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Suzy McHale’s Journal: 2021

Another plague year of lockdowns, but the last one: 13/2, 28/5, 15/7, 5/8. These caused me much distress (as they did for many others), but in light of what was to follow in the next few years, I feel almost nostalgic for them now (2025). My first Covid AstraZeneca vaccine was on 15/6, with a debilitating day of side-effects following (though these only lasted 24 hours). My parents had what would be their last timeshare holiday at Kyneton Bushland Resort (24/4). My maternal uncle (Mum’s older and only brother) sadly passed away on 17/9. Earthquake on 22/9, which I did not feel.

January

Sunday 10/1: Surviving the Stone Age documentary

A new year, my 51st in this world. The COVID-19 pandemic still dominates the headlines and daily life, but I will avoid dwelling or commenting upon real-world events generally as they are too depressing.

I watched Surviving the Stone Age, a 3-part 2019 documentary featuring 8 survival skills experts (including Lynx Vilden, mentioned in my Journal previously (2/7/2020 entry) living for a month in the Rhodope mountains in Bulgaria using only primitive tools and techniques as our Stone Age ancestors would have practiced these. It was quite interesting and enlightening, and emphasized how difficult it is for modern humans, even ones like the group who have relearned many of these skills, to survive as our remote ancestors would have. The priorities are the obvious basics: making fire, finding shelter, food and water, as well as making one’s own clothing and tools from only natural elements (wood, bone, stone). Our ancestors of course had a tribe and thousands of years of inherited knowledge to draw upon, but this connection to living in nature has long since been broken in the modern high technology world, and a great loss it is.

The primitive lifestyle is certainly not idyllic, but a lot of hard physical work each day – the group had much difficulty in finding sufficient calorie-dense food such as meat, though in the last episode they did manage to hunt and kill a deer. Such a joyful and delicious feast was had! The wild European landscape was rugged, with high mountains and coniferous forests, hard but beautiful – it was restful even just to see it through a computer screen. (I love the boreal and taiga forests of the northern hemisphere, as found in the Scandinavian countries, and wish I could visit.) It is soothing and a much-needed antidote for me to escape the unpleasantness of events in modern society.

Our society is extremely fragile and interdependent upon complex supply chains – as the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated worldwide – and it would not take too much strain for the system to begin a catastrophic collapse.

As I have noted in earlier entries, Lynx Vilden fascinates me (she is only a few years older than me) and I rather wish I could partake in some of her courses (though they would not be comfortable!). COVID restrictions permitting, she has some courses in Norway later this year, which look appealing, but of course I am unable to go anywhere, given my real-world circumstances (and international travel from Australia is still banned). There is one called The Tindra Gathering in Vågåmo, Norway, and some of her own in that region.

Saturday 23/1: 41°C ahead

Monday 25/1 is forecast to reach the dreaded 40-something (the first for this summer); 41°C so far. The next day, though, drops to nearly half that. These sudden spikes in temperature are very hard to adjust to.

I have not been doing much, and have not felt inclined to write.

Sunday 31/1: Wild weather; watching The Expanse

The threatened hot day last Monday 25 reached 39°C before an overnight cool change. Saturday, however, was a complete contrast, where Melbourne received nearly 50 mm of rain in one morning.

My weight is nearly down to 40 kg. At the beginning of last October it was around 45 kg (31/12/2020 Journal entry). Of course I am experiencing side-effects (lethargy, brain fog – I really need some energy pills!) but these are worth it just to have my small-size clothes fit comfortably again.

I have been watching the latest episodes of The Expanse TV series and am generally enjoying them. The TV episodes and the novels are different in many places, but complement each other.

One obscure aspect I liked was the portrayal of religion in the early books and TV episodes, namely in the form of the Mormons (Archive.is page). They were to depart for a distant exoplanet in the Tau Ceti system on a generation starship (the Nauvoo) but this unfortunately was commandeered and retasked for a different mission. After that they seem to fade from the storyline. Some quick links:

If it is mentioned at all, religion in science fiction is generally depicted in a negative light, and some stories give the impression that it will no longer exist in the future, a trend I increasingly find irksome and dismaying.

February

Saturday 13/2: Yet another lockdown

Surprise, surprise, Premier Daniel Andrews has overreacted to new coronavirus cases yet again and imposed a strict “circuit-breaker” 5-day lockdown. Maybe longer as is being threateningly hinted at. Extremely upsetting and frustrating for businesses and people in Victoria generally. We have only recovered from the months-long lockdown ordeal of last year, and now have to go through the trauma again (and I don’t think “trauma” is an overstatement). I certainly am mentally and physically exhausted from the constant low-lying stress of more threatened lockdowns, and now the worst has been imposed. Lockdowns are arguably more damaging than the actual virus (hysterical reports of high death counts in other countries notwithstanding, which I am skeptical of).

I have an item on order in one store and may want to return a purchase in another (14-day time limit), and now can’t do either yet as nearly all “non-essential” retail stores are closed, and no certainty as to whether they may re-open later next week.

Saturday 20/2: Lockdown ended (for now); culture wars

The “circuit-breaker” lockdown was ended on last Wednesday at midnight with no new coronavirus cases then, but with much collateral damage to businesses and psychological damage to citizens generally. Our normal daily lives can now be shut down at the Premier’s whim, and it is reminiscent of an abusive relationship. Future lockdowns are a real threat.

Culture wars: a huge controversy erupted this week when an obscure, self-righteous virtue-signalling author posted a long rant on his Patreon page (archival link) about some supposed threatening posts in a book publisher’s forum, this being Baen Books. I learned of it via two subreddit posts that were also hostile towards Baen. The predictable outrage ensued from the “progressive” Leftist sympathizers, and this has cemented my disgust at them and their worldview. I have bought Baen-published books on occasion (two physical copies this year) and certainly will continue to do so. Some Conservative bloggers responded: Larry Correia (who is refreshingly blunt in calling out bullshit), Vox Day and John C. Wright among them.

Sunday 21/2: Vikings TV series; mythology book remembered; seeing the world differently

I began watching episodes of the Vikings TV drama. The first series is compelling, though it does not skimp on the brutality! The series is not historically accurate, as is to be expected for a dramatization, so it is more a fantasy.

I also managed to find online a book on Viking mythology I had enjoyed when young: Gods and Heroes from Viking Mythology by Brian Branston, published in 1982. My local library had a copy (as well as others from that series, World Mythology Series) and I borrowed it quite a few times, enjoying the beautiful and evocative illustrations by Giovanni Caselli (both author and artist are, sadly, deceased). That it remains in my memory is evident it made an impression! Unfortunately the book is long out of print.

What seems to be a good website about Viking mythology is Norse Mythology for Smart People. One point of interest the author makes on the page The Enchanted World is that the worldview of historical cultures was very different from ours.

Today, we live in a very disenchanted world. Our built environment is purely functional and utilitarian, save for some merely aesthetic flourishes. Nature is similarly useful and at times pretty, but hardly anything more. We view our cultural and ancestral heritage as something more or less incidental to who we really are, and similarly devoid of any higher meaning. Our lives are so bereft of a spiritual element that we find it hard to even take seriously those religions that offer us salvation from our plight in this world and entry into an otherworldly situation full of the numinous meaning that our lives here and now lack. How, we tend to think, could such meaning really exist anywhere? The glints of enchantment that we can find amongst our lives are small, pale, and cold, because they don’t transcend the horizon of the mundane world within which we find ourselves. There is nothing spiritual or religious about them; they are incapable of reaching our ultimate concern.

The Vikings and other Germanic peoples, however, lived in a radically different kind of world, one infused with divine presence and strong, sacred meaning.

Another history resource website, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, makes a similar point in this entry, that people of past cultures believed their own religions:

In my experience teaching this, it is the next step that baffles my students the most. This vast increase in the institutional power of the Church was made possible, not by armies or shrewd real-politic (though both were involved), but by belief. The primary weapon wielded by Popes in this effort was the threat of excommunication, which (under Catholic doctrine) cut off the excommunicated individual or community from salvation, potentially damning them for all eternity. But of course that threat is only real if you believe the Pope has that power. And therein is the key point: most of Europe did believe. As I tell my students, it is safe to assume, as a general matter, that people in the past believed their own religion. Of course there are exceptions, but the general rule remains.

This is in the context of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series, where there is a very modern and cynical worldview towards religion. This is an annoying mistake many fantasy writers make, that their characters will (conveniently!) share the modern worldview of the author’s culture. There is a similar attitude towards women, where the “strong warrior woman” trope in fantasy fiction has become ubiquitous to the point of annoyance, and is highly inaccurate: female warriors in real history would have been almost non-existent (social status, gender – if women fight also, that means the bearers of the next generation are being slain, lack of physical strength in comparison to men). But that is a topic for another time.

March

Saturday 27/3: Sister visit; book bargain; reading and watching

My sister flew from Queensland to stay at my parents’ home from Friday 19/3 to Wednesday 24/3. She has not been able to visit since last year (6/2/2020 entry), since the strict lockdown was imposed on Victoria just over a year ago (23/3/2020 entry). There is no direct train service from Tullamarine Airport (though building a rail line has been talked of for decades), so visitors must take a bus or hire a taxi (both not cheap options). Michele got the bus to Southern Cross Station, then the Frankston line to Patterson Station, so at least not a too-long journey.

Had a lot of thoughts going through my head as usual, but I freeze up once I try to set them down here. I have found iCloud Notes invaluable as I can type in various things at any time (often during the night!); it is easier than handwriting.

I bought Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (mentioned in my 5/7/2020 entry) for $1.50 on clearance at a department store today! The physical book is ridiculously thick and heavy, but I could not resist such a bargain. I still have not managed to get past the first few chapters; there is something about his writing style which makes reading the story a chore. As the stardrive technology used is the theoretical (and arguably implausible) Alcubierre drive, the story is essentially science fantasy (or fantasy with stars and spaceships). The book itself is, however, quite nicely presented with internal artwork, and there is a companion Fractalverse website. I enjoy worldbuilding, and reading about others’ worlds.

I have been reading, even managing to finish a more literary (if still flawed) science fiction novel (Goldilocks by Laura Lam). I will put my thoughts about it on my “Books read” page sometime.

I quit viewing the Vikings TV series (21/2/2020 entry), growing weary of the constant grimness of the storyline.

Wednesday 31/3: Story ID made; COVID-19 in Brisbane

There are two stories I read when young whose identity I cannot recall, and which have been nagging at me for years. One I posted on a subReddit and it was identified within an hour! I will post both descriptions below, as I initially wrote them:

Miserable wet weather last week, but this week has a few glorious fine Autumn days to make up for it!

Brisbane has had another COVID-19 outbreak, so it is back into a few days of lockdown, with possible border closures. Michele made it here and back home again just in time. The lockdown has greatly disrupted the upcoming Easter holiday for many, though.

April

Friday 2/4: Reading RPG manuals; World of Dinosaurs

This article, “The joy of reading role-playing games,” The Guardian, 19/6/2015, expresses how I feel about Role-Playing Game manuals – I simply enjoy reading them and looking at the artwork, and so on – namely, the worldbuilding aspect rather than the actual game itself (and I would have no one to play them with, anyway, if I were inclined to do so). I thought I was alone in being like this, but apparently not, reassuringly!

“World of Dinosaurs put Creswick on the map, millennium technology killed it off,” ABC News, 2/4. My family and Dad’s sister and her family (new immigrants from England then) visited this park in 1981! Below are a couple of scanned old photos Dad took; I am wearing the pink skivvy and was 10 years old here. The dinosaur sculptures were hand-built by the family who operated the park. Sadly, it closed in 2002, past history like so much of that era. I miss my childhood (1970s and 1980s) more and more as I get older. No Internet for children then, and I do believe we were none the worse off for it.

McHale and Reilly families at World of Dinosaurs My cousin Phillip and myself in front of T-Rex

Tuesday 13/4: Starlink sighting

I am sure I saw what looked to be a string of Starlink satellites early this morning: around 5:15 a.m., orbiting from southeast to northeast. Quite an unexpected and startling sight as the satellites were in a line, dozens of them, and very bright. They are constructed and launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. I think they might have been from the 7th April launch.

Later addition – ABC News article: What were these lights in the sky over eastern Australia?

Saturday 24/4: Parents to Kyneton; sister coming; forum lockout; stagnating space

My parents managed to get their holiday in Kyneton this year (missed out last year due to the COVID-19 lockdowns), from last Friday 16/4 and returned home yesterday. My sister is also flying down next Friday to stay until the following Thursday (barring any snap lockdowns).

I have had a frustrating few days with the NASASpaceflight.com forum: since last Tuesday, my password has stopped working and I have been unable to log in. I have not received any emails to reset it, despite my trying this several times, and the support@nasaspaceflight.com email is so far unresponsive. My emails to there or back seem to be vanishing into the ether. I managed to contact the owner of the site’s Facebook page, and they have responded, but still nothing from the forum help. I have had the account since the forum began in 2005, so do not want to lose it and years of my post history there. It is frustrating as I have not had any feedback as to why this has happened, and the forum is one of my most-frequented.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company yesterday launched its third crewed Dragon flight, the second operational mission to the ISS with a crew of 4. Such a dynamic company makes the Russian space program look even more moribund. The 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s spaceflight was marked last week (12/4), but to me it seems that the Russian space program spends too much time stagnating and dwelling upon past glories rather than looking ahead with solid plans (and adequate funding). The latest of the vaporware fantasies they announce every so often is a proposal to launch their own space station in 2025, as NASAWatch cynically reports.

Tuesday 27/4: Forum access restored; upcoming flu vaccine

After a week I am able to log into the NASASpaceflight.com forum again! Same account. I don’t know what happened, but the person running the NSF Facebook page contacted the webmaster who was able to sort things out this morning. Much relief!

I booked in for the annual flu vaccine at my local chemist for this Friday. I have no idea as to when I will be able to get the COVID-19 vaccine, though!

Friday 30/4: Flu vaccinated; another book remembered; Russian snub; new Chinese space station

I got my influenza vaccine today. My sister arrived from Queensland and is staying with my parents until next week.

I found another book whose title had eluded me for years but which remained in my memory! It is Lyrico: The Only Horse Of Its Kind, also titled Lyrico: The Story Of A Very Special Horse by Elizabeth Vincent Foster, first published in 1970. “A young girl’s greatest wish is fulfilled when a horse is delivered to her New York penthouse – especially since it is a horse with wings.” Unfortunately it is long out of print. As I vaguely recall, the girl took the horse to her uncle’s ranch in the mid-West and eventually removed its bridle; without this it could not be controlled and flew off into the sky.

I was reading this NASASpaceflight.com article, “The Evolution of the Big Falcon Rocket,” 9/8/2018. A short extract:

Musk pressed on regardless, intending to buy a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and use it as the Mars Oasis’ launch vehicle. By late October 2001 Musk had recruited his friend from college, Adeo Ressi, as well as former international intelligence agent and space enthusiast Jim Cantrell, to fly to Moscow with him as he attempted to buy a huge R-36 (SS-18 Satan) ICBM. Michael Griffin would join the team once there.

They met with members of NPO Lavochkin, a robotic probe manufacturer, and Kosmotras, the launch service company for the Dnepr rocket, the commercial version of the R-36. They were met with much derision, with some Russian chief designers so contemptuous they even spat upon them. Eventually, things came to a head at a Moscow meeting, when Musk asked how much a missile would cost.

The Russians demanded $8 million per rocket, which Musk countered with an offer of that amount for two. The Russians scoffed and insulted Musk, after which Musk determined they were either not being serious with him or wanted to extract as much of his money as possible. He stormed out and the small team took a cab trip back to the airport.

