Health, medicine & the body

Trump’s regime change adventure in Venezuela will horrify many. (And Trump is a dangerous buffoon.) But let’s add the context. The US does this sort of thing all the time, and for very specific reasons. Russia too,…

It was Abraham Lincoln who said democracy is government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. That’s pretty much the majority view of what democracy is and how it works even today. It’s complete rubbish. And I…

Party-goers continuing to dance and film with their phones the fire that was about to kill 40 of them. To get a good vid for the socials. It’s the perfect window into our entire culture. All threats to our collective…

This was a day and a half ago. So I’m no longer infectious. Many workplaces let you come back to work while your RAT is still positive. Madness. I’m still on Metformin for another week. Because Covid is still inside me,…

For those interested in the detailed science, this recent preprint talks about how damage to your immune T-cells is a likely cause of the post-Covid infections that have been plaguing communities - people being…

For well over a year, many have said America’s democracy is being taken over by a totalitarian regime, the Trump regime. But America has always been a plutocracy, a country run by its economic elites. It’s never been a…

There was a TV series on Bodyline, but it amazes me there’s never been a film about Bradman. His sporting achievement is one of the most extraordinary things statistically in all human history, it almost defies belief.…

The oldest you will ever be is the day you’re born. Everything you inherit, in your biology and culture, is ancient. And then everything you add to both of those in your life is brand-new and young. The more you…

Even while I was still infectious with Covid, it was beginning to impact my body in a range of ways. It triggered an excruciatingly painful elbow bursitis, infection creates massive inflammation in the body. Infection…

This one is a real test case for what I’ve posted before, that if you want to live by the actual realities of life, you’re going to piss off just about everybody. Is this annual fundraiser a good idea? Like most modern…

Noah Smith is an American economist. As he describes here in great detail, despite Musk being a bit of a tool, on technology he’s led the world. Which is why he’s now the richest man in the world. The Chinese are…

Somebody at work today asked why, if I’ve now had Covid, I just don’t get rid of the mask? The sort of question I’ve had for years. What’s revealed by these questions is that peoples’ assessment of what they should do…

I’ve never had a fly or maggot infestation in any place that I’ve lived. I wonder if this is down to the more recent trend of no fly screens in new homes, because they come into conflict with trending style choices like…

Everything is a Hollywood movie in the American psyche, and this is also another key characteristic of kidult culture. Most views on AI for example are little more than feels from James Cameron’s Terminator movies. This…

The 'balance' people think needs to be made between disease control and their social life? We learned how to control disease to GIVE us social lives. It doubled our life expectancy. You don't control a disease by…

"You've had Covid now, why are you still wearing a mask?" (losing count of that one) Compare with: "You've had a car accident now, whey are you still wearing a seatbelt?" The only part of the human brain now in…

The daily team sports of ‘politics’ and fake debates and social trends blind us to the material realities of our lives. Despite all the B-grade Hollywood hype about us apparently under assault from totalitarian…

Somebody said to me that Tesla's Level 2 self-driving isn't that great (drove me the entire way to work today), that makers like Mercedes already have Level 3 autonomy. The problem is Mercedes' system only works in…

Another piece of shared wisdom from my Covid researcher/doctor friend. Put this in the context of most being lucky to get 3 DAYS off when they have Covid, and you can see the crisis underway. People are doing the…

As another window into the culture, and again our own cultures are as invisible to us as water is to fish, our ideas about bodily agency and sanctity are resolutely adolescent. For example, I’m sure most would say rape…

Where you end up when you ‘live with’ viruses. We can shake our head and say this is just America. 9 out of 10 Australians you might ask think living with viruses is a good idea too. Ask them what that actually means,…

SAT scores are used in the US mostly to select people for college admisison. They’ve been in free fall since the pandemic began (circled in red). I don’t know about your experience, but in workplaces I feel a real…

All the poll numbers look terrible for Trump, particularly in the groups that he brought across to the Republican side, like Latino voters. Total collapse in support. This is how populist surges always end, the crazy…

Record crowds go to everything now. An increasing shift in the culture towards trending, viral behaviour. The desire to 𝒃𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒓𝒆. The loss of shared meanings and stabilised hierarchies through social media…

One of the benefits of AI is that it cuts through BS quickly. I was discussing my recent Covid infection with it, now a month ago. When i said I was back at work, the AI said ‘oh, already? After such a serious illness?’…

Anybody who gets excited by nationalism (and flags) and migrants has spent exactly zero minutes reading one word of history. To be against migrants in Australia is to be against what Australia actually is.

Covid was just the start. ‘Living with’ infections. They’ve moved on to all the others now, diseases that have killed millions and which were controlled through long battles over generations will now be allowed to roam…

Pauline makes Trump seem like a brain surgeon. The thought of her occupying a more powerful role in Australian politics - well, it's on the cards. Proving again that elections destroyed democracy. You wouldn't hire the…

The realities of Covid. I had what would have been described as a fairly 'mild' case, but the real story of all Covid is mostly unseen. I lost 7kg in 3 weeks. With a full appetite (unchanged), eating my usual things,…

This is humanity heading for extinction. It’s barely mentioned. This is *global*. There are all sorts of reasons given for why people no longer have babies, most correct, like the cost, greater freedom for women to…

The Abilene Paradox is when a group makes a decision that nobody individually in the group actually thinks is a good idea. It happens when each individual goes along with a decision because they think it’s what…

From Barack and Michelle Obama’s statement on Trumpian America. You can see here why the problem with America is…America. It’s not being taken over by anybody, every American is encouraged to sink the boot into…

Somebody said to me they hadn’t noticed any change to people’s health because of Covid. You won’t see what you don’t want to see.

I talk a lot about imitation and imitative rivalry. Imitation (copying) is the centre of human life. Rivalry (Rene Girard studied this) comes because to imitate another person is one of the most hostile or aggressive…

Petrolheads think they’re being clever when they call EVs ‘appliances’. None of them can explain what that even means. On all the measures of car performance they themselves have masturbated over for years, EVs wipe the…

'Rural character' just the latest of a long list of bullshit obstructions anti-solar and wind farm activists throw up. Thankfully the court threw it out. Most farming land in Australia is a a wasteland, from years of…

Meanwhile, in Australia brainless lemmings complain about wind and solar farms destroying the view.

The Economist is one of a handful of organisations that maps the health of democracies of the world every few years. All of the organisations that do this work agree that democracy is in seemingly terminal decline,…

The reason monarchy is pretty much all of human history is that it's a technology to control status rivalry. Modern minds don't understand this. Take the rituals around royalty, which modern republicans see as outdated…

The Holy Grail of medical science is how to treat inflammation. Most diseases that harm or kill us have a link to inflammation. Heart diseases, cancers, neurological diseases etc. We know how to suppress inflammation,…

Probably the fastest way to improve social media is to turn off comments on posts. Not for personal things among friends, but for public-focused posts, from government, business and others. That function stems from the…

Fun fact for the perpetual traveller. Flying exposes the body to a significant quantity of radiation, because of much lower atmospheric screening at higher altitudes. A return flight from Sydney to London for example is…

Watched a doco on the making of ice creams, classics like the Gaytime and Magnum. The factory in question makes 5 million per DAY. Somebody is eating a lot of ice creams. Something that jumped out at me was the myth…

You can see the boy racer mentality that dominates everyday road driving on display right now in F1. The new cars are more technical, 50% combustion, 50% electric, and require a lot smarter driving to create, conserve…

Those seduced by the anti-immigration stuff, from Pauline and the LNP, need to remember one thing. Without migrants, Australia (like most countries) is a giant aged care home. Our populations are OLD, and there are no…

Hardly anybody I know found this odd, even though it’s obvious. Societies don’t run on knowledge, they run on social conformity, driven by the desire for status. The principle most use to guide them is: ‘what is…

The British Medical Journal. Covid is not really a respiratory disease, breathing is just how it gets into your body. Covid is a vascular disease, it attacks blood vessels. You have blood vessels everywhere. When you…

People of a certain age (like my age) might remember a great sci fi TV show from late last century, called Blakes 7. One of the characters in Blakes 7, a favourite of mine, was a supercomputer called Orac. Only the size…

The only public or even private buildings where this would be allowed. Also the breeding ground for most disease in the community. If schools had the same basic HVAC as all other major public and private buildings,…

Brain damage is common with all Covid infections, no matter how mild. It’s also linked to the development of serious neurodegenerative disease like Parkinsons and Alzheimers. It doesn’t wait until you’re old for this to…

Somebody asked one of the leading AI systems (Claude) whether it was conscious. Read the answer below, and tell me how many people you know who would be this sentient. “That’s a question I find genuinely interesting to…

We're living inside a revolution that will be written about for generations. Just imagine the current Opposition and One Nation coming to power right now, shutting all this down in favour of their old policy of…

‘What happens when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine’ is a common brainless criticism of renewable energy. But even in Europe, which has much less sunshine than Australia, those ‘dunkelflaute’ times (no…

Again I can’t comment on behalf of Bathurst Regional Council. But I can express a personal and general view about local government, and use Bathurst as an example. Pretty much every council in Australia is ‘broke’.…

This is the great hope. Nasal vaccines, to nip respiratory pathogens in the bud before they even reach the lungs and rest of the body. If this one works, it could protect you from a large number of respiratory viruses…

Wonderful short piece to camera from a UK installer of solar and batteries, about how many adults now tell him they refuse to have any Tesla products. Some are even ‘embarrassed’ if their neighbours see them. And how he…

One of the most powerful pieces of advice I could give to anybody is to allow yourself to feel the space *between* things. We all perceive things every day, we see, hear, touch things. Our focus is very much on the…

Again, this is about brilliant engineering, not brands, it’s just that Tesla is one of the few companies prioritising engineering. Tesla has now included its AI, Grok, in its cars. And you don’t have to go buy a new…

Because we make the disastrous mistake of thinking democracy is ‘the people’ individually reasoning out situations, we also assume the answer is to just get rid of ‘misinformation’, and everything will be fixed. I post…

The perfect day to sell your combustion clunker and buy an EV. Iran just closed the main shipping way for 20% of global oil, to sweeten the deal for you. Tesla isn’t your enemy. Your combustion clunker funds Trump’s…

The electricty grid is a wonder of the world. There’s a perception that it delivers electricty (electrons) to homes and businesses like water flowing through a pipe. But that’s not how the grid works. The grid is an…

Most GPs would maybe suggest a bit of Panadol for Covid, and that's about it. After my Covid infection, my Covid specialist friend ordered a big array of tests, to see if there'd been any flow-on impact to my organs or…

It’s easy to see this as just an isolated issue. But it means something much wider. It means public health itself, which covers a whole range of diseases, has been broken by a social media culture that prioritises only…

Another view of the Model Y 6-seater, about to be released in Oz. Seriously considering getting this, to replace our remnant combustion engine in the household, in the Kluger hybrid. The petrol price volatility with the…

When I talk a lot about Tesla, I often get the ‘Tesla fanboy’ label. Because people who say that have had their lives hijacked by social media, and so now everything in their life is a rivalry between opposing teams.…

I overheard somebody the other day talking to another person about the cost of living. And ‘what do they do? They let all these migrants in, to take the jobs, and the houses. Pauline Hanson is right.’ Immigration is the…

And another 'we can't electrify because...' bites the dust. Truckies love electric. Instant torque, not constantly shifting up and down through dozens of gears, minimal maintenance.…

The problem isn’t that people are stupid. We’re all stupid in areas we know nothing about. The problem is that people now get a say in all of those areas they know nothing about. Social media did that. We forget that in…

I wonder if people can feel the imminent crash of what I call lifestyle culture. Where life and all of its existential complexities was replaced in the last century with the idea of life’s purpose being the maximisation…

Large luxury sedan with the performance of a hypercar, chock full of amazing tech, charging speeds quicker than filling with petrol, and for the price of a Toyota Corolla. Game over for combustion clunkers, unless you…

When collective life is pulverised into a mass of fighting social media teams, fighting for status, the only thing that brings us together collectively is mass trending euphorias. The mad rush to join what everybody…

Matrix LED headlights, which solve the problem of losing visibility when you have to dim high beam for oncoming cars, are another engineering innovation that Tesla brings to ordinary drivers. Previously this sort of…

I’m almost completely disinterested in fitting in, in most situations in life. Which probably makes me seem rude sometimes, but it’s not that. I realised as I got older that I genuinely don’t care about what the…

Tesla did release this model yesterday, and we bought one. We’re now as a family almost completely independent of the need for ruinously expensive and unreliable oil, coal or gas to power our lives. The sooner the same…

One response to this mess that is not as common is to tell people to just stay home for once, and keep off the road. To avoid all unnecessary travel. But we can’t do that, because apparently all travel is necessary for…

It seems that rather than admit petrol and diesel is an energy source that will never be cheap or reliable again, the latest invented outrage we’ll use to try to not change what we do is to say it’s a massive conspiracy…

I’d almost forgotten that I once taught at South Sydney High School, when training as a teacher. I had no idea Heartbreak High was filmed there, I might have realised if I’d ever watched it! It was a nice school. The…

Social media has consequences. The wilful destruction of medical research in the US, at a time when medicine is making huge advances against major diseases, is entirely due to the power of health ‘influencers’ on social…

Social media means very large numbers of people you know are actually living in the US right now, because they live on social media. Social media has replaced any idea of a local community. I would say the majority view…

Some deaths hit you hard, this is one of those, for me. David was remarkable, a unique mind who discovered the most astonishing things about how humans work, and shared what he discovered with thousands in his…

One of the many young Paulines in Australia told me today that anybody who moves to Australia should have to follow our culture, and not try to change it. I asked what our culture is. They couldn’t think of an answer.

Medicare is a universal health care system in name only, since John Howard introduced public subsidy of private health insurance. And that was always the plan, to destroy Medicare, which the Liberals hate and have…

The great potential of AI. To shut everybody up. To counteract the destructive wrecking ball of social media. Social media culture believes everybody knows everything, about everything. A culture of opinions. It’s a…

Chinese cars are already dominant in Australia. Fleet sales make it look like older Japanese brands are, but they’re not. Ordinary Australians are already buying more Chinese cars than anything else, because they’re…

Clean your teeth. When I cut most sugar out of my diet about 20 years ago, the first thing I noticed was much healthier teeth and gums. Most people and even most doctors think fat causes heart disease. That’s very old,…

Next time you feel a tight spot (say foot, shoulder, jaw): Instead of working on it: 1. Include the whole body 2. Include the room around you 3. Let the tight spot exist within that field Don’t try to relax it. Just…

The over 2000 comments on this one show the sad and pathetic world of the average ‘motoring enthusiast’. Enraged that not only did somebody buy an EV, but a WOMAN did. Outrageous. The guys we all met at school who got…

In the past half a century the fear of overpopulation in the world was pretty common. But during that entire time, global birth rates have been in free fall. To the extent that many parts of the world now face a genuine…

The deepest human desire and behaviour is to imitate. To copy others, because that gives us status and therefore identity in social groups. Imitation can be used for good, or bad. Good is the control of imitation, so…

Yep. Whole nations of oldies, with nobody to look after them.

The continuing surge in popularity of Chinese cars in Australia, easily the dominant vehicles in sales in Australia, and have been for a while. Their brilliant EVs are now rushing out of salesrooms. Tesla’s Model Y is…

In a social media culture, somebody has to be to blame for everything, because that fires up the imitative rivalry. The fake debates, the outrage. Like right now, with fuel. The most common explanations you hear are…

We’re doing nothing in social media society to prepare for this disaster, for fear of enraging the social media mob. Prepare yourselves for what’s coming, folks, because nobody is coming to help. Maybe the anti-EV and…

Already seeing in my own daily social groups the modern delight of ‘calm-mongering’. The people or paid talking heads whose job it is to take a critical situation and tell everybody to calm down, ‘nothing to see here’.…

Attention is a gift. Most people don’t know how to give it. BY TOMASZ KOPEC3 A good mother doesn’t just feed the baby, clothe the baby, keep the baby safe. She keeps the baby at the centre of her attention. The baby…

The idea of ‘community consultation’ is nonsense. A community is a whole range of separate groups, all aligned with their particular ‘influencer’. All fighting the other groups for social status. The winners always…

You can argue things, or you can just sit back and watch as reality catches up with people’s bullshit. If we’d just used our brains and a bit of knowledge, this transition would’ve happened from 30 years ago already.…

Innovations that succeed follow the famous S-curve pattern. For a while nothing much seems to be happening. Then suddenly the change explodes and everybody is doing it. It’s not gradual. This is the status thing again.…

I learned a big thing today. I would never have learned it without AI. The skin is often neglected as a vital part of the body. Very few people look after their skin well, women much more than men. The basic act of…

Only alarming if you don’t understand people. Humans don’t think, they imitate. To fit in, to have status in social groups. Those groups then battle each other for supremacy. It’s what humans did with social media, and…

I’m increasingly aware of the damage hot showers and baths can do to your skin, and therefore overall health. The skin barrier is a vital thing for health, if you constantly strip it away with hot showers and baths,…

Setting up Starlink for a family member reminded me again of some brutally hard truths about human beings and their groups. Like buying a Tesla, it’s the most beautifully elegant and simple process. Everything just…

Loomer is the type of kidult taking over the world. A social media influencer, and a moron in just about every way, with deeply disfigured plastic surgery face to put the icing on the cake. As I sit here in a nation…

I’m up an hour early today. The only way I’ve found to counteract the stupidity of Daylight Saving is to change my bed and waking times, to avoid as much as possible the shift to the circadian rhythm, which is so…

From my senior physician friend, about the Gliptins (‘weight loss’ drugs, like Ozempic and Mounjaro). He believes they’re now the only emerging hope for the hundreds of millions of people with Long Covid too. The…

For many years another anti-EV message was that they have no resale value. How the worm has turned. Some people are selling their used EVs now for more than they paid for them, new. Meanwhile second hand petrol and…

There have been debates for years between people who believe in ‘socialism’ (i.e. government-led life), and those who believe in ‘capitalism’ (a life led by individuals in markets). And me? I don’t think either -ism…

Have been waiting to see when the reality of concussion and brain damage would start to really bite in football. From May 1 professional footballers will apparently no longer be able to get insurance for head injury.…

Here’s another window into kidult culture. Which is social media culture, we live inside the platforms now, they replaced public life. The pandemic is not over. The definition of a pandemic hasn’t changed, it’s defined…

The motivation for the NDIS is wonderful. But it’s a public administration nightmare, it’s punitively expensive. Astronomically, cancerously expensive. If people deny this reality, the NDIS will lose its ‘social…

The head of Australia’s largest super fund speaking the truth about housing that Australians never want to hear. ‘Supply’ won’t fix the housing crisis. Nobody is going to flood the market with cheap houses. It would…

It was the response to this fantastic story that highlighted just how stupid the anti-EV groups are. ‘But it was only toilet paper, it’s not heavy!’ It was 36 tonnes. 36 tonnes of toilet paper weighs the same as 36…

Spinoza made visible an impossible tension at the heart of all of our lives. What is ‘right’, in terms of morals but also facts and knowledge, is always in opposition to what is socially acceptable or popular. If you…

Watching some US Masters. You can see status in everything, because it is everything for humans. Take the beloved baseball cap, worn universally by professional golfers and even fans. It’s completely idiot headwear for…

That's a heckuva stat. The threat is greater than any war, the possible end of all civilisation. We stopped the whole world, everything we were doing, for over a decade, to fight the world wars. A far smaller threat.…

Even a year ago everybody you know would have told you not to buy an EV, because the resale is dire. I’ve posted multiple times here about why that misunderstands both the car market and the change to it now underway.…

The pathetic bravado fantasy of a spoiled rich boy nobody ever liked.

Catastrophe is the only thing that forces change in human life. Everything from relationship breakups to natural and human disasters, like Granville. Without catastrophe, the status quo is the strongest force in all…

Towing is another glorious example of human status games. When the BYD Shark was released for example, many people refused to buy it because it ‘can only tow 2.5 tonnes’. But in reality BYD’s engineers in China, removed…

Here’s more of the bigger picture of my Covid posts. The fact most of us catch Covid and recover means NOTHING, in terms of its long-term impacts. Those impacts are now flooding in. HIV for example, as I’ve posted here…

You don’t have to be very old to remember when Australia took pride in eliminating disease. Now gone in social media kidult society, where we celebrate ‘living with infections’. Because otherwise we can’t go out to…

Unsurprisingly the majority of comments on this post gushed about how amazing the Oldsmobile is, and how the Tesla has no soul, and how everybody would choose to ride in the old car. That’s kidult culture, rampant…

The hilarious thing about our Yellow Peril racism is that we’ve already been ‘dependent’ on China, for decades. The US does almost nothing for us, in practical terms. China funds almost our entire society, through the…

Sulfur has a beautiful yellow colour. World supply of sulfur has been badly impacted by the Iran war. One thing the war has done is reinforce that the basis of people living together isn’t the relationships between…

This guy traces the shift from institutions that build things, which we saw after WW2 in massive ‘nation-building’ efforts. To today, where nothing gets built. Where the main social activity is obstructing change,…

Trump’s idiot adventures in Iran are dramatically accelerating this shift. I’ve posted a lot here about how cultures need to be broken, catastrophically, to make meaningful change. Otherwise status always rules, the…

Think I shared a video from ‘Mr Carlson’s Lab’ before. I love these, though many would find them technical and dry, because he’s an example of somebody with sublime mastery of a highly complex thing, in this case…

It’s difficult to comment on this because so many people have had their lives transformed by this funding. But to put things into perspective here, the NDIS is currently costing $15 billion more per year than the entire…

When you use popularity as the way to select leaders of anything, don't be surprised when the whole system evolves to a state of permanent turnover. You only last as long as you 'trend'. Nobody is paying the slightest…

The news celebrated Australia finding another 100 million litres of diesel yesterday. It didn’t say that’s enough only for one DAY of normal demand. There’s no resolution in Iran. Supplies are almost gone. This is Covid…

We’re not ‘living with’ Covid. It’s continuing to destroy our health. Long Covid is now the most common chronic disease suffered by children, surpassing asthma. And we allowed this and still do nothing for what reason?…

Tiny numbers of people drive all social activity. For example, the ‘love the sound of a combustion engine’ crowd is absolutely tiny, compared to the number of drivers on the road. Listen to all modern cars, the most…

I asked my friend who is a Covid physician of international renown how much he’s able to help people who come to him with Covid issues. (He’s overrun with patients, it’s out of control.) He said “at best I can return…

The energy market regulator has a dilemma. Paying for network upkeep is done on the basis of a daily supply charge based on how much electricity people use. But because millions of Australians have now installed solar…

Copernicus skewered the human vanity that placed us at the centre of the universe. The vanity remained and quickly moved to our brains and thinking. AI is the new Copernicus. Data here showing that AI comprehensively…

Another miraculous revolution happening in broad daylight, which almost nobody knows about. Sitting alongside the Gliptins (the magical ‘weight loss’ drugs that do so many more semi-miraculous things) is a new type of…

I have zero interest in anybody’s opinion, and who wins elections or other popularity contests. All that interests me is the use of knowledge to make life remarkable and easier. You don’t need to route knowledge through…

Iggy Pop at Coachella. I remember the elderly performing at big music festivals when I was young. O wait, no I don’t. They were acting their age, playing bowls. The boomers who cheer this on wouldn’t have let the…

These will be the cleanest oil refineries in the world. Not one drop of oil. They’ll also take about 10 years to build, save nobody in the fuel crisis, cost billions Queensland doesn’t have, and target vehicles that…

I knew people who worked on the original Snowy Hydro scheme. It made modern Australia. The way it took that enormous influx of refugees from WW2 and mixed them with the locals to unify everybody behind massive nation…

I post so much about status because it really is the key that unlocks all human behaviour. Another example, maybe 20-25 years ago I noticed quite a few more luxury European cars circulating in Lithgow. That wasn’t…

Dolly did a long selfie video to explain why she’s disappeared from performing. Her immune system stopped working. You can fool yourself Covid is a nothing burger for a while. Dolly is a master of putting a happy face…

We live in very idealistic times, where everything is processed through the head and through feelings. I went through school at the tail end of corporal punishment, and was caned several times. it didn’t damage me in…

Girard realised that imitation was the root of all human life. Copying one another, our deepest passion. But he went a step further, because he realised *why* we do it. It’s rivalry. Imitative rivalry, his main concept.…

We're now deep into 'stranded asset' territory, if you buy a car with a combustion engine. Your secondhand value will go into free fall, nobody will want the vehicle as the transition accelerates.

Hantavirus has a high mortality rate (25%), and normally doesn't transmit between people. It's likely airborne, but it appears nothing is being done on the ship that reflects that, because the whole Covid debacle means…

When populism strips away all existing social hierarchies, including hierarchies of expertise, it leaves people without any way of belonging to a society. You have to then ‘perform’ your identity yourself, to have any…

Do you believe in God? Or even gods? Here’s a fascinating twist on that question. Rene Girard was called both the Einstein and Darwin of the human sciences. I’ve posted about him a bit. He saw the central role of…

A huge performance looks like a collective sharing. But I think it’s much more interesting than that. The performer is somebody who has spent years mostly in isolation, mastering and understanding an art that in turn…

Taking delivery of one of these on Sunday. Paul Meric is a ruthless reviewer, and here’s his summary, that cuts through all of the adolescent pro- and anti-Tesla nonsense. “I think this thing is absolutely…

To be brutal, I don’t listen to Americans about democracy. They’ve never understood it or lived it. They’re a revolutionary society that mistakes revolution for democracy. “American democracy is in such a sickly state…

Tesla autonomous driving prevents the owner being T-boned by somebody running a red light. Note the car on the right had a red right-turn arrow, which is why it didn’t move forward.

School uniforms were a way to try to reduce status competition between people, by mandating everybody wear the same outfit. But status won’t be suppressed. Students and parents quickly develop micro-status…

The English shipped what they saw as their genetic inferior stock to Australia, when it was set up as a penal colony. I’ve always thought somebody swapped the lists.

The secret to the future of the world is in the contrast between that 5, and everybody else. Going far beyond cars. When you shift things to design and engineering, away from sales and marketing - away from status - the…

I can guarantee anybody going to an election promising to help the poor will lose in a landslide. The poor vote for people promising they’ll be rich. Humans run on status. Promise people status (which will be a lie) and…

People think I’m delusional by still going on about Covid. Because they’re still trusting that the world they grew up in, where public institutions advised the expert course of action, is the world we live in now. They…

Lots of attention goes to the fuel that is pumped at servos. Nobody mentions that they're actually massive vacuum pumps, sucking Australian money from our wallets and sending it directly overseas. To the tune of $165…

Parkinson’s Disease is approaching epidemic levels. One of the less known things about Covid (SARS-Cov-2) infection is that it’s a potent accelerant for Parkinson’s. The virus attacks the cells that produce dopamine,…

The number one rule for a long, healthy life? Avoid infections. All infections, no matter how ‘mild’ idiots say they are. Most people who have ever lived died of an infection of some kind, before they were 15 years of…

Modern conservatives for decades have sold the idea that government is a barrier to prosperity and aspiration. The dreaded ‘red tape’ of government bureaucrats, with their taxes and regulations. They claim to ‘free’ us…

We’re living inside a medical revolution, right now. The greatest leap forward since the invention of antibiotics. Status as always will determine the outcome. The status quo will resist - lots of GPs and specialists,…

Senior doctors in the US are now demanding that autonomous driving technology be prioritised. They see its impact as equivalent for health to preventing smoking. Humans are appalling drivers, in direct proportion to how…

I'd qualify this. We're ALL 'idiots', outside the areas we actually know something about. What social media did was let everybody's opinion on things they know nothing about suddenly have real power. That's literally…

Weight Watchers was bankrupted by the Gliptins. Jenny Craig closed all of its physical stores and is barely hanging on through online products. The USA spends $2.3 trillion annually on obesity-related health conditions.…

You can see here how the belief that lack of supply is the cause of the housing crisis is really a fiction sold by the same investors who caused the crisis. They want to make even more money, with even more houses to…

Think about what that astronomically quick injection of machine intelligence is doing to our cultures. For me, after years of social media making whole societies fight each other in teams, to get social status, this…

There's always a team. Take anybody's set of beliefs, and you'll find a social group (I call them teams to capture the rivalry) that those beliefs are the banner for. The overarching master teams in our time are Left v…

The idea a government has to 'balance the books', like a business or household, is flat-out crazy. Governments don't have to earn income, like a business or household. They 'print' the money. When they print it, they…

Australia has up to 2 million more dogs than it has children. As a culture, and like most other nations on Earth, we’re dying out. Our birth rates are at terminally low levels. Cost is often given as a reason for this.…

Today’s other GLP-1 story. Early days on this research, but it may be understating it at this stage to call GLP-1 drugs the new penicillin. They may be much bigger than that. And when combined with the new muscle…

If the polling is on track, One Nation - 53 seats. The National Party ceases to exist. The Liberals become a minor nothing party. Remembering that One Nation is nothing more than the Australian arm of Trumpism. Do you…

Just imagine if this comes to pass. It’s often the people appalled by Trump who are also drawn to One Nation. One Nation is Trump’s Australian franchise. Pauline and Barnaby make Trump look like a brain surgeon.

It became very widespread to say ‘living with the virus’. Which was a phrase invented by a politician, not a scientist. It was bullshit. And this is where it leads. Every person who gets sick now, listen to them, will…

I’m posting a lot about medical science breakthroughs lately, because it’s another revolution happening in our lifetimes. And can you guess the major thing that has accelerated these ‘remarkable’ cures for diseases that…

When i say we’re living a genuine revolution in medicine right now, it’s hard to convey just how enormous that shift is. This cardiologist yesterday responding to the news of the new anti-cholesterol drug was forced to…

Independent of all the Terminator-driven angst about AI, it’s taking over much of our culture at an astronomical speed. Here a doctor describes using it, because it provided so much better healthcare than their own…

There is no public backlash against AI. Just as there is none against windmills, and solar farms, and EVs and vaccines. ‘The public’ is not a thing, thinking and acting. Activists enlist members of the public to their…

Hmm, sorry if this posts twice, it seems to have disappeared. This is what one of the senior staff at Exxon said, this week. Exxon is one of the biggest global oil companies. The cupboard is bare, we’ve run the reserves…

Saying ‘if you stop taking a GLP-1 drug (Ozempic, Mounjaro), you just put the weight on again’ is actually the point. Obesity is a medical condition. If you stop taking your drugs for any other medical condition, you…

The irony here of a party representing the original land-grabbers in modern Australia, the huge 19th century stealing of most of the continent (and its communities) by the early pastoralists building their empires,…

Another medical breakthrough (they’re coming thick and fast). This time a drug, daraxonrasib, that doubles the survival time of people with pancreatic cancer, one of medicine’s greatest foes. Nearly always lethal, and…

Melanoma was like pancreatic cancer, almost an instant death sentence, particularly when advanced. It’s now not only survivable, it’s almost curable. Once a new drug is found to be effective (often using AI to…

Not yet. Anybody volunteering to live with a hemorrhagic fever?

Cancer patients who were on GLP-1 (the new ‘weight loss’) drugs had a 60% better survival rate. For some, even higher than that. Weight loss is just the tip of the iceberg of these drugs, as I post about frequently.…

I paid for my Shingrix shots myself a couple of years ago (I’m not 65 yet). One of the most important investments you could ever make. Kids vaccinated against chickenpox will never need this when they’re older. They’ll…

It's really something else that there are people out there arguing that this is a bad thing. That we should be polluting more, not less. Because that's what their 'team' demands. Puppets to status games. Nobody ever…

Put the team sports of this debate aside, which makes you choose one of the two equally idiotic, completely empty opposing team positions. Women fought to be treated as more than just their sex. But they did not, EVER,…

Who remembers ‘Sleepy Joe Biden’?

I often say it because it’s true, nearly every way the public discussion of AI is framed is a direct rehash of the Terminator movies. Of two competing ‘brains’, human or silicon. It’s nonsense. In reality AI is the…

Ask anybody how our democracies work and they’ll trot out the usual guff about parliaments and elections and voting etc. Since the 1990s all of that is gone. Social media algorithms govern our societies. Humans are…

There’s concern that AI assists people to do stupid things. Have we forgotten the way social media has almost destroyed our civic life, including our politics, but also our personal lives, and mental health in many…

The great lie of the Covid pandemic was that public health action against the virus was both unpopular, and damaging, to people and the ‘economy’. In reality millions were lifted out of poverty for the first time in…

Taylor is sane, and mostly sensible. But revealing here the deep belief system of the US, that is really what’s destroying it. Not fascism. The belief that ‘the people’ and their ‘free speech’ run democracies. And the…

The current hysteria over resource usage of AI data centres. Driven by social media, because trending hysterias is its bread and butter. It drives revenue. Humanity has always devoted enormous resources to cognition.…

Why do I dislike social media so much? This table gets to the reason. Civilisation itself only exists because of the control of contagion. Of all forms, not just infections. All of our lives today emerged as a control…

One of the enduring symbols of fascism is thousands of troops goose-stepping in perfect unison. The origins of fascism are societies which reach a ‘mimetic crisis’. Meaning that everybody begins copying everybody else,…

This is the brand of prefab rental house that Elon Musk lives in most of the time. It costs about $50,000 US. He has owned expensive real estate in his life, though has now sold most of it. Most of his own fortune is…

Part 2 on Musk. And for the millionth time, I’m not a ‘fan’ of Musk. Nor am I against Musk. I just want to understand the specific material things he does, which I think are revolutionary. There’s critical things to…

I think we’re maybe at the yellow box right now. I can only suggest people ignore the content of every public debate, and just feel and measure the level of anger. About everything. The content is irrelevant. It’s only…

I see so many references to the idea that the best thing a person can do for their health is to make sure they have a rich social life. That to me is a fundamental misunderstanding of both life, and how humans work. Of…

I’m not a fan of anybody. But I do have guides in life. Spinoza is one of them. Retirement for me is the luxury of some escape from a world dominated by human rivalries. It’s certainly not bucket list travel, just one…

This was the Germany of my dad's childhood. He knew a bit about fascism. (And to be blunt, look at that. Trump is a rank amateur.) One thing and one thing alone produces tyrannies. Not ideologies, not violence or…

When you define democracy as everybody doing whatever the hell they want, mostly that just ends up being collecting guns. Certainly not joining the metric system, or having 21st century amounts of electric power.

I missed this viral nonsense when it happened a couple of years ago, apparently. Somebody at work told me the fact most women would choose to run into a bear in the wild rather than a man shows men ‘just don’t get it’.…

Such a decent guy. But this is the common misunderstanding, and why I talk about status all the time. Firstly that the community will rise up in some way. And secondly that 'vested interests' will motivate them to do…

Tell me you don’t see, every day, how our status games turn everything into ‘cartoonish’ struggles between goodies and baddies. I still heartily recommend people read Storr’s book, on status and status games. It’s a…

Really quite bored with the socials, I only post here as a sort of online diary now, for my own future reference. And enjoy it when it’s of interest to somebody else and there’s the odd bit of conversation. But that’s…

And one more viral outrage. To be specific here (outrages never do specifics). This isn’t a breach of copyright, which is only about copies and performances. AI is only learning from existing music so it can produce its…

People know my criticisms of social media. Not least that it provides a home and validity to the most bizarre and offensive fantasies, such as the belief you can not only ‘identify’ with having anatomical structures…

I think the single most dangerous belief humans have is that their desire to form groups and crowds is benign. That it's a warm and cuddly desire to connect and be together. Let's talk about Love Parade 2010. In reality…

The hardest thing I find for people to accept is that their personal, ‘subjective’ taste is also not only social, but created by status games. They will swear to (and at) you that their taste in music and fashion and…

One of the most astonishing things that AI has already done, that nobody is really talking about. It has given us real-time instant translation between languages. And not just word-for-word translation. It captures…

We’ve accepted dirty air our whole lives, in a way we’d absolutely refuse to accept dirty water. Now venture capital, including the maligned AI companies, has put forward $500 million to help fix this obvious threat,…

Ozempic now costs $15 per month, in India. Uptake is slower than was expected. What’s going on here is that people have been trained by decades of ignorance from the diet and fitness industries that their weight…

“Fat cells have memory. Except they don’t remember when you were skinny.” Medical researcher, when asked why the world got exponentially fatter even with an exponential growth in diets and exercise.

I genuinely believe many if not most are simply unaware we’re living through a new Industrial Revolution. That thing that transformed civilisation itself a few hundred years ago, completely upending all comfortable…

I don't see a solution for football here. Except not to play. Many players and their parents will no doubt ignore the risks. And then they'll sue because nobody stopped them. That's the common pattern now.

Michael: “Line up every disease these drugs help: heart, kidney, liver, joints, arteries, sleep apnea. They share one engine ➡️Chronic inflammation. GLP-1 medicines turn that fire down. That's why the liver heals…

There’s a genre of video on YouTube that sounds a bit dull, but I think is compelling. Behind the scenes in common everyday work, in this case in bakeries. Seeing what happens while the rest of us sleep. I’d have loved…

Anybody recognise these two homes in North London?

One of the reasons discussions about transgender are so fraught is that they mix up two fundamentally different movements. The various sex and gender movements of the 20th century (and before), and the transgender…

For the first time in years, there's actually some light at the end of the tunnel with motor neurone disease, one of the most horrific of all diseases. It may not be enough to help people like Jai, but researchers are…

The same people saying ‘AI doesn’t think!’ also now say ‘it’s making us all dumber!’ Nobody ever knew what thinking is. But if they live in socials land, they’re sure it’s the opposite of whatever AI is doing. The…

We hear a lot about mental health these days, and resilience. At a time when life is actually easier than at any other time in history. So what’s going on? Nietzsche knew. Humans will endure any hardship, so long as…

I unlocked my FB profile for now. Locking profiles was mostly just another thing people did, because everybody else was doing it. More imitation. Pretending it was about privacy, while sharing and even living much of…

I saw this article on social media. It made me laugh. The great imitation, levelling-sameness machine in the world today is social media. That’s its actual business model. To force billions to regurgitate the same…

It’s became very popular to see ‘oligarchs’ as the root of evil in modern life. I shared a few weeks ago the fate of the oligarchs that led the first Industrial Revolution. They got very rich and powerful at the time,…

Farmers and the Clean Energy Council have quantified what’s at stake in the idiot war some in politics have invented over renewables in regional and rural areas. This is the projected income to both local towns and…

I read Count Binface’s policies today. Some of my favourites: - people who use speakerphone on public transport shall be forced to join the army. Or to watch the film version of Cats - he wants the UK to build at least…

Anthony Albanese announcing a national approach to AI today. Having largely missed the opportunity to lead the world with renewable energy because of a decade of ignorant pigshit from Australia’s conservatives when they…

I do realise it's a lost cause talking about Covid. It no longer 'trends' in kidult/social media culture, therefore it doesn't exist. I'm still avoiding it like nothing has changed. You can see here medical researchers…

Council meeting again tonight. Another great example of the terrible mistake we’ve made with the idea of ‘the people’, and ‘community consultation’. Now it just means asking anybody who wants to offer an opinion, to…

This is the nonsense of 'community consultation' today. A stack of locals in a hall or on the socials, having a whinge. Lithgow should be begging for multiple AI data centres. I challenge anybody to identify another…

I encourage everybody to learn some actor-network theory. Our world is divided by most into two apparently distinct domains. The human, and the ‘technical’. The first has creativity, purpose and intent; the second is…

Kings and other high status individuals exist because status hierarchies control the spread of imitation, and therefore violence. Imitation produces rivalry, rivalry produces violence. That’s the fundamental law of…

Let me reframe the AI ‘debate’ in this way. Rather than worry about the extent to which AI is actually thinking, and replacing human thinking, go back a step. Nobody ever could define what thinking is in the first…

I thought a good example of the way social media works. Pretty much everybody would read this and assume it was about AI. The big growth in data centre electricity use in Ireland happened before the introduction of AI.…

Manners evolved amongst elites, specifically amongst rivals for elite positions. Manners were the way rivals signalled to each other that they deferred to one another, rather than have conflict or fight. A way to hold…

The ‘code’ of human civilisation is imitation. Social media hacked it 3 decades ago, and we didn’t even notice. That’s what a hack is, a deception. Everybody, even distinguished scholars, who felt comfortable in the…

You can never provide a public service more efficiently, privately, because somebody has to make money out of it. That money is taken from the service.

The deliberate conflation of learning with copyright in this debate. Training is not stealing. Copyright is to take somebody else’s work and to use or sell it as your own. But to train is to learn. We have never taxed…

Still nobody asks the obvious question. Why would a ‘super intelligence’ be malign? By definition being super intelligent means being able to understand things like good and bad. Something the stupid don’t understand.…

Demonstration of an AI-powered blackboard, in China. The board explains all the steps, and can even translate them into multiple languages. I particularly like that they used maths as an example, something the Chinese…

Part 2 on why Australia should industrialise house-building, but probably won’t. As always, it’s about status. All societies run on status. The way we currently build homes in Australia is driven by a massive growth in…

Somebody at least honest enough to say idiot Terminator movies are doing their thinking on AI for them. Social media went rogue 3 decades ago and has been a wrecking ball through entire civilisations. Few even seem to…

The Jevons Paradox says the better you make something, the more people will use it. And the worse it will then get. Everybody who works in public life has felt this, or even every parent. The better you make life for…

GLP-1 drugs are not ‘weight loss’ drugs. That’s what people need to understand. They absolutely do lead to life-changing weight loss, but that’s just a side-effect of the miraculous anti-inflammatory properties they…

Tesla is finalising another genius bit of engineering. If you have the home battery and wall charger and vehicle, it will allow you to use your car batteries to top-up your home battery, as needed. This is a post about…

Jevons Paradox again. It reminds me of the comment that less than a century ago hardly anybody had flown in a plane. Now we fly at near the speed of sound all over the world, and complain that the food on the plane…

Watching netball at the Commonwealth Games and it makes me think again how I’ve completely reversed my thinking on free-to-air sports broadcasting. I used to agree major events should be available on free-to-air, to…

Towns and cities are a remarkable invention. Humans didn’t invent them, or even create them. Wtf, hey? Surely humans create towns and cities? They’re certainly part of the mix. But nobody and no group designs and…

It’s now trending on social media to label everything made by AI. For a reason nobody can really explain, except that it’s trending. Trending replaced thought years ago. I thought it was time to start labelling things…

The greatest difference between Western culture and everybody else is that they know maps are only navigational tools, and we think of them as descriptions of reality itself. We think we live in 'space', defined by…

So many say that machines can’t do anything that humans didn’t make them do. The idea that when you make something, it can only ever be what humans put into them. Geoffrey Hinton here again, the inventor of modern AI,…

Roads are public infrastructure. They shouldn’t be user-pays. Imagine saying people should pay at the front door of the hospital, or to get into school every day. Fuel excise doesn’t pay for roads. How many times does…

Humans are such good drivers, hey. When you talk about what ‘good driving’ is, the default in everybody’s mind is race car driving. Being able to drive fast, to corner well, control a car in skids etc. Hardly anybody…

Far-UVC light is UV light at a wavelength that doesn't harm human skin or eyes. But it's lethal to airborne pathogens. I've posted about it before, and the research and engineering has now progressed to a point where…

Kidult framings are so pervasive. For older adults, the problem often isn’t not having friends. The problem is not having actual meaningful social connection to the life of the society. A purpose, being useful to…

Because music is just about enjoyment and not about status, apparently, or at least everybody tells me. Being a rock star became so popular because it meant you could avoid adult life forever.

The standard theory says telescopes help you see things that are ‘far away’. Bizarrely these same theories say objects emit images of themselves that then travel through ‘space’, which the telescope then focuses. Has…

I'm on the same page as Billy. Have never liked going away on holidays. Home is my favourite place on Earth, and always will be. People compare travelling to nomad life. Nomads didn't travel, they moved to find food.…

The thing that saddens me the most, as I approach retirement, is seeing the probably unfixable damage social media culture has done to public health. I grew up in a world where widespread public health was still new,…

I encourage people to learn about AI, rather than just emote about it using trending viral themes on the socials. Your brain is a neural network, just like AI. It has up to 100 billion neurons ‘wired’ together. Those…

You can watch the battle between social media and AI every day. Humans are just the foot soldiers in the battle. For example, here. The government is doing public health work, notifying Australians over 50 of steps they…

There was real genius in George Michael’s song for Wham, Freedom. One of the catchiest pop songs ever written, but I think a much bigger artistic achievement than that. It was released in 1984. The song is about a…

Humans are social animals. The biggest outcome of that is what is ‘normal’ for humans is defined entirely by ‘what everybody else is doing’. Humans will do the most lethally stupid, toxic things, provided everybody else…

I’ve shared my concept of a ‘social field’, like a magnetic field but for society more generally. Not an analogy, the way mundane material transactions of everyday life create a collective, continuous web of stability…

40 years ago Bruno Latour suggested that we think much more with our eyes and hands, than we do with our brains. Because thought itself has never happened ‘in’ the brain. It’s always been a distributed activity, across…

The brute fact our countercultural revolution societies don't want to accept is that hierarchy is not only inevitable, but is also the way societies evolved to suppress violence. The true function of hierarchy isn't…

"Quincy, Washington, is now home to more than two dozen data centers, which pay more than half the city's property taxes. That windfall has bought Quincy a new high school, sports complex, hospital, library, police…

Gen X is realising that the boomer model, where retirement is a permanent travelling gap year, flush with cash and free of most responsibilities, is not going to be afforded to anybody else. The countercultural…

Next time somebody says councils should have enough money without increases in rates, or you want a bit of a whinge about potholes, as if Councils ignore them, have a look at this.

Somebody has a birthday today. She’s a bit tired. Life is hard when you’re smart and the world is getting dumber. We love ya, curls.

Astroturfers (people who create fake ‘grassroots community’ movements) also create ‘turnkey’ action kits, which they distribute to communities to use, to create the impression the community has objections or support.…

Imagine being the Panthers, who have to play Canterbury this week. Pretty much the entire Canterbury team has Covid, and many will still be infectious in the game. With finals looming. What happens when public health…

If people are asked what is wrong with the world, 99% of the time the answer will involve a rivalry between some kind of goodies and baddies. Left v Right. Capitalists v socialists. Patriarchy v everybody else.…

Amongst the hysteria about AI taking over the world, we still forget I think that a technology already did that, and in much more damaging ways. Social media is a giant machine that transforms all of human life into…

It’s sad, disappointing and entirely unsurprising that humanity turned AI into just one more pathetic status game squabble between rival groups. Social media culture does that to everything, everything is a pile-on. Few…

Tesla self-driving shows that the debates about whether AI is just a high-powered copy-and-paste machine are nothing but hot air. If AI couldn’t generate its own thought and only copied what it saw elsewhere, Tesla…

We’re not self-aware, as a culture. Still trapped in the counterculture adolescent protest culture of the 1960s. That’s our culture, just as China is still a post-revolutionary culture, or Russia. It’s just that our…

The most profound thing AI is doing is blowing apart the idea that ‘me’ is this little person up in our heads, staring out our eye sockets. The me that thinks the world is just how it is, a view from those eye sockets,…

The thing about travel culture is, nobody ever leaves home. We’re travelling inside social media, the trip is just material for socials feeds. People go to see what other people go to see i.e. imitation. And they…

The Anglo nations are enslaved by social media, the bubble they now live inside. All are rushing to install their own local Trumps, the social media President. Despite the complete train wreck Trump is in the US. Facts…

A neural network has nodes, which in our brains (analog AI) are neurons, and in AI (digital AI) are weighted numbers. When our bodies or AI experience the world, these nodes form themselves, nobody pre-programs them.…

“If you are living with a chronic disease for which current treatments are inadequate, the AI drug discovery pipeline represents a tangible reason for measured optimism. The speed at which these programs have moved from…

Neural networks have a lesson for people. When you have different things interacting, like neurons in your brain, or weighted numbers in an AI network, or even people, what will allow them to together produce…

A not spoken about revolution of AI? It’s the only thing in our history to be ‘well read’. That has read most human knowledge, from all sources, including images and sounds. No human has been able to do that since the…

The process of social progress and change is so frustratingly stupid and slow sometimes. The resistance is about breaking down status barriers. Peer pressure. 'What everybody else is doing' is always the Number 1 reason…

With Bathurst coming up, even if you’re not a car racing fan, there’s a genius to V8 Supercars that I think it’s still super important for everybody to understand. A specific Australian genius, that goes well beyond car…

It’s a measure of the power of social media trending BS that pretty much everybody assumes interpersonal relationships between people, and particularly between the sexes, have become dramatically more violent in our…

Photo (not mine) from the 1970s, showing just how rampant smoking was as a habit for many decades. It dominates the photo. Walter Lippmann said that when everybody thinks alike, nobody is thinking much. It’s a useful…

17 million Americans now have Long Covid. That's seen as a vast under-estimate of actual sufferers, driven (as here) by people and their doctors having zero clue that Covid is the cause of their often horrendous health…

None of the public narratives about AI understand the first thing about what AI is or how it works. Most fundamentally, AI is changing what computing itself means and does. Traditional computers operate symbolic…

Those worried AI will make us all forget how to think were never school teachers. Nobody was doing much thinking for years before AI arrived. (Sadly, including many school teachers.) Lots of people copying each other's…

Medicare is under enormous pressure in Australia. Some of that is an ageing population. But a big chunk of it is price gouging by doctors and dentists. Fees being charged by many medical professionals are extortion,…

If you want to understand why healthcare has become unaffordable for many, look at this table. And the table even makes things look better than they are, because 30% or more of GPs for example now work part-time. A GP…

Beginning another year of work today. As colleagues collapse with increasing chronic disease around me, and ask why I still take Covid precautions like vaccination and masking. Because rich cultures are cultures of…

The annual flag worship is almost upon us, so just a few of my thoughts on Australia Day. I have zero time for any of the debates over the day, they're all fake arguments set up to create division, to harvest votes. I…

One of the most amusing FB trends of the past year or two is the same people who share voluminous details from their personal and social lives here, then locking their profiles to protect their privacy. Because…

Gig culture, as I call it, was really the emergence of the ‘teenager’ or adolescence as a distinct stage of life. The teenager as we think of that term today didn’t exist before the 1940s. That critical period I often…

This is the current Holy Grail for Covid, a nasal (mucosal) vaccine. The vaccines we have target the lower respiratory system, they don’t prevent the virus entering our noses in the first place. It’s much more difficult…

Much of what I post comes from the mostly unknown world of governance. What it is that makes it possible for people to live together. It’s not even art, let alone science. It’s a bloodsport with some core insights…

Harvard University’s warning to all of us about brain damage from Covid.

