September 2024

The wholesale price of electricity is negative all day today, from 6am until 5.30pm. (The red circle.) Coal generators have to pay retailers to use the power, or if you buy wholesale electricity yourself through a platform like Amber, you won’t just get it for free. You’ll be paid to take it. Coal generators keep generating because ‘baseload’ power is too expensive to switch on and off. Like a tap you have to keep running even when you don’t need water. Its days are numbered.

Massive shedding of ice from Greenland and the Arctic, into the sea.

This is the UK. The same thing is now happening here. The same people who forced kids to be infected repeatedly in schools with a lethal virus that trashes their immune systems, are now getting punitive when those kids are away sick. Their solution? Come to school sick. Or else. Meantime people like me, masking and taking precautions, are into their third week again covering for staff who do nothing to avoid Covid, who are home in bed, seriously sick. So I have to work like a fucking slave to compensate for others’ toxic stupidity.

Sheep, despite their reputation, are very smart animals. Unlike people on social media.

David is one of Australia's leading Long Covid experts. As he says, there are no treatments. Symptomatic relief at best. I'm sorry to those who desperately want to believe the pandemic is over. It just isn't, and retaining any sort of life expectancy now depends on you believing the opposite.

Elections are a disaster for democracy. Many confuse democracy *with* elections, but they're not the same thing. Democracy is over 2000 years old, elections are only 100. An election is a popularity contest, used as a tool to select leaders. We don't select staff or managers in workplaces using popularity, because that would be ridiculous. But we select who runs towns, States and countries with popularity and wonder why things are a mess. No serious problems can ever be solved using popularity. If the needed action was popular, it would already be happening. Elections turn all adult life into high school life. High schools run on popularity.

The crazy thing is, beating Covid is actually quite simple. Covid isn't everywhere, all the time. It spreads from small hubs, where it breeds. Mostly schools. You can see it in the data. Infections take off every time school goes back. If we targeted infection in schools, Covid woud be history. Most Covid infections start in schools. You only need to slow infections, exponential decay will do the rest. Fast.

In a rapidly heating world it’s important to know how much heat the human body can withstand before the heat kills you. (Heat is already the greatest killer of all natural disasters, killing more than all other natural disasters combined.) The existing science said 35 degrees C wet-bulb temperature is the upper limit. Which is 35 degrees at 100% humidity. Beyond that threshold for any length of time and you’re dead, your body can’t cool down. You can reach that threshold at a whole range of different temperatures and humidity combinations (dotted line on the graph). The most recent work shows the threshold may actually be quite a bit lower. You can see that in the other two graphs, for older and younger people. You can use things like air conditioning to help stay below these thresholds. But those technologies and the power networks linked to them also have upper limits of operating temperature, which climate change is already causing to be exceeded in some places. And most of the world doesn’t have air conditioning, and is unlikely to any time soon.

I see the social media ninnies in WA managed to get their big windfarm pushed 30km offshore, because of the 'view'. Gladstone, Queensland. The gas industry.

Nothing is cheaper than solar. Nothing else is even close. This includes the cost of storage, for 'when the sun doesn't shine' (which is when windmills do most of the work anyway).

It's hard not to be rude with people who deny that climate change is an emergency. They're like people who open doors on planes, mid-flight.

Crowds at Westmead Station in 1955, excited to see the new electric train. Electric transport is just as exciting today. Unless social media is your guide in the world.

'Kidman shared this sweet photo to mark their 18th wedding anniversary." Obviously a photographer was hired to capture this spontaneous moment. It's not just celebrities staging their whole lives now this way. We're living inside a lifestyle magazine.

What I love about this one is the sheer amount of ‘grunt’ noise the petrol shitbox makes, going exactly nowhere.

This is what answering a Council switchboard is like, every single day.

The future of Lithgow is in this graph. On current trends that future is about 5 years.

This is why both physics and economics will destroy fossil fuels. This is Germany, not atypical. Almost two-thirds of the energy generated by fossil fuels is wasted, as heat. The grey box at top right. Renewables don't have to replace all of the energy fossil fuels provided, only about a third of it. They don't waste energy.

“There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences.” I try to get this message out. Unfortunately for too many the only guidance they use is 'what everybody else is doing'.

The Waratah super battery at Munmorah is ready to go. The biggest power source ever connected to the Australian grid. Took only a year to build. A nuclear power plant would take 10-15 years and cost at least 30 times as much.

My living with Covid story for the day is that every single person in my office at work is now home sick. Except me.

New Disco Clubs, where women in their 40s and 50s get to pretend they’re 18 again for a few hours. Of course that’s the culture now, 18 forever. But there’s also an interesting Covid angle here. Why do some people go to a crowded mass gathering like this where nearly everybody catches Covid, and other times nobody does? Politicians want you to believe that’s because we’re getting better immunity to Covid. That’s horseshit. Covid is a pathogen that has low dispersion, meaning most people don’t spread it. But the people who do, spread it to EVERYBODY. ‘Superspreaders’. If you went to an event like this and didn’t catch Covid, it’s because there were no superspreaders there. But have just one superspreader attending, and most of the crowd will go home infected. It’s actually quite easy to control a virus that acts like this. You target places where lots of people mingle. The virus can be history in months, as it was in Australia at the beginning of the pandemic.