It was on the flight back to the US that Musk showed Cantrell and Griffin a spreadsheet with rocket performance and fabrication cost calculations he had been working on, saying, “I think we can build this rocket ourselves”. The Russians’ disrespect of Musk had backfired completely.

Ouch! Very poor behavior on the Russians’ part (though I think I remember reading such harshness is part of their cultural negotiation tactics?). Given the moribund state of their space program, perhaps they are having cause to regret snubbing Elon.

China launches Tianhe module, start of ambitious two-year station construction effort,” NASASpaceflight.com, 28/4. China has begun construction of its own independent space station, launching the first module. Perhaps it has the better strategy, doing this independently and not reliant upon unstable international partners for such a big project.

May

Thursday 20/5: Winter is coming; mysterious ailment; Aniara movie; TiddlyWiki; still reading

I am still here! Just haven’t felt like posting much. The weather is now becoming chilly, the Autumn leaves on the few deciduous are red and gold and falling. I much prefer the European and northern American deciduous and conifer trees to Australian native trees.

12/5 marked one year since my bicycle accident. I am still unable to get back on my bicycle, or go near it; I have lost all enthusiasm.

From last Sunday afternoon I had a debilitating aching in the middle of my abdomen; I was barely able to function. It gradually abated after 2 or 3 days. Some nausea and one vomit, and upset at the other end too. I wonder if this were a abdominal migraine, as I can’t think of anything I ate that caused it. It is the worst I have felt for a while, and I could not find pain relief (painkillers seemed ineffective). The pain seems to have receded now, though I am still feeling fragile. I did not go to the doctor as I doubt they would have been able to diagnose anything specific.

I watched a movie last week called Aniara, a gloomy but oddly compelling tale based on a 1956 Swedish poem about passengers on a cruise spaceship that is evacuating people from Earth to Mars due to a climate crisis, but it gets knocked off course and its passengers and crew, unable to be rescued, gradually go insane as years pass. They eventually reach a distant star system … over 5 million years later, when the ship’s inhabitants have long since perished. In what seems to be typical European style, there was some nudity and even an orgy in it! Not to my taste, but whatever. (Nudity does not faze me now; a body is just a body. Also if one has been in hospital – and probably if one does nursing as a profession! – nudity would quickly lose any shock value!)

A lot of thoughts going through my head and topics to write about as usual, but it is an effort to get them into tangible form. I am still using TiddlyWiki; despite other wiki programs I have tried, TW is the one I keep returning to. Its user community – the most active being at Google Groups (there is also a subReddit) is very helpful and friendly.

A lot of thoughts going through my head and topics to write about as usual, but it is an effort to get them into tangible form.

I have been reading, mainly my favorite genre of science fiction. I prefer stories about arkships or sleeper (hibernation) ships on journeys to other star systems, and preferably realistic (Mundane) SF that acknowledges the laws of physics, not “magic” science fantasy with FTL travel and so on. I am, however, slowly plowing through Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (previously mentioned 5/7/2020 entry), a physical copy, and it is not too bad after all on a second reading. There is a group that is “sporking” the novel, but they are rather mean-spirited and a lot of their criticisms are nit-picking in the extreme. I suspect there is some resentful jealously at Christopher being a successful published author.

Friday 28/5: Lockdown number 4; Tesla sightings; feminist anti-space nonsense

Things were too good to be true; Melbourne and Victoria were put under yet another “snap lockdown” from last night, for 7 days (minimum, depending upon circumstances) due to another outbreak of COVID-19 cases. Severe restrictions again – only “essential” retail shops allowed to open (supermarkets, chemists), a travel radius of 5 km, face masks worn at all times. Pity the retailers who, with much frustration, have to close yet again, with subsequent loss of stock and profits. An opinion piece in today’s The Australian:

Melbourne resembles a poorly run police state

Can an entire city suffer from PTSD? Maybe not, but something is sadly amiss in my hometown of Melbourne seven months after the city suffered the longest continuous Covid lockdown in the world outside Wuhan. This week’s snap lockdown for the latest outbreak will only make things worse.

I returned to Melbourne in March after four years living in Washington DC but I may as well have returned to a different city. Melbourne today looks and feels like a boxer that has gone 15 rounds. It is still on its feet, but it is battered and bruised, both physically and psychologically.

It’s the small things you notice. The reflex defensiveness of Victorians who feel the rest of Australia has no idea what they suffered during almost four months of severe lockdowns. The jittery, panicky reaction to news of any new Covid cases like the sudden cluster we saw emerge this week. The bitter arguments at dinner parties over the rights and wrongs of what Premier Dan Andrews inflicted on the city last year and whether the more relaxed NSW approach to Covid is better than the shutdowns of the Andrews government.

There is a strange mood of submission and acquiescence. The state’s Covid-tracing system and its hotel quarantine system remains a shambles and yet Melburnians seem to accept this bureaucratic incompetence.

It is as if they have been cowed rather than angered by last year’s deadly outbreak and the subsequent hardline shutdown. The good of the herd is firmly dominant over the rights of the individual. Victoria exudes the mood of a police state, but one that is poorly run.

Some of Melbourne’s lockdown scars are all too visible seven months on. Thanks to the long lockdown the city still boasts the quietest CBD of any capital city in the nation. Workers have become so accustomed to working from home that they have refused to come back to work in large numbers, curbing the recovery of the city’s cafes, restaurants and shops.

Beyond the CBD, the city’s famous tourism and shopping strips, like South Yarra’s Chapel St, St Kilda’s Acland St and Fitzroy’s Brunswick St are shadows of what they once were, littered with shopfront vacancies.

The city’s hospitality sector has not recovered from the long lockdown and from the ongoing occupancy restrictions for hotels.

As Matt Mullins, part-owner of St Kilda’s iconic Hotel Esplanade puts it in the Weekend Australian Magazine: “Those things that make the city so special – its art and culture and pubs and music and food and wine and coffee – have just been cast aside by what happened. We are going to look back in a year or two and realise that Melbourne is not the most liveable city in the world, not by a long shot. So much of that is just gone for a generation.”

But the deepest scars from Melbourne’s four-month lockdown cannot be seen.

Some of my friends speak quietly about how their teenage children went off the rails during the almost four-month lockdown and are still not back on track. Psychiatrists who deal with children and young adults say they are more busy than they were during the lockdown, as they deal with trauma that is only now becoming apparent. Support services for victims of domestic violence are being overwhelmed as the cumulative financial and psychological stress of the lockdowns manifests itself in brutal ways.

Schools were back until this week but hundreds of tutors are toiling to recover those lost months with government forecasts saying 20 per cent of students will require support to catch up.

And the families of the 768 people who lost their lives in the hotel quarantine fiasco continue to grieve quietly, having never got a satisfactory answer as to who was responsible for the tragedy.

This week, as the new cluster of Covid cases in Melbourne led to yet another lockdown, you could almost hear the city groan. The damage to Melbourne from last year’s mega-lockdown was greater and more traumatic than many Australians realise and is still unfolding seven months on.

Is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder an overstatement? After all, Melbourne is peaceful and has not had to endure war, famine, natural disasters. The trauma here is more subtle, but the city is collectively affected nonetheless. We have never experienced such an event before for many decades, and the harshness of the lockdowns and restrictions is extremely distressing for those accustomed to freedom of movement. I like to browse in bookshops as a form of escapism, and cannot during the shutdown period. A minor disruption, but still upsetting for me.

I am still occasionally sighting Tesla electric cars around my neighborhood! Such as a white Model-S 2 weeks ago, parked outside Tucker Road Primary School. Spotting them is still like seeing a unicorn: rare and elusive. I do admire Elon Musk (and Jeff Bezos) for their starting their own private spaceflight companies, and hope they succeed in these – both inevitably have many detractors and haters, though. An example are the opinions expressed in this 2018 article, “The patriarchal race to colonize Mars is just another example of male entitlement.” (Archive.org link). The female author is not in favor of such ventures, ascribing these to “patriarchial entitlement” and a colonialism mentality that apparently only men possess. The usual inane anti-technology arguments of the “progressive” Left.

Rather, the impulse to colonize – to colonize lands, to colonize peoples, and, now that we may soon be technologically capable of doing so, colonizing space – has its origins in gendered power structures. Entitlement to power, control, domination and ownership. The presumed right to use and abuse something and then walk away to conquer and colonize something new. […]

Not only, according to researchers, do women generally have a greater environmental conscience when it comes to the planet we currently live on, but the same researchers have found a connection between men’s insecurity about their masculinity and their lack of environmental conscience. Apparently, caring for the planet is perceived to be a “feminine” quality and concern; the psychology of toxic masculinity spills over into the unethical disregard for the environment.

That awful phrase, “toxic masculinity,” makes an appearance. There is nothing wrong with traditional masculinity in my view, and the phrase only alienates and demonizes boys.

June

Wednesday 2/6: And another extended lockdown

And, with weary predictability, Victoria’s “snap lockdown” has been extended into next week. Ominously “at least” one more week. The utter futility of these forced restrictions seems to be lost upon the fools in the State Government; that the COVID-19 virus will keep reappearing is inevitable. The economy and many businesses are already devastated. Once again, more wandering disconsolately around the ghost town that is Southland SC. Each day repeating like Groundhog Day.

The r/LockdownSkepticismAU subreddit is the only safe space for disaffected Australians to vent their frustration, and not surprisingly it is once again active (I seem to have ended up a moderator there).

One user suggested moving to another Australian State, but in my situation that is impossible: unemployed (and unemployable), deep roots here (I have lived in Melbourne all my life, in the same house), and there is no guarantee similarly-minded governments would not be elected in other States.

Thursday 3/6: Chilly Sunday

Last Sunday 30/5 was the coldest Melbourne morning in 70 years:

Melbourne has shivered through its coldest May morning in more than 70 years, the Bureau of Meteorology said on Sunday. Temperatures fell to 1.7C, which is the lowest for the city since mid last century. It was the coldest May morning since 1949. But the coldest on record was May 29 in 1916 when temperatures plummeted to −1.1C. The BOM posted to Twitter on Sunday saying, “if you are less than 71 years and 364 days old, it is the coldest May Melbourne morning in your lifetime.”

Very difficult for me to arise and function, especially in a poorly-insulated weatherboard house. I have poor circulation and my hands get corpse-cold, which is extremely uncomfortable. Still, I am grateful I am not homeless (so far); I think I would give up and perish if I had to endure this weather outdoors as so many homeless do.

The day was clear, sunny and glorious, but still chilly. A lot of local people out walking and little vehicle traffic due to the 5 km lockdown boundary; Sundays are usually busy on the roads as many people go out.

Monday 7/6: Persistent wind; lockdown abuse; still slowly creating

Saturday was another chilly day, 4°C morning and an icy northerly wind. The wind still persists to gale force, but is not as cold as then. Rain forecast for the next few days, unfortunately.

Waiting with apprehension for this infernal lockdown to end later this week … maybe. A poster in this r/LockdownSkepticismAU thread compared the Victorian Government’s treatment of Victorians to that of an abusive relationship, and I replied that it is exactly what I have been thinking. It is psychological torture at every press conference: cajoling and bullying, a carrot-and-stick approach. Constant uncertainty as to what decision officials will make regarding future restrictions.

I am slowly progressing in my latest creative project (see my Creative section); even managed to do a few illustrations in Inkscape (though the vector program’s random crashing on Windows is an irritation). I can only do little bits here and there.

Wednesday 9/6: Some lockdown restrictions to lift; COVID vaccine booked; awful weather

Some lockdown restrictions are to ease from this Friday; should not have been imposed in the first place. An added annoyance now is having to sign in at every store entered to enable contact tracing. As usual, it is assumed everyone has a smartphone, so they have to download an app and scan the QR code in. As I am one who does not have a phone, most have a pen-and-paper signin backup option.

I finally managed to book my first of two COVID vaccines for this Saturday; the AstraZeneca variety. There is a big push for people to get vaccinated, but supply has not kept up with demand due to a chaotic and unco-ordinated rollout.

The weather for Melbourne is at its most miserable, with a strong cold front dumping a lot of rain for most of this week.

Thursday 10/6: Wild weather continues

Gale-force winds overnight wreaked havoc throughout Victoria.

Tuesday 15/6: AstraZeneca aftereffects, dose 1; haircut; plain HTML

On Saturday 12/6 I had my first injection of the AstraZeneca vaccine (second scheduled in 12 weeks). The “common side-effects” the day after were rather intense and debilitating for me! They were like a 24-hour influenza infection with:

Sunday was, essentially, HELL – I could barely function. The worst I have felt in a long time! On Monday I seemed to be feeling better 🤞 so hopefully the worst is over? (And that the second dose in 12 weeks won’t be so bad?) If I had known the effects would be that debilitating, I might have reconsidered having the vaccine.

Timeline of Sunday:

So, for me, the immediate after effects were rather severe! Of additional concern is the publicity around the blood clotting issue linked to the vaccine, which a few recipients have died from (a small number out of the millions vaccinated). Articles such as “Experts want age limit for AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine reviewed after latest death,” ABC News, 14/6, don’t exactly inspire confidence.

Had my hair trimmed last Friday 11/6; it is still one length but now rather short! I can still braid it, but only just. It will grow again.

I was reading an opinion piece by John Ankarström, Writing HTML in HTML (and a followup, Static versus dynamic web sites). His views are why I keep coming back to plain HTML: there is nothing between me and writing the code. Even TiddlyWiki (mentioned in my 20/5 entry) puts a barrier up: it has its own markup which is converted to HTML and is a fairly complex program that is dependent upon open-source volunteers to keep maintaining and updating. HTML code is verbose and can be a bit of a nuisance to write sometimes, but it is familiar and will (I hope) be around for many decades yet, if not centuries!

Wednesday 16/6: Cash bashing letter

A letter was published in The Age today:

Cashless economy

Our government’s emphasis is on growing the economy by giving back to taxpayers more earned income to allow them to spend it while at the same time providing increased services needed. The concept is great.

I was disappointed that with COVID-19 the opportunity was not taken to outlaw cash completely. Think of the additional GST and tax revenue generated at no cost to hardworking Australians.

There would be some difficulties experienced by the older generation but what policy has zero negative effect on any age group? There is still time to outlaw cash and thus reduce the significant cash economy that reduces our tax revenue.

– Howard Brownscombe, Brighton

To which I emailed an indignant reply:

I strongly disagree with Howard Brownscombe’s proposal that cash payments should be banned (Letters, 16/6). Cash is reliable (digital payment methods are unusable when power supplies are disrupted), secure and convenient. Electronic payment methods can compromise one’s privacy, can have added fees and are also unusable if the network and power go down, as has happened several times. In my view, cash should never be outlawed.

Don’t know if it will get published, but worth a try.

Thursday 17/6: My published letter; AstraZeneca age limit revised; Finland a paradise?

My letter was published!

Why we still need cash

I strongly disagree with Howard Brownscombe’s proposal to “outlaw cash” (Letters, 16/6). Cash is reliable (digital payment methods are unusable when power supplies are disrupted), secure and convenient. Electronic payment methods can compromise one’s privacy, can have added fees and are also unusable if the network and power go down, as has happened several times.

– Suzanne McHale, Bentleigh

Just what I didn’t need to hear a few days after getting my first dose! “AstraZeneca COVID vaccine use recommended for over-60s only following ATAGI meeting.” The advice is for those who have had their first dose to get the second one of the same vaccine anyway, but this constant indecision and changing is exasperating.