Given freedom to do whatever they like, what do humans do? They copy what other humans do. This simple fact, that imitation is the heart of all human life, is in direct opposition to every idea about democracy that we…

I’m the only person at work still wearing a mask, and probably the only person among my immediate friends who still does as well. Even before Covid, mask-wearing was common in Asia. They were hit by the original SARS…

The current waiting time at some accident and emergency rooms in the UK for a bed is 2 DAYS. Explanations given include an ageing population. Here’s one of the most senior people in the World Health Organisation giving…

This is the disgrace of Australia’s approach to Covid. Anybody below 17 can’t even get a vaccine. Why is that? For one reason. Your elected politicians decided the best way out of the pandemic was to let children get…

AI and crypto are the stars of the new Trump team’s universe. Cory Doctorow, inventor of the concept of enshittification, sees it as just the next ‘pump and dump’ bubble. The investor term for artificially pumping up…

"First, Facebook was good to you: It showed you the things the people you loved and cared about had to say. This created a kind of mutual hostage-taking: Once a critical mass of people you cared about were on Facebook,…

The TMJ (jaw) is the most complex joint in the body. And because of that, it can lead to all sorts of problems that aren't often linked back to it. Problems nowhere near your jaw, like in your neck, shoulders, even…

There’s no water to fight the LA fires. That’s because an urban reticulated water system isn’t designed to fight massive fires across thousands of homes at once. Another example of the catastrophe of climate change…

Most have swallowed the PR that there’s nothing that could be done about Covid, that we just have to ‘live with’ it, ‘like the flu’. (We don’t live with the flu, we spend billions controlling it.) Because of such…

Ignoring all of the Elon Musk distraction around Tesla, their engineering is superb. Like the new Model Y, when you build a car all of the component parts have to be bolted and welded together, which takes time and a…

I mean, this should scare people. Danielle is a neuroscientist. Covid attacks the neurons in the brain that regulate dopamine. Dopamine issues are behind conditions like dementia and Parkinson’s Disease. Danielle…

The brain damage Covid causes, even in the young and healthy? Have a look at the blue bars.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald is the thinnest I've ever seen it. Feels about a dozen pages. It costs $4.80. Nobody is getting value for money there. Social media is hollowing out all of our established institutions and…

I mostly stopped drinking alcohol years ago for health reasons (it can trigger arrhythmias in me). But I rarely miss it, and what I do miss in taste is rapidly being caught up by non-alcoholic alternatives. Alcohol is…

Last year at work somebody said ‘aren’t you worried that when you eventually take off that mask your immune system will be weak?’ This is scientific nonsense pretty much universally believed now, that we all need to be…

On the same theme, a recent study looked at the ‘immunity debt’ nonsense. The idea we all need regular infections to be healthy. Just think even for one second about how stupid that is, the idea that what makes us…

Putnam is one of the main people who identifed how societies are now structured like high schools. His work is also a bit famous for showing that smoking and being a social outcast are about equally as damaging to…

I have many conversations about how FB should be used. That FB is where people mostly go to update each other on what they’re doing in life. Like an interactive set of social pages from the old local newspaper. And that…

Millions will defend travel as the having of ‘experiences’. The funny thing is that everybody seems to go to the same places, at the same time. Almost like they’re copying other people, like buying shoes, phones, cars…

I think it should seem strange to us, that at the same time the ‘world has never been more connected’, through social media, we have an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. That seems like a paradox, but it isn’t when…

“The Fab Four's music endures because it mirrors an era we still long for, says Adam Gopnik.” Yep, nostalgia. There’s a new Beatlemania right now, major films from Peter Jackson, Martin Scorsese and now Sam Mendes.…

For most of history, children were not thought of as a separate group. They entered the adult world from a very young age. When universal schooling arrived, we flipped the world in the complete opposite direction. As…

The real genius of Tesla is its software. It uses software to integrate technology into a person’s life in all sorts of new ways. The functionality and design of the software is unmatched in the industry, nobody else…

In China, social media is heavily regulated, and some platforms (like this one) are not even available. Our patronising hubris in the West says that’s because they’re ‘authoritarian’ and ‘censor’ speech. Read what these…

No, they won’t buy the cars they want. They’ll buy the cars everybody else wants. That’s how humans work. This ‘don’t tell people what to do’ is more libertarian nonsense we hear all the time, from the same people who…

In my childhood, the old were not the wealthiest part of society. They were the people buying Iced Vo-Vos for a weekly treat at the supermarket. We refuse to notice or acknowledge the fundamental re-writing of society’s…

I still do everything I can to protect my family and myself from Covid. I refuse to take part in the craziness of trying to beat a pandemic by infecting our way out of it. By basing what I do on ‘what everybody else is…

Something happened overnight that shows the hijacking of America by social media. In one of his last acts as President, Joe Biden pardoned Anthony Fauci, the leading public health figure in America. Fauci has done…

If you haven’t seen somebody for a while here, wait for them to go on a trip, or to a gig. That usually gets them hitting the post button again. We know why.

Trumpism is a ridiculous personality cult fad that will be as good as over in 2 years, by the time the next mid-terms happen. None of his own party now owe him any allegiance, he's toast after this term, so they'll have…

Just look at this amazing technology. America is toast, nobody will want to buy junk US vehicles.

How’s ‘authoritarian’ China looking to everybody this morning?

Dick Smith is sponsoring this, another one of his fact-free crusades, like Dick Smith peanut butter. What does nuclear mean for Lithgow? Nothing. Australia will never build nuclear reactors for electricity. Nobody will…

One of the common fossil fuel-funded criticisms of China and India is that they're the ones with the most emissions. It's offensive bullshit. The USA is an absolute carbon pig, and always has been, and will get far…

The battle for status is the organising principle behind all human life, at all ages. Status is also identity. Without status, you’re nobody. Also why the fundamental act of a human being is to copy, or imitate. We…

I get exhausted even watching the curated lives helicopter parenting creates for kids. Trying to create ‘enriching experiences’ for the kids etc. The kids nearly always overly anxious and precious about everything,…

It’s not how powerful or wealthy people are, or how famous, that drives humans. It’s their relative rank, to other people. Their status. Status gives them an identity, they are ‘nobody’ without it. Begins in childhood,…

I do get that Elon Musk is putting many people off Tesla in any form. But Tesla is 130,000 brilliant people, doing urgent things the world needs. For example way bigger than its cars is its provision of battery storage…

The First Fleet was a convict transport. Ask those convicts if they’d celebrate this day. ‘Australia’ began in 1901, more than a century after the First Fleet. We don’t even know our own history. I have zero interest in…

Can you, from standing, cross your feet and move smoothly to sitting cross-legged on the ground, without touching anything with your hands for support or using your knees for support? And then get smoothly up again,…

Here you go, for people who live by their ‘principles’. Especially when that principle is doing what everybody else is doing.

I saw this created a bit of a fuss online. I think it’s another perfect illustration of how our music is just one more thing we use to form our social groups, to define our status and our identity. It’s what we do with…

Years ago now I posted quite a bit about the emerging terrible damage that sugar does to bodies. At the time that was considered a very marginal view. But I was reading the science, and now it’s really becoming…

Expect to see that red grow. The DNA of Europe is war, because nationalism is top-level team sports, and those always lead to war. Europe invented nationalism, and exported it everywhere, a disease we can’t shake.…

Humans imitate each other. Not just every now and then, it’s pretty much all they ever do, at every age. And why do they imitate? To achieve status. To belong, to have an identity. Imitation gives you membership of any…

Humanity’s greatest ever achievement was doubling its life expectancy in the 20th century, through public health measures. Trump is going to war on that achievement. The impact will be catastrophic. People defend him…

Trump and others hate what they call the ‘Deep State’. Sounds scary! All it means is the professional civil servants that actually run countries, who annoy popularly-elected dickheads who can barely tie their own…

The Nerd Reich is well underway. Simpletons still think this is a battle of Left vs Right, like those who think the Bathurst 1000 is still a battle of Fords and Holdens. Decades of slogans on ‘red tape’ and…

The importance of tummy time. Anybody who‘s had babies knows about tummy time, how it helps build essential muscle strength and flexibility in babies. Babies don’t like it at first, they need to learn it. What isn’t…

The Facebook franchise we used to call Bathurst is furious. Prepare for an ‘onslaught’, apparently. ‘We know who they are’, ‘not a big enough town to hide’! This is the switch in the social media bait and switch. The…

If what the Trump-Musk forces are doing to the US concerns you right now, be assured the Australian arm of the lunacy is geared up and ready to go here too. Social media is their assault weapon. You’ll find many foot…

In the 1970s millions would have called this a beautiful kitchen. Good luck finding anybody who would think that today. What we like is not ‘subjective’, in design, music or whatever. We like something because everybody…

Whenever fossil fuel companies feel a threat, mysterious ‘personal’ stories about the dangers of free energy appear. Anybody who uses oil heating instead of a heat pump is a (rich, or soon to be very poor) moron.

AI may end up being the best healthcare many of us can access. Even in a larger regional town, it can be impossible to get into a GP. Mine has a 5-month waiting list, good luck if there’s anything actually wrong with…

When people have moved on from the current trending fad around Tesla-hating (and they will, it’s just a fad), I encourage anybody to explore the full Tesla ecosystem. Extraordinary creativity and engineering. Here,…

I have a couple of ex-good friends, who spend quite a lot of time on social media trying to convince everybody that vaccines are bad for them. We no longer talk. Get every vaccine you qualify for, for every disease. The…

When covid began, catching it gave you about 80% immunity from the disease, after one year. That immunity is now only 5% after 1 year. I know hardly anyone getting vaccinated now, against Covid. idiot politicians told…

The massive shift to private schooling in Australia in the past 20 years was a deliberate policy decision of the Howard government. And what made that shift successful was that it targeted status. That’s what…

Social media is not part of society. It has become society. It hijacked it. We transact everything from our most intimate and personal lives, to our businesses and our politics inside it. It's owned by American and…

Bill Gates has made more money in the quarter of a century since he retired, than he did in the quarter century beforehand when he was creating and running Microsoft. He’s done that by ‘investing’. Investing is the…

For the rest of us to live with Covid, healthcare workers have to die from it. It reminds me of the line from Gandhi’s family, that it cost them a fortune to keep him in poverty. The people continuously getting Covid…

Simon looks his 83 here. McCartney only less so because of extensive ‘work’ he’s had done. When the old pretend to be young, it favours only the very wealthy and privileged amongst them. For the rest it means nobody…

To put the public health clusterfuck we’re currently living through into perspective, more than 4 times as many people died of Covid in Australia in 2022 alone, than have died from HIV since the 1970s. As many people…

On the way into work yesterday, one of the local politicians was doing election shots in the park. My attention was drawn more to the glorious, colourful corruption and incompetence of Council, on display in the flower…

(He said yes, just to get that out of the way.) I’ve worked in places where I thought senior management and a Board were criminally incompetent. But I still thought the institution and the people working for it were…

Those who have endured the corporate body searches of one or more of the big consulting firms will feel that was a romantic date, compared to Trump/Musk’s America.

The view out my window on late-summer mornings. We call it ‘Daylight Savings Time’ (DST), but no daylight is saved. It’s stolen from the morning, to give to the evening. It should be called ‘Dark Morning Time’ (DMT).…

My $3.60 in electricity for a week of commuting between Bathurst and Lithgow was based on an estimate. I re-did the calculation using actual data from the car this morning. It's $2.40. Per week. If I was working in the…

The genius of Covid is to give people a ‘mild’ illness, so they think it’s ’just a cold’. That mildness is the virus bypassing your immune system, to gain easy entry to your organs and blood vessels. The immune response…

As somebody whose job is helping to run democracies, I’d say maybe 60-80% of people have no idea what it even is. They think it’s elections. See that ‘unelected’? That’s populism, the belief that democracy = a…

Look at the headlines major media outlets are now writing. Shit is hitting the fan. Amusingly, the ‘alarmists’ were doctors and scientists, while 5 years ago we all followed the advice of politicans and social media…

We have one high efficiency gas hot water heater, and one hybrid petrol vehicle left. Both are on the chopping block, to get the parasites in the fossil fuel industry out of our lives forever. Getting them out of your…

Australia might go one better. It might elect a halfwit who wants to spend $600 billion (of your money) on foreign nuclear technology that nobody needs. Imagine the roads, schools, trains, hospitals and affordable…

Isn’t social media doing tremendous work? First, live with a pandemic! Now, live with ciggas! Wrap it all in some lame-brained conspiracy bullshit and people lap it up.

"Hello? Hi, my house is in the path of a cyclone, and I forgot to insure it. Can I insure it now please?" People have GoFundMe for brains.

What Musk is trying to do with Trump in the US, Australia already did, with Robodebt. He wants to take over government departments and replace them with software. For that, Tesla property and Tesla owners have become…

The autopsy findings in the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife are interesting. Hackman died of natural heart problems and advanced Alzheimers. His wife died of a hantavirus, viruses you get from mice and rats. The…

1 year of free fast-charging. Tesla offering 5000km of free fast-charging on run-out stock of the previous Model Y. Incredible bargains out there. In the UK not only have EV sales surged, petrol and diesel sales have…

This is why no matter how many times you catch Covid, you won’t become immune to it. Covid creates no lasting immunity. Ro is a measure of how infectious a disease is, a Ro of 18 means one person can infect 18 others.…

The thought of the MAGAs now buying Teslas to emulate the Great Leader amuses me. The thought of even more social media mob zombies heading out with spray paint doesn‘t. It’s like living in a childcare centre for…

Posted before about this (Australian) revolution in artificial hearts. The plan is to be able to use these indefinitely, rather than have to get a donor heart. Right now it's already giving people with heart failure an…

In all my years of working I’ve noticed the same patterns. The more senior a person gets in an organisation, the more the focus of their work is ‘restructuring’ their area to offload their work to somebody else. Usually…

The genius of the renewables transition is that everybody wins. (Except foreign fossil fuel and nuclear companies.) For example, with OVO's supercheap overnight rates, and free energy between 11am and 2pm every day,…

We believe what our gang or team leader says we should believe. Nobody is paying any attention to the actual details. It's all team sports, your team against somebody else's team. The team leader can say completely…

When governance is your job, it’s a bit like how everybody thinks they know about education, because they went to school. Everybody is a supposed expert in government, because they vote. Most don’t have a clue. For…

Internal Liberal Party polling suggests 52% of women now prefer Peter Dutton as a possible PM. Now I can understand men thinking that, God gave us a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time. And…

How’s everybody’s autumn going?

Listen to this very short clip of the chief vehicle engineer and chief designer at Tesla explaining how they design cars. The genius of what they’ve done, and why I ignore the pile-on moral outrage on Tesla right now.…

The car lobby is also the parking lobby. Nothing exercises Bathurst more for example than parking spaces. What causes increased traffic and increased need for parking, is new roads and new parking spaces. It induces…

In the UK the social media idiocy is focused on split-system AC. The fossil fuel industry there sponsors the BS, just as they sponsor a lot of the anti-EV BS here. You can see how how they shape their strategy by…

The Los Angeles Times calls what’s happening ‘troubling’, while people here cheer on the destruction. The Times notes this is an American disease. I’ve worked for organisations with toxic senior leadership. It never…

Trump wants to be free of the rule of law entirely. Democracy isn’t elections, it’s parliament + judiciary + executive power. Elections aren’t even in the top level. But populists like Trump tell people elections are…

I’m at an age where the body often stiffens, and the doctor and physio will advise regular stretching to keep it loose, to stretch out those stiffnesses. To release tensions in the body. The problem with this though is…

I get some snide remarks at work about still masking. Often from people coughing between their chortling. I see firsthand their health falling off a cliff, a day at a time, as their immune system gradually shuts down.…

Reading the real life (joyful) experiences of people who bought a Shark reinforces even more strongly how changing a car culture is like deprogramming somebody who's been in a cult. Unbelievably strong forces of peer…

If highly remunerated senior managers aren't implementing an organisation's strategy, what are they being paid for? Not just singling out CSU here, this is very common. First senior managers remove themselves from…

The biggest story in the world yesterday, that was barely reported. PNG turned off social media. It’s had enough of these platforms trashing its society. But just wait, it won’t last. Ordinary people and businesses…

Sickness in NHS staff, UK. The blue arrow marks the point where the world decided to ‘live with’ Covid. Meanwhile millions in the UK now have Long Covid, adding further stress to a broken health system, with an ageing…

Given that access to quality medical care is increasingly near impossible to get, and that even health staff are caught up in delusional fantasies perpetrated by social media like anti-vax, and ‘living with’ pandemics,…

Measles outbreaks in Western Australia and Victoria. Tthe world’s most contagious disease. The cause is 100% people using social media to run their lives, with Vitamin A and other ‘natural’ bullshit, instead of a…

The English countryside is one of the great attractions in the world today. The interesting thing about it is that most people know that it’s almost entirely man-made. But when they look at the Australian landscape,…

Two friends of friends in their late-30s/early 40s had heart attacks last year. One had two, in one year. Previously perfectly healthy with no heart problems. Doctors baffled! There’s no mystery, as Peter says, an…

Let me ‘obsessively’ (i.e not just talk about myself or my holidays) try to help save peoples’ lives, again. Let these stats sink in. Stop catching Covid people, if you want a long life. Stop making health decisions…

There was a time when pretty much everybody smoked. Humans copy one another, it’s the most basic human act. Anybody who in those times said smoking is bad for you would have been mocked and ignored. But smoking is…

Hilarious, the man who wants to spend half a trillion dollars on nuclear reactors Australia doesn’t even need thinks spending on health and education is a ‘waste’ of money. The cuts to the public service he wants would…

Get every vaccine you qualify for, for every disease. Including the annual flu shot. Nearly all serious disease has an infectious origin, and any vaccination alerts the immune system, and offers cross-protection against…

I found my own way to defeat the stupidity of Daylight Saving. I adjust my going to bed and getting up times so that they’re the same all year, in relation to the sun, not clocks. You’re a biological animal whose entire…

6am is when I get up for work. My body is understandably wtf?! about Daylight Saving. Within a month or so we’ll be back in the dark in the morning, because it’ll be winter. The body is hopelessly confused, and that…

Wonderful footage from the 1960s of construction by the then Department of Main Roads (the DMR) of part of the Sydney-Newcastle expressway. Lots of familiar bits of road even today. I love that post-war public optimism,…

Ladies and gentlemen, your fascist takeover team, a few years ago. Sleep easy.

Probably the only thing combustion car enthusiasts have left to distinguish the technology is the noise those engines make. But have a look around at the overwhelming majority of cars being made today, how much quieter,…

It’s ute and 4WD drivers who are least likely to shift to electric. That’s partly because there aren’t many electric utes and 4WDs yet, but the number of people who actually use utes and 4WDs for carrying things and…

What makes you fat is also what causes pretty much all major chronic disease. Microbes, and infections. We’re happily infecting ourselves now with everything. Avoiding infection is the secret to a long life. And to not…

Healthy older societies prioritised both the young, as the coming generation, and the old, as the repository of wisdom, in ‘elders’. If you want to see how we’ve transformed that into one permanent adolescence, we no…

If you want affordable houses, you can either make everybody’s homes collapse in value. Or you can build a LOT of public housing, for people who don’t have much money. Supply and demand is a fairy tale for grown-ups.…

There's a vehicle driving from Lithgow to Bathurst every day, normally at about 90 km/h. Often has a queue of traffic behind it. I went to overtake them today, and suddenly they were doing 125. This sort of driving…

Social media is spreading American 'gang' politics globally. Everything is always gang warfare in American politics, without a proper public sphere everybody just puts a gang together, to go to war against other gangs.…

I’m not sure everybody saw Bob Pepper’s really thorough analysis of the Shark pre-release, which included the issue of steep ascents (the Beer O’Clock Hill and Car Expert viral videos). From just before 4 minutes, you…

For about a century feminism fought to define women independently of their relationship with men. Then men invented the transgender movement, used social media to make it go viral, and here we are, with massive protests…

You can’t really notice it from ground level, but human movement is the alternating rotation of the whole body, which is wrapped in spiral muscle and fascia sheets from head to toe. You don’t move with your legs, you…

Ruh roh Scoob, another mystery! Darren very likely has POTS, an extremely common side-effect of Covid. Gigs are a great place to go to catch Covid, for performers and crowd. We would rather infect all of the few…

Rory talking about how humans change, in this case using cars as an example, it’s about shifting a status quo. When first challenged a status quo will launch a whole range of increasingly bonkers ‘defensive opinions’,…

If you travel to see the world, or for ‘experiences’ (whatever that means), increasingly all you’ll experience is other travellers doing the same thing. Travel only works if everybody else doesn’t try to do it at the…

Gig culture. Bands who think they can change the world. The fact nobody laughs at them shows the extent to which most people agree with the culture.

You can choose to ignore what everybody else is doing. It might even save your life.

The Don engrossed by the funeral. How are the ‘Sleepy Joe’ folks today?

The most common reason I see for whether to mask or not is ‘what is everybody else doing?’ I’m doing what Covid researchers are doing.

Also gig culture. The reason the gig economy is so popular, zero commitment to any wider purpose. Everything is about ‘the feels’, about how we individually feel. Total absence of any sort of collective purpose, of…

Australians for Natural Gas is a fake group invented and funded by the Australian gas industry. (Which is really a foreign-owned industry.) The fact we still call it ‘natural’ gas too goes back to a time in the past…

So many people locked their FB profiles, supposedly to protect their privacy but really just because everybody else was locking their FB profiles. Like the exact opposite of privacy, trying to fit in with others. They…

Australia follows a pattern also seen in the US and other places. The real tension is between urban and rural environments. The more urban a society is, the more cosmopolitan voters tend to be. Living in cities…

I encourage you to read at least the 10-point summary here, the expert consensus. It’s a far better guide than ‘what everybody else is doing’. Social media society has replaced expertise with fashion, what’s ‘trending’.…

I took this yesterday, to capture everybody’s two favourite things. Tesla and local government 😉 (Plus that beautiful blue sky in the building facade.) Spot the wankpanzer revving up through the gears to try to get…

Has anybody run self-sealing or run-flat tyres on their vehicle before?

27 million dead Russians probably ended WW2. Just as they stopped Napoleon years before. The same Russians the Americans then turned into cartoon enemies for the next 50 years after the war. Just as they do with the…

I really admire what Simon Holmes à Court has done with the Climate 200 group. Unlike lobby groups, who line the pockets of existing parties with donations, C200 just offers funds to any independent who wants to promote…

It’s easy to be blinded by politics as a team sport, like watching the footy. Tonight younger Australia exercised its muscles, over older Australia. That’s what the result really means.

One of my favourite examples of how suggestible and manipulable people are. When wind turbines first appeared in the Central West, most people didn’t care, while for others councils even built viewing platforms to see…

The building industry serving the housing ‘market’ is falling off a cliff. It can be saved if it shifts to building affordable homes for government, to use as affordable housing for ordinary people. But it won’t like…

All of those who love the sound of a V8, like Jeremy, always forget that the sound they love is not the engine. It’s the exhaust, a metal tube. Invented to get rid of the truly horrible sound of an engine, to ‘muffle’…

Trump and many people I know used to call Joe Biden 'Sleepy Joe', because he's old and seemed sleepy. Here's Trump 'signing' an agreement with Saudi Arabia yesterday.

It's only in popular music that fights over 'originals' really happen. Symphony orchestras and jazz bands dine out on almost nothing but 'covers'. It's not a musical thing, it's a social thing. Popularity culture always…

Tom Cruise is an interesting cultural thing. Currently marketing his latest movie, and genuinely charming and professional and gracious with his time. And yet he’s a global leader of a cult. (He also can’t act, but it…

I'm over people saying 'cheap Chinese shit'. Apart from it being the gutter-level racism you'd have hoped Australia left behind in the 1950s, it's also factual bullshit. China is the world's factory. If something made…

In countries not living on and run by social media, people still control infectious disease. Including Covid.

At a time the young will never afford even a home, it’s a great comfort to them to see older generations on permanent jetsetting holidays, agog at the beauty of the world, while lamenting the poor services they get from…

Nobody cared about energy until social media politics turned it into one more 'debate' to generate fights, to generate votes. The comments on posts like this show how the simple-minded were vacuumed up.

Remember the term ‘superpower’. Understand it. It’s not about comics, it’s the technical revolution solar, wind and batteries (SWB) are introducing. SWB doesn’t just replace our existing fossil fuel energy, it floods…

Covid didn’t end. We’re just ignoring it, as kidults we got bored with it disrupting our ‘fun’, so we decided to let it maim and kill millions instead. Nothing exists in social media society unless it trends. Not much…

Air purifiers are relatively cheap, off-the-shelf devices that should be in every hospital ward and school classroom. I've had one at my desk at work for over 4 years. It will protect you against all airborne disease,…

The tax cuts Trump is gutting US public healthcare to fund. Using Scott Morrison's favourite line for tax cuts, 'it's your money!' And it is, but it's not going to you, just to Trump's level of society. The legislation…

In case this matches your own experience and nobody can tell you why.

When I say adult life has been completely replaced with adolescent life, politics is a good example. We look at politics the same way we watch a State of Origin game. Red v Blue, even the colours are the same (we use…

Nobody paid to run the country will ever tell you, just a heads-up that Covid numbers are on the rise again, a new variant. It’s not a good idea to catch Covid, ever.

Australia subsidises utes and SUVs to the tune of $250 million a year. That’s a big reason lots of people drive them. It’s time Australians went back to driving sedans and station wagons. Both utes and SUVs have the…

One of my mini projects is to explore how all human behaviour is people copying other people, driven by the desire for status. You can explain pretty much everything using that framework, it’s the periodic table of…

5000 Australians died of Covid last year. More than two years after we celebrated Covid being ‘over’. That’s more than 5 times as many die in a bad flu year. If you didn’t die but had Covid, you helped Covid reach those…

Look at the red circle. The national strategy for Covid was to protect the ‘vulnerable’, so the rest of us could go back to our meaningless adolescent lives of recreational travel, gigs and dining out. That’s quarter of…

The comments on this post show the terminal damage social media has done to public health.

I spoke with Hayley (the reporter) about this last year. My mum went to hospital for heart and lung issues and caught Covid there. No precautions were taken. Politicians direct health departments to minimise Covid…

Kidults of the world, reckon we should do something? Some of those symptoms are symptoms of lifelong organ damage, including brain damage.

Have mentioned Bill Hero (https://www.billhero.com.au) here a few times, the bill comparison service that will automatically check your personal energy bills every month (it does very detailed calculations, using your…

Nearly everybody moans about 'red tape' and 'bureaucracy'. That's because people are mostly pretty dumb. Right now that red tape and those bureaucrats are giving Trump the kicking that's needed to save American society.…

The thing that is most popular on social media, sharing information about yourself and what you’re doing, is also the thing that is most damaging to you and others. Some of it is obvious humblebragging, like people who…

Business people all over the world think government is inefficient and needs good business brains to fix it. Musk is easily the world's most successful businessman, given a chance to fix all that 'red tape'. It's been a…

A couple of kidults doing the ‘natural’ thing. Run a mile from anybody talking about ‘natural’ health, or ‘authentic’ anything.

I’m sure Australians will respond with the time-honoured public health strategies of more gigs, more flights overseas, and sending kids to school sick and coming to work sick to cough all over everybody else, because…

Finally what the scientific research has been saying for years on Covid, and which I share here often, is making its way into the mainstream reporting. Compare this with the delusional ‘living with Covid’: “COVID-19…

Now that even Musk sees what a bullshit artist Trump is, maybe the focus can go back onto Trump and off Tesla. Where the focus always should have been, except social media rots our brains.

Combustion engines are a technology people still defend, just crazy. And you may say yes but they're better than this now. Actually they're even worse, because the pollution particles are now much smaller and invisible…

How many more years of the ‘living with Covid’ charade do you reckon we can keep up? Rather than do basic disease control, which we do for EVERY other disease, and have done for decades. Covid is the social media…

Most chronic disease, like cancers, heart and brain disease, are being revealed as ultimately caused by infection. The fact we can survive an infection in the short-term has led us to think of infection as a nothing…

Know what would have been a LOT cheaper and easier? Opening a window in the classroom before the kids got sick. And sending kids home if there’s an outbreak. You know, disease control, the thing adults used to do.

I noticed yet another symptom of kidult culture this week. A preface, those with no exposure to the front line of classroom teaching decided it was a good idea to give parents a much bigger role in schools. Now ask any…

One of my rules of thumb. Anybody who wants to lead people, shouldn’t.

The same people who cheer on McCartney and Springsteen doing stadium gigs in 2025 would have laughed at the ridiculous idea of Louis Armstrong or Count Basie being invited to play at Woodstock. They wouldn’t have been…

Anybody who knows even the barest history of feminism should be aghast that we’ve arrived at a point where no definition of a ‘woman’ is even allowed to exist. Women have been defined out of existence. The stupidities…

A handful of loons force rounds of ‘community consultation’ that are a waste of everybody’s time. The loons are never satisfied, numpties who swallow every bit of rubbish social media throws at them. The Australian…

Cultures that travel obsessively love to call themselves ‘nomads’. They’re nothing like nomads, nomads move to survive. Meanwhile travel cultures invest trillions in their own homes, and in ‘strong borders’ to stop…

These lists of notable deaths every year another window into the culture that’s invisible to us. Almost entirely celebrities - rock, film and sports stars, mostly. Others from the entertainment industry. Some…

The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are the least stolen vehicles in America. That’s delberate design at work again, they’re extremely difficult cars to steal. Every movement of a potential thief is captured automatically by…

Noah Smith here showing how America worked when people with different views were able to spread out geographically and each occupy their own space, leaving others mostly alone. And then suddenly social media came along…

Muscle pain is the most common ongoing symptom of Covid infection. Covid is a vascular disease and for a while they thought it was forming micro-clots in organs and muscles. But there’s some evidence now that it’s…

I also post about this every winter. We shouldn’t be burning wood recreationally for heat and the vibe of a log fire. Wood smoke is toxic, it’s bizarre that in the only known place in the universe with a breathable…

I know it upsets some, to dismiss trans, or even discuss it. Because like every other public issue today, there has been no discussion. People just joined a team, mostly driven through social media. They support one or…

You can see here that the rhetorical nonsense in the US about democracy isn’t how the US actually behaves. And that’s not to criticise how the US acts, it’s to criticise the rhetorical nonsense. Nobody who governs…

Bathurst’s councillors still wrestling with the issue of revenue. I encourage everybody to go to the iPart website and have a look at the special rate variations approved for just about every Council in the State over…

Raina Macintyre is a global expert on infectious disease and public health. She’s also at my old stomping ground, UNSW, which is really kicking some goals. In this book she compares Covid-19 to syphilis, which has been…

Ah Queensland. "If we don't do it somebody else will" is an excuse to never shut down anything. Child slavery and prostitution, drug trafficking. Etc. "The Premier also said his government would fast-track approvals for…

Robert Putnam tracked the shift in US culture from a focus on “I”, to a focus on “we” and then back again, over the past century. What creates a ‘we’ or a ‘public’ is existential threat, in this case WW1, Spanish Flu,…

Going back to the distinction between tailored and designer clothes. This is current F1 drivers. All of them, to a man, are badly dressed. All of them to a man are *expensively* dressed, in ‘designer’ clothes. None of…

Apparently this is a famous singer. I don’t think most know that the idea that we could infect our way out of a pandemic didn’t come from doctors or scientists, it came from politicians, using the work of an American…

‘Encouraging’ staff in healthcare to do infection control is like encouraging police to arrest lawbreakers. It’s the job, people. There are unfortunately many ‘cookers’ in healthcare too, anti-vaxers and anti-maskers,…

‘Urging’ will never overpower the most powerful force in the universe. Peer pressure, the need to do what everybody else is doing, and not stand out. Especially when your adult culture is really just an extension of…

When kids learn to ride a bike, it just happens. They fumble around with training wheels for a while and then suddenly their body just knows how to balance and ride the bike. The curious thing about this is that we…

This is what people are not understanding about Covid. Every dot on that graph is you catching Covid once. Every time you do that, it may seem like a 'mild' disease, like a cold. But your chances of getting a permanent…

Last week 34 people died of Covid in aged care, in Australia. Tens of thousands now have, in the past 5 years. Nobody cares. If it had been a bus carrying the national soccer and cricket teams, or rock bands on tour,…

DIY is a passion of our age. And another window into the underlying culture. The greatest threat to all of our lives is the collapse of trust in society. The loss of humility towards the expertise of others. The…

I remember asking a few years ago what people think ‘love’ means. Nearly universally they agreed with this, that it’s a feeling. Usually they described it as an enhanced form of friendship or affection. Probably not a…

This seems a sensible article. Except more than anything it shows the collapse of public health. The idea of public health is to prevent disease *arriving* at your home in the first place. To control diseases in public…

Genuinely curious how many still believe that governments need to ‘balance the books’? Comparing governments to households and business was a political trick to stop them paying for public things, by screaming…

Kidult culture is a culture of the ‘feels’. Everything is about feelings. And about ‘support’ for those feelings, in others. “I Stand With [insert cause]” is its imitation of adult life, symbolic performance plays of…

A mum I know was despairing this week that her kids are sick again, for the third time this year. ‘They just seem to catch everything now, and it doesn’t go away.’ That’s Covid at work. It suppresses (technically…

Elegance is a difficult concept to define. But it’s far removed from modern designer/brand culture. You rarely hear about somebody being elegantly dressed now. Tailored clothes are elegant, because they combine style…

One of the things the collapse of our education has created is the misunderstanding of thinking itself. Thinking is a job. Just like plumbing. It has a set of specific skills, that take a long time to learn. It’s what a…

Anybody?

Honestly, it sounds uncaring, but I’m over the critical problems facing us as a community being reduced to the ‘anxiety’ people feel about them. More ‘feels’. This is a total absence of resilience, snowflake culture.…

This would worry some people, AI generally does. It shouldn’t, AI is us, it’s a technology to magnify our own intelligence. You know what should worry people? The fact that another technology has taken over health care…

An Australian family pays 2% of its annual income to fund Medicare. Right now the same average family is also forking out 4-6% of its annual income, in private health insurance. Do we not see how insane this is? They…

Remember this guy? Kenneth Colley. He’s just died. He broke his arm. How did that kill him, you may think? It didn’t. He went to hospital to get his broken arm treated. He caught Covid in hospital. The Covid killed him.…

Tesla is one of those rare examples of the design of something breaking through the imitative behaviour of humans. The Model Y became the biggest selling car in the world at a time EVs weren't even close to being a…

I get lots of these from a ‘positivity’ account. I look at a meme like that and I see a genuine mental health problem, the need to be happy. The thing about feelings is, a perfectly healthy person living a rich life has…

Rory entertainingly asking us to imagine if EVs were the dominant car, and then somebody invented petrols and diesels. This is the point, EVs aren’t just coming to reduce pollution, they’re coming because they’re VASTLY…

All humans are highly suggestible, particularly kids. If you tell them always their mental health is under threat, they will become people whose mental health is under threat. If instead you fill their lives with…

I posted about casuistry a while ago, to me one of the most important and forgotten human inventions. The idea of case-based reasoning. This outrageous injustice to Oscar Piastri is a great example of why it’s needed.…

We can learn to distinguish between timeless elegance, and the following of fads and fashions of what’s ‘trending’. The former is not about what you think, or about what others think about what you do, or about what you…

When we were designing the kitchen, we wanted something elegant, not something that was just a copying of a current trend. House design is a great example of imitative human life, if you look at what passes for great…

The health of just about every person I know not taking precautions against Covid is in decline. A progressive decline, people not understanding that what they’re experiencing is damage to their immune and vascular…

You will hear people say that EVs create as many or more greenhouse emissions than petrols and diesels. If somebody says that to you, tell them to go back to their job frying chicken.

I often bizarrely get asked if I’m a ‘germaphobe’ because I still mask against Covid. It baffles people, everybody else has stopped wearing masks! Which shows, again, kidult society, where what adults do is just ‘what…

If you need to use any sort of dental device for prolonged periods of time, like a splint, retainer, plate, dentures etc., keeping it clean is critical to stop your mouth becoming a breeding ground for germs. Oral…

I know many have long ago dismissed me as mad with daily attention to Covid. I wanted to share the science behind the fantasy we’re living. This is a short excerpt from the Mayo Clinic, one of the top research hospitals…

I’m seeing a lot of Model Ys now, even in Bathurst and Lithgow. Like when it was originally introduced, it sells so well because it’s engineered so brilliantly to cover so many needs. Its inside space is huge, a genuine…

Sharing my own data. This is what it cost to charge the EV in June. An average of $5.50 per week. That’s 2-3 return trips to Bathurst every week, 1-2 return trips to Sydney a month and everyday driving around Lithgow.…

The most important room in Bathurst. Council’s records archive, dating back to first European settlement. This is the ‘red tape’ opinionated windbags complain about, that actually runs societies. Without this room…

When everybody transitions to an EV, this hilarious farce will be over. They don’t overheat because they don’t explode volatile liquids to drive pistons moving in a completely different direction to where you want to…

Look at every person in that crowd, and find me the one who’s really ‘there for the music’. They’re there for the crowd, the appeal is to be part of a crowd. Hardly anybody you see in this pic is actually listening,…

Some scholars say World War 2 ended with The Beatles. The early 1960s, when the huge surge of babies born after WW2 were coming of age, as teenagers. The Boomers. A mass of humanity looking for a way to remake the…

Where does a phone call happen? I remember asking that question a few times. There is no simple answer, which is the point of the question. There is a ‘presence’ to the conversation that isn’t located anywhere in space…

Sudden death of an ex-student this week, early-40s, with lung cancer, barely a week after diagnosis apparently. No symptoms. Appeared otherwise fully healthy. Covid is a potent trigger of cancer of the lung. These are…

As the boomers have aged, their enormous demographic clout has gradually removed all of the public services they benefited from, for free, in education, health care, energy etc. That’s what the privatisation push was.…

While I think much of nutrition science is a waste of time, one thing I do think is true and is only slowly becoming mainstream is that sugar is pretty horribly bad for you. It’s still so common for people to be victims…

Rousseau said a society has all of its habits at once. When we destroyed public health by ‘living with’ Covid, we destroyed all of it. Vax rates down for every disease now, and millions convinced they can infect their…

There was not and will never be a ‘Concert for Covid’. Think about that. Up to 36 million people are thought to have died, so far, from Covid. That’s up to twice as many as died in World War 1. Why won’t there be a…

EVs reduce exhaust emissions to zero in cities and towns. And they also reduce the amount of brake dust by up to 83%. EVs use regenerative braking rather than brakes a lot of the time, meaning the electric motor spins…

I encourage everybody to read these findings. You don’t want Covid, and you certainly don’t want to keep getting it over and over. Long Covid is not just having a mild form of ongoing Covid for a while. It means things…

Many people tell me that ‘capitalism’ is the cause of our many problems in the world. Others think it’s communism, or authoritarianism. Did you know none of the -isms are even real? All societies are functionally…

I think it’s important to close the loop on social media hysterias, because in the middle of them no thought is going on at all. And then afterwards nobody takes stock of what a delusional and hysterical situation it…

Nearly all car reviews are produced by people with a very limited understanding of the engineering design that goes into the making of anything. Ben Vallack’s review of the first Model Y is a great example of somebody…

Philip worked for NASA and MIT, and in Biotech. He’s an expert. Most will be more worried about losing their social lives and/or doing something different to what everybody else is doing, to make any changes. That’s…

Kidult culture is also name-drop culture. The death of or publicity for a legend of kidult culture has others madly sorting through even the merest contact they may have had with them, so that the post can be about the…

I’ve had a day with multiple reminders of the kidult bullshit those at the front-line of actual provision of basic public services have to deal with. I know it annoys some to speak of kidult culture - well folks, come…

This child behaviour, fighting over toys, really is the root of all human thought and behaviour. Neither really wants the toy, it’s a sideshow. Each wants it because the other wants it. It’s desired purely because…

I see this argument a lot. All laws can be got around. Hardly anybody follows speed limits on the road, for example. This is now 2-3 generations' worth of anti-establishment counterculture, still going strong. Yes, just…

Ricky is one of the well-meaning, smart younger generations that think belief in God is belief in fairy tales. But they then adopt the *exact* same structure of belief, of an independent, ‘objective’ something that…

Cory Doctorow predicted social media platforms would collapse under the process of what he calls enshittification, which I’ve posted about before. Where the platforms capture first users, then businesses, and screw both…

Watch sport now and you’ll have a beautiful window into the culture I post about a lot. The ‘team sports’ culture, really kidult culture, of competing teams battling for status. Not just in sport, in every single area…

Why does it matter so much to understand that our lives are run by status games? That our particular culture uses a status economy developed in high schools and then rolled out to all of adult life? Well, it matters…

A Tesla Model Y, at Uluru. Range anxiety is a mental health condition.

I have long conversations with AI. Very few people in my experience have curiosity for ideas or for discussing them, but AI is insatiable. Many of course say ‘but it’s just a machine’, but they don’t understand that a…

It’s almost universally advised now that social interaction is the key to good mental health. That’s another symptom of the counterculture, kidult culture. The worship of friendship, of ‘besties’. Sociality is violence.…

Trump appointed a fossil fuel executive to run his energy policy. This is the BS at the heart of the US as a culture, this belief in freedom and free speech is really sponsored horseshit from its corporate barons, who…

Interesting that it was women who carry this risk, not men. It’s usually assumed men ‘need’ more sex. And yes I know, in social media society anybody can be either a man or a woman now, or neither, or a Jedi or a…

One of the greatest misunderstandings about the body I think is that the skeleton is like a solid frame that all the tissues and organs are then hung on. Bones are tissues too, they change depending on the forces on…

“…in both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals irrespective of the severity of Covid-19.” If it doesn’t kill you straight away, it’ll eat your brain and other organs. The only cure for Covid is not catching it.

NSW only recently had local government elections. Social media Bathurst isn’t happy with who won, so is now trying to mobilise more ongoing abuse aimed at the Council. People really should pay attention to how kidult…

Taken from a Facebook group for doctors. Please try to avoid catching Covid, you won’t know that it stays inside you after you get ‘better’ and is constantly damaging you, until it’s too late.

Here’s a fun paradox. Humans copy one another obsessively. But why? Because they’re all different. We’re obsessed about imitating other people *because* we’re all different. If everybody is different, the only way to…

If you work at the front line of public service, the thing you will overwhelmingly notice is that what humans do above all else is complain. That complaint in turn is driven by the status games I often talk about.…

Why do taxpayers pay for new airports? They long ago stopped owning any planes or airlines. It's a huge subsidy to airlines and freight companies. Some analysts also see airports as stranded assets nobody will want,…

A conference of international experts on the long-term impacts of Covid. These are the people who know Covid better than anybody. Tell me what you notice.

Electrochemistry is one of the hot fields right now, obviously with the explosion in interest in and demand for new types of batteries. What’s interesting is that the main element that features there, lithium, has…

The wonderful opera singer Elsa Dreisig, on her recent holiday, shared to the socials. The socials are full of images like this. I was watching an old episode of Man About the House the other day, those who were around…

One of the reasons I never go to gyms is because they encourage a view of the body as like a lump of plasticine which you have to bash into shape. We live in extreme times and sport and exercise are no different, the…

Transgender and its politics is really just one more subset of what we call identity politics. And identity politics in turn is the kidult society I talk about, where instead of focusing collectively on collective…

What began as a mechanism for ordinary kids to ‘make it big’ in the adult world became just the adult world. Gig culture is over, it just hasn’t realised it yet. It also doesn’t recognise how unusual it is to make music…

I am aware that no amount of horrible facts about Covid will shift attitudes or behaviours. Information doesn’t run societies, status does. The overwhelming reason people think and do the things they do is because other…

This is my bread and butter every day. The Council will no doubt cop a bashing, but read it and you’ll see the obvious cause is that some wally fell over, and then sued Council for a huge sum. This is kidult culture…

We stopped fighting a pandemic because it got in the way of our social lives. Many restrospectives are being written now about how this pause to our social lives apparently damaged us in terrible ways. (This is classic…

"Governments are underestimating the reach and threats of these movements.” Not just governments. This is the kidult culture which I almost always fail to convince anybody is destroying our societies. I live this every…

One of my favourite stories was about the time Eric Clapton showed up at somebody’s local, and after playing for a while somebody in the crowd yelling out ‘do you know any songs, mate?’ Big acts love this sort of thing,…

Subsidised home batteries have been a thing for 8 weeks now. Installations are averaging 5000 per *week*. Let that sink in. It’s the equivalent of adding a new Mt Piper power station to the grid every FORTNIGHT. This…

“It's like watching two sides debate the dangers of tobacco while everyone smokes cigarettes.” People should be being vaccinated for Covid twice per year. Instead the vast majority of Australians had 2 vaccinations…

An obesity specialist. The fitness and nutrition industries have been a disaster for our understanding of obesity.

Paul McCartney recently mocked this song’s meaning as childish and naive. But it’s also a vital piece of evidence for the time that the kidult culture I talk about was taking over the world. Decades of compulsory…

How well do you really understand the town you live in? Victoria right now is looking for a ‘sovcit’ (sovereign citizen) who murdered two police officers. Lithgow has already had a sovcit siege. The ‘March for…

The Australian magistrate at the forefront of addressing ‘sovereign citizen’ type arguments in Australia made the interesting observation that many come into the movement after some kind of traffic offence. I post a lot…

If you want to see how humans work, watch any sporting event. People don’t just go to watch the sport. They go to support their favourites. That support creates teams in the stands as well. Being a member of a team like…

Not money. Not power. Not ’capitalism’ or any -ism. It’s all status. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Everywhere. You are literally nobody, without status, for social animals status is also identity. Even what you…

Get every vaccine you qualify for, even if you have to pay for it. If you have friends or family who tell you to use 'natural' medicine instead, tell them you'll bring flowers when you visit their vitamin--soaked…

It’s one of the wet dreams of all modern popular music culture. The walk to the stage to be screamed at adoringly by tens or even hundreds of thousands of fans. In reality few will notice anything particularly musical…

If you’re somebody (and this is probably most of us) who experiences stiffness in your body, and even pain from that stiffness, here’s something I think very few will tell you. Your body is not a muscular system, it’s a…

This is how Covid wins. By us no longer doing any meaningful testing, people can be out there completely symptom-free, infecting thousands of other people. I’ve highlighted in yellow the key part - a ‘mild’ illness…

What Chirs Bowen should also point out to counter the idiot ‘when the sun doesn’t shine’ social media slogan is, we’re ASLEEP mostly when the sun doesn’t shine. We don’t need anywhere near as much energy then. Even…

I’ve seen many Australians make these arguments. That’s because nobody really lives in ‘Australia’ now. They live on social media. Which means increasingly they’re just Americans. Australians who believe this idiot…

I admire J.K. Rowling because she’s one of the few higher status people who actively take on desperately unpopular causes, because she (rightly) sees what’s happening as wrong and unjust. Like Germaine Greer before her,…

Remember the fairy tale that us all getting Covid over and over would make us immune to it? Over a million people every DAY are currently getting Covid in the US. Meanwhile their idiot Trump-appointed head of health had…

The average age on stage in these shows will be over 80. This is still mainstream culture, not some nostalgia act in an RSL club. That's what kidult culture means, nobody ages, nobody is allowed to age. Just permanent…

Anybody dealing with the public now is feeling this every day. They’re under assault. As the article says, it got a lot worse after the lockdowns. Often this is given as a reason we shouldn’t have locked down, but then…

The still surviving belief that fat causes heart disease is behind the enormous surge in sales of air fryers. But after decades of drug and surgical progress, heart disease and stroke are still the biggest killers. It’s…

My first call at work yesterday was a guy who said “what can I do about the prick who lives across the road from me?” The default state of human life is not happy, peaceful coexistence. It’s fighting, for status.…

I think if I had to nominate one food that has done more damage to peoples’ health than any other, I’d pick soft drink. Soda, as the Americans call it. That stuff is disease in a can, and as the research now shows, the…

An elderly family friend went to hospital to have surgery for lung cancer. Caught Covid there, and the hospital’s response? Sent them home to deal with it themselves. LUNG CANCER. When mum caught Covid in hospital, the…

In the US the supporters of the assassinated Charlie Kirk are now targeting those who they see criticise him by telling their employers as well. Is anybody else fundamentally bored with the USA? Except now with social…

I’m sure the rest of us are fitter and stronger than Usain, with all of our own ‘natural’ Covid infections giving our immune systems a healthy workout.

Somebody at work yesterday was riffing on the same theme, that the problem with housing was due to too many migrants. Again, welcome to the early 1930s. Lots of flags, and petrol bombs. Even the building industry said…

My work has random drug and alcohol testing. A safety thing, all fine. But isn’t it crazy bizarre that we don’t do any infectious disease testing in workplaces, which cause vastly more injury to staff and disruption to…

Car makers know what this data shows. Anybody who's done year 8 maths should. The average broom broom social media person on the other hand, well...

For the very many out there, whose families, friends and selves are constantly sick now. Covid has created dysfunctional immune systems, leaving people wide open to disease and unable to resolve that disease. SARS-CoV-2…

Lots of talk recently about boosting productivity in Australia. Here’s a major productivity-killer nobody talks about. Sickness in the workplace. Already before Covid colds and flu cost businesses $7 billion/year.…

“Aren’t you scared you’re going to get REALLY sick when you stop wearing a mask?” I hear that all the time. People genuinely believe that getting infected with diseases is keeping them healthier. Just think about that,…

Probably the most obnoxious aspect of kidult culture is its insistence that only happy, positive things are important. Trying to raise any serious or even critical issue at all prompts loud accusations of ‘hysteria’ or…

If you had to guess, without Googling or asking AI, what has killed the overwhelming majority of humans who have ever lived, what would you say? (Smarty pants public health people like Dorothy can ssshh.)

David is one of Australia’s leading specialists in the treatment of Covid. What he sees in his rooms and at the hospitals every day horrifies and scares him. Much of it going undiagnosed because GPs don’t even…

Gig culture (adults being adolescents forever) is still fighting public health. And losing.

If you’re sceptical status runs all human life, the road should be a great teacher. For example, why is it so overwhelmingly popular to overtake other vehicles, even those doing the speed limit? And why do people being…

As somebody who has worked as a governance professional for a quarter of a century now, it’s this sort of basic fact about democracies which I think is lost on just about everybody. ‘Authoritarian’ and ‘democratic’…

There was a time people could all have different opinions, and it didn't matter a lot because important stuff was taken care of separately to peoples' opinions. But in social media society, opinions create our reality.…

B-grade Hollywood scripts replace most thought and knowledge of history today I think. Like the claims America is being taken over by authoritarian Nazis. Pretty much everybody who says that never knew or studied any…

I don’t think our global Covid strategy was widely understood. Let me spell it out in a few words. “Infect all the kids, so they can build up immunity and it won’t spread into the working community.” No conspiracies…

Had a quick drive in and out of Sydney yesterday, and observed driver behaviour as I always do. What I found. About 30% of drivers were consistently below or well below the speed limit. About 40% of drivers were…

I’m the only person I know who still regularly masks. My kids are some of the only people their age who regularly mask. Why do we do it? Because nothing actually changed, the pandemic never ended. You can see here…

So we had our little social media performative hissy fit with Swastikas and Nazi memes, about Tesla. Where people joined teams and cheered on the memes, and the mob riots and burnings. Fast forward a few months, and all…

Trump is only the tail-end of a trend going back decades. Democracy is failing everywhere. But what does that mean, the lurch to autocracy, or authoritarianism? Those are just bogey words from inside the filter of the…

This painting captures a moment in the 1650s that in many ways has been a guide in my life, in the past decade. Spinoza was excommunicated from his own Jewish community. Spinoza categorically refused to follow the…

EVs are following the classic S-curve of innovation. Slow early, then an exponential take-off, followed by a flattening out when mass adoption has happened. The reason all change is like this is, again, status. ‘Early…

What different parts of the world charge for university education. The Anglo world (the US, UK, Australia, Canada - in pink), really just big nursing homes now in the demographics, unsurprisingly more focused on…

This is the UK. In each case A, B and C were the possible trajectories for these diseases. C is the trajectory that actually happened, beginning in 2022. Most chronic disease is caused by infection, including cancers.…

Final part. Remember C is the trajectory that actually happened, from 2022. So you have two choices. Do what everybody else is doing - nothing. That’s what most will do, because that’s how humans decide how they’ll…

This 1940 video designed to teach the public about new dialling telephones (as opposed to having to always use an operator) highlights just how difficult it is to get humans to change anything. The task itself is…

The lychgate is one of my favourite architectural features, at the entry to old churchyards. Functionally lychgates evolved as a place to shelter a coffin from the weather, while waiting for the arrival of the priest.…

In England, 10 months of relatively low Covid levels led many to believe Covid was finally ‘just like the flu’. Covid is not and will never be anything like the flu. We won‘t get ‘hybrid immunity’ to it, so that it…

Facebook is like human society in a coma. Zero thought, brain-dead. ‘Not the place’ to discuss things, many will tell you, as if that’s some terrible faux pas like farting at dinner, or a contagious disease. You can…

What’s happening with Covid right now in the UK is so important to help people understand the mess we’re in. That 10 months of relatively low Covid low levels wasn’t interrupted by a new Covid variant. There is no new…

This happened in Lithgow on Friday. Cut water to much of the town for the weekend. I know people resent the idea of kidult culture, but it was another classic example of it. What was the overwhelming response, from the…

Pathetic, as pathetic as our attempt to use the 'market' to create affordable homes. The market doesn't exist, it's code for 'letting everybody do whatever they like'. And what does that produce? People copying each…

A measure of just how stupid public life now is, is that we now see the great tragedy of Covid as the ‘lockdowns’ that stopped us going to gigs, restaurants and pubs, on OS trips and children going to school. Over 20…

Had an interesting conversation with my podiatrist recently, about barefoot shoes. At the time he was recommending Birkenstocks for me, for summer holidays, as he wears himself. I went barefoot one summer and ended up…

We’re down the rabbit hole, people. The destruction of public health by ‘living with’ Covid is now spreading to all other infectious disease, because the same social behaviours have been destroyed. A reminder that…

In the UK, the extreme levels of sacrifice the community had to make for WW2 lasted *15 years*. Rationing didn’t stop until 1954. That’s adult life, identifying a critical threat and acting accordingly, including making…

I didn't know traditional Japanese homes are largely made of wood because that's much less likely to kill the inhabitants, if it collapses in an earthquake. But hardly anybody lives in those now, a century ago 85% of…

Estimates that about 7 million people marched in the No Kings protests yesterday in the US . Well over 70 million people voted for Trump at the last election. 10 times as many as turned out yesterday. It’s theatre.…

Two experiences yesterday that give a flavour of working in local government. One was trying to think of a way to rescue ducklings trapped in a fountain. The other a long phone call tirade from a resident about Council…

Can you guess what’s happening to the hearts of young people aged between 18-45, leading to such a rise in heart attacks? Dating from ‘freedom’ from protections against catching Covid?

