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Suzy McHale’s Journal: 2020

Mum’s car, a Toyota Starlet, was taken away on 10/2 due to a worldwide airbag safety recall. She bought a replacement, a dark grey Mazda 2, on 6/2, and collected on 15/3. Alarm over the emerging Coronavirus pandemic was ramping up and panic buying of essentials was ensuing. Lockdowns, beginning on 23/3 (as I noted on 26/3), would become a recurring feature of the next two years, with worldwide social and supply chain disruption. I felt initially distressed and opposed the idea of the lockdowns as I liked going out to the shops and wandering around. On Tuesday 12/5 I was hit by a car when riding my bicycle home from Chadstone (15/5 entry); my first major accident. Fortunately I escaped with scrapes and bruises, though these were painful enough. On 10/7 I had one of my two remaining wisdom teeth extracted (upper right jaw), the other on 2/10 (3/10 entry). On 30/10 a brief listing of my-then current interests. A letter published on 4/11.

January

Wednesday 1/1: A new year; heat and hellfire; more moronic movies; finished a novel

2019 was another year frustratingly wasted for me as I achieved nothing, and feel creatively dead – I can’t seem to get any of my thoughts and images out as art and writing. At least I did not suffer any injuries.

A quiet day for New Year’s Day. As usual I did not go anywhere last night as I do not have a social life, so I was asleep in bed. I went to Southland SC with Mum and Dad as usual; a little later. Some shops open, others weren’t, annoyingly. Also went for my bicycle ride today down and along Beach Road. Port Phillip Bay was a lovely teal blue-green again and the sky clear and sunny, with a light cool breeze. I still find riding tiring after a while, though.

Another awful hellishly hot day last Monday 30/12, with Melbourne’s temperature reaching 40.8°C with gale-force northerly winds. The sky was hazy at times from bushfire smoke. I did not go out anywhere for exercise; just too hot and I had no energy. A cool change came through around 7:30 p.m., and the following day in contrast was blessedly cool with morning rain and just 21°C.

Bushfires have been devastating Gippsland in Victoria, and parts of NSW, so this ongoing disaster is dominating news headlines here. (ABC News and Guardian tagged articles) One article, “Bushfire to affect residents and holidaymakers long after the flames die out,” points out how precarious the provision of food, power and other supplies we take for granted are – it does not take much to disrupt the fragile and complex supply chain.

Moronic movie dominance

Below, an opinion piece from the Herald-Sun on the Marvel franchise’s domination of movies (and, by extension, the Disney corporation) – impressive, according to its author, but concerning to anyone who favors movie diversity and intelligent film. (Previously mentioned in my 6/11/2019 entry.)

How Marvel came to dominate the last decade

James Wigney, Herald-Sun

Whether Martin Scorsese likes it or not, there’s no denying that Marvel movies supercharged the cinema world in the past decade.

The veteran, Oscar-winning director – who proved with his recent masterpiece The Irishman that he still knows a thing or two about filmmaking – recently opined that the all-conquering superhero franchise is “not cinema”, likening the movies instead to “theme parks”.

Many who never warmed to the juggernaut that the vast, interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe has become might agree with that assessment, but if they are theme parks, there are surely many more who happily bought tickets and enjoyed the roller coaster rides of the fantastical adventures of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and co.

Put simply, there is nothing in cinematic history that has come close to the success of the highest grossing film franchise of all time.

Since 2008, the MCU has (so far) spanned 23 films, including this year’s Avengers: Endgame, which fittingly rounded out the decade by taking Avatar’s crown of the biggest box office hit ever, amassing a staggering $4 billion globally.

Led by visionary producer and Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige, it has done it in style – or many styles in fact. While detractors complain of a certain sameness to the films – superpowered heroes duke it out with similarly superpowered villains – the MCU has embraced many different shades in its journey far.

Feige has said he doesn’t believe in the “superhero genre” and the directors, often rising stars themselves, have obliged. Captain America: The Winter Soldier was wildly different from its predecessor. The first Ant-Man gave the franchise its first heist movie. And Kiwi maverick Taika Waititi rescued Thor by embracing the absurdity of it all and coming up with a gem for the Norse God’s third film that was bordering on out-and-out comedy.

After starting out as almost solely a white boys club, the MCU has been striking mainstream blows for diversity in the face of knuckle draggers for years now. Black Panther offered up the first black superhero, became a genuine cultural phenomenon, amassed more than $1.9 billion, and was the first superhero film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

And his year’s Captain Marvel, with Oscar-winning actor Brie Larson as the first solo female lead in the MCU, defied a toxic trolling campaign after the Oscar-winning actor called it a “big feminist movie”, to become a critical and commercial hit.

One of Feige’s key producing partners Victoria Alonso, a gay Latino woman, told the Herald Sun in 2018 that diversity was not only important to her and Marvel, it also makes economic sense to accurately reflect the real world on the big screen. And in the real world, more than half of the audience for Marvel’s films are women, and a significant portion are of Latino or African-American heritage.

“I address it in every moment that I can,” she said of the diversity challenge. “I always said that Black Panther and Captain Marvel are the legacy that I would leave for my daughter. That’s how important it is to me.”

Although the journey began last decade, it was really the 2012 all-star team-up of The Avengers that set the MCU apart from the pack. Feige has said that from the beginning he had the idea that the different strands of the franchise might be woven together, but surely even he couldn’t have imagined just how dramatically it would change the face of cinema.

The concept of a shared universe with a built-in audience and potentially huge profits became hugely appealing – but not so easy to pull off.

Rival comic company DC tried its hand with their Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman/Aquaman crossovers, which turned out to be a pale imitation of the MCU and has since been mostly abandoned.

Universal Studios also had a stab at an interconnected “Dark Universe” featuring its classic creatures such as Frankenstein and Dracula, but it turned up its toes after Tom Cruise’s expensively underwhelming The Mummy was declared dead on arrival in 2017. Similarly, a “MonsterVerse” with King Kong, Godzilla and other fantastical beasts is looking decidedly endangered after an uncharacteristically meek performance from this year’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And even the most ardent fans would agree that the recently concluded Star Wars trilogy has been disjointed at best and hot mess at worst.

All of which goes to show just how impressive and unprecedented the MCU has been in the past decade.

Fittingly, given the other seismic shift in cinema of the last ten years, the future of Marvel now embraces streaming and has eight streaming shows in the works that will introduce new characters such as Moon Knight and She-Hulk that will tie in with the movies.

If that all sounds like overkill, then maybe Marty is right and the film landscape will revert to “the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being”.

But Feige says he’s been asked about so-called superhero film fatigue for years and his answer is always the same: as long as they are good people will keep going to see them. Either way, don’t expect the theme park to close its doors any time soon.

James Wigney is the national Hit and Play editor.

r/TrueFilm at Reddit had another post on the topic: An interesting article about how Disney/Marvel turned “nerd culture” into monoculture, and how that is affecting film criticism. One comment of note:

So I mostly agree with the article, and I think it does a good job explaining the rift between the “Scorsese” crowd and the Marvel crowd. I don’t believe fundamentally that audiences are different today than they were 30 or 40 years ago; that is to say that they have always been susceptible to spectacle over thoughtfulness. I think that what is different, is how well Disney and a few other studios have managed to capitalize on that to deliver a homogeneous product, and that, in combination with a few other factors (the infinite variety of home media choices, reduced discretionary income, etc.) has resulted in mainstream audiences only really spending money on movies they regard as huge spectacle. Americans also seem to be built to engage in brand loyalty in all things they do, so the whole Disney thing fits like a glove.

This will sound really condescending, but there seems to be this arrested development with nerd culture, it’s as though people aren’t growing out of these movies. This is noticeable in the backlash to Scorsese’s comments, because I don’t think that what he said is very controversial; Disney films do lack the emotional and thematic depth that great films have. Like unless you are genuinely a teenager, I just don’t know how you can believe these films have any sort of depth to them. Is it really that offensive to criticize these movies for that?

*Just wanted to add, the whole defending Goliath from David idea goes way past the movies. That’s essentially what American conservatism is, defending the powerful from the weak. I think this instinct stems from comfort. People don’t want to question the power hierarchy because they may have to question their own place in it, and this results in them defending the most powerful, despite not sharing their privilege. I think this happens with film consumption, although in a less harmful way. People don’t want to question their own media choices, because introspection is difficult and scary, so an attack on Disney is perceived as an attack on them.

And from yet another r/TrueFilm post, a comment by Alan Moore:

I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying. While these characters were originally perfectly suited to stimulating the imaginations of their twelve or thirteen year-old audience, today’s franchised übermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to be serving some kind of different function, and fulfilling different needs. Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century. The continuing popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest, combined with an numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum. The superheroes themselves – largely written and drawn by creators who have never stood up for their own rights against the companies that employ them, much less the rights of a Jack Kirby or Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster – would seem to be largely employed as cowardice compensators, perhaps a bit like the handgun on the nightstand. I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.

Books read

I have just read and finished the 2009 novel Ark by Stephen Baxter, a long-established British science fiction author. He is an author whom I have read before so I am familiar with his style and work. I found this novel oddly compelling, finishing it within a week!

The plot scenario is somewhat farfetched, where the Earth is almost entirely flooded from subterranean water inundating the planet, with dire consequences for humanity and life generally. A space ark of sorts is launched – its developers managing to figure out how to create a functional FTL Alcubierre warp drive using antimatter – and Baxter’s trademark dysfunctional crew characters head off to a potential habitable exoplanet in the 82 Eridani system, 20 light years away (9 years’ travel with the superluminal warp drive). Not surprisingly, plans go awry, though the ending does provide some hope for the characters.

I do seem to like such stories involving dysfunctional characters within a confined space (perhaps because in reality I am in a somewhat similar situation? Namely semi-reclusive in my bedroom, living with my parents). Many years ago I read another of his novels, Titan, perhaps one of the most depressing novels ever and one that was oddly prescient in envisioning near-future world events (the destruction of a space shuttle, the rise of China as a superpower and decline of the USA – the latter under a religious fundamentalist president).

Saturday 4/1: Cool relief; no FTL talking

The bushfire crisis dominates the Australian media headlines (Wikipedia now has a page devoted to the topic). An acrid smoke haze from the Gippsland fires in the east of the state enveloped Melbourne yesterday, and some of this morning until a dry windy cool change blew through around midday.

A poster at Hacker News linked to an article explaining how instantaneous faster-than-light quantum entanglement communications is impossible (I reproduced the article locally as the Forbes.com website is an ad-infested ordeal to visit). This type of FTL communications has been appearing in various science fiction novels and, as with FTL travel, it violates causality as well as being realistically impossible. Any sci-fi featuring this is automatically fantasy-with-spaceships, in my view – it is no longer “hard” science fiction. (Previously commented on this issue in my 14/4/2019 entry.)

Monday 6/1: Ears syringed; smoke haze

I went to the doctor (East Bentleigh Medical Group) to have my ears syringed due to a mild wax buildup; this has become fairly regular for a few years (usually done once a year). Last time was Thursday 28/2/2019. My weight is 44 kg and he seemed concerned about my blood pressure, which was low; thought I was dehydrated (I only have a cup of coffee and 2 glasses of peppermint tea every day, some sips of plain water, and what I get via fruits and vegetables).

Very smoky again today – an acrid stench of bushfire smoke in the air – and hazy; also damp and drizzly. Rain yesterday also. A stark contrast to the hellish 40°C of last Monday (1/1 entry).

Wednesday 8/1: Avatar 2 concept art; billionaire eccentrics

Four new Avatar 2 concept art images were released yesterday! They are by Dylan Cole (who was one of the artists for the first Avatar movie). Posted on the official Avatar Twitter account; some low-resolution images: 1, 2, 3, 4.

I came across this opinion piece from December last year:

The Adolescent Spacefaring Dreams of Tech Billionaires

Zeynep Tufekci

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who runs Tesla and SpaceX, is trying to buy up all the houses in Boca Chica, Tex. – a tiny community of just a few dozen people – so he can use the area to launch his Mars spaceship. He says he might have people on their way to the Red Planet within a decade.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also has a spaceflight company, Blue Origin, and he sees the project as a stepping-stone to a future of space colonies. Bezos envisions that one day a trillion or more humans could be living somewhere else in the solar system, leaving Earth behind as a sort of park. The late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen founded Stratolaunch, which similarly had space travel in its sights. (There’s also Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic; he’s not from the tech industry, but still ….) These men aren’t necessarily focused exclusively on space, but why do they put billions toward launching humans out there? One reason is that Earth is threatened with climate change and nuclear war; space is a kind of plan B. But a crewed flight to Mars is full of perils – most notably the fact that we don’t currently have a way of protecting humans from the adverse effects of months and months of deep-space radiation. And once we get there, the planet’s lack of a significant magnetic field or atmosphere means the threat will still be substantial. It’s also not clear whether proposed plans for hauling the tons of supplies needed to make life there even barely possible could work as well as envisioned (or at all).

Still, what’s wrong with dreaming, right? In one sense, nothing. But in another, it matters how people with a lot of money dream. Bezos, Allen and Musk all have talked about their love of science fiction as part of their inspiration for investing in space. Bezos spent his summers reading authors such as Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Allen so loved his boyhood science-fiction collection that when he discovered that his mother had sold his books, he had the entire collection re-created.

As a former science-fiction geek myself, I can only sympathize. At its best, though, science fiction is a brilliant vehicle for exploring not the far future or the scientifically implausible but the interactions among science, technology and society. The what-if scenarios it poses can allow us to understand our own societies better, and sometimes that’s best done by dispensing with scientific plausibility. For example, Ursula K. Le Guin’s brilliant book The Left Hand of Darkness imagines an envoy from Terra (our Earth) to Gethen, a planet without fixed boundaries between genders. Through the hero’s encounter with an “ambisexual” species, we end up interrogating our own cultural norms around masculinity and femininity – groundbreaking for a book published in 1969.

Science fiction is sometimes denigrated as escapist literature, but the best examples of it are exactly the opposite. For me, it’s not the scientifically implausible part of science fiction that is most interesting. It’s what the expanded imagination allows us to discover about ourselves and our societies – and then to make them better.

Science and art have always been somewhat funded through the eccentric interests of the wealthy, and the combination has always been a mixed bag. One thing about being a billionaire is that it’s probably not hard to find people who will encourage you to spend money chasing space operas that either will not happen because of scientific constraints or will end up in disaster.

But more important, tech billionaires can shape our lives today, through how their companies operate, by repaying their obligations to society through taxes on their enormous wealth (at the moment, fairly little), and through their investments in solving the problems that threaten us. Doing that requires imagination. It’s just not the kind depicted on the covers of science-fiction books I, too, read as a child; it’s the kind that takes us to expanded universes only to have us think harder about how to understand the one inhabitable place for us in this vast universe – our fragile, pale blue dot – and make it a better place to live.