Last night I watched an SBS report on “Finland: The World’s Happiest Country,” including an interview with an Australian expat woman who had married and lived there. The country has excellent social services for the young and elderly, but as with everything there are tradeoffs: these are funded with a high tax rate and the cost may be unsustainable in the long term. No country is an utopia, of course, and Finland has issues with problems such as youth homelessness (particularly deadly in the freezing winters). Nonetheless it seems to be a generally good place to live (assuming one can learn the language! And has employment). I remarked in my 10/1 entry that I liked the forests and landscapes of the northern Scandinavian countries, though the cold would be very difficult for me (I can barely cope with Melbourne’s relatively mild winters).

Friday 18/6: Lynx browser testing

I had a look at my website in the text-only Lynx browser, which I use occasionally to see how accessible sites are. Mine works just fine, as I wish! Back in my 29/4/2015 entry I complained about the last NASA website redesign, which saw the reasonably accessible previous version “upgraded” to the bloated, Javascript-dependent monstrosity it (and too many modern websites – see 2015 essay The Website Obesity Crisis, and sites have only got worse since then) still is now. There has been no redesign since then, presumably due to budget restraints.

I have not redesigned my site since 2017; I am out of ideas, and perhaps the only redesign I would do is to simplify it. I don’t have the energy to at the moment, but as far as I know the site is accessible to most.

Saturday 19/6: Cash vindicated yet again

My preference for physical cash again vindicated: “Akamai says a technical problem not cyber attack was behind mass bank, corporate web outage,” ABC News, 17/6. Yet another electronic outage that saw online users unable to access digital payment methods.

Tuesday 22/6: Cold morning; Wim Hof wackiness

A very cold morning in Melbourne; only 4°C or so. I dread the cold, and having Raynaud syndrome only makes it worse; my hands and feet get literally corpse-cold. I can’t seem to get warm no matter how much clothing I wear; only external heat will warm me.

Due to my fear of cold, I have been recently reading with a certain masochistic fascination about Wim Hof, who has made a name for himself as an extreme “cold athlete,” immersing in ice baths and so on, and uses a form of breathing exercises to withstand such cold. I tend to be skeptical of such claims and he is now something of a cultish fitness guru, with a lot of followers. (ABC News has a couple of articles about cold therapy, and an Outside Online article.)

Monday 28/6: Mum’s vaccine turn; TiddlyWiki fiddling

Mum had the first dose of her AstraZeneca vaccine and thankfully had no obvious adverse reactions, apart from a little tiredness. I have read this is because the immune system is stronger in younger people, so they may display more severe symptoms, as I found out! So my parents and I are now half-vaccinated, with our second doses due in September.

Been having some fun and frustrations with this application. I have learned how to create inline Scalable Vector Graphics art; very simple renderings of exoplanets for my current worldbuilding project – one example below of a gas giant, and the underlying SVG code (may only display in the latest browsers):

<svg viewBox="0 0 400 65">
<rect x="0" y="0" rx="5" ry="5" width="100" height="60" fill="black"/>
<defs>
      <linearGradient id="LinearGradientBCW" x1="0" x2="0" y1="0" y2="1">
        <stop offset="0%" stop-color="#36a"/>
<stop offset="20%" stop-color="#7ca3d8"/>
<stop offset="40%" stop-color="#36a"/>
<stop offset="60%" stop-color="#7ca3d8"/>
<stop offset="80%" stop-color="#36a"/>
        <stop offset="100%" stop-color="#7ca3d8"/>
      </linearGradient>
      <radialGradient id="RadialGradientBCWshadow">
        <stop offset="50%" stop-color="#00000033"/>
        <stop offset="80%" stop-color="#00000080"/>
      </radialGradient>
  </defs>
  <circle cx="50" cy="30" r="30" stroke="#7ca3d8" stroke-width="0.1" fill="url(#LinearGradientBCW)" />
<line x1="5" y1="30" x2="95" y2="30" style="stroke: #7ca3d8;" stroke-width="1" stroke-linecap="round" />
<circle cx="65" cy="30" r="30" fill="url(#RadialGradientBCWshadow)" />
</svg>

I found out how to make a Javascript sortable table work in the static export of a TiddlyWiki, as described at the r/TiddlyWiki5 subReddit (Archive.org backup link).

After much puzzling and exasperation, I also solved an image embedding macro issue, where an embedded image would not display – turned out the syntax order seems to be important:

Note: the [images/$image$] in brackets must come last in the sequence, otherwise the macro won’t work.
\define imageEmbedWidth(alt,width,image)
[img alt=$alt$ loading=lazy width=$width$ [images/$image$]]
\end

So small things, but it feels good to solve such issues!

July

Tuesday 6/7: Yet another anti-space argument

Mid-winter; cold, dreary weather. Difficult for me to cope with; my hands seem permanently cold.

“The space tourism plans of Bezos, Musk and Branson are morally reprehensible,” The Age, 5/7. Yet another rehash of the tired argument that the entrepreneurs mentioned should put their wealth into fixing humanity’s problems on Earth rather than pursuing their spaceflight dreams. Typical Leftist viewpoint, and one I strongly disagree with. Humanity’s problems will never be “fixed” and, with human nature the way it is, it is pointless to try (the various political systems that tried to remedy this have ended badly). At least these billionaires are doing something constructive with their wealth – pushing towards expanding humanity into space – rather than just spending it upon indulgences.

The space tourism plans of Bezos, Musk and Branson are morally reprehensible

Ben Bramble

With billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson soon to send paying customers into space, members of US Congress are asking whether and how to regulate commercial spaceflight. But there is a more basic question: Should there be such an industry in the first place?

Supporters of such an industry, such as Republican Kevin McCarthy, cast these billionaires as modern-day Wright brothers, innovating commercial spaceflight in a way governments either can’t or won’t. While billionaires will be the first in space, they say, soon everyone will get their chance. Jeff Bezos is spending big on saving the planet but he could do more.

But this is clearly not feasible any time soon, given Earth’s environmental crises. It is unsustainable for humans to keep consuming resources at the rate we currently are, let alone if space tourism were to become commonplace. The fact that a product can be made cheap enough for many people to afford it does not show that it is environmentally sustainable for many people to actually consume it.

Still, you might say, what could be wrong with commercial spaceflight reserved for the ultra-wealthy? This wouldn’t significantly worsen our environmental crises.

But there is something morally distasteful in the extreme about space tourism exclusively for the ultra-wealthy when so many people on Earth are in such great need. Going into space, in full view of the many billions of humans who are struggling on a daily basis, is a little like enjoying a pop-up Michelin star meal in front of a homeless shelter.

This is not to decry all luxury goods. But there is something particularly objectionable about spending so much money on a fleeting experience for oneself and others, who are already among the best off on the planet, when so many cannot even make ends meet (through no fault of their own).

At present, there seems a clear tendency to reserve moral criticism for people who cause bad things or who set out to harm others. Such behaviour is certainly bad and merits criticism.

But we should feel grumpy also at people for failing to help others when they easily can. Those who display an indifference to the plight of others or who are too wrapped up in themselves and their own self-serving projects are morally criticisable even if they are not the cause of others’ suffering. While it is true that Bezos has recently become a major sponsor of the environment, much more is needed. Every dollar spent on sending billionaires into space is money that could have been used instead to help save the planet or bring others out of poverty.

It is worth adding that many billionaires have contributed to Earth’s problems. Our environmental crises are largely due to excessive consumption, something that companies such as Amazon have played a major role in making possible, affordable and accepted.

This leads me to what seems most morally troubling about the billionaire’s space race. Why is the experience of seeing Earth from space so highly prized? What is supposed to be so moving about it? It is Earth’s beauty and preciousness. There is something odd about spending so much to gain this experience when the money could have been used to help protect Earth, and especially when you are part of the reason it is so imperilled.

Bezos has said that one of his reasons for founding his company Blue Origin is that “we’re now big compared to the size of the planet”. Like Musk, he thinks we need to look beyond Earth to survive our present crises. But this is far too premature. We can still save the Earth. But to save it, we’re going to have to re-engineer our consumer cultures and economies. This, and not space tourism, is the great engineering challenge of the 21st century. I’d like to see these billionaires use their brilliant minds to help save the Earth, rather than flee it. If this means smaller growth for their own companies, so be it.

The pleasures of seeing Earth from space are special indeed. But they should be reserved, for now, for those who have gone into space on missions for humanity, such as astronauts and scientists. If we manage to save the planet, only then space tourism will become something we can all enjoy in good conscience.

Ben Bramble is a lecturer in philosophy at the Australian National University.

Saturday 10/7: Cold

Mid-winter. Very cold mornings this week (3°-5°C) but fine days, until next Sunday at least. Very difficult for me to function, though. My parents’ house (the one I have lived in all my life so far) is very old – a weatherboard – with poor insulation and it does not retain any heat, which is bad for electricity and gas bills. I dream of simply having a well-insulated apartment, but that is likely to remain a dream in my current situation. I cannot get warm no matter how many clothes I pile on. My hands and feet are like ice (Raynaud Syndrome) which makes the cold even more unbearable.

I am reading The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Brid by Daniel James Brown, about the doomed Donner Party, a group of American pioneers who got lost in the Sierra Nevada mountains over winter in 1846 with dire consequences. It is gruesomely compelling reading. The suffering and hardship they endure in the awful snowy cold makes mine look mild in comparison. A short extract from Chapter 7:

(Click to expand)

Living conditions deteriorated steadily at the lake camp as the snow began to bury the cabins. The emigrants cut steps into the snow so that they could climb from their doorways up to the surface, but the interiors of their cabins grew dark and increasingly fetid. There was virtually no light except for the flickering of the fires. Smoke from the fires continuously stung the eyes of everyone who stayed inside. And even inside, even with the insulating effect of the snow piled up around the cabin, the cold gripped them without surcease. Their hands and feet ached around the clock, ached with the kind of dull, relentless pain that gets down into your bones and lives there and will not ease up.

In the Graveses’ half of the double cabin, Sarah and Mary Ann and their mother crouched around their own fire, over which was suspended a Dutch oven in which they cooked small bits of the stringy beef they retrieved from the snowbanks outside. The rich but perishable organ meats and the best cuts of beef were almost certainly long gone by now, consumed within the first few days after the slaughter of the oxen. What was left was largely muscle and gristle. There was almost nothing now with which to supplement the meat, and no salt with which to season it. The more they ate of it, the more it began to taste like pasteboard to them. Sarah and her mother and Mary Ann tended, around the clock, to the younger children in the cabin, who were bored, miserably cold, and increasingly cranky. Five-year-old Franklin Jr. and the baby Elizabeth in particular wailed and whimpered.

Jay and Franklin and Billy spent much of their time out in the relentless snowfall with Stanton and Luis and Salvador, foraging for firewood. The dry pine limbs that had littered the ground when they arrived at the lake had by now disappeared under the snow, so they tried to knock dead limbs out of trees. Finally they took to felling living pines, cutting them off just above the snow line with crosscut saws, bucking them into short lengths, and splitting them with axes. But the work was exhausting, and they came back from these wood-cutting expeditions cold, wet, and spent. The green wood they brought in burned poorly, filling the cabin with even more smoke.

Everyone’s clothes were perpetually damp. There was no way to bathe at all now. Lice, bedbugs, and fleas continued to infest their bedding. The cabin reeked of wet wool, sweat, unwashed bodies, urine, and excrement. To relieve themselves, day or night, Sarah and her family had either to use chamber pots or to emerge from the cabin into the bitter cold outside, climb up steep steps cut into the snow, walk a reasonable distance from the cabin, and squat in the cold, stinging snow.

On the other side of the log partition that separated the two halves of the cabin, just eight or nine inches away, Margret Reed, her albino servant Baylis Williams, and his sister Eliza labored under similarly miserable conditions to provide for the Reed children. Margret Reed was carefully rationing her very limited supply of meat, and Baylis, who was likely getting the least share, was beginning to grow noticeably weak. To pass the time, Patty Reed played with the small wooden doll she had hidden away back on the western edge of the salt desert. At the Murphy cabin, where there were seventeen mouths to feed, only scraps of beef were left from the two oxen they had started with at the beginning of the month. William Eddy went out to hunt every day but seldom returned now with anything more than an occasional squirrel. In the Breen cabin, Patrick was suffering bouts of agonizing pains from kidney stones. On November 29 he and his sons managed to kill the last of their oxen, but his wife, Peggy, had to do most of the butchering the next day. On December 1, as the snowstorm continued unabated, Patrick Breen wrote in his diary, “Difficult to get wood no going from the house completely housed up …. The horses & Stanton’s mules gone & cattle suppose lost in the snow no hopes of finding them alive.”

Things were even worse for those at the Donner brothers’ camps on Alder Creek. Their tents and brush shanties did almost nothing to keep out the cold and snow. Their clothes were wet day and night. Most of their cattle had been lost in the first storm and buried under the snow. By now George Donner’s cut hand had become badly infected, throbbing with pain and swelling up to twice its normal size. The infection was beginning to creep up his arm. When he went foraging for firewood, he had to carry it back bit by bit cradled in the crook of his right arm. Jacob Donner, frail to begin with, had also begun to weaken noticeably and now spent most of the time prostrate in his tent. Tamzene and Elizabeth Donner rationed out meager bits of beef to their children.

Thursday 15/7: Guess what – another lockdown

With COVID-19 spreading in NSW and now popping up in other states, Melbourne has the threat of another imminent snap lockdown from tonight. These damn lockdowns are worse than the virus; just a kneejerk reaction that disrupts society.

Saturday 17/7: Lockdown anxiety; upcoming Nauka launch

The all-too-familiar boredom and anxiety of lockdown #5. I feel a constant low-level anxiety, exacerbated by the current lockdown and disruption to the usual routine. I am stressed all the time and can’t relax. There are now rumors that it will be extended from the initial 5 days to 2 weeks, which will be unbearable.

A new Russian ISS module, Nauka, is to be launched on 21/7, after years of delays. It is actually a very old module, built in the late 1990s and originally intended as a backup for Zvezda then brought out of storage and refurbished, albeit with many technical problems adding to the launch delays.

Monday 19/7: Surprise (not) – lockdown extended

With wearisome predictability, Premier Andrews has dolefully announced that Victoria’s lockdown will be extended beyond 5 days, so no “non-essential” shops open until that ends whenever. This psychological warfare incites anger and despair; snapping and snarling at other people on my part. Patronizing articles online about coping with the lockdowns just irritate me. Nothing soothes or comforts me; I can’t focus or concentrate.

Reading about Lynx Vilden (mentioned in 10/1 entry) somehow does comfort me a little. She is currently in Norway according to her website (Archive.org page capture, as the page will change). As I noted, I like the pine and conifer forests of Northern Europe and Scandinavia; I wish I could visit there but that seems unlikely in my lifetime. In fact, I wish I could have been born and live/d there, as I am really disliking Australia more and more.

Tuesday 20/7: Finished TSIASOS

One minor achievement: I actually managed to finish To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (last mentioned in my 20/5 entry). It has taken me a few months to plow through it, a few paragraphs at a time as my atrophied attention span allowed, but it was surprisingly good, unlike my first impression (28/6/2020 entry), and the characters became endearing. The writing was straighforward but readable, and Paolini does have a knack for vivid, even poetic, landscape and scenery descriptions. So I would recommend it after all. The snark directed at it (and the author) by the posters at the “Antishurtugal” group is rather uncalled-for, in my view now. (There is also a more positive subReddit for the book.)

Victoria’s lockdown is to be extended until next Tuesday 27/7 (at least for now). Another week of this restricted monotonous dreariness (if it is not extended again). A recent post at LockdownSkepticismAU: Anyone else’s mental health taken a significant plunge with the recent lockdowns compared to previous? with quite a few distressed members posting (myself included).

