat is spared, to continue the work. There are also Judas Cows. All social animals, including humans, follow leaders. Right now we have Judas leaders leading us to Covid slaughter. People would rather die than break away from the herd.

Newer RATs test for flu at the same time. Overseas they even have RATs that test for RSV as well, on the same test. I find people aren’t testing for Covid now because they don’t want to know if they have it. It would force them to question their belief that it’s all over.

Here's a new word for a Western world operating at peak stupidity. 'Un-retiring'. I can't imagine massive demand from retired teachers to enter the shitshow of Covid-infested schools, particularly as they're in higher-risk age brackets for the disease.

'Flooding the zone with shit', have a read. This is how very bad people have managed to destroy trust in expertise in society. Meaning every person is now a supposed expert on everything, and actual experts on things can't get a thing done because they have to wade through this flood of shit. All very deliberate, so that people will then place their trust in a 'Great Leader', like Trump, rather than in expertise of various forms. Putin was a pioneer, "to engineer a fog of disinformation, producing just enough distrust to ensure that the public can never mobilize around a coherent narrative."

Beyond me why people still buy straight petrol or diesel vehicles. When your beliefs cost you that much money, it's time to read a few books. https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/byds-new-hybrids-can-get-from-melbourne-to-brisbane-with-range-to-spare

I think the pandemic has been 'over' more than 9 times now.

This is the sort of thing that should make Australia the Saudi Arabia of the next 2 centuries. The richest country in the world. Instead we have people cheering on an old economy run on oil, from Saudi Arabia.

Surely the club should just let everybody else get Covid too, and players play with it? Aren’t we all ‘living with’ Covid?

If you’re in NSW and you have kids between 5-14, and they’re not vaccinated for whooping cough (pertussis), I’d get that done right now.

Try this mind filter. In a photo, who are the people looking at? Who are they communicating with, in their feelings and expressions?

I continue this theme because of the ridiculous delusion that if we ignore problems, they go away. They don't go away.

'Cough' notifications, Canberra. 9 May on the left. Today on the right.

One of my favourite things in the whole world is workplaces full of smug 'living with Covid' zombies, who are always sick, while the handful who take it seriously and take precautions cover all of their work.

I’m not sure Australians know that Chinese cars now outsell Korean cars from Hyundai and Korea here. BYD’s sales have jumped sixfold in just a year, for example. Meanwhile the US and Europe do what they’ve always done, protect their fossil fuel-dominated economies, including their car industries, by putting massive tariffs on Chinese EVs. Hilarious. Fossil fuels have received trillions in subsidies for decades, enormous government cash handouts. This is that industry still at work, running its puppets in government. Thankfully we don’t have a car industry, so hopefully we don’t impose the same tariffs and keep getting superb EVs at unbelievable prices.

Several younger people at work are open fans of Donald Trump. He’s a social media President. We have no idea how much we’re going to hell in a handbasket.

These are the 3 self-proclaimed ‘Great Leaders’ in the world today. What do they all have in common? Their power came from popular revolutions. Populism. People forget both the Russian and Chinese leaders today came from two popular revolutions, in China and Russia, in the early 20th century. Revolutions for the people, by the people, all that sort of nonsense. Popularity causes tyranny. We know that’s true in schools, we’ve all lived it. Adult life isn’t any different. There’s not one single way in which the popularity of something is a measure of how correct or important it is. This is why elections are the greatest enemies of democracy. Mass elections are only a century old. They allowed high school populism to undermine all of our democratic institutions. If you think that’s a stretch, Trump’s supporters actually launched an assault on the US parliament. And he’s out there right now trashing judges and the law. The currency of social media is also popularity. Likes. For that reason it’s pouring petrol on the fire of turning all adult life into high school. Run by popularity. Trump won the presidency using Twitter.