I can see her point, but I disagree to an extent. Eccentric billionaires may be the alternative route to colonizing the solar system (and other systems, eventually?) as governments have generally lost the will to strive towards this (with China perhaps being an exception, as the country has a collective need to prove themselves equal or superior to the West, due to a still-sore memory of how they were humiliated by the West in previous centuries). Dreaming of expanding into space is a welcome distraction from worldly problems, though humans would still retain all their foibles should the species ever attain that dream. (And people like Elon Musk are just cool, despite their flaws :-). He has a lot of detractors, but that is perhaps inevitable.)

I saw a dark red Tesla electric car on the way home from Chadstone SC. I do see them occasionally when out and about. There is a Tesla showroom at Chadstone, and a charging station in its carpark. I would love to buy one if I had the money! I love the image and advanced clean technology.

Tuesday 14/1: Smoke haze returns; Amaranthe wiki

The bushfire smoke haze returned over Melbourne yesterday from the Gippsland fires, and is even worse today. Weather is warm – 29°C or so – but more humid, and tomorrow will be similar. I did go for a bicycle ride, but a little shorter – went south up Nepean Highway rather than all the way to Beach Road. Still felt a bit off-color, though at least I don’t suffer from asthma. I am fatigued as usual, though, and don’t have much energy to write, though I’ve had a lot of thoughts.

G. S. Jennsen’s Amaranthe series science fiction novels (mentioned in my 14/4/2019 entry) now have a wiki. The wiki company, though, uses some Javascript-based program to generate the wiki, and, using the browser “View source” option, it is a horrendously complex spaghetti of coding that I can’t figure out. One of the Javascript files that generate the page is over 2 MB! This type of web application seems to be the current trend, but it uses a lot of bandwidth to load and view, and is a big step backwards in website accessibility, in my view. Many developers seem to like to overcomplicate the websites they build (“feature creep” is the term, also applicable to software development) with whatever the latest trends and features are.

The series is now 14 books and growing – I envy authors who are that prolific! It is arguable science fantasy, certainly not hard science fiction, as it includes faster-than-light travel, nanotechnology and a lot of other “indistinguishable from magic” technologies and technobabble.

Friday 17/1: Wild weather; stationery fetish

More unpleasant weather last Wednesday, but a violent storm and cool change came through from 4:30 that afternoon. Yesterday and today were refreshingly cooler, but the humid and smokey weather is due to return by the weekend for a few days, unfortunately.

There was a post at MetaTalk about office supplies, and one member commented:

I have a great weakness for office supply stores. (More so when they weren’t yet quite 80% electronics and furniture … but, even so today.) I don’t actually need, want, or use most of the stuff there. But, it just smells like overwhelming possibility. So many raw materials just waiting to do something. The same is true of art supply stores and hardware stores.

I feel exactly the same way when entering such stores! The products encapsulate all the potentially creative activities I could do with them, and are bright and colorful … but I never end up actually starting these activities. There’s a well-known quote that goes something like: “It’s the not the destination, it’s the journey.” It’s the thought of doing a particular activity, rather than the somewhat scary process of actually bringing this into reality – which is why I have been almost creatively dead for quite a while now.

Sunday 19/1: More weather drama; xcopy batch file; Aurora novel

After a brief cool respite, some more unpleasant weather due in the next couple of days (humidity and smoke haze).

I found out how to create a .bat (batch) file to automate an xcopy backup to my portable hard drive: open a blank Notepad text file instance and type:

@echo off
xcopy f:\ g:\ /d /y /s
exit

Save as "xcopyfull.bat" (with quotes around file name and extension to prevent Windows appending .txt onto the end). When appropriate backup drive is plugged in, double-click on the .bat file to execute it (it will self-close when finished).

Books read

I am reading Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is arguably one of the most realistic depictions of interstellar travel yet written; the author takes the viewpoint that such an endeavour will be extremely difficult if not unfeasible altogether, given the vast distances, timespans and technological complexities involved. A generation ship is on its way to the Tau Ceti star system, but encounters many difficulties along the way and the travellers find their chosen exoplanet also ultimately incompatible with their biology. The novel generated a lot of debate and articles. Some of these (note – now stored locally):

I will perhaps post more thoughts when I have finished it.

Friday 24/1: Wild weather continued

Sunday and Monday late afternoons saw storms pass over Melbourne and the usual havoc ensue, though fortunately my suburb missed the worst of it.

Thursday saw the city covered with red rain dust, picked up from the north of the state by a cold front passing through overnight – ochre-colored dust staining everywhere. Today’s weather is thankfully much milder.

I had my hair trimmed on Tuesday.

Friday 31/1: Hot hell; cashless concerns

A very nasty weather forecast for today and tomorrow: heat and high humidity. Today, according to the Bureau of Meteorology: 43°C, “Very hot and becoming humid. Sunny morning. Medium (60%) chance of showers late this afternoon and evening. The chance of a thunderstorm late this afternoon and evening. Winds northwest to northeasterly 25 to 40 km/h becoming northwesterly 25 to 35 km/h in the evening then becoming light in the late evening.” Overnight: 23°C. Tomorrow: 33°C, “Humid. Cloudy. Very high (95%) chance of rain developing. Thunderstorms likely during the morning and early afternoon, possibly severe with heavy rainfall, damaging winds and large hail. Winds northerly 15 to 20 km/h shifting southerly 15 to 25 km/h during the morning.” I had hoped the worst of the hot weather had passed, but apparently not :-(.

Article: “Royal Australian Mint expects lowly silver coins to be phased out amid rise of contactless payments,” ABC News, 30/1. One development that concerns me is the advent of a cashless society (digital payments only). Electronic payments are a great erosion of privacy as one’s buying habits and purchases can be tracked, and if the electronic network goes offline, as has happened many times, payment is unavailable. A lot of younger people like the supposed convenience of cashless payments (as some in this Reddit thread linking to the article say), but this supposed convenience comes at a great cost (so to speak). Making small-denomination coins obsolete as the linked article states will also ensure that prices will have to be rounded down or up (mostly up).

There is also the issue of electronic payment being unavailable when there are power outages – a recent example being during the recent Australian bushfires.

Brown said when everything goes down, a smartphone and debit or credit cards become useless.

“We need to go back to some of the old-school things, like having cash, a radio and being better prepared,” she said.

That may be difficult, as most people today often prefer digital payment methods.

A recent report commissioned by Suncorp entitled Attitudes towards Money and Food found most people use debit or credit cards to pay for the vast majority of their food expenses.

The most popular choice of payment for groceries is a debit card attached to a savings account. Most 18-34-year-olds were likely to use this method by tapping their smartphone. Loading

In emergencies, banks can deploy mobile ATMs to provide cash. However, that usually takes time – something those fleeing a bushfire often don’t have. […]

When power is down and communications are out, having cash at hand becomes critical, he said. “We rely on ATMs and auto-payments as an essential part of infrastructure but, when the power goes down, cash is gold,” he said.

February

Monday 3/2: Weather reprieve; older recluses

Endured the awful hot humid weather on Friday (43°C) and Saturday; a cool change came on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately the humidity returns from Thursday this week.

“Reaching Out to Older Hikikomori and Their Families,” Nippon.com, 29/1. Though Japan-focused, the situation described (older recluses living at home with parents) applies to me (I would be a quasi-hikikomori, as noted in the table in the article). It is not a happy or secure way to be, but I have been like this for so long now that I feel beyond any help.

Thursday 6/2: Tesla sighting; sister visit

I saw a Tesla electric car parked next to my parents’ car at Southland SC today! A dark grey metallic Model S. I do see the brand occasionally when out and about (previous sighting was 8/1 on the way home from Chadstone SC). A Tesla is now my dream car!

Another run of unpleasant humid weather from today into early next week, though temperatures are not as high as the awful ordeal of last week (into the high 20s-low 30s).

My sister is coming to visit and stay from tomorrow to Monday (she lives in Queensland with her family) – unfortunately the humidity there will follow her here!

Monday 10/2: Windy; Mum loses her car; RuSpace revisions

Persistent humidity with a strong south-easterly wind the last few days, due to an extreme wet weather system streaming along the south-east coastline, causing flooding and havoc in NSW. The wind is good for drying washing, but it can be irritating! It puts me in mind of the irritating wind described in Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (which I am still reading – see 19/1/2020 entry):

Down in Hvalsey, they were having more trouble dealing with the winds. Through the long morning of the daymonth there was a steady offshore wind of about fifty kilometers per hour, with gusts as strong as a hundred. There was a slight katabatic effect coming off the sea cliff that made the river canyon particularly windy.

Mum had to get her car taken away today due to the defective airbag safety recall – a Toyota Starlet, bought in 1998. She only received the notification in the mail a week or two ago! Don’t yet know if the airbag will be replaced (none currently in stock) or if she will be compensated for the car’s value. Quite dismaying for her, nonetheless!

I have been managing to do a little work on my RuSpace site section; I may focus on the Russian part of the ISS only and delete or alter a few pages.

Wednesday 12/2: Ball rescue; paid site content; no return for Mum’s car

I retrieved a soccer ball for some young school children while out on my bike ride yesterday! The ball was on the road at the roundabout and level rail crossing on Dendy Street, and I noticed some kids looking over the fence of the Catholic school there (St. Joan of Arc). I debated riding on, but felt compelled to get it, and handed it to one little girl who smiled gratefully at me. My good deed for the day! A small thing but I felt a little cheered up.

Continuing to correct a few errors on my RuSpace site, mainly the Cosmonaut Group pages.

I am not happy about RussianSpaceWeb.com’s increasing amount of paid-access “Insider Content” pages. I understand the author, Anatoly Zak, has to support himself and that he puts a lot of work into the site (an invaluable resource), but US $50 a year is unfortunately unaffordable for me! (Current currency conversion has the amount around AU$75.)

Mum will not be getting her car back – no spare parts for the airbag replacement available – and she will only be compensated $2000 or so for it, which demonstrates how much cars depreciate in value over the years.

Saturday 15/2: Extended humidity; cash preferred in Japan

Melbourne has been experiencing a prolonged bout of humid weather since Wednesday or so, not to change until early next week, due to easterly winds capturing atmospheric moisture from Tropical Cyclone Uesi over Queensland and pushing this southwards. The whole south-eastern coastline has been innundated with heavy rains and flooding.

Relevant to my concerns about the threat of a cashless society in my 31/1 entry, I came across this article at Nippon.com, “Back to the “Cash Age”: A Chinese Writer in Japan,” where a Chinese mainlander tries to adjust to using cash again (apparently electronic payments are prevailant in China now? “There’s a tendency in China to look down on people who do not use their phone to pay as dinosaurs behind the times.”).

There are a number of reasons why mobile payment has not developed fully in Japan. No dominant firms like WeChat and Alipay have emerged, and people are concerned about their privacy, worrying that their consumption habits will be transformed into data to be tracked by corporations.

But I think there is a bigger reason. The progress of a society is not only measured in terms of its speed, the standards of its smart or rich people, or what is good for the young. It must also take account of the elderly and others who feel left behind, and consider their happiness.

Sunday 16/2: The Silver Brumby lives

A photo gallery of a brumby mob (taken by Michelle Brown) was recently posted on the Facebook Snowy Brumby Photography Group page – as all the commentators noted, they seem the living images of the Silver Brumby and his herd in Elyne Mitchell’s marvellous classic novels! (The bay is Storm, Thowra’s half-brother.) The Silver Brumby novels are still a wonderful read (see my book review page for more).

These are the ones in the Snowy Mountains that a lot of environmentallists want culled due to supposed damage to the ecosystem, though I think this is much exaggerated. A lot of commentators at Reddit also hate the brumbies, as is evidenced whenever an article is linked there – they are mostly young urban males, so not surprising, sadly – some examples here and here, the last link is search results.

Sunday 23/2: Another Tesla sighting; new car

Some nice calm sunny weather yesterday and today after the tropical turmoil of the previous week.

I spotted another Tesla car on the way home from Southland SC yesterday, on the Nepean Highway! It might have been the same one I saw parked there on 6/2; it was the same dark grey color.

Mum is to buy a new car! A creamy-white Mazda 2, to be delivered in April. It has 4 doors and (most importantly!) power steering – the Toyota Starlet did not, and Mum found it increasingly difficult to turn the steering wheel as she aged and her muscle strength weakened. She didn’t realize how important this would be when she bought the Starlet in 1998. The Mazda should hopefully be a pleasure to drive in comparison. (I wish we could get a Tesla, but sadly it is not affordable!)

March

Sunday 1/3: Currency Bill passed; organizing data

One item of concern is that the Bill banning large cash payments (Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill) has passed in the Senate – I have expressed dismay about the advent of a cashless society in previous entries (15/2). I do not trust the Government’s reassurances.

Some time ago, I realised that I like to organise and present information, to tidy it up – such as what I am doing with various data tables for my RuSpace site. It is a peculiarly obsessive and satisfying pastime that is mindless but almost meditative, and I think is an autistic/Asperger’s trait. There are a lot of space sites with such data tables, and I wonder if their authors derive a similar satisfaction when creating theirs. I realized I have a lot of errors in mine so I have been fixated on redoing these; a time-consuming process.

Sunday 8/3: 60 years for Cosmonaut Group; Mum’s car update; AFL funding outrage

I seem to have been undergoing a resurgence of interest in Russian spaceflight, and am consequently attending to my website (albeit slowly). Yesterday marked the 60th year of the Cosmonaut Group:

Today, the Russian Cosmonaut Squad celebrates its 60th anniversary. On March 7, 1960, by order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force № 267, the first twelve pilots were appointed to the position of listener-astronaut. In the structure of the Cosmonaut Training Center, a unit was created with the name “Cosmonaut Squad.” (Отряд космонавтов, Otryad Kosmonavtov) On March 15, 1960, the first group of students began theoretical classes, which took place in Moscow at the MV Central Airport Frunze. Since July 1, 1960, the CPC relocated to the Moscow Region, where preparation continued. […]

As of January 2020, 283 people received cosmonaut qualifications in our country, among which 122 (43%) completed 264 flights with a total duration of more than 27,992 days. Four times in space, four representatives of our country worked. For 60 years of manned space exploration, 225 people worked in open space, including 66 Soviet and Russian cosmonauts. Domestic astronauts made 283 spacewalks with a total duration of 1296 hours 13 minutes (more than 54 days), which accounted for 70% of the total time of extra-space activity of all cosmonauts on the planet.

Now there are 32 people in the Cosmonaut Roscosmos Detachment, 12 of them have made one or more space flights, and 8 are undergoing general space training. (Roskosmos/TsPK)

One book I would like is Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak. Unfortunately it is out of print, and second-hand copies are being advertised for $900-$1000, which is just absurd!