Friday 23/7: Nauka launched; space billionaires verbally bashed

The latest Russian ISS module, MLM Nauka, launched successfully yesterday – but has run into problems during its checkout orbits, possible leaks in its propulsion system (issues with pressurization of the main engine tanks).

Both Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic Unity 22, 11/7) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin NS-16, 20/7) made it into space – sub-orbital parabolic hops – in the last 2 weeks! This garnered much attention, but inevitably a lot of it was negative (resentment toward, and perhaps envy of, “selfish” billionaires). The letters below from yesterday’s The Age are a sampling of such attitudes (see 6/7 entry for previous). At least the billionaires are doing something tangible to contribute toward private spaceflight and humanity’s future.

BILLIONAIRES’ SPACE RACE

Let’s call it what it is: pointless and polluting

Jeff Bezos says “you can try to intellectualise it but you really get to understand the fragility of our thin layer of the earth’s fragile atmosphere when you see it with your own eyes”. If we all had to see something to understand it, we would be back in the Stone Age (Flat Earthers excluded?). Thanks, Mr Bezos, for ruining the atmosphere further on your pointless, polluting space tourism. An example of capitalism gone totally wrong.
David Farrands, Box Hill South

Put the money into environmental projects here

The space flight competition between Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson (pictured) and Elon Musk is unfortunate. One of the reasons given for it is that humans will be able to settle on another planet when this one is “screwed up” (or full, I might add). How about these billionaires invest in a future on this planet, including projects to successfully inhabit deserts which cover large areas of it? A setttlement on Mars may not be required.
Jen Gladstones, Heidelberg

Did Branson feel guilt when he looked down at us?

As Richard Branson looked down from the edge of space recently, he would have been able to see the fires raging in California. Perhaps he might have had a pause to reflect on his contribution to global warming through all those Virgin flights that dumped carbon into the atmosphere. He may even have had a guilty feeling about all the money he has squandered chasing his ego-driven, space cowboy dream. It could have been spent planting trees by way of making amends for the damage he has done to this once beautiful planet.
Sid Abraham, Molesworth

When ego overrides all else

Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos could do more for humanity by spending their fortunes here on earth rather than flitting around the edges of space. With such vast fortunes to play with, it is sad that their focus is not on poverty, the plight of millions of refugees and climate change. These issues should be their goals, but ego and the making of money are always the top priority for such men.
Ron Reynolds, Templestowe

Let us nurture and grow this beauty, not destroy it

Michael Hiltzik (Opinion, 10/7) rightly puts paid to any claim by would be billionaire spacefarers that their egotistical flights have any scientific value by stating that Alan Shepard equalled their achievement of sub-orbital space flight 60 years ago. However, he was not the first: Yuri Gagarin far outshone Shepard or Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson or Elon Musk by achieving a full orbital flight several weeks before Shepard’s sub-orbital flight.

I work as a space physicist (currently remotely) at the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt (German Aerospace Center) in Berlin. In the foyer are inscribed Gagarin’s heartfelt words of humility as well as love and deep respect for our beautiful planet uttered during his flight at the height of the Cold War, showing sentiments sorely lacking in any of today’s small ventures: “As I flew around the Earth, I saw how sublime our planet is. Let us nurture and grow this Beauty, rather than destroying her”.
Frau Dr Selene Routley, Blackburn

Floating around, competing with each other forever

How about the billionaires just book a one-way trip to space. They would like it there. No taxes to try to avoid paying. No poor people needing stuff. Just billionaires floating around with each other. Do not come back on our behalf, guys.
Cindy O’Connor, Brunswick

Inflicting more damaging to learn about the damage

Billionaire Jeff Bezos described the earth, from space, as looking “fragile”. How much carbon dioxide did he put into the atmosphere to discover that?
John Heggie, Hastings

Sunday 25/7: Feeling the cold

A couple of pertinent The Age articles: “Not just in your head: Why do some people seem to always feel cold?” and “‘Virtually no protection’: Why Australian homes are so cold.” Women do tend to feel the cold more than men, generally! Don’t I know it.

Monday 26/7: Nauka on track to dock (so far)

Not quite so cold as yesterday. I do have painful chilblains on my toes, though :-(

The dramatic saga of the Russian Nauka ISS module continues. So far it is set to dock on the 29th, after the old Pirs module is undocked and deorbited tomorrow. It has successfully completed some orbital burns to get it into the correct rendezvous orbit, and a test of its Kurs automated docking system.

Tuesday 27/7: ISS Pirs module decommissioned

The nearly-20-year-old Pirs Docking Compartment module was undocked from the ISS and deorbited on 26/7 at 14:51 UTC, and no longer exists. A bit sad to see it go. The “temporary” module was only meant to be docked for 5 years, but this got extended a bit longer than intended!

The new Nauka module is still on track to dock 29/7, barring any more issues.

Friday 30/7: Nauka docked (but its travails not over yet)

The Russian module MLM Nauka has been successfully docked to the ISS! At 13:26 UTC. But after that relief, there was another major glitch from the temperamental module: the module’s thrusters began firing without external command, sending the ISS out of alignment. The Russian ground controllers were eventually able to cut the thrusters (and use the docked Progress MS-17’s thrusters to correct the Station’s attitude), but this is obviously a big concerning incident.

August

Thursday 5/8: My published letter; lockdown #6

From today’s The Age:

Our Christian values

I agree with Kevin Donnelly that the Lord’s Prayer should continue to be recited for parliamentary sessions. I am tired of the continued hostility towards anything traditional (and Western civilisation and values generally). Though many now want to deny it, Christian values are part of the foundation of modern Australia, and this should be acknowledged.

Original version:

I agree with Kevin Donelly’s opinion that The Lord’s Prayer should be continued to be recited for Parliamentary sessions. I am tired of the continued hostility towards anything traditional (and Western civilization and values generally). Though many now want to deny it, Christian values are part of the foundation of modern Australia, and it is important that this be acknowledged.

And in an unpleasant surprise, Victoria is back into lockdown, our 6th, for 7 days initially. A ridiculous overreaction to a few new COVID cases.

Sunday 8/8: Lockdown extended; signs of Spring; northern forests

With wearisome predictability, Victoria’s current lockdown is likely to be extended. A pointless strategy, as it will be temporarily supressed, then pop up again. The government, though, will not lose face by admitting this strategy is not working, and keep repeating the same futile course, at great cost to business and the economy, as well as citizens’ mental health. Stupidly patronizing articles about minimizing the emotional impact are just annoying and unhelpful.

Local plum blossom

Some happier observations: Today is mild and sunny. Plum and cherry blossom are blooming on their deciduous trees; always a hopeful sign that warmer weather lies ahead. The mornings are still cold, but not as brutally so as a few weeks ago. Local magpies have begun warbling in the very early morning (from around 2 a.m. or so!), as their nesting season approaches.

Came across a book called Out on the Land by Ray Mears and Lars Fält. “Fifty years into my life journey I realise that while I love remote, wild places and the peoples I meet there, it is in forests that I find the greatest joy. Of all the forests that I have explored, it is the great Boreal forest that calls to me most.” I have noted before that such a landscape appeals to me too, though I have never visited the region (and am probably unlikely to). I dislike the Australian eucalypt forests; though I was born here, I sometimes feel the landcape is still alien to me. The northern hemisphere of Europe is the home of my remote ancestors.

Sunday 15/8: Unending lockdown

The lockdown continues, with the threat that it will be extended yet again from this week. So no “non-essential” shops to open yet. The same cycle over and over again. I came across the phrase “learned helplessness,” where a mentally and/or physically abused person (or animal) simply gives up trying to resist, and does not attempt to escape even when presented with an opportunity. That feeling is somewhat descriptive of the mental dullness I feel now regarding the endless lockdowns.

I ordered that wilderness book I mentioned in my previous entry. I wish I could escape here, at least mentally if not physically. I also rewatched the first episode of Surviving the Stone Age just to get away virtually into some wilderness in Europe.

Tuesday 18/8: Lockdown extended again

Victoria’s lockdown is now extended until Thursday 2/9 at the earliest, so no “non-essential” retail shops will yet open. The hysteria over the Coronavirus outbreaks in Australian States continues unabated in the media. The virus is out in the community, it is not going to be eliminated – learn to live with it and manage it. I am just mentally and physically exhausted, and the weeks stretch out with a dreary monotony. I loathe Premier Daniel Andrews and his government like none other.

Monday 23/8: Still in limbo; slowly warming; little people

The lockdown continues, with no clear ending. Shops still shut. Premier Andrews was threatening to enact even harsher restrictions on Friday (no take-away shops or coffee allowed to open), but seems to have backed away from that – for now. I had a stressful and sleepless night on Friday as a result. I hate these constant mind games and “carrot-and-stick” manipulations, his treating the citizens he governs like misbehaving children. Melbourne now has among the harshest restrictions in the world, and reached 200 cumulative days of lockdown last 19/8. For the sake of my fragile mental health, I have simply stopped listening to any pandemic-related reports, don’t care about exposure sites, and am generally apathetic. I am fed up with the constant hysterical media reports.

The early mornings, at least, are still cool, but the awful winter chill has gone, so arising is more bearable. I have even been warm.

Gnomes book cover

A childhood book I remembered earlier this year is Gnomes by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. Someone uploaded scans to Archive.org. Dad had a copy of this in the 1970s and I used to like looking through it. It is quite charming, though with a darker tone in places! I first learned of the city of Uppsala through reading this (the name stayed with me for some reason). A part of me, the mystical part, wishes this were true; that the ancient northern forests are still inhabited by little people and other beings from old myths, though retreating from the modern civilization and its destructive technologies.

Saturday 28/8: Mental turmoil

I am mentally distressed; I cannot settle, cannot find comfort in much of anything. Yesterday was gloomy and overcast; today is bright and sunny. There are even days into the mid-20s forecast for next week. September and Spring will arrive also. But the lockdown continues with no end in sight and I feel a continued anxiety. This increases as the afternoon comes. I cannot focus on anything, cannot do anything creative. I have no one to talk to. There is little comfort in online forums; these are full of angry distressed people also. I can only find a little comfort in reading about and watching nature, of what I mentioned in my 15/8 entry, but this is fragile. Also reading of Lynx Vilden, who is currently in Norway (mentioned in 10/1 entry). I bounce from one thought to another; can’t focus on anything for long.

Sunday 29/8: Lockdown extended again; lost in nostalgia

You guessed it: Lockdown extended yet again. I am just numb and despairing; mentally wiped.

I often lose myself in nostalgic memories: of now-deceased relatives (particularly my maternal grandmother), of times and places now gone. I have lived in the same house, same suburb, same city of Melbourne all my life so far, and my roots here are deeply embedded. The surroundings have changed, of course (not always for the better), and I deeply miss what has vanished, particularly that of the 1980s: the shops, the culture, the people, the analog technology, the atmosphere of then. These memories are ephemeral and vague, hard to express, but the feeling is strong. I miss my grandmother’s home in Elsternwick (demolished in 1997), and the old 1920s atmosphere of it and the surrounding area. I wish I could time-travel, go back to see what it all looked like then. I miss going on daytrips to the surrounding countryside – the Ballarat region out of Melbourne – in the 1970s and 1980s with my parents, sister, and grandparents sometimes. We drove all over the region then. I wish I could have appreciated all this more when I was living it, but I could not have foreseen how I would be now.

I am now glad I grew up in a world without the Internet, where landline phones were the main form of communication, where you had to go to a local library for research, where you rented movies on videotapes from video stores. Vinyl records and CDs were how we listened to music. I miss the popular culture of then.

September

Wednesday 1/9: Unending lockdown; driving through London

The lockdown extended AGAIN until late September at least. No indication as to when retail shops will open, which is the main issue I care about. A lot of businesses will fail if this continues for months. Premier Andrews should be deposed; he is unfit for office and clearly does not care about the dire economic effects on the State.

Yesterday Dad was watching some a Slow TV-style video of a bus traveling its route in London on YouTube: Megabus: M11 London to Glasgow via Birmingham. Sounds mundane, but it is surprisingly mesmerising to watch! Just driving and driving on a long journey, looking at all the sights while traveling through London. A feeling of freedom, perhaps, particularly confined as we are in Melbourne lockdown. The UK seems to have a better approach to the Coronavirus: it is mostly opening up despite high case numbers. I rather wish we were there rather than Australia. (Dad emmigrated to Australia from England in the 1960s; I wish we could all have moved back to his homeland to live in. I have only visited there twice in my life – 1975 and 1978 – with my family when young, so my memories of those journeys are very fragmented.) Watching the video was a nice bonding moment with Dad.

A sunny mild day to begin the official Spring season. Sadly not a happy day.

Sunday 5/9: Fully vaccinated

I had my second immunization dose of AstraZeneca at the GP yesterday, so I am now fully vaccinated, with a digital certificate (which I printed out to keep with me). So far, the injection site on my left arm is a little sore, and I am a bit tired, but no debiliating symptoms like last time (see 15/6 entry).

Covid-19 digital certificate

Wednesday 8/9: Mostly recovered

Thankfully, I did not have debilitating symptoms from the AstraZeneca vaccine shot; just some soreness at the injection site and some lingering tiredness, the latter which I still feel.

“Victoria can’t go on like this,” The Age, 1/9. This unusually pointed editorial from the more Left-leaning paper incited a storm of controversy from its readers; so much that there was a follow-up response.

Friday 10/9: Bluebells; a harrowing anniversary

Bluebells in garden

Bluebells have been appearing in ours and others gardens for a couple of weeks. They are not a native plant but are pretty nonetheless. They carpet the few ancient forest remnants in England: “Bluebells are a common indicator species for ancient woodlands, so bluebell woods are likely to date back to at least 1600.”

Tomorrow marks 20 years since that awful day of 9/11, so local channels here have been showing various documentaries. I find them traumatizing, despite only having seen the tragedy on TV, so am unable to watch them.

The days pass monotonously. Waiting, waiting for some indication as to when shops will open again. Feeling of almost losing will to live; lethargy and mental dullness.

Wednesday 15/9: Bright Tesla; London bus rides

Saw this unusually-colored lime-green Tesla electric car today, outside Bentleigh Woolworths; it must have been custom-painted (or wrapped). I spot Tesla cars in my area perhaps once a week or so.

Lime-green Tesla car

I have been watching London bus route videos on YouTube, mainly those filmed this year by Britong Bisdak and Wanderizm. They are quite mundane, yet oddly soothing to watch. Seeing the buildings, the suburbs, passers-by going about their daily lives in a faraway place. No dramas, no inane commentary, just the sounds of the bus engine, muffled conversations of passengers. Wondering what it is like to live there. I would now rather like to visit! My family holidayed in England to visit Dad’s relatives way back in 1975 (I was 4 years old) and 1978, and my memories from then are fragmentary. We stayed with my paternal grandmother in the Corner Cottage in the small village of Spridlington, Lincolnshire.

Friday 17/9: Uncle passed away; lockdowns summary

My maternal uncle passed away over last Saturday/Sunday night, Sunday 12/9/2021, in the nursing home – Greenwood Manor Aged Care in Dingley – where he was residing. He was aged 94 years (born 1927). His funeral was today, but due to COVID rules only a few can attend. Mum and Dad went.

I made a summary of Melbourne’s lockdowns so far, in the table below. A few minor restrictions are being eased from tonight, but still no retail open, frustratingly.

