1/n On a very different level, for those suffering at the moment, I offer the example of Port Hedland, West Australia. The entire town was a *rusty red* in colour, and it's one of the more depressing ones I've ever been in.
cc.@ChrisSidwells, @jdpoc:

2/n The entire region back then of the huge Pilbarra had a *total* of 22,000 people living throughout it, plus another 22,000 in its one town, Port Hedland. Which was very *red*.

3/n Most buildings in Port Hedland were built of depressing cinder block (because of the occasional tropical cyclone), and the light grey had all turned red because of iron-ore dust. Port Hedland exists largely just only to transfer iron-ore (plus other ores and salt) to ships.
4/ The local post office had a postcard for tourists: it showed three huge conical piles next to the wharfs, one red (iron ore), one black (another metal ore, I forget which one), and one white (salt). That was their idea of what would interest others.
5/ I attended a couple talks/lectures at the local hospital, and gave one myself. Most common cause of death there was work accidents, followed by diabetes from long-term alcoholism. This was not a great quality-of-life area.
6/ Mind you, I was offered $100,000 AUS $, cash in hand (no joke), to stay there, except I didn't think it was ethical at all for me to accept the job offer, so I didn't take it up. All people did there was work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, or they drank. Sad place, rly.

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More from @Gurdur

5 Dec
This is a bizarre & wholly wrong condemnation of the young #KeiraBell, who was badly advised, allowed to go through unnecessary surgery & medical treatment, & who now points out how badly advised she was.
Yes, #KeiraBell *dared* to go to court to protest malpractice and bad advice. Too bad if you don't like that, the UK still manages to be somewhere where a person can go to court to redress wrongs. Suck it up, get over it.

I still can't get over the other tweeter who wanted Biden to go in and muscle the UK into ignoring its own High Court judgment. I mean, seriously, what planet are people living on?
Read 4 tweets
5 Dec
1/n I was asked my thoughts on the video below (sound on! Watch in full), not sure why. But here are some of my thoughts, in a thread. It's about Los Angeles, where Eric Garcetti is mayor, in CA, where Gavin Newsom (D) is governor.
cc.@CathyYoung63
2/n This is not a simple matter, & I will be very rude to anyone trying to be simplistic about it all. My very first reaction is, of course she's right to protest. I myself would under those circumstances. Confronted with both loss of livelihood AND with gross inconsistency.
3/n The abhorrent way the USA as a whole (many US states in particular) simply left a great deal of its own citizens in the lurch, that's well-known. As too that this will mean a further widening of the abyss between the well-off & the poor, cue @Chris_arnade. But that's not all.
Read 20 tweets
5 Dec
1/n A thread for those who don't know me well yet. When I cover science, medicine or COVID_19, I don't do feel-good stuff, and *especially* I don't do "Hide or obscure inconvenient stuff for the good of the proles". I do facts instead. Here follow a few examples.
2/ A long while back, I did a thread on breastfeeding, a very important topic in Africa, because of marketing campaigns for baby-formula, + that many women there see baby-formula as a status symbol, breast-feeding being only for the poor.
3/ I was astonished to get flamed by a tweep. The tweep kept going on about "my body, my choice". That's not my problem, that's your own choice, but it was *irrelevant* to that *usually* breast-feeding is >much< better for the infant than baby-formula.
Read 15 tweets
4 Dec
Can't move without some meddlesome fact-checker. Betrachtungsqual.

I might. Lewis Carroll invented, all by himself, at least 22 words still in common use in English. I feel maybe I could do the same for German.

Read 13 tweets
3 Dec
1/n Kim Stanley Robinson is a very interesting science-fiction writer. He's also only all too obviously caught in a rut, and shows the weaknesses in his thinking in a stereotyped way.

He's definitely 'political', but in that weird way the US 'left' are.
2/n For example, Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) centered one story (in his Three Californias Trilogy, 1984~1990) around the "5%'ers", *a decade* before everyone there started nattering about the 1%.

3/n Another of KSR's stories in the Three Californias trilogy was, to me, a bizarrely exaggerated guilt, "blame America" theme, where some unknown foe has nuclear-bombed the USA into pre-1850 tech, and the USA ... just accepts that??!

Read 5 tweets
3 Dec
Pretty exhausted today, so some things I might leave till tomorrow, we'll see. In the meantime, some of my old photos. Theme is butterflies and moths. This is a glasswing, Greta oto,
This is an Atlas moth, fresh out of its cocoon, drying out its wings, gathering its strength to live its new life as a moth, after the life of being a caterpillar. My old photo
Another photo of mine of that Atlas moth, resting on its old cocoon
Read 11 tweets

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