Mum decided to switch to the automatic transmission version of the Mazda-2, so she will collect it this week (this one is a metallic silver in color).

Below, an opinion piece from the 5/3 Herald-Sun (article under a paywall, so reproduced below) criticizing the State Government’s funding of an already-wealthy sports code, Australian Rules (football) – which is, obscenely, tax-exempt, despite making profits of ¾ of a billion dollars in the last year:

Footy fork-out reveals government’s madness

Rita Panahi, Herald Sun

The state government must think Victorians are dimwitted mugs. How else can one explain the astonishing decision by the Andrews government to spend taxpayer dollars “securing” a second-rate AFL game?

To be clear, the state government is spending a six-figure sum, rumoured to be between $250,000 and $300,000, to have St Kilda play their home game against Port Adelaide at their home stadium. It would be funny if it wasn’t so mindlessly stupid.

Public money should not be going to the nation’s wealthiest sporting code, which had revenue of $794 million and net profit of just over $48 million in 2019, all without paying a single cent in tax.

The AFL’s tax exempt status helps it pay its executives millions in salaries and bonuses. In 2018 the AFL’s 12-person executive team was paid just over $10.7 million in wages, including $3.56 million in bonuses. This is a competition so fat it can pay an activist a salary that rivals that of the premier and prime minister to be the league’s “general manager of inclusion and social policy”.

The St Kilda v Port Adelaide game was originally scheduled for Round 11 at Shanghai’s Jiangwan Stadium to promote the AFL’s fanciful notions of expanding the game to new markets. Because of the coronavirus outbreak, it will now be played in Melbourne in Round 12.

As much as the AFL loves an overseas junket, at some point they’ll have to acknowledge people in other countries, whether it’s the UK, New Zealand or China, are not going to adopt our game.

Even giving away scores of free tickets doesn’t get many to the games, which are typically attended by expats.

The latest clubs to declare plans to play a home and away game overseas are Essendon and Greater Western Sydney, who will reportedly “net more than $1 million” for the venture, though no one has explained how.

The Victorian government’s explanation for using taxpayer dollars for a Sunday twilight game which will likely draw less than 20,000 spectators is that the game will be a “celebration of Melbourne’s Chinese community”.

Trying to use the plight of Chinese restaurateurs to justify this absurdity takes real chutzpah but that’s precisely what Premier Daniel Andrews did yesterday in the Victorian parliament when asked why a government facing significant budgetary pressures, that have forced treasurer Tim Pallas to cut $4 billion in spending, is paying the nation’s richest sporting code to play a game at a ground it owns.

The same weird rationale was put forward on Wednesday by Sports Minister Martin Pakula (pictured left) who said Victoria did not want the game going to Cairns.

“It’s been well-publicised that there may have been an offer from the Queensland government, so this is something where there was a degree of competition,” he said.

“We don’t want to see a great AFL fixture between the Saints and Power played in Cairns, where for a modest investment, not only can the game be here, but we can have a great celebration of our Chinese community and get a whole lot of South Australians over … staying in our hotels, and eating in our restaurants.”

Is the sports minister unaware there are interstate clubs playing in Melbourne every week during the AFL season, with the exception of Round 21, so why should this lowly game receive government support? And why assume a low-drawing club such as Port Adelaide is going to bring thousands of interstate tourists to our struggling Asian eateries?

If the government is going to throw away our money on frivolities then the least it can do is be transparent about how much its spending – but Pakula has refused to reveal the sums involved.

“We don’t want to reveal our hand in regards to how we secure events in Victoria. In the scheme of things, it is a relatively modest sum,” he said.

One wonders what possible reason could the government have to bail out the rich and mighty AFL? The AFL’s head of clubs and broadcast, Travis Auld, was also on message about the game being vital in boosting Asian eateries.

“It’s a time to support our Chinese community,” he said. “They require our support more than ever and on behalf of the AFL, that is our intention now and through to the game and beyond.”

If Auld or Pakula had bothered to speak to a few Chinese restaurateurs, they’d know the bulk of the patrons staying away are of Asian background. By all means do everything possible to get them back to Melbourne’s great restaurants, but luring a few dozen Port Adelaide fans isn’t going to have much of an impact.

The decision highlights the Andrews Government’s twisted priorities. On the same day it announced taxpayer funds would be used for a St Kilda game to be played at St Kilda’s home ground, we learned a vital service for traumatised women is to be axed. A $130,000 cut from Victorian Legal Aid funding means the Court Network will not be able to help domestic violence victims.

Surely a critical service for at-risk women negotiating the court system is far more worthy of public funding than an AFL game.

Professional team sports should not be government-funded at all; the activity is of no value to society, unlike the arts.

Sunday 15/3: Virus hysteria; Mum’s car arrives; website updates

I am surely not the only one who is utterly weary of the increasing hysteria over the Corona virus pandemic. The frantic buying of essentials at supermarkets is beyond a joke – I have never experienced such mass panic before. How pathetic is it when the highlight of one’s day is managing to buy a packet of toilet rolls?

Mum collected her new car (Mazda-2) last Tuesday! It is a medium metallic silver in color with a hint of blue – a cool grey color, quite attractive. She has found all the technological gadgets in it daunting, though – compared to her previous relatively primitive and simple Toyota Starlet – and is tentatively easing into driving it (Dad is doing most of the driving at the moment!).

I have been doing the usual fussing around with my website, undecided whether to retain or delete older pages. For personal history’s sake I decided to keep them, though some no longer represent my views on some issues.

Friday 20/3: Virus saturation

What a mad and surreal week with this Coronavirus pandemic that is now affecting Australia. The saturation media coverage and various countries’ reactions seem to almost be worse than the actual virus. Richard Stallman has some sensible advice – try to avoid overdosing on coverage as, like with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the cumulative effect can be mentally traumatizing even if one is not directly affected, as I found from watching 9/11 media coverage (the passenger jets crashing into the Twin Towers over and over again).

I went to the City (Melbourne CBD) by train today, for the first time in a few weeks – the trains were notably less crowded! But the big frustration is the panic buying of groceries – I have had trouble finding my own “safe foods” (such as plain rolled oats, Weeties cereal, pita pockets) to my distress.

I still am reorganizing parts of my website, and decided to delete a few no-longer-relevant pages after all. As I previously noted, I seem to have a revived interest in Russian spaceflight but have lost a lot of the (modest) web presence I had around a decade ago.

Thursday 26/3: Shutdown; Corona cashless threat; another migraine

The national shutdown of various activities and businesses began on Monday 23/3, and is being ratcheted up, with Victoria’s Premier threatening to go even further (Stage 3 – no details yet). For me it is distressing as a lot of the shops I go to are shut or restricted and my routine is disrupted. Though as I only do solitary exercise (walking, cycling, or aerobics and bodyweight training in my bedroom) there are no changes to my routine there; I have no social life or real-world friends or employment, so no changes there, either.

Some businesses are using the virus as an excuse to refuse cash payments in preference for digital, a trend of concern (see my previous posts on this topic). An article from Technology Review states that:

No, coronavirus is not a good argument for quitting cash

When the central banks in China, South Korea, and the US decided to “quarantine” potentially contaminated cash amid the outbreak of Covid-19, the implication seemed clear: paper money must be capable of spreading the disease. Right?

If that’s true, it also seems like a straightforward argument for finally going cashless. Digital payments firms, a number of merchants, and even some policymakers have been pushing to move away from notes and coins in the name of convenience and cost. Reducing the risk of spreading disease would be another rationale.

Lihui Li, a former president of the state-owned Bank of China, recently argued that in light of the epidemic China’s central bank should speed the release of its planned digital currency, which is supposed to replace physical cash. Then last week, when asked about whether cash could spread coronavirus, a spokesman from the World Health Organization apparently told the UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph that “it’s a good idea to use contactless payments” when possible. (Later, the WHO clarified that this was not actually coronavirus-specific guidance, and that it has not issued any official warnings about cash.)

But the truth is, there isn’t much evidence that quitting cash would make a difference, at least in the case of Covid-19. It would, however, have significant consequences for the many people who rely on cash for access to goods and services – and that may help explain why the WHO was so quick to walk back the line about contactless payments.

Here’s what we know: Infectious viruses, including other coronavirus varieties, can live on inanimate surfaces including metal, paper, and plastic for hours to days. Preliminary research indicates that the novel coronavirus can survive on cardboard for a full day, and on steel and plastic for up to three days. And laboratory-based simulations have shown that other kinds of viruses can not only live on banknotes and coins for days but also maintain their infectiousness.

But it’s not enough for the germ to survive on an inanimate surface. For virus particles on a dollar bill to infect a human, they must follow the “primary route of infection,” says Joseph Eisenberg, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan. For Covid-19, it appears that people become infected by inhaling particles someone else has coughed or sneezed into the air, or by contacting a virus particle with their hand and then touching their eyes, nose, or mouth. What we don’t know, says Eisenberg, is how capable this virus is of being transmitted to humans from inanimate surfaces of any kind.

Says the US Centers for Disease Control: “It may be possible that a person can get Covid-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.”

But that message hasn’t quelled fears of “virus-tainted” dollars, perhaps spurred in part by the central banks’ quarantines. According to Bloomberg, the Fed has resisted calls from industry groups to issue a statement assuring Americans that the risk of using cash is minimal.

In fact, we don’t have any evidence that money in any form has ever been a source of any kind of infection, says Marilyn Roberts, a microbiologist at the University of Washington School of Public Health. And given the way it appears that Covid-19 is transmitted, she argues, focusing on money misses a more important point: “Are you in a crowded theater? Are you in a restaurant? Are you in a Costco? You’re more likely to pick up Covid-19 from people exposure than from the type of payment.”

Roberts compares the central banks’ quarantining of cash to a Seattle-area fast food chain’s request that customers stop paying with cash during the outbreak. There is little evidence to suggest that either measure is protective against the spread of the disease. In the case of the restaurant, a glass barrier between the cashier and the customer would be more protective, she says: “I think focusing on money or how we pay for things is the wrong message, frankly.”

I had a migraine headache from Sunday night into early Monday morning, probably brought on by the stress of the virus crisis. I lay down on my bed for around an hour after arising (4 a.m. to 5 a.m.) rather than my usual exercise routine, and the headache had subsided. I am, not surprisingly, stressed and unsettled generally (probably like most people now). I can still go to shopping centers such as Southland, but they are now dismal, half-deserted places. There is a general aura of unease in the community as people try to follow the “social distancing” rules (a phrase I have rapidly come to hate, along with “flattening the curve”).

Friday 27/3: Disobedience as a Western “virtue”

The Australian newspaper published an opinion piece of salient interest to me, “Coronavirus: The West’s civil disobedience – it’s a trend to die for.” I have commented before (16/3/2019 entry) on the endemic disrespect of authority that is so corrosive to the cohesion of Western societies, and this article contrasts this with traditional Confucian values in Asian societies (though the latter are also being eroded due to Western cultural influence).

Tuesday 31/3: Virus hysteria ramp-up; no birthday celebration

Such a lovely sunny Autumn day today – there has been a few of these since last week – yet so much unhappiness in society no thanks to current events! Government reaction to the virus contines to ratchet up, with the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews (whom I am beginning to strongly dislike) threatening to go to a “Level 4” shutdown, but not detailing what this would involve. The current Level 3 is bad enough with the near-destruction of the economy and daily life, and I would rebel against anything more restrictive. (I am also furious at the support of many on the Australian subreddit forums – mostly younger users – for a full-on lockdown; one random example being this thread.) My life before this was not very dissimilar anyway:

Dad’s birthday was yesterday, but of course he and Mum could not go out for lunch as they normally would, due to the closure of all restaurants and similar venues where groups of people gather.

April

Thursday 2/4: A dismal month; Uniqlo closed; regex problem solved

Under the current Coronavirus pandemic circumstances, I am surely not the only one thinking of the line from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, “April is the cruellest month.”

I was upset to learn that one of my favorite apparel stores, Uniqlo, is of today closing its physical outlets (Melbourne CBD and Chadstone near me). Hopefully this won’t be for long, but it is frustrating to see virtually all the physical stores I visit are closing. Also frustrating are stores refusing cash in favor of electronic payments (see 26/3 entry for previous comments on this issue). I do have a debit card, but still have to put in cash at an Automatic Teller Machine to top up and access the funds online as I am not receiving an online income; ATMs are not nearby.

On a minor but happier note, I finally found the solution to a problem involving regular expressions that had been frustrating me for months! I posted this query at r/regex:

[Help] I want to add a prefix to text inside multiple files but can't get it to work properly

submitted by SuzyM

I want to add a prefix to internal web page links within multiple files inside a directory - find and replace within the text. I am using Notepad++ (also trying GrepWin).

Some of the file names are divided by dashes (generic examples: word.html, word-word.html, word-word-word.html - the actual names are of varying length). A few of the file names have numbers in them as well. I want to add the same prefix before all of these (prefix-word.html, prefix-word-word.html, etc.).

The syntax I have tried is <a href="[^images/][^../][^#][^http://](.*?).html"> (to exclude external file links, and links to other directories). But this only seems to pick up some of the file names.

For a file name with word-word.html for example, I tried <a href="prefix-$1.html"> for the replacement syntax, but this results in <a href="prefix--word.html">, with the first word replaced with a dash.

Hope this makes sense - I am stuck and frustrated as to what I am doing wrong!

https://regex101.com/r/L92KHl/1

ihaxr

Your "not matches" are not correct it's not matching any individual character in those groups, not the entire words... use a negative lookahead instead:

<a href="(?!:images\/|\.\.\/|#|http:\/\/)(.*?)\.html">

https://regex101.com/r/L92KHl/2

Some extra functions:

Remove internal links but retain the words surrounded by the links:

  1. Find: <a href="(?!:images\/|\.\.\/|#|http:\/\/|index(.*?)\.html)(.*?)\.html">(.*?)</a>
  2. Replace: $3 (the third (.*?) in the Find Regex string)

Add prefix to internal links (excludes other directories, external links, anchor links):

  1. Find: <a href="(?!:images\/|\.\.\/|#|http:\/\/|index(.*?).html)(.*?)\.html">
  2. Replace: <a href="prefix-$1.html">

Add prefix to internal links (excludes other directories, external links, anchor links, pages beginning with index):

  1. Find: <a href="(?!:images\/|\.\.\/|#|http:\/\/|index.*?\.html)(.*?)\.html">
  2. Replace: <a href="prefix-$2.html"> (note: second (.*?) in the regex sequence)

Add prefix to image files in images/folder – images presented as a src or link (href) file on a page:

  1. Find: (src|href)="images/
  2. Replace: $1$2="images/sww-

Friday 10/4: Not a Good day; more anti-cash rhetoric; Supermoon; ISS mission launch

A very quiet day for the Good Friday public holiday – but since the lockdown, it seems little different from what is now normal (and uneasy) days. I went out for a neighborhood walk and there were a lot of people, mainly family groups or single exercisers, out and about. This does make one feel a bit safer, though one has to dodge people when passing to ensure social distancing! I have been feeling very tired and mentally exhausted, and the current lockdown stress is certainly not helping. I did find a subReddit where people are skeptical of the rationale behind the lockdown mentality, so it is a relief to rant there. I still feel the restrictions are a ridiculous overreaction, and the economic, social and mental damage will remain for years to come.