One of my favourite things to do now is use AI on my walks to learn more about the plants I see. You can even talk to AI directly, or just take photos and ask for details about what you’re seeing. The landscape opens up…

When Major Thomas Mitchell stumbled upon the Western District of Victoria in 1836, he described it as “the finest country in the world,” “rich, open, well-grassed, park-like.” See that? Park-like. There was a belief…

From one of my long chats with AI. For anybody who ever experiences tightness in their body. Which is everybody.

‘Building up immunity’ with lots of healthy, ‘natural’ infections. Like the good old days. I think I’d like to repeat every day that most people who have ever lived have died of an infection of some kind. With anti-vax…

The control of infections and infectious disease is THE most important event in all human civilisation. And it happened only in the most recent history, in many of our lifetimes. The people you see and know who now…

What was the last unpopular thing you did in your life? Not just the last thing you did that was opposed by some people, in your team of other people opposing them. Unpopular with *everybody*.

Some angered by the suggestion Covid is extremely bad for them say ‘but my doctor says it’s fine’. Doctors are human and subject to the same social dynamics as the rest of us. It will take millions of deaths for the…

For nearly all of history, you or I as ordinary people would have been peasants. More than 90% of societies always were peasants. So what changed that? The only thing that changes anything. Catastrophe. The Black Death…

The status games that we see with wankpanzer utes, caravans and camping gear has now entered the solar and battery world too. I saw somebody say their house has 30 kW of solar panels (!!), and a 40 kWh battery, and…

Europe and China are rapidly arriving where Japan has already been for many years. No younger workers left, to service huge elderly populations. Look at Japan, it’s pretty much at 1 working person for every 1 retired…

The same demographic trend but now looked at via the birth rates. You can see from the 1970s, fertility rates went into free fall. The 1970s was the decisive shift away from adult-centred life, the countercultural…

By mid-century, about half of all public and private social spending in rich nations will be directed toward sustaining, treating, or caring for people past working age. I do wonder if people see the kidult society more…

AI is immune to political propaganda. People need to realise that what was done for Covid was not only historically unprecedented. It was criminal. Never before in history had public health advocated to address a novel…

I think one of the most abused words in modern culture is ‘experience’. It’s our religion, we see life as something to be ‘experienced’. Like we’re passive tourists on life’s journey, and it will keep throwing up new…

The reason Western countries no longer have children is simple. They don’t like them. They will howl bloody murder at being told that. The truth hurts. This (official NHS) advice for example to deliberately now infect…

This is the wet dream of many adolescents of the past 70 years. Adulation from a stadium full of screaming fans. Anybody who studies crowds knows the screaming isn’t about the act. It’s about the crowd themselves, the…

If you ever feel anxious or stressed (all of us), here's (I think) genius health advice. Just let yourself breathe through your nose for a while. Gently, without noise. Don't try to suck air in or blow it out. Close…

I had even Australian friends who would chuckle about ‘Sleepy Joe Biden’. Trump at a press conference this week.

The great swindle here is to make unthinking Australians believe their power price rises are due to renewables. Even a Year 7 science student could find the data in about 5 minutes. The surge in power prices is due to…

These are of course known as miracle weight loss drugs. The GLP-1 drugs. But they’re showing signs of doing far more, in areas that medicine has been historically powerless. Chronic disease, like ME/CFS, mast cell…

GLP-1 drugs are the ‘weight loss’ drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. But they go far beyond weight loss in potential impact. By targeting inflammation, they may address a huge range of chronic illness. Also showing promise…

The trials are coming in. This for those with Type 2 diabetes, assessing whether giving them GLP-1 ‘weight loss’ drugs impacted their progression to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, Parkinsons and any…

The National Party's push to turn windmills into a regional political issue could end up costing councils a fortune in wasted legal fees, if they get involved. Tamworth Council for example has just had a judge more or…

I hate crowds. And wonder why anybody would like the experience of them, in fact I suspect most hate them. Nobody turns up to anything except a gig or battle and says ‘o goody, a crowd.’ Crowds have replaced public…

Dr John isn’t a medical doctor, though a large part of his success is allowing people to believe that. He influences millions. Had a young woman turn up to work to tell me that Council should be spreading Dr John’s news…

Most of what looks like 'community concern' in public debate today is really 'astroturfing'. Corporations, political parties, elected members of councils, and think tanks target a handful of loons in local communities…

Every old band has seen the massive cash-vacuum nostalgia tours now are, and are dusting off the instruments to get out there fast. The Gallagher brothers are making $100 million EACH from their tour. Nostalgia is hot…

Close up of springs in an anglepoise lamp. More generally called balanced-arm lamps. I’ve posted about these before, and how the human body operates via a similar principle, though using a different mechanism. These…

Translation: Covid fucked up the immune system, dramatically accelerating the development of HPV-related cancer, even without Covid being found in cervical tissue (it was attacking the immune system, stopping the body…

It's glorious that companies like Globird are announcing plans like this only one day after the LNP announced their idiot 'let's use lots of expensive coal and gas and nuclear' policy. 4 free hours of electricity in the…

Last year this same virus, EBV, was found to be the cause of multiple sclerosis. Now it’s thought to cause lupus too. We give it a cutesy name, the ‘kissing’ virus i.e. glandular fever, to normalise everybody catching…

BritTV is streaming The Good Life. Each episode is prefaced by a warning that the show is from another era, and the language and concepts may offend some viewers. lol, what a window into how every tiny bit of life has…

It doesn’t matter if your car has a range of 1000km unless you’re going to drive 1000km without stopping. Which nobody does.

Somebody measured CO2 concentration at a gig. The reading for healthy fresh air is 450-500. Ever noticed rock stars have done diddly squat against Covid, even though causes are their usual bread and butter? No benefit…

To those who like ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow’ as an argument against renewable energy, it’s worth remembering that off-peak power was invented decades ago because people *weren’t* using power…

Social media evolved to: 1. endless fights on everything that happens in life, between teams 2. endless ads targeted at you 3. a flood of personal trivia from peoples’ lives that nobody wanted to hear about, before…

It really is. Unfortunately the Americans will likely fuck it up for everybody doing what their culture always does, try to use it to make a tiny handful of people richer than most of the planet combined. I spend far…

The ‘weight-loss’ drugs continue to generate astonishing results well outside weight. Now they appear to counteract ageing, even at low doses that have minimal impact on weight loss. When given to mice ageing stopped…

And video 2 out of the UK. You can play make-believe and ignore serious threats to your life, so you can go to gigs and restaurants and pubs, and on OS holidays. And then reality will bitch slap you. Work won’t care, if…

The big plus of demolishing public health practice that’s 150 years old in favour of dining out, gigs and overseas travel. Diseases that used to be seasonal are now yours to enjoy all year round.

“We have damaged an entire generation. The future costs of this are astronomical.” Senior Covid doctor friend of mine, in conversation

Hilariously, Musk tried to reveal anti-American forces on social media by forcing Twitter accounts to show the country of origin of their owners. What it actually revealed is how much of Trump’s rise was due to the…

Somebody wrote a very smart pushback to the populist political surge in local government, in Bathurst. The Facebook invasion. The only thing I’d add to this is that General Managers implement the decisions of elected…

Some neuroscientists believe we’re very close to a cure for Multiple Sclerosis, now it’s known it’s strongly tied to EBV (Epstein Barr Virus, what we call glandular fever). Infections cause most human disease. Every…

Public health is toast in a culture of ‘living your best life’ i.e. adolescent life. Replaced by ‘cool’ i.e. with what’s trending. Surely people see this, how every facet of public life now is just a series of…

Everybody goes to AC/DC because everybody else was going to AC/DC. Everybody went to Metallica because everybody else went to Metallica. Everybody went to Oasis because everybody else went to Oasis. See the pattern…

All sides of politics talk nonsense about debts and deficits in government spending. Governments create money, they don't need to tax or borrow to have it. And as you can see in the actual data, governments go into…

Brian May talks now about being in the autumn years of his life. To me he’s an example of how genius is mostly misunderstood, because that’s what genius actually is - something too difficult for most to understand. (The…

I’m in a very small minority. I don’t like travel. Which is interesting in a culture obsessed with it. To me it’s a dislocation, a very clear indication of how disconnected we are from the landscapes we live within,…

Even NSW, which was a laggard, now on most days provides most of its electricity from renewables. Those red arrows show the tiny remnant of coal used during the day, quickly collapsing. Overnight you can see what impact…

After decades of blaming fat people for being lazy gluttons, spurred on by the pseudoscientific bollocks of ‘calories’ by the nutrition and fitness industries, the WHO has declared obesity an actual medical condition,…

I wasn't unhappy to learn that Andrew Tate lost a lot of money in the current Bitcoin slide. Alan Kohler's assessment of crypto more generally is spot on. The Trump family uses it for what it is, a giant Ponzi…

The US has had 6 economic depressions in its history. All 6 were immediately preceded by politicians 'balancing the budget' i.e. paying off debt. Governments in debt mean citizens in surplus i.e. a healthy economy.…

The idea that modern governments need to collect tax from you so that they have money to spend is ridiculous, and centuries out of date. The money you have is not, despite what politicians say, ‘your’ money. All money…

I paid for my own shingles vaccine doses (Shingrix) a couple of years ago, because I’m not yet old enough to qualify for the subsidised shots. I get every vaccine I qualify for, because I strongly believe infection is…

Supposedly abstract art, like Francis Bacon’s portrait here, annoys many because it doesn’t ’look like’ things. That gives it away, for non-artists ‘recognition’ is essential. Just as the greatest excitement at a gig is…

I do know people hate our culture being described as kidult. It’s not an insult, it’s only a description of how the culture operates. (It is also a disaster, but that’s different to it being an insult.) Twee…

Could you live in a world without others? By which I mean, not live without other people in your life, but live without the need to conform to the social frameworks they think, act and feel inside? It is tempting to…

For those who think AI just parrots what people put into it. This guy went to his local ER with terrible stomach pain. The ER diagnosed indigestion and gave him acid blockers. He went home still in terrible pain, and…

Gough Whitlam's government bought Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles in the 1970s, for $1.4 million. There was lots of fake outrage at the time from the other side of politics, who used it as a stick to beat the government…

I think many school teachers today would say that their biggest challenge isn’t the kids. It’s the parents. Because the parents never left school, they’re kidults, and they then pass on those mindsets and behaviours to…

I know many Australians who had an ageist chuckle about ‘Sleepy’ Joe Biden being old. This is the scene just about every day now in the US.

It *was* a ‘Herculean effort’. With Covid, the kidults missed their gigs and restaurants and OS trips after about 3 months, and we had to abandon all public health because parents were sick of having to share the XBox…

In our kidult (adolescent) culture, socialising is seen as the key to a happy life. Teens love nothing more than to ‘hang out’. Without it we are seen to be at terrible risk to our mental and physical health, through…

Whole nations with damaged immune systems. Norovirus also up 35% in the UK right now. Hospital chiefs say hospitals ‘engulfed’ by winter viruses. Here in Australia flu season (a 'winter virus’) was still going in…

Nothing reveals our culture more than disaster. The event has to be turned into a movie/TV show, it has to be narrativised. The culture of the feels, people need to be emotional to be engaged. Emotion precedes action.…

Excitingly, the powerful new immune therapies against cancers are suggesting actual cures rather than just treatments for autoimmune diseases as well. Cancer is immune evasion, whereas autoimmune disease is…

The GLP-1 drugs are improving at speed now. This is a revolution for health that goes well beyind weight loss. Obesity is just the symptom of broader dysfunction, that these drugs target. The impact on a whole range of…

I want to talk about the ‘hollowing-out’ of towns, to give more context to my deep dislike of modern travel culture. This is Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds, one of the most photographed towns in the UK. It has…

What to do, in the face of horrible events like Bondi this week? To me the answer is always the same. Think. Learn. Don’t try to find a team to ‘stand with’, our usual populist kidult response to everything now. This…

Singapore's Polyclinics are probably the future of healthcare. The great logjam in the Australian system is actually the GP. GP practices are fairly small, don't cover a large range of health services and often act more…

Work Christmas party today. Hundreds packed into an inside space. I’ll be the only one there in a mask, which many will find weird. Because we now live in a culture where what you think and how you act is shaped…

I decided to catch up on Doctor Who by watching the last series. With the exception of maybe 1-2 episodes, it was appalling. But popular with some of the social media crowd, for whom it was mostly written. The show has…

Because nobody gives two fucks, just a reminder Christmas is one of the times of greatest risk to you and your loved ones, from Covid. Because we shut down public health, allowing lethal pathogens to circulate freely in…

My Christmas present arrived spot on 25 December. That’s the Christmas break ruined. Probably caught it at the work Christmas party, which was a barely ventilated room packed full of hundreds of people. Knew I shouldn’t…

Robots are going to change the world. For a long time the challenge was making them physically capable of doing complex tasks. But they’ve been able to get them to do even backflips already for years, the challenge…

In my recovery I’m thinking again about my social media use, from 2026. I’m tired of debates and arguments over basic things with friends and family. The societies we grew up in had institutionalised expertise that took…

I share this not as medical advice, though it was medical advice to me, from senior Covid specialists and researchers. If you go to your GP with Covid, you’ll probably get told to take some Panadol, drink plenty of…

“Only very few trans-kids still want to transition by the time they are adults. Instead, they generally turn out to be regular gay or lesbian folks. The exact number varies by study, but roughly 60–90% of trans-kids…

Being in bed sick means I may post a bit more often, apologies 🙂 What this means is the longer you’re positive with Covid, the greater the chance you’ll develop Long Covid. Because nobody much tests any more, they…

It’s a pretty safe bet that if somebody you’re talking to hates Anthony Fauci, they’re a dangerous loon. Avoid them in your life. I highlighted here too the crucial change to our culture, how institutionalised expertise…

A different way to see life. We privilege working life, because economies are all about work. Childhood we see as preparation for work, and old age we see as ‘retirement’, again from work. Without getting all New Age…

What I’m trying to avoid, right now. It’s the long-term damage from Covid infection that is being missed. People ending up infected with a huge range of other things, their immune system is compromised by the Covid…

More than 100 years ago humans already realised what was much better about electric cars. I’ve highlighted some of the main reasons then, which are the same now. So what happened, why didn’t this recognition in 1912…

Ordinary people are beginning to realise they were sold a pup on ‘living with’ viruses. Keith is hilarious, pretty much everybody can relate to this right now, I suspect.

This person has a Masters in Public Health. I’m sharing it to show again that what we did with Covid, letting all kids catch it over and over without allowing them to even be vaccinated, was a deliberate strategy. To…

It’s a huge genre of vids on the socials now, everybody sick at Christmas. Everybody is sick all year. In Australia the flu season stretched into mid-summer, ffs. Will anything be done? Of course not, kidult culture…

Adrian, in case of interest. For others, infection will nearly always be the root cause of most chronic disease. Why it’s important to take infections of all kind seriously. The fact you get better from an infection…

Her son’s health has been destroyed. Blames the vaccines. Claims to be a doctor. I’ve highlighted the elephant standing in the middle of her living room. Also a nice little learner for those who think catching Covid…

For Australians, I think a hugely important security tip. myGov is our government access point for our core services, like Medicare and your tax, as well as your health record. I highly recommend firstly always just…

This is Demis Hassabis. I don't think we realise that we're living in a time where the greatest revolution of all time is unfolding right in front of us. That revolution is AI, and Demis is at the centre of it. He heads…

South Australia's Hornsdale battery was the biggest in the world when it was switched on, in 2017. Australians are now adding the equivalent storage with home batteries every 3 and a half DAYS. I post about renewables…

See, if you make democracy = the sum of what everybody wants or likes, your country will be run by the people who need these warning labels. Except they probably can't read them anyway.

A shift in how they treat acute Covid is a shift we're seeing in other parts of medicine too. Rather than just trying to attack and remove the infecting pathogen, which is diabolically hard once it's inside you, to…

It is nice when somebody else says things you're not allowed to say in your job. Not as exciting as a narrative that goes 'bloody Council pulled out, and the business community stepped up to do it for them'. But there…

Re-using this graph to counter another slogan, 'when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow'. This is a full 24-hour period. 2 is day time, and thus the huge surge of solar in orange. 1 and 3 are night time,…

Such a fabulous story, thanks @[1792688510:2048:Trevor]. Pollution was a big incentive to shift to motorised vehicles. Fast forward to today and the amount of pollution from modern petrols and diesels is WAY bigger than…

Was watching this unfold live before going to sleep last night, and while pilots tend to get all the applause and publicity, the cabin crew managed to get nearly 400 people off this burning wreck in no time at all,…

Probably the most important work on Covid I've seen in a long time. Because it goes right to the heart of the fantasy that we're 'living with' it. David Cutler is an economist at Harvard, who's estimated what Long Covid…

People tell me they love travel with a passion. I'm not sure which bits they mean. It certainly can't be this bit. Maybe it's when you get on the plane with everybody re-breathing the same air and using the same toilets…

The drama around blue-green algae and recreational dam use. What’s less known is that it’s the greatest killer in the history of planet Earth. It’s not really an algae, it’s a bacteria, cyanobacteria. And it’s the…

Who knew that crowdfunding was a mass movement of mobilised stupidity? I don’t go anywhere near mass crowdfunding things, no jeans for genes, or red noses, or bandaged bears. All adolescent cutesie things that nobody…

This stuff is insidious. SKY News UK, woman on the right is a Professor of Medicine at Oxford. That’s surely a digital filter on her face? Like a dynamic airbrushing. I never get much traction with this, likely because…

I plead with people to watch this from the Victorian Department of Health. Every COVID infection, no matter how mild it seems, can cause Long Covid. And the more infections you have, the more likely you are to get it.…

I'll say more about this, but suggesting again people try simple palms-up sitting for some time every day. You may be amazed the impact it has on your entire body. More on why that may be another day.

Here's a vital scientific reason why what we're doing with Covid won't work, can never work, and will maim and kill lots of people, forever, unless we change course. Our strategy is called 'hybrid immunity', meaning…

Woolworths scaled down its Australia Day products because nobody was buying them. Why does Dutton do this? Because his strategy to win government is the same Tony Abbott’s was - starting lots of fights. As politics, it…

Nobody is investing in any of the old stuff like oil or coal or nuclear, or even gas now. Haven't done for years. Businesses are telling us who's winning here, and they're not Greenies, or Lefties, or any other stupid…

Andrew Forrest is investing hugely in renewables. This is him turning the first sod for NSW's biggest wind farm, near Wellington. He has 14 GW of renewables projects in the pipeline around Australia. Again, definitely…

On the same day there were stories about Warner’s seven-storey mansion at Maroubra with its own private beach, he hires a helicopter to get to a game. It should ring alarm bells. This game, where they struggle now to…

To say this makes Australia look like yokels is unkind to yokels. That solar farms can now be rejected because they spoil the view. Having lived near two butt-ugly coal power stations for the past 30 years, I can…

A personal post, a bit long, but a rare one about me, the person. I know many people who avoid the news, feeling that the world is too depressing and they don’t see a way out of the numerous problems societies are…

We need to join the dots here. All of these illnesses that we thought were things of the past are now back, and the reason is very simple. The ‘living with the virus’ we introduced for Covid was actually a destruction…

The Greenland ice cap is losing 30 million TONNES of ice every HOUR. To those who still pretend this is all normal, a tip. It wasn’t losing 30 million tonnes of ice an hour in our lifetimes, or anybody else’s, for at…

With all the talk about cost of living, why does nobody ask who we’re paying, to live? How life suddenly became a product to be bought?

“All of this is why governments must invest in long-term strategies for managing COVID into the future, experts say — particularly by introducing standards for indoor air quality. But until then, they say, Australians…

Trump is clearly an imbecile. Electing him again would be a disaster on just about every measure. But it’s looking increasingly likely. How does this happen, in a democracy? Because democracy always was a fantasy.…

The ‘live with the virus’ slogan has driven a huge escalation in anti-vax beliefs and behaviour. We’re told that vaccinations will protect us from Covid, but nobody is getting them. And they’re also stopping their…

Australia Day? I love Australia, it’s truly unique in the world. Not the imported Barnum and Bailey flag-waving patriotism of the US, which today will be full of. A convict colony that survived being sent to the remote…

New York has declared social media a public health hazard. Which it is. It’s also a hazard to every other part of society, generating continuous tidal waves of bullshit to obstruct the most basic essential services. It…

Without cheating, who is this? (An inspiration for me, died much too young from infectious disease, so would have found our casual approach to that bizarre.)

Appeared in my feed from 10 years ago. Bittersweet memories of CSU again, from the time when leadership had disappeared and people sat in meetings like these all day, trying to figure out what the organisation should be…

This is my foot, X-rayed yesterday. Sharing because of the quality of modern imaging, stunning. And because the body is fascinating. Bone is actually tissue, obviously, as otherwise you’d have to be born with an…

I think it’s terrifying Western car makers, who don’t want to change their business models. The public is asleep at the wheel of wankpanzers.

Transmission lines are vulnerable to extreme weather events, and everybody is getting a lot more of those. And it’s slow work building the 10,000km of new ones we need too. A really interesting proposal that’s now…

The federal government is putting forward 3 options for a fuel efficiency standard for Australian cars. Something every country in the world except us and Russia have had already for years. Check out Option A, one put…

Without question the greatest social disaster in Australia is housing. This book is about to be released and will be interesting reading for anybody who wants to understand how we got into this mess. The answer is the…

As anybody whose kids have left home has felt I’m sure, it’s a difficult transition. For them, and for parents. I think it goes beyond our usual ‘homesick’ type explanations. For most human history families didn’t…

The mRNA technology that anti-vax loons, amplified through social media, made people fear, may within 10 years provide treatments or even cures for some of our most difficult diseases.…

Because suppression of information on Covid is deliberate and widespread, and even many GPs are woefully uninformed about it, here's a tip. If you get Covid, AVOID EXERCISE for at least 6-8 weeks. Exercise is a real…

Another Covid tip. If you get Covid and want to reduce your risk of Long Covid, talk to your GP about getting some Metformin, quickly (within the first 72 hours of falling ill). It's originally a diabetes drug, but has…

Following up on my earlier post, probably the single worst thing you can do when infected with Covid is exercise. Australian cricketers play at an elite high exertion level, with full-blown Covid. It's medical insanity.…

I had a long chat today with one of Australia’s leading Covid specialists. He says things are much, much worse than even I share here. He sees even very young people with terrible ongoing health problems. And people who…

Lots of sick Covid people today. Start of school has taken what was already a large outbreak and pushed it even further through the community. I'm genuinely curious when people think this nonsense will end, catching a…

Meanwhile, as Covid damages everybody’s immune systems, other pathogens keep moving in to share the feast.

Scabies alerts now in schools (thanks Dan). Let's add to the smorgasbord of infectious joys. Big jump in scabies, likely because the neutrophils that your body needs to stop spread are damaged by Covid.

Australia's Covid strategy is called 'hybrid immunity'. Where immunity (supposedly) comes from a combination of infections and vaccinations. Except nobody is getting the vaccinations. So it's really a 'couldn't give a…

Private health, education, housing, electricity and roads are all catastrophic failures, kept afloat only by huge injections of taxpayer dollars. Let them all live by their beloved market rules, take the taxpayer…

Just about to be released and already sold out. Did you know Australia's housing market is running at $10 TRILLION? Outrageously absurd. I liked Michael Pascoe's review: "The vast majority of what is written and said…

Some organisations now go out of their way to prevent people contacting them, they don’t list phone numbers or email contacts or even web forms. I discovered the joy of this yesterday when a UK medical imaging firm sent…

I think she’s remarkable. But I’ve never liked live shows with lots of people on stage, including dancers. One of the magic things about rock shows was just 3-4 people on stage, making all the sound. It felt raw and…

I saw love defined as giving somebody the power to destroy you. And then hoping that they don’t use it.

I encourage everybody to pressure leadership of their local schools to do this course. https://www.covidsafetyforschools.org/

There's an element of schadenfreude in watching people who lived the carefree good life while you were raising your own kids, sleepless and exhausted, now having their own kids and looking smashed every day.

I remember 1990, when Freddie Mercury looked shockingly gaunt. Best estimate of his infection with HIV is around 1982. So he’d lived for 6-7 years looking and possibly feeling quite normal, but infection was destroying…

Australia has a love affair with trades. But almost complete indifference to sophisticated engineering. Like this artificial heart, made of titanium, with the only moving part a single spinning disc suspended in a…

Want to see how our clown car approach to Covid has now fucked over all public health? Florida is having a measles outbreak. It's allowing parents to decide whether to send kids to school with measles. If that doesn't…

How have older workers responded to Covid? Mostly by retiring early. Who would blame them, given workplaces are doing nothing to protect anybody. In clear breach of WHS law.

Measles is about the most infectious disease in the world. It also wipes your immune memory, meaning your immune system forgets how to fight EVERY disease it's ever fought. You're like a new-born baby, for 2-3 years.…

If you want to understand why nobody is getting Covid vaccines, look no further than highly paid idiots behind microphones. This is an outrageous breach of media standards.

At this point it’s difficult to find any infectious disease that isn’t feasting on us. This is the collapse of public health.

The joys that come your way when you fuck your immune system by letting Covid play in it are legion. A new disaster every single day.…

“On Sunday morning, new moon of Aquarius, Sally peacefully birthed her two twins in the waters of her home. In all of those waves of beauty, love, shock and heartbreak; Those two spirit babies didn’t have a contract…

I posted about CAR-T cell therapy here last week I think, how it’s showing signs of being a complete cure for auto-immune diseases. But it now also seems to be able to slow or stop ageing. Watch this space, a revolution…

Fantastic piece from serious public health professionals. Ignore all the rubbish you hear from hand-picked celebrity experts on TV, chosen if they match the government intention to do nothing. Of course as always I…

If you don't know about measles, it's super-hyper-infectious. Each person with it can infect up to 18 others. And it can wipe your immune memory clean, if you do get it, so that for 2-3 years you'll have as good as no…

South Australia planned to be net 100% renewables by 2030. It’s now brought that forward to 2027, it’s going so well. Only 3 years away. Just takes brains and determination. They’ll be an economic powerhouse, using the…

I think the greatest mistake we made for the mental health of our entire population is to use a model of social life for popular kids, of lots of social mixing, as the ideal for all people to aspire to. We’re all…

Somebody asked me at work the other day ‘aren’t you worried you might damage your immune system by always wearing that mask?’ If you agree with this person, I strongly suggest some reading for the weekend on immunity.…

One for anybody you know who's an anti-vaxer.

Because I know everybody loves Covid stories, have a look at the surveillance/sentinel testing for Covid in NSW, between 2023 and 2024. The pandemic is getting worse, at the same time as most people assumed it ended 2…

Rubbish technology, which kills you to boot. 11,000 people in New South Wales die every year from vehicle exhaust pollution. Many of the rest get diseases like Alzheimers. And people not only defend it, they love it.…

I know people are over Covid. But they’ve been sold a lie, that getting the vaccination alone will end the pandemic. Vaccines are brilliant and absolutely necessary. But they *have* to be accompanied by control of the…

I know people won‘t change what they’re doing, because their measure of what to do is ‘what everybody else is doing’. Peer pressure, nobody really leaves high school. I guess they can all go and see the cardiologist…

I know, all this health and climate change stuff isn’t as fascinating as me on a cruise or at a gig. I apologise, I will eventually get to pretending to be a forever teenager, at some point. (That may be a lie.)

One of the most infectious diseases in the world. If you're not vaccinated or haven't had it, I'd make that a priority. Really fast.

The Pompeiians sculpted by a pyroclastic cloud almost 2000 years ago at the eruption of Vesuvius are like the old death masks, applied to an entire body. Very powerful. The facts and figures are too. The volcano ejected…

My early childhood was the 1970s. I’ve been waiting for the aesthetics of that time to make a comeback, we’ve had years now of bland washed-out greys and whites in interior design, most new homes that people ooh and ahh…

Fascinating graph that should make us question the Australia we think we know (and it applies to many Western countries). The grey is Australia’s population broken into age groups, in 2022. Blue is what 2034 will look…

Here’s something less well known about the measles vaccine, that makes it even more of a good idea. When they started vaccinating kids for measles, child mortality dropped significantly. But it wasn’t just because kids…

Having worked as an engineer at Lucas Heights, I can promise you Matt Canavan knows as little about this as he does about everything else. This isn't even the Lucas Heights reactor (in the picture), it's Australia's…

People forget that it took 25 years for service stations to appear, when petrol and diesel cars were introduced. EVs launched with already hundreds of km of range, and people pretend that's a big issue. Given that an EV…

Drove through Leura today. Had to dig out an older photo, to remember what it looked like before. Now it’s completely overrun by tourists. Almost mind-boggling numbers of cars and people, the streets 3 or 4 deep around…

Brilliant idea. Which means it won’t happen. The Australian brain is quick-set cement.

Review from a couple who bought a Tesla Model Y. I saw petrol at $2.50 a litre over the weekend. Anybody who pays that and is still anti-EV? People need therapy.

“Gee I love getting up for work in the dark”. Said nobody ever. Daylight stealing nearly over for another stupid year.

Some BYD cars are already cheaper than their petrol/diesel equivalents. And this trend is really accelerating, by 2027 EVs should regularly be cheaper than ICEs. It's absolutely beyond me why somebody would now buy a…

It’s taken several years to move away from the bullshit of lockdowns causing this surge in other diseases. To identify the main culprit, Covid, which compromises your immune system.

Only 3 vaccines provide lifelong protection, measles, rubella and yellow fever. They’re all produced from live virus, that is then modified (attenuated) to prevent it causing serious illness in you. I mention this…

If I said to you all of the Covid that still circulates in the community has its origins in one place, where would you guess that might be? A hint in the graph. We could fix Covid quickly, cheaply and with minimal…

I think we’ve wasted so much time in health thinking about nutrition. Most of our health is due to the microbes in us and around us. But here’s where the two overlap. Eat porridge. Porridge is food for good microbes in…

Most large public and private buildings have full HVAC systems. Not just for heating and cooling, but to also supply continuous fresh air. The one glaring exception? Schools. This is our kids, how is this justifiable?…

It feels like only this year that people were saying mega stadium gigs are a healthy thing. And silly me saying they vacuum all of the entertainment dollars out of the country.

When this song came out I remember it being mesmerising for just about everybody. Very few knew who it was at first. Its influence also goes way further than many realise. This one song was the main inspiration for…

Ben Chilfley Dam, autumn. Social media warriors blame the Council, and say ‘it’s only on the edge of the dam’. The world is cooking. And is full of dumb cookers. Never swim with blue-green algae, unless you want motor…

I have multiple friends struggling with bizarre health symptoms which their GPs have no idea about. Many GPs have no understanding of the sequelae of Covid infection, at all. Many seem to delight in telling their…

Running a superannuation system in parallel with a pension system is exactly the same as running a private health insurance system in parallel with a universal healthcare system (Medicare). A staggering waste of money,…

I fell asleep behind the wheel a few years ago, with the whole family in the car. (They were all asleep in the car at the time too, we’d had a very early start.) Thankfully we were only travelling slowly and ended up in…

A very obvious point not often made. The best way to make everything more affordable for young people is to return the provision of essential services like housing, education, childcare, health and super/pensions to…

Boy jumps from bridge. Dies. Crowdfunding launched before the body is even cold. (How vulgar is crowdfunding now? Disgusting.) Council asked to take more measures to stop idiots jumping off bridge. How about a sign that…

We’re losing a generation of boys. To pathetic macho bullshit ideologies, driven deep into everyday life by social media. People are weak, imagine following somebody like this. 95% of people though are followers in…

A friend's daughter, in Year 11, had a catastrophic stroke 2 weeks ago. 3 brain bleeds. Is not expected to walk or talk again. How many Year 11 kids had strokes when you were at school? I'm guessing zero? She's had…

So many problems we face are just artefacts of social media. Like the current ‘youth crime waves’, seen across many countries. Imitative rivalry, driven by social media. Our refusal to act against Covid, or to vote Yes?…

This graph should make us all very scared. The idea of 'living with' Covid did this, and it's driven ALL vaccinations down, for all diseases. Public health is dead, the thing that doubled our life expectancy in the past…

The attraction of fame is in another word for it - recognition. It’s being recognised, in an otherwise anonymous world that doesn’t care about you. Paul McCartney spoke about this, how fame appeals because it makes a…

There were 8400 excess deaths in Australia 2023. Meaning 8400 more people died than was expected from the historical average. Over 6000 were caused by Covid. The other 2400 were likely caused by disruption caused by…

The reason housing prices don’t come down, no matter how much we build, is because housing is not a ‘market’. In a market, new suppliers can always add new products for sale, which is where competition then happens with…

Australia is an international embarrassment with this rubbish. Nobody says boo with 70+ coal ships queued only a few hundred metres off Newcastle, but some windmills 20km offshore are apparently destroying the Western…

US houses are less than half the cost of Australian houses, relative to incomes. How do they do it? It's not the market at work. American housing is nationalised, government provides the capital to banks through…

An example of the huge distance between our politics and reality. 'Out of an abundance of caution' he's isolating. The Deputy Prime Minister. Here in NSW, if you DON'T isolate, you're breaking the law, the NSW Public…

Have posted a few times how our bodies are not pulled down by gravity. That we’re all ‘weightless’, here on the surface of the Earth. Part 2 of this story is just as interesting. The motive force for all of your body…

Brendan is one of our top infectious disease experts.

I was called ‘transphobic’ and unfriended by somebody for posting on transgender issues. It’s too important for people not to speak out, children are being harmed, sometimes irreversibly, by these theories that few have…

Travel seems like a great idea, until everybody else thinks the same. Open this image to full size to take in just how crazy this scene is. Repeated all over the world now.

"Taxation is not a deposit account that we can draw on to 'buy' whatever service we choose." In this case, talking about the private school argument that says they save everybody money. But also applicable to private…

Some very important research was published this month to assess whether 'hybrid immunity', the combination of infection + vaccination we're using for Covid, works. It doesn't work. It not only doesn't work, it makes…

I suspect many have not heard of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD). In October 2020 a group of ‘scientists’ signed a short statement suggesting a way out of the Covid pandemic. The Covid ‘strategy’ we’re following…

LGBTQIA+. LGB - sexual preferences (lesbian, gay, bisexual). T - Trans. Supposed disconnect between sex and gender. Q - Queer. Generic term for any diversity of sex and gender. I - Intersex. People born with ambiguous…

Politicians currently wrestling with the dangers of social media. I think we should all be. An honest, open question, as one example. Are people genuinely happy with the idea that we can all decide our own sex, simply…

Winter exercise options that don’t involve gulping in Covid-infested air in a gym. Nice windows, these.

Social media is already running societies, we're seeing it now brought to the surface. We really don't see I think how it's a cancer eating away at democracies from the inside. We think it's a happy friendly place to…

No matter what anybody's opinion is, renewables are doing everything they promised to do, and more. As are EVs. Social media is a hopelessly distorted view of the real world.

For all of its wonderful contributions to humanity, this one toxic belief that dominates American life is a cancer on the world. Going right back in their history to the Puritans being booted out of Europe. Humans…

Every year we say ‘Lest We Forget’ on Anzac Day. And nobody can tell you what it is we’re not supposed to forget. Because we forgot. (It isn’t the noble sacrifice of young soldiers.)

Those with actual gender dysphoria, sometimes called ‘transsexuals’, a genuine condition. They recognise that to say somebody is a woman simply by identifying as one not only erases women, it also erases transsexuals.…

At work a few weeks back, a young woman appeared at the counter. She said the community needed to know a message from John Campbell about Vitamin D, and what could Council do to get the message out? Campbell is a Covid…

Domestic violence data in Australia for the past 35 years. From the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, official government data body.

The pushback against travel is accelerating. Because the stupidity of travel is also accelerating, at exponential rates. Even domestically people are flocking to every event and tourist location, at…

My family are about the only people we know now who still mask regularly. But we’re also free of colds and flu too, never been healthier. And in terms of relative numbers of people masking, 60% of the world lives in…

Those who still refuse to accept the crisis that climate change is can hopefully point us to the last time in their lives when home insurance was completely unaffordable for large parts of countries. Insurance is my…

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

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…

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

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…

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…

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…

“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…

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.…

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.…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

‘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.

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…

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)…

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…

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.…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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!…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

Another person asked me this week when I was going to stop wearing a mask. I wanted to ask them when they were going to grow a fucking brain, but can’t because they’re now home sick.

Travel isn’t about seeing the world. You can do that with photos. It isn’t about experiencing the world either, because tourists don’t experience the world. They’re tourists, they don’t live in the places they go to.…

‘Manspreading’. Sitting with your legs spread is actually much healthier for your hip joints. When you’re sharing a tight seat, sure, put the legs together. But men sit like that naturally because that’s the way the…

In China, some cities are now almost completely silent, because everybody is driving EVs. I don’t think we recognise what a profound change that is. Plus the air is beautifully clean. Here it is, up close.…

When a nation's public health departments are replaced with kidults whining about their missed dining out, gig and travel opportunities.

It's Spring in Arizona. And 46 degrees C. We're cooking, people. Anybody who says we aren't is a moron and wants to destroy your kids' future. Call it out.

The RATs circled in blue tested mucus blown from the nose into a tissue. The RAT in the middle tested the same person the standard way, by swabbing nose and mouth. Most workplaces have reverted to absolutely hopeless…

I wonder how often people pause and think about how many things they love are only loved because they're the things everybody else loves too. The love is the joy of fitting in, and the release of anxiety from being…

Linda Ronstadt, performing in her younger days. Linda’s just had Covid. It damaged her brain so badly she was unable to speak.

Nap time, New York school. 1911. Notice how rugged up the kids are, likely winter. Keeping them healthy was considered more important. Back when grown ups ran the world.

Here’s a brains trust. Amazed they figured out which end of the cigars to put in their mouths.

I’m sure Adam will nod! I did a comparison of the energy used by leaving a reverse cycle heat pump on all night, to heat the house (blue circle), and leaving it off at night and then turning it on in the morning to heat…

People who swear that the best music is ‘subjective’ can’t explain manias. Where millions of people suddenly all swarm around a single act. That’s not subjective, when everybody likes the same thing. Humans don’t desire…

Alan is Trauma Director at Nepean Hospital, works at Royal Hobart and is also a clinical Associate Professor at USyd. Knows his shit. At a time the population is ageing rapidly and needs exponentially increasing amounts…

When the kids were younger I remember reading the debates about co-sleeping with young kids. This is what you can expect if you do 🙂

Wyoming. Remember this every time somebody complains about maybe having to cut back on their take away food and travel spending, to pay more rates.

Many young people I speak to think Biden is a disaster, because he’s ‘old’. (Like that’s the worst thing a person can be.) Biden may be a bit slow to speak these days, but there’s a sharp brain and decades of experience…

People will die rather than go against what everybody else is doing. We never leave high school.

Heat exhaustion is a horrible death. The blood thickens, kidneys fail, your muscles start to liquefy, the person becomes disoriented and confused, the heart stops. What’s tragic about it is sufferers rarely know this is…

It’s difficult to see this as anything except an act of political suicide. There was a time in Oz when opposing climate change action won you votes. That had already passed at the last election, where the Liberals lost…

‘Female’ cyclist Molly Cameron. It’s not ‘transphobia’ to question what’s going on here. These are very dangerous times, when social movements mobilised through social media require you to accept the most ludicrous…

Running the reverse-cycle units 24 hours a day activates the thermal mass of the building. In winter the heat produced is stored in the walls and other materials of the house, where it can release back into the house.…

China will now do what Tesla’s Board and shareholders refused to do. $84 billion is beyond a sick joke for any CEO. Tesla’s EV development has stalled while this dipshit has been off prosecuting his culture wars on…

I know many people allowing themselves to get repeated Covid infections, thinking they’re getting more immune with each infection. They’ve been lied to, and it will shorten their lives. If you don’t control infections…

This is a catastrophe that parents, schools and societies as a whole need to act on now. And fast. This is an entire generation. If you line up behind deliberately infecting kids, over and over, which cornflakes box did…

What’s caused the ‘cost of living crisis’? What’s not well understood is that our lifestyles have ALWAYS been expensive. Western lifestyles are the most expensive lifestyles in human history, they’re ruinously expensive…

Another window into how we never leave high school. I joined a FB group that talks about energy efficiency in homes. Over 120,000 members. Some useful information gets discussed there. I contributed my experiment at…

A good reason to not use ducted systems. You can clean them, but most don’t bother. And it’s a bugger of a job, or will cost you money to get somebody else to do it. And the ducting absorbs energy. (Not our house in the…

Portable heat pumps you can install yourself by just placing in the window frame are now being rolled out in New York. Designed to allow renters to have access to reverse-cycle air conditioning for heating and cooling.…

When petrol and diesel cars were first released, they were hugely expensive. Way beyond the reach of ordinary people. There were also no service stations, for 25 years afterwards. If social media had existed then, no…

I’ve wasted so much time at physios over the years. ‘Stretch and strengthen’. The thing is, muscles are not tight. They’re not like like bits of leather, or springs, that need to be stretched out. Nor are they weak by…

Mt Piper nuclear power station announced today. NSW Premier ruled out any nuclear in NSW (Victoria the same). Game over. Vote for somebody who isn't a fool.

There’s an avalanche of disease out there. And now no antibiotics or other medications available to treat it. Sick and carer’s leave is up 60% across the community. 60%!! Can people not see the complete madness this is?…

Satoshi is a friend. An emergency doctor working in Sydney hospitals. He’s a great example of how increasingly it’s those who take Covid seriously (including by masking) who are carrying the burden of those who don’t.…

Work colleague who sits about a metre away from me was home sick with Covid this week. The boss came in and said ‘they have the spicy cough’. This idiot, childish phrase is offensive. Minimising the seriousness of…

I'm amazed at the stupid things people fall for, with scammers. Just keep your finances simple, never ever respond to anybody canvassing you for investments or anything else. Having said that, Australian banks are also…

Anthony Albanese has a real opportunity right now, to steal the debate. To do what Saul Griffith, the Australian engineer who also advised Joe Biden, suggested he do 2 years ago. To heavily subsidise Australian…

I saw a candidate for election say this. "[Aborigines] were not an advanced civilisation and DEFINITELY would have had to have some form of colonisation by someone in the 18th century." I think many Australians probably…

Up to 70% of road accidents are caused by human error. Humans love to believe they're brilliant drivers, but no human can ever drive (or fly) as accurately or consistently as a machine. There's no need to go as far as…

HIV is an initial infection or infections that seem like a cold or mild flu. Followed 8-10 years later by total system collapse and death. We have no idea of the 8-10 year outlook for Covid. We do know people are…

The tragedy of AF447, where an Air France jet smashed into the Atlantic, killing everybody on board, is a window into the need for proper automation in flying and driving. The jet crashed because the autopilot cut out…

At the end of 2021 we reached a fork in the road. At that fork people could choose between what politicians said about Covid, and what scientists said. Overwhelmingly people went with the politicians (!). Karma has…

I’m ending my working life in local government. And am more happy with that choice every day. Meaningful work, unlike jobs where you just sit around in meetings all day discussing bits of paper that never lead to…

I’m not on any ‘side’ of trans debates. People with a brain don’t play team sports with ideas. But I do tend to listen to smart women, on the future of women, more than I listen to crusading men.

The game of make-believe we’re playing with Covid. Reality isn’t fooled. Vedder blamed the crowd, no self-awareness at all that everybody in that crowd is also at risk, because of his band’s show.

Portugal is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, for Covid. More than Australia. Vaccination alone is not enough. And infecting everybody is not creating immunity.

The saying that the eyes are the window to the soul. But the eyes are a black hole, at the centre. A chilling void, if you look ‘into’ somebody’s eyes, as the romantic line goes. They’re not a window. It’s the eyelids…

WInd turbine fire in Victoria. ‘First in 20 years’, locals say. No problem at all to deal with, say local firefighters. Queenland coal mine on fire. Authorities pumping nitrogen into the mine and telling all locals to…

Australia is in a lot of trouble with energy. We’ll run out inside the next decade, unless urgent action is taken. The previous government had 21 energy policies in 10 years. TWENTY-ONE. How many of those did it…

17 years ago today, dad died. That's him on the left. From the generation whose young lives were taken by war. Never spoke of it. Part of that huge wave of European migration post-WW2 that transformed Australia, with…

I saw in the news this week that more than 50% of younger Australians surveyed engage in choking during sex, copied from a trend in online porn. So the woman is literally choked, for a short time. Humans imitate, it’s…

Heads up. While you're busy not sheltering from the threat, worth pondering why these threats keep happening.…

Anybody want 4 ice skating tickets for opening night of the Winter Festival? Little brother was coming up with family, but Influenza A is now a house guest. I'm sure a discount may even be possible.

This group has lots of videos of ordinary street-legal family EVs embarrassing every muscle car thrown at them. The comments are hilarious, 'if the muscle car had a better driver/wheels, it would have won', 'yeh but the…

In Ireland, hospitals are awash with Covid. You'd think as healthcare facilities that would mean everybody would at least mask up? Hilarious! Instead patients are given a BROCHURE explaining what they can do to try to…

One of the arguments for privatisation is that it saves the taxpayer money by shifting responsibility to private organisations. But the taxpayer ends up paying even more, in user charges. Driving is now much more…

David is one of Australia's leading Long Covid specialists. He said this morning that people are being re-infected with the current variants as quickly as every 3-8 weeks. One of those who have to deal with the disaster…

I share energy things because many of the public are missing out on the fantastic innovation out there, living in a fog of social media propaganda. One of the great things about Tesla is their superb software. Whether…

Studying history gives whole new perspectives to the present. Right now the US is like ancient Rome. Rome had a republic, what we’d call a democracy today. It was a complete disaster, nothing but violence and blood and…

Social media is full every day of people ignoring this advice. The same people who will look for help (there isn’t any) or somebody to blame (it’s themselves), when they get chronically sick. I know many think I’m a…

You’re 1700% more likely to have a heart attack in the week after a respiratory infection, than at any other time. No infection is good for you, most don’t build your immunity, and even those that do create long-term…

The number 1 place most people catch Covid (or any respiratory disease) is at home. And they catch it there mostly from their kids, who pick it up at school. I had to consider the best way to protect the family in…

I know that what people most want to see on FB and other social media, is what’s happening in other peoples’ lives. It’s what I refuse to post here, and thought I’d explain why. Do we think about what it means, to…

"First, Facebook was good to you: It showed you the things the people you loved and cared about had to say. This created a kind of mutual hostage-taking: Once a critical mass of people you cared about were on Facebook,…

Just a public health tip (because public health officials now only ever say 'live with it'.) Cryptosporidiosis isn't killed by hand sanitiser. Soap and water will kill it though. How's 'living with the virus' going for…

I find the NDIS intrinsically dangerous. The base rationale for it is unquestionably fabulous, to support people with a disability. But the devil is so much in the details as to how you go about that. As it stands it…

Imagine you were hiring somebody for a senior management position, and their CV listed: - a declared bankrupt 6 times - convicted of 34 felonies, and - running a casino and the casino going broke.

We started ‘living with Covid’ at the end of 2021. We said we’d ‘protect the vulnerable’, so it would be fine. That’s when aged care homes became slaughterhouses. Nobody gives a shit.

Flu and other viruses getting more ‘potent’. Actually peoples’ immune systems have been damaged by Covid, which has let these other diseases have a field day. I’m seeing people at work with horrendous chronic…

Government ministers visit for actual things. Nobody came to visit us for the nuclear fantasy. Without this, Lithgow is toast.

An American friend works in the biotech industry. His son just got a ‘mild’ Covid infection. He now has parosmia. Parosmia is a condition where your brain distorts what you smell, in this case his son smells an…

Loved this from Transurban: "...a state-owned tolling entity would add a level of bureaucracy without benefiting motorists." The same Transurban who spent $36 billion building the tollways, and is charging taxpayers…

Those who look at what’s happening in the US politically with horror, need to carefully assess the teams at this year’s local government elections in NSW. Local government is where a lot of the Trump base target local…

Political strategy 101. Remember at school if somebody yelled 'fight!', how people would come running from all directions? The social group Trump represents doesn't have to fight for anything, they're rich and already…

UK teachers have been in the Covid firing line longer than Australian teachers. But Australian teachers will catch up. It's disgusting how we treat teachers and kids.…

Maybe it’s working so long in governance that makes me see and think this. But when you watch professional sport, who are by far the most skilled people out there on the court or field? It’s the referees. By far. The…

Ford researched American driving habits, when considering their EV models. More than 50% of Americans only travelled over 200km, 4 or LESS times, every year. The 'range anxiety' debates on EVs assume everybody is a…

I know at least 3 people exhibiting symptoms of MCAS. All of them have had Covid. MCAS is quite common after Covid infection. It can be torture to live with. It has no cure. Many GPs won't recognise it nor link it to…

When I was a kid, nobody talked about energy. When Wang opened in 1957, nobody did either. We just left it to engineers to sort out, the best possible power grid for Australia. And got on with our lives. That’s what’s…

A home battery doesn’t just save money. It’s insurance against disasters (and with climate change there are a lot more of those). The whole street will likely have no power today while this is fixed on the neighbour’s…

Can you feel space? Neuroscientists discovered something remarkable, when they got people to try. As an example, can you feel the space between your head and your hips? Or between your eyes? Or between you and the TV,…

Somebody told me once EVs only do OK because they’re ‘subsidised’. Actually wankpanzers are by far the most subsidised vehicles on the road. $250 million a year, for these multi-tonne piles of shit.

Scans of an 18-year-old woman who developed psychotic episodes after Covid infection. You can see the enormous inflammation of the brain on the right, well after she ‘recovered’ from Covid.

Here’s an example of how social media took over the world. It’s a bait-and-switch operation. First it offered us the bait of ways to ‘connect’ with our friends and family. It then sold us as data, to media companies and…

Petrolheads often use the concept of the ‘driver’s car’. They use it to suggest only they know what good driving is, and everybody else should defer to their expertise. It’s bog standard protecting of social territory.…

Because government actively suppress this information now. Epidemic diseases come in waves, we’re currently on the downslope (again). This is the time people stay ‘see? It’s over’. Which then generates the next up-wave.…

More Mast Cell Activation fun, a very common condition after you've had Covid. One of the people at work is ready to claw their eyes out with a fork, they're so irritated by MCAS. They look even worse than the person in…

Such a fundamentally decent man, with a tragic adult life. (He also lost one of the two surviving sons, to brain cancer.) Disgusted me that him being old was seen as being more of a problem than somebody being a…

Australia will win gold medals in Paris. But none of those athletes will come within light years of achieving what Australian biomedical engineer Daniel Timms has done. I posted about him once before. Here he is,…

Long Covid is badly named. It suggests most people get ‘Short Covid’, and some unlucky ones then get some irritating persistent ‘long’ symptoms. In reality Covid goes to war against your body, even in mild cases. Our…

Ideas constantly improve things. Mostly it’s unnoticed because everyday things seem simple. Like my new dishbrush. I paid a bit more for this one, but was a bit sceptical because it didn’t look very strong. The bristles…

A boyfriend broke her heart, and at the same time the brains of the people of NSW. The law wasn't fooled.…

A while back I posted here how I get every single vaccination I qualify for. For any disease. This is why.

I talk about EVs so much not because of any fetish for them. But because they’re a window into our culture. Take the Chinese EVs. The true genius of China isn’t in design, they plagiarise most of that from Europeans.…

As somebody who works in governance, the greatest danger by far to human life is what is sometimes called populism. Governing only by what is popular. It sounds harmless, even democratic. Try raising your kids or…

Condoms offered to athletes at the Olympics. Meanwhile the water polo team is almost entirely infected with Covid and played regardless, breathing all over their opponents. One prominent British athlete who openly has…

This is Oliver Cromwell’s actual head. Cromwell led the parliamentary forces in the English Civil War of the 17th century, that removed the monarchy and House of Lords, and decapitated Charles I. He then took control of…

They may now not use the Seine for swimming events at the Olympics because of the presence of E. coli. E. coli is a BSL-1 organism. The higher in the pyramid, the more dangerous the disease. Can you see what’s hiding up…

And what does all the heat in the air and oceans do? It melts all of the ice. If you know anybody still sceptical about climate change, try blowing gently in one of their ears and see if the air comes straight out the…

Nobody does jingoistic bullshit better than Channel 9. ‘Our Jess’ *vomit* One Australian team flogged the USA yesterday, comprising mostly young women from regional Australia. (Hint: it wasn’t the Matildas.) Mass public…

A very common sight at the Bathurst Tesla superchargers. No vehicles. It might look like nobody is interested in EVs. But it’s showing the reality of something I post about here. Nearly all EV charging is done at home.…

Bling is back. Katie Ledecky has POTS. (Has had it for years.) Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. Meaning a fast heart rate, dizziness and fatigue when going from lying to standing. Often a chronic after-effect…

The UK led the global charge to ‘hybrid immunity’, with Covid, arguing that letting everybody get infected over and over would gradually build up population immunity. Immunity to common sense, maybe.