This is from 2021. Brian had a stroke last week. Stroke is a common side effect of Covid infection. Nobody will join the dots for many stroke victims.

The Australian approach to the big fossil fuel companies is to touch your toes and not even ask them to use lube.

Victorian data for percentage of people whose hospitalisation for Covid was caused by the patient catching Covid IN hospital. NSW is I think even worse. A national disgrace.

Plug-in hybrids (PHEVS - hybrids with bigger batteries that can do electric-only driving for most weekly drives) are hugely popular now, because of 'range anxiety'. They're great cars. But this could be a problem, because range anxiety is a mental illness, not an actual physical issue for most drivers. If carmakers tool up their factories for PHEVs, they'll be reluctant to change them again to go to full-EVs. This is the damage social media is doing to our societies. Weaponised dumb ideas on social media lead to actual physical changes to our social infrastructrure.

For years those who refused to believe 'house prices always go up' have been laughed at.

Lots of pilots have had Covid, including those flying you on holidays. The military actually measure the impact of Covid infections, on their pilots. It's very, very bad numbers. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/02/09/military-pilots-reported-1700-more-medical-incidents-during-pandemic-pentagon-says-they-just-had.html

Love this. Though I find with fun t-shirts, it’s like walking around telling the same joke all day, over and over.

This is ‘range anxiety’ at work, again a social media fiction. These platforms are wrecking balls through societies. The Chinese may save us (they’re smart, they don’t allow these platforms). Incidentally ‘slowing demand’ is deceptive, EV sales are still growing. They’re the only category of vehicle that has growing sales.

In Germany, the average number of sick days per worker every year more than doubled, after 2021. Another mystery, Scoob!

Just a brilliant time to be alive. A new industrial revolution. And so many of the public are instead trapped in the putrid sewer of social media bullshit, missing the whole show.

This is the reason anti-EV and anti-renewable piffle proliferates on social media. Collapsing fossil fuel companies fund it, to try to maintain their status. It's over, they're just trying to buy time.

Because the pollution is invisible, we don’t notice it. Just think of the air quality improvements when we get petrols and diesels off the road.

Australian owner of a BYD Seal gives their impressions after 10,000 km of motoring. Note the total silence of the cabin as they talk too. This car is a genuine unbelievable steal at the price you pay.

Brought to you by the incompetence and corruption of local government.

Happy Birthday! 🎊🎂🎈

I’d be sceptical about the fitness industry’s claims about ‘core strength’. The core is not a group of muscles (usually they mean the abdominals). That part of our body is a sophisticated interplay of a range of things, most fundamentally your breathing too. The movement of the diaphragm and pelvic floor are integral to how the ‘core’ operates. It’s the dynamic interplay between all of those components of the core which leads to healthy functioning. Almost never is anything there too weak. Trying to strengthen parts of it, like the abdominal muscles, is more likely to throw the relationship between all the parts of the core even further out of whack. Often something like slow breathing a few times a day is the healthiest thing you can do for your core, if it’s out of balance. Not stretches and building muscle.

Happy Birthday! 🎁🎂 Have a great day Rach :)

Mt Arthur coal mine, in the Hunter Valley. To file under ‘windmills spoil the view’. Some facts about it, a window into the industry. - BHP owns it, and in recent years all of its coal has gone offshore - it’s Australia’s largest coal mine - BHP has been trying to sell it for 4 years. Nobody will buy it. - In the early 2000s, it was valued at $2 billion. BHP now values it at negative $200 million. It will pay somebody to take it. Coal is dead. Coal mining towns are therefore also dead, unless they have different work lined up.

Posture isn’t a great word, because it tends to make people think it’s something they need to do. To hold themselves in a certain position. The concept of ‘neutral posture’ helps, it means sitting or standing in a way that requires no effort. Balanced. Probably the number one best thing you can do for your health is to have neutral posture when sitting or standing, and diaphragmatic (‘belly’) breathing. Those are connected things, non-neutral posture will also produce bad breathing, and vice versa. Bad breathing will cause tightening and strains. You don’t need to do either of those things, you just need to be balanced and not straining for neutral posture, and then the belly breathing will do itself. But it’s helpful to check for any feelings of strain, and that your belly is expanding when you breathe rather than your chest, as indicators of whether you need to adjust.

Social media connects people like this to each other, making them a powerful political force of rank stupidity. Before social media they were just isolated individuals in the community. Even local government elections here in Australia are seeing this right now.

When we bought a home, the kids were keen on something brand new. But I’ve always been glad we went with an older home, because it was clearly solid, otherwise it wouldn’t still be standing. Time is an excellent test. The only minor issues it’s ever had are in the newer extension the previous owners added. The statistics on the quality of new homes in Australia are appalling.

These guys got to choose how to launch WIndows 95. And they chose this.

Humans are incapable of following a speed limit. If they did, traffic would flow much more smoothly. Which is why eventually more control over driving will shift to networked cars, and away from drivers. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-10/drivers-speeding-up-while-being-overtaken-are-breaking-the-law/104325774?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

A good example of how social media has dumbed down the world to probably terminal levels, is imagining in my childhood if somebody had said 'we'll give you a car with much more power, that needs no maintenance, makes no noise and produces no pollution, that you can fuel for nothing from sunshine.' People would have been unbelievably excited. Today? 'Give me my $2/litre wankpanzer!'