Metropolitan Melbourne lockdowns summary
Number Began Ended Duration in days
1 30/3/2020 12/5/2020 43
2 8/7/2020 27/10/2020 111
3 12/2/2021 17/2/2021 5
4 27/5/2021 10/6/2021 14
5 15/7/2021 27/7/2021 12
6 5/8/2021 at 8pm ?
Notes

Sunday 19/9: Roadmap to nowhere much

Premier Daniel Andrews revealed Victoria’s “roadmap” out of the lockdown today. Little of interest for me, and “Non-essential retail will not reopen until 80 per cent full vaccination is reached.” Who knows when that might be – November, maybe? That will mark over 3 months of shops being shut, which is unsustainable for many businesses here. I am so despairing I can barely function.

Wednesday 22/9: Earthquake! Tradies protest

There was a big earthquake (magnitude 6) in Victoria this morning at 9:15 am, felt across south-eastern Australia. My parents and I were at Southland SC. I did not feel it at all; my parents did (sitting in their car in the multi-level carpark for their coffee). I did notice staff standing outside shops (there for click-and-collect services), seeming agitated. It caused some damage to buildings, but no injuries. It is the largest earthquake here since European settlement!

Melbourne erupted yesterday with furious “tradies” (tradesmen) protesting against mandatory vaccines against COVID-19 for their workplaces. Of course they are getting demonized by the mainstream media, portrayed as anti-vaxx, right-wing extremist “thugs.” I have long learned not to rely on these biased sources for anything objective regarding the pandemic; I go to more conservative sites such as Spectator Australia (“The deplorables down under”/archived link; “The rule of law is cracking in Victoria – and so is the Labor establishment/archived link).” There is also the LockdownSkepticismAU subreddit, which has become very active.

Wednesday 29/9: Small easings

A further tiny easing of a few restrictions for Melbourne from today:

Which means I can travel by train into Melbourne CBD … if only the shops were open. Might do that anyway sometime, just to go somewhere different. May say hello to Gog and Magog, like I did last year (21/10/2020 entry).

Thursday 30/9: CBD and Chadstone SC visits; Melbourne heading for longest lockdown record; books read

Took the train to Melbourne CBD today, for the first time since lockdown #6 began. A few people walking around, but most shops were of course shut, and there was a dismal aura of gloom where a normally bustling city would be. I ended up chatting briefly to a young man in a black T-shirt and pants (shop assistant?) outside a store in The Block Arcade; he was very unhappy at the current situation, the so-called haphazard “roadmap”; said he had previously voted Labor but would not again (as will I). That NSW were managing their pandemic situation much better by not forcibly closing down everything. It was refreshing to talk with a like-minded person in real life!

I did say hello to Gog and Magog in the Royal Arcade, at least!

Suzy, Royal Arcade Gog and Magog

I took the bus to Chadstone SC yesterday. Felt visiting is becoming rather hostile as people had to check-in with a QR code even when walking in to the shopping centre, as well as every store. I hate and resent this, and find ways to avoid it (or fake it). The once-simple act of visiting shops is becoming an onerous ordeal with all this security theatre nonsense.

A sad upcoming milestone: Melbourne to overtake Buenos Aires as world’s most locked-down city on October 4.

Books read, both non-fiction:

October

Monday 4/10: An unwelcome record broken

“Melbourne passes Buenos Aires’ world record for time spent in COVID-19 lockdown,” ABC News, 4/10. Not a happy day – and no exit from this limbo until the end of October … maybe. “It means Victorians may spend a total of 267 days in lockdown before restrictions and reasons-for leaving-home rules are again lifted. Premier Daniel Andrews said on Thursday he would not rule out amending the roadmap and extending restrictions should health advice make it necessary.” Still issuing the threats. Have we not suffered enough?

Friday 8/10: Enviable UK

Below, an article from today’s The Australian about the relative return to normality in the UK, as compared to the ongoing COVID hysteria and lockdowns in Australia. I really wish I could afford a one-way ticket to over there! Of course, this is just a wistful fantasy – I am tied to here for various reasons (financial and personal), and I have no employable skills in any case. I have come to really hate Australia in the last year or so.

Ready to travel overseas? Then get ready for a culture shock

Jacquelin Magnay

Ready to hop on an overseas flight when the national border is reopened next month? Then get ready for a culture shock.

Australians heading to London – the first across the globe overseas trip allowed in nearly two years – will be quite the experience.

Upon arrival outside Heathrow Airport there are no masks, no vaccination certificates, no checking QR codes, no breathless daily updates on Covid-19 cases, no obsessing about death tolls: London and the rest of the country in December will be a festival of Christmas markets and sparkling street lights, packed pubs with mulled wine and mince pies.

Australian travellers may not quite believe it, but you can also leave your phone at home, for there isn’t any tracking, routine phone app check-ins or data collection.

And Australian arrivals won’t even have to face any quarantine. That means none of the brutal two-week lockup inside a hotel, and there are no restrictions at home; people can mingle freely with the vaccinated and unvaccinated, inside and out at venues. The only requirement is a self-administered day two Covid test that you pop into the local post box.

Welcome to a very different normalcy in England, which has more than 80 per cent vaccinated – and a far different way of life compared to the 80 per cent plans in some parts of Australia.

Since the beginning of October, the British government has done away with the traffic light system of arrival countries, instead keeping a handful of countries on the red list which require hotel quarantine (with smoking and exercise breaks). Australian arrivals have always been on the green list, requiring no barriers to entry at all.

The Brits will quickly present a very different viewpoint of what has gone on in Australia. Be ready to be regaled of their continued shock of how Australia’s state and federal governments have imprisoned Australians with cruel national and interstate border closures; how they’ve weaponised the police; how they’ve imposed heavy-handed fines and cowed a once larrikin and free-spirited nation.

Once here, Aussies may even revisit their own psychological response to the fearmongering and smugness that has riddled Australian discourse.

Remember too, stories about lockdown will get the short shrift here: the Brits had seven months of home schooling. But the smallest of thanks to the British and Turkish-born German scientists that developed the Covid vaccines, fast-tracking a return to daily activities and allowing families to reunite, will be very much welcomed.

One question mark is whether Australians arriving here will freak out that Britain admits to hospital each day about 700 Covid-sufferers.

Travellers will have to quickly adjust to packed trains, to football fans jumping and screaming inside packed stadiums, and even theatregoers dancing with glee. Britons can even sing hymns in church and swim in indoor pools.

Everyone gets on with their daily lives without government fines and draconian restrictions.

This is despite knowing the virus will still circulate, make people sick, and cause deaths, thankfully in diminishing numbers.

A snapshot of the virus in the retirement county of Norfolk, where the North Sea blows, foretells the quandary that Australians may soon face. Here the vaccination rate is one of the highest in the country, with 80.5 per cent having had two jabs – yet 531 locals still contracted Covid in the past seven days and 17 were admitted to the local Kings Lynn hospital. One died.

The British appear to have come to terms with the virus, knowing they can’t afford the extreme financial pain and collateral health damages of extended lockdowns.

Come to Britain and be imbued with some of that “keep calm and carry on” spirit.

Sunday 10/10: Lockdown limbo; War of the Worlds

Melbourne is still in lockdown limbo (unlike NSW, which is opening tomorrow under its new Liberal/Catholic Premier – wish he could replace Dan Andrews here!). No indoor retail to open until 5 November at least – 4 days before my 51st birthday. Another month of this tedious dreariness. I am utterly weary of the media obsessively reporting the daily CV infection rates, exposure sites and body counts, and tune this out.

About all the posting I have recently done on Reddit is in the LockdownSkepticismAU subreddit (rather depressingly). I posted in one thread (What has lockdown meant for you?):

Kind of difficult for me to express coherently … but apathy, mental dullness, despair. I was already reclusive before the lockdowns, so I had no social life anyway, but I desperately miss the once-simple act of going into shops to browse. Suspicion and anger at other people. Disgust at the meanness and snitching to authority of so many. An increasing hatred of left-leaning politics in general. Cynicism towards so-called “experts”. Concern at the ongoing erosion of privacy and ever-more onerous restrictions on activities.

(Edit to add:) I already had mental health issues before, and, like so many, the lockdowns have exacerbated them. Am creatively dead – I envy those who have been creatively active during this time. I initially voted for Andrews and Labor in the last State Election, but now have an utter hatred for him and his advisors, the scolding and hectoring, dangling a carrot of hope (end of lockdown) then pulling it out of reach at the last moment. I will not vote for him or Labor again. Increased fear and wariness of police. A dread of watching the news more than ever as it is predictable what will be first reported. The by-now ritualistic recital of the daily infection rates and body counts. I spend a lot of (too much!) time on Reddit, and it has become unbelievably hostile towards lockdown dissenters in so many subs.

I have started watching a 2019 TV series called War of the Worlds, inspired by the classic H. G. Wells story. The free-to-air SBS channel had screened both seasons (2 so far) here, and I watched these sporadically (when I was awake!). So I am now doing this in a more methodical manner. I find the story (filmed in London and France) grim but oddly compelling, and those robot dogs extremely creepy! (Their design seemes to have been derived from the equally creepy “BigDog” real-life prototype.)

Tuesday 19/10: Some restrictions eased – but no retail open yet; Jeffersonian

A few lockdown restrictions were eased on Sunday, but unfortunately, and frustratingly, indoor “non-essential” retail will have to wait another 2 weeks to open, much to their frustration (and mine) – and that’s if the pandemic situation does not worsen again. The other restrictions did not affect me as such anyway (I don’t go out at night, I don’t eat out, no social life). So more waiting. Retail will have been shut for four months by the time November arrives; absolutely devastating for the economy.

Melbourne will have spent roughly two-thirds of this year in lockdown. An utterly pointless waste.

A few months ago, via a comments link in a blog (can’t recall which one), I came across an American personal website, Jeffersonian’s Home Page, by Karl Leffler. He is most assuredly not a Left-wing/Democrat voter! But, given how my views have changed over the last couple of years, I find him agreeable. He keeps a manual “old-fashioned” HTML journal like I do (though the pages are very image-heavy). He has a creative world (story and worldbuilding), The Jeffersonian Republic project. The science fiction story is quite well-written, better than a lot of self-published novels (most of which are crap).

Wednesday 27/10: Reopening at last

Retail shops are opening from late this Friday. Finally. They have been forcibly shut for nearly 4 months, financially devastating for many. So-called “non-essential” shops (a misnomer if there ever was – all retail is essential if one wants a functioning economy) should never have been required to close in the first place. Unfortunately, entering a physical store will be even more onerous now as you have to show your double-vaccinated certificate (digital or a printed copy) as well as checking in, so that requirement will exclude some. Hopefully this ridiculous security theater charade will not be extended for too long and be reconsidered as it will be a major hassle and stress for everyone.

Some service shops, such as hairdressers, have been open since last week, and, as with the similar reopening last year (30/10/2020 entry) there are long queues out their doors.

Friday 29/10: Haircut at last; past cultures not like ours; aggrevating topics; Jeffersonian shout-out; dobbers and snitches

I managed to get my hair trimmed on Wednesday, after over 4 months! I had to take a number at the hairdresser’s and wait in a queue for around an hour (very tiring when standing), but eventually was served! Seems like most of the population have gone for haircuts in the last week. My hair is now just above my neck, still all one length, almost a bob; it is easier to manage when shorter.

Gale-force winds blasted across the State from early this morning, wreaking much damage and havoc. The power cut out briefly here around 7:30, but many suburbs have lost power altogether.

Recalling my 21/2 entry on past cultures taking their religion seriously, I saw an article in the Civil War Times magazine, “In God We Trust: Did George B. McClellan Suffer from a Messianic Complex?” which has the same theme, this in the context of the sincere religious conviction of various American Civil War personalities.

Historians frequently state that Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan suffered from a messianic complex and that he alone believed he had been called by God to save the Union. McClellan’s religious beliefs are often presented as a character flaw, personality disorder, or psychological malady. A quick look at the historiography of the general reveals that belief began with his contemporaries. […] Did the commander use God to escape responsibility, rationalize, or offer excuses for failure? Was he unique in that regard? To the secular mind of the 21st century, professing to be God’s chosen instrument appears to be conceited behavior or a self-righteous delusion. These judgments may seem plausible when viewed through the vacuum of modern skepticism; however, as we shall see, for citizens of the mid-19th century the notion of consigning oneself over to God’s will was a common principle in all Christian denominations. The following examples will prove Little Mac was not alone in his thoughts. […]

We gaze at the images of Civil War participants, read their written records, and walk in their battlefield footsteps, all factors that can make us feel as if they are familiar and we “know” them. But their lives, and scientific knowledge, were vastly different from ours. They were people of another age. Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz were still 23 years away from producing the first successful gasoline engines. The idea of generating artificial light by passing an electric current through a wire filament inside a glass sphere was still years away. People, even the wealthiest, lit their homes with candles, fires, and oil lamps. In the mid-1800s, there were reputable scientists who still believed in the theory of Spontaneous Generation – the idea that certain forms of life, such as flies, worms, and mice, developed directly from non-living matter. Charles Darwin’s controversial ideas on evolution as set forth in his Origin of the Species had been in print for only three years when Abraham Lincoln penned his September 2, 1862, meditations. The first complete dinosaur skeleton had only been unearthed four years previous and another six years would pass before it was put on public display. The concept that creatures other than human beings had once dominated the earth was still some years on the horizon. Neptune, the eighth planet in the solar system, had been discovered only 16 years earlier. Concepts of time, space, and the geological history of the Earth were still very much defined by the book of Genesis. In the mid-1860s, the natural world was still mysterious enough to suggest a supernatural power that governed the course of events; religious belief and prayer still occupied a very dominant and influential part of day-to-day life. In this context, there was nothing odd or peculiar about generals and presidents regarding the will of God.

This again shows how difficult it can be to put oneself in the mindset of those even a few generations before us, whose culture was different from the one in which we now exist. And future historians will no doubt regard aspects of our current culture as bizarre and unfathomable.

A side note is that I do find the Civil War – namely, the American Civil War (1861–1865) – of some interest (the first war on American soil was their American Revolutionary War against the then-ruling British Empire). It was within my great-grandparents’ lifetimes, so it is not too distant from the present, and was such a brutal, polarizing conflict.

I have a build-up of topics I want to rant about, mainly on the current “progressive”/“Woke” nonsense that has infested Western culture, to its detriment, but can’t focus long enough to put my thoughts together coherently. A quick summary of some issues that aggrevate me:

More on those topics when/if I have time and energy!

The Jeffersonian gave me a shout-out on his own Rifleman’s Journal! A little disconcerting, but cool! I am not one to normally donate, but I felt compelled to (albeit only a small amount; can’t afford large donations). And, yes, I now have an idea of what the people in Communist East Germany or occupied France endured – in particular, the concept of collaborationism (those who inform on fellow citizens to an occupying government). There were and are plenty of “snitches” who dobbed in rule-breakers during the lockdown periods in Melbourne to the authorities here, and did so gleefully. “Dobbing-in” has traditionally been despised in Australian culture (informers in prisons, for example, are not regarded kindly and will get revenged upon), but it seems that the awful social upheaval from the government response to the COVID pandemic has brought out the worst in many people’s natures (an example being reported in this article from August).

Sunday 31/10: Retail returning to life; night of the dead; health deteriorating

The shops are open! After nearly 4 months. Felt quite strange to actually go in and be able to browse and buy products – albeit marred by the onerous ritualistic COVID check-in procedure at the door of every shop.

Some sunny warm weather for a few days. Today was gloriously bright.