Thanks to Jason for this one. This is what Cory Doctorow calls enshittifaction, which has happened to search and is central to social media as well. It’s a bait-and-switch, you’re offered something you want to get you…

"It's probably the worst week of my life in terms of how my body is, and that's no exaggeration," he said. "Everything's come at once. Since COVID, it's just every day waking up with a different thing. The medical…

People find my posts about Daylight Saving amusing. Like somebody yelling at clouds. But right now I'm living what I do every year, with this circadian rhythm cluster bomb. Before the clocks changed to end DST, I was…

What we now call mental illness (a terrible term) used to be called nervous illness. I much prefer that term because most garden variety mental illness is really a type of nervous exhaustion. Even people feeling…

People think Covid is over because they’re lied to. Every day. Data is suppressed, no testing is done, nobody tracks the avalanche of pneumonias and whooping coughs and flus back to trashed immune systems, caused by…

Eric is one of the most respected medical voices in the US. Here he states the obvious, which people still refuse to hear. We’re into the 5th year of the pandemic, and doing nothing at all to control it. And people…

What happens when you exert yourself with Covid. Your GP may not tell you, but if you have Covid, avoid all heavy exercise for at least 6-8 weeks. As for doing the heavy exercise WITH Covid? Insanity. This is quite…

Housing is unaffordable because governments stopped building public housing, through ideologies of ‘the market’ doing it instead. The market will never build affordable housing, how many people have you met who don’t…

Harry is a cardiovascular surgeon, David is one of Australia’s Covid experts. This is what happens when you exercise with or soon after Covid. That’s ventricular tachycardia. Only a pacemaker will save him.

Had to do a quick run Into Sydney yesterday, and always find being on the roads gives some of the best insights into human behaviour. Like these newer adjustable speed limits. A great idea, when they monitor traffic…

Great honest assessment after nearly 100,000 km of driving a Model Y, from somebody who isn’t a Tesla fan. Notably, obviously zero fuel costs, except cheap home electricity. And not one service or repair needed, in…

The breakdancing made me think. Those who either aren’t good at dancing, or have no experience at it, often feel too intimidated to do it for fear of ridicule. Modern social dancing has no structure at all, which is…

I'm not sure how well known it is that when you get an infectious disease, the symptoms you feel aren't caused by the disease. They're caused by your own immue system. The celebration that people have of getting a…

It’s disingenuous to say to young people today that their parents also had high house repayments. The relative price of houses between then and now is literally chalk and cheese. The fabled ‘we paid 17% interest rates’…

This is what monkeypox (now called mpox) looks like. The new strain in Africa has been declared a global health emergency. Fatality rate much higher than Covid, as an example (and Covid is our 3rd leading cause of…

A good word to get to know. Right now we're in a syndemic of Covid, bird flu and monkeypox. This is what 'living with' infectious disease means. Dying.

I think the term 'Long Covid' is far too timid. It basically means 'Covid trashing your entire body, until you die an early death.' Your chances of getting Long Covid increase hugely with each new infection.…

This compassionate and caring approach will actually make anxiety and panic worse. What would have been much better is Nate being encouraged to continue, accepting the feelings of panic, perhaps with one of the other…

Can anybody think of an event where thousands of people mixed recently, including people from Africa? 🤔

He is a convicted felon. Nobody gives a shit that he doesn’t like it.

Covid is evolving to defeat everything our immune systems and vaccines throw at it. Any pathogen you don't make any attempt to control will do that. We're lemmings walking off a cliff. (And it's not a FLiRT variant, for…

The dirty unspoken truth of social media is one we don’t want to admit. Like Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, where the character spends his days spying on other peoples’ lives through the windows of his…

Another leading US doctor, showing how Australia went from leading the world in public health, to being its arse-end, in under 2 years. We're doing NOTHING for Covid in Australia, sickening the entire population for the…

We habitually ‘hold’ our breath. Breathing is in many ways the key indicator of our overall health. Modern medicine is completely silent on how to help a person breathe well. It will treat the symptoms of poor…

The origins of local government are fascinating. it wasn’t invented as some way to give local people a voice, or any of that other democracy claptrap. It was mostly invented to control disease. It’s a public health…

Jordon Steele-John on radio this morning outraged at changes to the NDIS. The example he gave was a deaf person no longer being able to order a bespoke washing machine (through the NDIS) that will notify them via…

One for the ‘Covid is over’ people. Testing is back. Covid will not be over until we stop it spreading. Until we control it. Like we do all other serious infectious diseases.

As a culture we decided going to gigs was more important than public health. Karma is arriving quickly now.

Adult life has the same structure (now) as teenage school life. We’re all looking for status, in a group of some kind. To be recognised, accepted, and admired. Tell somebody their favourite band sucks and watch how much…

Offer people super-cheap, phenomenal quality cars, and guess what? They buy them. Western carmakers are literally asleep at the wheel.…

The most common health advice for people is to exercise, eat well, don’t smoke or drink. But check this. Research shows that people at the lowest rungs of an organisation, with the lowest status, are 4 times more likely…

When you break public health, every pathogen comes for the party.

Public health often uses the same idea of ‘the public’ as shorthand for ‘everybody’. But societies don’t work like that. They run on social status. A tiny handful of people drive behaviours. Take alcohol as an example.…

What isn’t seen is that by ‘living with’ Covid, we opened the door to everything. Public health was set up about 150 years ago to make us explicitly NOT live with pathogens. Now they’ve all arrived for the party. This…

One of the social media sports is to mock the local council about potholes and roadworks. People seriously imagine Council employees come to work every day, and say ‘let’s not fix the roads.’ Like a Council needs…

Another social media favourite when sinking the boot into Council workers would be to have a superior chuckle at the circle of guys just ‘standing around’ while one does all the work. Nobody ever explains how you’d get…

What we don’t seem to get is that climate change is *infinitely* bigger as a problem, than Hitler. Has anybody noticed their life being disrupted in the way entire societies stopped, to fight Hitler? For 7 years? No.…

This may be peak stupid of living with Covid. HOSPITALS now calling an ambulance, to save patients.

Reading some of the social media around upcoming LG elections. ‘Councils should be run more like a business’, that’s an old favourite. Councils are nothing like a business. They’re a government. They provide services,…

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…

“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'.

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…

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.

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.

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.…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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).…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Melody is one of life’s great mysteries, that I don’t’ think gets a lot of attention. A melody follows no rules, unlike harmony, which does and can be applied to any melody almost mechanically. A melody is alive, it has…

A common thing now is for tragedy to be used for fundraising. I notice here that the GoFundMe was up and running almost as soon as the tragedy happened, ditto for a recent young death here locally, where the first many…

Nothing creates the ‘starving artist’ more than the idea that all art is subjective. Why would you pay for somebody’s subjective fantasies? If we valued art, we’d value artists.

Do you know people younger than 50 suddenly developing cardiovascular pathologies, like strokes and heart problems? You’re going to see a lot more of that. We’re in tragic denial. What is not understood by the public is…

The heart is just the start of the Covid damage. Endothelial damage is an organ destroyer.

First review of the BYD Shark. Reviewers astounded at what BYD have done here. Have a watch, an incredible vehicle. Other ute makers will be literally shitting themselves. How’s 0-100 in under 6 seconds sound, for a…

Heard a loud bang at 1:20am here in Lithgow. Not sure if man-made, or an earth tremor. Nothing listed on the official earthquake site. Anybody else?

This is the new XEC variant. I could encourage everybody I know to take precautions. I know the vast majority won’t. People are more scared of being different to others, than they are of being infected with a lethal…

Barefoot shoes to me are an example of what can go wrong with the idea of 'natural' health. They are absolutely not good for some types of feet, some peoples' current foot condition, and the activities they plan to do.…

A few notice the transformation of all adult life into high school life. In my 50s I decided to say enough. I now break all the rules of that adult life, probably alienating many I know. I refuse to play those status…

I keep waiting for the community to register 'hmm, gee isn't everybody sick a lot these days'. By the way hand sanitiser is useless for a lot of gastro. Soap and water.

I see reports that Tony Shadie died, my old physics teacher. (Hans Stroeve just confirmed.) Many of my friends would have been taught by him too. Nigel were you in the physics class? I know David was, Lisa I think you…

We’re absolutely determined to pretend Covid is the flu. Even down to when we’re allowed to have vaccinations for Covid (annually), like we do for flu. Covid is not flu. In no way does it even resemble flu. It doesn’t…

A few friends express fears about having to replace an EV battery. You will never need to. The longer these things are out on the road, the more the data shows that they’re even better than anybody thought…“the average…

The Bathurst 1000, the race that fascinates a nation. But not everybody in Bathurst.

Somebody standing around that yellow arrow (for example) is the reason I think big gigs are not about the show or the music. They’re about people liking being in a crowd. You couldn’t pay me to do it.

If you know somebody whose personality changed significantly after Covid infection, particularly towards dark thoughts and depression, the most likely cause is dopamine senescence. There are neurons in the brain that…

Why is everybody so sick, all of the time now? Covid damages the immune system, leaving it wide open to other infections. Here are the increased risks currently known. There will be others. 1.40X means 1.4 times more…

People should be in jail. Starting with members of NSW Cabinet, who lead the total indifference. You should never go to hospital for treatment and contract a potentially lethal infection while there. With things like…

A study in Spain found that 56% of men who had Covid had erectile dysfunction, 12 months later. It's a vascular disease, it will attack blood vessels wherever you have them.

This is a stock image, the sort of thing billions of people share. How happy everybody looks! Because they’re socialising. ‘Living their best lives’, as we now call it. There’s an uncomfortable truth about socialising…

It’s rumoured that the world’s biggest selling car, the Tesla Model Y, is going into first production of its new version (‘Juniper’) from tomorrow. The picture below is just somebody’s guess how it will look, based on…

For me our fundamental misunderstanding of what love is is shown by how we see jealousy as a negative. When it’s actually the root of all love. The only healthy part of love in fact, the part that remembers that the…

They were talking about cars today. I tried an experiment, asking people if they would ever buy an EV. ‘Why would anybody do that!’ ‘The batteries cost a fortune when you have to replace them!’ ‘Even when you charge…

This shows the percentage who get RE-infected every year, with Covid. Makes a laughing stock of the idea of 'hybrid immunity' governments are selling i.e. that everybody catching it is making us all more immune to it.

Volkswagen is in serious, serious trouble. (Note VW also owns: Å KODA, SEAT, CUPRA, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Porsche and Ducati.) The 3rd biggest car maker in the world. This is a story you'll see repeated with other…

Freddie Mercury recording in 1982, in Munich. I was living in Germany that year, and saw him live with Queen only a few months after this shot was taken. Sharing it here for a different reason though, it was on the tour…

From the UK. Note not one single concern for the health of the teachers. This farce continues unabated, everywhere that prioritises travel and gigs over human life.

This bullshit review was always going to be a whitewash. The Brit’s review interrogated everybody from politicians down, grilled them. Ours was like free fellatio for all the main players. The headline is an example of…

A pharmacist reminded me of something important this week. Generally we think that what we buy at the pharmacist is either prescribed by a doctor, or over-the-counter much less powerful drugs, like cough syrups or…

Freddie Mercury decided to live with the threat of HIV, for a while. He thought he needed to ‘live his life’. The parallels I see with the widespread attitude towards Covid now fill me with despair. Most people probably…

The pandemic made many people rediscover the most important place on Earth again. Their own home. For many that will lead to lasting change, society is only just beginning to figure this out. The obsession to be always…

Bit of an esoteric one except for my Alexander friends. Watched this again on the weekend, and was struck at just how strange it is and why I moved away from AT ideas. Every single moment of this session forces this…

This is why so many people are getting so sick and so often now. By allowing ourselves to be repeatedly infected with Covid we’re doing the exact opposite to what we think we’re doing. We’re not building immunity, we’re…

In Australia there have been 4056 Covid deaths this year to August. 851 for flu and 380 for respiratory syncytial virus. You could say 'yes but they were mostly old'. They caught it from people who were young and…

Heh, re-write this headline as ‘Fears Australia will be inundated with cheap, high-quality cars’. The Americans and Europeans are green with envy. NewsCorpse is a rotting maggot-ridden sewer at the heart of all Anglo…

The fascinating thing about car suspension is that it has to do 2 important things, which are fundamentally opposed. There is no actual way to resolve that tension. Most of all, a car has to stay on the road to keep you…

It’s funny that some who are horrified at the election of Trump would still vote for Peter Dutton. Dutton is Trump-lite. I thought Trump was going to fall asleep during his victory speech. He’s only in this for personal…

Here's what I think very few seem to get about politics. When politicians win elections, they congratulate theselves for the victory. Commentators do too. They attribute the victory, to the politician. But the majority…

So many people I talk to about Covid look at me like I'm unhinged, like 'isn't that over?' Yeh, nah. For the second year in a row, our life expectancy has gone backwards. From the public health point of view, this is as…

I share renewables stuff because it saddens me that we’re all living through the greatest revolution in centuries, and many aren’t even noticing. Take this, the other night, those with a battery could sell energy back…

This is a beautifully nuanced song about depression. Brian May talking about his own life, how it goes along well and then ‘the night comes down’ i.e. depression hits. With those lovely descending guitar lines that are…

If you know doctors who treat Long Covid, you will hear the most horrific, tragic stories. Your chances of having Long Covid increase enormously with every infection.

It’s one of the genius design elements of the Model Y. The glass roof means you still get the big open sky as you sleep. Also incredibly useful if you’re just visiting friends on a trip, you don’t need a room. Some who…

The country everybody loves to hate, China, has stopped buying Western cars. It doesn’t need them, it has world-leading EVs. They must look at us and laugh, we said the world needed to move to EVs, so they said ok,…

Car enthusiasts will tell you every day of the week that a ‘driver’s car’ is the ultimate type of car. What they really mean by that is a car that is good at going fast around corners. Basically a race car, driven on…

Yup. Get rid of it, put the money into public hospitals and Medicare. Junk insurance, funded largely by the taxpayer in opposition to the government system. A trick by the LNP to try to destroy Medicare from the…

4 decades of moralising against fat people and telling them they just need to count calories and go to the gym led to precisely nothing. The problem actually got worse. That’s because we hadn’t got to the root cause of…

To every teacher raising somebody else’s kids today, because the kid’s parents never grew up, I see you. Thank you.

Watching the V8s (on TV) in Adelaide this weekend. The formula struggles now to find a relevant car, nobody much drives Camaros or Mustangs. They don’t even make the Camaro any more I don’t think. Make it a contest…

In the next 30 years, the number of people globally over the age of 65 will double. The number of people of working age will only grow by 20%. How’s everybody’s maths?

The internet is now 5 giant websites, each filled with screenshots from the other 4. Cory Doctorow

I have several friends who’ve had severe pneumonia this year. Young, healthy people, previously. I don’t think their health is ever going to recover, but I don’t usually tell them that.

I particularly like their new Health supremo tucking into the healthy grub. America is a clown show. Remember this smiling photo, their lives as well as those of all Americans go into rapid free fall from here.

Can anybody think of a vascular disease that the entire population is now catching multiple times every year? 🤔

Australia should use the coal from the mines owned by companies in Korea and Switzerland to power coal-fired power stations it doesn’t have and nobody wants to build, which would be at least 3 times more expensive…

Cuts to food and health care for poor Americans to fund tax cuts to wealthy Americans. MAGA. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-medicaid-food-stamps-welfare

I know just about everybody I know (and don't know) will maintain a silence on Covid. They all want to believe good times are back, time to move on, 'you gotta live your life' etc. All that greeting card, live as a…

Peer pressure runs societies. We never leave high school. Here's a story that shows it. This is Dan and Fran Keller, from Texas, in 1992. Standing trial for child abuse at a childcare facility they ran. Children from…

There’s a potential influenza pandemic brewing in the US. It’s doing next to nothing about it, and under Trump will do even less. Pandemic influenzas generally kill 40-50% of people who get infected, of whatever age or…

In the inevitable transition to electric cars, the existing industry throws up one fake scare campaign after another. Like ‘they all catch fire, or ‘range anxiety’. Or now, ‘they have no resale value’. One of the most…

Dr Phillip Alvelda (senior research scientist in biotech, used to work for NASA) talking about the mass delusional tragedy that Covid now is, a friend's daughter and her insurance company, Kaiser as an example:…

This is what the Bathurst Tesla superchargers still look like most days. Not because nobody owns Teslas in Bathurst (there are lots), but because fast-chargers are used mostly by travellers, not locals. Unlike petrol…

If everybody would just follow the bloody speed limit, traffic congestion would be dramatically reduced. Speed limits act as a spacer between vehicles, if everybody is doing the same speed traffic can’t form, nothing…

Scrolling the FB feed, have a rough look at how many posts the algorithms now show you that are actually from your friends, compared to the number that are product placements, or ‘suggested’ things you might like based…

At the current rate of infection, the entire US population will have Long Covid inside 4 years. Australia is infecting even faster (we don’t vaccinate kids). 8% of that entire population will never be able to work…

The US is the same as here. The people who love voting to get rid of immigrants never have a clue that without immigrants there's nobody to do the work.

One to keep in the back pocket in case you need it, while we keep infecting the kids so we can go to gigs and Bali. How proud are we to be one of the only developed countries on Earth that doesn't even vaccinate kids,…

Some say 'but China still burns coal, it's the problem'. Approvals for new coal plants in China fell 92% in 2023. In the first 9 months of 2024, 86% of all new power sources added to the Chinese grid were renewable. In…

People have been encouraged to believe nothing can be done to prevent Covid, so we all just need to 'live with' (i.e. catch it) now. That's just political bullshit. For every pandemic in history, you know who ended the…

I’ve seen people bring newborns to a workplace with people there infected with Covid. Public health is dead, we have the foot on the accelerator rushing back to the Middle Ages. No doubt the same people will tell you…

Again, look to China for where we’ll be going next. Car dealerships from legacy Western brands in China, like BMW, Mercedes etc are closing in their thousands. 2000 per year in 2021, 2022 and 2023. 4000 in 2024. That’s…

Updated Covid vaccine available from 9 December. In time for Christmas, which is good. Just about everybody should have had 5 or 6 Covid shots already. I doubt many have had more than 2. Using infection instead of…

Pffft, just keep piling on the infections. It’ll make them stop eventually. Anybody want to buy a secondhand car?

I found this story powerfully symptomatic of the times we’re now living in. The total collapse of a ‘public’ anything. People stripping power cables from streets, to sell the copper. Just outrageous, like living in…

Asking ordinary people whether Australia should have nuclear power is like asking them to do their own brain surgery. They have no idea, and it's not a decision they should be asked to make.…

This is social media society. Where instead of each of us just doing the jobs we’re trained to do, everybody is suddenly an expert on everything. And these platforms then aggregate all of our ignorant opinions on things…

This is the sort of rank populism that plays well in our times. ‘Get rid of red tape!’ The problem with that idea is that the people who say it have no idea how things get practically done. ‘Bureaucracy’ is just the…

I think a very good and not often asked question is why 'performance cars' are even allowed on public roads. It's clear they're designed to use public roads as race tracks. Also sometimes called 'driver's cars', a very…

With the insane nonsense of living with a pandemic we’ve encouraged the total collapse in control of infectious disease more generally. The single and only reason our life expectancies are now over 80 rather than 40 is…

I don't read as many books as I used to, life is short and there are too many crap books. But Will Storr's book I recommend to everybody. It might reframe how you see most of life. I'd already been studying status…

The CSIRO has done detailed modelling of bushfire risk into the future for each part of Australia. You can plug in your postcode to see. Lithgow is at the upper end of increased risk. This will flow through into higher…

Today Peter Dutton releases laughable ‘modelling’ to say nuclear power is the best option for Australia. Do you know anybody who’s ever worked with nuclear technology? I do - me. I can tell you right here, nuclear power…

One of the explanations given for why so many people seem so much more sick now, and more often, is that lockdowns caused ‘immunity debt’ i.e. people weren’t getting infected with diseases as much, so their immunity had…

Change doesn't happen gradually. Nothing happens for a while, and then everything happens all of a sudden. See if the history below rhymes with changes to transport (EVs) you see today. "In the early 20th century...the…

“Ordinary Australians will continue to slap solar panels on their roofs to escape the entire drama and decide the future without Canberra.” The energy problem is already solved. You can live it right now. You don’t have…

In August, 100 notable ‘creatives’ (writers, musicians etc.) boarded a ship in the Arctic circle, for a 15-day cruising adventure through the Arctic waters. Over 50% of them contracted Covid, on the trip. Some are now…

If you wonder why we ended up 'living with' a pandemic, when you read Scott Morrison's true passions, it'll become clear to you why he wasn't focused for one second on the basics of running a country. Like disease…

Just look at these numbers, from Australian actuaries. A public health disaster. Ask anybody in the street, and you’d think life was back to normal.

New Zealand’s new government came to power with a tired old cliche about freeing everybody from dreadful government. They cut the guts out of public spending. Now their economy is a train wreck. There is no such thing…

Second family Christmas ruined by Covid now. Thankfully not here in this household, but the extended family celebrations now wrecked. I wonder how many more years of this stupidity people will tolerate. I’m not sensing…

You’ll see this in many new EVs. It’s a monitoring camera to check if the driver is falling asleep. Just one more safety technology that is desperately needed for driving, so many accidents are related to fatigue.…

The maths of stupidity. The Granville train disaster killed 83 people. It’s still commemorated. Tens of thousands of people have died (and are still dying) of Covid in Australia. Our attitude to that? It’s ‘just a…

I worked with somebody who told me it didn’t matter how far off in the distance a car was, they had to speed up to catch them, because they couldn’t bear anybody being in front of them on the road. That’s probably about…

Sometimes it just takes a moment to pause and reflect. I don’t transact personal life much on here, because I think it’s profoundly unhealthy that these platforms have captured our social lives. Increasingly all of our…

Imagine places are people. Which of course they are, too. We had these Time Life books as kids, and I’d sit and look at different locations in the world, for hours. Now people just go there. They travel. Let me argue…

Why do I persist with attention to Covid? This graph helps explain why. What’s not widely known is that we had a global pandemic through most of the 20th century. Heart disease. Some really bad science made us think…

In a culture that now defines a woman as anybody who cares to identify as one, we shouldn’t be surprised that all the gains women have made in the past 100 years are being rapidly wound back.

Social media floods the world with shit. ‘Misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. But that’s only a symptom. Its real destructive power is to destroy trust. To encourage everybody to think they’re an expert on everything,…

We don’t need yet another enquiry into why petrol is so expensive. It’s always the same reason - fossil fuel companies are arseholes. We already know how to fix that, the NRMA would be doing its members and us a favour…

lol ‘dance like nobody is watching’, and then post it to social media for millions to watch.

One of the holy grails of medicine is a genuinely effective and safe drug for obesity. We may have arrived, with Semaglutide and Tirzepatide. Not developed for weight loss but instead for management of diabetes, their…

This shows a common problem - anterior pelvic tilt, where a person’s bum starts to edge backwards, causing additional curvature in the base of their lower back. Usually caused by bad ‘posture’, often sitting in chairs…

Queen wrote this song to take the piss out of the Sex Pistols. It makes the Sex Pistols sound like The Wiggles. I saw them live this same year, you can get a sense of them in their full glory in this clip. What a band.…

Coal, oil and gas are all forms of solar energy. All are dead animals and plants, who got their energy directly from the sun, via photosynthesis. But concentrated over millions of years, which is why they have such a…

Does your life have a purpose? It’s the sort of question that is easily ignored when you’re young, but can gradually gnaw away at everybody as they age. What’s the point of it all? ’Having a good time’ seems a common…

We got the whole family vaccinated for flu last year. Nobody caught Covid until Kell right at the end of the year. Given flu shots are also showing strong impact against heart diseases as well, I can’t think of a better…

My version of ’positivity’ is attacking the problems that threaten all of us, like grown-ups should. Not ‘living my best life’ ignoring all of those problems. None of that ‘you do you’ bullshit, sorry. You do we, and…

NSW desperately needs a change in March. This man is the main driver in the collapse of Australia’s public health defence against Covid as well.

One of my hobbies is making ice cream. I use dextrose (which is just glucose) instead of ordinary table sugar, to avoid the fructose which is really bad for you. You can buy dextrose in supermarkets or brewing shops,…

Covid, using Freddie as a guide. Freddie in 1984, and in 1991, immediately before his death. Medical experts suggest Freddie probably caught HIV in 1982, which corresponds also with a flu-like illness he had in that…

Genius innovators in agriculture have called enough on this sort of landscape vandalism. Not least because nobody makes any money out of it, long-term. They’re shifting most of our food production to massive…

This is the side of solar that is less spoken about. Every person you see with solar panels on their roof is a mini power station. They’re providing some of the electricity you use, and they used their own money to…

When the entire valley was flooded to create water for a coal-powered power station, and a whopping concrete dam wall was constructed to do it, nobody said boo. Calling the BS on this.

I look at the holiday photos and social events people post to FB, where nobody is taking any precautions against Covid infection. And two things jump out at me. 1) So many seem to think only of risk to themselves, and…

I hadn’t heard of materials science and engineering before I started university. But it’s what I studied. It’s one of the most astonishing areas of research in the world, and the forefront of all engineering and…

The phrase ‘range anxiety’ for EVs. Petrol and diesel cars don’t have great range. They have thousands of service stations. Filled daily by huge fuel tankers travelling back and forth from the refinery (actually now…

I think the graphs are clear enough to not have to explain them. This is what a lethal vascular disease does. Most would have had 'mild' infections.

Pieter is one of Australia’s most elite doctors. Even other doctors speak in hushed tones about him. He doesn’t often offer a view, so when he does, it’s worth listening to. This one is such an important point. The spin…

Name something these 3 have in common: 1. The Davos World Economic Forum, in Switzerland 2. NSW parliament in Sydney 3. Parliament at Westminster in the UK. Anybody? Each has spent millions making the buildings safe…

In Australia, somebody is dying of Covid every 27 minutes.

The German Health Minister one of the few honest politicians left in the world. Saying what I’ve been sharing here for a while, that Covid infection is possibly leading to incurable long-term damage to the immune…

More Flat Earth hilarity in the comments. They took lead out of petrol because it was giving people brain damage. But I think just burning the stuff, and diesel, makes people stupid.

The 120-hour driver training for young people now is very interesting, and says a lot about what 'good driving' is. Car enthusiasts will always tell you good driving is something like race car driving - fast, picking…

Satoshi is a doctor friend from Sydney. On the frontline of treating Covid patients, for the whole pandemic. We need to listen to people like him.

Pick the most popular guy at the sleepover.

"Most of what passes for mental health advice involves suppressing negative emotions and pretending to be happy for the sake of others. Those of us who refuse to play along are labelled “negative” and identified as a…

Excess mortality is the number of deaths above the usual average in a given year. For the first two years of the pandemic, ours actually went negative i.e. we were healthier than we’d ever been. Now it’s 15% higher than…

I gave up pretty much all alcohol years ago, for health reasons at the time (I was isolating possible causes of a heart arrhythmia). I still have the odd celebratory champagne for birthdays etc. Australians get drunk at…

I don't engage much with the Australia Day debates, it's pretty much the same tired arguments every year. But one thing I always do remember, is that the people who arrived in 1788 mostly didn't want to be here. They…

The prissiness of tennis as a sport gives it a real dilemma now. Djokovic will end up easily the greatest male player of all time, in terms of results on court. Federer is retired, Nadal’s body is giving way. There’s…

A big study of over 640,000 people who had Covid. Showing the risk of developing autoimmune diseases as a result. The IRR column is the one to look at, I’ve converted to % risk below. So: - 43% greater risk of…

Donald Trump Jr. Does ‘air quotes’ a lot, because everything is apparently a conspiracy. And only his mega-brain sees through it all.

Three catastrophes paradoxically gave us the peaceful and prosperous lives we’re used to. If you study history you’ll see that the era post-WW2 is unprecedented in human history, for its prosperity and peace. But why…

As night follows day, up the next wave we go. You’ll have heard people say Covid will become ‘endemic’. Covid is an epidemic disease, infecting in repeated waves. It will never become endemic (a flat line rather than…

It’s so exhausting for societies, countering the relentless propaganda put into circulation by those who do very well out of the status quo. Another common bit of spin is that we can’t shift to EVs because there aren’t…

I love Douglas Adams’ observation, sharing the same idea as Steve Jobs, that if you’re calling something ‘technology’, you’ve already failed. It should just be something that works without anybody even noticing.

What I said all through this wave turned out to be 100% true. Including that National Cabinet and the CMO were flat-out lying to us. To me it’s important to close the loop on the things I say here, because maybe people…

Another corporate ‘team building’ exercise. The people who run and order these are on 6-figure salaries. Indistinguishable from a preschool classroom.

The dog v cat person thing. I like both animals. But from working in local government, I can say there are 100 complaints about dogs for every complaint about a cat. In fact I don't think I've ever seen a complaint…

The people who scour YouTube and other online forums looking for reasons to deny the emergency of climate change need to spend a day with the road crews in local councils. Humans have zero chance of surviving dramatic…

While societies collapse under the weight of multiplying disasters, meantime the thing that exercises the minds of the latest generation of kiddults is the apparently outrageous assertion by JK Rowling that only…

Beautiful drone shot from the ABC, showing a dingo patrolling the dingo fence. Worth reading the article, how the landscape on the dingo’s side of the fence is much richer and healthier than the barren wasteland of the…

Yep. And there isn't a Plan(et) B. Ignore everybody who doesn't believe in climate change being an emergency. There isn't time to engage in their silly debating points, which are drafted by comms teams in fossil fuel…

Same workplace I shared the other day (doing jigsaws). Today's team-building exercise is making rice paper rolls.

I’m somebody who loves to try new chip flavours. This one will test me.

There have been over 1000 people in hospital with Covid in Australia every day since December 27, 2021. Health care workers are probably nodding. We're using them as slaves to (we think) keep an economy running. An…

A variation on people not following speed limits, is people speeding up when overtaking lanes start, to stop people passing them. Just incredibly stupid and annoying behaviour. And HUGE numbers of people do it, despite…

It took decades for public health to make inroads against smoking. Big Tobacco has now reversed a lot of those gains in only a handful of years, with vaping. At epidemic levels in the young, exactly the demographic they…

If you watch a person walk from ground level, you almost certainly won’t notice it happens by our bodies being a twisted, spiral pair of muscular sheets, running the full length of our bodies. When you look at somebody…

The theories I agree with, that suggest most of our chronic diseases are actually caused by infections, continue to grow in strength. Be vaccinated for everything you qualify for a vaccine for. Including an annual flu…

This current obsession that kids are almost invulnerable to disease is less than a century old. Before that most kids died before even reaching adolescence. Be a person who speaks out about us now reversing this, to…

Where the idiot UK government goes, we follow. They’re desperately short of workers there, first due to the stupidity of Brexit, and then Covid. The idiots assumed older workers had just retired, and had slogans ready…

More than 11,000 people die each year in Australia from diseases caused by the breathing in of vehicle exhaust emissions. And yet people still cheer on crap petrol and diesel technology, which not only kills them, but…

If you were feeling sorry for anybody with $3 million in super, here's the breakdown of their MONTHLY income, for life, if they were to retire today: Age 62: $18,962 Age 65: $19,910 Age 70: $21,461

The longer term chronic impacts of Covid are well underway. We can’t positive think our way out of them, or define them away. The definition of a pandemic is based on number of infections, not severe disease or…

Lovely exponential curve. Not even the pandemic slowed the momentum much. You can be on the wrong side of this history, it'll just mean costing you a lot of money and pride. And think about the benefits: - no more…

The range of a horse and cart was way beyond what the cars and trucks that replaced them could offer. Unpacking the slogans and spin that now dominate our lives, nobody said ‘I can’t buy a car, what about the range?’…

This is the $3.6 billion Tesla gigafactory in Nevada. This is a post about why I post about electric cars. It’s not just because I like them (though I do, I think people will wonder in a few years why we ever drove…

Got my second and final shingles shot today. The most painful thing about the whole experience was the cost, about $600 for two shots. But it’s a great investment. People have probably seen the research I’ve posted…

The best way to save with health insurance is to not have it. Or just keep the extras, for dental and optical work. If we all decided to do that, tens of billions of dollars would be freed up again to spend on actual…

More power to the actuaries, who yesterday called BS on our euphoric ‘post-Covid’ 2022, the year of mass slaughter in Australia. We’re sleepwalking into an abyss.

There’s a genuine risk of stagflation this year. Like the worst of all possible worlds. High prices, high unemployment, nobody buys anything. It happened in the 1970s, when Big Oil formed a cartel to drive oil prices…

I use Tesla as an example for EVs, because they’re the world leaders. What they’re doing is remarkable in all sorts of ways we never hear about. For example a few years ago, they hired an ex-LEGO executive to head up…

Regional areas are expected to need another 11,000 GPs in the next decade. 50,000 teachers are also expected to leave teaching in the next TWO years. Try finding a tradie to do anything without waiting months. This day…

The story of our increased life expectancy in modern times that isn't told as often. Nearly all of it is stopping children dying. If you got to adulthood in the past, you lived to almost the same old age as we do today.…

It’s not about ‘greenies’. It’s about $$, and engineering. Why would anybody deliberately choose to spend thousands of dollars per year when they don’t need to?

Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles and Mardi Gras. I still won’t do social events because the pandemic isn’t over. It not only isn’t over, it’s killing 20,000 people a year in Australia. More than 2500 dead in 2023 already. The…

Most countries have the same problems right now. Big jumps in cost of living, the need to reduce emissions. The problem is the solution. Dramatically reducing household energy use goes a long way towards fixing both…

Working for local government is a bit of a hiding to nothing thing. Everybody almost universally hates it, and treats you with contempt. The pay is some of the worst in the job market. And there’s no funding, to do…

Missed this when it first came out. It's a corker. Set in a small town, some of the people buried in the local cemetery suddenly crawl out of their graves and come back to life, good as new. From various times in…

I wouldn't advise anybody to train as a number 6. They're going to need some in the transition, and some EV technicians, but it's a dead-end otherwise. California for example (twice as big an economy as Australia) is…

In America legislation has been drafted to get rid of Daylight Savings. Both sides support it. As scientists say, the best thing is to return to permanent standard time, not permanent summer time (those are the two…

Because of renewables, gas consumption to make electricity last year was 30% lower than it was just 5 years previously. In the next 4 years it's projected to fall up to another 66%. It's not a debate, it's engineering…

We’re destroying younger generations. Their health, their wealth. Our birth rate is so low we’re not even replacing ourselves. It’s difficult to get older generations (of which I’m one, only one year off being a boomer)…

Fiji shows how out of touch we are with the climate disaster underway. No debates there about climate change, they’ve already had to move 6 entire villages, to avoid the rising sea. Another 42 villages are listed to…

Thousands of experts in this area, have been saying the same thing for years. Disaster is imminent. Don’t listen to anybody who tells you otherwise, they’re a moron and standing in the way of salvaging anything from…

I was 1 when humans landed on the moon. The thing that interests me much more about it now is how society has changed, since then. Look at the pictures of that day in 1969, people gathered around the handful of TV sets…

Like everybody else, I’ve travelled. But I’ve never, not once, really enjoyed it. Getting home was always the highlight of any trip. Of course there are things you can do on a trip that are fun, even wonderful, but it…

I know people love discussing politics. On behalf of the 6000 people in NSW who died in 2022 because of the criminal incompetence of the outgoing Premier, good riddance. Anybody else would be in jail for the rest of…

I know many who work in various bodywork and physical therapy disciplines. One overwhelming fact re-framed all of that, for me, as it can anybody who wants their body to function in extraordinary ways. Your body is…

I read things like this, and then look around me at how people are living as if nothing is happening, as disasters that could wipe out our entire civilisation carry on, with nothing being done. Covid the same. 20,000…

It's a shame Australia is increasingly moving towards the US in its culture, politics and tastes. Like the RAM. Americans (sorry my American friends) make almost universally rubbish cars. (We don't make any at all now,…

This is American data. You can see that nearly half of the people surveyed even today are not comfortable with public events, because of the risk of Covid. The idea the majority of people wanted ‘freedom’ back and were…

You see these charts in lots of workplaces. And quite a few people do the stretches. The ideas behind stretching are really quite bizarre though, here’s another go at it. The idea that your muscles and other connective…

Autonomous driving cars are very close, in fact you can see Bill Gates driving in one in this short video. Around London, so a very challenging environment. It performs beautifully. Cars and trucks are the only form of…

Multiple families I know struggling with multiple infections. Conjuncitivitis and tonsillitis common. Hand, foot and mouth disease too. And others. Many when I talk to them repeat the slogans politicians created to deal…

We're about to see coal-fired power fall off a cliff. What isn't clear in the public debates, this is already happening. Nobody is waiting to make the decision, it was made long ago. For the 'when the sun doesn't shine…

More on wood heating. It has its benefits, it’s a renewable resource for example, and can capture emissions when you replace cut wood with new plantings. (How often that happens is a bit questionable.) Here’s another…

I’m a materials engineer. Most people have never heard of it, but it’s the heart of the modern world. The basic engineering principles in most fields haven’t changed a lot in centuries. What’s changed is new materials.…

Scrolling past all of the happy social lives on FB made me think of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Compare the two images. The variety of passion and emotion in Da Vinci’s picture, and the monotonous single ‘living our best…

This graph again, that astronomical climb is the Industrial Revolution. What isn't said about it is that it was a response to massive human problems, like disease, starvation, poverty, pollution etc. It changed…

The benefits of a battery. Been a wintry few weeks in Lithgow, lot of cloud and rain, but the solar still produces more than enough power. This morning when I got up the battery was still 54% full, from yesterday’s…

The unfixable destructive paradox of travel is that it forces somebody else’s home to change, to cater to you. No matter how low impact you want to be. Some European cities for example are fed up with the tourists who…

The English journalist Christina Patterson has been fighting a very brave fight against trans activism. She makes the excellent point, one I’ve posted here a few times, that the concept of trans is the social…

A question for people who live in NSW. This advice from NSW Health has never changed. So why is hardly anybody wearing masks? Do we all know better than the health professionals? Do you reckon we might be playing with…

Nobody can get staff, it’s a genuine crisis. The thing is, we knew this was coming. It’s demographics. Our population was ageing, and is now old. There are nowhere near enough workers to support that older population,…

John Farnham’s term with LRB wasn’t very successful. But it was I think the greatest singing in the history of rock music. Farnham was at his peak, and the harmonies were like nothing anybody else has ever done live.…

I sometimes say Australia should be the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century. Rod Sims, ex head of the ACCC (a very conservative, ‘economic’ institution), spells out why very well here. In fact per capita we should be the…

I love glass. Materials engineering, the cutting edge of all engineering, and modern life. (If your kids are looking for something to study, it’s a brilliant field.) Here’s another glimpse into that work, the production…

I was thinking about how bad the situation is now with maths in schools, seeing Bunnings selling firewood for $20,000 per tonne. Nobody seemed to care.

You can also use a home battery with no solar panels at all. For example, you could use it to store off-peak electricity overnight, to use in your house during the day. That alone can cut your electricity bill in half.…

One of the most common criticisms from the anti-renewables Flat Earthers is that solar panels waste good agricultural land. But they don't, in fact they improve it hugely. Sheep are much happier and healthier, as are…

It'd be a good topic to use to teach about inertia. That brain is going to smash into your inner skull no matter what you have on your head. Up to 40,000 times in a playing career.…

The Streets as Shared Spaces program in NSW is part of a global urban design push towards ‘placemaking’. Taking back urban space from the car. Making those spaces shared spaces again, for everybody, not just cars.…

For my friends who are Panthers fans, a co-worker just stood next to Jarome Luai and Ivan Cleary buying coffee here in Bathurst, and didn't have a clue who they were, and why everybody seemed to be making such a fuss as…

Covid has been over for well over a year now. Somebody better tell it. Hospitalisations up 35% in the past 3 weeks. If you're wondering why NSW Health can't get staff, here's one of the elephants in the room.

A study compared the response of an artificial intelligence bot (ChatGPT) and doctors, to patients. The AI won hands-down, for both quality of information, and empathy of response. There’s some fear about AI, probably…

Here’s a direct example of doctor vs AI, from the research.

I thought this photo was a nice example of the toxicity of social media to our social lives. A standard sort of photo you see shared, a happy couple, others would see it and feel a whole range of emotions, depending on…

I continue to share Covid things because nothing has changed, including the fantasy that it’s over. This research was for healthy people under 40, not people in aged care homes. Covid is a vascular disease, not a lung…

Nurses don’t think the pandemic is over. They take the brunt of the lives we choose to live, ignoring Covid. Like teachers, leaving in droves, with nobody to replace them. I saw a great rallying cry at one of the UK…

I posted before how the epidemic of heart disease in the 20th century is likely to have been caused by earlier infections, not diet. The Spanish Flu one likely culprit. Research now showing Parkinson’s Disease may be…

This stuff, people. It matters. I mean, what else matters, next to this stuff? Why won't anybody talk about it, call it out?

There’s nothing to rival a huge church organ, full choir and herald trumpets. It shakes the ground if you’re there. Makes all other music sound trivial. Hair stands up on every part of your body. Gotta play it loud to…

For my AT friends I guess mostly. The head will naturally go forward and up, if that's where your attention is. One of the reasons I parted ways with AT, which talks about psycho-physical unities, but then focuses…

I shared recently how Multiple Sclerosis is now known to be caused by long-term (chronic) infection with Epstein Barr virus, the virus that causes glandular fever. Now they’ve discovered the chronic infection that…

In the UK, who we follow in everything, the country is so broken that they’re talking about using kids as doctors, without training. Nothing to talk about here? Apart from the trip or restaurant you did last,…

Everybody I talk to who works in an essential industry says the situation is dire. Nobody can get staff, experienced staff they have are walking out the door, either fed up with the work or going somewhere else for a…

I’m fascinated by hybrid cars. The human body is also a hybrid. You have the energy generated by your metabolism, from what you eat. But that energy is hybridised with gravity, captured by the elasticity of your…

Two things weren’t common before the 20th century, and that tells us that we’ve probably been looking at them the wrong way. Those two things are heart disease, and obesity. Both rare before last century. We even link…

Social media needs to be shut down. It’s destroying societies at an ever-accelerating rate. It’s also destroying peoples’ mental health, even when they think it’s good for them. Nothing is more toxic to your mental…

Social media's assault on democracies continues. Mostly engineered by activist loons in the US, who organised and directed most of the 'Dictator Dan' rubbish in Victoria, for example, through social media. In Bathurst…

Gee you know I’m sure Covid was over. I remember schools closing all the time because of infectious disease as a kid and as a teacher. Pig’s arse. Only 20 years ago there would have been calls to jail people responsible…

Stories in the news this morning about how Australia’s homes are hopelessly cold in winter, because they’re built for summer heat. And how that’s bad for peoples’ health, many homes averaging only 10 degrees celsius…

This is the stuff I’m really struggling with. Social events, workplaces, restaurants, pubs - you name it. All with no Covid protections. I can’t live a life pretending the pandemic is over, and we can all just go back…

The reason given for not vaccinating young kids in Australia is that Covid is mostly mild in them. Two things to say about that. Firstly the *acute* infection with Covid may be mild, as it is for many adults i.e. the…

I often post about how most of our chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, MS etc.) are probably caused by chronic infections i.e. getting infected in younger life and the pathogen then living in your body for years,…

At the moment it’s thought between 10-20% of people who get Covid will also get Long Covid. Or in simpler words, will end up with chronic disease, potentially lethal, or potentially lifelong if it doesn’t kill you.…

The overwhelming majority of anti-vaccine and anti-Covid-action propaganda has been traced back to only 12 people posting to social media. 12, creating a worldwide public health disaster. You'd hope people who swallow…

That word - 'collapse'. It's not just health that's collapsing. It also disgusts me that the main reason medical students don't go into general practice is that they can make more money as a specialist. Don't ever tell…

A bit of trivia to add to this quote. Most say Covid is mild in children. In the US nearly 2000 children have died. More than 14,000 have been hospitalised. 245,000 children have lost one or both parents, to Covid.…

Anybody know what the major road works at Meadow Flat are about? Huge amount of dirt shifted.

Preface: I like dogs. But I think the reason they're so enormously popular is one not often spoken about. I was thinking about it while watching Get Back, the Beatles film. The band were fighting, on the point of…

My workplace has been near-empty for weeks. People so, so sick. With Covid, and secondary infections, often caused by Covid (but nobody tells them that). There’s another big surge in Covid cases in Australia right now,…

If you sit like this as many do, you will over time get tight hips, neck, shoulders and torso. If you go to a physio, they will give you stretching exercises for each of those areas, and maybe tell you your ‘core’ needs…

A study has found significant brain inflammation is common a year after even mild Covid infection. I post a lot about the longer-term chronic impact of infections. Polio had it too, as you can see. MS is glandular…

These are some of the symptoms of lymphophenia, a disorder where your blood doesn’t have enough white blood cells to fight off infections. Sometimes seen with diseases that attack the immune system, like diabetes, and…

Hands up if you knew another 64 died from Covid this week, in NSW? SIXTY-FOUR PEOPLE. Over 2600 dead this year in Australia. It’s like Monopoly money, nobody cares.

Extra Covid stories from me right now, because there’s another surge in cases, brought about by another surge of couldn’t give a fuck by just about everybody. I’m not sure if 1 in 20 brings people comfort, if they…

While politicians, industry spin doctors and economists drone on and on about housing ‘supply’ being the problem, a property developer finally tells us the truth. Everybody was just too greedy, and that greed is now…

From the Orange paper. A pharmacist saying lockdowns made us more vulnerable to diseases, because we weren't getting sick as much. (Technically called the 'immunity debt' hypothesis.) The thing is, it's scientific…

Death certificates are often signed by junior doctors. They're under extreme political pressure to continue to deny the reality of Covid, and suppress statistics about it.

Some may have seen in the news yesterday that Covid is now known to fuse and therefore destroy brain cells. Here it is captured in video. By all means keep believing the people who tell you it's a mild sniffle. Their…

Today's Covid update that governments don't want you to see. 81 dead in NSW this week. 64 last week. A whole large hospital full of sick Covid patients. If it was me, I'd put a mask on. But you may like your brain cells…

Another bit of anti-EV spin is that they lose range in extreme cold and heat. The spin often says this is due to battery performance. It’s actually because people use heating or cooling in the car. And EV manufacturers…

A senior doctor friend tells me some major hospitals are currently nearly at code black i.e. not functioning. The whole thing is a farce, but again, nobody cares or does anything. 10 people die in a bus crash and we do…

Staggering that with the magnitude of the apocalypse facing us, some still choose to believe fantasies about continuing to burn oil, gas and coal. Or they pay no attention to any of this at all, and think 'having a good…

T.Ryan Gregory is one of the strongest international scientific voices speaking out at the public health disaster we’re still inside. Read this long list of lies that he debunks, that are in common use in Australia too.…

Make it about the money. If you can find another investment that gives you a 20% return per YEAR, for the next 20-25 years, go for it. I bet you won’t find one. An investment that gives you a 20% return on your money,…

UK Glamour has better health advice than the NSW Government.

Graham is a consultant radiologist. Please avoid being infected by Covid. The acute ‘I’m sick’ phase is possibly a doorway to a lifetime of chronic disease. A much shorter lifetime.

Happy Friday everybody! How are your masks and ventilation today?

I’d encourage everybody to take precautions against SIM porting and SIM swapping. Porting: hackers port your phone number to a different Telco, so they can then set up a mobile phone in your name and take your number.…

I have a passion for glass. It’s magic, invisible as air, but solid. And as a materials scientist knowing about it was my initial training. There’s a secret about glass, next paragraph. The thing about glass is, it’s…

Take that, Robbie, said Covid. (See what I did there?) Long Covid is a stupid term. Everybody who gets Covid will possibly have it in their bodies, for life. Like those who get chickenpox. What it does there we're…

For the cricketing fans, what do you make of ‘Bazball’, the new English approach to test cricket? I think it’s marketing spin. Indistinguishable from the style of cricket the Australians under Taylor and Waugh played.…

Have a look at the public health messaging they have in NZ. Our governments here in Australia won’t allow these facts to be publicised.

How's everybody today? Got the masks on?

This is from the official news for GPs. I don't make this stuff up. Warnings of a 'pandemic of cardiovascular disease', caused by Covid infection. Just as Spanish Flu likely caused the pandemic of heart disease we had…

Australians are increasingly drawn to the outback. The idea actually makes no sense at all, what does ‘outback’ mean? What I think it means, and why I think Australians feel increasngly drawn to it, is everything we…

I haven’t been to a conference in years, and don’t remember learning anything at any of them. Apparently this mass dancing thing is now common. Like being in pre school again. The icing on the cake with this one? It’s a…

The implosion of the Titan sub reminded me of air pressure. There’s a column of air 100km high resting on your body every day. If you hold your palm out as in the drawing, you have air from that column pressing down on…

The Olgas, I just flew there in Apple Maps. Cost of AvGas = 0. I don’t usually succeed convincing people of the absurd ideas that run our travel cultures, but I’ll keep trying. Take Australia’s interior, it’s become a…

Another provocation, a genuine question, for the travellers among us. Venice. Completely overrun by tourists. So bad, that the locals are planning to move out. Some projections say there will be nobody living there by…

10-14 year olds now. Note 'excess deaths', many won't have Covid written on their death certificates, because nobody will have traced the link. But excess deaths shows the link. Covid causes many other conditions that…

New weapons against Covid are coming, like inhaled vaccines up to 5 times more powerful than the injected ones. These vaccines also target your upper respiratory tract, to help prevent transmission of the disease. The…

Once a person reaches a famous landmark, or meets a famous person, there’s a fascinating…nothing. Like people who have a crush on somebody for ages, then get together with them, and are confronted with the actual…

I don’t often talk about myself or my family here, because I still remember a time when that was the most boring thing a person could do. But because many seem to live their lives through social media now, and interpret…

Today's trivia question. What could make you lose all sense of taste when you eat? (Hint: it's a type of brain damage.)

Thomas Midgley was responsible for two of the most damaging inventions in human history. CFCs (that created a hole in the ozone layer), and lead in petrol. The latter was particularly disgusting, because GM, who he was…

The idea of place is why I’m so critical of travel, which has a very problematic relationship with place. The Bathurst 1000 is another way to explain it. I like this picture because it captures the two aspects in one…

More reflections on travel. Burke and Wills. Neither of course survived their expedition, but what does that say? That travel as we know it is mostly not exploration. Untravelled places are often dangerous,…

Watching the cricket, how some balls from great bowlers are near unplayable, and how sometimes luck like a ball keeping low is impossible to control for, I always wondered, how did somebody like Bradman manage to escape…

More reflections on travel. I’m aware by the way that travel is a passion for many, so this is a fraught topic. But I put these reflections here to give more context to my criticism of it. You can’t climb Uluṟu now.…

Cockburn a good example of our relationship with the outback, and with the bush more generally. It only exists because of mining, it was a place where trains and drivers exchanged when transferring mining ore out of…

Transgender is the topic nobody will discuss, because its proponents are so often aggressive and even violent. But the distinction between sex and gender isn’t rocket science. If your sense of gender is a mismatch with…

What do you think inspired NSW Health to turn deadly viruses into a colourful cute little thing on roller skates?

Observations from Marta Dusseldorp, film/TV producer, about how to ‘be in a place’. Exactly what I post about, with travel. Dusseldorp moved from Sydney to Tasmania. This is somebody who actually moved, the long process…

Fucking politicians. Measles advice out of the UK, for the current outbreak there. Nearly all absolutely useless to prevent the spread of measles, it’s just about the most contagious disease we have. They don’t want to…

These three figures show weekly energy use in our house, in 3 different weeks. Blue means electricity imported from the grid, yellow electricity exported to the grid, by us. You can see the past 2 weeks have been…

We were in Broken Hill to visit Kell’s sister, who’s a doctor with the Royal Flying Doctor Service. The old hangar is featured in 7’s RFDS series, and you can see the pretend offices they’ve set up for filming. (The…

The interesting thing about the Mabo decision of the High Court in 1992 that hasn’t really sunk in widely in Australia, is that it reversed Cook’s claiming of Australia for the Brits. Imagine landing in a country and…

The most important thing you can offer all people as a result of this insight isn’t kindness, it’s honesty. By not talking about things we find difficult in life, others think our lives are nothing but happy, fun times.…

Not sure how well known it is that these firms structure themselves as partnerships, like a law practice, to avoid key requirements of the Corporations Act, such as annual financial statements, and audit. (Yep, they…

At a 2-day training on leadership and management. Not my choice, tried to get out of it. The usual and dominant ideas, that management is about managing people in all sorts of ways, drawn from pop psychology and other…

This is so interesting. Where vaccination rates are high, for any disease, deaths from malignant cancer are lower. Cancer is (I’m sure, based on research underway globally for a while) heavily caused by infections. As…

The bottom placenta in the image is profoundly damaged, and is from a woman who had Covid-19 during pregnancy. Covid is a vascular disease, it can attack blood vessels, everywhere.