My parents can’t go to the Bentleigh Baptist Church service either, as such gatherings have been cancelled for now.

The coronavirus will accelerate the trend towards a cashless society, The Age, 8/4. Another opinion piece predicting the demise of cash in favor of digital payments, of great concern for me (previously expressed: 2/4 entry).

The pandemic and the fear of infection from bank notes are accelerating the trend away from cash towards digital payments. Amid fears of getting the coronavirus, many businesses have stopped accepting cash from customers.

The Bank for International Settlements, in a paper released late last week, said the outbreak had led to unprecedented public concerns about viral transmission via cash, with central banks reporting a large increase in media inquiries about the safety of using cash and internet searches for the combination of “cash” and “virus” soaring.

Around the world, countries are sterilising their bank notes even though there are, as yet, no known cases of transmission via cash. The virus appears, however, to survive longer on non-porous materials like plastic and steel, which probably explains consumers’ anxiety.

Historically, in times of crisis, consumers hoarded cash. This time, however, appears to be different and the pandemic could accelerate the trend away from cash and towards digital transactions. It is already generating increased interest in digital currencies, with China said to be close to releasing a digital version of its currency.

A full “Supermoon” yesterday; I saw it sinking into the west at dawn. There was a similar large and golden full Moon last month (10/3).

Expedition 63 successfully launched to the International Space Station yesterday on Soyuz MS-16, so I updated the relevant pages at my RuSpace site.

Wednesday 15/4: Another 4 weeks of nothing

Dismayingly, though not surprisingly, the Victorian Premier announced on Monday that the State’s “state of emergency” lockdown would be extended another 4 weeks (to 11 May). He seems determined to prove himself as tough-minded and has a belligerent approach that is very aggrevating.

My own life was already semi-reclusive and I live with my parents, so the situation there is little changed, though the complaints from, and media reports about, people suddenly forced to stay at home with their families is both amusing and bemusing. Apparently it is normal in the society I live in for families to spend little time together?

Monday 20/4: First flu vaccine done; more reading; cultural aggravations

I had my influenza vaccine for this year done at the local chemist (Patterson Road Pharmacy) last Thursday 16/4. That is the first time I have had the vaccine; I thought I had better motivate myself to get it this year due to the added risk of getting the Coronavirus and the flu. My parents get the flu vaccine every year, too. I have had the flu just once in my life so far, in June of 1997 – I was so exhausted that I could barely move, and my appetite vanished for a couple of days.

Books read

I am still reading books, albeit slowly and hopping from one to another as the mood takes me.

Some topics that I have found increasingly aggravating, and intend to post longer opinions on if I am able to motivate myself, are the ridiculous concept of “toxic masculinity” (namely, traditional male values), and the nonsensical controversy “social justice warrior” types raise over so-called “cultural appropriation” (authors writing stories about other cultures of which they are not a part – according to some extreme leftist types, one is not allowed to do this for fear of offending the target culture). Not to mention the ridiculous and seemingly ever-increasing gender designations outside of biological male and female (e.g. non-binary, genderqueer). I find I am adopting some conservative values as I grow older, perhaps due to increasing intolerance of what I regard as, to put it bluntly, manufactured cultural bullshit!

Wednesday 22/4: Tesla car sighting

I spotted a Tesla electric car while bicycle riding: parked on North Road, in Ormond, a metallic-blue color. Last sighting was 23/2.

Thursday 23/4: Cash is not contagious

The Royal Australian Mint has a notice regarding cash and COVID-19:

Cash Usage Regarding COVID-19

23/03/2020

Medical experts have confirmed that cash, including coins is safe to use – there is no evidence that either coins or cash spread COVID-19.

The World Health Organization has rejected reports that it warned COVID-19 could be spread through handling cash. WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said, ‘WHO did NOT say banknotes would transmit COVID-19, nor have we issued any warnings or statements about this.’

COVID-19 is transmitted through droplets caused by infected people coughing, sneezing or speaking, which can land on other people or common surfaces. You can be infected by breathing in the virus if you are within one metre of a person who has COVID-19, or by touching a contaminated surface and then touching your eyes, nose or mouth before washing your hands.

The best defence against these droplets is to avoid touching your face, sanitise the surfaces of any items that you touch, and regularly wash or sanitise your hands.

This applies equally if you use cash or cash-free methods such as contactless payments. Be sure to also wash your hands after using phones, credit cards, keypads or touchscreens.

Being able to keep using cash during this period is vitally important for many people, particularly disadvantaged people such as those with literacy issues, on low incomes, and without regular access to phone or internet services.

We urge retailers not to discriminate against people who prefer to use physical currency and to continue accepting cash to ensure people have access to the goods and services they need. Refusing cash could put an unnecessary burden on people who depend on cash as a means of payment.

More information on cash and coronavirus is provided in the link below.

Useful link: No, cash does not carry coronavirus, says WHO, 9 March 2020

The site linked to there is Cash Matters, a European site in support of cash usage. Found this via an article in The Australian:

Why cash hoarding is on the rise in the face of COVID-19

James Kirby, 23/4/2020

Cash savings – that is, physical cash hoarded in a safe place – is reportedly on the rise as a string of forces combine to move money outside the banking system.

Recent support from the Royal Australian Mint for cash as a payment choice that is resistant to coronavirus, coupled with ongoing cuts to cash deposit rates, have boosted the sector which is notoriously difficult to quantify.

But with reports that safe deposit boxes at the major banks are regularly booked out, the resurgence in physical cash savings would explain one of the biggest mysteries in the money market: where are all the $100 notes?

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, the $100 note is one of the most common in circulation.

Professor Steve Worthington at Swinburne University suggests: “If we look at the circulation figures we see there are fourteen $100 bank notes out there for every person in Australia.”

But $100 notes are rarely seen in everyday exchange. “That’s because they are favoured by people putting their savings into hard cash – it’s the most popular note for building savings in safe deposit boxes,” says Tim Wildash of Next Payments, one of the key players in the Automated Teller Machines sector.

“Typically people will have envelopes stacked in safe deposit boxes with $1000 in each one,” Wildash explains.

While running against a deeper trend of less cash being used for transactions across society, the revival of cash hoarding is hardly a surprise when set against recent hoarding of everyday goods. Retail data this week showed the biggest ever monthly jump in March when panic buying underpinned a 22 per cent lift in supermarket sales.

Worthington also puts forward the suggestion that among the key reasons people may keep cash in safe deposit boxes rather than bank deposit accounts is to manage savings in a way that retains access to government pensions, which are means tested to specific dollar totals in relation to household wealth.

Ever lower cash interest rates and ongoing fees on bank savings accounts may also be doing their part to swing hard cash outside the system.

Earlier this week the major banks took the scalpel again to savings accounts. Base cash rates at the major banks are now at less than one tenth of 1 per cent – the base rate at big four banks is currently around 0.05 per cent – with rates inching above 1 per cent for savers who take advantage of so-called “introductory” arrangements.

Indeed, according to the research agency Canstar, the top base savings rates in the market just now are 1.35 per cent at Macquarie, 1.05 per cent at AMP and 0.80 per cent at Rabobank – such rates would have been considered absurd even a year ago.

Cash transactions have fallen by around 50 per cent over the last decade and the decline may accelerate with pending legislation that will mean transactions above $10,000 in cash will have to be reported.

Meanwhile, authorities are trying to clarify the virus status of bank note. the Bank of International Settlements, the “bank of banks” based in Switzerland recently supported cash transactions.

In the local market, the Royal Australian Mint has also issued a statement stating: “There is no evidence that either cash or coins spread COVID-19.”

As Wildash at Next Payments suggests: “Cash is sanitised with ultraviolet light, disinfectant sprays and stored for up to two days to ensure it is free of contamination. In contrast, EFTPOS terminals can be used by hundreds of shoppers every day.”

Sunday 26/4: Atypical Anzac Day; books read

A peculiar Anzac Day yesterday, with no public commemorations or veterans’ marches due to COVID-19 restrictions. Modified versions of these did take place.

Books read

Tuesday 28/4: Credit not private

Cashless concerns: an article in the Saturday Age about the Government’s release of its Coronavirus tracing app included this paragraph:

[…] “All the major [data] dashboards from [departments] have now been drawn into one place,“; he says. The state Data Analytics Centre, which he set up five years ago, is using aggregated and anonymised data from a wide range of state agencies as well as from banks, telcos, Google and Apple to produce what he calls “mobility tracking”.

Credit card information supplied by banks, for instance, can reveal whether people are spending in their neighbourhood, or 20 kilometres from home.

“If there are lot of people in a given suburb moving around, that speaks to a higher risk of transmission,” Dominello says. “The health data is telling you whether there is a hotspot, but these other systems become relevant for telling you why a hotspot has developed.” Or, indeed, where another might spring up. […]

So the privacy issue with electronic payments is valid! Cash, in contrast, is anonymous. (Previously on this topic: 23/4, 10/4.)

May

Saturday 9/5: Wild weather; brumby cull approved; lockdown slowly easing; cashless concerns

Some awful weather last weekend, then Tuesday 5/5 was a perfectly fine and sunny Autumn day, fine but windy the next two days, now back to unpleasant cold and wet weather.

Culling of brumbies (wild Australian horses) in the Snowy Mountains has been approved, sadly; not surprising given the fanatic environmentalists in the current Labor Victorian government. (Previous mention of brumbies: 16/2 entry.) Not surprisingly, the obnoxious commentators on a Reddit post linking to the article are all in favor of the culling (mainly young urban Greens-voting males).

The Coronavirus lockdown restrictions in Australia are to be gradually eased in phases. Unfortunately (but, by now, unsurprisingly) Victoria’s megalomaniac Premier is holding out on easing up.

Cashless concerns: “Strapped for cash: coronavirus is changing the way we pay,” The Age, 5/5. Yet another article asserting the demise of cash in favor of digital payments – will this become a self-fulfilling prophecy? I hope not. One of the commentators linked to an opinion piece at the Macquarie University Business School: COVID-19 and the downsides of a cashless society (Archive.org backup link).

Friday 15/5: Hit by a car

On Tuesday 12/5, one of the worst possible events happened to me: I was hit by a car while riding my bicycle!

I was riding home from Chadstone SC, along my usual route. On one of the quiet backstreets around 12 midday (not sure of the exact time) I went to ride across a roundabout at the intersection of Marma Road, Henty Street and Murrumbeena Crescent (Google Maps location), I looked before entering the roundabout but did not initially see any oncoming traffic. As I was riding through, a blue Mazda 3 seemed to appear out of nowhere from Marma Rd and, its driver not seeing me, it ran into me! The female driver stopped and was very apologetic and helpful. The car was not traveling very fast, and the left side of my bicycle hit its front and I was tossed onto the road, onto my left side. My left arm and shoulder took most of the impact on the bitumen; my left hand got the worst of the grazes (I was not wearing cycling gloves). My head also hit the road – fortunately, as I was wearing a helmet (as I always do), I did not get a concussion or worse, did not lose consciousness, though I did get a large (literally golfball-sized!) hematoma on my left forehead from the edge of the helmet. A lot of bruising and grazing along my left arm, chin and left leg. The most painful injuries are muscle strains and pulls under my left pectoral and lower right side; I might even have a cracked rib or two on the left side.

An ambulance and police attended; I was checked over but elected to go home with my parents (who were called on the woman’s mobile phone – as I don’t have one I was at a real disadvantage as it’s assumed everyone has a mobile phone now). I went to my local GP clinic, and the doctor whom I saw strongly suggested I go to a hospital emergency department. My parents and I went to the one at Sandringham Hospital, which we are all familiar with by now! I had a CT scan done of my head (no brain bleeding) and chest x-ray (no obvious fractures or damage). The medical staff were all very nice and helpful.

My poor bicycle was damaged, with a bent left handlebar and pedal shaft; I don’t know if it will even be repairable (or affordably repairable). I have only had it just over a year and have got a lot of riding done on it, now this has been taken away. I really want to ride again once I am healed.

I have been stressed and in pain, so have not felt much like writing – there is a lot more I could say – but if I seem quiet on my site that is why. I am still processing the event and feel very disorientated and unsettled. One of the worst parts was the sickening realization just before the impact was that I was going to be hit and could do nothing to escape. Also the sensation of falling and hitting the bitumen very hard.

My facial injuries after visit to ED

My bicycling accident facial injuries before visiting the Sandringham Hospital Emergency Department for a checkup and patching up: haematoma on my left forehead and chin graze. This was only an hour or so after the accident.

My facial injuries, 24 hours later

My face, around 24 hours after the accident. Blood has pooled around my left eye from the hematoma with subsequent swelling and discoloration. Despite the alarming appearance, it was not painful, just tender.

Bicycle damage - bent pedal shaft

My poor bicycle – bent pedal shaft shown here.

My facial injuries, 48 hours later

My face, 48 hours or so later. A very colorful (purple and pink) black eye!

Injuries to my left arm and hand

Injuries to my left arm and hand: bruises and grazes. Most painful injury is between my left pectoral/breast and armpit; extremely sore and tender. Hurts to breathe deeply or move suddenly (push or pull).

My facial injuries, 15/5

My facial injuries, today: swelling gone down a bit, but hematoma still large and eye area is very colorful!

Sunday 17/5: Accident injury update; a wild woman

Still sore, obviously, but not quite as badly as in my previous entry. The worst pain is under my left breast/pectoral and side; I think there might be a cracked rib or two as breathing in deeply elicits pain. My other bruises and grazes are scabbing over and beginning to heal. The hematoma and black left eye under it (from subcutaneous blood) are still very colorful, which makes walking around rather embarrassing! I am being a bit naughty and still doing my chores as much as I am able to (parents are elderly so I voluntarily do things like cleaning, ironing, sweeping, etc. – I do earn my keep! I am a bit obsessive about getting them done). I am rather restless and impatient, and don’t take to being incapacitated very well.

Before events sidelined me, I was going to remark on the fascinating woman who is the subject of this article, “The Woman Who Lives 200,000 Years in the Past,” Outside Online, 2/4/2020. A somewhat hyperbolic title; the article profiles “Lynx Vilden, a 54-year-old British expat who, for most of her adult life, has lived wholly off the grid.” She practises ancient survival skills. I found her choice of lifestyle fascinating; there are similarities with aescetic hermits, though she does not follow a formal religion. Lynx is deliberately choosing a difficult way of living but it seems to give her contentment. She does make some concessions to keep a foot in conventional society (she has a website). One could argue that she is privileged in being able to choose to live as she does, but at the same time there is admiration for her deliberately resisting the ease and comforts of modern technological civilization. The New York Times also profiled her, though there is an underlying cynical tone (I have reproduced the article locally as the online NYT site is so aggrevating to visit). There are also a couple of profile articles on her site (Archive.org links: Seattle Magazine and interviews).