Halloween tonight! The occasion has become more widely celebrated in Australia, with many putting up appropriately ghoulish outdoor decorations around the neighborhood (orange and black being the main theme colors). I used to grumble about this, but now I welcome the sight; any excuse to alleviate the misery of the enforced lockdowns (but marred by the usual COVID hysteria).

Did not get any sleep last night; I could not turn my thoughts off. A fairly frequent occurrence. I am still around 40-41 kg (height is around 158 cm). Underweight but I want to fit into my smaller-sized clothing. I have not menstruated since 22 September 2015. I am fatigued and weak; even slow walking is tiring. I suppose I have osteoporosis by now; I am surprised I did not break any bones in last year’s bicycle accident when I hit the tarmac hard. I have not ridden my bicycle for months now, and do not want to go near it. I am feeling my age; I have had several occasions where I overbalanced and the feeling is extremely distressing, as though I have lost control over my body and am unable to stop my fall. Getting up from a kneeling or crouching position is increasingly difficult; I get very stiff. I am mentally dull and listless. But I do not care much; I have nothing to live for or look forward to, so the prospect of a premature death does not faze me. I am too passive to take more active means to end it.

November

Thursday 4/11: Shopping frenzy; myGov setup for parents

Been getting my shopping fix this week, like so many others. How wonderful to simply visit a bookshop again! My birthday is next Tuesday 9, so they have opened just in time for me.

I set up myGov accounts for both my elderly parents last month; a tiresome process, but I managed to – an afternoon’s work! They would not have been able to do this on their own (Mum is not computer-literate and cannot use one; Dad is better with hardware than with software and also struggles with many online tasks.) Oddly, and frustratingly, both had previous accounts but these had been locked and were no longer usable.

Sunday 7/11: Swankivy spending

I last mentioned “Swankivy” (Julie Sondra Decker) back in my 4/10/2019 entry, and her massive merchandise collection of the TV cartoon series Steven Universe. In a recent Amino post she was asked:

darkraven333: How long did it take you to collect all of this?

swankivy: I’ve been collecting since 2015 and whenever any new toy comes out I buy it.

alienqxueen: Woah you are dedicated! How much money do you estimate you spent on all of this?

swankivy: About $2800. I am actually making a spreadsheet of the value of each type of merch as I'm posting images because I am actually gathering the info to get my ridiculous collection insured. There are just a few more things I need to calculate but I'm kinda scared to see the final dollar amount.

But I cannot criticize, as I have spent more over the decades than I care to think about on various obsessions – only to give the merchandise (mainly in book form) away when my interest fades. I would need several rooms just for all those books otherwise. It is awfully wasteful, but I suppose it gives me satisfaction while in the throes of an obsession. At a deeper level it is the fulfilment of the drive to hunt and gather.

Tuesday 9/11: 51 today; still not grown-up; unhealthy extremes; worldbuilding indecision

My 51st birthday. Did not do anything as usual; just went through my usual day and routines. I am happy and grateful for the gifts I received though! I am certainly looking more my age, though I don’t feel it mentally. Or feel that I am a proper (i.e. emotionally mature) adult. The world out there terrifies me – I barely cope with my relatively sheltered life as things are. How do normal people manage all the complexities of their lives – surviving in modern society, making a living, raising children and so on? In contrast, I have done very poorly at “adulting.”

I have been indulging in some “retail therapy,” which I really can’t afford, but damnit, I have been miserable for the last few months (well, year) and I deserve some pleasantness. It is shallow and materialistic and stereotypically female, but I don’t care.

“Talk of fearing ‘COVID kilos’ is the norm. Meanwhile, Bella’s embracing weight gain,” ABC News, 9/11. She looks awful now, to be brutally honest. Gone from one extreme to another. I hate the “body acceptance” and “fat positivity” fads; they are just an excuse to indulge with no self-control, and are certainly not healthy.

My current worldbuilding and story project proceeds at a glacial pace. I am vaciliating between recording data in a single TiddlyWiki file, or on hand-coded HTML pages (the latter method I do for the rest of my website, including this Journal). Both have pros and cons. The TW method makes the process much easier, but the HTML code it produces is a bit bloated and does not validate, and I am dependent upon its creators for its maintenance. Hand-coding my own HTML has no dependencies, but is a more labored process.

Thursday 11/11: New phone owner; CBD visit; still like TiddlyWiki

Someone received an iPhone for their birthday (not the most recent model, but the iPhone 11) and also has a basic mobile plan, and is now feeling more part of the civilized world! How sustainable this is remains to be seen; it is money one does not really have. But the smartphone is extremely convenient, almost a neccessity these days – much as a computer and Internet access have become neccessary just to function in modern society, whereas a couple of decades ago these were discretionary hobbies. The model 11 has sold out in Victoria for some reason, with no more due in stock in all stores until December; I was lucky to get this one, dug out of a back storage room by the helpful shop assistant. And in a lovely green! The screen size is just right – not too small or too big. It is the least expensive model (64 GB) but more recent and capable versions are just too pricey. And other, cheaper smartphone brands are just crap.

I took the train into the City (Melbourne CBD) today. In contrast to my last visit (30/9 entry), most shops were open and the streets moderately busy; almost a welcome feeling of normality (aside from mandatory facemasks and checking-in via QR codes).

Regarding the program dilemna noted in my previous (9/11) entry, I am still inclined towards TiddlyWiki as it automates a lot of tedious procedures and is simply fun (if sometimes exasperating) to use. I export my data in one big HTML file which I put online (the live version of TW is editable by others). The TW community itself has migrated from Google Groups to a Discourse community.

Friday 19/11: More worldbuilding dithering; new normal

Tired. Doing various chores and tasks all day; little energy left over for any creative work. Still dithering over whether to use TiddlyWiki or just write HTML pages for my worldbuilding (11/11 entry). I am very fussy over my underlying HTML code; my hand-coded pages validate. But, as I noted, it is a bit more effort to produce them.

Almost back to semi-normal as regards COVID-19 restrictions in Victoria (but there is now the overhanging threat of future lockdowns). If one is not fully vaccinated (two shots), though, one is barred from “non-essential” retail. I have my digital vaccination certificate on my iPhone, duly scanned when I enter a shop. All this was unthinkable two years ago, in a supposedly democratic and free society. Now we know better; how fragile it is. If I were American, I would likely vote Republican, even for Donald Trump again (should he run for President again). I actually hope he does make another run for President, just to see the hysterics and melt-downs from the Left. I have rather missed him; he certainly stirred up things.

Monday 22/11: SU merchandise again; American homes envy

Swankivy put up a page with her Steven Universe Merch Megapost (previously: 7/11 entry). Enough to fill her own store. The cartoon itself is very “Woke,” though, with a “prominence of LGBTQ themes,” so of no interest to me.

Tired again. Toilet blocked up today, but Dad was able to clear it (hopefully). There is only one in our small 1940s weatherboard 3-bedroom house. One feature that has long fascinated me with American homes – as seen in TV shows and movies (such as Elliott’s home in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) – is how huge they are. Envy! The stand-alone houses typically seen in American suburbia (which tend to get sneered at by inner-city elites). Some examples are split-level houses, ranch-style and neo-eclectic.

Wednesday 24/11: Tropical weather; new Russian module launch; troublesome toilet tree roots?, War of the Worlds DVDs bought

Some humid tropical-type weather for a few days this week. South-Eastern Australia is experiencing a La Niña weather event, as was the case last year, so milder summer temperatures are forecast, but more rain and humidity.

A new Russian module for the ISS, UM Prichal/Узловой Модуль «Причал», is to be launched later today from Baikonur at 13:06:36 UTC (12 a.m. Melbourne time). Hopefully it won’t be drama-filled like the Nauka launch back in July! (23/7 entry.)

Our toilet was still making ominous glooping noises yesterday when the washing machine or the shower were draining, so there might be a partial tree root blockage (which has happened a few times over the years). An expensive plumber callout if that is the case, unfortunately.

I bought both DVDs of the War of the Worlds TV series, which I actually liked and, as I noted earlier (10/10 entry), found oddly compelling. I liked the post-apocalyptic settings in London and France. There is an intriguing twist with the aliens not being what they initially seem.

Thursday 25/11: Dark day; no more moderating; successful launch

Had a bad day for reasons I won’t go into.

Decided to remove myself as a moderator on the r/LockdownSkepticismAU subReddit. It is getting increasingly filled with unhinged conspiracy posts and I can’t cope with it anymore; it is now affecting my mental health just visiting and browsing.

The ISS Russian module Prichal launched successfully, at least.

Saturday 27/11: Sleepless; successful docking; comfort places

Still agitated. Did not sleep at all on Thursday night.

The new Russian ISS module, Prichal, docked successfully on 26/11 with no apparent dramas.

Bought a couple of books on Japan today. The place and culture are still one of my comforts of the imagination, though I am unlikely to ever travel there (or anywhere). Of course, the reality would be more mundane; humans are still humans wherever you go, once the novelty of a new culture wears off.

My own past – now-vanished people and places – is another source of comfort; simple nostalgia. The past is another country, a saying goes, and the era I grew up in would be alien to young people now, even in the span of a single lifetime.

Along with Hikikomori, I learned of another Japanese concept today: Jouhatsu, people who intentionally vanish (“evaporate”). Like recluses, certainly not a unique phenomenon to that country. I have been a partial recluse for nearly two decades and am virtually unemployable now. It is not a happy way to be (I am at the stage of the “80-50 problem”; also, a 2020 Bloomberg article). What might happen once my parents are gone, I try not to think about. I will likely lose the will to live. I am already passively harming myself through being underweight and the resultant health issues, as well as more outward self-destructive and irrational behavior (doing stupid things). I simply do not care.

When a young-old is forced to become an old-old, mental illness can emerge in the transition. Townsend notes that adults 65 and older have the highest suicide rate of any segment of the population, twice the national average. Suicide expresses depression in its most tragic and severe form; an eating disorder is also a form of slow and very painful suicide.

– Trisha Guru, Lying in Weight

Sunday 28/11: Weather and nostalgia, more on Swankivy’s spending; remembering the Wallmeyer twins

Weather warming up in the next few days; into the low 30s by Wednesday. Today is gloriously sunny. I went on my usual plodding walk, lost in nostalgic memories. I have lived in the one house and suburb all my life so far; unusual these days.

I came across a post by Swankivy (22/11 entry) in the r/StevenUniverse subReddit featuring her merchandise collection. In one comment she has a screenshot of an Excel worksheet displaying how much she has spent on it so far: $20,187.12. Enough for a small car! She gets very defensive when some commenters criticize this spending (she does not take criticism very well and writes very verbose and indignant replies to them). Again, I am hardly in a position to criticise, but it still is a huge amount of money to spend on what is essentially a frivolity. I can only think that if society gets to a stage of serious collapse (of which the response to the COVID pandemic has been a foretaste), the products will be essentially worthless detrius.

After yesterday’s post, I remember again the deceased Wallmeyer twins (last mentioned in my 28/8/2012 post, linked to an article about their tragic deaths in a house fire on 27/8, aged 42). They had been severely anorexic since their teenage years and eventually self-destructed, after years of self-deprivation and increasingly getting into trouble with the law for petty crimes. I remember them, feel sad for them, but they are also at peace.

Monday 29/11: Added bookmark links; Jeffersonian in trouble; returned books

I have just added bookmark links in front of each Journal entry heading as an experiment (you can click on these, or the same heading in the Table of Contents at the top of each page, to bookmark an entry). Done quite quickly thanks to Regular Expressions (RegEx):

I got the idea for making a quick bookmark link from this entry in Rifleman’s Journal (previously mentioned: 19/10 and 29/10 entries). I am reading through his Journals; I like that his are typed up in “old-fashioned HTML” (his words!) rather than “durn newfangled ’blog-o-thingies.” He is, however, going through a rough time at the moment (November Journal), having moved to Florida from Portland but his boarding fell through.

I decided to return the two Japan books I bought yesterday; I have too many books already and I was undecided about these two.

Tuesday 30/11: Actress Léa Drucker

In The War of the Worlds TV series (previous mention in 24/11 entry) I really liked the French actress Léa Drucker and the character she played. She came across as no-nonsense, competent and determined. The series got a lot of criticism from some, but I quite liked it, as I noted earlier. It was genuinely creepy in some parts. I am also in the mood for end-of-the-world stories.

December

Thursday 2/12: Tropical weather; Leviathan Falls released; Council Green fanatics

Unsettled humid tropical weather yesterday and today. Clouds built up into a late-afternoon thunderstorm over Melbourne that was quite violent.

I had some interest in The Expanse books and TV series, which I began reading and watching from 2018 (see 15/8/2018 entry as an example). I initially liked them, though was not enamored of the two authors’ clunky writing style (and still am not).

I have only managed to finish the seventh novel, Persepolis Rising. Another case of some interesting ideas

– human starship built with alien technology) but the execution (as in the prose) is lacking. The authors seem to be trying to be deep and meaningful with rather obvious statements, but these come across as obvious and trite. I tried to start the first novel, but could not engage in it – I find the characters unlikeable; they all have the same snarky cynical outlook that seems common in modern sci-fi and fantasy. The TV series has garnered a fanatical following. (5/6/2018 entry

The ninth and final book has just been released as of late November 2021. I will dutifully read it, but not buy it. The authors are fully and annoyingly “Woke”/Left/Progressive in their politics, as is evidenced in their snarky remarks towards anyone and anything Conservative on their Twitter account, and this patronizing attitude has fully repulsed me. The novels themselves are becoming more fantasy space opera than hard sci-fi, with the alien technology able to defy the laws of physics simply because it is “alien” and thus incomprehensible – a viewpoint I disagree with; aliens would be as bound to the laws of physics as humans are. Admittedly the storyline can only be considered “hard” because it acknowledges some real-world physics, such as spaceships flipping-and-burning to decelerate, and the effects of gravity on their occupants.

Another implausibility was the United Nations becoming a world government:

While Earth was still divided between the various national governments, the UN wielded significant power. Extraterrestrial colonization was organized under the UN. As time passed, Earth’s ecosystem was deteriorating, until the damage done reached dangerous levels. To successfully counteract this, humanity unified, with all national governments ceding their sovereignties to the UN. (United Nations wiki entry)

I can’t imagine the fiercely independent USA ceding to this option, to give one example!

“Brisbane Lord Mayor labels 30kph speed limit plea a ‘socialist’ Greens push,” ABC News, 30/11. An example of insidious anti-car activism by fanatical environmental activists, who are infesting local councils. The push to reduce speed limits has been instigated by the council where I live, as noted back in my 29/10 entry. Other measures include removing parking spaces in shopping centers. These deluded selfish activists do not seem to acknowledge that there are many who do not or cannot use bicycles and public transport, such as disabled and some elderly.

Friday 3/12: More storms; local Council virtue-signalling; more anti-car laws

Another humid tropical day yesterday, followed by a late-afternoon violent thunderstorm.

Some recent examples of my local Council’s annoying and irrelevant virtue-signalling – post texts taken from their Facebook page:

26/10/2021: Climate change

Would you like to become part of the social movement for strong action on climate change? We’re recruiting 25 passionate people to become Climate Conversations Facilitators. You’ll be trained on how to have effective conversations with your friends, family and wider community on climate change, and how to give them tools and strategies to cut their carbon footprint and advocate for strong climate action. You’ll be supported by us every step of the way.

Climate for Change is supporting us to pilot this program. Two half-day online training sessions will be held on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 November.

8/10/2021: Rainbow Pride

Do you live, work or play in Glen Eira and identify as LGBTIQA+? We want to hear from you. Join our new Rainbow Pride Advisory Group to share your voice on important matters for the Glen Eira rainbow/LGBTIQA+ community.