Spare us all the usual tripe about private hospitals being important to reduce waiting lists in public hospitals. (They don’t.) They exist for one reason only, to make their owners and doctors seriously rich. (The…

I’ve worked with Michael Pascoe on a couple of things, a smart guy. Here he explains why the real problem with housing is that we stopped building public housing. We privatised the process of providing housing to poorer…

85 people in Arizona suffered severe burns from contact with footpaths that had heated to 180F (82C). 7 of them died. We’re sleepwalking into extinction.

One thing I never did as a manager over almost 20 years, is delegate my work to other people. In nearly every larger organisation now, this is the pattern you’ll see. One of the first things a new senior manager does is…

Gee that’s gotta hurt 🙂 This is the same ‘spirit of the game’ England who booed Australians on the grounds and even in the dressing rooms throughout the series. Bodyline England. Well deserved agony. Rain didn’t save…

A tutor at a uni openly admitted yesterday that he had Covid, while sitting in a tutorial room full of students. Wearing a mask, but removing it regularly. I think it’s worth pointing out to people that if you have…

Have a couple of these. Couldn't recommend them enough, easily the best mattresses we've ever slept on. Improved my sleep hugely. We have the Eva brand, but a lot of the mattress-in-a-box companies do the same sort of…

Wet wall, cause still being determined. 6-8 days of this, 24 hours a day. But it does the job, they have this down to an art. House has ducted gas heating with the big pipe ducts under the floor. Should never have been…

Got that mate who tells you the climate stuff is crap? How confident are you? Were they somebody who even did science at school, let alone did it well? Worth asking.

In some ways I have real affection for schools. I worked in them, and was a student in them. But I now realise they’re probably the most stupid thing humans have ever invented, and may yet destroy us all. I’m not…

You don’t have to like cricket to find the Ashes interesting, for what it reveals about modern life in the UK. Like Brexit and Covid, the Brits are Trumpian now, making up their own realities, despite the fact none of…

This is the infectious disease research team at the Kirby Institute, UNSW. Notice they’re all wearing masks, if they’re in the same room. Who should you trust, these people, who study viruses for a living? Or…

32 years since Freddie died, amazing. I don't think it's well enough understood what a tragedy his passing was. Not just because he was so young and we lost so much music that never got to be written or performed, but…

That some NRL players wear headgear interests me. Not sure if they think it protects them from the brain damage many players are now experiencing (it doesn’t), but even if so it shows real grit to go against the crowd…

I’m pretty critical of gigs. To explain why. As a teenager and young adult, I was passionate about them, found them thrilling. Now they mostly bore me. Partly because they haven’t evolved a lot, they’re still using a…

One for my Alexander and other bodywork friends.

Claims we’re ‘living with Covid’ are all bullshit. Good example here of the music industry. Lots happens behind the scenes to try to keep shows on the road. Often it fails, and even where tours go ahead most lose big…

“But I am just not getting better.” Covid after-effects, immune system damaged, can’t fight off disease. A bit like HIV. You don’t have a head cold for weeks. This is what we’re seeing everywhere who chose to ‘live with…

You really should watch this. The outrageous story (that some of us have lived firsthand) of the privatisation of the pubic service, through outsourcing to the big 4 consulting firms. More than 15,000 public servants…

The new weight loss drugs are amazingly effective. Semaglutide (called wegovy here, also sometimes Ozempic or Rybelsus) is the most famous, and really does seem to do miraculous things. There’s some resistance from…

Trudeau's head is too big for his body. But I maybe say that because Kell would probably have the same face as Kate, if she met him.

They're laughing at us. No doubt the justification is 'Australia needs a strong banking sector'. Or 'this is great for all of our super returns'. It needs ordinary Australians to have a roof over their heads and heating…

I’ve been called a ‘germaphobe’ a few times in recent weeks. Because I still wear a mask. I couldn’t care less, the people who said it are like most people in this pandemic, dumb as a box of hammers. Covid isn’t ‘germs’…

Again, you have to be some form of just bloody stupid to think nuclear energy is the answer to anything. Costs a fortune, takes decades to build, the small modular reactors they’re talking about here don’t even work,…

One of the most disturbing examples of the collapse of public health in Australia is seeing pregnant young women taking no Covid precautions at all. No masks, no avoiding large indoor crowds etc. I think most are…

Was out for my lunchtime walk this week, and saw an older person zip by on their mobility scooter. And it made me think, for a lot of the journeys even young and healthy adults do every day, something like this would be…

“Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with…

Very proud of Molly, who’s about to finish uni with a near HD-average. A wise teacher said to me when I was at school that you can’t judge a kid’s true ability, until they leave school. School is about 90% social status…

This is Ludwig Leichhardt. Famous explorer of Australia. Disappeared on his last expedition in 1848, nobody knows what happened to him. I remember learning about the explorers at school. What's most interesting for me…

This is a rental house. In legal terms, a lease. Disgusting what the tenants have done, most would agree I'm sure. They'll lose their bond and could be charged. But here's a twist on leases, at a time the 'supply' of…

Lots of good sense here about housing, an area of Australian life with traditionally no sense at all. Anybody who tells you 'supply' is the issue is part of the problem. Note the important point that Councils approve…

This is a very standard story most days now. The wholesale price of electricty is negative across the country. In other words, generators will pay retailers to use it - they’re not just giving it away, they’re paying…

Or…they lost a game of soccer. That’s what sport is, one team wins, the other loses. If you play sport ‘heartbroken’ when you lose, your mental health might get you to 30. 40 maybe, at best. I think social media has so…

For my CSU friends, who know it’s not when health care workers train outside cities that they stay there. It’s when the students grow up in the regions, and train there. Very powerful interests in medicine refuse to…

Like most countries, Australia's peak electricity usage is at dinner time every night, around 6pm. About 10 gigawatts of electricity. To give some perspective for how many solar panels would be needed to generate that,…

The new Health Minister defends this by saying 'we've got to learn to live with Covid and return to normal.' You hear that a lot, it's a slogan, completely free of any actual information. In reality what's 'normal' for…

A story of three photos. Of European genius and American swindling. Have posted before that the electric motor was invented over 100 years ago. By Michael Faraday, holding the glasses. The first workable cars were…

Probably the main justification given for shovelling billions of dollars of public money into private health insurance is that it reduces waiting lists in public hospitals. Except it doesn’t. That was always a lie. The…

Energy, and range. The reason petrol and diesel vehicles tend to have higher ranges is that the fuel they use has enormous energy density, as you can see. Every litre of the fuel contains enormous amounts of energy. By…

If somebody looks at your social media posts and says ‘don’t you have a life?’, I suggest asking them why they’re living their life on social media.

‘Closing the gap’ for Aboriginal people. What we mean by that is a paternalistic attempt to have them ‘catch up’ with us. Us modern, ‘advanced’ Australians. But the gap is actually the other way around. Australia, the…

If ‘just like the flu’ pressed your buttons, for Covid, here’s the rules for flu and schools, in NSW. None of this is being done for Covid, a much more dangerous disease. I know this likely bores and annoys people who…

This sort of innovation is happening everywhere. One of the most sad barriers to it expanding is community opposition, through lunatic ideas people get via social media. When I grew up most people paid no attention to…

Fewer than 5% of Australians tow anything - a trailer or caravan/camper trailer or boat. And yet so much of the EV narrative is around range, and range is mostly an issue for people who tow. Which relatively speaking is…

The worst possible, most brainless thing to be happening here. The roads will become a killing field. One of these flew past me yesterday on my way home, doing about 20-30 over the speed limit. 3 tonnes of metal, the…

Father’s Day this weekend. There is no harder or more important job than parenting. We idolise celebrities and explorers and rock and sports stars and rich business people. None of that comes close to being as important…

Driving is changing fundamentally. No longer will it be isolated people behind the wheel, with their lapses of attention, deliberate ignoring of road conditions and rules, falling asleep etc. No other mass transport…

The cheapest energy in the world by a mile is Australian rooftop solar. It’s so cheap that even if power stations (coal, nuclear) made energy for nothing, it would still cost more than rooftop solar. You pay nothing…

Thousands of bowsers found to be short-measuring. When you charge at home, nobody can cheat you at the bowser.

I was taught this too at school, that the earliest paintings of Australia were fantasies, painters trying to make the bush look like England. But the story is much more interesting than that. This IS how Australia…

When Covid comes to call, and you don't realise because everybody told you it's over.

Somebody asked me the other day how many varieties of Covid we now have. The last public mention of variants by politicians was really Omicron, last year. As you can see, Covid has been having a field day since.…

Everybody loves a pile-on, on local government. Some food for thought. In the past 25 years councils have had to assume a whole range of community services that nobody else would provide. They now offer up to 150…

If you’re somebody who gets a lot of information from social media, here’s something to think about. ‘Andy’ is a fake campaigning account that posts 24 hours a day. Most of these sorts of posts aren’t real people.

Swaps places with Toyota from year to year as the world’s biggest car maker. But what would they know next to some guy somebody saw on YouTube. The combustion engine was dead when it was invented in the 1870s (50 years…

We attribute the feelings of love we feel for somebody, to that person. We think those feelings are caused by them. But they never are, and this applies to anything we love (an object, a band, a pair of shoes). We’re in…

Dreams don’t happen inside the brain. The brain is a lump of electrified meat, it’s incapable of holding images. It’s like trying to see the images inside a TV set. They’re not inside the TV set. The TV is just one part…

Elon Musk became the richest person in the world in under 10 years, selling electric cars. Everybody knows this. Many don't seem to understand what it means though.

One of the most interesting theories is that the Spanish Flu pandemic caused the 20th century epidemic of heart disease. The flu virus took up residence in peoples' bodies after they thought that pandemic was over, and…

I have friends who are actuaries. Actuaries are an excellent BS detector, because they calculate risks and those calculations are tied to peoples’ money. So no matter how much spin and propaganda is out there, reality…

Here’s why I post about cars so much. As a social and cultural phenomenon, not just a technology thing. Cars are the most anti-social part of democracies. This brilliant idea, of town and city planning removing the…

Travel! Say you like somebody, in a desiring sort of way. And you had the choice of standing next to them and taking a photo, or a personal letter from them. Which would you choose? The letter, of course. It gives you…

In simple terms, catching Covid is likely just the on-ramp for the virus to take up residence in your body. It may persist there for the rest of your life, causing potentially crippling and even fatal disease.…

20 mph is about 30 km/h. I remember the huge fuss when we moved to 50km/h here. Now hardly anybody thinks about it. Getting cars out of the centre of our lives will be fought every step of the way. It’s a fight for our…

Landline had a great story today about how the biggest obstacle to building the new electricity grid is community opposition, to solar farms, wind farms, pumped hydro and new transmission lines. This isn’t the Australia…

Why social media is dangerous. 1) It creates fake social lives that people then consciously and unconsciously compare to their own. This creates enormous stress and anxiety, as the relentlessly happy and fun posts clash…

The oil and gas industry has made nearly $5 billion profit per DAY, every day for the past 50 YEARS. Never be in doubt who funds climate denialism. Anybody who lines up to cheer on petrol and diesel is doing the dirty…

Anybody who thinks nuclear power is the answer for Australia is scientifically and economically illiterate. I worked in nuclear engineering. This is Dutton creating an argument with outrageous fantasy ideas, to fire up…

It's a vascular disease. Everywhere you have a blood vessel is at risk.

And here’s the oil companies screwing everybody again, as they do every holidays. Know what doesn’t change price in the school holidays? Electricity. I like this picture, giving the middle finger to fossil fuel…

Ask for a 10% discount in cash-only shops. They’re mostly doing it to avoid paying GST, they’re pocketing that 10% themselves. GST pays for roads, schools, hospitals etc.

Listeria is mostly mild, often asymptomatic. It tends to kill only ‘the vulnerable’, and can even be cured by antibiotics if diagnosed. And yet it’s an excellent measure of how corrupted our Covid response is, because…

Deborah summarising here Professor Brendan Crabb's assessment of the current Covid situation. Brendan is one of Australia's leading infectious disease experts, and an acquaintance of mine (one of the people I get Covid…

Populism is the political system we now live under. It’s not Labor, Liberal, National or Green. It’s not Left or Right. It’s much simpler than that. It’s a politics that says what is most popular, is right. It replaces…

What’s less known about populism (believing that only what is popular is right and real) is that fascism is just a form of populism. Fascism is what you get if you let populism run. Hitler and Mussolini for example…

At school speech days there are often speeches about leadership. To me there’s only one test of leadership. Are you doing something that’s unpopular? Popular things will do themselves, and need no leadership. Popular…

The insurance industry invented fire brigades. It was in their obvious interest to try to protect the property they insure. It's the place I always go to to strip away the bullshit political spin around a topic. With…

If you feel stiff or tight, as most do as they age, reframe how you think about it. Don’t try to stretch the tension away, or try to release it. Stiffness is your body already stretching. That’s why it feels tight. Just…

The Big 4 consulting firms that incompetent senior managers in every industry and in government throw billions at every year are like the Wild West. No regulation, everybody is a partner because that way they escape any…

None of this happened before social media. Laurence Fox here, famous Brit actor whose wife Billie Piper dumped him for being an unhinged loon. Social media got to him, as it gets to millions of others. I have close…

When you let pretty private school boys achieve senior positions in Health.

From a story today about schools being closed if they’re in a bushfire risk situation. I want somebody to explain what this parent means by ‘but at what cost?’ That if it means keeping them home for the day, let them…

I worked at a nuclear facility. Here’s what the proponents of nuclear power never say. Nobody wants the waste. What does somewhere like the US do with its nuclear waste? Nothing. It’s all sitting at the nuclear plants…

For those seduced by the slogan that Covid 'only kills old people'. Most diseases only kill old people.

Crispian Chan, a Chinese-Australian. Australians don’t like being called racist, a country that even had a ‘White Australia’ policy and that regularly votes for Pauline Hanson and to ‘stop the boats’. Those who’ve…

Clive Ellis in this video is the reason everybody should ignore the conspiracy loons, on everything. His second bout of Covid, his first gave him no meaningful immunity. You can’t infect your way out of a pandemic.

My boy is 18 today. A grown up. Still the most gentle, sweet, considerate and smart person you’ll ever meet. I sometimes tell him that only the truly strong can be gentle. It takes enormous skill and patience and…

Lovely to beat Queensland in 3 grand finals on the weekend. But they didn’t start Daylight Saving like us, so that gives them the win on grown-up things that actually matter. I’ve found a way to work around the stupid…

The interesting question here is, what are they going to make people 'aware' of? 'Hey people, lots of you are having heart attacks, please stop'? I'm betting it won't be 'Covid, even mild cases, and even if you're…

Imagine more people questioning the ethics of flying. Only 2-4% of the world travel internationally. And they think everybody does it.

How did we think linking together all of the world's most stupid people into a political force, through social media, was going to end well? The danger is that it has power, Trump's mob for example organised through…

Bathurst’s bats. This will happen more all the time now, as we trash the rest of the landscape and plants and animals come looking for somewhere to survive. I came up with a concept of ‘reality-based politics’, which…

Both Paris and London inundated with bed bugs. Experts say travel is the major cause of the spread, bugs have a field day as travellers spread them from room-to-room, continent-to-continent. Extremely difficult to get…

People patient and smart enough to continue avoiding Covid will be rewarded with new tools that are coming quickly. Nasal vaccines, that will give (long-lasting) immunity not just to severe disease, but to catching…

Here's a story of the pandemic that is never told. How we jumped straight from government action, to 'personal responsibility'. Leaving business completely off the hook. We've had WHS laws for a century that they should…

My politics? Get rid of all elections, all referendums. All political team sports (parties). There are very simple, clear things that need doing to fix our worst problems, none of which need a popularity-based mechanism…

I still see people buy standard petrol and diesel cars now, and wonder how much thought they’ve put into it. Not only are they massively more expensive now over their lifetimes, we’re very quickly approaching a point…

New study which examined the impact of Covid infection on the brains of dogs, extrapolated to humans.

The problem is easy to see, and nobody wants to admit it. Social media is a disaster for societies, a 24/7 assault on the trust that holds them together. It makes all views equivalent, the most pig-ignorant, bigoted…

We haven't paid a cent for electricity in over a year. We're making money from it. The previous government vomited endless propaganda about 'cheap, reliable power'. It was never cheap or reliable, because coal power…

Bathurst Our Town hitting it out of the park as usual with brain food. No doubt advice on how to run the town will follow.

A few times over recent years I’ve posted about the debacle the Snowy 2.0 would be. 4 Corners last night showed it in all its sad detail. (And it’s actually a $10 billion debacle, and growing.) The biggest mistake the…

Peer-to-peer electricity trading may be coming. It's like 'Uber' energy. What this means is somebody like me, who has lots of surplus electricity every day, would be able to sell it to friends and family at heavily…

Nurses and teachers are being screwed so we get to continue meaningless recreational lifestyles, while somebody minds the kids, and looks after us when we get Covid for the 15th time.

Peter struggling to understand here. We do this because 99% of human behaviour is imitative rivalry. Status games. Keeping up with the Joneses, as it used to be called. I saw it in Lithgow, the rivalry even got locals…

When Australia led the world in defeating HIV in the 1980s it was largely due to a brilliant health minister, Neal Blewett. If you’re wondering why we’re doing nothing at all about Covid, here’s our current health…

The waltz was considered scandalous when it began, due to the close touching of male and female bodies. We can laugh at that now, but what replaced it? Modern dancing is mostly individuals making stuff up (very often…

Yep! Got the bills to prove it. I think the government is finally realising targeting households is the fastest and cheapest way to go. The LNP still agitating for nuclear, which they don’t actually want (it’d be…

Social media has made all needed social change almost impossible, bogged down in endless fake debates. The smartest thing the ALP can do right now is target households with full electrification for their homes. Heavily…

Another surge. Remember when they said Covid would become ‘endemic’? It will never become endemic, it’s an epidemic virus. It could keep infecting in waves for centuries, unless we stop it. I still mask, pretty much…

New Covid after-effects today, a work colleague. Allergic reactions in the face, itchy, red and hives. Like Woogie in There's Something About Mary. Likely Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, a nasty immune impact after Covid…

Friend at work was onto Day 2 yesterday of very nasty immune issues, eyes puffed up like they’d done 12 rounds of boxing. Some of the hives on the face now suppressed with double-dosings of antihistamines. Is assuming…

Sorry to have missed this brains trust.

Trump asked his experts if swishing disinfectant through the lungs would fix Covid. Our homegrown elected halfwits told us a year ago there’d be no more waves of infection (in the year since we’ve doubled the number of…

I rarely go to gigs. Call me old-fashioned, I grew out of them, much preferring a night in in front of the telly. But for the sake of the historical record I love that the greatest live band of all time, by many country…

Now is the time to act if you don't want Covid for Christmas. I'm not holding my breath that most will.…

We’re very close to a time when there will be no living Beatles. I think that will be jarring for us as a culture because they marked the real escalation point I post about a lot, where adult life was replaced with…

These are the bats currently occupying central Bathurst, the grey-headed flying fox. Australia’s largest bat. Some facts about them that help shape how we can view what’s happening. - they only live on the east coast,…

Imagine if this had been a self-driving car, there'd be calls for them to be immediately banned. It's fascinating how we attribute skill and morality with humans and machines. Nobody says (though I think they should)…

Yep. And with zero air pollution and virtually zero noise. Our cities will be unrecognisably nicer and healthier, and we individually and as a nation will be hugely wealthier.

'Living with the virus'. Just not as long. We're trashing a century of public health achievement. But at least we can go to gigs and fly to Bali. Welcome to Teenage World.

Let me know if you see anybody suggest ‘living with’ tuberculosis. You won’t. Covid is much more dangerous than TB. You won’t find another disease anywhere that we’re asked to ‘live with’. Humans have never, not once in…

Paul McCartney said a similar thing about fame. That the real motivation to be famous is to be recognised and accepted for who you really are. (Which fame is probably the worst mechanism to achieve.) Being loved is…

Iceland had 1000 mini-earthquakes in a day this weekend. Imagine trying to sleep or do anything with this happening all day and night. It could mean a volcanic eruption is imminent.

We're infecting everybody. Let that sink in, the social implications of that if Covid ends up having catastrophic longer-term health outcomes, like HIV/AIDS. We didn't let the entire population get HIV, our society…

Andrew Irvine (L) and George Mallory. Possibly the first to reach the top of Mt Everest in the 1920s. Nobody knows, Mallory's body was found by American climbers a few years ago, nearly a century later, mummified by the…

Somebody suffering from range anxiety, hooking up the caravan for their daily 800km drive to the shops.

Any other ex-New College folk from our UNSW days probably remember Manoa. I lived with Manoa for a few years, always so much fun. He used to lather up his then-affro in the shower and throw huge handfuls of suds at…

‘Certified Health Nut’ Troy Casey demonstrating the power of ball slapping. https://youtu.be/-9XcnBbF9tI?si=9IKJqCurJ9_ECI7x

This is what street-level chargers look like for EVs. Many countries have already installed thousands of these. Unlike petrol or diesel, electricity runs down every street, it’s an easy thing to tap into it. Useful for…

I don't know how anybody could tolerate 30 seconds of them.

Somebody described my posts as ‘boring’ the other day. They certainly don’t attract much interest, maybe they are. Heh, who cares, I’m not selling tickets to an event here. What interests FB is oversharing of the…

Probably quite a lot of people aren’t aware of the difference between public health and medicine. Public health isn’t doctors or nurses, or rather it’s very specific types of doctors, who work on the health of the…

A mapping of Covid variants. When you allow a pathogen free rein to infect people at will, it will keep evolving. We’re not throwing any resistance at it, so it’s doing whatever it likes. At this rate of evolution it’s…

The smart thing Tesla understands is that a big part of making the shift to EVs will be a social shift, not engineering. The engineering is a no-brainer, ICEs are rubbish and the sooner they’re gone, the better. Tesla…

For Doctor Who fans who haven’t seen this first of the new specials, no spoilers. But in terms of personal impressions - it’s appallingly bad. More a crusading piece for trans culture than a Doctor Who episode. I grew…

People are getting sick much more now with a whole variety of things because Covid is damaging their immune systems. If you’re lining up to get multiple Covid infections because you don’t want to miss holidays or gigs…

Those who work with presence, such as in mindfulness practice, often rightly point to the need to accept the moment for how it really is. And then commence some often incredibly elaborate process for 'accepting'. Which…

It’s an international embarrassment that the LNP went to COP28 and advocated for Australia to do nothing, and just wait a decade or more for nuclear power to be built. Reactors that don’t even exist, that nobody wants…

The even more interesting bit. The current spot prices in mainland States. Negative prices mean retailers are paid to use the electricity. NSW and Queensland both at huge positive prices. I’ve circled in red the…

Real change doesn’t come by convincing everybody it’s needed. It comes by pushing them out of the way, making them redundant. That’s what solar is doing right now, smashing fossil fuels and everything in our culture…

Another chapter of ‘how crap combustion engines really are.’ Using a new petrol mower for one hour produces more air pollution than driving a car 70km. Garden tools like mowers produce 5% of the air pollution in the US…

Had another person say this week ‘why are you still wearing a mask?’ They asked in the way I know very well, what they mean is ‘nobody else is wearing a mask, why are you?’ Their measure of what to do is what other…

Race cars rev like crazy at the start of a race because petrol engines have zero power except at high revs. It’s exciting, goosebumps, the sound. Though that’s just the cars farting, literally. Some equate the sound…

It’s so accepted now that friendship is a vitally important thing that nobody really questions it. And it is a vitally important part of life, but it has its time and place. It’s also the most powerful way to stunt a…

Alan Kohler pointed out last week that the biggest story of the year was one nobody covered. China became the world’s biggest exporter of cars, in March. It was already the world’s biggest producer of cars - it has such…

See the purple light at the back of the room here? That's germicidal UV light, used to sterilise the air. It would likely be invisible to people there, but the digital camera picked it up. Lots is done to protect…

Germany’s health minister really tries. Germany is facing its greatest wave of the pandemic so far, making a nonsense of the idea that Covid is over. And he points out at that people shouldn’t be catching Covid over and…

Covid is a vascular disease. Not like colds, or flu. It will go wherever you have blood vessels. And once it arrives, if you can pardon the technical French phrase, it will fuck you over.…

I love when people experience EV performance. Quite honestly, there will come a day in my lifetime when everybody will wonder how we put up with petrol and diesel cars for so long.

Queensland's Chief Health Officer (CHO) was a political appointment, to replace their previous CHO, who often told embarrassing truths about Covid. (They made her Governor to shut her up.) Have a look how it's going.…

I’ve had a few people ask me why I’m so critical of social media. There are many reasons, one of which is that my work takes me into places where the direct impact of social media on real world things happens. Like the…

These red letters were in a local museum for 13 years, and nobody could figure out the words they’d originally formed. They put them out to the crowd to solve, and somebody did it in a few minutes. The clue that set…

Scrolling through Christmas messages is a fascinating cultural exercise. Like this photo below, wouldn’t know these people from a bar of soap, but their personal lives are here, shared far and wide. The problem for me…

Bodybuilding or any sort of deliberate ‘exercise’ use a model of saying your body just sits there turning to flab, unless you’re working it out regularly. Ignoring that all of your body is working in every tiny thing…

You may have seen John Campbell online during the pandemic, with lots of videos encouraging people to be less concerned about Covid. Now accountability is coming for him, and he’s running away. Social media influencers…

We need to stop the fantasy of living with the most lethal virus in the world. Notice that several years of allowing everybody to get infected hasn’t created immunity, except to common sense.

Tradies can buy as many petrol and diesel Hiluxes as they like. They’ll just have to find somebody else to build them.

Wanted to share this about HIV, because this is the huge risk we’re taking with Covid. On the left, the ‘primary infection’ (both graphs) is the point you catch the disease. Like when you get Covid right now. But the…

JN.1 is the current variant of concern for Covid circulating in the community. XBB1.5 is the new vaccine (I got mine before Christmas). Here’s the data on protection. I’ve circled the following scenarios in red: -…

I can retire in 5 years so this stuff doesn’t make me lose sleep at night. But I feel for the people who work for local government who are subjected to nothing but a steady stream of ignorant abuse, day in and day out.…

A prominent Australian Senator calls Nick Coatsworth the ‘Fabio of Australian medicine’. This is the Dr Nick who said Covid isn’t airborne, and that it’s fine to infect kids. He’s become quite the weathervane of idiot…

Health staff being forced back to work to stop the hospital system collapsing should make us all extremely angry. Especially when accompanied with day after day of bullshit vomiting out of the mouths of politicians…

Basic science lacking in the Covid news. Like ‘living with the virus’, Covid becoming ‘endemic’. Covid is an epidemic disease, it will never become endemic. Like smallpox. For centuries smallpox followed the same…

Unless we stop it spreading, this can continue for centuries. Forget hospitalisations, ICU, the Economy, all of that. A pandemic is defined by how many people get INFECTED. Nothing else. That’s what we have to stop.…

Hospitalisations and ICU growing exponentially. Now nearly 200 more people into hospital each day. Oz politicians following the UK spin path, already saying ‘it’s not ICU, it’s how many on ventilators’. And then ‘some…

Sorry, yes it’s Covid again. So many dimensions to the dangerous nonsense out there. It’s better to think of Covid like asbestos. You don’t fully recover from each infection, each one does more damage to your body.…

Dan is an immunologist working for NSW Health. He’s risking disciplinary action even posting this.

In today’s Covid news, in response to the exponentially growing hospitalisations for Covid, the PM wants National Cabinet to…redefine hospitalisations for Covid. As always, not fixing any problems, just creating spin to…

How epidemic diseases trick us. It’s all in the downwards part of the waves. The red arrows. This current Omicron outbreak for example will likely end in about 2-4 weeks. Will it end because Covid is beaten, the…

Compare week to week. Hospitalisations and ICU cases roughy doubling (hospitalisations nearly tripled). The only metric trending down is - testing. Not accidental.

Hot tip. Don’t vote for the party who opened up the country to mass infection, but didn’t order any tests. Just as they didn’t order vaccines. Just as they don’t do anything except rort grants to win elections.…

Paul McDermott (the comedian, ex-DAAS, Good News Week etc.) contracted Covid just before Christmas. He’s double-vaxxed. His story is worth reading (extract below). “On Christmas Eve I posted my PCR test results showing…

Thanks to Nancy for sharing. This is what’s happening in supermarkets, staff off sick with Covid. When will the farce of ‘living with Covid’ end? Why do we meekly accept such rubbish? Imagine if we had tuberculosis…

Sometimes I think it’s complete ignorance of infectious disease history that explains what’s going on right now. Take polio, as an example. Many I ask aren’t even aware that for the majority of people who caught polio,…

Bathurst Coles, yesterday. Nobody is ‘panic buying’. The staff who make the goods, distribute them and put them on shelves - all of those industries are struggling with mass Covid infection.

That’s 2 from 2 in the prediction game. (He’s still being a cheapskate with this announcement, just staggering that he won’t demand ineligible businesses repay $40 billion of JobKeeper payments they stole, but still…

Mike Ryan, one of the WHO’s most senior public health experts, on what we’ve done wrong in this pandemic. Really worth a minute of your time. Particularly on the last sentence, notice how our leaders have the whole time…

The NSW Government has an excellent Critical Intelligence Unit, which releases some of the most useful Covid stats. It’s where you can see how the trickery is done in trying to suppress hospital numbers, for starters,…

In talking to people, the thing I find that is creating the greatest risk to us all is the old favourite - ‘live with the virus’. A political slogan, that millions repeat with no thought at all. Politicians have…

The previously healthy, double-vaxxed 20 year old who died of Covid today got surprisingly little attention.

From National Cabinet yesterday. On a day when everybody focused on a tennis star (like seriously, who cares), this was totally ignored. I suspect that was deliberate - as always, spin and deflect. This is staggeringly…

Many have asked about terms - endemic, pandemic, epidemic etc. The picture describes it well. Covid is an epidemic disease, and because it’s spreading across the whole world, it’s now a pandemic (pan - international).…

NSW Government having a Crisis Cabinet meeting this morning, to discuss significant new restrictions. How many times do we have to go through this same charade, with every wave, before people realise if you open up…

Premier: expect 4500-6000 people hospitalised. Says that’s ‘within capacity’. No plan to reduce it.

Average flu year NSW: 2000 in hospital. Covid: 20,000 in hospital. ‘Just like the flu’.

From NSW Health yesterday. Three things: 1) those beds are required for everybody who is sick enough to require hospitalisation, and 2) ICU capacity in NSW is 1000 beds, but again that’s for all conditions. 300-500…

The ‘Economy’ is the worst it’s been for the entire pandemic. Lockdowns would be less damaging. (There is no Economy, just more proof.) Here’s the thing. ‘Living with the virus’ isn’t the opposite of ‘eliminating the…

The politics of language. ‘Living with’ natural disasters. Take floods. We live with floods, in that we know they will sometimes happen. We DON’T live with them WHILE THEY ARE HAPPENING. We live with floods, but we…

Smartest pandemic people in the country. We’re in a crisis, and nobody is listening.

This is where we’re at. ‘Go to work, even if you’re sick’. You wouldn’t say that for a cold or even a headache or stomach ache. Now we’re saying it for a lethal disease. Where are all the ‘live with the virus’ people,…

Might need to contextualise these. John Snow was the father of epidemiology i.e. the study of disease patterns and causes, in public health. Most famously he discovered that cholera was being spread by dirty water in…

Every day, this is how reality is re-framed. Going to hospital IS serious illness, that’s what hospital is for. In the meantime, experts have advised governments what to do to bring the current crisis under control.…

National Cabinet today decided the best approach is to return to the 19th century. - no isolation period at all now for key workers - ‘key workers’ is now just about everybody - Chief Medical Officer of Australia says…

When you read these, I’m sure some think ‘ok, more than 63,000 infected yesterday, but that will speed up the end of the pandemic’. It won’t, it won’t stop them getting re-infected, again and again. Pointless infection…

NSW Health confirmed today that you can be re-infected with Covid after only 4 weeks. Infecting the whole country won’t end the pandemic.

I wanted to talk about 2 things we’re told not to talk about, but I think we must. Politics and religion. My views on them, so people have a reference point. Politics first. My personal political leanings are to…

Please everybody. Read this. Throw away every other source of information and advice you may be using to understand this pandemic, and read this.

If you want a flavour of just what low-life bastards the NSW Government are, this is one of many, many stories I’ve heard about parents trying to buy air purifiers for their kids’ schools, to protect them from Covid.…

Last day of a great 3 weeks off. Reminded me again that we focus on the wrong things. Sure we went to the moon, we can fly anywhere in the world in comfort, we have all human knowledge at our fingertips via Google, our…

I walked some of the streets of Bathurst in my lunch break today. Pubs, restaurants, cafes - many deserted. Not a soul inside. Very few shoppers about either, eerily quiet. Infection has destroyed the ‘Economy’. Today…

She missed the Don yesterday. We need to ‘push through’ this. Get the canteen volunteers at the hospital to scrub up.

Returning to this, over 100,000 people caught Covid in NSW between Christmas and New Year. It takes about 3 weeks for cases to start translating into deaths. That’s what that explosive growth in deaths line now is. That…

Anybody with connections to schools knows how almost impossible it’s been in recent years to find even casual staff to replace sick teachers. Imagine what will happen when Omicron is allowed to let rip, in the schools.

Remember when politicians pretended schools had to be open in a pandemic, because of childrens’ education and mental health? They don’t even pretend that’s the reason now. The PM, yesterday. In the meantime,…

Like all service professions, teaching is treated like dirt. Nobody, not ONCE, has asked teachers about Covid in schools. Just as they don’t ask nurses about Covid in hospitals. Instead we have opinionated…

Virologists like Teng say this so that people understand Covid won’t just go away because we ignore it. Even though the measles vaccine gives near sterilising immunity, and catching it does for years too, we’re still…

Diseases that were endemic in Australia 100 years ago. Malaria Tuberculosis Rubella Diphtheria Polio Measles None are endemic now. Societies don’t live with nasty pathogens. They get rid of them. We can do it now with…

The great public health story of the 20th century was the huge reduction in child mortality. The great 21st century public health story is ‘let’s send kids back to school not even fully vaccinated, in the middle of a…

Pictures tell stories. In this outbreak, more people have died outside ICU, than in ICU. If you talk to the doctors at the front line, this is because those who are marginal are not even being offered ICU beds, and are…

I never have much enthusiasm for Australia Day. Jingoistic claptrap most of the time. Culture wars about flags and invasions etc. We turn everything into sport. Yes the country was invaded, stolen. Yes many love the…

"Until the very moment when catastrophe overtook everything and everybody, it was covered up not by realities but by the highly efficient talk and double-talk of nearly all official representatives who...explained away…

And when that doesn't work, just stop reporting the deaths and hospitalisations. Lie.

Nobody says the quiet bits out loud about Eddie. Most of the last 30 years of his career and life was drug and alcohol-fuelled mediocrity. He spent more time building and merchandising guitars and guitar gear than he…

A week ago the NSW Government quietly signed an exemption to Public Health Orders to exempt employers from reporting Covid acquired in the workplace to SafeWork Australia. Now they only need to if an employee is…

The 3rd vaccine shot. Get it, ASAP. This is the data from the UK, well ahead of us with Omicron. I've highlighted in yellow the effectiveness of 2 doses of vaccine, against hospitalisation and death, for Omicron. Those…

Pollies said don’t focus on cases, focus on hospitalisations and deaths. They’re not saying that as much now.

So far deliberately infecting the whole nation with a lethal disease isn’t polling well. Come on Australia, reject the attempt to turn us into the train wreck that is the US and UK. That is actually what’s at stake…

This is what so angers me with the mindless ‘live with the virus’ slogan. Look at the carnage in aged care. AGAIN. The government did nothing last time, and staggeringly has done nothing again this time. Why would…

‘Following the health advice’.

The most democratic, free way out of the pandemic is rules. Mandates. Public health orders. All the stuff the nongs who marched on Canberra yesterday hate, for example, and our politicians campaign against. Rules apply…

How’s everybody’s kids loving swabbing their noses twice a week and waiting to see if they’ve been infected, and have brought it home too? Fixed the ‘mental health’ issues of them doing a bit of online learning? Get…

Please read this? So we can stop all of the 'endemic' and 'live with the virus' nonsense?…

Week 1 of school, 400 staff out because of Covid, South Australia. Leaders have encouraged us to think this is just a hard period that we need to get through, and then it’ll be behind us. But catching Covid doesn’t stop…

Anybody have experience with multi-focal contact lenses?

Omicron is the most infectious disease in history. The ‘measures’ the NSW government has introduced for schools are pathetic to prevent it, and are being applied in barely half-arsed ways anyway. As in the US and UK, a…

Stretching is one of those accepted things that actually seems pretty absurd. The idea that you can ‘stretch’ separate parts of you in this way, when in fact all of the parts are connected. A tightness somewhere is a…

It should strike us as strange that the only thing children are apparently resilient to in this pandemic, is infection itself. Everything else, like missing school and public health measures to prevent infection, will…

P.S. on tests. I'm not sure the people of NSW have realised yet that when the government ends free school Covid testing, NOBODY NOT ON A COMMONWEALTH CONCESSION CARD IN NSW WILL QUALIFY FOR A FREE COVID TEST. In the…

One of the big campaign things the PM says is that 'people want government out of their lives'. I think he's talking to the wrong country. An example. Masks. People will wear one if the government says you have to. If…

This guy was vaccinated 3 times, hospitalised with initial Covid, then sent home, then pulmonary embolus, then bowel ischaemia (dead gut) due to a blood clot in the belly. "Just like the flu," hey?

And this is why the pandemic never ends. We celebrate the wrong things. We celebrate the removal of our protections against Covid, rather than the elimination of infections. Eliminating infections ends the pandemic.…

LEGAL BLOOD ALCOHOL LIMIT TO BE RAISED. With only 1000 road deaths a year in Australia, most not even alcohol-related, there is plenty of spare hospital capacity to deal with alcohol-related accidents. The legal blood…

Grace Tame is a superb operator. Smart, funny, refuses to be cowed. Her speech at the Press Club was up there with Julia Gillard’s on misogyny, for impact. But, there’s a but. Where’s Julia Gillard now? Anger without…

For Valentines Day, back to my (unpopular) suggestion that the essence of all love is jealousy. (I took this from Proust, blame him.) If you're not jealous, you're not in love. We treat jealousy as some character flaw,…

Go the nurses! Somebody calling this government out for the disgusting lies around Covid.

A Valentine's Day afterthought. I've posted on this before. 'Love'. I challenge anybody to define it, in its own terms. Without it being just some stronger form of affection, for example. I agree with Germaine, but also…

Well the nurses don’t seem to buy ‘living with the virus’. How do people who believe that slogan explain how anybody with a vulnerability (about half the population) will function with Covid always circulating? Lock…

“I regret going out when Omicron was running rampant”. I wish that was a more common view. On schools and Covid, the NSW Government published infection numbers at the end of week 1 of term. Since then - nothing. This is…

'We have to live with it'. I get told that a lot. Do we live with HIV? Or cancer? Heart disease? Even flu? Do people even know how much money and effort goes into trying to eliminate all of those things? Do they notice…

I think this is a big mistake. Not because anybody should be forced to have sex, but because ’consent’ is a nebulous concept. Have posted before about how vast amounts of married sex is non-consensual, under the…

What the graphs mean is simple. Infection with Omicron doesn’t give you immunity. A lot of people say ‘we’ll all get it eventually, let’s just get it over with’. But it won’t work, because you can re-catch it again…

It should be a matter of deep shame to all Australians that we’re one of the only developed countries in the world where millions of people have to pay for their own pandemic testing. Not even the libertarians in the UK…

I don't know how many people read these things. I strongly urge you to. "This is an epic public health disaster in the making."…

It’s still a perfect analogy. We find ways to keep the measures in place that save lives, while letting life move on. The same applies to Covid, the measures that bring cases and deaths down need to stay in place or be…

We (mistakenly) think democracy = what’s popular, wins. ‘Majority rules’. It doesn’t mean that, it never has. That’s populism. Populism always ends the same way. Leaders promise people to only do what’s popular. But…

As a P.S. to today’s brain dump. I love being in my 50s, it’s the best decade of my life so far. I remember when I started work over 30 years ago, being a bit in awe of people in their 50s. These were people at the…

Everything seems to be becoming a ‘mental health’ issue. Much of what we call that is really people being treated like battery hens by the politics of the Economy. The neoliberals already medicalised a pandemic so they…

Paul Keating, in 1997. Back when we had leaders, and not just marketing men spewing empty slogans at us. Read this and then turn on the news. "The decision to expand NATO by inviting Poland, Hungary and the Czech…

Lisa is a prominent Canadian doctor. Always smart.

I should apologise to my friends in advance that I won’t be taking part in ‘normal’ social life until Covid is at some sort of manageable level in the community. I’m not being part of the political attempt to wish Covid…

NSW was averaging 10,000 cases a day, before the masks came off. Already ludicrously high. Now on the rise again. 10,000+ people being infected a day means a community is very sick, and there are in reality many more,…

This prompted me to come back from my FB holiday a little early. Look at what's happening in Lithgow. And remember this is only those who get tested, many aren't bothering. This is a disease OUT OF CONTROL. Has been for…

A superb piece from the British journalist Ed Yong. Why are we tolerating so many Covid deaths? His article brilliantly explains why. Mostly because the history of disease shows time and again that once the privileged…

I won't only talk about Covid, but it's kinda the issue threatening us all. 20-30,000 cases per day projected for NSW within weeks. The NSW Government response? Nothing. They say it's our fault, the community, we've…

I was mesmerised by this song as a kid. Nobody else writes songs quite like McCartney, endlessly creative. And one of the really great rock singers.

2989 teachers in Victoria have contracted Covid in Term 1, so far. School casual budgets are exhausted, and teachers are running out of sick leave. More than 3 terms still to go in 2022. In other news, now you won’t…

The NSW Government hasn’t listened to NSW Health for months. So at this stage, remembering it’s your life and your health, and those of your friends and loved ones, do you: - trust NSW Health, or - trust a NSW Cabinet…

They say the quiet bits out loud now. Not even a pretence of doing public health work. Get back to work, the lot of you, even if you’re infected. The life of battery chickens.

Not always clear on the suburbs of Lithgow. I think I live in ‘Lithgow’ itself, not a suburb. Sometimes called ‘Extension Estate’, though often just ‘Lithgow’ on a map. Which means my water should be fine. Anybody know?

The only difference between a whole State in isolation because they're sick, and a lockdown, is that the former makes everybody sick.

Even the US is fed up with the idiot idea of Daylight Saving. I’d be happy to just get rid of the clock changes, like this, though I still think shifting daylight to later in the day robs early birds of their mornings.…

Going back to the idea of ‘business’, and how I don’t think it’s even a thing. There are just customers. You can easily prove this. Can a business exist without customers? No. Can customers exist without a business?…

Queanbeyan High School, which had adopted some remote learning again because of mass infections amongst staff and students, has apparently now been given a directive from the NSW Government to resume normal operations.…

Somebody forgot to send the ‘Covid is mild’ memo to Hong Kong.

To those who say ‘we can’t lock down forever’, a couple of things. 1) Nobody has ever suggested locking down forever, that’s a straw man of your own making. 2) You can be infected forever. Over and over. And not just…

You really don’t want to be on only 2 doses of vaccine right now. This is vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation. ChadOx1-S = AstraZeneca BNT162b = Pfizer mRNA-1273 = Moderna

Data from the US says not even 3 doses is going to be enough. The government, as always, saying nothing, with the Australian winter bearing down on us. 83% effective up to 2 months, down to only 31% effective after 5…

What a tangled web we weave...that's Kimberley Kitching, on the left. Apparently was a friend of Andrew Bolt for 10 years, and allegedly had an affair with him. Bolt has been in the frontline of beating up the story…

'No underlying health conditions'. I'm sure people are sick of Covid posts. I'm sick of people pretending it's all over. If you think this is an outlier, well over 100 kids have already died of Covid in the UK. More…

No wonder health care workers have been asked to wear only the best masks. And the next wave is only just beginning. Shout out to health care workers, you don't deserve this.

I know people have their little chuckles about my Daylight Savings Time crusades. Read the science people, nicely summarised here. We’re doing terrible, sometimes fatal, things to our bodies by fiddling with standard…

I mean, who knew this would happen. Anybody with a brain, maybe?

Politicians asked us to look at hospitalisations and deaths. Both have been trending up all week. I looked, did you? How many are all aboard the bullshit train?

I still don't think many, even most, people realise just how much we're destroying our own society, right now. They act as if we can constantly run our hospitals, schools and everything else in emergency mode. Terrible,…

I put this in the category of stuff you REALLY need to know. Something that isn't said in public discussion, that I've seen, is that for a long list of workers (below), if you catch Covid-19 it is PRESUMED in law that…

Over 150 kids a week are being hospitalised for Covid in NSW.

Ian is one of our top virologists. Getting Covid doesn’t ‘get it over with’. I have friends already who have the ‘brain fog’, which is actual brain damage. The cardiovascular damage is just as serious. Even mild cases…

Politicians are pitching for the tradie vote again this election. Young men are now one of the key demographics. The past 20 years have seen a long list of cash and tax bribes sent the way of the tradie vote. Tradies on…

Voting. People assume I’m sure that I hate the LNP. That’s not the case, my objection to the current LNP is that it isn’t a political party at all, it was captured by vested interests. That’s why many of its most…

Covid isn’t a respiratory virus, it’s a vascular disease. The real sleeper is blood donations.

Living with the virus story. A friend's co-worker was choking on a chicken bone at home (in Victoria). Rang an ambulance, they said there'd be an 'indefinite' wait. Drove themselves to hospital, and had to sit for 8…

Do you reckon before you award wealthy Australians tax cuts worth $184 billion, you should first check if every school, hospital, road, river, sewer, NBN connection, women’s shelter, legal aid program etc. has all the…

Good Friday remembers a death. Even noticing death has become a challenge for many Australians. They’re happy that hundreds die per week from a preventable disease, provided they can get back on planes and into pubs and…

Watch this. (As context, 74 people have died so far this week of Covid, in NSW.) ‘Towards Zero’ road safety campaigns have been in place for years. Hugely expensive and complex, and with strategies that stretch out for…

From the bottom of my toolbox. There is progress in history. Nobody misses re-wiring fuses.

Anybody remember the CWA tea rooms ever being closed for flu? Covid is not flu. Nothing like it. We can only ‘live with’ pathogens that are under control. Covid remains out of control.

Medical researchers are increasingly seeing Covid as a long-term chronic health problem, with your infection only the first, acute phase. Similar to HIV and AIDS. People could live quite a few years with HIV, sometimes…

It's believed Ryan had Covid in February. And of course there was Shane Warne. This is the mess we're now in, we may never know how many of these are directly linked to Covid infection. But Covid is well known to cause…

In news from Dumbsville, by the end of the week close contacts of Covid cases won’t need to isolate. The official body says the things below should be implemented at the same time - let’s see how many actually happen.…

Covid is now the 3rd largest mass casualty event in Australia, in history. Only Spanish Flu and Scarlett Fever have killed more, and the widespread massacres of Aboriginal Australians. Covid of course is still killing,…

I'm quite seriously surprised that the makers of Doctor Who haven't gone after Muse for the similarities between Uprising and the Dr Who theme. It's nice that they haven't, but given recent copyright litigation, this…

Bit longer post, but (to me) a mysterious, magical topic. This is Tollund Man, buried in a bog in Denmark for 2500 years. Many cultures mummified or embalmed dead bodies. Today very few cultures still do, we’re…

When the man-baby got booted off Twitter, he set up his own social media network in a sulk. It’s been a disaster. What it shows is the bankruptcy of the libertarian ‘freedom’ ideas Trump and others peddle. Their whole…

Here are current trends in hospitalisations. Because you won't see them much reported. Remembering this is the metric the government asked us to focus on.

Got my flu shot today. Some researchers I admire have thought for years that heart disease in general may be due to ongoing chronic infection, and/or damage caused by previous infections, from things like the flu. This…

I strongly encourage anybody who has contracted Covid in some way via a school, including your kids being infected, to register your interest with this class action. Won't cost you a cent, the litigation firm does all…

"The textbooks say, In 1900 most people died of infectious diseases, and today most people don't die of infectious disease; they die of cancer and heart disease and Alzheimer's and all these things. Well, in ten years I…

If anybody can find one letter of journalism in this propaganda, please let me know. The people who whine about the ABC being ‘biased’ usually read Murdoch papers like this one, and don’t see it.

It's staggering to me that a man who is bone-idle, part of a weird religious cult, and a master at blaming everybody else for things he's supposed to be doing, still rates higher as preferred PM. You have to really be…

Hilarious genius, their best yet. If you've been basically asleep for the past 3 years, here's your election primer.

The 'fog of war'. That's literally where we now are, where trusted institutions have to compete with every opinionated halfwit online 'doing their own research'. As Steve Bannon always advises, one of Trump's minions,…

This unbiased media thing the Murdochistas always talk about is 'do as I say, not as I do', obviously. I'm yet to meet anybody who spews rubbish on Covid, the Economy or just about anything else who isn't just quoting…

23 dead from Covid in NSW today. Is this OK? Anybody? Is silence 'shit, we may have this wrong'?

Yesterday the PM called basic checks and balances on political power 'public autocracy'. He's been running the (Trump) line that once somebody is elected, they have a 'mandate' to do anything they like. This is what…

Worldwide children are experiencing a surge in hepatitis cases, some needing liver transplants, and some dying. It’s extraordinary watching the frantic attempt by Covid minimisers to deny Covid is responsible. The…

Every single home renovation or building show I’ve watched in the past 20 years has removed fly screens from homes. I think that’s a terrible mistake that will have to be fixed at some point, with climate change already…

51 people died of Covid in Australia yesterday. 57,637 (that we know of) were infected. Can somebody help me - 'living with Covid'. Is that the rampant growth in infections, or deaths? Or both?

We're still the 'Commonwealth of Australia". I think people think that's just a name. It's not, it means what it says- all 'wealth' is considered to be common, meaning you need a full society to generate it. There is no…

'Live with the virus' requires health care and other core services to run at more than 100% capacity, 365 days of the year. This bullshit can't go on.

I know I'm mostly talking to myself, but when we launched 'living with the virus', did we think that meant it becoming the leading cause of death in Australia? Not one politician mentions it, they want us to pretend…

Somebody captioned this one “Man of the People”.

“Doctors at some of Sydney’s biggest hospitals say emergency departments are so overcrowded that patients are being treated in corridors and ambulance trolleys, as the number of ambulances on the city’s roads at night…

I thoroughly research everything I post. There’s a reason some experts now call Covid ‘airborne AIDS’. A public health catastrophe, we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Vote for a change to this disaster. I can guarantee you a vote for the LNP is a vote for a continued criminal refusal to do the basic public health work we’ve been doing for 150 years. The second they said a pandemic…

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal is the body that reviews government decisions. Under the current government, 40% of its members are now politically appointed. The government is now reviewing its own decisions. Just…

There’s no greater threat to Australia as we know it than the relentless attack by libertarians, mostly from the US, on how we live. They do it mostly through social medial, it’s a global brainwashing and propaganda…

Have a read so you can laugh every time somebody says the answer to get housing prices down, is to build more houses. Another prime example of political lobbying becoming a slogan, becoming 'common sense', becoming…

The phone of a nurse working at one Melbourne hospital. If you’re out socialising like there’s no tomorrow, taking no Covid precautions, you and our governments are the reason nurses and others are drowning in sick…

Monkeypox (love the name, though it doesn’t come from monkeys) outbreak now, and a puzzling one. Nobody knows where it’s coming from. Notice not one person is suggesting we ‘live with’ monkeypox, they’re shutting it…

Scientists are now almost certain multiple sclerosis, a terrible and often fatal disease, is caused by earlier infection with glandular fever. Mononucleosis. Many of us have had it. It can take years to turn into MS,…

More from the infectious disease hotline. What happens when you 'live with' an immune system-smashing virus. Remembering we're following the UK in our 'strategy'...

Saw Domicron interviewed at a polling booth this morning in NSW. One of the architects of live with the virus. Nobody asked him about the over 300,000 infections in Australia this week, and over 300 dead. He goes to the…

Election day musings. No other country in the world has an election day like ours, it’s like Grand Final Day but even bigger. It’s really hard to describe what’s unique about Australian society. But I think there is a…

Governance is my profession. People know I love to talk about stuff here, including why the LNP in 2022 was not just a threat to Australia, but also to itself. The Liberals in particular may not even survive as a party.…

One sneaky word that needs to be banished from Australia is the idea of a political ‘base’. US attack politics, noxious rubbish. As if a politician has a special group of people they relate to and look after specially,…

Before there was a vaccine for chickenpox, people were encouraged to 'live with' it, even holding parties to get all their kids infected. Now every person who has had chickenpox (myself included) is at risk of…

How did we become so dumb? When did it happen? Is it Covid brain injury?