Wednesday 20/5: Slowly healing; Tesla sighting; compulsive runner

I am still sore and bruised, but a little better than last week. The hematoma on my left forehead is still lumpy, but is shrinking, and my black eye is not so bad. Some of the grazes on my left hand have not scabbed over, so that is an annoyance. My left ribs, upper arm and lower right side still hurt.

Tesla electric car sighting! On Tuesday 16/5, I saw a dark blue Tesla sedan parked on Hinkler St when out for a walk.

The autumn weather has been very pleasant, with cold mornings followed by still sunny days earlier this week – unfortunately that ended today. It would have been perfect bicycle riding weather! My bicycle is going to its purchase shop, 99 Bikes in Bentleigh, for a repairs assessment this week.

Another Outside Online article that piqued my interest (there are quite a few compelling articles on this site): “The Man Who Runs 365 Marathons a Year,” 29/4/2020. Michael Shattuck has been running great distances almost everyday as a way of coping with his mental illness. It is taking its toll on his body, but his attitude is admirable, though his rather naive enthusiasm has inevitably attracted some Internet haters. There is also a Facebook interview with him.

Wednesday 27/5: A little better; bicycle in for repair

I am a bit better than this time last week. My grazes have scabbed over and my muscle strains are less sore (though I overdid it on Monday with chores and was in a bit of pain, mainly from my upper arm). My forehead hematoma has begun to shrink, though it is still a big discolored bruise. I saw a GP about it on Monday and she said it was best to observe it and leave it alone to heal naturally (it is not infected). She measured it then at 4 × 3 cm.

Dad took my bicycle to 99 Bikes for assessment and (maybe) repair last Thursday, so I am uncertain of how it will fare. I had hoped I would be able to get a replacement bicycle but that model, and all affordable ones, are sold out, no thanks to people deciding they want to try out cycling during the Coronavirus lockdown (most will probably give it up in a few months).

Sunday 31/5: Bicycle back; SpaceX launch success

My bicycle was collected from the mechanics shop yesterday. Yes, I have been for a ride! It feels OK, though it has some cosmetic damage, unfortunately – mainly scratches and the plastic cover for the right handlebar gear shift indicator is missing (perhaps popped off during the accident). I was a bit naughty and rode to Chadstone SC and back today to test my mettle, along the same route – made it back home unscathed! However I did dismount before crossing that roundabout where I had the accident, looking very carefully for oncoming cars.

My hematoma has shrunk drastically since last Tuesday; it is now almost unnoticeable! I still have a black eye, but that is also fading. I am still a bit sore on my side and chest under my left arm.

“To the Driver Who Hit Me and Ran,” Outside Online, 4/5. This cyclist who was the victim of a hit-and-run suffered horrendous injuries due to the speed at which the driver was traveling: “Your speed was so fast relative to mine that I was guaranteed severe injury, despite my safety tokens: a helmet, a blinky light, and a defensive posture on the right edge of the wide shoulder.” The driver who hit me was not going very fast, thankfully – but I may not be so “lucky” if I am hit again in the future.

My facial injuries, 29/5/2020

My facial injuries, Friday 29/5 – much improved! (Compare with 15/5 entry photos)

Some good spaceflight news: the first crewed test launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft has launched successfully, with a 2-man crew onboard! Spacecraft commander Douglas Hurley and joint-operations commander Robert Behnken will rendezvous with the ISS.

June

Tuesday 9/6: Coldest day; almost healed; cashless concerns

The coldest morning of the year so far in Melbourne; just under 3°C. Very difficult for me to function.

Four weeks or one month since my bicycle accident (see 15/5 entry). I am mostly healed: most of my bruises and my black eye is almost gone, my forehead hematoma (though there is still some tenderness there); my grazes are healed up. My left side over my ribcage is also much better this week. The accident really has unsettled me though, and I have lost a lot of what motivation I had to work on my website for the moment. I jump from one interest to another and can’t seem to focus – the accident has exacerbated this. (I have no interest in the current turmoil in the USA and world generally, so I won’t comment on that.)

Cashless concerns: another small collection of recent articles emphasising the supposed demise of physical cash in favor of digital payments:

Various shops and businesses are reopening, and life is slowly returning to some semblance of normality in Australia (but with the irritation of a later opening time for many – 10 a.m. – and refusal of cash payment in favor of digital).

Saturday 27/6: Dentist visit; city outing; State of Emergency extended

Last week was a bad week for me, for reasons I don’t want to elaborate upon.

I went to the dentist for an overdue checkup and clean. My top right wisdom tooth (I still have my upper wisdom teeth) had a little decay on it which the dentist said to watch for now. I would like to have them both extracted as they are not worth keeping if they develop problems, but as usual expense is an issue.

I went to the city (Melbourne CBD) last Wednesday 24/6 and 17/6 by train for the first time in a couple of months. The trains were notably less crowded.

I was annoyed – yet somehow not surprised – that Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews extended our “State of Emergency” for another month due to a small rise in COVID-19 cases here. It is a convenient distraction from the Labor branch-stacking scandal of last week. As far as I am concerned, the Premier lost any remaining credibility by allowing the “Black Lives Matter” protest crowds to gather in Melbourne despite the obvious risk of transmitting the virus, presumably just because those protesting are left-wing/“progressive” in political view.

I have not felt much like writing again for personal reasons. I find myself wishing I could become a recluse or hermit and disengage from the world, but I have no way of supporting myself and am physically and mentally exhausted and unsettled.

Sunday 28/6: New Paolini novel forthcoming

Christopher Paolini, author of the Inheritance Cycle, has his first science fiction novel being released in September. Some sample chapters are at Tor Books. I read them, but they are nothing particularly memorable. The novel will probably sell well as he has an established fanbase, but on its own merits the writing is rather mundane (which I dislike saying as Christopher seems to be a nice person generally, as much as I can ascertain from his online presence). As the “Fractalverse” setting appears to contain Faster-than-light travel it is thus very much soft science fiction (or “science fantasy” as I call any fiction with such realistically impossible technology). The female protagonist is also irritating, the ubiquitous bratty disrespectful female who seems lamentably prevalent in modern fiction.

Some clear but very cold mornings at the moment, with temperatures in the low single digits (3°C tonight) – makes getting up in the early morning difficult.

July

Wednesday 1/7: A sad end

There was a suicide in Southland SC yesterday, early in the morning before my parents and I arrived there around 9 a.m. According to Dad, (who was told this by the owner of a coffee shop he bought some drinks from), the person jumped from the third level of the center court in the original section, down onto the hard floor below. The 3 levels were cordoned off and police and security guards were there.

There was a very brief report of the suicide in the Herald-Sun:

Southland: Man dies after falling from balcony at shopping centre

Staff writer, Bayside Leader
June 30, 2020 11:42am

A man has died after falling from a balcony at Southland Shopping Centre.

A large section of Southland, near David Jones, was roped off this morning while police investigate and people are being urged to avoid the area.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman told the Leader the man’s death was not being treated as suspicious.

Police will prepare a report for the coroner.

There is also a r/Melbourne subReddit forum thread. The man was 65 years old according to one commenter.

Thursday 2/7: Unfocused; wild woman fascination

I am scattered and unfocused and bounce from one interest to another; my usual state of mind now, frustratingly. My spaceflight enthusiasm has faded a bit again; the bicycle accident (15/5 entry) also really sidelined me. My physical injuries from that have healed, at least.

I find myself fascinated by Lynx Vilden, the woman re-enacting a primitive lifestyle, whom I mentioned in my 17/5 entry (I initially found out about her via a Hacker News forum post). She gets some derisive commentary in some of the articles written about her (perhaps because her detractors feel threatened by her sincerity?), but in my view her dedication is admirable; she has not chosen an easy lifestyle and is arguably well-equipped and skilled enough to survive a collapse of civilization. She is pragmatic about having to keep a foot in the modern world too (such as having a website, paying bills, traveling to different countries and so on). She was born in 1965, so is only 5 years older than me. She has found her purpose and passion in life, for which I envy her (I am just drifting aimlessly).

Sunday 5/7: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Sneak Peek thoughts

I managed to get hold of the “Sneak Peak” of Christopher Paolini’s forthcoming science fiction novel, the rather pretentiously-named To Sleep in a Sea of Stars – the first 10 chapters (mentioned in 28/6 entry). I am still not impressed; the writing is just bland and the setting is nothing that has not been done in sci-fi innumerable times before. As Faster-than-Light travel is utilized, the story is strictly science fantasy. The “fan service” references to the Alien movies are jarring and pull me out of the story:

Friday 10/7: Another lockdown; tooth extraction!

Victorian Coronavirus lockdown #2 began yesterday, for 6 weeks. Stage 3, like last time – and it will destroy many businesses. For my own mental health I am barely glancing at the r/Melbourne and r/Australia Reddit forums as virtually all are in support of the hard lockdown strategy and Premier Andrews. r/LockdownSkepticism is one of my few refuges there; another Australian vented their frustration at the situation in one thread (I am SuzyM at Reddit).

I just had 1 of my 2 remaining wisdom teeth extracted today! In my upper right jaw. Done at Team Dental Bayside by Dr Aditi Gadre. I am happy to be rid of it – better late than never! The last one (in my upper left jaw) is booked for extraction on 7 August, but that depends on the virus guidelines (might be delayed). The extraction went well, took only 20 minutes or so, though now it has to heal up! My two lower wisdom teeth were extracted long ago: lower left in December 1994, and lower right on 2/2/1996, when they grew in and became impacted.

Saturday 18/7: Stage 4 lockdown threat; Stormlight Archive retry

I visited the dentist last Tuesday 14/7 as I was concerned I was developing dry socket in the extraction site due to the clot falling out the day after and soreness ensuing. She seemed to think it was healing OK so far, and just over a week later the site is still a bit tender, but no agonizing pain yet. The hole has mostly closed over as far as I can ascertain. I am not sure if I will be able to get the last wisdom tooth extracted on the current appointment date due to the threat of Stage 4 coronavirus lockdowns for Melbourne; this may have to be postponed to a later date.

With the misery of the lockdown, I decided to give Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive epic fantasy series another go at reading through. Three massive novels to date, with the fourth due for release late this year. I had started the first one a couple of years ago but never managed to finish (this is apparently a common trend with some), but feel determined to plough through this time (hopefully!). The worldbuilding is impressive (a major drawcard for me) and the design of the books is attractive; Brandon is fortunate to have high-caliber artists such as Michael Whelan (one of my favorite artists) illustrating his creations. Unfortunately, the U.S. edition mass-market paperbacks I bought (with the Michael Whelan cover art) were all shopworn (damaged covers), but they were the only copies available in the bookshops I found them. I would love the U.S. hardcovers that have the gorgeous color illustrations, but they are prohibitively expensive – currently around $AU60 each at Book Depository. I try to keep my books pristine, so damaged books like these are aggravating!

Book chapter summaries at Tor Books (who have a large resources section for them): Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer.

I have not ridden my bicycle at all this week; the weather is unpleasant and I have lost enthusiasm at the moment (perhaps also an aftereffect of my accident).

Monday 20/7: Despair and dullness; devastating docudrama

“Anyone else in Melbourne, Australia? I’m having a tough time.” A despairing post by a fellow Melbournian at Reddit. I am feeling exactly the same way, as are many others. I am lethargic and depressed, and cannot concentrate on anything. Each night I collapse into bed in front of my TV and doze off, only watching programs fitfully between naps. Forget doing anything creative. I find little comfort in anything. The dull and cold winter weather does not help my mood. Facemasks will now be mandatory in Victoria from this Thursday ($200 fine for not complying).

Watched last night (or at least viewed in fragments between sleep periods) a docudrama called Supervolcano, where the magma chamber under Yellowstone National Park erupts and blankets much of the USA in volcanic ash, initiating a volcanic winter (blocking most sunlight so that plants – including food crops – cannot photosynthesize, they die off and this ultimatel;y results in mass famine). Enjoyable in a cathartic sort of way, I guess! Makes the real-world pandemic look relatively benign.

Wednesday 29/7: Blossom once more; Coronavirus fatigue

The plum blossom street trees are starting to flower with pink buds, since last week. A hopeful sign of Spring.

Weather today was relatively mild; went for a ride on my bicycle for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. Have not felt much like bicycling due to coldness.

Am dutifully wearing a facemask when I go out, but I have the usual issue of glasses fogging up and I hate the feeling of suffocating. To no one’s surprise and by now exhausted resignation, Victoria’s lockdown is likely to be extended. My dental appointment for my last wisdom tooth extraction has been postponed until Friday 28/8; not happy but again I was expecting this. Probably like many people I am just physically and mentally exhausted from the months of incessant virus reportage saturating the media. As soon as the TV news airs, the first words are almost always coronaviruscoronaviruscoronavirus … and the daily ghoulish reportage of the new cases and the death toll (currently mostly old people in aged care homes in Victoria). I just tune out.

August

Tuesday 4/8: Lockdown misery

The inevitable Stage 4 lockdown was imposed by Premier Daniel Andrews on Sunday 2/8, the harshest restrictions Victoria has ever been under. It is for 6 weeks, until 13 September – at least. As if that weren’t bad enough, thousands of businesses will also have to close, devastating the economy here.

The restrictions include:

There is a small r/LockdownSkepticismAU subreddit (for affected Australians), so I have posted a few times there; a safe space to vent. I am utterly exhausted and depressed, so I likely won’t be posting much.

Thursday 6/8: Shutdown begins

Most shops shut from today, and it is going to be a dismal 6 weeks.

“Here’s an idea for politicians: Stop the slogans,” The Age, 4/8. Great opinion piece by Chris Ulhmann. I find the false bravado faux bonhomme put on by those on social media under lockdown extremely irritating and patronizing.

It’s one of the markers of our age that every government or company endeavour has to have a marketing slogan.

One piece of drivel spawned by this plague is “Staying apart keeps us together”. It features prominently on a banner behind the Victorian Premier at his daily press conferences.

Yet the longer this crisis goes, the more obvious it is that the long-term effects of forcing people apart will be to entrench physical, economic, social and ideological barriers that will further ghettoise us. […]

At home staying apart will have profound effects on our society as the economic and social consequences get baked in.

We are making a choice that one generation will make sacrifices to protect another. Older Australians are being preferred over the young. It was clear at the outset of this crisis that there were no good choices but this one is the worst. The sacrifice the young are making is to be poorer than they otherwise would have been, perhaps for the rest of their lives, to keep the elderly alive for a few more years, or months. If they get this message then a bitter division will arise between generations.