Donald Trump in the current Presidential debate says migrants are eating peoples' dogs and cats.

Curious how this will play out with fans. A lot of the appeal of the Foos to many is Grohl's personality.

We’re living in a revolution. Many are missing it by living in a sewer of brainless shit on social media.

In the absence of catastrophes, like natural disasters or wars, human societies just battle each other for status, in status hierarchies. Like we do at school. Only catastrophes force societies to stop doing that, and change. You can see it here, with the pandemic. The only meaningful progress against both climate change and poverty in our lifetimes came from a catastrophe. ‘Living with’ Covid is a con high status groups sold to the public, as a way to reverse this reversal. They saw (rightly) their status being threatened. So now we’re all stewing in infections, so they get their status back. They’re doing the same with mass brainwashing about the evils of windmills and solar panels and EVs.

Johan Rockstrom is an international expert on climate change.

Professor Rockstrom's full talk, people should watch it. We had 2 global wars for piddling dangers, compared to this, we dropped everything we were doing for over a decade to fight them. We're doing nothing, against climate change, compared to what's required. Civilisations will not survive.

Happy Birthday, Evert! 🥳🎁🎊

Happy Birthday, Brett! 🎈🎁

Donald Trump’s ‘Eating the Pets’ for trombone wins the internet today.

Over the years I’ve seen others here do periodic pruning or culling of their friend lists, for various reasons. I’ve never done that, but am thinking about it now. I think there’s increasingly very little shared interest from my friend group in the things I post here, and it’s uncomfortable then continuing to share things that obviously grate on friends in some way. If you stop seeing posts from me, it will be because I’ll have set you to restricted friend status, only seeing public posts of mine. Rather than unfriending people.

This is interesting, for all those like me who are 55 and older. From Fair Work.

If your kids aren't vaccinated against whooping cough, I'd get that done like yesterday. Over 600 notifications a week now in NSW. You can also catch it as an adult, even if vaccinated. The immunity wanes (ask me how I know). Get a booster for yourself while you're at it. One of the horrible diseases.

Republicans in America responding to Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris.

NSW really can be the arse-end of the world. The only jurisdiction on the planet with average speed safety cameras that doesn’t use them for cars. FINALLY after a big surge in road deaths, NSW politicians have authorised their use for cars as well as trucks, in two locations, in a trial. They should have been used for this years ago. Looking forward to the Bathurst-Lithgow road being added in time, the cameras have been there ready for years, used only for trucks. Cue the ‘this is just revenue raising’ morons. Don’t speed and there’s zero revenue. The traffic will flow a lot better too.

Last summer I discovered that when you get older it can be a bad idea to go without shoes for too many weeks, especially if you have any issues with fallen arches. Spent a few weeks on anti-inflammatories afterwards. A plug for two slides in particular for holiday wear: Archies, and the Ascent Groove Slider. Both recommended by podiatrists to give you proper support. Super comfortable.

Still lots of counting to go. But in both Bathurst and Lithgow, the local government election has so far produced the same pattern we’re seeing at State and federal levels. The equivalent of a ‘hung parliament’, with no clear majority to any group. Which, given the lunacy of some of the groups, seems a good thing. But still a way to go.

Very interesting research shows that if conspiracy theorists engage in long conversations with AI bots, their beliefs can be shifted in ways that doesn’t happen if they’re only presented with alternative facts, or have long arguments with humans. The researchers say they think this is because conspiracy theorists are just trying to make sense of things, like everybody else. But I’m sure that’s not the reason. No amount of talking to humans budges them. I think the AI bots succeed because they’re not a threat, socially. They’re not part of the opposing ‘team’.

These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I’ve got others. Groucho Marx

My favourite post-election saying is ‘the people have spoken’. Many winners say that. Even some losers. Forgetting the people also spoke for the other candidates who got elected, and even the ones who lost. And the same people will likely turn on them at the first sign of any of their fantasy promises being broken. Many local council winners will have gone to the election promising magic money, without raising rates. When the people realise that was a lie, duck for cover. I wouldn’t want to be those ‘winners’ right now.

I’m genuinely curious how we think travel can survive as an activity in the way we do it. Travel destinations are already overwhelmed, and less than 5% of the world is travelling. Let alone carbon emissions from all of the flying. Two TONNES of fuel per *person*, to fly return to Europe from Australia.

Watching Oscar Piastri continuing to win while the entire British media and F1 establishment (also heavily British) criticise him for not letting his Brit team mate win (miles behind). Typical Brits, can’t win it on the field, so will try to win it with tabloid newspapers and breath mints.

This is the BYD U9. To give context for why BYD is able to generate so many models, and also alter existing models so quickly in response to consumer demand, here's a stat. BYD has almost a MILLION employees. Over 110,000 of them are dedicated to research and development alone. They're just hired another 50,000 to work in R&D.

For the next time you hear somebody say Australia has a shortage of gas. Bend over Australia, don't even ask for lube.

I think KIA is going to do big business with the EV3. You can get a BYD Seal for the same money, which is a ridiculous bargain. But the EV3 is a lovely bit of kit at a great price (probaby around $50K).