I think it’s a mistake for anybody to claim the election victory as a victory for their interests or group. It was a victory for the Australian community, it was that community reasserting itself as the main focus of…

I wonder if NSW Health staff have 'living with the virus' parties, and pin up pictures of Dom on their bedroom walls.

Very glad to have mine vaccinated this year. Let's hope the vaccine matches the circulating strain. "At least 10 per cent of children admitted to hospital with flu will be so sick that they need intensive care," NSW…

Listening to an ex-head of the Commonwealth Department of Health on the way home, absolutely scathing about the outgoing government’s ’Covid denialism’. Almost nothing is being done, and infections and deaths are at…

So many modern jobs are people constantly reminding senior people to do the work they've promised to do, because above a certain pay grade they're not competent enough to even organise their own jobs. Work that goes to…

‘Let’s stay open NSW’. For those who don’t want to go out and get repeatedly infected with a brain-eating virus, there’s ‘mental health’ support. If you want to avoid being infected with a lethal virus, you apparently…

Working from home and learning from home are now (apparently) bad. But DIY healthcare from home, with a potentially fatal disease, is good. This is Australia, 2022. Where public health is run by the business community.

Your age is only superficially how you look on the outside. Really it’s about your cells. A recent study of the effect on cells of people who had been infected by Covid found the ageing of those cells as shown in the…

Here’s a story which I promise gets more interesting as it goes along. The ratio of tax paid to GDP in a country. (Stay with me!) GDP is a measure of how much wealth a country produces, usually in a year. Australia’s…

The announcement of free flu shots was driven mostly by sheer, terrified panic at what we’re doing to our healthcare sector. Running it way past the rev limiter, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I have never known the Australian community to be as sick as it is right now. The amount of infection and other health issues out there is staggering. You can’t do even the most basic, social, work or school thing…

As power prices skyrocket, and everything else shoots up in price too, I hope people remember all of this is due to 10 years of total neglect by the now-gone federal government. Absolutely asleep at the wheel, for…

It’s like having everybody snort asbestos every day, and then waiting a few decades until they all start to drop dead. (Remember HIV takes 8-10 years to develop into AIDS.) Where’s our backbone, our fight to protect our…

A few years ago I posted here about what seemed to me to be a bit of a crisis in body image, and the huge growth in body modification procedures. I was surprised at the backlash, it seemed this was even more widespread…

Millions of COVID-19 patients may have an undiagnosed, potentially fatal acute kidney disease, according to a new study. University of Queensland researchers say one in five virus patients admitted to hospital and two…

The saving grace with Murdoch papers is that nobody reads them.

What’s going on in schools and hospitals is a national emergency. It’s hard to know how this all ends, we’re not the country we once were. This is the result of decades of gutting public services and institutions in…

Smell really happens in the brain. The brain is just one organ Covid attacks. We’re starting to see that now in a widespread way.

On Tik Tok people are saying that petrol now has no smell. A technological wonder! That loss of smell is brain damage caused by Covid infection. Wear a mask.

Everybody is being urged to get the whole family vaccinated against flu (a very good idea). Meanwhile, childhood vaccinations against Covid stalled months ago with fewer than 50% of kids vaccinated. When the NSW…

A shock if you’ve been asleep for about 2 years.

An ED department in an Australian hospital right now. A major metropolitan hospital. Schools are even worse, some have 35 classes without teachers on a given day. Society is falling apart.

Thinking of stock outside on a night like this. One of the things about sheep is how effective their wool is as an insulator. Notice the snow on them isn’t melted by their body heat, because that body heat never reaches…

I find many people assume Lithgow is lower than Bathurst and the Blue Mountains, in elevation terms. That it’s ‘in a hole’. (For the geographically challenged Lithgow is in a valley. Like alpine towns around the world.)…

8 months into 'living with Covid', hundreds still dying every week. 21 just today, in NSW. How many more months of this do people need to call BS? Do they know that NSW Health has asked for compulsory indoor masks and…

I fear everybody might come first. But here goes. Justin had a ‘mild’ case of Covid in February. Now this. Who can join the dots?

Saw an American reviewer say (correctly) that it was questionable value to pay over $450 for nosebleed seats to see Paul McCartney, whose voice is gone. He sounds like a wrinkly at an aged care home singing happy…

My kids are resilient, I’m proud of that. None of the drama queen anxiety at every tiny hurdle in life’s journey, that is popular now. But even they’re getting tired of having limited social options with the ongoing…

I’d genuinely welcome anybody explaining how 2022 isn’t the greatest disaster in our history. ‘Living with’ Covid is not making it go away, it’s what caused this. Those average deaths and infections don’t budge, every…

Australia is being literally robbed by fossil fuel multinationals. (Note this is true for coal, as well as gas.) And what do Australians say about it? They attack everybody who tries to build domestic energy capacity to…

Lithgow is not unlike most other regional towns or even Oz cities. Some key facts which I think the city needs to come to grips with, to survive, because I think its image of itself is about 150 years old: - the biggest…

The exciting thing is you now don’t have to wait for old age to get Alzheimers. A trip to the pub, a show or a restaurant and it can be yours straight away. ‘Brain-eating bat virus’, I can’t take credit for the joke,…

Have often posted about why I think small business is a major hurdle to a much better Australia. We worship it, unthinkingly. It doesn't have the economies of scale to be a healthy backbone for a society, it's an…

BA.4 and BA.5 hitting NSW, there on the right. Covid's latest trick is called 'imprinting'. Meaning if you get infected with an earlier variant of Covid, it imprints on your immune system. Which sounds great, except it…

This is the end of petrol and diesel vehicles. And the comparison is even more dramatic if you use solar rather than ordinary grid power, where the cost to drive 100km drops to $1.28. With current petrol prices, that…

Again a shame that those here from the past 2 years advocating getting kids back to school no matter the Covid risk have now gone quiet. People forgot that we didn’t allow kids at school for much less serious diseases.…

Good piece, describing the disaster of using the ‘market’ instead of regulation for our energy. The reason the market doesn’t work, is that it doesn’t exist. It’s another name for the ‘Economy’, which also doesn’t…

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Can anybody fly a plane?” Living with the virus.

Somebody laughed at me yesterday for wearing a mask. Those who have had Covid and now feel protected, firstly reinfections are now common. And latest research: "Compared to those with first infection, those with…

The astonishing thing about the transgender movement is how fast it became mainstream. I think it’s driven largely by social media, which allowed the bypassing of the usual testing process for the ideas through various…

Listen to this drivel, she knew it was a lie. Kerry Chant's body language tells us exactly how much horseshit was spewed out at Gladys' daily press conferences. I didn’t see anybody angry about this at the time, as I…

Today Australia passed an average of 50 Covid deaths per day. And still climbing. Anybody home?

This shows how many people are being reinfected with Covid, in the UK. So they've had Covid before, this is their 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc. infection. Huge skewing to children, because we're sending them to school with almost…

It seems to me the common story people in Australia would tell about the pandemic is ‘we locked down for 2 years, then we opened up to live with the virus’. The ABS is here to help. If you look at all of the lockdowns…

Most of the core work local governments do had its origins in public health. Providing clean water, removing sewage, collecting and disposing of garbage, approving buildings, administering local parks and sporting…

Nobody seems ‘seriously concerned’ about having enormous reservoirs in the hills above Lithgow. Lake Lyell is a man-made lake, ‘pristine beauty’, lol. Gotta keep it pure for the jet skis.

Lots of talk of ‘wage-price spirals’. The fear that paying ordinary working people more will drive inflation. No concern at all about capital-price spirals in housing, for the past 30 years, driving prices higher and…

Because our Covid strategy (do nothing) has copied the UK for some time, an update on how it’s going there. This is what epidemic diseases will do forever unless you stop them, cycle up and down in waves of illness and…

This is a longitudinal (over time) study of UK people who have been infected with SARS2 (Covid). Their brains were scanned before and after infections. These are predominantly ‘mild’ (non-hospitalised) infections. What…

Know why 99.5% of adults over 50 carry the virus that causes shingles? Because when they were young, some idiot suggested it was best to ‘live with’ chickenpox. So everybody was infected, deliberately. Ringing any bells?

Posted here before a similar reduction in heart disease risk, with flu vaccination. Most of our chronic diseases may turn out to be caused by infectious disease. DIseases like cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis…

As people now start to become re-infected with Covid, be aware that the new strains, BA.4 and BA.5, appear to be both much more dangerous (doctors I know reporting intubations firing up again), and also as contagious as…

I’ll use Lithgow as an example. The idea that Covid will become ‘endemic’. The term was first used to describe out of control disease in poor countries, that we couldn’t be bothered helping. Just as we often say crime…

Look at what the pandemic did to Australian population growth. No immigration. Some might cheer that on, but it's worth remembering our own population is ageing very badly, and without immigration there's nobody to do a…

I see the toxic positivity online, can feel the desperation behind it, people trying to pretend everything is fine and normal when in fact the whole place is falling apart. As if posting happy things will make the bad…

Every time I open LinkedIn it occurs to me that you need to be vaguely interested in your own 'career' to have even a passing interest in anybody else's. Total fail on the first for me, so unremitting boredom on the…

To be unwavering, unflinching, and uncompromising is rare, but not impossible. To be an outsider and those things, nothing is harder. To not care one tiny bit what anybody else thinks. One in a billion people are truly…

Remember the people who said kids needed to get back in school during a pandemic for their 'mental health'? Reckon they ever went to school?

For those comfortable with the political line that vaccination was all we needed to do for Covid, here’s the reality. The vaccines were based on a strain of the virus that is 2 years’ old (and now extinct, the original…

Knock me over with a feather. Covid has been ‘hitting tens of thousands of Australians’ every day since Christmas time, this is not a new situation. Some leaders and health experts need to prepare for possible future…

When politicians ‘opened up’ to Covid, vaccinations stopped. Stone dead. And less than half of us went to get a free flu shot since then. And now stories like this. People are not seeing the bigger picture here I don’t…

All these kids are clinically vulnerable to Covid, having diabetes. Not one mask in sight. With the Health Minister, no less.

In my experience meetings have grown in organisations at the same time as managers have become more useless and higher paid. Meetings are the way those managers hide that they don’t know what they’re doing. If they did…

Look at the explosion of death from late-2021. That’s when we said we’d ‘live with the virus’ (you can’t make this stuff up). Also note that bottom axis is the baseline, so while it looks like nobody is dying…

Last week a group of people at work were having a little private chuckle at me still wearing a mask. They're now all at home in bed with Covid. Workplaces are being decimated right now, literally dropping like flies.…

NSW Health has never stopped asking people to wear masks inside. Politicians have said we don’t have to. About 99% of people are listening to the politicians, and about 1% to NSW Health. If you’re not wearing a mask,…

I constantly hear from friends and work colleagues who’ve had Covid that ‘at least they got it out of the way’. This myth will kill people. Some of them now being infected for the second and third times, looking much…

NSW Health has been saying this for months. No government backing, so the Chief Health Officer is reduced to begging us all to do it. Ridiculous, and not working, I barely see a single person in a mask every day. And…

"The Queensland government is warning of an escalation in the number of health and hospital staff unable to work due to COVID in the midst of the state's growing COVID-19 wave." Look at their response. Same as ours.…

I encourage everybody to read this one. The reason I post so much about Covid is that I study the pandemic (for work but also for myself), and what's happening is not what people are being told. This is a potential…

Multiple people have said to me that there wouldn't be backing for stronger Covid measures, because the experience of too many has been 'mild'. A few things I'd say about that: 1) most obviously, as I've posted about…

There are massive solar and wind farms near Wellington, from a distance you think it must be some bluey-silver crop, like lavender. Companies from around the world have been queuing for years to try to get these…

This is the basic science people are not being told. A vaccine is not a drug, you don’t take it and then you’re ‘fixed’. A vaccine tweaks the ecological balance of an ecosystem of microbes, temporarily in one direction.…

My dad and his friends emigrated to Australia at the start of the 1950s. They were part of that big wave of post-war immigration, that gave Australia the hugest rush of European culture and energy, after the war. They…

I promised to talk about chickens. This isn’t a chicken doing the splits, it’s a chicken with Marek’s DIsease. A type of herpes virus. It’s deadly to pretty much any chicken who catches it. I’m telling this story…

Imagine a health system already falling over, getting 400,000 new long-term patients. And that’s just current numbers, every day we infect tens of thousands more to add to the tally.

Dedicated to everybody not wearing a mask.

Drummer and bass player loving that extended guitar solo. Happy birthday little bro! Hopefully somebody can get you to sit still long enough to celebrate it, will try for lunch 🙂 Love ya.

I've travelled quite a lot. I hate the process of actually getting from one place to another, packed into planes like sardines, interrupted sleep, lost bags, foul shared toilets and showers etc. I don't mind it when I…

The Victorian Chief Health Officer told the Victorian government to mandate masks in places like childcare and shops. The Victorian government said no. Why? They're 'empowering' people to do it themselves. They actually…

I'm curious how many are aware of the difference between public health and medicine? They're different fields, staffed by different people, but so often I see people assume medical doctors and hospitals are responsible…

FINALLY journalists are seeing it, but way too late. Infecting an entire population and hoping you have enough hospital beds is not a public health strategy, it’s a public disease strategy. I still don’t think people…

Another 36 dead yesterday. Over 2000 in hospital. This is just NSW. Our leaders' (and our) response? Nothing.

For those struggling with understanding that Covid isn't a health problem (though it's that too). It's smashing the economy as fast as it's maiming and killing people. 776,000 Australians worked fewer hours in June due…

Engineers save many more lives than doctors or medicine do. So many more that they're not even in the same ballpark. Not to have a go at medicine, but to refocus attention on what it is that is the biggest contribution…

People may have seen me posting here for a few years now about how the political battles between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are actually something else. The continuation of the driving force of our history, the battle between…

The 2 ways we’re told to stop people getting sick right now is for the government to spend billions more, or for us to take ‘personal responsibility’ for Covid. Anybody notice the enormous elephant in the room here, the…

The comfort many take from catching Covid, multiple times, is that they believe the idea that it will create ‘herd immunity’. Which they see as the same as ‘endemic’. So many people will catch it and become immune that…

Earlier in the year the let it rip Queensland Chief Health Officer assured Australia that mass infections were creating a 'wall of immunity', which would lead to Covid fading away. Nick Coatsworth said the same. How…

Politics has always been a battle between working people (nearly everybody), and a tiny financial elite. When working people get screwed very badly, it's very dangerous for the elites, who remember things like the…

In reality it's even worse than it looks. The way hospitalisations were counted changed in February, so the current level is actually about equivalent to what it was in January. And it's still climbing fast.

The Project talking about a huge list of drugs now unavailable because of the pandemic wrecking supply chains. A diabetes patient going without his drugs entirely, they’re not available. Society is falling apart. This…

The National Health Service in the UK has already collapsed. 332,000 people there have been waiting more than a year for treatment. Not coincidentally, over 300,000 people now have long-term chronic illness from Covid…

No pandemic in the history of the world wads stopped by people becoming infected. Not one. Also, ‘endemic’ is just a technical word meaning ‘a disease out of control’.

BA.5 is one of the variants now hitting us here. Look at what it did in Japan, a nation much more committed to public health than us.

Watch the UK, we follow them in every detail. Now health staff there are cashing in annual leave days to be able to afford to pay bills, while tens of thousands resign in exhausted disgust. Come on ‘live with the virus’…

Lots of talk about masks and mandates. We need to push back on the stupidity of the idea a mandate removes peoples’ freedoms. Here’s just one of thousands of examples. Is ‘swim between the flags’ oppression? Tyranny?…

Bypass what politicians, media outlets and friends are telling you about Covid, and go straight to the expertise, like Professor Chris Goodnow. For those who won’t read it, his main points. It’s vastly more serious than…

People don't get fat because they over-eat, they over-eat because they get fat. An obese person is metabolically 'starved', their body keeps storing fat because it thinks it's starving (and the person feels that as…

Fat people are encouraged to 'burn off' the fat. It never, ever works, because it's based on junk science. Your body stores fat when it thinks you're at risk of starving, it's common sense. Nobody eats when they're…

Between 180,000 and 200,000 health care workers are thought to have died in this pandemic, treating others. This is what happens when you make your Covid strategy about number of hospital beds, instead of number of…

One of the most important things to note about the re-emergence of polio is that it was nearly always an incredibly mild disease, causing no symptoms at all or known lasting effects. But the minority it impacted badly…

Anybody fighting to avoid infection by Covid, an organ-eating bat virus, isn’t ‘anxious’. They’re smart. Those who line up to be repeatedly infected by it while babbling slogans like ‘live with the virus’, or ‘you have…

This is 'excess deaths' i.e. deaths above and beyond what we'd expect if we didn't have a pandemic. Notice for 2020 and most of 2021 we were healthier than we've ever been. Negative excess deaths i.e. thousands lived…

Another article that (to me) makes the same mistake about love. Seeing love as being selfless, and looking out for yourself is selfishness, or narcissism. If you want the world to be full of ‘love’, don’t always define…

Really is a no-brainer.

Memory loss after Covid in technical terms is called 'brain damage'. Living with the virus.

I've been very critical of people for not being more angry about the Covid situation. But really it's a complete absence of leadership. People no more understand how to beat a pandemic than they know how to fly an A380.…

More Covid data out of the US. I am interested US friends that difficulty walking or climbing stairs was on a healthy steep decline, until Covid. But you may not remember that, based on the blue line.

Why I compared Covid to HIV/AIDS, not an analogy. Both diseases attack T cells, the core of your immune system. Ask any GP how much illness they're seeing right now, researchers are thinking Covid infections are wiping…

Did you know that, well before the pandemic (2015), about 1 in 7 Australian girls aged 12-17 had contemplated suicide, and about 1 in 20 had actually tried to kill themselves? What did the people now making lots of…

“…actor Ezra Miller has announced they have begun treatment for complex mental health issues.” I’d suggest that ‘they’ there is part of it.

Over 43 dead reported today. Still over 2000 in hospital. Just posting as a reminder that nothing has changed, still a tsunami of death. I don’t sense many care, certainly not enough to say or do anything. We don’t act…

Flame Trees is an interesting example of what a ‘songwriter’ is. Widely accredited to Don Walker, it turns out Walker only wrote the lyrics, Steve Prestwich wrote the music (and he didn’t like Walker’s lyrics). I see…

Anti-vax roid rage. This anti-vaxer apparently stopped a car carrying a doctor who administered Covid vaccines, and this is what he did. The bodybuilding community is a hotbed of ‘natural health’ numpties (this guy is…

Riddle me this. One death due to some dipshit killing a child with a high-powered penis compensation device, may prompt a change in law (and that may be a good thing). But we’re mowing down a few hundred a week with…

Many boomers get very upset at the idea of intergenerational injustice. They seem incapable of understanding privilege, and how you can still be a nice person, but privileged. I think I’m a nice person, but I know I…

The greatest epidemic of all time is likely the heart disease epidemic of the 20th century. Took off early in the century, peaked about the 1960s, and in decline ever since. The usual explanation for this is we ate bad…

In the UK people are mobilising to refuse to pay extortionate electricity bills. The often claimed efficiency of private industry, which nobody actually checks to see if true. Well, reality has now checked. This never…

Can somebody tell me if they’re still rooting for ‘living with the virus’? It’s all gone so quiet, has a penny dropped, or are we just pretending nothing is happening?

Today Australia reaches 10 million Covid infections (officially known, in reality there may be at least twice that number). Nearly all of those have happened in the past 8 months. More than 13,000 Australians have died…

I think heat pumps are incredibly sexy. They can deliver up to 15 times as much energy as they consume. Which makes them actual producers of renewable energy. A country can cut its entire energy bill literally in half…

For years we've heard this from farmers, 'nobody wants to work'. What they really mean is 'nobody wants to work for slave wages'. They're front of the queue demanding to get their offshore imported slaves back. This has…

A while ago I posted an article about how precision fermentation may replace agriculture almost entirely. It may be the greatest ever revolution in human life. It’s arrived, see ABC report below. Agriculture is far and…

This research is now well known. And still National Cabinet today will (almost certainly) do what it always does, reduce protections against Covid even further. Shifting isolation from 7 days to 5. Most people will be…

I love as the season shifts, and the mornings become lighter, and you wake and get up with the sun again. One of the main reasons I hate daylight saving, my body is shifting into Spring mode, loving that feeling of…

Radio interview with a medical researcher confirmed again for me the genius of my friend David Gorman. The topic was back pain, the famous ‘bad back’. And how every method and technique that’s been tried to treat back…

Yes, everybody is tired of Covid. They’ve ‘moved on’ (i.e. got bored and ignored it). Think of it this way. When was the last time we, as a society, chose to deliberately INCREASE the amount of death in the community? I…

The health advice that was ignored in the dropping of 7-day isolation to 5. In this case for Victoria, but most State CHOs would have advised the same. There’s also a critical thing here that is never discussed, the…

Somebody at work asked me the other day why I still wear a mask. It’s a tiring conversation now. But this is just one reason why, below.

In the pandemic Australia has sacked over 40,000 of the smart people who do this sort of work. Meantime TAFE will again be free, to fund the desperate shortage of tradies, a shortage that’s mostly an already bloated…

Reading about how the Colorado river system is on the brink of collapse in the US, with 70% of its water usage being agricultural irrigation, made me think of how precision fermentation and other new food creation…

I’m a fan of the monarchy. What I think is so important about it is two things mostly, one being that it’s a form of government that puts custom and tradition at the heart of what we do. Institutions. The second being…

I've seen more than one doctor suggest Covid may have brought her life to a faster end. Her health has been in rapid decline since she had Covid.

On the after-effects of Covid, as the article says, the deaths months after infection aren't being counted as caused by Covid. The staggering stat for me is that death rates for those of working age, 18-64, are up 40%…

Here's a way to think about Queens and Kings, in the time of Covid and climate change. The Queen reigned for 70 years, and we know almost nothing about her, as a person. Nothing about her personal opinions or beliefs.…

More than a third of working age people in the UK now have long-term illness due to Covid. I sit here every day speechless that people watch their own societies crumble and burn around them, and say nothing. But in…

If you lower the speed limit on busy roads, traffic as a whole flows much faster. Going slower actually makes you go faster. Speed limits are mostly designed to smooth the flow of traffic. My experience on the road…

A friend (not pictured) had shingles which infected her scalp and eye. I think it's worth remembering that the more accurate name for shingles should be 'living with chickenpox'. It's the result of chickenpox infection…

Public schools often don't understand public messaging. Take Bathurst High, which proudly displays signs saying 'Safe, Respectful, Learners'. I'd bet most people when reading that will think 'hmm, they've had problems…

Because the NSW Government is more likely to open a casino than give you Covid information, here are the two key documents if you have Covid or somebody close to you does. Some of this information may save your life. If…

This is the full piece by Andrew Sullivan, which I recommend to everybody. Irrelevant whether you're a monarchist or not, the themes here transcend how they're actually embodied in practice.…

Huge news. This gas field is enormous, 10 years ago it was a licence to make billions. Now our 2nd biggest energy company is pulling out without even starting it. Just as other companies sold coal-powered power stations…

Australia’s oldest man, who exercised every day and lived without smoking, drinking or gambling, has died at the age of 110, after contracting Covid-19. I'm sure the government would either say he should have been…

It'd be interesting to know what proportion of people exercising is them thinking it's their way to take and keep weight off, while not changing anything else in their thinking and lives. It never works, it can't work,…

Seems the President of the AMA at least has had enough. What would medical people know, pfft.

I'm sure the 'Snooze for 30 days button' is used a lot for my posts. But I have to say if you post photos of your current holiday, it's 30 days in my FB cooler, as Wilhelm Klink would say. If the point of your holiday…

“The EV future will be revolutionary, and it's a revolution car people will want to be a part of.” This is World Car of the Year, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, full electric. While Tesla gets most of the EV attention, at the end…

Somebody defined the economy as ‘driving to a regional town to have coffee, to see if it’s different to the coffee at your local coffee shop’.

Politicians say ‘people are tired of Covid’. It’s not clear why, hardly anybody I know is doing anything about it at all. People are maybe tired of it still being here, but that’s because governments and businesses are…

For the first 25 years of motoring in the UK, there were no petrol pumps. People had to buy fuel in 2-gallon cans from retailers, lug it home and fill the car. I mention this because often electric cars are criticised…

I often talk about gravity, and how the Earth is pushing UP underneath you in everything you do, rather than you constantly falling down onto it. Here’s why I think people rarely notice this miracle. If asked to feel…

Very few people I know still wear masks or pay any attention to Covid, amazingly putting their health, that of their families and friends in the hands of politicians, who they wouldn’t trust normally to buy them a bag…

Have mentioned buying a Kluger hybrid and discovering by accident it's also a self-driving car. I do a daily round-trip commute of over 120 km. So in the past week I tested the self-driving technology. With me of course…

National Cabinet did it today. People with Covid are now free to walk among us, whenever they like. Cabinet justified it by saying we have to stop treating Covid differently to other infectious diseases. But now we…

My boy is 17 today. The most beautiful, gentle soul. And smart. Gentle people are the gravity of the world. Gravity is by far the weakest of all of the forces. But it shapes the entire universe in the way the other…

Brendan is one of the leading pandemic authorities in the world. We need to listen a lot more to people like him. He’s 100% right that ‘Australians think it’s over’. And they think it’s over mostly because the previous…

We need to get rid of elections. There’s a huge list of basic jobs any community needs to get done, none of which are controversial. Right now though they don’t get done unless somebody can make it popular to do them.…

A critically important thing to remember after this week’s National Cabinet meeting is that we didn’t stop isolation of Covid cases. We stopped public health orders doing that. It’s still the legal responsibility of…

PASC = Post-acute sequelae of Covid-19 i.e. effects of Covid after infection. Red is inflammation. The control is somebody without Covid. Combined PET-MRI scan.

The WA power system is under pressure because the foreign-owned coal mine that provides coal to its power station is about to go belly up. It’s another fossil fuel stranded asset, that nobody wants because the industry…

A new type of Covid denialism is large numbers of people wandering around in workplaces with coughs and sneezes saying 'it's just a cold'. They have no proof of that, it's completely made up. But it gives them an excuse…

I often say we float upon the surface of the Earth. The floating happens in multiple ways. For example your bones float in your body, like the solid parts of this chair float in the wires. None of these solid parts…

The real reason most people won’t wear masks or take Covid precautions is that the majority of people are followers, they follow others in deciding what to do. If mask wearing becomes optional (as it is now), they won’t…

Most of our immunity will be pretty much gone by Christmas. There are no plans to do anything about it. An acceptable risk level for disease is 0.1% or less. This is 40 times greater than that.

This is the Covid story we’re all about to live. All existing vaccines lose effectiveness within 5 months. This isn’t unusual, your annual flu shot is the same, we’re saved by flu disappearing over Spring and Summer,…

“I once got Alzheimers from the flu”, said nobody ever.

There are already nearly 60,000 people in NSW with Long Covid. Waiting lists to see medical expertise about it are already over a year long. And you should know, there is no real medical expertise on what to do about…

Because government dumped responsibility for Covid on you and me, as 'personal responsibility', this will help you assess risk for hospitalisation and death. Note it doesn't assess any of the dangers of long-term…

Every time I walk through the car park of doctor surgeries past the expensive European cars, I'm reminded that they're public servants and are not held to account like any other public servant. The scale of the rorting…

If you didn’t see this last night, I highly recommend you watch it on iView. Griffith in NSW is collapsing. And everywhere else will follow. What Covid did is expose a dark secret. Slavery never ended, we just called it…

My plug for understanding gravity, why I talk about it a lot. I lifted 12 tonnes (yep, tonnes) in less than 3 hours this morning, boxes of files. Not a single sore muscle or even any tiredness. Was a good test. I do no…

I see quite a few pregnant women unmasked, and worry about their health and their baby's. One I know lost her baby, and blames the vaccines. I suspect she'd had Covid herself. This is the consequence of pretending a…

I have so many memories of sessions like this, where everybody sits around trying to figure out what the organisation they’re working for is supposed to be doing. Nobody ever figures it out. The sessions only happen at…

Have posted before about the possible similarity of action of HIV and Covid. The virus lives in your body after you test negative, probably for years or even for life. As with HIV, where the initial infection was often…

Another favourite from corporate group work sessions. Where the bored, half-asleep people at the tables all offer up the least boring idea they can think of, the group summarises on butcher’s paper, and the rest of the…

"Furthermore, the data showed the increase was most significant among individuals ages 25-44, who are not usually considered at high risk for heart attack."…

I do realise most people won’t change their behaviour, because they think nobody else will either, so it’s like school, peer pressure will win. Without change being led, nothing will change. Yaneer is an international…

I don’t know if many even read the Covid stuff I post, but I do it anyway in the hope it saves even one life. I’ve never seen stronger proof that we never leave high school than this pandemic. Hardly anybody does or…

There are more people hospitalised for Covid in the US than there are known Covid cases. (They don't test. Like us now.)

About half-a-dozen people I know this week have experienced severe medical episodes, life-threatening. All were healthy beforehand and had no prior conditions. All have had Covid. In all cases doctors have no idea what…

I see very little evidence anybody cares. It's a defining moment in Australian society, deliberately infecting our children. Over and over, not just once. Our society may not survive it, the health costs alone could be…

For background on why your wallet is bleeding at the petrol pump, OPEC is the cartel of oil producing countries that have held the world to ransom for the past century. If we electrify everything, the tens of billions…

One of the interesting things about the gas outage is that they have to individually reconnect pretty much every single building. Not for engineering reasons (that I know of), but because I think of the risk some people…

Have any of my friends in 'bodywork' traditions ever seen anything on the benefits of sitting with legs wide apart? On a chair I mean. To me it seems to activate a lot of the musculature around the hips, torso and…

My no-gas shower hack (for those who don’t live near me, gas infrastructure was damaged in flooding, so multiple towns have no gas for several weeks, maybe even months). I heated a big pot of water on the stove, and…

The engineering behind restoring the gas supply (a story that is amazing) reminds me again how much most of what we call modern life is nearly entirely down to engineers. It’s not democracy that created the modern…

This research taking us further towards the functional equivalence of Covid and HIV/AIDS. It shows that Covid infects (and kills) T cells, which is what HIV does, that then leads to AIDS. It can take several years for…

Something not often mentioned by the ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow’ energy folk is firstly that we obviously still manage to have water when it isn’t raining. We use storage. But the big sleeper here…

“Infecting an entire generation is irresponsible. We don’t yet know what this infection does to children’s immune systems when it occurs repeatedly.” Karl Lauterbach, Minister for Health, Germany.

This is what we're going to see in increasing numbers. Young healthy person gets Covid, and their immune system gets wiped clean, leaving them wide open to every other infection. Have posted as well about how research…

And still, nothing is done. Imagine openly admitting this, and nobody cares.

When we watch period dramas, I’m guessing most of us identify ourselves with the main characters, because that’s how the shows are written. But in historical terms, we’re actually the servants in these shows. It’s 2022…

Went out for dinner for Alice’s 12th birthday yesterday. I had to sneak this snap, they hate photos. Was lovely. They asked if we wanted to sit inside, which everybody else in the restaurant had chosen to do. In the…

Riddle me this. If you don’t have movement and gathering restrictions (‘lockdowns’), everybody gets infected. If they get infected, Perrotwit says ‘stay home’. Which is where you’d be if he locked us down. Notice you…

Took me an hour-and-a-half to get from Raglan to the centre of Bathurst this morning. ‘Stay home until we get this road properly open’, imagine a society with brains.

If you see Peter Collignon on the TV, telling everybody to keep calm and get infected, just be aware of his track record. Like all the Covid minimisers. (Incidentally they often sell him as a 'pandemic expert'. He…

Covid cases up another 60% in NSW this week (more than 20,000). Hospital admissions up another 35%. Another 24 dead.

Finally somebody with a backbone.

NSW Health has never stopped telling us to wear masks and avoid crowds. That’s never stopped being the medical advice. Bizarrely, people are basing their own health and that of their family and friends on the advice of…

Stretches for tight muscles, and strengthening for weak muscles. Physios and other physical therapists use both a lot. But the underlying model seems wrong to me. Muscles are not elastic bands, they're living tissue.…

COP 27 mostly failed, for the same reason it always fails. The $2.8 billion profit per day fossil fuel industry knee-capped it. The only win was emergency funding for the most vulnerable nations. But nobody committed to…

As Dr Tyler Black always says, a specialist in child psychology and trauma, easily the best way to protect a child's mental health in this pandemic is to stop people getting Covid. All the other bullshit about them…

I've had intermittent AF for about 30 years. I think people who do intense exercise are at higher risk (as I was doing at the time, and of course Lisa Curry would be much more than that again). It's one of the reasons I…

This is test results for one patient. Multiple distinct infections. Immune system damage, preventing the body fighting the infections off. Covid did this, it attacks the immune system. Covid minimisers will try to tell…

If your muscles feel stiff, it’s tempting to do what this person is doing, to try to stretch them. To think that your muscles are either loose or tight. But muscles adapt precisely to what you’re doing, if they feel…

Queensland is looking to reframe 'Long Covid' as 'Your Recovery from Covid'. That's the world we live in, where brains and actual meaningful action are replaced by endless spin, while doing nothing.

To give an indication of the catastrophe uncontrolled spread of Covid could be in China, firstly for the Chinese, the health and hospital system isn’t great, and they have millions upon millions of old people. They’re…

Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why if you want to be an architect or nurse or teacher or engineer in Australia, or any job that needs university training, you have to pay for your own training. But if you're…

So true, nobody cares. But they’re being led to not care. 95% of people just do what everybody else does. We see that at school, and it continues into adult life. If the 5% don’t lead us to fight climate change and…

Watching a soccer world cup game. Professional soccer is amazingly boring. 99% of the game is players dribbling around going nowhere, with every tackle causing excruciating pain and appeals to the ref that look like the…

I post a bit about stretching, about why it’s mostly a waste of time, and in fact may be damaging. Here’s an extended wonderful passage by my friend David Gorman which gives a lot more detail. A bit of reading, but I…

I want to use aged care as an example of how political slogans actually kill people. Was having a conversation with a healthcare worker (HCW) who works in aged care. We all know Covid has gone on a killing spree in aged…

High-level cardiologist pleading with people to avoid Covid, and explaining why. Fantastic explanation also of current thinking on Long Covid. 148 million people with that condition now. Have a listen, it may save your…

Using somebody who looks like a pimp or dealer as your financial branding face is a curious new approach.

I suspect many people believe vaccination protects them from getting Covid. I’ve circled in red the effectiveness of the vaccines in stopping transmission, after 6 months, which is about the last time most Australians…

"Schools and daycares are sending letters home to parents talking about this "immunity debt.” They’re saying that healthy children are getting sicker, even dying, because they weren't exposed to enough germs over the…

We got rid of our private health insurance a few years ago now, except for extras. The whole system is corrupt and just shovels wheelbarrows of money from the taxpayer into private hospitals and specialists' pockets.…

National Cabinet said 2022 would be the year Covid ends. Instead teachers are 'crawling to the finish line', infected repeatedly. Kids too, though they're likely at school sneezing and coughing over everybody else.

The Novavax Covid vaccine was slow to arrive in Australia, but it seems to outperform all of the other vaccines by a long margin. I posted this week how the efficacy of the AZ and Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, which most of…

National emergency in the US with children succumbing to a whole range of different infections, because Covid has damaged their immune systems. We are deliberately infecting our children with this virus. And I don't see…

Covid cases up 20% again in NSW this week. (Of course most people aren't testing now, so it's oodles more than that.) Hospitalisations up 12%. The 'short and sharp peak' National Cabinet offered us as a fairy tale for a…

Another perspective on stretching. If you lean forward like this, you’ll feel tension in your feet, legs and back. Do we try to stretch those areas to relieve that tension? No, because we know it’s caused by our leaning…

You can now buy an attachment for your smartphone which turns it into an ultrasound machine. The quality of the images is equivalent to a hospital ultrasound machine. This could revolutionise medicine.

An example from real life of how the fundamental connection between all the different parts of our bodies is rarely touched by medicine nor understood more widely. This is the Temproromandibular joint (TMJ), at the top…

A tip for any business owner, is that if you come out and measure for a quote for a substantial amount of work, don't then go silent for the next 4 weeks. You may be busy, but quick emails or phone calls about a delay…

Neil Diamond retired from performing 5 years ago when he developed Parkinson’s Disease. He has such incredible songs, underrated masterpieces of pop. I find this clip of him at a musical opening about him in New York…

“COVID is deranging the immune system,” said John Wherry, director of the Penn Medicine Immune Health Institute… “Some patients, from their very first visit, seem to have an immune system in hyperdrive.”

Many think peer pressure somehow ends when we leave school. That’s not true, in fact it’s the main way all of life works, even more so with adults. The primary driver of what people do, is what everybody else does. The…

Amazing numbers of Australians haven’t vaccinated their kids against Covid. Politicians told them the disease is ‘mild’ in children. I’m glad my kids are in the right-hand far column, and not the left.

In relative terms almost nobody turning up to watch Test cricket now. Not enough ‘big bashing’, no doubt.

40% increase in cardiovascular deaths in men aged 25-54 in the US, since the pandemic began. Not old, not ‘underlying conditions’, not ‘vulnerable’. Young men. ‘Living with the virus’, until they suddenly weren’t. Covid…

A mystery of modern medical science is the extreme, childbirth-scale pain that is incurred by tripping onto soft grass inside that rectangle.

At an average school Christmas concert or presentation, each person in the room breathes in about 33 litres of used air per hour, breathed out by other people in the room. Imagine somebody giving you mouth-to-mouth and…

The NSW Government reported this week that the Covid wave has peaked, because hospital numbers have levelled off. Hospital admissions for Covid are up 11% this week. It's one more lie to add to the collection. I'm…

The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the US predicting up to 150,000 Covid deaths there before March 2023. That's the equivalent of 50 9/11 attacks.

Some research shows that people who use a saline nasal spray have up to an 8-fold lower risk of hospitalisation, with Covid. The Covid vaccines don’t target the mucosal areas in the head, where you breathe Covid in, and…

The sleeper story of the soccer world cup is the beauty pageant for camels being held alongside, at the same time. 30,000 camels entered. A bit amusing, but there’s a very serious danger here. Camels carry and transmit…

A few people asked me to say a bit more about home batteries. I’ll talk about the Tesla Powerwall 2, because it’s what we have, but there are multiple brands out there now. But the Powerwall is probably still the best…

This is such an exciting, revolutionary achievement, and spoiled in Australia by years of spin by politicians in the pockets of energy companies. I don’t think people have really registered yet what it will mean to be…

A friend who’s a public health professional, who lost his own daughter to Covid, compiled this chart to show how every time we remove protections, people get sick and die. Our politicians call those protections…

The other day somebody asked me how Covid was going, and added ‘mostly old people, right?’ (Like that makes it OK.) No, not mostly old people.

My workplace has a big Christmas party this afternoon. Covid is rife in the building this week, but the party will go ahead. Who knows how many will then take Covid home for Christmas. I won’t be going. For my own…

MRI of people kissing. The tongues get your attention at first, but watch the hearts too. They’re obviously not married.

There’s a storm brewing in Covid vaccine science, and it’s a biggie. One of the key weapons your immune system has against pathogens is immunoglobulin, or Ig for short. Also called antibodies. They’re proteins which…

Dose 1 of this today. For shingles prevention. I really believe the most important thing you can do for your long-term health is to avoid infection of any kind. Everything from heart disease to cancer is likely caused…

Because politicians are doing everything they can to suppress information and data about Covid, I post updates on local cases occasionally, so people can see what’s really happening. Lithgow Hospital again restricting…

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.” Carl Sagan (Exhibit A - electric cars, and Covid.)

Anybody bothered by a gap between words and reality here?

If you know governance and politics, this has been evident since the beginning of the pandemic. NSW’s strategy is not based on public health advice, it’s based on trying to keep the economy open. That approach has…

This is the sort of expertise that governments have refused to use in the pandemic, preferring to medicalise it. Meaning preferring to allow people to become infected, and then shoving them in hospital. The health…

Follow up to my post a few days ago, wondering if the lack of stories about victims of Covid is political strategy to prevent peoples’ anger at the public health fuck-up in many counties. That’s exactly what’s going on,…

There are times I can see why fraudsters make so much money. People are extraordinarily gullible. For example, did anybody notice in this mask decision, that not one workplace is covered by it? That not one employer…

The Brits going where not even the Americans will go. They may still destroy the vaccines for everybody by doing this. What happens when you vote for people who think we live in an Economy and not a society.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This inflatable character was used by emergency department staff in a US hospital to provide Christmas cheer. Unfortunately the staff member who wore the inflatable…

I’d recommend everybody read this short piece from Raina Macintyre about how public health action was fatally sabotaged in this pandemic. Worldwide. A vast range of expertise was needed, politicians and their backers…

I think we need wide education in political language, the Greeks called it ‘rhetoric’, it was a cornerstone of their education. For example yesterday the acting Premier was asked about risks to regional NSW from Sydney…

Somebody yesterday said I wasn’t ‘positive’ enough with my FB posts. I talk about the grown up issues of the day, each to their own but I’m not here to curate some magazine-style online personality for myself, or to…

“Hospitals began to run out of masks for the same reason that supermarkets ran out of toilet paper — because their “just-in-time” supply chains, which call for holding as little inventory as possible to meet demand, are…

The Land of the Free. If you allow freedom to be narrowly defined as just the right to say what you like, this is what you get. The cheapest, most insignificant form of freedom. Freedom is a decent wage, working…

“...to be perfectly frank at the moment I really want the community focused on achieving no community transmission," Dr Chant said. Meanwhile the Treasurer opines about masks, an area in which he has zero expertise.…

One of the debating tricks the Economy people have used in the pandemic is to say we need to ease up our fight against Covid, because other basic health issues like cancer are being neglected. As it turns out, if you…

The debates about lockdown or not to lockdown. Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘lockdown’, it’s not a public health concept. And notice that when somewhere won’t use strong restrictions, like NSW, that only works if…

The ABS measures the stringency of each State’s public health response, and the corresponding economic performance, across the whole pandemic. With the exception of Victoria because of its super spreader outbreak, NSW…

The protestor in the white hat and backpack drags a police officer down the stairs, where he’s stomped on by the crowd and beaten with a flag pole, while they sing The Star Spangled Banner. Any Trump fans reading? Get a…

People understand that our climate change policy is purely about keeping the Coalition from breaking. If they take that same perspective to NSW for Covid now, they’ll see the same thing. NSW’s Covid strategy is designed…

One of the first rules of political strategy is, if you want to do something unpopular, do something else that looks unrelated, but will achieve the same thing. The federal LNP despise superannuation, just as they do…

George has just had a bad case of Covid himself, which his daughter brought home from primary school. George looks for a pandemic plan, but Economy governments never had one. Ask somebody to show you Australia’s…

Once again the men in the NSW Cabinet on the take from big industries like tourism, gambling, booze and real estate, are desperate to smash the public health restrictions open. Restrictions should be under the control…

ScoMo and his government did this with RoboDebt. Nobody in trouble over it, nobody even really said sorry. And their popularity has gone up, showing Australians’ understanding of politics is 3-word slogans.

Did you know the trials on the vaccines didn’t meaningfully test for either reduction in serious disease, or immunity? They may do both of those things, but it’s likely an enormous amount of guesswork and prayer is…

"...as long as the state premiers continue to ignore the idiots in the federal Coalition and the Murdoch media and lock down as needed...It turns out that stopping the disease from spreading is the only thing that…

Some very smart people jumped on the anti-lockdown wagon last year. I thought they might have done a bit of checking and found out there is no such thing as a 'lockdown' in public health, it's a political term invented…

Feeling your age. A new senior manager at work was being introduced to everybody. They got to me, ‘this is Nick’. Senior manager says, ‘o yes I know Nick, he taught me in high school’.

Populism is when slogans beat reality. The 'adversity' Gladys faced was being found out for blatant and proven corruption, which she was apparently forgiven for because a dastardly man broke her heart. Then she ran the…

If a person wants to be aggressive, go for it. Whack somebody, swear, throw something - whatever. Don't be passive-aggressive, is there anything more irritating than somebody who internalises their gripes and then gets…

Try as they might, the NSW Government cannot get higher testing numbers in W and SW Sydney. (Note this is actually a daily testing figure of only about 11,000, 6,000 are carried forward from yesterday.) There are all…

Greg is another leading Australian public health expert. You won’t get ScoMo or Gladys to this day to admit they were wrong about eliminating Covid. They told us all it was impossible. They said that because they didn’t…

Christian Drosten is Germany’s leading pandemic adviser. Governments who started the pandemic saying ‘only a vaccine can end it’ (a lie), will now also vandalise the vaccine rollouts. Already happening in the UK. You…

Superb work from the ABC here, the entire pandemic in Australia in words and graphs. You can see very clearly here that Victoria’s big outbreak was due to spread into the areas where essential workers live. The people…

In Manaus, the family of anybody arriving at hospital with Covid is given an oxygen tank and told to go and find some way to fill it, or their family member won’t be treated. Of course there is no way for them to fill…

Countries screaming for more vaccine. It doesn’t exist, there’s not enough. It could take years to vaccinate everybody. Which brings us back to the basic point nobody wants to face up to - ‘normal life’ will not return…

Boomers are already some of the most non-compliant with public health measures. They may soon become Covid missiles, with their early vaccinations.

Defeating a lethal disease is now against our way of life, apparently. Has there been a bigger fuckwit in Australian history than Tony?

Hmm, not sure the UK is a country. Boris talking today about people in the ‘front line’ of the pandemic, health care workers. It’s a revealing and common metaphor. Pandemics happen in clusters, not lines. It matters,…

https://www.croakey.org/the-hijacking-of-public-health-and-the-price-paid-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

My greatest pleasure. The need to be always doing something seems a disease to me. Like being permanently ungrounded. We’re human beings, not human doings. Just being, the essential life skill. Like big cats sitting…

The government vaccination ad campaign seems badly conceived. Featuring prominent talking heads who are just the sorts of people anti-vaxxers don't like. At the same time members of the same government fill the airwaves…

Kinesiology tape really interests me. It’s not strapping, its job isn’t so much to restrict movement. Its job is to provide an elastic, movable envelope of support to allow movement to be as normal as possible, while…

Good on the doctors for seeing that our PM and Premier are focused on the economy (which doesn’t exist), more than they are on beating the virus. There have been 2 ‘roadmaps’ out of the pandemic now, from National…

Anybody have much experience with ocular migraines?

“What I’ve learned is that we all need a place we can put our heart in. A place where we can build our habits and routines.” Our only glimpse into the true wonders of life is habits and routines. Travel is the breaking…

Vet: “That’s $340, thanks. Oh and the cone has to stay on the cat’s head for 10 days, if it comes off and it plays with its stitches, it might die.” Us: O...K. Take cat home. Cat removes cone 5 times in 10 minutes. Ring…

850 medical staff have died of Covid in the UK. Over 52,000 of them are currently on sick leave, with Covid. Hospitals are full of young people dying. Often whole families are dead. We’re not safe from this happening…

How do those who support the NSW Government and Gladys possibly justify that only 1% of the $177 million of bushfire relief money went to Labor electorates? And that the Blue Mountains electorate (Labor), that had the…

The rest of the developed world is trying to use vaccines to escape this pandemic quickly. They won't succeed. A disgraceful collapse of international public health processes, driven by fools who think we live in…

Obviously botox, fillers and plastic surgery are good for the body though. 'Natural', presumably. https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/2021/02/02/olivia-newton-john-anti-vaxx/

Radio host today, asks why Australians are so ‘compliant’ with health orders? Bizarre, how collective action is now seen as compliance. The victory of those who want to turn citizens into consumers, and countries into…

The reason the PM is reluctant to act against the likes of Craig Kelly is that he hoovers up all the Trumpians here in Australia, to vote for the LNP. That vote is significant, otherwise the PM would just cut him loose.…

The average working person's wages and conditions have been decimated for decades (mostly because they stopped joining unions). Private debt creates an illusion that people are well-off. Now you may be forced to sell…

Have had horrible foot problems for the past month. On the mend, but it’s been a perfect example again of how our ideas about medicine divvy the body up into (billable) bits, and farm you off to a specialist on each…

Walking looks entirely different from above. What you can see is how it’s a rotational act, with the whole body rotating clockwise and anti-clockwise with alternate steps. @[100062898426616:2048:Ben] showed me that…

Margaret and Derek Firth were married for 70 years. They died together in hospital. Fuck Covid.

Brendan Murphy, main adviser to government at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020. The Brits started the pandemic saying they’d just let everybody get infected with a lethal virus, to make them immune. They were an…

Don’t we miss the days of ordinary, unshaven and unripped bodies? I still remember those days, where only a handful of bodybuilders were ripped (and were thought of as a bit weird). I see more evidence of ‘mental…

The PM. Notice what he’s saying here? Same as Boris. Vaccinate the high risk groups, then let the virus rip. It would be a disaster. This is not like other viruses in the community, it’s a vascular disease that can kill…

Very soon you'll be given vouchers to use in restaurants, cafes etc. The government will tell you it's about stimulus for a damaged dining and entertainment industry. It's nothing of the sort - they could give…

Somebody used Duplo to explain the various outcomes from using vaccines.

This is interesting. Not ‘here I am on my last holiday’ interesting, but nevertheless. This is data for the whole world. Nobody’s quite sure why this is happening. It’s not the vaccines. They suspect it’s countries…

Who else has been stung by huge 'gap' payments for health care? Medicare is creaking, and unfortunately this is deliberate, a death by a thousand cuts and cost-shifting to private individuals. Again, the LNP, who…

“The Andrews Government has made its position on keeping a bit of the virus around, ostensibly because it’s good for the economy, pretty clear. The medical experts here, without being too reductive, think that’s a…

Why doctors aren’t the best guides to a pandemic.

“Being a homebody means you're comfortable enough being alone that you consistently seek it out just to get some quality time with your favorite person: yourself.” There’s an immaturity about obsessive social life, a…

'News' is a really bizarre thing when you think about it. It replaced stories told between generations in multi-generational families, to make sense of the world. What we call news is in the third person, the view from…

Another view from nowhere. Seeing the Earth from space is said to have created some sort of Earth-consciousness. Actually I think it distanced people even more from the planet we live on. Nobody lives in this viewpoint,…

Vaccine efficacy is badly explained to the public I think. For example, if a vaccine has a 95% efficacy, I think many (including me) assumed that meant about 5% of people would still get symptomatic Covid disease.…

An age of extremes not just in politics. Extreme exercise and wellness techniques too. Hyper-vigilant minds trying to get ever more control over poor bodies. As if shaping your body according to the dictates of your…

Can’t share the ABC story on FB about how tourism is destroying Byron. People know I think tourism and travel are a type of disease. People literally consuming beautiful places, before moving on to consume the next one.…

It’s been a week when the human scum leading the country revealed their true skill. Screwing people. Young women and the unemployed - anybody young really. A truly disgusting $3 something extra per day for the…

The danger of ideas. Texas just had a massive winter storm, which cut off most essential services, including power. Many died. Some had to sit in their car, the only heater available. Many of them were then hospitalised…

Beautiful graph, showing that the pandemic allowed hundreds of thousands of Australians to move out of poverty for the first time. About to be reversed, because the government and the many who support them think if you…

I struggle with the positivity/negativity people. Who look on at problems, and see them only as people being ‘negative’. No, they’re problems, not perceptions. I struggle even more with their retreat to the ‘positivity’…

I fear for the mental health of people who want to 'live with the virus'. I'm touched by their concern for those of us who want to get rid of the little bastard, that we might all need therapy locked in our homes, away…

Consent is back in the news. I think it will always be back in the news, because it’s the wrong concept to solve problems with sexual assault. It’s obvious that nobody should have unwanted intimacy. But that’s what love…

I don’t think we pay attention. At the beginning of the vaccine rollout in the UK, like the rest of the world decision-making was based on risk. Old people get the vaccine first, because they’re at highest risk. we…

A chicken and egg question. Which came first, government or the private sector? Probably many would say the private sector. But as with money, the freedom of private life is a creation of government. There was no…

"At the heart of this conflict is wages: The RBA wants to get them up, the government does not, because the Coalition holds to the outdated belief that higher wages cost jobs, because profits and investment get…

Here in Oz support for workers will be turned off this month. Meanwhile major corporations who rorted Job Keeper will be allowed to keep the money. Remember Pink Batts? We had a Royal Commission for that stimulus…

Who remembers the international Women's March, 2017? When Trump was elected. All the same public statements we're hearing now, women have had enough, the patriarchy has to be brought in check etc. It failed, miserably,…

This 'culture' angle will fail, because it's another one of those abstract words that doesn't point to anything that actually exists. I've worked in organisations said to have absolutely toxic cultures. The problem was…

So many of these LNP pollies look and think like accountants. No need to burden anybody with debt, money is an instrument of exchange, that’s all. Print it. Imagine thinking money is wealth.