1/10/2021: Reducing road speed limits

We are seeking feedback from the community regarding a proposal to lower the speed limit from 60 km/h to 50 km/h on a number of major roads across the municipality. The proposed locations are:

As we are aiming to achieve a 50:50 mode share of car and non-car trips by 2031, we want to be able to increase the use of non-car alternatives where appropriate (walking, cycling, public transport and working from home) by making these options as safe, convenient and attractive as possible. High vehicle speeds can sometimes be a disincentive to walking and cycling, especially near major roads where the speed limits are usually higher.

Speed is also a major factor contributing to the number and severity of crashes. We do know that lower vehicle speeds result in fewer crashes and reduces the severity of injuries, particularly for vulnerable road users. There have been numerous reported casualty crashes (crashes involving injuries or fatalities) on each of the proposed roads in recent years. Lowering speed limits improves safety, both perceived and actual, between all types of road users and generally improves amenity for residents residing on these roads.

Roads, rates, rubbish – that is what local Councils should stick to; the practical issues. I am utterly fed up with this Woke/Leftist/Progressive nonsense infesting everything, as well as the increasing anti-car measures (as noted in my previous 2/12 entry). Residents’ rates are being squandered on these trivialities.

In more anti-car initiatives, the Labor State Government under Daniel Andrews is to incrementally introduce a user-pays, distance-based road charge over the next decade.

Government backs user-pays road system in fee overhaul

Herald-Sun, 3/12/2021

Motorists would pay a distance-based charge in Victoria instead of fuel and other motoring taxes under a major long-term road reform.

The Andrews Government has backed a plan to start replacing fixed road user charges with “user pays” variable taxes over the next 10 years, beginning with an expansion of its 2.5c per kilometre electric vehicle charge.

The push for reform has been triggered by an expected surge in low emissions vehicles later this decade, which will eat into taxes used by governments to maintain roads.

The Andrews Government has already introduced a per-kilometre charge for electric vehicles, currently set at 2.5c/km – or an average of $330 a year.

Details about how to transition other motorists to a similar scheme would be complex and likely take years to finalise, in partnership with the Commonwealth.

Recommendations made by advisory body Infrastructure Victoria in August were to “replace fixed road user charges with variable distance-based and congestion charges over the next 10 years, by gradually expanding and reforming the existing electric vehicle charge”.

Yesterday the government released its 2021 infrastructure plan and supported the plan in principle but “specific actions are subject to further policy”.

“The Government supports the intent of this recommendation and is considering the long-term effects of the erosion of revenue from the fuel levy as more vehicles move to non-fossil fuels and electric propulsion,” it says.

“The introduction of distance-based charging for zero and low-emission vehicles in Victoria is a first step in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the transport network by making sure everyone pays their fair share to build and maintain our roads.”

A spokeswoman for Treasurer Tim Pallas last night distanced the government from congestion taxes saying it “will not put tolls on existing roads or introduce a congestion tax”.

When Mr Pallas flagged the 2.5c/km EV charge last year he said “this compares to almost $600 a year paid by the average internal combustion engine vehicle owner in fuel excise”.

In the 2021 infrastructure report he says the state is also working with the Commonwealth on reforms to heavy vehicle road user charges.

Congestion tax, paid train station parking and user pays registration costs in transport plan

Herald-Sun, 19/8/2021

A congestion charge and paid parking at busy train stations are part of the state’s new traffic-busting plan. But one radical change will affect every Victorian.

A London-style charge for cars entering Melbourne’s CBD or inner-city streets should be trialled within five years to bust congestion, the government’s infrastructure advisory body says.

Cars driving into the toll zone during busy working weeks would be hit hardest under the Infrastructure Victoria plan, with charges set higher when traffic volumes are higher.

For example, the toll would be lower during summer holidays when fewer people drive into the CBD.

Charges would also be dynamic, meaning that if car speeds slow to a crawl earlier than typical peak hours, congestion costs could rise at the same time to discourage people from adding to traffic.

This is the third time a congestion levy has been recommended to the Andrews government, which set up Infrastructure Victoria to “take the politics out of infrastructure” but has previously rejected the advice.

The Infrastructure Victoria report contains a wide array of transport pricing changes to encourage commuters to change travel patterns.

It recommends off-peak public transport ticket prices be slashed by 50 per cent, bus and tram fares be reduced, and all new tollways have premium charges at peak times.

The most radical recommendation in Infrastructure Victoria’s 30-year blueprint to deal with growing pains would be to overhaul transport pricing statewide.

Within 10 years, the report says fixed charges, such as car registration, should be scrapped in favour of a “user pays” system based on time and distance travelled.

For example, instead of paying hundreds of dollars to register your car, you would pay for the kilometres you travel, which would be priced depending on the time of day and mode of transport.

This system – which has previously been rejected by the government and opposition – would be gradually installed and overseen by a transport pricing adviser.

“Our research shows that comprehensive pricing reforms for roads, public transport and parking is the most effective way to reduce congestion and get the most from the transport system,” the report says.

“Transport network pricing would replace fixed upfront charges and uniform fares with flexible prices set to encourage travel at times, to places and by modes that generate the greatest benefits relative to costs.”

The report recommends baby steps to get there, beginning with scrapping the free tram travel zone, reducing off-peak public transport fares, and slashing bus and tram travel costs.

Next steps, within five years, would be to introduce paid parking at “major public transport hubs” to encourage less driving in local streets, a congestion charge trial in the CBD, along with other parking price reforms, and new off-peak and peak charges for new tollways, such as the North East Link.

“A combination of off-peak and lower fares, improved public transport services and road user charging can encourage more people to use public transport,” the report says.

Parking Australia chief executive Stuart Norman slammed the parking and congestion charges as “lazy recommendations” that lacked evidence.

This will discriminate against anyone wanting or needing to drive long distances. The fondly-remembered daytrips driving out of Melbourne and around the countryside that my family undertook in the 1970s and 1980s will not be viable under these punitive measures.

Sunday 5/12: Celebrating space billionaires; diversity a dangerous distraction; James Webb Telescope article

A couple of spaceflight-related articles from a Conservative news site:

The Australian military is also infested with this nonsense; earlier this year there was controversy when the Defence Chief and Defence Secretary directed the Australian Defence Force that:

“Defence represents the people of Australia” and that it “must at all times be focused on our primary mission to protect Australia’s national security interests. We must not be putting effort into matters that distract from this,” General Angus Campbell and Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty wrote. “To meet these important aims, changing language protocols and those events such as morning teas where personnel are encouraged to wear particular clothes in celebration are not required and should cease.”

The order is in stark contrast to a message issued to ADF members earlier this month, encouraging them to support their LGBTI colleagues on International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on May 17. In the advice issued by Defence People Group, ADF members were encouraged to take part in activities such as “hosting morning teas” and “wearing visible rainbow clothing or ally pins.”

In the current permissive cultural climate, this caused a lot of angst amongst the Left. But if there is one thing in favor of China’s leadership it is that they do not tolerate such nonsense. I imagine officials in their defence force looking with bemusement and derision at such bizarre distractions.

An earlier and related article was that the ADF had to be reminded of their “core business”: inflicting lethal violence!

I am angry and fed up with being innundated with such rubbish in the media, and I am no longer hiding my intense dislike of Social Justice Warriors, Wokeism and all the related social trends (see 29/10 entry for my list of aggrevations).

In somewhat happier if rather pensive news, an excellent detailed article about the James Webb Space Telescope and its forthcoming launch on 22/12 has been posted on various sites. There is so much that could go wrong – with no chance to fix anything after takeoff – that it hardly bears thinking about. If the telescope is launched and deployed successfully, it will contribute greatly to understanding the Universe soon after the Big Bang, and help with discovering more exoplanets.

Wednesday 8/12: Not creatively productive; gender stupidity

Afternoon slump. Had one of my periodical headaches, a mild one, yesterday morning. Felt OK today; slept little all night but was in an oddly good mood. That has now evaporated. My sleep is very erratic.

If I write only a few sentences here, or work a little on my worldbuilding project, I feel I have achieved something, if only minor. I envy those who can still be creatively productive, even when stressed from real-life events (such as the Jeffersonian, who is still putting out chapters of his current sci-fi story, though it has a notably darker tone).

Some Woke stupidity I recalled from last year: the Victorian Labour Government last year allowed people to change their gender on their birth certificate if they decided to identify as another gender. How utterly stupid is that – it is a complete denial of one’s physical biology (can’t alter the XX or XY chromosones you were born with). I would argue that all this gender-swapping can be defined as a mental illness. More practically, there are medical and family history issues (men and women can react to some medications differently, and how does completely denying one’s birth gender affect future descendants or relatives wanting to trace their family tree and history?). I hope this madness will be looked at as a temporary cultural aberration by future historians.

Sunday 12/12: Getting warmer; tired; where is Khannea?; Galaxias; The Expanse 6th season

Weather is heating up; into the low 30s this week.

Very tired; my afternoon energy drop-off (what little energy I have) and lethargy.

Khannea Suntzu (last mentioned in my 23/10/2020 entry) seems to keep disappearing from her various Internet sites; her personal site is offline and she keeps getting banned from social media accounts due to provocative/incenidary/explicit posts (she is very Left-leaning). Despite what I have written about the transgender issue, on a personal level, someone’s choice to change their gender does not particularly bother me; it is who they are, not what they look like that matters more. It is the politicizing of the issue that I find aggrevating. I find it hard to envision Khannea as previously male now, and I think of her as she (which is a compliment, I guess?). The main disadvantage with later-life transition is that the adolescent physical changes from hormones are evident, and cannot always be erased with surgery. Anyway, I do miss her blog posts about transhumanism, creative work and so on, and still admire her marvellous “Dreamlands” map (an ongoing life work). She is still favoriting the works of others at her Artstation account.

Edit, 17/12: her Wordpress site is still online, but at the http:// version, not https:// (my Firefox browser was complaining the latter was misconfigured). I find the push towards https unneccessary for personal sites that do not gather information, as this opinion piece, Plaintext HTTP in a Modern World, explains.

I have started to read Stephen Baxter’s latest novel, Galaxias: “What would you do if the Sun went out? In this standalone novel, a near-future Earth faces a devastating cosmic intervention …” Quite a terrifying scenario once the characters realize all the implications after the Sun literally disappears from its central position in our Solar System. So far the story is quite riveting. He has been one of my favorite authors over the last couple of decades; his writing style can be awkward but I still enjoy his stories. (Last mentioned him in my 20/4/2020 entry.)

I watched the first episode in Season 6 of The Expanse TV show. Not too impressed so far; the episode was short, rushed and would be totally confusing for anyone coming in new. It is of course being analyzed exhaustively by fans at the r/TheExpanse subreddit. Only 6 episodes for this season. The visuals are nice, at least. (I mentioned I was reading the final novel, Leviathan Falls, in my 2/12 entry, and my dislike of the authors’ politics.)

Tuesday 14/12: Tornado disaster; climate change hysteria

Hot yesterday; low 30s.

A horrendous tornado outbreak devastated regions of the southern USA, mainly Kentucky, on the night of 10-11/12, killing at least 100. Particularly fearsome as they came at night, when most people would be sleeping and unprepared. The continent seems especially prone to severe weather and natural disasters. Not surprisingly (and predictably), the disaster is being linked to climate change. Aside from the coronavirus, climate change continues to be the main bogeyman topic dominating the mainstream media, to the point where I just tune it out. As an absurdly tenuous example, even premature births are being linked: women are more likely to give birth prematurely in hot weather. Ergo, climate change link. (*Rolls eyes in cynical exasperation*) Climate change is the equivalent of the nuclear war threat that my generation grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s, and nothing came of the latter. I have become very cynical and skeptical of the more far-fetched claims (such as this site – “Unless we dramatically transform our way of life, climate change and other man-made perils will cause our civilisation to crash. Earth’s Black Box will record every step we take towards this catastrophe …”, linked to from a MetaFilter post – and a rant about the extreme Wokeness that has infested MeFi in recent years is forthcoming).

There is a book called Apocalypse Never by environmentalist Michael Shellenberger: “But in 2019, as some claimed ‘billions of people are going to die,’ contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.” I may not get around to reading it (too much on my reading list already!), but it looks like a much-needed counter to the hysteria gripping the developed world.

Addendum, 15/12: The author of a site I have been visiting for a few years, Gunlaug.com in Norway, is also a climate change skeptic and has a few opinion essays on his site (the lost art of climatology; unsettled political science consensuses; green ignorance will cause hell on earth being some).

Wednesday 15/12: Authors to avoid

Reinforcing my dislike of The Expanse authors James S. A. Corey (12/12 entry), comes this from their Twitter feed (via a snarky, patronizing comment on the equally annoying Woke website MetaFilter):

My god, watching the internet’s angry ass-weasels lose their shit because #TheExpanse has ONE non-binary character that matters to the story makes me deeply happy.

– 1/12/2021

Patronizing is the attitude of so-called Progressives towards those who don’t have the same opinions they do. In their view, “ignorant” people need “re-educating.” It is this condescending attitude – as exemplified in Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s infamous description of Donald Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables” – that angers and alienates, and rightly so.

Sci-fi author John Scalzi is just as bad; the snark of his comments becomes unbearable. Only book I read of his was Old Man’s War way back in 2007 (18/9/2007 entry) and was not impressed. Nothing else of his since; he is a trite, lightweight writer at best. The travesty is that he was awarded a multi-million dollar contract to churn out his cruddy books (a quick search turns up one of his blog entries from last year about the state of this contract).

Friday 17/12: Missing beach rides; cramping feet; doomscrolling; Coyote and Genesis novel opinions

As I noted in my 31/10 entry, I have not been on or anywhere near my bicycle for months now, and feel unable to. I am too weak to ride in any case. I do miss riding along Beach Road on a fine sunny day and looking at Port Phillip Bay, though.

I get very painful cramps in the soles of my feet if I flex and curl them; perhaps a mineral or vitamin deficiency, so I have to be careful doing that.

“Doomscrolling” is a new term used to describe obsessively trawling through online news feeds such as that of Twitter. It is too easy to get caught up in (a deliberate dark pattern by the developers of social media sites) and certainly is mentally debilitating and exhausting. (I still use Facebook despite the criticism towards such social media, as it is still useful for keeping up with family and some online friends.)

The Jeffersonian’s/Karl Leffler’s opinion on Allen Steele’s Coyote novel series, from his October 2005 journal:

7/10/2005: Starting Allen Steele’s Coyote, which appears to bear certain parallels in plot to my own story (which I’m sure Steele has never heard of). Well, I think it was Straczynski, the guy who did Babylon 5, who said something about our myths and legends casting off one mask and taking up another – there are only so many basic plots to go around. Also have the second volume, Coyote Rising. Some years ago I read some of Steele’s early books but nothing else by him ’til now.

8/10: On impulse, wasted fuel on a drive up the Columbia Gorge on the Washington side, pulled over at an appropriate spot, read Steele’s Coyote – and it starts off as a diatribe against “right-wing idealogues” with things like the Patrick Buchanan Correctional Camp and Gingrich Space Center and the starship’s two shuttles named Jesse Helms and George Wallace. So it’s looking like Steele will be off my reading list – I’ll see what kind of society the dissidents think is ideal.