The Chinese are on track to completely smash the Western car industry, with Tesla. And that industry has nobody but itself to blame. VW also owns: Audi, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Bentley, Cupra, Skoda and Seat. https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/04/volkswagen-has-a-year-maybe-two-to-turn-around-financial-chief-warns

The last week of August was a watershed moment for Australia. Coal provided less than 50% of Australia's electricty for the first time. The total collapse of coal will accelerate rapidly from here, and it will have exactly zero to do with 'Greenies'. Renewables are far and away the cheapest form of power. (Nuclear is far and away the most expensive form of power.) You do the maths. This is a revolution. Enjoy it, rather than regret later that you were one of the wallies who fought to keep 18th century technology, in the 21st century.

China is installing wind and solar at a rate the equivalent of 5 large nuclear power stations a week. Renewables are not only cheap, they’re super fast to install.

A tale of two States, SA and NSW, over 24 hours this week. This is electricity generated over the 24 hour period. Black is coal. Green is wind. Yellow is solar. Blue is battery storage. Purple is exports to other States. Orange is gas. SA (at the bottom) was able to fill all of its overnight needs entirely with wind. It didn’t even need storage. This is the importance of windmills, and why fools like Barnaby Joyce trying to sabotage windmill projects are a threat to the nation. You can see here that SA is already entirely renewables, 24 hours a day, many days. That’s what cutting through the bullshit and just getting on with it achieves. NSW as always is way behind, bogged down in the vested interests that actually run the State.

Australians travel obsessively for the same reason they drink and gamble obsessively, and always have. We’re a settler culture with no connection to place. Settler cultures accumulate places as ‘land’, and drink and gamble to hide the essential emptiness otherwise of their lives. We voted no on a referendum for Indigenous recognition because Indigenous culture has a profound connection to place. That can’t be tolerated in settler culture. Place in a settler culture is just real estate. Capital gains. We travel the world accumulating more and more ‘sights’, terrified of sitting still for too long, as it would reveal again the emptiness of the culture. We have to be permanently distracted with new sights, to avoid that confrontation with ourselves. We’re even tourists in our own country. Every week somebody at work says ‘what are you doing on the weekend?’, and looks surprised when I usually say ‘nothing’. Always gotta be doing, moving around, to avoid the obvious fact that if we didn’t do that as a culture, we’d be left with nothing.

In the UK there are annual media stories about how 'coal is making a comeback'.

Again, enjoy the revolution happening right in front of us. https://thedriven.io/2024/09/15/tesla-to-add-30-new-supercharger-sites-around-australia-in-big-boost-to-ev-network/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFVmwpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTAqqWXpdOHDiCYvjAPI6hUh27BR1BGS4WZ9yejRaqON64UHWE6yAUoERw_aem_TuW1UfGpScj3iB5gu0u9Aw

About twice as many households have solar in poorer suburbs than in richer suburbs. The rich don't care how much electricty costs. Similarly most EV buyers live in poor suburbs, because they save a lot of money owning an EV.

There are all sorts of reasons people don't have kids, some out of their control. That's obviously up to each person to decide and deal with, their free choice. But I think as a society we've lost our way in not making this the centre of everything else we do. It can be that even for people who don't have kids. You can see this is now broken by the fact we're infecting all of them, every single child, with a novel, lethal virus, repeatedly, and nobody bats an eyelid. That's a society in terminal decline. It should make us furious, like a magpie defending her chicks. Children are not a lifestyle choice, but that's what they've become.

Happy Birthday, Michael! 🎉🥳🎁

Jacob Collier is rightly considered to be a musical prodigy. The confusing thing about that though is, that he can’t seem to write music. Only perform it. I listened to his latest album, and all of the songs are terrible. If you take somebody like Mozart, another famous prodigy, what made him unique was his ability to compose masterpieces. To write astonishing melodies that sound like they’ve always been here. I honestly couldn‘t find a single song on this latest Collier album I’d have called even OK, and they’re light years away from a Mozart composition. Certainly not even in the same league as a Beatles song, for example.

Nuclear power has been in decline everywhere for a quarter of a century. It’s enormously expensive and complicated, and renewables are incredibly cheap and incredibly fast to put together. Even China, who was still building nuclear, has ditched the push for it in favour of a massive acceleration of renewables.

Queen have completely overhauled their first ever album. I'm not usually a fan of remasterings, but in this case the band had almost no control over the album, not even any booked studio time, they had to record when other artists weren't using it. Usually in the middle of the night, and without creative control of the process. Non-Queen fans probably won't know this song from the remixed album, The Night Comes Down. Beautiful song, and reflects a time when songwriting was a more complex art than it is now. https://youtu.be/jiNVqhtjyW4?si=0BpjuzR8tz7kcGFA

The most expensive wholesale electricity has been today. Never happened until there were renewables. Before right now it's been negative prices again all day - they will pay you to use it.

Happy Birthday, Meg 🎂🎁🎈

I think we should all book a trip to Bali, or buy a ticket to a gig or musical, to help them out.