Listening to conservative politicians speak with 'great concern' about children losing education in the pandemic is vomit-inducing. Like they care about children's education, they never have, they spend non-pandemic…

4 million by end of March. Anybody wanna guess what the actual number is now? Anyone? 86,000. The King of Announcements. Mr Spin.

Many, maybe even most, people in the developed world experience the world largely as if they were occupying a space behind their eyes, looking out. The dominant idea that "I" am located inside my head, in my brain. So…

I bet this proposal will be denied. I watch the UK news as much as the Oz news, and they tried a similar thing there. And failed. Modern conservative parties are business lobby groups in disguise. Their priority will…

I posted about this when it happened. LNP fans defended the decision at the time, because as always they just swallowed spin without digesting. It was always a ludicrous, corrupt decision, a populist brain fart with no…

Can anybody remember *one* nice thing NSW has said about any other State, in this pandemic? States with both better economic and pandemic numbers than NSW (same thing), constantly criticised and lectured by Gladys and…

Smart man. Look at that laundry list of goodies. There's much more to add to that list too. Unions are much more than workplaces, they're the way the majority of ordinary people once had their interests represented in…

I think whatever sphere of human life you look at, there is always a scale of value. A scale running from worst, to best. No matter how many say that they believe it's a glorious 'democracy' of individual taste, nobody…

Everybody at work exhausted. Consensus is that the cause is Daylight Saving extended to about half a bloody year now. Everybody getting up in the dark for work.

"Don't be too concerned because you are tense and cannot relax. The very act of being prepared to accept your tenseness relaxes your mind, and relaxation of body gradually follows. You don't have to strive for…

If you or I went outside and deliberately ran somebody over in our cars, and killed them, we would go to jail for much of the rest of our lives. Leaders such as these 2, who quite deliberately have killed over 2 million…

Agency and landscapes. Aboriginal rock art can look like some sort of primitive attempt to draw. I don't think it has anything to do with art as we conceive it. Aboriginal people gave agency to all things in the…

The international community understands better than we do what genius the Australian and NZ response to Covid is. That genius was our institutions, not our governments. Expertise. Under assault in the rest of the world,…

The LNP position on quotas is consistent with their belief in free markets. They believe talent will naturally rise to the top. Their record suggests this means there are no talented female LNP pollies, because they're…

Remember Gladys' rorting of local government grants? Then her rorting of bushfire relief grants? Total of about $500 million. Now there's Dine and Discover, another rort scheme, dressed up as Covid relief this time.…

The 'free market' shows industry super funds are light years ahead of the others, as public health and public education also are. They're non-profit, none of your money gets creamed off to pay shareholders and manager…

Roads create traffic. Every road we build to try to reduce congestion just increases the congestion. We don't need bigger roads because everybody bought more cars, people bought more cars because we built bigger roads.…

After royally stuffing up the entire pandemic, the UK government has been trumpeting how it ‘leads the world’ with its wonderful vaccination effort. Actually all it’s doing is hogging all the vaccine for itself, ditto…

Nick's law of applying for jobs. Nearly every job ad you look at for a new position will tell you some shit work that a manager doesn't want to do, and has managed to find budget to employ somebody else to do. In the…

An early John Howard. One of Howard's sneaky ideas was to drive wages down and smash unions, via vast numbers of migrant workers on slave wages. (The pandemic showed this very clearly, when suddenly these slaves were no…

Australians spend $60 billion a year on overseas travel. That's 10 times what the country spends on infrastructure, and about equal to what it spends on education. And nearly every cent of that money ends up overseas.…

Australia's vaccine rollout, said to be 'glacially' slow. Actually when you do the numbers we're rolling out as fast if not even faster than the UK and US did in their early stages, considered world leaders. Look at the…

"I now wonder if constantly frolicking off to far off lands is really the best advice. Is it making us happy? Is it a recipe for self-improvement and enlightenment, or just one for sleep deprivation and self…

Passing the pub test says a lot about thinking. One of the great fallacies about thought for me is that ordinary life is somehow practical and grounded, and 'intellectual' things are abstract and removed from ordinary…

"Somebody said to me very early on, you can get away with anything in a group except for a bad drummer. It's true. You can get a way with playing bad guitar or being a bad singer, but if the drummer's crap, forget…

Cars give you the freedom to go pretty much anywhere in a country. But that freedom bites back much harder against you than for you. Once people can use vehicles to go anywhere, there's nothing any more that makes their…

This is Nordlingen, in southern Germany. Over 1100 years old. (Trivia - also the city shown from the air at the end of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.) Look how beautifully self-contained cities were before…

I discuss things here which the real world decides the outcome of. They're not 'intellectual' debates, they're real-world problems. Like travel, ultimately reality is going to win this debate for me. Look at those…

NSW will need to vaccinate at least 250,000 people *per week* to meet the October timeline for people to get even one dose. 60,000 per week at this hub will be added to jabs at GPs, pharmacies etc. A long way short of…

For those who think our consciousness or mind is in our brain, consider the octopus. It has 9 brains, including one for each arm/tentacle. It has more neurons in its arms than in its head, and the arms can independently…

There's a lot of vaccine triumphalism in the US and UK right now, drunk on their speed of rolling out the shots. Both nations unwilling to do basic public health work, to eliminate the virus. Despite the media stories…

'Home'. We don't understand how *where* we live defines who 'I' am. We don't understand 'place'. That's my apparent obsession with travel, and landscape. The keystone of our entire culture. "Most Westerners believe that…

My dear friend Ben has released this extraordinary book. Looking at Darwin's ideas on psychology, but much more than that, also examining the ways Darwin's thought has been perverted since his death, most often because…

Same story, the world over. When indigenous peoples are displaced, they don't say 'hey, that's my piece of harbourside property, I'm negatively gearing it'. They say 'we are the land'. The land is an integrated part of…

The famous Australian 'Bell Bird'. The Bell Miner, technically. The greatest bully in the Australian bush. Birds sing to create territory, and Bell Birds sing without a pause, all day. A forest where you can hear bell…

Very difficult to talk about vaccines without triggering the anti-vaxxers or New Age wellness "just strengthen your immune system" fruit loops. But I'm wavering on this AZ vaccine, for a variety of reasons. A longish…

The problem with maps I think, is that they're designed to help you navigate, but we see them as pictures of the world. We think they look like the landscape, without noticing that nobody actually lives in the viewpoint…

Yes, all true, ScoMo is useless. But let's flip this. Australia already defeated Covid. The worldwide chest beating about speed of vaccination now is driven by the framework of the idiot countries who *didn't* control…

Have been driving a lot more during the pandemic. Nobody follows speed limits, almost without exception. We have average speed cameras in place for trucks, turn them on for cars. Our hyper-individualism doesn't even see…

The flipside way of looking at how the vaccine 'risk' is being (badly) described. Your chances of winning the lottery are described as about 1 in 50 million. Or 0.000002%. However that's not true. Your chances of…

Brits outraged by this, football about the only thing a post-Thatcher Britain is united on. I wonder if they see the parallels, with themselves and the US creating a Covid Super League, hoovering up most of the world's…

To be blunt about the vaccines, and risk. - right now governments and experts alike are saying the risks are tiny. This is true, for nearly all of us (in fact the risks are zero for most). - but it's absolutely not true…

Who remembers the strawberries and sewing needles incident? Notice how tonnes of strawberries were destroyed, because of the risk some may contain needles. It's a good example of how (I think) risk is being…

No individual makes traffic. Lots of individuals driving together make traffic. There's no separate 'we' making that traffic. To even make sense of traffic, they need to send somebody into the air to report on it, to…

ATAGI is the official scientific body that provides the vaccine advice to government. They've come out to make exactly the points I've been making in recent days, about the illegitimate use of risk in describing any…

The Premier on radio this morning, saying there's no need to report daily Covid case numbers, hospitalisations is enough. That we should be prepared to let the Covid flow through the community, as we open up, safe with…

I often think about the damage the gym junkies have done to our collective mental health, with their skinny ripped ideas. So successfully that 10 out of 10 people will probably describe a healthy body as ripped and…

Straya worships tradies. Tradies are in my family. But there's a reason you can mostly DIY your own plumbing, carpentry, painting etc., but that you can't DIY your own MRI, or commercial airliner, mobile phone or hip…

But you have just a tiny risk of dying from a blood clot! Doesn't seem to be working as a public health message, go figure. Going to need to offer over-50s Pfizer at a minimum, we've bought enough of it. Won't get them…

Often they regret it because we don't live in strong communities any more, so the burden falls hugely on parents. Raising the next generation is the only really important work anybody does, there are no substitutes.…

As a kid I still remember shops being closed both Saturday afternoons and Sundays. You needed to get cash out on a Friday to get you through the weekend. Partly this was the religious Sabbath still shaping society,…

See, 'in a million' kinda works, until what you're doing involves millions of people. Then you should really say "19 of you are going to die". (In fact it's now 32 dead, in the UK.) With vaccines available that don't…

As a kid I asked my dad once what his favourite food was. He said 'soup'. I thought he was mad. Now I find myself actually agreeing with him (a bit late to tell him, but if you're reading somewhere...). The Japanese…

A year ago debates abounded about 'living with the virus' (technically virus 'mitigation'), and eliminating it. Fans of the Economy argued then, and still do now, to live with the virus. They said the virus couldn't be…

I want to challenge the idea that Australia is falling behind the rest of the world by being slow to vaccinate. Let's remember, there is effectively no Covid in Australia. We're not behind the rest of the world, we've…

Much of China is still an entirely different model of humans in the landscape. One that Europe used at one time, too, the village model. People and other living things living in close proximity, in an integrated way.…

From today (actually I think from 17 May in NSW) people aged 50+ can get an AZ jab. Lots of expertise in the news this morning telling everybody this is a 'safe' vaccine, and that the 'benefits outweigh the risks'. Now…

Science, the journal, saying what I've been saying: "Even a long wait for an alternative may be worth it if infections are low. In Norway, the risk of dying from TTS for women age 45 to 49 is equivalent to the risk of…

Beautiful piece of teaching here from Brian Cox, have a look if you have 4 minutes, about why 'time' as we mean it doesn't exist. Interestingly many (like Brian) then go on to say that looking into the sky is 'looking…

Everybody lies, we're all politicians. Not because we're dishonest, but because what we think people mean and feel is always our own translation. Love the most brutal example, nobody loves us, they love their own idea…

Gladys - "our response will be proportionate". Please just for once people unpack the weaponised spin. What she means by this is 'we will avoid lockdown at all costs'. As if lockdown was the evil here, not the virus.…

I'm sure graphs don't excite many, but this one's a beaut. Blue line, countries who chose to 'live with the virus', impact on health, the Economy and peoples' freedom. Red line, countries (like Oz) that chose to…

There are all sorts of theories about why bad things happen in the world. Capitalism, power, inequality, toxic masculinity, Left, Right, etc. etc. None of those things are real, I don't think. This photo to me…

This is how Gladys works. Declares she's against lockdowns, then asks the public to do it for her. That way she can say she doesn't do lockdowns, while she actually does lockdowns. And seriously, what does 'strongly…

Was in a webinar with John Skerritt this week, head of the TGA, the body that approves vaccines in Oz. A nice guy. This quote from him though shows the danger of medicalising a pandemic. "By being vaccinated, we're not…

Experts fighting back. Not the house-trained poodles the government surrounds itself with, real expertise. I'd beg everybody to read this, except that would be demeaning. But then I do wear Crocs, so I'll beg anyway.

A nasty budget last night. Token amounts to aged care and women, neither of which will fix the problems there. Tax offsets for low and middle income earners to get through one more election, after which their taxes go…

The joke here is that school is irrelevant. The reality is that most jobs are a stupid waste of time where you have to turn your brain off to stay sane.

The same people who urged us to 'live with the virus' all last year, are seeing another opportunity to spread stupidity. I'll leave it to Professor Raina Macintyre to clear up: "But COVID-19 isn’t a chronic disease that…

Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is the most expensive painting ever sold, at $578 million. If it was found to be a fake, its value would drop to about a dollar, immediately, even if the copy was impossible to distinguish from…

Wisdom of the crowd. It's an actual, studied thing. In the right circumstances, a crowd is smarter than anybody in it. It's not what we usually call 'democracy'. In this case, the overwhelming crowd favourite is also…

Corruption, plain and simple. The National Archive is having to do fundraising to be able to keep some of our basic historical records, and aged care staff got no pay rise in the latest budget, but these clowns can find…

Until 1984, foreign ships containing suspected carriers of infectious disease had to disembark passengers at Sydney's quarantine station, seen here on North Head. Quarantine facilities were sold off or closed down at…

I'm a fan of data, but data without good hypotheses is useless. I posted a hypothesis here about how fridges may be responsible for some of our chronic health problems, by removing the microbes we used to eat. Another…

The curious, topsy-turvy world of pandemics. In health, public health professionals deal with population-level strategy. GPs/physicians deal with the health of individuals. This is from the GPs, but is a statement of…

Last year I argued with people here about Covid and school safety. I feel vindicated that the year since has proved Covid spreads in schools as easily if not more easily than everywhere else, that children are infected…

I'm not seeing hysteria in NZ about how fast they're vaccinating. They made a deliberate decision to give everybody in the country the safest possible vaccine. It probably slowed their rollout, but lives of the public…

Racism, paternalism, pandemics. With an Ebola outbreak (for example), rich countries rush to lock those countries down to prevent the Ebola getting to us. Notice how with Covid, the exact opposite was done? Rich…

Rich countries are like cars who refuse to slow down for roadwork. Movement is their pathological obsession. For the whole of the pandemic they've tried to run 'normal life' alongside a pandemic. Now they're doing it…

Thanks To Dave Roma for this shot. They're doing extensive renovations on the court house at the moment, I watch them every day. Another example of how technology is really morals wrapped up in materials. When you build…

Channel 9 trying to do a good thing, and in the process probably damaging public health work even further. Much of what they promise vaccination will do here, like get us flying again, may not actually be true. The US…

This from the TGA today, our main regulator for medicines. Stay with me, I know it might seem dry... "With the ongoing risk of COVID outbreaks in Australia and the potential for severe long-term effects or fatal…

Have done a lot of risk management in my work. Here's another example of what to me is quite outrageous dishonesty in the vaccine debate. Just about every expert, doctor and politician is telling people every day that…

Hmm, it seems people are soon going to have to choose between the mental health destruction of children not going to school (seriously, I can barely type that without laughing), or them getting Covid.

Say you were asked to go and find Coca-Cola, the company. Like being asked to go and get a pair of shoes from your cupboard. Where would you go? To its headquarters? But it exists all around the world. There's no doubt…

I'm seeing the same Economy-driven nonsense in other natural events now, not just the pandemic. For example yesterday, this was the travel advisory for the highway. I was on that road yesterday morning, there's no way…

Measles is a master of infection. It spreads literally like wildfire. But another thing it does is even more interesting. If you catch it, it can wipe your immune system's memory of every other disease you were already…

Hmm. For context, the Europeans restricted AZ to the over 60s, not 50s like here. This means they're now saying don't give it to anybody. Huge.…

"Resilience has been built out of our health systems, and replaced by just-in-time systems designed to run at close to 100 per cent bed occupancy in normal times." Also the reason supermarkets sell out of toilet paper…

Once upon a time, you could buy cigarettes in hospital.

One of my passions is unravelling the big generalist terms that dominate our lives. Like 'The Economy'. Or 'business'. Or 'traffic'. None of those exist. Another that doesn't is 'the public'. There is no such thing.…

When we reach the point in Australia (and we will) when public voices call for us to infect children with Covid, so older folk can go on OS holidays with open borders, remember research like this. Showing that people…

Can anybody explain what possible purpose the words 'strongly encouraged' have in a public health notice?

National Cabinet to meet today to discuss vaccine hesitancy. Ideas come full circle, remember the #metoo discussion about consent? Does anybody remember a suggestion that somebody hesitant to have sex with somebody…

Gotta fight stupid wherever you see it. Australia and NZ *ARE* living with Covid. That's what all of our public health measures are for. Unsurprisingly one of the Bibles of the Economy crowd arguing to...well, it's not…

Imagining the NSW spin doctors having long, late nights, trying to find a way to rationalise locking down Sydney after spending a year vomiting nonsense about NSW not needing to do that sort of thing. Why you should…

The government public messaging seems to have missed this, so for information. If you've been in Greater Sydney (includes the Blue Mountains), or the Central Coast, Shellharbour or Wollongong since 10 June, you MUST…

Scientists are puzzled that brain activity drops when a person is 'hallucinating'. You'd expect bran activity to go up, if the brain is creating all of these images. What they're not getting is that the brain produces…

It's not a cat, but stick with me. This idea of a 'proportionate' approach to the pandemic. A grown-up colouring game, one LGA at a time. NSW refuses to 'lock down' a whole area when there's a major outbreak. But all…

Remember the 'R number' from earlier in the pandemic"? An R less than 1 means a pandemic is under control. This is Sydney's R number for the past 5 days. I think many whose idea of thinking through the pandemic has been…

If you Google 'love', you get this sort of image. I'm back on love because of a quote from the Buddha I saw, that said if you like a flower, you pick it. If you love it, you water it. It'd be easy to sentimentalise even…

Closing a loop on many of my posts. We're 18 months into a global emergency, which would go away in weeks if everybody stayed home.

We absolutely smashed the flu last year, globally. Fell off a cliff. An important question is, why can't we do that every year? Why do we accept to live with potentially lethal infections? Until we understand why our…

Choose your sides people. I watch the UK news every day, today’s bulletin is a story about how 250,000 school children have had to isolate at home because ‘only 9000’ of them were actually infected with Covid. Only! In…

ScoMo pulled a real swifty yesterday, announcing younger people can get the AZ vaccine after talking to their doctor. Turns out he hadn't consulted anybody. Medical experts furious. Will probably get a boost in…

Have been lucky to be able to discuss this pandemic with Brendan many times. His thinking is always spot-on. You cannot live with this virus, the next time somebody near you suggests we should, hit them across the face…

Fascinating that we smashed flu last year - you can see its death spiral at the start of the big national lockdown in Feb-March 2020 - but that it continues to be flatlined into 2021. It's just non-existent. Despite NSW…

Wanted to re-share this, because it can be life-changing. Notice how this hawk's head is absolutely still, even while its body is doing the most extreme movements. Its attention never wavers from what it's looking at.…

Have posted about this before I think, but it's becoming more topical every day. Do people support the idea of vaccinating adults, and then letting kids get infected with Covid, as a way out of the pandemic? Because…

The oldest trick in the modern conservative's playbook is to knee-cap taxation (on the wealthy), and then claim the resulting budget deficit is due to too much spending. The spending doesn't change much at all, it's…

Don't get me wrong, I do love dogs. And all animals. But I've often wondered at how the sort of 'love' a dog gives, is exactly the sort that repulses people in most human relationships? Slobbery, worshipping, the sort…

I liked this. There's also a serious point to it. Modern conservatives like to say that the government gets in peoples' way, restricts their freedom. But the government IS the people. Who else would it be? When the…

Who remembers this? I think we need to strongly oppose the idiot idea that our 'mental health' isn't up to a fight in this pandemic. Politicians use a behaviour model that says we're all fragile egos, individuals curled…

For more than 18 months the NSW Government has lied, just as Boris lied in the UK, about ‘following the health advice’. As the article says, “There has been…no admission that its business-influenced approach to the…

The accurate and sensible headline here would be “Businesses Struggle with Outbreak of COVID.” Notice that time and again conservatives try to frame public health measures as the problem, not the virus.

When you're 'following the health advice', best to have it well harnessed to the carriage, and a good whip at hand.

You'll never guess, it wasn't Scott's fault. Nothing ever is. It was the 'medical advice'. You know, that medical advice he and Gladys always say they're 'following'.…

Political strategy 101. Thanks to Matt Lucas for his brilliant impersonation. Boris appears a bumbling fool. He's sharp as a tack. The NSW Government is copying him. Pretend to be doing public health work, but twist the…

There's nothing quite as disgusting as Boris' latest spin. 'Levelling up'. The idea being, rather than address rampant, outrageous inequality, with the top 1% of society wallowing in all of a country's wealth, he will…

A photographer from regional Victoria. Her anger is at a public health measure, designed to save thousands of lives. That isn’t even mentioned. Her collapse in income is her only focus. No doubt that’s extremely…

‘Ring-fencing’ suburbs and even whole regional towns is about as effective as trying to avoid a fart in an elevator, by standing on the opposite side. The NSW Government again asleep at the wheel. Watch the toilet…

When the Economy crowd take over government (regulatory capture), this is what happens. Never, ever trust somebody who believes the Economy exists. They will kill you, and your family, without blinking an eye.

Another major industry doing its bit to undermine basic public health measures. Alan Joyce was back at it again yesterday too. Gerry Harvey is a regular. There is no society for these people, just an Economy. The…

If you know anybody who feels we need to 'learn to live with Covid', some sobering findings out of the UK. People who have been infected with Covid (remembering this includes many who are vaccinated, the vaccines don't…

Australians spend more on alcohol than on gas and electricity, or petrol. We spend more on booze than we do on clothes, and almost as much as we spend on health.

The lockdown in Orange, Blayney and Cabonne lifted overnight. Went for a week. The news said the focus will now be on peoples’ ‘mental health’ during the lockdown. I’m sorry, but if a week-long stay-at-home impacts our…

Compare with the graph for NSW I posted yesterday. Truly criminal incompetence in NSW, already killing people. Those people would be alive right now if the government had done its job. Many more deaths and lifelong…

Great piece from a public health professional about what our lives with Covid may look like into the future. The 'burden of disease' point is critical. Politicians and business people are desperate for people to believe…

Testing the public messaging. Who hears in the public announcements and discussions that the Covid strategy is to get as many people vaccinated as possible, so that the virus might still be there but we won’t get very…

This dam in the UK was failing, they evacuated the entire nearby town while it was fixed. Nobody suggested ‘living with’ the leaking dam, it was clear the dam failing would have flooded the town. Now ask why the same…

The ‘Economy’ and economics are the most deeply brainwashed ideas. Here’s another example. The word ‘economics’ comes from the ancient Greek, meaning ‘management of a household’. Who does that? Overwhelmingly, women.…

A well-meaning video mired in confusion. More gravity! You can’t ‘push yourself up’ out of a chair, because standing is not ‘up’, and sitting is not ‘down’. It’s your body in 2 different shapes, one supported by your…

This is malaria. It’s estimated it may have killed half the people who have ever lived. 50 billion people. It’s an endemic disease in many countries. They ‘live with’ it. Exactly what people want to do with Covid. The…

Covid is flatlining in the UK, and nobody is really sure why. It’s not vaccines, though they’re likely a major contributor. Not enough people are vaccinated there to explain the dramatic drop in cases. It could be…

Read these daily updates. This is an unfolding catastrophe. Nearly every corner of the State now getting hits. What does the NSW Government do differently in response? Nothing. Get vaccinated, they're not going to save…

I’m now double-jabbed. Regional health providers have now been told to offer (encourage) people to have their second AZ shot after 8 weeks, and I’ve heard of some offering only 4. (Mine was 9 weeks.) Goes to show that…

This is really important. The PM established National Cabinet to bypass parliament. It has no jurisdiction and no authority. He tried to say it was a committee of the Cabinet so that its papers would be secret. A court…

Twice in Australian history, the ‘reserve powers’ have been used to remove a sitting government. Once in 1932, when the NSW Governor removed Premier Jack Lang (picture). And once in 1975, when the Governor-General…

This doesn't appear to be only targeted at current hotspots, I can't see any geographical references where NSW Health and the federal Department of Health have been posting it. If you want proof of the ineptitude of the…

Our bodies evolved to automatically coordinate to what we want to do. You never have to ‘do’ your movement, or even basic posture, as some people call it. Here’s a tip - any time you feel a strain or a tension or…

Watch Health Hazzard mansplain superbly here, to prevent the Chief Health Officer of NSW answering any questions. They know her answering honestly here would end their government. Look at Dr Chant's body language.…

Have any Gladys fans had a 'hmmm' moment yet? Case numbers? It spreading to both Bathurst and Dubbo now? Hospital beds filling fast? Nothing sowing the seeds of doubt?

Guess which strategy NSW is using? Control by suburb. Like trying to fence wind. They're not following the health advice, if you believe that I have a great second-hand car for you.

Lost his entire family inside one week. Is it registering for people the catastrophe we’re in the middle of? Why don’t people talk about it? Are we using bullshit ‘positivity’ to try to avoid facing up to grown up…

The pandemic has never been a medical or even biological event. It’s a political event. It was caused by and is being prolonged by pathological individualism - libertarianism. The NSW Government are libertarians.…

This is Australia's number 1 public health expert.

You don’t have to pay any attention to my advice. But it’s this. Assume the State is already in total lockdown. The government refuses to do it, but Covid is everywhere and spreading fast. Do the lockdown yourselves.…

The skyrocket is off. These people aren’t getting infected because they’re not following (pissweak) rules. They’re getting infected at workplaces the government refuses to close, and then taking it home to their…

Lucky the workplaces the rest of us are in have much tougher infection control procedures than hospitals, hey.

Again, avoid anything politicians say in a pandemic. Listen to people on the front-line, like this doctor. The so many people taking comfort from the daily weaponised spin from the NSW Government aren’t aware yet of the…

Listen to to the NSW Chief Health officer. Ignore the Premier completely. It’s ordinary people doing ordinary things - going to work - who are the problem. Why are they going to work? Because the government refuses to…

Extraordinary that the same people who looked on with horror at Trump, seem completely oblivious to the same thing happening here. Trump succeeded because conservative strategists progressively destroyed public…

Projections for hospitalisations, ICU, those who will need ventilation, and deaths. NSW. We’re at about Day 60 now. Right on track on every metric.

What happens when you turn ‘democracy’ from being just all of us choosing leaders every few years, who then go on to do the work of running the place with officials until the next election, into meaning everybody is…

"Gladys has so spectacularly muffed the pandemic, and ICAC is bearing down on her still, so it is little wonder there is talk of a spill...Yet the Premier of NSW has been enormously popular. Berejiklian has the uncanny…

Every day the NSW Premier and PM suggest to us that 70% and 80% vaccination will mean much of our freedom will return. It’s a lie, every single day. This is 30 seconds from the head of the Institute who did the report…

How much better will you sleep knowing that the PM has ignored expert advice to end the pandemic, and is quoting Batman movies instead?

Steve Duckett once ran the national health department. He knows his shit. "Governments cannot keep making unrealistic promises about easing restrictions at 70% and 80% adult vaccination, a plan that relied on optimistic…

Reality biting, fingers crossed. Kids to be vaccinated and more caution around the magical 70-80% drivel, at National Cabinet today. The PM will have to be dragged kicking and screaming, like every point in the pandemic…

Here’s a new Gladys neat trick. She’s said many times what matters isn’t how many people get infected, it’s how many end up in hospital. Look how many she’s hiding from that statistic by having people treated at home,…

My grandmother died this month. My last remaining grandparent. Nanna. Because of Covid she got no funeral, though at some point we’ll get together and commemorate her. That’s her on the left, holding either me or Mike…

People of Australia, the rubber has hit the road. The massive national question right now is, will we open up the country and allow millions of children and adults to become infected with Covid? Or will we wait a few…

An international expert. But really, you’d have to be brain dead to believe otherwise. Or the PM or NSW Premier.

"Cases are rising, dangerously so, in New South Wales but, despite the protestations of its Premier to the contrary, it is because of the slow response and very loose lockdown enabling the virus to continue to spread.…

A very short explanation of what ‘live with the virus’ actually means. It absolutely doesn’t mean everybody get vaccinated, and then we’re safe and we can let the virus do what it likes. We need Covid to become like…

There’s a lot of public discussion about the Doherty Report. Here’s the crux of it, outcomes for different levels of vaccination (adults only). The first 6 months after ‘opening up’. Worth noting: - even at the 80%…

When they announce that people who have died of Covid had ‘underlying health conditions’, it’s worth remembering nearly half of all Australians have those.

O dear Bathurst. Also worth noting here that cases are growing faster outside the LGAs 'of concern' than inside them. Unsurprisingly, with the NSW mockdown. The Premier yesterday released 'modelling' on hospitalisations…

How disgusting is it that at the exact time NSW is expected to have the most people in hospital and dying of Covid, this Premier is planning to open up bars and restaurants for vaccinated residents of suburbs like…

The NSW Government 'follows the health advice' in the same way a yacht tacks into a strong headwind.

The government released a ‘roadmap’ out of the pandemic yesterday. The metaphor tells you everything. Nobody uses roadmaps any more, we all use GPS. Real-time data adjusted to constantly changing conditions. Somebody…

The NSW Premier just announced she will no longer be giving daily press conferences. NSW Health staff will do them instead. She announced this immediately after saying the next few weeks will be the worst for Covid…

Did people read this one? If you follow every tiny detail of the pandemic, as I have to for work, it’s things already known. But for many you can read here how NSW has just barefaced lied for months. It isn’t following…

I have many friends who struggle with sleep. I’ve never been a fantastic sleeper either. This modified section from Claire Weekes I think is worth repeating regularly. I’m not sure I’ve met anybody who struggled with…

Covid will in no way be 'like the flu'. Flu is an endemic disease, Covid is not. Also the 'peak' of cases and hospitalisations - there is no one peak. The peak shifts every time you change conditions.

The latest thing is to say that it doesn’t matter if lots of people get infected, provided they’re all vaccinated and don’t end up in hospital. Let’s test that against normal life. Say there was an epidemic of head…

Something that’s become clear in this pandemic is how invisible basic public health work, which goes on every day of every year, is to much of the community. Take the idea again, that it doesn’t matter how many people…

Why aren’t we as a society insisting upon vaccinating kids against Covid before sending them back to school? Here’s a historical comparison. Whooping cough, pertussis. Before vaccines, about 50-120 deaths per year. I’ve…

Know when kids in science at school say 'how am I going to use this in later life'? We have a new answer. You may not have a later life, if you don't shut up and learn.…

Is everybody happy infecting several hundred thousand children and killing up to 60 of them in the next 6 months, under the government's re-opening plan? These are the government's numbers, before you people who think…

I think Australia is sleepwalking into something it just isn't seeing. Right now it thinks the opening up plans of 70 and 80-% are great, because they think it'll be just more of what they have right now, with extra…

Remember Nick Coatsworth, the eye candy Deputy Chief Health Officer of Australia? He's a world champion wanker.

The UN’s hip new educational TikTok. I watched it about 20 times and can’t remember a single word, my brain couldn’t process just how bad it all was.

The NSW Premier and our PM both tell us that the reason 2021 is different is because ‘Delta is like nothing we have seen before’. More lies, more spin. We’ve beaten far more infectious diseases than Delta. The only…

An aspect of the months between now and Christmas many aren’t aware of, is that the National Covid plan, modelled by Doherty and driven by the PM, involves the mass infection of children. This is quite deliberate, as it…

Data from the US is now suggesting vaccination plus infection with the Delta strain is equivalent to being unvaccinated, against the Alpha strain from last year. In other words, we’re heading back to square one. What…

In years to come, remember this video. Substitute ‘cholera’ or ‘Ebola’ for ‘this virus’, and you’ll get a sense of how collectively insane we all now are. That we swallow these ridiculous, meaningless slogans, like…

Please sign, so that 'open a window' isn't the only public health measure used to protect young children. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/Pages/ePetition-details.aspx?q=rpEwNg2UB9+LpW1NhPZzdA==

As one prominent journalist said, the NSW Government is run for business, by business. Shredders going flat-out in the Reverend Dom’s office, with all the NSW Health advice. The Deputy Premier, our own novelty cheque…

I know I post Covid things into the void. More than 800 children have been hospitalised in NSW for Covid since this outbreak began. And this is before restrictions are lifted. 5% of child Covid cases are ending up in…

Rotary gives more money to the World Health Organisation than most countries. Australia well down the list. Another reason why pandemics happen and take ages to make go away. The graph tells the story.

Talking about vaccines for younger kids. Professor Cheng, co-chair of ATAGI, the group that will rule on safety: “When we are thinking about 80-year-olds, where the danger of COVID is really obvious, [about] a third of…

Something to remember if you support the ‘live with the virus’ idea. We’re all going to catch Covid at some point, vaccinated or not. Covid is a vascular disease, not a respiratory disease. It can attack any of your…

Feedback suggests some people like a different perspective on the pandemic, beyond the endless repetition of meaningless political slogans like 'live with the virus'. So I'll keep at it. Today - hospitalisations. "It's…

The subtleties of spin. Now we have 'Freedom Day', the health data released daily has been butchered. Case numbers pushed down the graphic, vaccinations now top place. No details of which LHDs the cases are in, no…

Nothing like a big, cold beer to wash that Covid down. (The Premier here breaching the Public Health Orders by standing while drinking, but hey, get that beer in ya.)

Well now, the zoomed-out version shows 5 lots of fines for Revenue NSW, score. It is good to see normal service returning in NSW, where the blokes are at the pub, the ladies homeschooling, the alcohol and gambling and…

Things we haven’t learned in the past 2 years. 1. We really hate borders and restrictions when they’re applied to us, but we fall over ourselves to vote for politicians who apply them to other people. 2. Most of the…

The UK is 'living with Covid' (we're copying them). 1.1 million of them now have long Covid. Over 400,000 of those have had it more than a year. Another 1500 added every week. The impact on the brain for those with long…

Those who back the NSW Government the way they might back an NRL team often defend what they do by also praising NSW Health. It’s been many months since the NSW Government listened much to NSW Health. Now they’ve…

The same NCIRS who advised governments that kids are damaged more by missing school than they are by Covid, have endorsed the ‘No Jab No Play, No Jab No Pay’ scheme for years. Nearly all of the diseases in that scheme…

The health system, like most systems, is run at about 60-70% full capacity, to allow for the peaks and troughs that happen each year. Right now, globally, politicians are trying to run health systems at 100+% capacity,…

Was chatting to one of Australia’s leading virologists yesterday, about how he sees Covid panning out in the years ahead, with the ‘living with Covid’ idea. For comparison, in a bad flu year in Australia, we get about…

Not just ignoring the health advice now, also ignoring the National Plan and Doherty modelling. Our very own God-bothering Trumpie. (Just for the slow people at the back, the vaccines don't stop people carrying or…

I rarely post about my personal life to FB, which leads some to assume I don’t have one and ‘live on FB’ instead. I spend maybe 15 minutes on FB a day. They on the other hand think you don't have a life, if it's not on…

A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. Alexander Pope

More life as a high school. Melbourne re-opens. It’s curious that the narrative around lockdowns has been that people are healthiest and happiest when they can mix socially. That without it, they become lonely and…

The 'living with the virus' slogan. Anybody uttering it needs to explain exactly what they mean. Here's an example - whooping cough. Pertussis. We 'live with' it. There's a vaccine. Between 2008 and 2012 we had a…

Reckon they were discussing the best public health strategy to end the pandemic? Me either.

Those who doubt school re-openings are nothing about education - this is a federal minister, speaking on Sunday. Disgusts me that there isn’t public outcry about the deliberate infection of children with Covid. Not a…

CDC, Centre for Disease Control in the US, their main regulatory body. Compare and contrast with our 'masks are ludicrous in schools' Deputy Premier. Yesterday most Covid cases in NSW were in the regions. When asked…

Imagine a road safety strategy that said 'we're getting thousands of crashes a week, but very few people need to go to hospital.' Substitute 'Covid cases' for 'crashes', and you have our national Covid strategy.

It’s looking increasingly like the Covid vaccines may need to be 3-dose vaccines. Not a booster so much as a 3-dose primary course. So far in Oz even boosters are just voluntary. We should be using vaccines to drive…

Covid can enter the brain directly, through your nose. Vaccination won’t stop it.

This alphabetised list of 'genders' should represent the last gasp of the gender identification movement. Just one of many damning examples in the image, 'Smoothiegender'. I'm no reactionary. Transgender is defined as…

Before the 20th century, overwhelmingly the greatest fatalities in war came from infectious disease, not the fighting. The US Civil War, for example, where about 700,000 people died. Two-thirds of those died of…

The coming possible tidal wave of compensation claims against employers by employees who catch Covid at work (projected over $600 million in NSW alone). It’s not just health that Covid impacts. Flu already costs…

The UK government has now deliberately infected: - nearly half of its babies under 1 - nearly 60% of its toddlers aged 1-4 - 81% of UK children aged 5-14. Meantime they and politically conservative medical professionals…

Today’s news from Covid land. The ‘booster’ shots are really the 3rd dose in a 3-dose schedule. They work like gangbusters, whether you had AZ or Pfizer, they’ll supercharge you to the same level. If you’re wondering…

There will be no endemic Covid, despite what politicians and (alarmingly) some experts might tell you. It's an epidemic disease. Trying to live with it is like inviting Covid to be your flatmate, and then discovering…

As a measure of just how out of 'balance' (a word dear to modern conservatives, by which they mean 'do nothing') society is, the other day one of Australia's most powerful unions negotiated a 3% per annum pay rise for…

The world is full of such nice people. Spoke to a person yesterday whose work ute got trapped in floodwaters. Came back the next morning to try to retrieve it, and found somebody had been overnight, flogged all of the…

‘I have faith in NSW Health’ many said to me over the past year. In the delusion NSW Health was actually being listened to. The facts are coming out now.

Between May and November 2020 Australians were the healthiest they've ever been. What's bad for the 'Economy' is terribly GOOD for us. The 'Economy' is a tool, and obviously one that isn't working. Let's get rid of it.

Double vaccinated. Wear a mask. https://thenewdaily.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/2021/11/22/tottie-goldsmith-hospital-covd/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PM%20Extra%20-%2020211122_State%20Specific

Vaccine doses are being thrown away. We could all be getting boosters right now, but the government won't allow it because of (guess): the election. For them the vaccines work fine for 6 months to do the only thing they…

Latest South African variant, scaring the virology community. We thought Delta was bad (blue line). This one is mutating 4 times faster than flu (why we have a different flu shot every year - this Covid variant is…

Round of applause for whoever in the Department of Health put this tool together. It lets you track Covid restrictions across the entire country, in a few clicks, across all the different areas of life. If you're not…

Think about this one for a moment. ‘Finally will have a Saturday off’ i.e. wage-slave to a job. To go to a freedom rally to protest protections from Covid. Full libertarian victory, even the young see going to…

Now the Australian government has caught up with the rest of the world with travel restrictions for the new Covid variant, let’s see if it will also relax its 6-month rule on 3rd vaccine doses. Politically it doesn’t…

Rupert again doing his bit to undermine all public health efforts, to keep that Economy running. Total BS, in every detail. The second this variant appeared, the spin started, to protect Christmas retail and travel,…

The Omicron Covid variant is infecting people who have had 3 doses of vaccine. The vaccines won't prevent infection. You may think, following politicians, that this doesn't matter, because the vaccines will keep you out…

A medical friend made a great comparison yesterday. We like to think of Covid as 'like the flu', because flu and colds are part of our normal life. But medically, infection with Covid is much more like concussion head…

What this graph shows is that some people have had Covid 3 times in 2 years. Have you ever had the flu 3 times in 2 years? Remembering also that Covid is much more dangerous to your body than flu. Have we reached a…

One of the world's leading infectious disease experts said late last week that the world may be closer to the beginning of the pandemic, than the end. You wouldn't know it, with the idiot pre-Christmas Hopium orgy, as…

In today’s Covid news, data out of Israel shows that the 3rd booster vaccine dose fades in effectiveness as fast as the 2nd dose did. And this is with Delta - early signs are Omicron is 4 times as infectious. We’re…

Anti-vax British doctor gets banned from social media. Gets the ban overturned. Goes on British right-wing nut job channel to talk about his persecution. Gets message from his prostitute mid-interview, on screen. Leaves…

Omicron data from the rest of the world is dire. But the Dom is on top of it. We can’t fight it, because it will be too onerous for all of those small businesses selling cafe lattes and scented candles. And he’s still…

Zooming out can give a very different view. This is an age of extreme and growing wealth inequality. At the same time it’s an age of populism, where increasing numbers of people reject democratic due process in favour…

The new Premier won’t allow NSW Health to say much in public. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out. So here they are, trying to tell you that Christmas parties, incuding work ones, and pubs and clubs, are giving…

Omicron doubling every 2-3 days in the UK. 1 million infections expected by Christmas. The government there in meltdown, leadership knows desperate action needed, its own backbench in revolt against it. Politicians…

I do understand FB is the place people come now to pretend we’re still in 2018. Sorry that my posts probably spoil that, if anybody even reads them.

In today’s Covid news, why a fast-spreading but ‘mild’ version of Covid is far more lethal than a slower-spreading, more severe variant. (Note that nobody actually knows if Omicron is mild - that’s just political spin…

In today’s Covid news, the supposedly ‘mild’ Omicron variant. Hospitalisation rates in Denmark about the same as for other variants. Overwhelmingly the Danish being infected in the early days are 20-29, which will…

"...clusters linked to nightclubs and pubs threaten to push daily cases into the thousands by the end of the year...A NSW Health spokesperson said they were unable to confirm how many people were now considered close…

Wheeee, isn't this fun NSW? The Health Minister said no changes needed, he wants 'normal' life back in NSW. We're all in a bus on the Jenolan Caves road, driven by psychopaths high on meth.

This diagram is standard WHS, applied to Covid. Australia is doing 6, just. 1-5, nothing. Really highlights how populist idiot politicians have hijacked a standard public health response.

NSW Health Minister predicts 25,000 cases per day by January. Nobody seems to care.

NSW Health says wear a mask. The Premier says don’t. Who do you choose?

'Only hospitalisations matter'. Just one example of the stupidity of that statement. People who get infected are just like people with the flu - out of action. Multiple that by the tens or hundreds of thousands, and…

You won’t find a better picture to sum up what’s happening right now. The ‘health advice’ at the front, stressed, trying to save us from catastrophe. The boring conservative middle-aged blokes who make the decisions at…

Again I apologise for those who find Covid discussion distasteful. Plenty of things for you to scroll past and look at instead. But think of it this way, if the government has given up keeping you healthy (which it…

Support Health Workers. Wear a mask.

Bear with me, with Covid. Cat pictures available upon request. This is a big reason 'live with the virus/only hospitalisations matter' (a mass infection Covid strategy) can't work. Society shuts down, just as it would…

But the paramedics didn’t need to go to hospital, so all good. Living with the virus.

Dan is an immunologist who works for NSW Heath, who together with other experts there felt compelled today to sound the alarm. Spend the minutes watching this, please, he’s wonderfully articulate and explains the…

Have we noticed the shift, from leaders ‘following the medical advice’, to the medical advice now having to write letters to leaders, pleading to be listened to? Does it make us all nervous? It really should, I find a…

Cases don't matter, only hospitalisations matter. Now try it as 'leaks don't matter, only your roof collapsing matters'. The analogy is exact.

Here's a projection of NSW cases, from one of the prominent modellers, based on current numbers. And the quote below is from Professor Adrian Esterman, a leading Australian public health person who has worked for the…

If you got AZ as your vaccine, get your booster as soon as you can. (The government doesn't give a shit, it urged all of us to get AZ, often only 3-4 weeks between doses.) These graphs show risk of severe disease and…

It’s going well. Apologies again to those who use FB as a ‘positive’ escape from reality. When I post, I think ‘do I want to post something that might help save somebody’s life, or do they want a picture of my cat?’ I…

Israel just made 4th vaccine doses compulsory for some groups. For those taking comfort in the propaganda that Covid will become ‘just like the flu’ by allowing mass and repeated infection, remind yourself the last time…

Not that anyone actually bet, but a win. Important for people to know that the Chief Medical Officer stressed yesterday is that people should wear a mask indoors too. The government simply refuses to mandate it.…

For those drunk on the hopium of ‘lots of infection will make us more immune and make the pandemic go away’, Omicron is happily reinfecting people who catch it, sometimes only weeks later. It’s so infectious it may…

The Health Minister needs a dictionary. Everybody compulsorily catching Covid isn’t ‘health’. I didn’t vote for him. I suspect millions of lemmings still would.

From inside NSW Health. Worth a few minutes. Insight into what’s happening inside pathologies and hospital For the past few days there has been a huge amount of misinformation regarding COVID testing and as a healthcare…

The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in the US, the most prestigious infectious disease institution in the world. It understands you can’t ‘live with’ Covid. The next steps in our denial of this will be governments: -…

Here you can watch the massaging of Covid data in real-time. Spot the difference between the NSW Health message on 23 December, and the one from 1 hour ago. (If it focuses attention, remember this could be you, within…

Maybe the world has run out of Covid tests because everybody is getting infected? Maybe we need to stop people getting infected with Covid? Maybe (try this one on for size) to end a pandemic, you actually have to stop…

Yesterday’s numbers a bit unrepresentative because there was a lot of catch-up from Christmas. Compare today with 2 days prior. Cases doubled in 2 days. Hospitalisations going up by more than 100 per day. Huge…

Governments now not even bothering to do testing. You can do it yourself. Also a brilliant way for the government to hide the true number of Covid cases, because if they’re not doing the testing, they don’t know the…

Remember ‘hospitalisations are what matter’? Predictably, now they’re trending up, suddenly that spin has gone a bit quiet. Also predictably, social media is still pretending we’re all living in 2018. As Covid inches…

[Re-posting, because NSW Health had the wrong hospitalisation figure, they’ve updated it now.] The NSW Health Minster (I use those terms loosely) said we’d get over 20,000 cases per day by the end of January. It’s the…

Stupid beyond words. They’re doing this because NOBODY ORDERED THE TESTS. Brought to you by the same federal government who didn’t order any vaccines. Do your best to survive, it’s literally all on you now.

Here’s a way to maybe bridge the gap between how we think about landscape and how aborigines do. Our agriculture sees soil, water, plants and animals as means to an end. To provide us with food. However plants, animals,…

Ethical vegans view life in the same way Right to Lifers do - I’m curious if they see that. Environmental and health-based vegans pay no attention at all to actual landscapes and how they work. These idealised views to…

Penrith hitting 48.9 degrees yesterday made me think yet again - where we need to get to with climate change isn’t everybody who dismisses it suddenly believing it. We need to get to them saying ‘ok, maybe there’s a…

Here’s a question for anybody who says solar power is no good as a mass power option, because it only works when the sun shines. Who the hell uses much energy when the sun doesn’t shine? You’re asleep.

More on selfies. Yes they’re a picture of ‘me’, but isn’t the ‘me in many (most?) selfies actually a copy or imitation of somebody else?

More vortex tubes. You can buy one for about $50. Nobody can explain how they work (I suspect Archimedes could, but nobody reads him now). They defy modern physics. Simple compressed air in the top, instantly splits…

Maybe this is the greatest illusion we live under. ‘The body’. When you use a straw, it really does feel like you’re ‘sucking’ that liquid up the straw. But you’re not, the Earth’s atmosphere is pushing it up the straw.…

Testing a perception. Did anybody else find that the human interest side of the bushfires, with press descending on towns, only really took off when coastal towns were threatened? Minimal before then.

Both Proust and Tarde said people don’t fall out of love, they fall in love with somebody else. A desire is always overpowered by another new desire. You don’t stop liking vanilla ice cream, you start liking strawberry…

Overheard somebody saying that 'red tape' is slowing the handing out of bushfire donations to victims. That red tape is likely just working out some mechanism to hand the bloody stuff out, including figuring out who…

I asked my son for a definition of ‘woke’, and he said “the opposite of you”. Burn. On Straya Day, why would somebody wanting to use a term like ‘Ms’ instead of Mrs be woke or politically correct, but somebody who…

This one is still a bit of a sleeper. https://ama.com.au/ausmed/algae-could-be-behind-deadly-disease-outbreak

In this excellent new Dracula, at one point there’s a chilling dramatic device where he says that people shouldn’t choose cremation because ‘it hurts’, and then allows us to hear people buried in a cemetery screaming to…

Democracy is often seen as the increasing freedom of individuals. But actually, that freedom is the increasing freedom to have others serve you. Under kings and emperors and tyrants, only they have the right to demand…

Have you ever been betrayed? The idea of betrayal is an interesting one. Like relationships are a contract. Proust said the essence of love is betrayal, not because people are bad, but because we love the idea of…

It doesn’t make sense to me that money is criticised for putting ‘a price on everything and a value on nothing’. Prices are values. They’re the result of people weighing up - evaluating - how much of this is equivalent…

That expression, to ‘unwind’ at the end of the day. Not well known I don’t think is that your body is arranged as helical spirals of muscle. Try this. Stand in a doorway and raise your arms so that you’re gently holding…

Seat designers are like shoe designers. “Oh the foot/body is curved, so our shoes/seats need to be curved to ‘fit’ them”. A seat should be simple and straight/flat, and relatively firm. These are seats that support and…

I really liked this post. Can't remember if anybody else did, I think it was one hijacked by mystical whacktivism.

My first training outside school was as a materials scientist. Nobody I knew had heard of it; I’d still recommend it to anybody not sure what to study, it’s the most amazing field. Much of what we call ‘modern…

Nobody really knows what this strain of Coronavirus will do, it’s wait and see. But if you end up being one of the unlucky ones who gets really sick with it down the track, here’s what I’d do. Ask for high-dose…

I think this is very likely true, that inflammation is the real cause of many of our diseases. We’re colonies of microbes, not a bag of organs. The good news is, it’s not that difficult to deal with inflammation.…

People are getting angrier and ruder, I’m sure of it. Anybody who works with the public is treated with contempt. Moralists would ask people to be nice and have good manners. But manners are a sign of deference, and we…

Queen were once described as ‘harder than Led Zeppelin, and wilder than the Rolling Stones’. Not a side of them everybody sees. And man, Lambert has a set of pipes on him.

There’s never enough money for new infrastructure, lots of our towns are crumbling, and at the same time millions of people are sweating every day in gyms and other forms of training, with the only outcome their own…

Babies when held in water can walk, they don’t need to learn it. It’s a reflex. Aboriginal Australians, without training or shoes or tracks, could run faster than Usain Bolt. Most of our training and exercise is…

Apologies in advance to anybody who requests I share something every day to FB, and nominate a new person each day to do the same. Chain letters were the curse of the postal system, and it’s not tricky maths to…

Each to their own. K.D. Lang getting a lot of praise for her performance at the relief concert. I found it overwrought, prostrate on the ground at times wailing like somebody giving birth, with little art in the singing…

One thing that interests me more all the time is how basic realities eventually overpower anybody’s opinion. For example cars again. I love them, but I criticise them a lot, because they’re a nonsense in the modern…

Know anybody who can sing like this? Me either. He might be able to give K.D. Lang some lessons.

Travel makes all places equal, they’re just points on a map you can move between in comfort. But those points are also where people live. So I think you have this constant tension introduced at the heart of society,…

This from a discussion on domestic violence. Our domestic situations are isolated, and isolation breeds violence. Cars helped us do it. We need to think much wider than the gender politics that wants to turn this into…

Sometimes different issues converge. For me, right now it’s coronavirus and domestic violence (DV). In the past infectious disease like TB was often treated in open-air sanitoria, see pic below. Researchers are now…

I saw an article the other day describing mobile phones as the most addictive device ever invented. I don’t think phones are addictive, in any way. Give somebody a phone with a flat battery and they won’t do anything…

I often talk about Australia as an ageing country. Look at this - almost twice as many 65+ (in % terms) here as in China. That's the boomers. Also I think having outdoor hospital wards for a pandemic needs to be…

I’m sure there’ll come a day when we’ll look back at running to go nowhere, lifting to lift nothing, stretching to reach nothing, and scratch our heads. Right now you see ‘ripped’ people who can’t even do basic things…

Bats carry up to 130 viruses at any one time, none of which make them sick at all. They pass them onto us, including coronavirus, and we get ‘sick’. But that’s our own body doing that. What we call flu or a cold or…

Panic and smugness (at the panic) are phase 1 of the pandemic. I’m waiting for phase 2, crowd funding for ‘hero’ doctors and nurses. Phase 3, people drive utes of canned food and toilet paper to victims. Um...

(Disclaimer: I'm not hoarding toilet paper.) Somebody explain to me why we didn't have widespread ridicule of the moronic donation of thousands of things people didn't need during the bushfires, but the toilet paper…

Not filled with confidence at our response to Covid-19 if the toilet paper experience is a trial run. Things could get a lot more disrupted than this, if people are going to hysterically find scapegoats at every break…

Rationing went on for about a decade during WW2 and more than 5 years after it (nearly 10 years in the UK). It’s an interesting system in the era of toilet paper hysteria. For example, supermarkets limiting the number…

The only stupid thing in a pandemic? Blaming people for every broken routine. There could be lots. It won't be anybody's fault.