And do we really think that a prolonged period of keeping children apart from a real-world school will be good for them? Or that their education and socialisation will be improved?

What about the human interactions that bind our society, like handshakes and hugging? Will that kind of staying apart improve our lives?

The economic fallout of staying apart has barely begun to be measured. All that we can know from this vantage point is it will be wrenching, the effects will last for decades and have consequences that we can only imagine.

Staying apart divides us. Some of those divisions will be permanent and bad.

So spare us the slogans, we are suffering enough.

Saturday 8/8: Missing the shops; faux bonhomme

A letter from yesterday’s The Age which I emphasized with:

Joy of in-store shopping

My worst fear is becoming a reality. Shopping will now have to be done online; not just temporarily for six weeks but possibly continuing into the future. Call me old-fashioned, but I love cash, together with the ability to examine and evaluate the products in a store. I often need to talk to various staff members to glean advice about the products I am buying and using. “Click and collect” is no substitute for the real experience of in-store shopping.

– Robert Scheffer, Bayswater North

I finally found a word and phrase that had been on the tip of my tongue for a while, and perfectly describes what antagonizes me about all these cheery people posting lockdown videos online of the various creative activities they are undertaking, or the equally irksome “Life in Lockdown” or “Hibernation” type of articles in the newspapers: faux bonhomme. French noun: faux bonhomme m (plural faux bonhommes) – one who has a false visage of joviality and lightheartedness. I have no mental or physical energy to do anything creative now and the lockdown and general dismal atmosphere stemming from this has made me even more lethargic.

Saturday 22/8: In limbo; some photos; abandoned Sanderson

Into the third week of lockdown. Weather today is wet, cold and dreary.

Me wearing one of my floral facemasks

My local chemist had some nice patterned cloth facemasks, so I bought a few (vaguely Japanese-style floral patterns).

Some photos from walks around my neighborhood and trips to Southland SC:

Plum blossom and distant mountains

Plum blossom and a glimpse of the Brisbane Mountains across Port Phillip Bay, 18/8 (last mentioned in my 17/6/2016 entry).

A Spoonville

“Spoonville” – a local effort to cheer up passers-by, 19/8.

Dog in a window

Window dog, 20/8, seen sometimes enroute on the drive to Southland SC.

Southland SC interior Southland SC interior Southland SC interior Southland SC interior Event Horizon gravity drive

And (2/8) the near-deserted ghost town that Southland currently is – “This place is a tomb,” to quote Laurence Fishburne in Event Horizon. I like the gold leaf installation on the ceiling in the first photo, and the wood ring sculptures rimmed with light globes resemble the gyroscopic gravity drive in Event Horizon!

I have again lost interest in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive and his other work (see 18/7 entry). His writing style and stories do not resonate with me, despite my effort to like them. Some relevant comments from a recent Reddit post:

phenomenos:

Mistborn. The magic system is so detailed and intricate, and the way it integrates into every level of the world-building and the plot is truly impressive. The problem was that, for me, the story completely lacked any kind of an emotional core. So appreciating this intricate plot, world and magic system was like appreciating a very detailed and intricate painting which obviously took a lot of technical skill to paint but which you don’t find the least bit aesthetically pleasing.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters. The more I read of Vin the less I liked her (she killed a dog in cold blood in book 2 which kinda sealed the deal for me). I found the dialogue to be very stilted and unrealistic, and the characters lacked a unique voice to me – it seemed that everyone had the exact same vocabulary whether they were from a noble background or were a street urchin.

On top of that, I found Sanderson’s prose to be extremely utilitarian which did very little to immerse me in the world. It was clear that he’d put a lot of thought into the world-building so that if anyone asked a tricky question like “why don’t the plants all die if it’s constantly raining ash” he’d have an answer … but, and this is hard for me to pin down and very subjective, but the best way I can put it is that the world lacked soul. In my mind it didn’t feel like a real place in the way that my favourite fictional worlds do.

It’s like every piece of world-building, every character, existed to serve the plot. I couldn’t imagine them having lives outside of the events of the book. It just didn’t seem real.

Swie:

This is me as well except what really sealed the deal was when book 1 had the most cliche and predictable ending I think I’ve ever read. I’m NOT the kind of person to theorize or predict things so when even I can tell how this shit is going to end that’s just sad.

And yes it’s exactly soulless. There’s no style to it, no craft, the plot is just serviceable. Every shred of creativity went into the magic system and the world-building which gonna be honest is nothing that special.

I’m completely unsurprised that Sanderson writes like a machine, mistborn feels like it was written by a robot.

mixo-phrygian:

On paper, everything about the Stormlight Archive should be right up my alley. After rereading the first two books multiple times and slogging through the latter third of Oathbringer, I think I’m finally comfortable dropping this series and Sanderson’s books in general. Just doesn’t work for me.

Tortuga917:

Can i ask why you read 1000 page books you didn’t enjoy multiple times? Genuinely curious.

mixo-phrygian:

Sure, it’s a fair question. I think the main reason is … I really wanted to like the series. I love a lot of the ideas in Stormlight, I love the art in the books, and I really wanted to be on this modern-day epic fantasy train. Being able to get hyped about consistent new releases would be awesome, and go a long way to filling an ASOIAF-shaped void.

Moreover, there are a number of books and pieces of media that I’ve disliked on a first pass but came to enjoy upon a second one. I liked a ton of the ideas in WOK and didn’t want to ditch the books entirely without giving them a fair shake. I find Sanderson’s style to be exceptionally propulsive and readable so rereading these books to try and “click”with them felt worthwhile. Unfortunately, the ideas I liked in WOK seem to be diminishing with every book, and the parts of Sanderson’s style I didn’t like are just impossible to ignore.

englishbutter:

This is pretty much the sum of my thoughts as well. I’m going to read Rhythm of War, and maybe the fifth book as well if the latter half of this series really is split from the first half and so I can be comfortable with jumping ship then. But there’s simply far too much in these books that I think are tolerable to okay to actively disliking that far outweigh the enjoyment I get. The problems range from filler pages of worldbuilding to the construction of prose to characters I just do not enjoy reading about (I’m gonna go against the grain here and say Dalinar is one of the characters I hate reading about, urgh). It’s just not worth slogging through a huge book like this where I’m bored with what’s happening in 2/3rds of it.

And as you said, I keep reading because I want to like all of it. It’s absolutely miserable when you don’t like something which is hugely popular. You want to like it, you want to share the excitement … but you can’t. It’s an awful feeling.

Mexicancandi:

People joke about how he writes like a machine and in my opinion they’re true in that he writes like a machine, almost everything feels like it was written by a committee. It feels like reading a marvel movie. Sometime you want to see marvel, but not all the time. Maybe that’s what happened to you?

lyonsbs:

It’s Sanderson’s dialogue that really kills it for me. It’s just so … stilted. And when you have to constantly remind readers that a character is HILARIOUS, they probably aren’t.

IlliferthePennilesa:

He’s aggressively unfunny. Anytime he’s writing humor it’s painful. I thought Sanderson mostly did a great job finishing WoT, his strengths were just what that series needed at the point where he came on board but all his Mat stuff was excruciating. Just never came close to getting the character’s voice at all.

tulobanana:

I just started Way of Kings and there’s a character who’s outright described as witty. And to show how witty she is, she’s always making some remark that twists peoples words around, but in the most unimaginative way ever. Once someone said that her beauty caused the light to shine or something along those lines, and she came back with “well what about on dark days are you saying I’m ugly on those days?” Paraphrasing because I don’t remember. I’ve only read a few pages of her but she’s already exhausting

ceratophaga:

Actually, people – Sanderson fans – loved that. Sanderson regularly gets praise for how he writes female characters, and this scene is often brought up as an example on how good his writing is.

tulobanana:

What the f*ck. Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying the hell out of this book so far, but this scene in particular made me feel physically uncomfortable

Mexicancandi:

Yeah, it’s pantomime like a Marvel movie, it’s all spelled out cause his books are written like Wikipedia articles, theirs no nuance or subtlety just rote fact after fact and I’ve gathered from his other books that’s it’s the same. Just watch out for hoid or the shard backstories and you see that his books don’t really have a backdrop or subtle large world that the protags inhabit, it’s a brash pantomime where he spells it out for you. If you want a good somber fantasy rec I would reccomend gene Wolfe, start with his short story collection “The Best of Gene Wolfe”.

mixo-phrygian:

I think you’re right on the money there. A lot of the actual content and ideas behind Stormlight are great – I think his very mechanical execution might have drained a lot of my enjoyment out of the experience. I like a lot of other books that might be considered “Marvel-esque”, but I think they generally feel a bit more visceral or offbeat than Sanderson’s work.

Mexicancandi:

Yeah one example that I’d like to mention is his little chapter excerpts in book 1 that were death gasps I think? You’d think he’d keep that shit a secret to foster some mystery in his world but he outright says what’s going on in later books. There’s no sense of a wide world or real people. It’s like reading a script or a Wikipedia article, it’s all laid out and pointed out to you like you’re a 9 year old who finds peek a boo the peak of a murder mystery.

MellowHallow:

Eh, the death rattles are super vague. It’s not like you can read them and instantly know what’s gonna happen.

They’re pretty comparable to prophecies in other fantasy works I think.

(OobaDooba72)

There are plenty of secrets that haven’t been revealed. We don’t have major pieces of most character’s backgrounds. We don’t know a lot about so many things.

The interludes almost exclusively show how wide a world it is, with snapshots of characters that are mostly disconnected from the main thrust of things. A ton of the world exists beyond the immediate story.

That said, if you didn’t feel that, if that didn’t connect with you, obviously that’s fine. We all have different tastes and feelings and whatnot. I just thought this complaint was a bit off-base from my perception of the series.

fabrar:

Stormlight Archives. Its massive popularity is just absolutely baffling to me. It’s some of the blandest, most vanilla fantasy I’ve ever read. Dull, shallow archetype characters, horribly cringey dialogue, cliched good vs evil plot, a narrative that reads like an RPG video game and the writing style plainer than the back of a cereal box. It’s like a faceless Hollywood blockbuster created to make money by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

Thursday 27/8: Tesla sighting; Labor has lost me

Spotted a Tesla electric car enroute to Southland SC with my parents! This one a white one with an old Victorian numberplate (presumably a special one bought). Not sure of the model. Got a photo of it with my now-old digital camera. I also saw a grey one a week or so ago on that route, but going east along South Road. (Previously: 20/5 entry)

A proposal by the Victorian Premier to extend coronavirus-related emergency powers for the next 12 months ignighted a storm of controversy, and at last many others in the government opposed this. Unfortunately it looks as though this might partly get through after compromising with some. Labor has certainly lost my vote (as has the “progressive” Left generally) – I may instead vote for the Liberal Democrats (though I don’t necessarily agree with all their policies) as they are strongly opposing the legislation.

Monday 31/8: Lockdown Week 4; opinion; energetic at the wrong time

Into week 4 of the Stage 4 lockdown. A good opinion piece in today’s Herald-Sun (also on his Facebook page):

Lockdown damage immense

WHEN most of us have a challenge to overcome, or a purchase to make, we weigh up the cost and consider our options.

But after weeks of questioning Victorian government ministers and bureaucrats about their response to COVID-19, it has become clear to me the cost of turning us all into prisoners in our homes has not been calculated.

When questioned about the impact on businesses, livelihoods, the education and mental health of children, people who live alone, domestic violence, or unintended health consequences, the government tells me very little.

This is in stark contrast to the people calling my office. Victorians are in distress. I have heard from people who spent years building businesses now selling everything to feed their families, grandmothers forbidden from seeing newborn grandchildren, children banned from visiting ill parents, single mothers struggling under enormous strain, children becoming disengaged from education and feeling depressed.

People whose lives have been torn apart are infuriated by the suggestion we are all in this together because it is just not true.

The only factor the government seems to pay attention to is the daily COVID numbers. This has become a dangerous fixation, and there’s little consideration for anything else. Since the government is not measuring the harm it is causing, it has no way of knowing if the lockdown is a proportionate response.

You might think this damage is incalculable but that is not entirely true. Public health professionals weigh up these kinds of decisions all the time. To be clear, this is not about “letting COVID rip” through the community.

The Premier often criticises people he believes are “pretending this is over”. I would argue what has proven far worse is pretending everyone is equally at risk.

By locking up six million people, we are paying a terrible cost. In fact, it is possibly the greatest cost ever paid in the name of public health. But I can only guess at that, because nobody is measuring it. Meanwhile, some older people I have spoken to are embarrassed by the fuss. They are tough and smart enough to take precautions, and do not want their children’s futures sacrificed.

The government has demonstrated it cannot be trusted with emergency powers.

So this week, when the legislation to extend the state of emergency for six months comes before the upper house, I will do everything in my power to end it.

DAVID LIMBRICK IS THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS MP FOR SOUTH EAST METROPOLITAN REGION

And, ominously, Stage 4 could be extended, according to the Herald-Sun (extract below; article paywalled). I am so sick of being teased and taunted with a possible end to all this, only to have the goalposts moved yet again and this misery extended.

Melbourne unlikely to exit stage four lockdown on time

Tamsin Rose, Kieran Rooney and James Campbell, 31/8

It is unlikely metropolitan Melbourne will come out of stage four restrictions in two weeks, according to Deputy Chief Medical Officer Nick Coatsworth.

He said it was “hard to see” restrictions being lifted on schedule, given the coronavirus numbers still being reported in Victoria.

The state recorded 73 new cases and 19 deaths on Monday, but the death toll jumped by 41 after aged-care facilities reported new deaths in the weeks leading up to August 27.

“I have to be honest … with the people of Victoria,” Dr Coatsworth said.

“I think that we’re going to have to see the numbers down where they’re controllable.

“That is the numbers that you are seeing in NSW and Queensland at the moment.

“You can see the effort that it takes to control numbers between about five and 10 per day.

“I think we need to see what happens to the numbers. I think the numbers need to be a lot less than they are now.”

It comes the day after Premier Daniel Andrews declined to rule out stage four restrictions being extended past September 13.

A deal to extend the government’s state of emergency powers by six months is also up in the air after a group of crossbench MPs declared they would not support it.

Public health authorities are to assess infection data over this week as they work to determine what rule changes will be possible when the current limits are scheduled to end in a fortnight.

Mr Andrews said it was still too early to say whether Melbourne would then be able to move back into stage three.

“Before then though we will be able to give people a clear sense of the different stages that will be a feature of the weeks and months to come,” he said. “We will give people as much certainty and as much notice as we can.”

Mr Andrews said he understood every Victorian wanted to know what the government’s next steps would be, but he said case numbers were still too high to open up and to finalise a strategy.