Happy bday! 🎈🎊

This is a team sports battle going back decades, Mac vs PC. PCs (and Windows) are rubbish, like the ICEs of computing, only dominant because of historical trickery from people like Microsoft. No integrated hardware and software design. Time has proven this to me over and over again. All of our Apple products just work, and for years. Laptops 4 or 5 years old feel like brand new. My iPad is even older and still works as flawlessly as the day I bought it. Never, not once, have any of them had a security issue. Those can happen with Apple, but they're much rarer. What keeps PCs and Windows dominant is the inertia of IT departments in organisations. Usually full of people who were social misfits and enjoy lording it over people now in their job, including by doing everything possible to discourage Apple products, which they see as a rival team. That's improved over the years, but not much, for fun I asked at work about using a Mac, and IT laughed. The IT crowd love that Windows and PCs are more 'configurable' i.e. they're more able to fiddle with them. Just like ICE fanboys, it's a core part of their social status schtick. I still agree with Steve Jobs, computing should just work, like a washing machine. Fetishists and fanboys can then fiddle all they like in their sheds at home, and stop lording over the rest of us. Much of our social lives is infected by cybercrime, which thrives on the lauded 'open' systems IT fanboys love. It gives them more opportunities to feel superior, as they smirk smugly at 'lusers' having their bank accounts drained. The IT industry is a sociopathic cancer on the planet.

One of the reasons I gave up going to any gigs was the existing prices. (That and I'm a bit old-fashioned in thinking life as an adult shouldn't look exactly the same as life as a teenager.) They're going to get even worse. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/entertainment/2024/09/18/surge-pricing-events-concerts?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240919&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

I looked at 'barefoot shoes' a few times. The idea is deceptively appealing. Shoes that allow your feet to act as if they're barefoot, while giving you protection from dirt and cuts etc. But experience and some thought makes me question these now. A well-fitted shoe is not a container for your foot to move inside. It's more like a wrapping of your foot, a snug fit that becomes like an extra layer on the outside of your foot. For a while I thought arch support was a silly thing, your arches work fine without support. But support is the wrong word, it's a molding of the shoe to match your foot shape, and an elasticity of the whole material to allow the shoe to bend and twist as you walk. That way your foot can act as if barefoot, just with this extra elastic layer fitted to it. Barefoot shoes on the other hand seem more about letting the foot move inside the shoe. I think that's the worst of all worlds. The movement will be restricted no matter what you do, causing all sorts of problems.

The more I talked to the echidna, the more it walked towards me. They’re usually very shy.

Right now Covid, influenza and RSV are at low levels in New South Wales. Hooray. Whooping cough continues to spiral out of control. 

The Vatican Library. The documents here are some of the rarest in the world. Would rather a day in here than a month in Bali.

This will take less than two minutes of your time. This is Professor Stefan Rahmstorf explaining how 3° of warming which is what we’re easily heading towards, and fast, actually translates to 5 or 6° of warming over land. This is a total disaster, most of the plants and even animals around us will simply die.

Presbyterian Ladies College, Burwood, is getting a new sporting facility. It will cost $85 million. In a given year the school receives over $10 million in public money. "The sports centre will be the size of three basketball courts, which can also be configured for badminton, netball and volleyball. The project also includes a 50 metre, eight lane swimming pool, a learn to swim pool, diving towers and seating for 400 visitors."

I don’t know why I see you in this shirt, Alex.

This is a national disgrace. And disaster for the young.

Some basic science from Anthony Fauci. Why 'living with' Covid was always a lie.

Even at huge sub-zero temperatures, heat pumps are far more efficient for heating than anything else. Still 200% efficient even at -20 degrees C. No other form of heating by defintion even reaches 100%, in any conditions.

Happy happy birthday! 🎁🎊🥳

Thankfully FB groups are coming to power in Bathurst, to put an end to this incompetence.

Human groups and whole societies will not make important changes until total disasters force those changes. Without those disasters (wars, pandemics, natural disasters), humans only ever do one thing. They fight for status. In groups or teams. Those teams battle each other, like sports. You can see it with housing. All the nonsense about ‘the housing market’. It doesn’t exist. Only one thing ever gave us mass home ownership. Two wars, WW1 and WW2, and a pandemic, the Spanish Flu. Those catastrophes in quick succession forced emergency action, bypassing our usual status games. Without catastrophes disrupting the status games, housing will just become a status symbol, with values going up and up into the stratosphere. Tell me that’s not us right now.

A few times this week I sat and watched the traffic. And was amazed again at the sheer number of wankpanzers (big utes) rolling by. A perfect example of how we never leave high school. People own these vehicles for only one reason. Because other people own these vehicles. The same reason people all owned yo-yos at school or wore the same sneakers. These are crap vehicles in every possible way. They have the aerodynamics of a brick wall, which gulps fuel fighting the wind resistance. They have lots of weight high up, causing body roll in corners. The dual cabs are rarely comfortable, except in the front. They have too much weight and are sprung and suspended for loads, to be really good ‘driver’s cars’. Their trays are small and more aesthetic than functional. They’re hopelessly unsafe in collisions, with other vehicles. They use lots of fuel. Not one redeeming feature. A triumph of peer pressure over engineering.

The ocean is like a bath, there’s nowhere for the heat to go. So we may be in for another drenching. In September! Usually the driest month of the year.

The main reason we’re seeing a massive influx of bats to places like Bathurst is still the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. Those fires destroyed enormous amounts of native habitat. Bats are actually a main way that habitat regenerates, they’re pollinators, much more than bees or birds. They’re a sign the landscape is trying to repair itself, overnight when we don’t see them they’re off pollinating far and wide. This is a very visible example of the sorts of impacts climate change will increasingly have on our lives. People moan about Council not getting rid of the bats. First, it’s physically impossible, and it’s illegal to even try (they’re endangered). And second, they’re here because we’re not addressing climate change. They’re a wake-up call. They’re trying to repair our damage.