10/10: Continuing Steele’s Coyote – before the departure of the starship (on it’s 230-year sublight voyage) circa 2070 AD, the “United Republic of America” (after the Second Revolution and Third Constitutional Convention) is described as a place where abortion was outlawed with severe penalties for doctors and patients, where poor, innocent “left-wing intellectuals” were rounded up and sent to reeducational camps, Americans are involved in various foreign military misadventures, and the secessionist states comprising New England and Cascadia are places to escape to – in short, the whole Michael Moore spiel. As if Hillary wouldn’t have our kind “shot while trying to escape.” However, looking ahead to the end of the first volume, a follow-on starship brings the alleged virtues of “social collectivism” from which the original colonists pack up and flee, hm.

Wrapped up, starting sequel – social collectivism has promoted the advance of technology, global warming has wrecked whole countries, Earth’s natural resources are depleted, more Moore garbage. Tempted to just chuck it in the return bin. Note this is not published by Baen.

14/10: Trying to finish Steele’s Coyote Rising, kinda lame, politics aside. He ain’t no David Drake, nor David Weber neither. And now I’m out of book.

I do disagree with him a little as I generally liked Coyote; I read the first serialized four sections when they were originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 2001. (There are scanned pages of the serial from the issues at Archive.org: 2001-01, 2001-03, 2001-07, 2001-10 – I used to own the issues but discarded them in some long-ago purge; to my chagrin now as the hard copies are unavailable.) The first two are a sort of comfort reading, though the future America scenario in the first is perhaps a little far-fetched. I am uncertain of the author’s political inclinations; they come across as mildly Libertarian in the first books, at least. The colonists want to escape an oppressive government and live their own lives, similar to the Mayflower Pilgrims.

As I noted in my 14/4/2019 entry, in the third novel in the Coyote series, he introduces FTL travel via a wormhole, which spoils the realism of it, in my view. I did like a later unrelated novel, Arkwright, which featured the launch of a beam-powered starship to a distant star system, but with human embryos aboard rather than an adult crew.

There is a Coyote fan site archived up to 2009, but, frustratingly, no images were saved.

I now like hard (i.e. realistic, mundane) SF stories featuring sleeper or generation starships on a voyage to another star. (Of the two types of slower-than-light ships, I tend to prefer the crew hibernating option, as the same characters feature throughout the story.) The prospect of beginning a long journey to a strange and marvellous new world is appealing, particularly the details of preparing and embarking upon the voyage itself. There is that pleasant anticipation one feels when just setting out: a break from everyday routine; what adventures lie ahead?

I have also begun reading a novel mentioned in a later entry, Genesis by Paul Chafe (which has a small now-archived website). This features a GenShip on a 10,000-year(!) voyage to another star. So far, I have liked it; reading all the trials and tribulations of getting the mission underway, initiated by the will of one man (a common theme in many of these stories, including my own latest worldbuilding project).

25/9/2007: As for reading, I’m still working through Genesis when I’m at the hovel (grave warnings and dire consequences for taking a USB drive or laptop to work). About 2⁄3 now and … the generation ship project was initiated as the personal crusade of a UN secretary-general who is evidently answerable to no one (got that much right at least), the UN is multiply and variously arrogant and condescending, and not once in the entire book is the United States even acknowledged to have ever existed despite UN headquarters still being in New York City (they spend Euros there (and everywhere else)). This work is slipping into the Socialist Utopia category. Now it’s 177 years after the ship was launched, on a voyage expected to take millenia, and it looks like they’re heading toward a caste system. On a less political note I’m disappointed that a society that would, even through coersion, devote such enormous resources to such a project, would seem to completely ignore colonizing Luna, Mars, the Belt, the gas-giant moons, and artificial habitats wherever they found a LaGrange point, and would almost completely ignore the scarcely-imaginable potential of spaceborne industry (a single asteroid can contain more nickel-iron than the entire human race has used since maybe ever), agriculture (they’ll build a 30 km sublight starship based on one man’s traumatic childhood but won’t slap together a few 1km hydroponic stations in that same synchronous orbit, where they’d have only a few minutes of not-daylight every 24 hours, if that? And they build a 40,000 km orbital elevator for the ship but don’t think of hanging some farms and apartments off it?), and power generation (there are a few solar power satellites – but c’mon, this book has fusion power (to drive the ship and provide an artificial sun inside) and a beanstalk and only incidentally has a small amount of surplus solar power coming down the wire for dirtside use, when the first half of the book bawls about people not being able to afford to turn on electric lights in their own apartments in NYC?).

26/9: Chafe’s Genesis now begins to devolve into church-bashing, stereotyping clergy and religious parents as narrow-minded power-hungry child-abusers. I’m agnostic, but Christians – the obvious target here – are generally on my side in the Culture Wars and seeing my allies thus attacked offends me. As for S. M. Stirling’s lame excuse that one shouldn’t assume that the fascistic horror stories he writes have anything to do with his personal views, authors have been putting their own messages into their work since Homer. That’s what writing, especially fiction and not least science fiction, is for.

28/9: OOh yeah, I finished Chafe’s Genesis, which, while not the full Orphans of the Sky creep-me-out, was a downer with the passengers losing nearly all their history, most of their understanding of who they were and where they were going, and degenerating to a medieval level while the ship plunges on for potentially ever until something breaks and they all die, making the whole thing – the resources, the expense, the brilliance, the sacrifices, the Vision – meaningless. Now if, if there’s a sequel where Daring Adventurers and Free Thinkers Courageously Rediscover the True Nature of the generation ship – which, if memory serves, was kinda what happened with OotS, at least a little – then I’ll dish out some redemption, but after a quite good showing in the Man-Kzin Wars franchise this was not what I was expecting from this author.

Agree with some – church-bashing is all-too-prevailent in science fiction generally (31/1 entry); it would be refreshing to see Christian religion presented more positively, but one has to go outside of Woke-infested mainstream SF to find any, now. (Islam, however, I dislike and am suspicious of; it is incompatible with modern society – the atrocities inflicted by ISIS being a recent example.)

But in the Genesis protagonist’s – Josh Crewe’s – position I would also want to get the hell out of the Solar System (being confined to which seems a little too mundane) – to another world around another star.

Sunday 19/12: Awful headache; The Expanse Episode 2

Had a debilitating headache overnight on Friday 17/12 to Saturday morning. Not quite a migraine – no nausea – but still very unpleasant. I think the weather might have contributed to it; warm and unsettled.

Watched Episode 2 of The Expanse Season 6. Very short again. Characters flipping their spacecraft and shooting at each other. The actor portraying Marco Inaros, Keon Alexander, is quite good-looking!

Monday 20/12: Another book purge; violent storm; patronizing protestors

Another pre-Christmas book purge today; carried several kilos of books to two charity shops, so I am rather tired from walking with such a heavy load. I seem to do these purges despite my best intentions not to accumulate any more books. Problem with physical books is that they get so heavy, and there is no room to store them.

A short but violent storm front blasted through Melbourne yesterday afternoon; almost tornado-like in its intensity.

A typically patronizing analysis of anti-lockdown protestors by ABC News (which is left-wing biased, despite its claims to being impartial).

Wednesday 22/12: Haircut; Starbound book

Had my hair trimmed yesterday, so it is still one length but rather short; almost bob-length (just to my shoulders). Unlike last time (29/10 entry), I did not have to wait long.

In his May 2006 blog, Jeffersonian mentions that:

Then I went through Battleground, still on my way to L-L, ansd saw “Old Town Battleground Saturday Market” – which was, like, four stalls of niche-market produce and a fundraising book sale for the local library. For one dollar, Starbound, Time-Life 1991, on what was then the future of space exploration […].

Coincidentally, I found that book earlier this year in a charity shop! I bought it; there were others in the series there but I do not have the room for them, and Starbound was the only one pertinent to my interests, mentioning interstellar and beamed sail propulsion – albeit, only a small portion of the book. Very dated now, as noted, but a somewhat wistful vision of what might have been. “I want to ride a starship to another world and do that Pioneer thing with lots of elbow room.” (1718 - Wednesday, 16 January 2008)

Thursday 23/12: Sesame Street spoiled

Sesame Street was standard children’s TV viewing in the 1970s in Australia, and I and my sister enjoyed it, like most children then did. (The setting of New York City was also appealing; especially the now-nostalgic glimpses of urban life there in the 1970s and 1980s – I was into the 1980s pop/hip-hop music and culture during my teenage years, some of which originated from that area). Last night a retrospective documentary was screened on SBS TV, Sesame Street: 50 Years of Sunny Days. I did enjoy the clips showing scenes and characters from the old episodes of that era … but the modern version, not so much. You guessed it, “Wokeism” has infested the program. It was always more progressive and inclusive in nature, but in the earlier days this was more unobtrusive. Now the propaganda is quite blatant, as this article describes: “Sesame Street Goes Woke, Introduces Same-Sex Couple For ‘Family Day’ Episode.” If I had a child now, I would have serious doubts about letting them watch the program. The original puppet characters were gentle and likeable, even the misbehaving ones.

Racial politics has also become blatant:

This is depressing:

“Sesame Street” is introducing two new Muppets, a Black father and son, as part of an effort to help children understand racial literacy. The two Muppets, Wes and Elijah, were introduced in a short video created by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind the long-running show. In the video, Elmo wants to know why Wes’s skin is brown, so his father Elijah explains the concept of melanin and how “the color of our skin is an important part of who we are.”

“Racial literacy” and lectures on melanin sound like something out of a 1920s handbook on eugenics. Teaching kids to see skin color as an essential part of their identity is what America spent decades fighting to get away from. And if you compare our society in the mid 2000s with, say, the mid 1940s, we made some pretty astounding progress in that direction. Far too much of the critical-race-theory movement today is aimed at reversing that. Imagine any show having white characters say, “The color of our skin is an important part of who we are.” It ought to be a point of general agreement that we should not be teaching white kids in this country to think that way. But if white kids hear that message from everybody else, how are you going to tell them it’s wrong for them to think the same thing? Maybe you could make that distinction in 1960, when white people were 88.6 percent of the population, but that’s down to around 60 percent these days, and below 50 in some parts of the country. A more diverse nation ought to be an opportunity to teach each of the component groups to de-emphasize group tribal identities and see each other as individuals. Instead, too many voices are dedicated to sending the message that racial identity is a thing of power.

The Sesame Street I grew up with in the 1970s was all about de-emphasizing race. That was the mainstream liberal/progressive vision of its day, and it was quite successful. The show’s cast was racially diverse, and plenty of white kids grew up loving Gordon, Maria, and David. Most of the Muppets were racially ambiguous, even the humanoid ones: Ernie and Bert were orange and yellow, and Prairie Dawn was pink. Yes, the game-show host Guy Smiley was obviously white, and Roosevelt Franklin, voiced by the actor who played Gordon, was obviously black and went to a gritty-looking city school.

Roosevelt Franklin was a staple of the show and a popular character until they stopped making his segments in 1975 and pulled them in the early 1980s; I can recall, for example, that he was included in the Fisher-Price Sesame Street set. But nobody talked about race on Sesame Street. Showing people together and not caring about race was the point. A lot of Americans shed a lot of blood in pursuit of that ideal. It is sad to see so much of our culture now giving up on even trying.

Saturday 25/12: Quiet Christmas; COVID booster shots mandated; JWST launch upcoming

A quiet Christmas Day at home with my parents, as has been the situation for a few years now. Most of my older relatives – my maternal Grandmother – have passed on, and others live far away.

The weather here is a pleasant 21°C. By contrast, I am thankful not to live in Perth at the moment, where there are several days forecast into the low 40s.

COVID booster shots (third dose) are being fast-tracked, which I am not enthusiastic about. The general pandemic hysteria continues, and being obligated to take all these extra vaccine doses is stressful. I could cope with it once a year, like the influenza vaccine, but the COVID vaccines seem absurdly frequent. I will probably opt for AstraZeneca again if I can – “better the Devil I know” – rather than risk yet more unknown side-effects from the other brands.

More happily, if still fraught with tension, is the upcoming launch of the long-gestating James Webb Space Telescope tonight! 11.20 p.m. Australian time today.

Wednesday 29/12: Hot days; JWST enroute; The Founder Effect novel

A few hot days upcoming: 38°C forecast for Friday. Getting Perth’s hot weather, though not quite as bad as that city endured. Weather systems sweep eastward across the bottom of the Australian continent, so what Perth on the lower west coast gets in weather, Adelaide then Melbourne follow a few days later.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched successfully and is now enroute to its L2 orbital position. Much still needs to go smoothly though, namely the telescope unfolding and deploying its components.

I took the train into the City (Melbourne CBD) today, just to pop into the Minotaur bookstore and buy a physical copy of The Founder Effect – a Baen-published novel of a sleeper colonist starship traveling over centuries to a habitable exoplanet in a distant star system. It ties in with my current interests, so I had to buy it; also it is a way of supporting Baen after the nonsensical controversy they were subjected to earlier this year (20/2 entry). The obnoxious, virtue-signalling, self-righteous twat, Jason Sanford, is still posting and publishing, unfortunately, and garnering Patreons.

A lot of colony starship stories assume that nuclear fusion will be made sustainable (able to produce more power than is taken to create the reaction), and is used for propulsion in them, but in reality such a feat is still nowhere near, and may never be – “to date, no design has produced more fusion power output than the electrical power input.”

An RPG called Shadows over Sol: Siren’s Call (a physical copy of which I also ordered earlier this year as a reference for my worldbuilding project) has the same opinion:

Thorium Power

Thorium-based nuclear fission is the cornerstone of space travel. It powers almost all spaceships, space stations and colonies from the Belt outward. Thorium is an abundant element, making it cheaper and more easily attainable than Uranium – the traditional fuel for fission electrical production. It also produces less dangerous nuclear waste. On the flip side, generating energy from nuclear fission results in vast amounts of wasted heat. On a planet, bodies of water or other material can be used as a heat sink to absorb all this waste heat. On a spaceship or space station, however, this heat still needs to go somewhere. Remember, vacuum is a very good insulator, while the metal frame of a ship or station conducts heat very well. Practically this means spaceships and space stations need to cap how much energy they produce; otherwise the waste heat will transfer into the rest of the station and bake the inhabitants alive.

The Failure of Fusion

It’s worth noting that in Shadows Over Sol, sustainable nuclear fusion as a power source has never quite panned out. Despite promises to the contrary and claims of it being “just a couple decades away,” technical issues have always rendered it technologically and economically infeasible. In short, the often-promised future of nearly free and clean fusion-based energy remains a fairy tale.

Friday 31/12: Hot; another year in limbo; gender silliness

Very hot for today and tomorrow; into the high 30s. Home gets very hot inside, and saps what little energy I have. Dreading the prospect of a bad headache.

Another peculiar and lost year; much of it dominated by COVID hysteria and spent in lockdown (4/10 entry), with dire consequences for the State’s economic future here. My hatred of the Left and “Progressive” politics has solidified under the autocratic regime of Premier Daniel Andrews.

“‘Absolutely huge’: AFLW star Vescio changes the game on gender diversity,” The Age, 31/12. A sportswoman (presumably!) “comes out” with the fashionable and nonsensical “gender” of non-binary. “Much courage was required to come out publicly when some people still argue loudly on social media that ‘there’s he, and she and nothing in between’, she said.” No, it’s a simple biological fact that humans have two genders of male and female (and, yes, I am aware of the supposed distinction between biological sex and mental gender, but that does not diminish the ridiculousness of the issue). Referring to a single person as “they” feels rather dehumanizing (there is no proper term in English for a neutral gender, unlike, say in the French or Russian languages, and “it” is usually used for non-human creatures and inanimate objects). Linguistically, pronouns tend to be closed-class words, difficult to change rapidly.

(Note that I am now using Internet Archive links for many articles to hopefully avoid link rot – hundreds of articles in my old Journal entries are now gone, and the Archive does not always capture them.)