“At 100, 94, at 114, whatever the number, we simply could not open up,” he said. “Those numbers would explode, we would finish up in perhaps an even worse situation than we have been in recent months.

“We cannot fritter away all that good work and sacrifice.

“Once we see these numbers fall further, we will be able to talk in more definitive terms. We all wanted this second wave to be defeated but it needs to be defeated properly.”

I am too tired to write much as usual (due to doing chores for much of the day), though I have had some ideas for topics. A recent post at Reddit expressed what I experience: Who else always has writers block during the day but at like 2 am when they’re going to bed they have a million ideas? I seem to get a renewed burst of energy late at night, but that is the time when I need to sleep (my sleeping patterns have been out of kilter for a few years). This ongoing drama has only exacerbated my mental health issues.

September

Sunday 6/9: Stage 4 lockdown extended yet again

Today is a lovely sunny Spring day, but I am in despair and want to scream with incandescent rage. The strict Stage 4 lockdown for Melbourne has been extended by Premier Andrews for yet another four weeks, and only a gradual reopening of various facilities after that; most retail will not open until near the end of October, assuming the Coronavirus is under control (faint hope). I am tired of this and feel these extreme measures are unnecessary. The promise of reopening keeps receding like a mirage. The only forum I am finding a little comfort in at the moment is the likeminded r/LockdownSkepticismAU. The main Australian and Melbourne subreddits are just unbearable to visit now, as nearly all members support Daniel Andrews and the strict lockdown measures.

This opinion piece in The Australian expresses my feelings perfectly (article under a paywall, so reproduced below):

Obsessed premier has lost touch with reality

Chris Kenny

In a macabre theatre of the damned, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews comes out each day, gaunt and morose like a funeral ­director, but never wearing a tie, and he lists the daily death toll. He shares only numbers and ages, and sometimes describes the deaths of aged care residents in their 80s or 90s as “tragic”.

His Chief Health Officer, Brett Sutton, has confirmed some of those listed have been in palliative care and did not die from the disease, but tested positive at the time of death. When rare deaths of younger adults are reported, there is no mention of comorbidities; the privacy of the anonymous deceased is apparently more important than providing relevant infor­mation in a public health crisis.

At this point it is worth recounting that Victoria enacted voluntary euthanasia laws last year and in the first 12 months of operation at least 124 people have availed themselves of assisted dying. Presumably, if any people who have won approval to end their lives test positive, they too will be listed as coronavirus fatalities.

So twisted is our response to the coronavirus that our politicians provide additional funding for ­suicide prevention services, especially in Victoria. In a grotesque demonstration of the self-perpetuating nature of governments and bureaucracies, we see government overreact to a viral threat by imposing costly and extreme economic and social restrictions, and then government acts to mitigate the damage it inflicts on its subjects by spending more money imploring them not to end it all.

And from houses they have not vacated for weeks on end, many citizens cheer. Let’s do this thing! If only every Victorian could sit in their living room until their clothes fray against their whitened skeletons, then there would not be a single infection in Victoria (well, so long as someone keeps the borders secure).

Andrews gives the impression he is quite prepared to destroy Victoria and Victorians in order to save them from the coronavirus – perhaps he sees it as his only way to make up for mangling quarantine, contact tracing, infection control, public messaging, ADF assistance and testing. He is mistaken and should stop compounding his errors.

Whatever he does, whatever damage he does to his state, the virus will still exist, in Australia and around the world, and Victoria eventually will have to learn to live with it. Either that or he has bet his legacy, and the lives of 6.5 million Victorians, on the prospect of a highly effective vaccine being available within a few months.

You never know your luck. But history and science suggest this is a long shot. Andrews is obsessed. We know this because we can see it, and because he has told us.

When federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg made the obvious point last month that Andrews was presiding over the worst public policy failure in living memory, the Premier was pushed for a response. “I haven’t got time to have an argument with (Frydenberg) or a debate or even a discussion. I’m very focused on getting the job done,” he said.

When Scott Morrison announced plans to scrap state government deals at odds with national foreign policy, Andrews refused to engage, even though his Belt and Road deal with China was in the frame. “I’ll leave it to the Prime Minister,” said Andrews. “He seems rather focused on these matters. I’m much more focused on fighting the virus. I’m much more focused on creating jobs. If the Prime Minister has got time to be doing those things, then that’s fine for him. I don’t. I’m exclusively focused on fighting this virus.”

If only the quarantine security guards had been so single minded. Apparently nothing matters in Melbourne any more except the daily infection count.

A premier who cannot multitask, prioritise, or realise that, as difficult as the pandemic is, there are many other issues jockeying for importance, is surely not up to the job. Andrews is disappearing down his own wormhole.

He turns up every day. Andrews wants to be the one announcing the numbers. He trusts no one else to convey the gravity of the crisis. He has lost touch with the world around him. He needs some time off to walk around a park and wander around some empty streets to see what he has done to the state.

Instead, this week he gave us an insight into his inflexibility. “My message is the strategy is working and we have to stay the course,” he said. “We have to make all that we’ve given, all that we’ve done, all the sacrifices that every Victorian has made, has to count for something. We can’t just let that be washed away by opening up too quickly. We’ve got to do this in a safe and steady way. That’s what the science, the doctors, data tells us, and as difficult as that is to hear, there is no alternative.”

That is so wrong. In a task that is all about balancing risks against rights, costs against benefits and health outcomes against economic and social needs, the alter­native approaches are myriad.

What Andrews is really saying is that he must persist with his approach until it succeeds because he is unwilling to admit error or ­adjust his approach. He is driven to redeem himself, and Victorians must pay the price.

None of us should or would be dismissive of the loss of life – especially those of us whose loved ones are in their 80s in nursing homes – but the invocation of tragedy and reluctance to reveal comorbidities of younger victims speaks volumes about the mindset.

Andrews is the personification of pandemic pessimism, or COVID catastrophism, representing that large cohort of society that likes to dramatise every challenge.

He is determined to portray COVID-19 as an existential threat.

These Hanrahans have determined we would “all be rooned” save for their grand intercessions. Journalists and media, by their very nature, are drawn to this approach and become complicit as they sensationalise developments and heighten interest.

We see screaming headlines and hysterical television stories about modest and trifling outbreaks of infection, along with hostile beat-ups about people who are breaking the rules. Zero infection fatality rates for young people, high rates of asymptomatic or mild cases, and improvements in treatments seem to interest them much less than people holding house parties in breach of draconian rules or sneaking across heavily policed state borders.

Other premiers tap into this fear and parochialism. Queensland bizarrely says its border will not reopen to NSW until the largest state can go a full month without community infections, a condition that might never be met. This is extreme, illiberal and unsustainable.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian is the only premier who has grasped reality and accepted the responsibility of leading. Instead of hiding behind medical advice, she is using it as a crucial input in decisions that involve many moving parts and which she is prepared to own.

More than two million Australians are employed by governments federal, state and local; they are insulated from the financial strains and threats of the virus responses. Publicly funded journalists are the most enthusiastic proponents of lockdown, as they swap social media jokes about the trials and tribulations of working from home.

In the real world, the economic pain is here now, or looming daily. The strain is immense, and the restrictions are absurd.

The federal wage subsidy schemes are so generous they have sheltered many from the reality, giving hundreds of thousands of people similar comfort to the public sector, and staving off the economic reckoning.

While the safety net has been crucial, it has had the perverse ­effect of sheltering people from the stark choices ahead, protecting them from the need to get back to work while the virus is still with us.

It might always be with us. We cannot have another year like this one – we could not ­afford 2020, let alone a repeat.

A year from now we might be proud of how we “got to the other side” as Andrews frames it. But I fear we will be learning the difficulties of living with the virus, and looking back on 2020 with disbelief, wondering why we spent $300bn and caused enormous disruption, only to delay the hard choices that we could never avoid.

Mum is elderly and is not coping well; she liked to browse in her favorite shops (Myer, David Jones) but of course they are closed with most other stores so she is denied even that small enjoyment. I like to browse in bookstores, but they are also closed.

I have barely ridden my bicycle in recent weeks; I have lost enthusiasm for it at the moment. I have been walking for exercise around my neighborhood (as have a lot of other people). The exercise soothes me, but that is only temporary. I need comfort desperately.

Thursday 17/9: Ghost town; Expedition book

The dreary limbo of lockdown continues in Melbourne. Walking disconsolately around Southland SC is like visiting the mall after the Apocalypse has happened; it is almost deserted with most shops shut. Those in regional country areas in Victoria have had the severe restrictions lifted.

Artist Wayne Barlowe’s long-out-of-print 1990 Expedition book about an imaginary voyage to an exoplanet with fantastical lifeforms is to be republished. Unfortunately the price in U.S. dollars will be high when converted to Australian dollars, and shipping to Australia (if they do this) will be almost as expensive, so the print book is frustratingly still out of reach for me (secondhand copies are also well over $100). Looking through it is the next best thing to visiting an alien world (and I desperately need the escapism more now than ever). His creature design has a distinctive angular style and I have long admired his creations.

Saturday 19/9: Some books read

I have managed to finish reading two novels! Both would be classified as Mundane Science Fiction – reasonably realistic with no Faster-than-Light travel or other tropes that effectively classify most SF as fantasy.

October

Saturday 3/10: Final wisdom tooth extracted; Journal combined

I had my last wisdom tooth/3rd molar extracted yesterday (after two cancellations due to the COVID-19 lockdowns); by the same dentist (Dr Aditi Gadre at Team Dental Bayside – Friday 10/7 entry). This was the upper left one. It came out in around 10 minutes in one piece, after some tugging and twisting. I was feeling very sore last night after the numbing injection wore off, and will take things easy today.

My Journal entries are now one year to a page, after much complicated search-and-replacing using Regular Expressions! Took me most of this week, but there are now 17 pages rather than 184; much more maintainable (though the combined pages are of course larger).

Tuesday 6/10: Rememberances

Today marks 20 years since my maternal grandmother passed away, at age 101 (born in 1898). I still miss her, and think of her every day. She was the grandparent I saw most often, and was closest to. 17 November this year also marks 25 years since my paternal grandmother passed; she lived in England (where Dad emmigrated from to Australia), but I only saw her in person 3 times in my life, sadly – an unfortunate effect of families living in different countries.

Sunday 11/10: Extraction healing; suicide documentary; Tesla sighting

My wisdom tooth extraction site seems to be healing with no issues; it is not sore anymore. So that is one task achieved this year, at least!

I watched the 2017 documentary The Departure, featuring the Zen priest Ittetsu Nemoto, who was first profiled in a 2013 New Yorker article, “Last Call.” The documentary was appropriately quiet and contemplative, with (thankfully) no narration, just the camera unobtrusively following Ittetsu as he strove to help various troubled people and dealt with issues in his own life (such as an ongoing heart condition).

I spotted another Tesla electric car while on my afternoon walk today! A blue one; not sure of the model. It was parked on East Boundary Road.

Tuesday 13/10: Expensive book; Blindsight trailer

I asked the publisher about the cost of the Wayne Barlowe Expedition art book I mentioned in my 17/9 entry, but, as I feared, the total cost to ship it to Australia would be over AU$100! Around $50 for the book itself (which I could afford), but at least another $50 for the shipping cost! I also have to add the currency conversion cost by the bank (AU to USD) and the 10% GST imposed on all imports. So perhaps $120 at least? I don’t know why shipping is so expensive, but it is very frustrating. The book only seems to be available from that publisher, not via sites such as the Book Depository. (And it is just as expensive for a second-hand edition.)

Fans of Peter Watts’ compelling Blindsight novel have just released the most awesome animated trailer and website! A labor of love from a lot of talented animators and designers, most in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Wednesday 21/10: Visited Melbourne

Today I took the Frankston Line train into Melbourne CBD for the first time since Sunday 1/8, and since the 5 km lockdown zone was increased to 25 km last Sunday. Almost no shops open – certainly no bookshops, sadly – but nice to make the familiar journey that I have done all my life so far. Nice just to sit and look out the window, or read, or think. I alighted at Melbourne Central Station and walked back to Flinders Street, saying Hello to Gog and Magog in the Royal Arcade, as I wanted to! Took a few photos with my old digital camera (can’t afford a smartphone, alas).

Richmond Station

Richmond Station, looking west at Melbourne CBD.

Suzy in the Royal Arcade

Me in the Royal Arcade.

Gog and Magog

Gog and Magog! The inscription reads:

These two 7-feet giants have been striking the time on Gaunt’s clock since 1892. They were carved from clear pine and modelled on the figures erected in Guildhall, London, in 1708 to symbolise the conflict between the ancient Britons and the Trojan invaders.

Mythology tells of the giants Gog and Magog (also known as Corineus and Gogmagog) having been captured in battle by the Trojans and made to serve as porters at the gateway of an ancient palace on a site later occupied by the Guildhall. It is traditional for Gog to stand to the north and Magog to the south.

Friday 23/10: Pointless holiday; Khannea Suntzu

Today is a public holiday, even more pointless than usual given that virtually all shops are still shut anyway. A brief article from today’s Herald-Sun:

Holiday a “slap in face”

VICTORIA’S Grand Final public holiday is a “slap in the face” for businesses still reeling from coronavirus restrictions, according to employer association Ai Group.

Tim Piper, the Victorian head of the association, has lashed out at Friday’s holiday because it will slow down the state’s economic recovery.

“The Grand Final holiday, cynically rebadged as a ‘thank you’ holiday, was and still is the most frivolous and unnecessary holiday that could be imagined,” he said. “Part of the rationale for the holiday was to give Melburnians an opportunity to holiday in the regions, which today looks as far away as ever.

“Industry that is trying to catch up will be forced to pay multiples of normal pay.

“The holiday is a debacle on top of a debacle when we haven’t removed the most significant COVID restrictions.

“The sensible decision would have been to forgo the holiday altogether.”

I have been doing a few posts in the r/LockdownSkepticismAU subreddit (one of the few I find bearable to visit at the moment with the virus hysteria), my username is SuzyM.

People: Khannea Suntzu

Khannea Suntzu (her adopted, now-legal name) is a transgender (male-to-female, M>F) internet personality – “transhumanist, outspoken transgender, libertine and technoprogressive” – whom I first learned of via her postings in r/worldbuilding at Reddit, and have been meaning to mention her for some time. She posted images of her huge and detailed “Dreamlands Map” of a Lovecraft-inspired dark world that she had been working on in Photoshop for many years. She also has some of her work at ArtStation. Since then I have been fascinated by her, especially her creative work, and have been following her via her various sites and social media accounts (a Google search will turn up a lot of links for these). She underwent a series of painful operations to transition from male to female, one of the final of these being “facial feminization surgery” in March 2018. She has a YouTube channel, and one of her videos is of her not long after one of her surgeries. She lives in the Hague, in the Netherlands, and is Dutch. She is very Leftist in politics, which I am not, so I will disagree with her on some issues. She is, however, not happy but is very troubled and is on disability; she comes across as very cynical and jaded. She does lead a hedonistic lifestyle and is into the more extreme BDSM nightlife – which I suspect is a desperate attempt to mask or escape this deep unhappiness. That lifestyle is most assuredly not something I find appealing! She does post a lot on Reddit – but again quite a lot of posts and subreddits are decidedly Not Safe For Work.