China is literally saving the world right now. Which is why Yellow Peril politics is being ramped up, our existing status quo knows the threat. China is not only single-handedly building more renewables and EVs than everybody else combined, it’s also providing the rest of us with these technologies at absolute bargain prices. It’s making doing the right thing the super cheap thing. We’re too stupid to see it.

Amazing watching the Europeans make a meal of heat pumps. Everybody should want a heat pump, they’re engineering marvels. 600+% efficiency! And save you shitloads of money to boot. I watched the neighbour install a new gas heater this week, and wanted to say ‘what the hell are you thinking?’ It would have cost him more to buy and install, and it’ll cost him an absolute fortune to run. And people still installing wood fires. Ffs.

Happy Birthday! 🎂🎁🎉

Ths shows the whole new set of possibilities EVs bring to something like camping. An EV carries enough energy to run an entire house for days. So sleeping in air conditioned/heated comfort while camping is a doddle. Tesla even sell a fitted air mattress for the Model Y, shown in this video. You could run any number of full-voltage domestic appliances at the same time, like fridges and TVs. How’s your Model Y going, Keily?

Social media reviews of things aren’t always that great, a lot of opinion and not a lot of knowledge. But I like watching EV reviews from people who’ve never driven an EV before, and who are EV sceptics. This is for a Tesla Model Y, biggest selling car in the world now.

I advise all my friends to not exercise for 6-8 weeks after they have Covid, or any serious illness. It can lead to hypoperfusion, the starving of your muscles and organs of oxygen and nutrients. This can lead to organ failure and even death. These lacrosse players living another ‘mystery’, Scoob! There is no mystery.

Happy Birthday Miss Thompson. Can I go to the toilet please? :)

Another mystery, Scoob! (Post-infection asthma is a very common Covid side-effect.) I'm lucky to be friends with one of the world's leading Covid doctors, treating the Covid zombies who walk in his door every day, of all ages. I commented on the glorious names of some of the wreckage, like mast cell activation syndrome, hypoperfusion, and dyslipidaemia (just a handful of a huge list of conditions). He said "Nick, one of the benefits of the technical names is that it's easier than telling 26-year old Long Covid victims 'you're fucked'." There is no treatment for much of the catastrophic damage he sees. He's completely fed up.

May be useful for the ones who play chicken with traffic on Keppel Street. https://youtu.be/tpKtLQEdCss?si=IrrUC4IL93vt1irH

There's no air conditioning for plants and animals. We're going to be seeing a lot more of this.

The study was of healthy people who had a mild Covid infection.

Just scan the comments on this post. The ocean of stupidity out there.

We’re back at the evil supermarket ‘duopoly’ again. Australia doesn’t have a supermarket duopoly. Aldi and IGA for example have been other options for years. Aldi is cheaper than either of the Big 2. But people mostly still shop with the Big 2. For the same reason car racing has been Holden v Ford. And football is NSW v Queensland. And political Labor v Liberal. And energy renewables v nuclear. ‘Brand loyalty’ i.e. team sports. All life is really football, it uses that same social mechanism.

My cherry blossoms and azaleas are enjoying the sunshine. Until Noah’s flood later in the week anyway.

I know Colin, and the course he's created for school leaders is superb. I also know Hayley Gleeson, the journalist, one of the few who sees the complete insanity of what's happening with Covid in our communities. I don't think either of them will win here, 'living with' Covid is a tidal wave of rank stupidity that can't be stopped. It will take the entire population with chronic disease for anything to happen, and we're well on the way there.

At the exact moment yesterday when Peter Dutton announced another fact-and-costing-free nuclear fantasy, South Australia was running on 113% renewables.

BYD has had to commission a second 7000-car ship, to deliver its growing global expansion. It's planning for 7 more ships. What I love here is these realities carrying on despite the absolute brain-dead rubbish 'debates' going on. It's not too late to enjoy this second Industrial Revolution, rather than look back and realise you were one of the stupid tits trapped in a social media bubble.

Living with Covid. DIY health care coming, start reading up on MCAS and endotheliitis.

You’re 7 times more likely to die if your car is hit by a Wankpanzer, than by a sedan or smaller vehicle.

It’s the light in Monet. The changing light, throughout this painting. The whole thing resonates with light, the objects in the painting are secondary. Turning paint, opaque, into light.

From one of the major teaching hospitals in Sydney. Of course nurses have been saying this for a long time already, and voting with their feet, leaving the profession in droves. Now the BMW X5s are leaving the car park too, it’ll be interesting to see if it gets more attention.

The price of electricty is pretty steady all year. And you don't need much of it to fill an EV. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2024/09/24/petrol-prices-sydney-brisbane?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240925&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

Towing has become one of those big swinging dick things, like a rite of passage of Australian manhood. I mean, who would tow anything, if you had the choice? Gulps fuel, holds up traffic, and as it turns out plenty have no idea how to do it and then kill people.

Ditto for Oz. Time and again the objections around EVs relate to towing. A tiny sub-group in the community whose identity revolves around burning as much petrol or diesel as possible.

Households are installing LOTS of batteries. Enjoy the revolution. Each household that does takes load off the grid at peak times. They're national benefactors. They also help drive prices down for people who can't get solar or a battery. (We still need a lot more batteries. More government incentives may be coming.)