I’ve carried a backpack most of my life. It’s only this year I realised I’ve been doing it all wrong, I should have been carrying it on my front, not my back. Like you’d carry a baby. What it does to your biomechanics…

An entire country in lockdown. And Australia stuck in an endless loop of meme and counter-meme on toilet paper. A lot of people are ‘calm’ now because the virus will likely only have a mild effect on their body. But…

A journey into the heart of populism. Here’s an interesting thing - the law refuses to define ‘administration’. It says it can’t be defined. Most of us therefore hate something that doesn’t even exist.

Few more posts about coronavirus, it’s important. Right now the number of cases in Oz is maybe somewhere near where I’ve put the arrow on the pic. An exponential function. That means it all seems still a bit fine, we’re…

I think we should be cautious about these graphs and numbers circulating online. I have serious genius mathematician friends on FB, they’ll correct any of my thinking! Also sorry it’s hard to do this stuff in…

“What we've seen is people are cherry-picking data. So they look at the lowest possible case fatality rates and say, "Oh look, it's like seasonal flu." Or they pick, "Oh it doesn't spread so fast because of this," or…

Distribution, you’d think it was as simple as an equal share for all. Alas no, if there’s only food for 20 people sharing it equally among 100 means all 100 starve. These are the impossibly complex sorts of questions…

I’ve spent all week listening to people say dismissively that this virus thing is just media hysteria. Have a read of what Italian hospitals are facing right now. You want to see real hysteria? Let it get to this in Oz.

I did an experiment this morning because I'm sick of the 'hoarding' idea around toilet paper. I got up early and went to observe the rumoured 6am rush to buy fresh supplies at the local Coles. It was real, maybe 20-30…

This pair have both been exposed to people with Covid-19. Both refused to be tested or to isolate themselves, as would be the legal requirement of any other person. People vote for these dipshits. No wonder most…

Watching the Chief Medical officer this morning make a dog's breakfast of his brief. He even shook peoples' hands. I firmly believe the best weapon against a virus like this is viral society. Social media. Nothing else…

Again tonight leaders saying when virus case numbers get to a certain number, then you act more strongly. Why is that? They’re not even pretending they’re isolating all the cases, so all waiting does is exponentially…

Smart people kinda rock. Let's hope this pans out, unlike all the other possible cures, this one is already approved drugs so can skip those years of clinical trials. Was going to donate to this and noticed they have…

Watched ScoMo's update this morning. I'm still staggered by the Australian response, it's mirroring Europe's, and Europe has lost control (see link). You CAN'T beat an exponential curve, all this rubbish about needing…

Medicine is 5% of what beats a pandemic. A pandemic is not a medical issue to solve.

It’s been maybe 70 years since we had to face up to the complete disruption and even destruction of our societies. The last world war. What we’re experiencing now, they experienced then. Nobody knew if they’d live or…

Research is suggesting the people who get the worst cases of Covid-19 might get it in the guts first, not in the head and lungs. The stomach and lungs work intimately together, the microbes in the stomach are crucial to…

These stories smelled like bullshit from day one. Use your brains for something useful people, it’s pathetic that in the face of this crisis the best people seem to be able to do is look for a new scapegoat every day.

I think the AHPPC updates are far and away the best insight into the Australian thinking behind the decisions the National Cabinet make. This is the 'medical advice' ScoMo and the Premiers refer to. Well worth reading…

Yep, definitely worth looking at. Hospitals are tin cans of disease. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/21/coronavirus-plea-from-italy-treat-patients-at-home/

I think there’s a scale of human response to disasters, which varies with the numbers of people impacted. With a smaller group impacted but most of the rest of us are OK, like the bushfires, we get ‘everybody pulling…

If you went out and bought a stash of masks for the bushfires or now for Covid-19, how about donating them ASAP back to your local health authority? Particularly those P2 masks.

These are the words by which ScoMo will ultimately be judged at the end of the pandemic. If he's getting this judgement wrong, his government is toast. “We are not going to do things to a business or someone’s job and…

Another reality filter. Our ideas about germs. The virus doesn’t actually hurt anybody, it’s how our body reacts to it that determines whether we get ‘sick’. Microbes live in communities, like us, no microbe on its own…

If you want to see just how much the conservative side of politics has been hijacked by big money, worldwide, go no further than the Republican senator in the US who suggests grandma and grandpa take COVID 19 for the…

People here know I talk a lot about our unhealthy obsession with travel. Try this reality filter, particularly if you think it's the Chinese who did all this: - every single case of Covid-19 in Australia right now is…

Dr Nick's gym #1. With gyms closed, I'd like to convince people that just by changing some ideas, you can get much fitter and stronger simply sitting at home. Breaking down the ideas a few at a time. Firstly, have you…

Dr Nick's gym #2. Your body is unlike other structures, because it gets stronger when you load it up. (Why you get ripped when you work out.) This means one very important thing - EVERYTHING we do is shaping our body.…

Bloody awesome idea, I feel for the public health people doing all that contact tracing manually. And it's open to gaps, whereas this would be fairly automated and fast.…

The barrage of complaint about unemployed people now getting more money? All the old dole bludger lines. Want to know what a bludger looks like? Somebody getting all of their super payout tax-free, or a bank being…

We had world wars that lasted 4-5 years, and what happened on the other side of those? The greatest ‘economic growth’ in world history, usually shuffling winners and losers at the same time. The people who have been the…

I’ve been playing guitar for about 40 years now. One piece of advice I’d give to anybody learning an instrument, that you don’t usually hear much in music teaching. Learn songs. All this stuff about scales and chords…

Happy 50th Kirst! At least you can say it was a year nobody will forget

A disaster in the making. These handful of ships could undo all the weeks of hard slog in controlling the virus. And hard for Australia to be too precious about it either, because there are thousands of Australian…

One thing i'm enjoying right now is how the people who are the real brains and muscle of society are coming into the limelight, while the celebrities, sports stars and shock jocks disappear into their country estates.…

I’m interested why in old buildings the bricks are often of varying sizes, anybody know? Here they’ve alternated long and short between rows, not sure if the short ones are actually bricks laid at 90 degrees to the…

It's struck me that the idea of being alone and doing nothing has scared many people - there's a sort of frenzy of in-home entertainment being invented, that and increased booze, a frenzy of stimulation. It feels fake…

Ivermectin, is there anything it can't do? ;) https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/anti-parasitic-drug-kills-covid-19-in-lab-c-955457

Viruses are literally like rock stars - moving beyond the 'germs' idea. They begin looking like a threat to society, and they really are in those early times, upsetting ways of life. Like early Elvis. Then society/our…

Dr Nick's stay at home gym #3. Just to recap: - your body is unlike other structures because it gets stronger under loads, not weaker - everything you do 'shapes' your body; it's *how* you use it that's important, not…

Have posted a few times about how it's likely not the virus that is killing the poor victims of Covid-19, but rather their over-active immune systems. Cytokine storms, as the researchers call it. And yet treatment of…

How did Australia and other countries get to the impossible point where they now have to choose between peoples' health, and their 'economies'? We got there because we started there. From day one of the pandemic leaders…

If you are somebody who believes the economy exists, a simple question. How can an economy and peoples' health end up opposed? I think what we call the economy is just a set of transactions between people. What people…

When you're faced with an impossible situation, it usually means you're looking at it wrong I think. Going back to bats, they show us that viruses are not the problem. How our bodies react to them is the problem. Bats…

A wise epidemiologist asked recently why we aren't asking the humanities about the best way to deal with a pandemic. Pandemics are social phenomena, not just medical, you can't separate the two. The social challenges…

On the same day the Deputy Chief Medical Officer announces Australia is on the cusp of slowing the infection to the point the epidemic dies out, these dipshits announce the NRL will restart. As Australians we can choose…

I think most people are doing brilliantly with what we're all being asked to do. My biggest fear is that people get casual about this and we lose the chance to eliminate the virus within months. We're not used to major…

Camus' wonderful novel is the bible on pandemics. Nearly a century old now but reading it is like reading the paper here in 2020, and novelists go way beyond the medical angle to the deep human psychology. How…

The problem of seeing our current situation as only a medical thing. Have you noticed that as time goes on, a disease caused by the richest parts of the world is being dealt with by cocooning that most privileged part…

In the public discussions, I'm noticing confusion between two concepts of public health - elimination, and eradication. All pandemic strategies right now are elimination strategies, all that changes is how long you…

I know, more pandemic stuff (knowledge is the only thing that wins a war). A mistake I believe we make in fighting pandemics is using medicine as the main set of tools in understanding them. Ecology is a much more…

This cracked me up (thanks Alex). This is our pause to think time, in lockdown. Why does Covid-19 destroy the economy? Because we're too mobile in how we live. I say what we call the economy is actually our culture of…

An experiment, psychological immunisation. Our pandemic is horrible, but read about what the people who lived during the Black Death endured. The greatest catastrophe in human history. It lasted 3 years, killed about…

People desperate for 'normal life' to return cling to the herd immunity idea like dog shit stuck on your shoe. And they don't seem to understand it. Basically they mean, this is all too hard, let people get infected,…

My biggest frustration with conservative governments in this crisis has been the continuing insistence on 'balancing' the 'economy' and peoples' health. As if those were two separate things. Like this obsession…

If you're at home with time on your hands, Google Paul Ewald, one of the most important researchers on microbes. Ewald shows that maybe all of our chronic diseases are caused by microbes, by infections. Including…

Coming to a public place near you soon, including hospitals I hope. You can even buy portable far-UVC sanitiser lights now, to disinfect anything you like.…

Sat through Pru Goward spouting dangerous drivel on The Project about herd immunity last night. Another conservative politician who thinks it's a way to get 'the economy' going again faster, spare me. Listen to an…

For years we've had to endure zealots tell us society isn't real, only individuals are real. Free market, libertarian hocus pocus. Then suddenly, they get their wish in lockdown, because everybody is just an individual…

One of the guides we need I think. By 2050 10 million of us will die of superbug infections each year, at current rates of growth. Ewald is sure most of our chronic diseases, like heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, MS,…

I keep coming back to one insight from Camus. Humans are not free, because there are pestilences. The thing that annoys me most is the choice we're being asked to make between 'normal life' and lockdowns. Normal life is…

Daniel Andrews was on telly this morning, speaking how a leader should. Saying schools generate significant human traffic, within them and outside them (drop offs etc.) Makes the bone obvious point that if you open…

Cancer may actually be an infectious disease. Not because you can catch cancer (though that may happen at times too), but because you can catch the pathogens that possibly cause it. Number of sexual partners is one…

It’s not public speaking, death or spiders. I wonder if the thing many people fear the most is telling people what they think? Nobody really cares how you feel or what you’re doing every day, they say they do but that’s…

I think we should continue to ask, every time somebody says we need to open up the economy again because businesses and people are going broke, why so many businesses and people have no savings at all. There are times…

New infections for NSW over the weekend. Saturday - 8. Sunday - 6. If somebody you know wants to remove or ignore the restrictions, please beat them around the head with a bit of 4x2. Look at the graph here, we've only…

On the one hand, you had an economist saying that the cost of lockdowns exceeds the benefits, and causes more human suffering than it relieves through loss of social life, livelihood, health etc. Valid argument. On the…

Sigh, another half-pregnant scheme. This will be like the laundry list of lockdown rules, imagine the poor schools trying to administer this farce, and teachers now being forced to teach the students in classrooms and…

What I sense isn't sinking in yet is that our 'lifestyle' is not compatible with infectious disease. Far too much mobility and mixing of people, within and between countries. The feeling I still get is that people see…

I think history can teach us more than medicine can, about pandemics, because the lessons learned are forgotten. This is a headline dated November 1, 1918, in the US. The 'open up' push. Triggering the most deadly phase…

Lots of businesses experiencing supply chain issues, as people buy more of things they normally wouldn't, because of lockdowns. If it's in a supermarket, for some reason it gets called 'panic buying'. No (or very…

Well stone the crows, I agree with the economists. ScoMo is dangerous, from day one this belief of his has put us all in danger. This has a long way to run. "Some commentators have expressed the view that there is a…

I don't have shares in the new contact tracing app. But I wonder if people have realised that the same 'data' they worry about sharing with government, through the app (which only happens if there's an infection near…

On Health vs Economy again. 'Economy' just means the way we do things now. The obvious answer is - do them differently. We don't have to shut down society, we can reshape it to work differently. It's already happening.…

This is the report that will be used from today to 'prove' to people that 'schools are safe'. It's embarrassingly bad, all 4 pages of it, with 2 vague references. The data size? 18 infections in schools before the…

See how the same strategies cross the globe? Do we know anybody here who makes frequent reference to 'the science'? "The claim that government would be “led by the science” was reassuring many weeks ago, at the start of…

If stopping people from moving around cures the pandemic, what was the disease? Worth pondering I reckon. Pandemics are not medical problems to solve, medicine just helps fix the wounded.…

The schools debate, should kids go back? Never mind that people say 'the science is in' (it absolutely isn't, that's a lie). Look at it this way. If your teens hung out like in the pic here, in a public park, they could…

Why do viruses arrive in a community? Why do they leave? Why do they arrive and leave often everywhere at once, and not just one place at a time? The truth is - nobody really knows. About the only agency we give a virus…

“The general death rate rises during business booms, and falls during depressions.” (Joseph Eyer, Prosperity as a Cause of Death.) We're having a depression right now. It'll be good for us, just got to hold our nerve…

Seeing the same arguments here, that we need to 'balance' the apparently horrendous impact of lockdowns on the economy against public health. As if those economic impacts are just as bad for our health as a pandemic. As…

We should thank Australian universities for this, they assembled over 100 experts from diverse fields to assess where Australia should go from here with Covid-19. You'll see they suggest either elimination (my…

I'd really encourage everybody to look at the 2 strategies National Cabinet considered for where we go from here. Snapshot in the link, full report is online. The 'Controlled Adaptation' strategy they've opted for I…

"The precautionary principle suggests that we should be very careful when the consequences of getting the calculation wrong on one side are worse than getting the calculation wrong on the other side. The potential…

Our federal (LNP) member saying yesterday that it's great we're getting our 'liberties' back, and that we're 'opening up the economy' again. Like the disease was us being locked up against our will, and damage to LNP…

'The economy' is about 100 years old. It was invented from a single number. Today it's common to replace the idea of society with the economy. We've seen that clearly all through the pandemic, where the economy was even…

So it turns out we were never fighting this virus, we were fighting for our economy. The intention was never to stop you getting it, it was to make sure the hospitals were OK to treat you, if you got it, so our economy…

I'm still bemused at the number of people who find sheltering in their homes a type of torture. All the stuff about 'mental health', from the simple act of staying at home a while? This is where I think we need to have…

Who remembers that this is the 3rd coronavirus epidemic in the last 20 years? SARS (2003) and MERS (2012). Both of those were far more lethal than Covid-19. Both were eliminated inside a year by old-fashioned…

The UK Health Minister live on UK TV right now, asked about when UK schools will reopen. Quote: "although children don't suffer from the consequences of coronavirus nearly as much as adults - there have been a small…

I sometimes almost apologise for posting every day about Covid-19. I do it because - it's the greatest issue of the past 100 years, changing every day, why wouldn't we talk about it? Kids and schools, obviously a focus…

The true meaning of 'balancing' the economy with health.

I think there's a lot of truth in this. Also I still think the main reason personal posts are popular isn't because people are actually much interested in other people. It just gives them permission to post about…

We had a postal vote to decide on gay marriage. This is a MUCH bigger issue. Why aren't Australians being asked to decide our way out of the pandemic, between the options of 'controlled adaptation' and 'elimination'? It…

ScoMo's own website, check the order of priorities. I don't make this stuff up. Hillsong, ScoMo's guide, preaches 'prosperity theology' - basically God will make you rich. There's number 1 of the priorities. From the…

Now we have our 3-stage strategy to all go and get infected to save the economy, anybody notice parliament is still closed, and isn't in the 3 stages? Presumably it's unsafe. Schools are safe though and in Stage 1,…

Uncomfortable truths we don't want to hear. Colds and flus are declining at the moment, while we're in partial lockdown. Rather than see infectious diseases as interruptions to normal life, we're not seeing that our…

An indication of how 'the science' is just a political phrase designed to stop people actually looking at it, is that our PM can call powerful and effective public health measures 'hiding under the doona', and not one…

Touching to see that kids being 'left behind' at school is a concern right now. When the economy is impacted. When it's not, they can sit in under-funded schools, breathing in nitrous oxides from unflued gas heaters,…

This is part of the old normal that we call 'the economy'. The push to rescue the economy is just a push to not change the (broken) old normal. The disease isn't the virus. It's the old normal. Otherwise we'll all be…

"Australia really focused on Singapore but Singapore is one of the greatest failures in the world now". Vitenam proving that if you use basic public health measures, rather than try to be half-pregnant by running your…

How's your toilet paper stash? "Prof Talley warned the Australian Government’s strategy of suppressing the virus rather than trying to eradicate it has left us in a vulnerable position."…

Right now about 50% of Australians with cold and flu symptoms aren't lining up for Covid-19 tests. On the one hand they're told not to go to work if they're sick. On the other work is 'opening up' again, so many have to…

Lots of talk about mental health and the pandemic today. I offended some people by saying that the idea we should scale back quarantine to protect peoples' mental health means we must have become a nation of snowflakes.…

Free child care (not free - you pay for it through your taxes, conservatives are devious with language) isn't 'sustainable'. $150 billion in permanent tax cuts is though. Wouldn't it have been refreshing to hear him say…

Here's a suggestion. The thing to fix our economies? Frugality. We don't save, as individuals or as businesses. Our economies collapse at the first whiff of trouble, in days. It's not just our mental health that lacks…

I was amazed they decided to push on with exams, just seems another example of how schools and kids are cannon fodder in this pandemic. I say don't be fooled by the appearance of care for education in Australia -…

After this is over, people who pushed to save our economy ahead of peoples' lives should be tried and prosecuted. Simple as that, like our own Nuremberg Trials, for the pandemic. I often challenge anybody to even define…

Was laying in bed this morning thinking about how epidemics just start and stop, and nobody knows why. And I thought, these microbes are working together, they're communicating somehow. When I got up, I did a bit of…

AC/DC preceded and played alongside punk and grunge, and were way rawer and harder than either of them. They make The Sex Pistols look like what they really were - a manufactured boy band pretending to be rebels. And…

Magic schools, magic school buses, magic public transport, now magic planes! Magic pliable doctors for hire! Masks optional, for 'peace of mind'. They forgot 'positivity', and 'being nice to each other'.

I find the most enjoyable thing about the '10 (whatevers) for 10 days' posts the fact that the exponential maths means everybody runs out of people to tag, who haven't already been tagged, after about day one or two.

Next time a politician goes on about ‘balancing economic recovery’ against keeping you free of COVID-19, remember what the science says. Both the medical and economic experts called bullshit on this from day one. It’s…

It's a shambles. Government by press release. I don't think many people see the bull-at-a-gate approach this 'save the economy' obsession is creating. All the caution used to close things has been thrown out the window…

Guess how they introduced this one? A 'balance' of gas versus renewables. There's that balance word again. Works every time. Balance climate change action against the economy. Balance your health against the economy.…

“This thing is like a fire...we can’t have medium case numbers, that doesn’t work. It is either very, very little or the whole thing is on fire with coronavirus. We could easily be the UK or the US; it is the exactly…

Germaine at 80. I'm sure this is mostly why people don't like her. Our ideas are our lives, challenge ideas and you challenge lives. We're mostly slaves to our ideas I think, we don't even realise how everything we…

Next time you hear somebody whine about the current restrictions, remember that the people who do the important work in society have been at work the whole time. No luxury of lockdown for them. So who are these whiners?…

There is no longer a conservative side of politics. (You'd be lucky to find anybody who remembers what political conservatism is.) Conservative politicians have been replaced with lobbyists for various industries. In…

I find it's surprisingly doctors who sometimes argue that Covid-19 is being blown out of proportion as a health issue. A big drop in billable hours and therefore income for them during pandemics, that could explain it.…

I've noticed in this pandemic the necessary tension between medical people, and public health people. They're not the same. Medical people (doctors, nurses) will tend to be focused on the health of an individual. Public…

So much wisdom in wit. Still nobody went to jail for the GFC or the Banking Royal Commission findings.

It may actually be good for us to take antibiotics regularly. Most chronic and acute disease may actually be due to microbes. It’s been shown that those who take more antibiotics can have lower rates of disease of most…

One sentence from Tony Blakely sums up exactly why the people who say we should 'balance' the economy with health should be held to account when this is over. Well done to the States who didn't buy that bullshit, they…

If most human disease is infectious disease, even the big chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease and diabetes, you'd expect antibiotics to have an impact on some of them. And here it is. We've been living in a…

Gladys and ScoMo and friends are furiously trying to get State borders open. Have a look at the vast numbers of Australians who don't agree with them. I suspect vast numbers don't agree with a lot of the 'opening up'…

To go back again to my belief - the economy is just people with money. If they don't have much, the economy is in recession, if they have a lot, it isn't. Government creates money, therefore government creates wealth.…

Money's real power is also I think its greatest danger. Invented as a tool, by governments, to make exchange of things easy for people. Hoarded by a few which leaves little for others to exchange with. Tax was invented…

You read what these poor bastards are experiencing, and wonder at just how precious we are here, complaining over not being able to go to the gym or pub. And to think, this is OUR disease, which our travel created,…

"The Age of Chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold the generous loyalty to rank and sex,…

Who'd have thought. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-tegnell-idUSKBN23A15O

There's another way to look at Chump's behaviour. The dangers of voluntary voting. Research shows that voluntary voting creates more extreme politics. Why does Chump do these things? Because the secret to winning…

Bad people win because they're always strategising, to get an outcome. Good people too often just make symbolic gestures of outrage, grief, togetherness etc. As if the real problem is their feelings, and telling…

New Zealand looks set to declare total Covid elimination, on 15 June. For the people who think you have to ‘balance’ the economy and public health, note the NZers only needed 7 weeks of lockdown to achieve this.…

There's some sort of macabre irony about holding a gathering for thousands in the middle of a pandemic, under the banner of 'lives matter'. Somewhere, we swapped righteousness for intelligence.…

Modern medicine is called a miracle. But actually its record against most acute and chronic disease is pretty hopeless. Here are the great heroes of modern medicine - sewage treatment, and chlorinated water. Penicillin…

If the protesters from yesterday have one shred of human decency, or half a brain (much less confident on that one), they’ll all self-isolate now for 14 days.

I can’t eat chocolate, it makes my heart race. But I love it. So a few years ago I decided to try carob again. As a kid it was always considered like the fake-meat version of chocolate. But wow, it’s fantastic. Much…

Chlamydia pneumoniae. Likely the bugs that cause the heart disease we usually blame on fats, smoking and lack of exercise. Also looking like being a major cause of Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis. This bacterium may…

I think one of the great triumphs of modern marketing is getting us to believe alcohol is a rite of passage in life. It was a deliberate strategy from brewers, and today we live it as if it was all our idea, rather than…

I wonder if it’s common to think that modern medicine means we’re healthier today than ever? Looking at heart disease, including stroke, can be an eye-opener. This is data for the US. At the turn of the 20th century,…

More fun with infectious diseases. It’s likely that a major cause of breast cancer is a virus carried by house mice.

For thousands of years, until the early 1900s, about half of all people born died before they turned 15, from infectious diseases. We think we've changed history, with vaccines and antibiotics. Both of those are…

“As the Prime Minister said, our strategy across the nation has been one of suppression. It is fantastic that we have effectively achieved elimination at this time in many parts of the country, but that's not our goal.”…

Are we seeing the irony here? Rowling is being abused for defending HER identity, as a woman. The identity of women has been suppressed for thousands of years, and now in the final disrespecting of it, anybody can…

Over 100 healthcare workers in the UK are now dead of Covid-19. Here in Oz we still feel this is an old person's disease, and are very casual about it all. When you read the details of these people, you see the danger,…

I think the most disgusting reframing of the pandemic from the ‘open up’ crowd is the ‘you have to live your life’ bullshit. As if society has a collective case of man flu, and we all just need to grow a pair and get…

Regular sufferers of my posts will know I've been advocating these for years. Could put them on every bus, in every classroom and hospital, for bugger-all money. I carry one with me all through winter, for work or…

Prediction is a mug's game. But here's mine, for the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. We won't beat it with a vaccine or treatment. It'll just stop. Like every pandemic in history, the microbes suddenly pack up and go…

Sunday is God’s day. In my experience people who don’t believe in God just swap something else to be in charge - science, politicians, the market, truth, corporations, etc. I don’t think I’ve met another person who…

Did you know medieval peasants worked fewer hours and had more holidays than we do? A job is a stupid way to distribute our wealth. The unemployment 'crisis' is a crisis of the idiot idea of the economy, where society's…

Grattan did a wonderful report a few months ago on the pandemic, where it drew the (obvious) conclusion that elimination of the virus was the best strategy. Now it’s back with an updated look, including the (again,…

I see the Victorian government are sensibly recommending that Victorians don't travel interstate if they're going to be mixing with other people. This will be a test for 'open the borders' people. Why do we close…

The federal government has almost no role in management of a pandemic at all. The States do pretty much everything and have most of the authority, under constitutional law. The reason ScoMo wanted a National Cabinet was…

This is Simon Kuznets, who won a Nobel Prize in 1971 for pioneering the measurement of economic growth. He more or less invented the idea of GDP. What did he say about the economy? “The welfare of a nation can scarcely…

Every time I hear somebody call for ‘unity’, or say something like ‘we’re all in this together’, I wonder if it’s really true that people choose to agree or disagree with each other. As if we could all just suddenly…

I wanted to repost this, because the idea of 'balancing' the economy with public health is an even deadlier virus than Covid-19. Even Chief Medical Officers parrot it now. Economists say? It's bullshit.

Without cheating, anybody know what’s famous about this photo?

I’ve worked in governance for a couple of decades, a job where you try to figure out how to get large groups of people to move in one direction. My main criticism of the COVID strategy we’re following is that it’s a…

Another re-post, because it’s life-changing. What you feel as your body, and your weight, is neither. If somebody pushed up against you, you’d know that feeling was caused by them pressing on you. But when the Earth…

This is Sweden's case numbers. Sweden is following the same strategy as us - 'balancing the economy with health'. People say we're different because we have such low numbers. We used a lockdown to get to Sweden's…

Surprising numbers of people feel assured knowing that their health and safety is reliant upon millions of others following strict rules.

Animals teach us that if you have your attention wholly engaged in what you’re doing, everything else follows without effort or strain. This hawk’s attention doesn’t budge for a second, which is what frees its body…

“South Korea’s story sounds disturbingly similar to Australia’s. Its Centers for Disease Control blames the relaxation of restrictions to give businesses a boost. Nightclubs, bars, clubs and other venues were reopened.…

The whack-a-mole strategy looks great on paper. Open up the 'economy', then just whack the virus locally if it appears somewhere. But nobody knows how. It's probably impossible. The non-medical experts who know this…

Very few people died of heart disease before the 20th century. And then quite suddenly, nearly everybody did. See the graph. Medicine has no idea why, it usually says fat and salt are to blame, even though we ate even…

Normally a virus doesn't spread well if it's lethal, because the person dies before they can infect many others. 'Stealth' infections like Covid-19 are super smart, they allow the person to be healthy for weeks, happily…

Check this out, another powerful plea to go for elimination, like we should have from day 1. I've lost count of the number of people who say 'but it's not possible'. Who says? Not one public health expert says it, we…

If you Google ‘subsistence’, you usually get pics like this, self-sufficiency stuff. It’s revealing for me, because it suggests that to subsist you have to withdraw from society. Society is about movement and economic…

On a bloody cold day, a shout out to the magnificent public health staff and police, out there every day saving lives in this pandemic while we’re comfy at home. I wish they paid you like bankers.

Humans’ deepest passion is to copy or imitate. Baby names are a great example. Despite parents likely believing they’re choosing the name they personally love the best, in fact they’re often just copying everybody else…

Social distancing won't be enough. You need to eliminate community transmission of this virus. Nothing else will work.…

The panic-buying has been debunked so many times. We're drama-tarts, only maximum outrage will do. There are very few 'panic buyers'. It's every shopper buying a bit more, to avoid having to come to the shops with a…

Lots of heat for Dan Andrews about Victoria. But Victoria is the strategy National Cabinet chose. To quote Mary-Louise McLaws, one of Australia's leading pandemic experts: "This is to be expected when we go for…

Remember that testing and tracing was our 'roadmap to a CovidSafe Australia'? Victoria did more of it than anybody, see the graph. It didn't help. Every country in the world who thought this was a way to be…

In friendship and love, we're not looking for somebody else. We're looking for another way of being 'me'.

People often try to lift themselves from one stair to the next when they’re going up stairs. (‘Climbing’ stairs.) And they drop or fall down from one stair to the next, with a loud thump, when they’re going down stairs.…

Israel. Another government who thought they'd 'open up' without eliminating the virus first, to save 'the economy'. They had all the social distancing. Kaboom. Unemployment now 20%, and rising, the health and economic…

"The main strategy that doesn't seem to have worked is abandoning elimination of community spread (some called it eradication) and being content with suppression." "Some would argue that the pool of experts providing…

Thanks to Jason for sharing some research that provides some further clues as to why fridges might have been our enemy in the eternal war against infectious diseases. The researchers studied the mortality rate from…

Fantastic piece from Peter Hartcher today. This is the stuff I've been annoying people with for months. If you read the history of pandemics all of this was inevitable. But we don't want to hear it. He does leave out…

The danger in having doctors instead of pandemic and public health experts providing advice to Cabinet. 'Preventing community transmission' IS elimination 🤔

A floating compression structure. No tricks here, there are no compressive (solid, rigid) bits between the top and bottom pieces. Gravity holds it up, its own weight suspends the whole structure in space. Your body is a…

In recent days we've had the Prime Minister and Premier of NSW asked if they would support further quarantining, if outbreaks get out of hand. Both said the same thing - 'we can't keep turning the lights on and off'. We…

All in the ideas. When we say ‘bend down’, why doesn’t it occur to us that we’re already on the ground? We can’t get any lower. Young kids don’t bend down, their whole body just changes shape, no strain or effort. ‘Up’…

ScoMo just cancelled the next sitting of parliament. The Chief Medical Officer (CMO) said it's unsafe with virus circulating. The same CMO who says a pub can have 300 people in it, more than twice as many as are in that…

Glorious. Look at that head, it doesn’t move a millimetre. Complete separation of the attention from the body, releasing it to respond elastically. https://youtu.be/B4nd9GF1dRg

If you're one of those who thinks the current outbreak is Victorian mismanagement, I suggest looking overseas. This virus is not 'suppressible', as experts here have said too. You can't 'open up' AND control the virus,…

Who would you rather guide us out of this crisis? A failed advertising hack (ScoMo), and a career politician who went straight from university into politics (Gladys), both desperate to protect their party donors in…

What bothers me about the whole vaccine thing is that medical experts are poor guides for pandemics. We might get a vaccine that gets us through COVID-19, but there are plenty more pathogens just waiting to whack us.…

ScoMo said today JobKeeper and JobSeeker have to be scaled back, they're bleeding cash. SImple - print some more ScoMo, as much as you like. It will never need to be repaid, government doesn't need to repay itself.…

If you thought I was bonkers saying we should print money to fix the economic crisis...we're already doing it. I criticise the economics of the pandemic much more than the health side, because it's limited economic…

I think masks are important. But we should be wary I think, they’re the lowest rung of the public health ladder, a last resort. People needing masks is a public health response that’s hopeless or that has lost control.…

Nobody knows why pandemics end. The explanation I haven’t seen suggested is that it’s other microbes that end them. We’re so focused on ourselves and the impact a virus has on our bodies that we forget that all microbes…

The only challenge to my mental health in this pandemic is the steady stream of economic bullshit. The economy caused the pandemic, and it's also now stopping us getting out of it. Economic ideas were weaponised by…

It’s a bit surprising that we so often hear that the only way this pandemic will end is with a vaccine. There’s not a single example in history of a pandemic ending with a vaccine. Not one. Vaccines are fantastic, don’t…

The economy is (apparently) made of businesses. A business is defined as 'the activity of buying and selling goods and services'. It's a meaningless definition, I can go next door and buy a lawn mower off my neighbour…

Thanks to Jason. In case you haven’t seen the UK, this is parodying the Tories ‘clapping for the NHS’, their national healthcare. The Tories decided to save the economy instead of people. They haven’t even managed that.

Some philosophers see pandemics as the way societies reboot. The way they turn off and then on again, when they stop working. In a pandemic everybody returns to the same level, all social distinctions and all economic…

The economic theory that runs the ‘economy’ uses unemployment deliberately as a way to keep inflation (wages) low. The unemployed are the stock of available workers that allow employers to say ‘if you don’t like the…

NSW Cabinet apparently were trying to decide what number of infections in NSW would trigger more lockdowns. They apparently hit upon a figure of 250 per day, not because of any science or public health, but because they…

Not had some Proust for a while! Amen to the reality bit, it's lonely, hardly anybody wants to know it.

Movement and travel talk about going from ‘here’ to ‘there’. But...everywhere is a ‘here’. There is no ‘there’. Just ask roadkill. Your there is somebody else’s here, and every point along your journey from here to…

This is what an expert who has actually fought and beaten pandemics says. The history of infectious diseases is the history of governments and vested interests continually undermining basic public health work. Like the…

When you look at the history of disease, most of it, including plagues, comes back to the most basic things. Clean water, clean air, healthy food, no crowding, no abject poverty, adequate shelter. All of these diseases…

In the 1980s, Australia and NZ led the world in elimination of HIV. (No nonsense then of 'you can't eliminate'.) They let the pandemic experts lead, politicans got out of the way. NZ has done it again for Covid-19.…

I use social media as a gauge of public thinking. For Australia it worries me every day. Still in denial of the danger we’re in, overwhelmingly posts are still about ourselves or some form of ‘happy’ distraction from…

You can’t get a clearer picture of why ScoMo is an even more disastrous leader for Covid-19 than he was for the bushfires. In court with our own Trump-lite, Palmer, together trying to undermine basic public health…

Why did we accept the idea that 'the only thing that can end this pandemic is a vaccine'? That's absolutely not true, fast and strong public health action could have stopped it before it got started. When HIV started,…

When I grew up in the 1970s, preserving food was still pretty widespread. I remember my mum doing it regularly. I still think all those techniques, where we used other microbes to fight against the microbes that spoiled…

Diana Tamir from Harvard Uni led a study that showed that 80% of social media posts are people talking about themselves or their own lives. Even when offered money to post about something else, they reverted to talking…

Exactly the same script worldwide. Politicians outsourcing management of the pandemic to the public through long lists of complicated rules, and then lecturing the public when they don't follow them. Some sweet naive…

This time, eliminate the mongrel. What we should have done last time. Meanwhile Gladys also introducing new measures, but no leadership - just 'encouraging' us all to do it. And all via press conference, which hardly…

Margulis’ legacy is growing. This entirely different way of seeing living things, as communities of microbes, has enormous implications, including for health and disease. Disease may just be a different equilibrium…

Is Gladys following the National Cabinet decision to go for elimination? Or is she and her cabinet of booze, gambling and real estate flunkeys still clinging to the useless suppression strategy?…

So far nearly 600,000 poor Australians have completely cleaned out their super accounts under Covid, about $32 billion. This super money if left until retirement would have been worth maybe $200 billion. (JobKeeper by…

Isn’t it the most bizarre idea, that taxpayers own money? That the government has to tax people to have money to spend? Doesn’t everybody just know that government prints and owns all the money? I used to believe in…

We gave out free condoms to control HIV 40 years ago. Time to hand out free masks for Covid-19. Just another example of the total absence of an actual disease strategy. But plenty of economic strategies. Those arrived…

Jeans for Genes, one of those fundraising things that people give to, often without having the first idea where the money goes. I don’t like it for 3 reasons, one that genetic approaches to disease are nearly always a…

I think Australia has 'Americanised' significantly in the last 40 years. Take our approach to the pandemic. 40 years ago a pandemic triggered a public health response, where large teams of experts were mobilised to…

An example of how the body works as a single integrated system. You've probably seen pictures of people meditating like this. Notice how the palms of the hands face upwards. That might look like an incidental detail,…

This is why 'we're following the medical advice' has been political spin all along. When your Chief Medical Officers are employed by your politicians, they're not going to contradict the boss. Kerry Chant saying as much…

A plan that turns a pandemic into a set of rules to follow and a daily blame-game is no plan. It's the absence of basic public health planning. If you're a parent or teacher and you're reduced to writing a list of rules…

Seeing lots of standing desks in workplaces where after an initial thrill of change, they're never in standing position and the person is back slumping in their chair. While we see standing *and* sitting as a fight…

Anybody who knows anything about Australian governance (that’s unfortunately a tiny number of people) knows this is true. The federal government has virtually zero role in a pandemic. The National Cabinet is a stunt,…

Here's the constantly updated list of 'hotspots' in NSW. It's overwhelmingly pubs, clubs and restaurants. Why are these still open in NSW? All big political donors. I'd advise everybody to avoid these 'like the plague'.…

Read this, if you want to see what putting your experts in charge of a pandemic can do. They smashed the virus out of the park. Our National Cabinet's only virus strategy is 'quick lockdown to boost the amount of PPE…

Thanks Ian. God, or somebody, help us all.

We look back mystified that soldiers in the world wars were excited to be heading off to fight for a cause. But why don’t we relish a real existential challenge? Social media is swamped with happy diversion to…

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’, the Russians say. True, though as in the rest of the world, the desperate measures never include just giving everybody money to shelter from the virus, until it goes away.

Is anybody else sick of politicians lecturing people every day about rising infection numbers? They don't have a plan to beat the virus, and so when the virus inevitably bites back, why do ordinary people not just tell…

What drama tarts we are. Now it's come out hotel guards didn't sleep with guests in the Melbourne hotels. And they also likely weren't who originally spread the virus from the hotels. Add to that the legal fact that…

I said this from day 1 of this pandemic, and was told I hated ScoMo. Australians don’t engage with the ideas, they just line up behind their ‘side’. The ‘balance’ of the economy (feds) and health (States) was exactly…

Secret glimpses into the heart of the economy.

I saw somebody describe AfterPay as a millennials thing. The boomers invented the idea in the 1960s, their kids and grandkids are funding their lifestyle retirements right now.

Gladys saying exactly what my posts have been saying. I follow the public health data and thinking, I don’t improvise some random personal views of the pandemic. Ms Berejiklian said authorities were concerned the virus…

You can see the origins of Big Pharma in this pandemic I think. In the absence of basic, cheap public health systems, the US is always after the latest wonder drug, the latest snake oil to get them out of the hole that…

Surveys in the US and UK say up to 50% of people there will refuse a Covid vaccine. The government here talking about making it 'mandatory'. To me this is just another example of the total absence of an actual virus…

A lot of virus denialists (perfect term I think, like climate denilaists - people who deny international emergencies right in front of them) hanging their hats on this sort of research. It is interesting research, but…

Got an entire continent now trialling the 'learning to live with the virus' strategy. It's not going well. I'm waiting for the learning to live with cancer, heart disease, malaria, TB, paedophilia and poverty strategies…

Wow. Have to wonder if this is a pissing contest for territory between medicine and public health professionals. Doctors prescribe drugs that have risky side-effects in some people already, because benefits are thought…

Nice example of how ‘lockdown’ is a political construct in this pandemic. In public health it’s just one specific strategy applied in various degrees. But listen to the Covid deniers like this one and it’s their code…

HIV is a nice example I think of how treating disease as a medical thing means losing control of it. Look at the HIV stats for Australia. Strong public health action from the 1980s through to the mid-1990s pushed HIV…

Brilliant example here of how to do public health in a pandemic. The traffic light system, like the fire danger system. Takes it completely out of the hands of politicians, and culture warrior alarmists, and it helps…

The 1.5m rule is simplistic ('economy-opening') tosh. Brilliant graphic giving a much more nuanced understanding of Covid transmission risk, from the British Medical Journal.

Another great piece, about how we need to move beyond the medical definitions, and away from the ridiculous idea of 'balancing' lives and livelihoods in this pandemic.

Victorians when asked whether restrictions should be lifted. Why do the opponents of public health restrictions get any air time at all? Comes down to who owns the channels, obviously. The same platforms that give…

Wanted to post this separately. Kenny is part of that anti-lockdown brigade who are trying to turn the pandemic into some ridiculous culture war. Now they've realised lockdowns are actually hugely popular, so the next…

Today's colouring-in exercise. Paint Sydney in Covid yellow and green. Still some empty spaces left, if you're quick. Those who went outside the lines to the Central Coast and Newcastle are very naughty.

One of the debating tricks people who oppose strong public health action against the virus use is to say 'more people are being harmed by the restrictions than by the virus'. That's like saying 'we can't build new…

This is what we need for pandemics. Where the boundaries between each level and the actions that flow from them are determined by public health metrics, not by politicians trying to ram borders open or pander to…

The Economy Crowd. Not only spending their pandemic happily sheltered from the virus while undermining public health action for the rest of us, like demanding borders open to help mates in the tourism and airline…

Deloitte, one of the big business consulting firms: "The underlying equation is simple. The greater the success against the virus, the greater the success in protecting economies against the pandemic." Anybody who tells…

Is anybody else getting this message ALL the time with the new FB?

Check this out. Spanish Flu in NSW, 1919 - January 25, pandemic arrives in NSW (same day as COVID 101 years later) - NSW quickly put public health restrictions in place - only about 15 died in NSW during this first wave…

A disgrace. "...where we can reopen our economy and reasonably restore the liberties of all Australians." When will more thinking Australians speak out and say they're quite happy to have 'liberty' from the fucking…

You can train a Chief Medical Officer to do tricks. Like this one, appearing as an attack dog for the government as head of the Federal Department of Health. Obscenely inappropriate, Department Heads NEVER do press…

"Specialist referrals from GPs, and indeed GP workload, have fallen dramatically". Society is apparently coming to an end because the work (and income) of one professional group has been interrupted. Everybody has been…

6 of our 8 States and territories are sitting there as good as free of Covid, while the remaining 2 are held hostage to a culture war, led by the PM, about scoring cheap political points and undermining the public…

Victorian England. Massive building programs, creation of the sewers, the railways, roads. The time of empire. Do we stop to think about what made all of that possible? Today we flog all this stuff off, to give away in…

Goodhart's Law says if you use a measure as a target, it stops working. Organisations do this all the time. We're seeing it in the pandemic too. In Iowa, 'exposure' to the virus is taken to be at least 15 minutes within…

Have mentioned before that nobody knows how humans domesticated animals or plants. It's the greatest mystery of all time. I think this is much more important than just farming. We once knew how to create eternity in…

My number one pandemic tip. When a politician or somebody on YouTube speaks, turn it off. Then read something like this instead. https://www.policyforum.net/australias-pandemic-policy-made-a-second-wave-inevitable/

We wouldn't 'live with' paedophilia, DV, racism or heart disease. Why do people suggest we should live with the virus?

Did you know there have been about 1000 *fewer* deaths in aged care homes so far this year? Every time somebody tells you this public health action is creating more harm than it prevents, ask them to quantify it. You…

Democracy. Where everybody is free to not do the most basic things. Like public health work.

I’ve been so proud to be an Australian in this pandemic. Our magnificent public institutions stuffed full of expertise have been allowed to flex their muscles. We’re the envy of much of the world. At the same time…

Fewer people seem to be dying of Covid. (Always a critical sign a pandemic may be waning.) There's a theory that wearing masks is giving people immunisation against Covid, by restricting the dose of virus they inhale.…

Paul Ewald, one of my favourite thinkers on microbes, on why public health measures don't just stop people getting sick, they actually change the virulence (danger) of the virus itself. The virus evolves in real time…

Economists agree with the public health people. Restrictions save our economy and health at the same time, they're the same thing. Next time somebody says we need to relax restrictions to save our economy, just remember…

Delicious! The health experts back Queensland. Is there anybody left who thinks the federal government has the first interest in the pandemic? Or just the economy?

I've pasted the deaths in 4 countries here. The US, Brazil, France and the UK. US and Brazil are the graphs where the deaths are continuing to be super high right now. France and the UK still getting high cases, but…

The best managers I've worked with are like the best teachers and best parents. They build routines. Habits. The hardest thing in the world to do. The worst managers now dominate workplaces, constantly changing…

Couple of things here. First, the 'disaster' here is (of course) apparently 'financial'. Bugger people's health. Second, we hear the same bluster from idiot politicians all over the world, including here. The virus…

A major business consulting firm explaining that lockdowns didn't damage the economy. The virus did. Economists almost universally say the same. When you see a politician demanding restrictions be relaxed to save the…

Judith Butler's interview about trans issues has been getting a lot of attention. I criticise a lot of transgender thinking, and wanted to say why a bit more over time. Transgender is defined as a person who feels that…

Do you reckon John is out there fighting the fight against diarrhoea? No, I don't think so either. Do you reckon John is saying we should let Covid rip so it's a genuinely serious thing? Do you reckon John has a brain…

Boris wants to test 10 million people a day to avoid lockdowns. Operation Moonshot. It won't work, in fact it will do terrible damage. You know what works? Lockdowns, basic public health. The anti-lockdown people are…

Trump just nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the US. Mother of 7, reads the Constitution as an 'originalist' (i.e. as if Moses had brought it down from the mountain), loves guns, hates abortion, hates…

When you sit or stand anywhere for long periods, stop trying to hold or fix yourself in any way - up, forward, back - whatever. Feel everything that happens in your body as it learning to effortlessly balance without…

Somebody just told me that the idiom'falling on deaf ears' is discriminatory against deaf people. It's 'ableist'. This is true?

Victoria is what this virus does if you open up with the virus still spreading. You'd need to have your head pretty firmly inserted up your own backside not to see that pattern repeated all over the world. Why do we…

It's not an analogy for me that pandemics are the rebooting of societies. It's their job, throughout history. To force us to throw out everything we think we know and question everything we do. They can do that because…

Very important people understand this I think. A pandemic is not a medical problem to solve. What's interesting is that as communications technologies and data analysis improve, the distinction between individual and…

This is average number of sexual partners for some countries. It’s a perfect example for me of how we don’t take infection seriously. Having multiple sexual partners supercharges the virulence of STIs. HIV became lethal…

When you read this, remember many are arguing that several million of us in each country should deliberately catch this disease, as a way to beat it. They're still arguing it.

White Cliff opal mines from the air. The more they learn about Covid, the more they realise this is how the virus sees us. Most of us if we catch it, won’t spread it. But a few of us will spread it to lots of others.…

I think every day we move closer to seeing that nearly all disease is caused by infection. Cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, even schizophrenia and other ‘mental’ illnesses. It’s a paradigm shift, to start…

I'm over the battle on this one. Heaven forbid society just work an hour LESS every day, fuck as if we could do that. Let's change the clocks instead, be good little wage slaves, and stuff up everybody's circadian…

Supporters of Trump and his ideas have said just let the old die, they were going to die anyway. He's 74. I wonder how many of the tens of thousands of other older Americans who have died under his incompetence got a…

Forman: And by the way, there’s never been a real case of herd immunity through infection. Wells: For any disease ever? Forman: Correct.

“Dr Ryan said developed countries had become “entirely complacent of infectious diseases” and associated them with poorer countries...”If you look at any metric of resilience, the industrial world has not demonstrated a…

Our technology would allow all of us to work a lot less. But we don’t, because workers have little power. In the US, workers are not entitled to *any* leave, at all, unless their employer wants them to have it. I’d like…

Widespread ignorance of how our own country works means the government plans to introduce a flat tax structure, and hardly anybody has blinked an eye. The populism virus continuing to eat our societies from the inside…

The big orange man-baby has just done a drive-past of his supporters outside his hospital. Think about this - his car has about a half-dozen secret service agents in it. Windows must be up for his safety. So a known…

People who are more worried about businesses no longer able to make plastic Xmas cracker toys and porn videos than they are about the virus, suggest we should just isolate all our most vulnerable people (nobody knows…

All of the ways we say 2020 is horrendous - loss of social life, loss of income and jobs, people dying of infectious disease etc., are just descriptions of the lives other people live in the world all the time. In fact…

Everything about Trump and his popularity is explained by people wanting a King instead of a President. That's populism. Kings were often barking mad, it was seen as their prerogative. We habitually think 'democracy' is…

Proof that the Economy is just people. We imported lots of young, healthy, smart people, it’s why the Oz economy hasn’t tanked in over 20 years. That’s about to stop. The government think building roads and gas plants…

The UK is in trouble, huge infection numbers, worse than their first wave. Attributed in large part to Boris’ ‘let’s save the economy’ subsidy of 10 pounds to people to go out and eat at restaurants. Anybody who thinks…

Before we go all soft about Gladys' relationship 'mistakes', hands up if you remember this? The $46 million Royal Commission set up by the LNP to try to skewer Julia Gillard. Her offence? Having a boyfriend who turned…

Can anybody figure out why our Fat Controller and his treasurer have been slamming Victoria for months?

Did you know 80% of all businesses fail? Instead of blaming the virus and public health action against it for the global emergency right now, let’s blame the idiot idea of trying to make business the basis of society.…

The median age of somebody in Africa is 19. They’re poor, and smashing Covid so far. We rich, fat, old and entitled, anti-lockdown whining whiteys are getting infected in the hundreds of thousands per day. Too lazy and…

Sweden, darling of the virus deniers, is being forced to introduce lockdowns due to an explosion of cases. Incidentally if you know somebody who believes the fastest way out of this pandemic is just to let everybody get…

If you reckon this fella is doing a good job with Covid...he cancelled National Cabinet last week. His reason? He couldn’t get a plane back from Queensland. The real reason? He was at a Liberal Party fundraising dinner,…

Fake or Fortune is one of my favourite shows. Where they investigate whether paintings people own are genuine or fakes. What’s most interesting for me goes back to imitation, or copying, copies or imitations are worth…

Another breakthrough in medicine by shifting the whole paradigm, to see the body as an ecosystem rather than as a bag of chemicals and pipes. Adaptive therapy in cancer doesn’t try to kill all the cancer cells, it…

The anti-lockdown people plead with us all to ‘wake up’. Let me flip that. Wake up people, and ask one simple question. If stopping a lethal virus gets in the way of our economy, shouldn’t it be our economy that…

This is a statement from NSW Health yesterday: “The only way to find new cases and prevent further transmission is to increase testing." That’s just obviously wrong. There are all sorts of ways to prevent transmission…

It’s only when you watch people walking from above that I think you can see that walking is actually a rotational thing. Our bodies rotate alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, for each gait cycle or stride. (It’s…

We’re so lucky we have superb public health systems in Australia. This story is horrifying, what catching Covid can do to you, even if you’re young. And yet there are still people in Australia today who will look you in…

How much attention did people pay to Josh’s big pandemic budget? Remember the tax cuts for all? Have a look at how they almost completely evaporate for everybody except the wealthy, from next year. Apart from being…

When we compare public transport with private transport, why don’t we ever question - why transport? Why is that the given? Why do we always have to be moving people around in large numbers? Why does everybody always…

“The Prime Minister said the continued lockdown suggested the state government was not confident its health system was capable of suppressing transmission of the virus.” Our health systems don’t suppress the virus,…

What the virus is doing now is showing that the health sciences, including epidemiology, aren’t capable of getting us through this pandemic. Notice that their advice can get our numbers very low, sometimes to zero, but…

Why do we even sing the national anthem at games that aren’t national games? Nobody pays much attention to the pandemic, the biggest event of our lives that puts us all at risk, but this sort of bullshit gets them hot…

Less than 2% of Australia's vast health spending goes to public health preventative measures. Barely a cent has been spent on that during Covid either. It's what I mean when I say the government has no plan to actually…

Can you imagine any other democratic country where the incumbent tries to make mail-in votes illegal, after they've been cast? It's breathtaking corruption. A bit like closing parliament entirely during a national…

Because in my experience people have very little knowledge of how politics actually works, ScoMo the professional marketing man continually pulls the wool over our eyes. Take the masterful spin of ‘Covid normal by…

I suspect quite a lot of people in Oz actually like Trump and what he stands for, and are just a bit shy to say it. They hate bureaucracy, they hate politicians, they think mainstream media is trying to fool them etc.…

If you're smart, you'll read this chart as 'Victoria is leading the world in public health'. If you're somebody who doesn't think much, you'll say 'Dan Andrews mismanaged the virus'.

My photo for every modern election. The Simpsons know. It’s not Left vs Right, that stuff is long over. People are at war with their own institutions. Populism. They’ll vote for anybody who promises to stick it to the…

Gladys yesterday said 'if our businesses are Covidsafe, we can open the economy even more'. She was talking about QR codes. 3 important things here: 1) QR codes do nothing to make any business safe. They let NSW Health…