She has a biography and some articles at The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (Archive.org link).

For convenience, I have put the short speculative fiction pieces from her blog on a local page also.

Monday 26/10: Lockdown limbo; upcoming elections

12 weeks of lockdown and still no clear end in sight for Melbourne. Easing of restrictions was delayed by Premier Daniel Andrews yet AGAIN at yesterday’s press conference, despite teasing earlier that these might be eased (surely by now a form of psychological torture). A “cautious pause” because of just 7 new cases. The retail sector, which was preparing and hoping to open this week, is understandably very frustrated (as are customers). Christmas is less than 2 months away. Online shopping is no proper substitute for browsing products in person in a real store; there are also extra postage fees and delivery delays to factor in.

I even find myself agreeing with former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett in his opinion piece in today’s Herald-Sun, whom I have disliked in the past:

Seven new cases and millions made to suffer

JEFF KENNETT

I SAID last week the Premier had lost the plot when he attacked federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who with the federal government is providing billions of dollars through JobKeeper and other schemes to keep Victoria breathing, while the Premier through his actions appears to be trying to snuff the economic life out of the state.

On Sunday Daniel Andrews again demonstrated he is well past his use-by date.

He failed to lift some of the road map restrictions, in particular on small businesses.

Earlier last week he indicated he was moving to ease some of those restrictions. On Sunday he slammed the door in the face of those who were preparing to reopen.

Why? We have seen the average number of cases in metropolitan Melbourne fall below his own measure of 5, to 4.6.

We had only seven new cases yesterday. Victoria has a population of 6.4 million people.

Daniel Andrews is penalising 6.4 million Victorians because he will not, cannot, manage seven new cases. What an indictment on him and his government.

Forget that 99.9 per cent of the public has done all that has been asked of us.

Sunday and Saturday night was a clear example. Our Grand Final was played interstate. Two Victorian teams competing. Richmond wins and not a soul in Swan Street, whereas last year tens of thousands were celebrating.

Swan Street on Saturday night reflected two things: the community’s acceptance of the restrictions, but on the other hand the sad and tragic place that Victoria has become.

Major events played interstate or in the absence of crowds. Major firms in catering and tentage having stood down thousands without hope of re-employing them this year.

The Premier takes from so many and gives nothing.

Conflicting statements. He lifts small businesses up, then crushes them down again.

Some tweet me saying the Premier is saving us from what is occurring in Europe and the US. That is rubbish. We are not Europe or the United States.

We are Australia, and our closed borders to international travel, because we are an island has been the major contributor to our containing the virus. We should be comparing Victoria with the other states and territories in Australia.

Here, NSW is the closest state to Victoria in size and population.

It had the incident with the Ruby Princess, but through much better contract tracing than ours, it got on top of that very quickly. NSW has had on some days had more new cases than Victoria, but has managed to keep its economy open, addressing new outbreaks as they occur, as they have done in Tasmania and elsewhere.

Importantly, NSW has not divided the community with curfews, 5km and now 25km limits, not to mention a ring of steel that separates rural from metropolitan Melbourne.

Remember, we started meeting this virus challenge to contain it, and to ensure we did not put too much pressure on our hospitals.

Our hospitals have next to no COVID patients, they are overequipped to the roof and 6.4 million Victorians are in lockdown for seven new cases. Give me a break. Give Victoria a break.

What will happen in a month if on one day we have another outbreak of seven or 17 cases? Are we going to close society down again?

I suspect many shops and restaurants might open next week anyhow. They cannot afford to stay closed.

Many retail shops have stock to clear before Christmas, otherwise the stock will be surplus to the season.

Yes, Premier, you might set the police against these small businessmen and women, and you can puff your chest out and say what a tough man you are.

You clearly have no idea of the damage you are doing to the financial security of so many not to mention their mental health. You are killing so many businesses, not to mention the 800-plus Victorians who have died because of your administration failures, your personal hubris and now the coverup you and your colleagues are seemingly conducting.

You are a disgrace to the exercise of good government. You have well and truly breached the oath you took on becoming a minister of the Crown.

And, sadly, no one knows any more when you or your colleagues are telling the truth, or whether business people can take your comments as fact and acted upon.

I do not know the detail of the knowledge your former head of the Premier’s department Chris Eccles still retains but is not admitting.

That said, when he found a piece of evidence was produced to the inquiry that contradicted the evidence he had given, he did the honourable thing and resigned.

You threw your health minister Jenny Mikakos under the bus to save yourself. Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton should resign as well for his evidence to the inquiry has been shown to be incorrect and worse.

You have said you accept responsibility for the failures of your government – well, do so. Go.

Get out of the way and allow someone else to start the rebuilding process.

Victoria simply can no longer afford you and your style of leadership; 6.4 million Victorians want leadership, not dictatorship.

JEFF KENNETT IS A FORMER PREMIER OF VICTORIA

2 weeks until my 50th birthday! Also the U.S. Presidential elections are the week before (3 November). I am contrary enough to not mind if Donald Trump wins again, if only to see the Leftist “Progressive” mob melt down in collective hysteria. I am increasingly finding Conservative websites and views a bastion of sanity in the last year or so, out of disgust at the fanaticism of the “Woke” activists (identity politics) and associated. Perhaps my feelings are also a result of maturing and losing any tolerance for nonsense.

Friday 30/10: Retail reopening; interests

The shops opened again on Wednesday! How wonderful to be able to go into them and browse around, especially bookshops (what is left of them). The shopping centers were very busy, not surprisingly. Many restrictions are still in place, particularly the onerous “security theater” COVID-19 precautions (the by-now usual social distancing, limits on numbers of people in stores, hand santizier everywhere, mandatory facemasks). Incidentally, I have had to almost stop using hand sanitizer as my skin developed a bad eczema-like reaction to it a few months ago (irritant dermatitis) which was painful and took weeks to heal.

Like others, I got a haircut for the first time since the lockdown begun; a bit short this time (just above my shoulders!) but it will grow back. The hairdressers had long queues outside them last week.

The Avatar 2 movie sequel mentioned back in my 8/1/2020 entry has been delayed yet again due to the Coronavirus lockdowns; release date is now 22/12/2022. I’m afraid I am no longer interested in it; the endless delays and lack of publicity killed my enthusiasm long ago. I also lost interest in the Halo video game (and others) early last year and all my related merchandise was purged.

Who am I? How do I define myself? I am nearly 50 and still have no sense of self-identity. No career or profession to define myself by; no real hobbies. I feel I am a hollow shell, that my body has a void at its core. I bounce around from one interest to another, sometimes several in one day, and the disparity between these can be maddening. My current interests include:

I still read fiction and follow the worldbuilding of various people on the Internet, but my own creativity is mostly dormant, to my frustration (I am passively consuming, not actively creating). I have not drawn at all this year. I have done a little writing, but this is a slow and laborious effort. It doesn’t help that I am mentally and physically exhausted; I seem to spend most of my days doing chores. My “Star Warrior” story is essentially archived, but a new one has been percolating in my brain; a reboot and merging of the characters from the older “Expedition Clueless” stories and SW, and the aliens from the latter.

November

Wednesday 4/11: My published letter; book ordered

I had a letter published in today’s Herald-Sun (page 59)!

Cash is still king

ONE concerning trend as a result of the coronavirus is the increasing number of businesses refusing cash payments.

Cash is still legal tender, is no more likely to transmit the coronavirus than other surfaces, and many people (myself included) still find it more convenient than using a card.

Electronic payments 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.

Businesses should be required to accept cash.

Original:

One concerning trend as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown is the increasing number of businesses refusing cash payments. Cash is still legal tender, is no more likely to transmit the coronavirus than other surfaces and many people (myself included) still find it more convenient than using a card. Electronic payments 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. Businesses should thus be required to accept cash.

Previous mention on the topic in my 9/6 entry.

With some trepidation I ordered the Wayne Barlowe Expedition reprinted art book mentioned in my 17/9 entry, as it was just listed at Amazon.com.au (whom I have ordered books from before). Total (including $20 postage and 10% GST) came to $110! I will consider it a 50th birthday present to myself. It is due to arrive around mid-December; before Christmas, hopefully!

Sunday 8/11: Books read; survival shows

My last day of being a 40-something!

I am reading Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amor. I read it as a teenager when it was originally published (1987) and not since then, and it has held up well. A straightforward but well-told survival adventure set during the Cold War (when Soviet Russia was a mysterious and powerful enemy, in contrast to it now!) where an American pilot of Native American (part Sioux, part Cheyenne) and Scottish ancestry has been taken prisoner and is being held in a remote Siberian prison. He escapes, but must endure the harsh Siberian winter, evade capture and his nemesis, the ruthless Yakut tracker Alekhin.

On free-to-air TV here, I have been sporadically watching a survivalist reality TV series called Alone, where partipants are left alone in selected wilderness areas with some equipment and must fend for themselves for a period of time. They experience much discomfort and difficulty. The main challenges are the basic ones: finding and making shelter, food and fire. There are also a couple of shows about families living in the Alaskan wilderness. They spend a lot of time preparing for the long brutal winter season (catching/shooting and storing food, readying their dwellings). The thought occurred to me that people who say they “enjoy” the winter season have never had to try to survive it without the modern technology and comforts we take for granted! I would guess that people in most ancient cultures without such comforts would regard the onset of winter with dread. I find Melbourne winters severe enough, and it rarely gets below 0°C here! I don’t think I would cope at all with snowy American or European winters. My circulation is poor and my fingertips and toes often get purplish and numb (as they did this morning).

Friday 13/11: Site purging and merging

Well, I have been doing quite a lot more purging and merging of pages on my website! Some separate pages on my main site have been consolidated, and my RuSpace site has been almost erased, aside from some flight update tables for the Russian ISS segment. I may add back more pages to the latter if I get around to revising them, but many were outdated and I have not the energy currently to rewrite them.

Wednesday 18/11: Eyes OK

Went to my local optometrist today for my 2-yearly eye exam. My sight has changed little, so no need for new glasses yet (which is fine as I like the green metal frames I bought last time, and I could see no affordable frames I liked there). Had a retinal scan; both are healthy. Also bought some Fitover sunglasses (that, as the name suggests, are frames that fit over the glasses I am wearing).

Thursday 19/11: Site culling; Last of the Breed finished; Jewish documentary

My RuSpace (Russian Spaceflight) site section has been much culled to just a few data pages for the time being; all I feel I can manage at present.

I managed to finish Last of the Breed (8/11 entry); still a great read and I would strongly recommend it! The fate of Joe Mack is left to the reader’s imagination – did he manage to cross the Bering Strait via kayak and meet up with the woman who also escaped and who fell in love with him? He becomes more and more in tune with his Native American heritage, thinking and living like they did in their traditional lifestyle. There is much wisdom in the writing and in my view the novel is far superior to many thrillers written today (and refreshingly free of the politically-correct “cultural appropriation” controversy nonsense that many writers feel inhibited by now).

Last night I ended up watching an SBS documentary, Untold Australia: Strictly Jewish, about the Orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne – around Elsternwick, not far from where my maternal grandmother lived – who live very traditional and insular lives there, preserving their traditions and keeping out the external world with all its temptations as much as possible. I felt ambivalent about their lifestyle: as the Holocaust devastated and decimated the Jews in Europe, I can understand why they are so determined to continue their traditions. More negatively, women are confined to traditional homemaker roles, and children are also somewhat segregated (how do they cope with unruly adolescents and interacting with the outside world, as most would have to at some point?). Still, I would rather have them as neighbors than certain other religions; they ultimately just want to be left alone. They do not bother me.

December

Friday 11/12: RPG books nostalgia; art book delivered

In the early 1990s I had some sort of imaginary world I created, and I bought and read a few of the Role-Playing Game corebooks that were available then for inspiration. I never played RPGs – never had anyone to play with anyway – but liked reading the lore and looking at the artwork. Today I was able to identify a couple that I have been trying to recall for years: Nephilim and Immortal: The Invisible War. I actually just went and ordered a physical copy of the original Immortal as it wasn’t too expensive, purely for the sake of nostalgia, and the still-attractive computer-created artwork that remained in my memory. Other books were from the Rifts universe, and Cyberpunk 2020. (There is a list of RPGs at Wikipedia.)

Up to around age 12, I used to have a lot of minature plastic toy horses, and take them out into my backyard and play with them, narrating stories; an ability I lost once I entered adolescence. To me, RPGs seem a more elaborate version of that.

The Wayne Barlowe Expedition art book that I ordered (see 4/11/2020 entry) arrived yesterday also! As marvellousy wierd as I remember it.

Saturday 12/12: Tesla sighted; paracosms

I saw a Tesla electric car today, in one of the Southland car parks! I think it is the same one I saw there some months ago (6/2/2020 entry), a dark metallic grey. Took some photos of it, but I did not want to draw attention by using my camera’s flash, so the images are a bit dark and blurred. It is a “Dual motor” according to a badge on its rear bumper.

A topic posted on Reddit at r/writing: It’s much more pleasing to have a story unravel in my head than it is to write it down. Which is what I have been doing since I was young also – narrating my daydreams and creating characters and worlds. The name for this is Paracosm, and, judging by the large number of replies, a lot of people do this!

Thursday 31/12: A difficult year

Last day of a peculiar and unpleasant year. One of the most unpleasant incidents for me was, of course, my bicycle accident (15/5 entry). I have not ridden at all for a few weeks now; I have felt aversion to doing it and am also lacking in energy.

More positive events: motivating myself to have my two remaining wisdom teeth extracted. Managed to lose a little weight since October as I had gained a couple of kilograms due to overeating (albeit healthy food), but my smaller clothes now fit comfortably again, though the physical side-effects can be debilitating (chronic fatigue, brain fog – wish I had some energy pills!). It is worth it though, to me. Traded in my Generation 6 iPad (9.7-inch) for a Generation 8 (10.2-inch) model with more storage; the trade-in was valued at $220 so I am happy with it.

More COVID cases have popped up in Victoria after two months of none reported; this is perhaps inevitable as the virus is out in the world and can’t realistically be eradicated. I hope the Premier will not overreact and impose another harsh lockdown.

I continue to struggle along with doing anything creative; the ideas are there but putting them into physical reality is an agonizingly slow process. My interests bounce around all over the place and I can’t focus on anything for very long.

Another Tesla sighting, 16/12.