The average age of nuclear reactors worldwide is 32 years. Nuclear power plants usually last up to 40 years.

“The only way to insist that a Queensland farmer should be paid much more for a cabbage, for instance, while simultaneously arguing that a Sydney shopper should be paying much less for the very same vegetable, is to keep your rhetoric sharply focused on the theme that Coles and Woolies just suck.” Annabelle Crabb, noting the confused mess of stupidity of our public debates.

I know the senior doctor who trained Nick Coatsworth. They were once friends. I can’t repeat what he now thinks of him. Just one who found celebrity (Coatsworth now has a TV gig) through a natural disaster, peddling nonsense to social media, where those who missed their gigs and travel lapped it up. A school could buy an air purifier for a fraction of the cost of hiring a casual staff member to cover a sick teacher.

So many convinced of the benefits of social media use it shamelessly as a way to plug what they’re selling, to their closest family and friends.

Price of basket of 14 representative goods people buy (Choice). Aldi - $51 Coles - $66.22 Woolies - $68.37 IGA - $78.95

Your taxpayer dollars run this disinformation hub. Even the Coalition didn't want him. EVs weigh less than many wankpanzers. And what about trucks on the road?

I think the Tesla Model Y is probably the best car in the world. Probably why it's now the biggest selling car in the world. Nothing else can really match it for the blend of style and functionality and technology, at its price. There's a new model due early in 2025, which will make it even better. In terms of EVs, the BYDs and others are also all superb, BYD probably even better in terms of build quality and price. But nothing else offers the same blend of space and functionality and high technology that the Model Y does. A real Tardis car, huge inside, and boot space over 800L and extendable to over 2000L. Extraordinary software, giving the car functionality no other car has, with updates in real-time to add even more functionality, after you own it. Redefining motoring.

The new obesitry drugs are tapping into something deep about the way our bodies work that nobody fully understands yet. New benefits are being found regularly (they also fight Parkinsons and Alzheimers Disease). Metformin, which is far cheaper and originaly only used for things like diabetes, is a bit the same, appears to tap into a whole range of things. Still one of the only effective treatments for Covid. Paxlovid is useless.

Old-fashioned (racist) ideas about China still dominate. For example, why do so many Western countries have their things manufactured there? Listen to Tim Cook. It’s not low labour costs, which we always assume because we won’t attribute any smarts to China itself. Nor is it China’s State giving Chinese industry an ‘anti-competitive’ advantage. It’s because China’s industrial capacity is so enormous, the depth and quantity of skills is unmatched anywhere. Chinese industry can re-tool entire production lines in weeks, not years. Look at the exquisitely engineered Apple products. Only China can make those, at scale.

I would bet that the resistance of many Australians today to shop at Aldi still traces back to it being run by Germans. Coles and Woolies are the ‘Aussie’ options. People who don’t experience racism never really understand it. It’s always there. ‘Cheap Chinese crap’ another modern example.

We’re about to enter that time when people elected to Councils with their dreams and big plans collide with the reality of running a town. It’s always the same equation. Services cost money. Money comes from rates. You can’t have lots of services, with low rates. Anybody who tells you otherwise has lied to you. And will be found out by the community.

I've posted about Metformin here before. It's the only really effective drug against Covid. An old drug used mostly for diabetes, and super cheap. Your GP likely won't even be aware what it does against Covid, but you can always ask, take a few research papers in with you. And as you can see here, it may do much, much more. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2024/09/26/the-pill-that-slows-down-ageing?ahe=662efd944398edbb2d8f4d85736c4bb830fa6116abf076eb6d8317fd70698f95&acid=3260892&utm_campaign=Morning%20News%20-%2020240927&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Adestra&lr_hash=

HBD! 🥳🎂🎈

One of the toughest shifts needed to beat climate change is a massive reduction in this. Travel. People won't give that up. Which means catastrophe will force them to.

The Model Y looks deceptively small in photos because of its design. Compare with the Subaru in front and you get a better relative sense of it. And that lovely full-glass tinted roof.

I share different EV posts for those who aren’t as familiar with them and interested in what’s out there. This is the Model Y’s interior, you get a sense both of the sort of space available, and also the premium feel of most EVs. The boot is also enormous. This is the Tesla that you can easily convert into a full bed, the rear seats collapse completely flat with the press of a button. If using it for camping you have the night sky fully visible through the glass roof. It will also run air con all night easily, for heating or cooling, as needed.

“Lithgow's this wonderful hidden gem that people don't realise is here.” It sure is. Tourism won’t save it. Tourism destroys places. But festivals, sure.

Social media makes us think we’re just here sharing lovely pictures and stories about what we’re all doing every day. That’s a trick. Nobody ever enjoyed looking at other peoples’ lives. They only do when it allows them to assess social status. People resist this fact. We never leave high school.

Ben does lovely calm, reasoned videos on EVs. He’s not an EV nut, he owns petrol cars too. But he says the same thing I did earlier this week, that the Model Y is easily the best family car in the world. (Best car full stop, I think, given the breadth of what it offers.) It ticks so many boxes with brilliant engineering, and and even has the performance of a supercar for the price of a Toyota, thrown in for good measure. It’s very clear why it’s the best selling car in the world. Well worth a watch, not long. Motoring is being revolutionised into brand new things it never was before. For a slightly extended explanation from Ben, this one is fantastic too: https://youtu.be/YIOm_76OdHk?si=eboec7hPYIsQECp-

Where’s that review, Adam Cousins? Or are you in a police lock-up somewhere? ;)

Many believe that by catching Covid repeatedly, they’re building up immunity to it. On top of that nobody is getting vaccinated. This research shows conclusively that there is no lasting immunity to Covid. Not from vaccination or infection, or a combination of both. No LLPCs (long lived plasma cells). All that getting infected repeatedly does is damage your body.

This could be you.

Photo of the year.

Policing, teaching, nursing, doctoring, aged care, local government. Etc. All the essential services are in a state of collapse. Not only is it impossible to now do these jobs, the people who stick with them are under assault daily from a never-ending torrent of ignorant abuse. Much of that abuse is mobilised through social media. Notice how many of these jobs now have signs and phone messages about aggressive and violent behaviour towards staff. I was on the phone to Services Australia yesterday and heard it there too.

I often call combustion engines puny and gutless. It’s not just slander, it’s engineering. Combustion engines only provide significant power or torque at one tiny place on the rev curve, at the black arrow. At higher revs. Why I say you have to rev the guts out of them to get any power. (Also why combustion cars have gears, to keep the engine revving at every speed.) Once you know that, working your way through the gears, which many drivers love, actually seems almost embarrassing. You’re making the engine rev like crazy, just to have any power available at all. That revving sound, which we equate with ‘grunt’, is the exact opposite, the symptom of the engine having NO grunt. Try starting from a red light in third gear. The engine will give you nothing, you’d be better off with a donkey. (Also, that revving sound people love is literally the engine farting. Exhaust gases. Only made to sound nicer by a muffler. Also the sound of 80% of the energy in the fuel going straight out the exhaust, because combustion engines are so hopelessly inefficient.) Electric motors on the other hand, the blue line, give you maximum power/torque even at zero revs. In that critical green circle zone. It’s why they take off like a rocket from a standing start. No gears needed, just a continuous flow of power. It makes them beautiful to drive too, power titrated exactly to need, at every moment.

Another year closer to retirement! Have a fab day Brett :)

The fact people are now doing this into their 60s and 70s, not just when they’re 14, is what I mean about us never leaving high school.

If you’re after a good VPN, I’ve been very impressed with Surfshark. I was with ExpressVPN for years, the industry-leader, but Surfshark is both cheaper and far more fully featured. You also get anti-virus and anti-malware, and an unlimited number of devices. And VPN speeds much faster than ExpressVPN.

This is quite a big movement, and shows just how far Australia has fallen in the past 30 years. It used to be one of the cheapest places to live in the world. It’s now one of the most expensive. That’s a disgrace, with the wealth our country has. Successive governments addicted to ridiculous small government ideologies have given away our resources for nothing, and invested in nothing here at home.

Ampol really stepping up.

Russell kept his underpants on for this. I think he’s still in trouble for all the times he didn’t.

Do you reckon we started building houses with gold walls and diamond windows? Or did we maybe just start using houses like casino chips, bidding up the value on the same stock, to get quick capital gains? Only once in history has housing been affordable to all. When government built the houses and provided them outside any market. It’s what Singapore still does.

Final local election results due early this week. At this stage it looks like Facebook has won the Bathurst election. Buckle up.

The penny is dropping in more households every day.

More pennies dropping. What say you, Adam?

One of the long list of ridiculous reasons people give that EVs aren't the way to go is that there aren't enough public chargers. I've posted before how that's a misunderstanding, that most EV charging will happen at home. But also, for about 25 years after combustion cars were first introduced, there were no servos. You bought the fuel in a tin, at the chemist or general store, and carried it home. EV infrastructure is already way ahead of that, no need to wait 25 years.

For those who don't follow these things, the new Bathurst Council: Ben Fry Jac Underwood Sophie Wright Natalie Cranston Stumpy Taylor Warren Aubin Elaine West Tony Gullifer Jess Jennings

Tesla is rolling a new car out of its Shanghai factory every 30 seconds. Deliciously, these are the best quality cars Tesla produces, because of Chinese engineering. Their first cars came out of American factories, and had quality issues. Shifting production to China created superb quality. 'Cheap Chinese crap' is racist horseshit.

I’m sure residents of Bathurst are excited about their imminent giant dinosaur tourist draw card.

Researchers find nothing about the current hysteria on supermarkets is true in reality. Including that they’re making big profits (they’re not).

You can’t miss it out on the roads now, more EVs every day. More joy for those drivers. Ditch your jalopy.

This dude turns 19 today. Society’s present to him is an infectious illness, hooray. Making his gentle and determined way through the world. I often compare gentle people to gravity, far and away the weakest force in the universe. But the force that creates that universe. Only the truly strong can be gentle. Happy birthday boy.

EVs are going to revolutionise off-road driving too. The problem with 4WDs right now is they need a lot of torque at low speeds. But as I post about a lot, you have to rev the guts out of a petrol or diesel to get that torque. So they have to use torque converters and low-range gearboxes to get high torque at low speed. This is a basic Model Y, with the off-road setting even switched off. A ‘soft-roader’. Combining maximum torque at low speeds with electronic traction control, to drive up a slippery steep slope. The computer directs power to each wheel as required. Torque-on-tap. You can see it happening, on the video. In total blissful silence.