COVID
Two guinea pigs meet for lunch and one asks “Are you gonna get the covid vaccine?” and his friend replies “No, I’m waiting until they finish the human trials”. Scotty says not everyone will have their “first jab” by the end of the year. (Is he implying that we should be buying biomedical stocks cause they will need to be funded to produce a yearly vaccine?) Second person got blood clot and then a 48 year old women with underlying health conditions died from blood clotting. It’s kind of ridiculous comparing the stats of dying of blood clot to winning the lotto, because winning the lotto doesn’t kill you. If you have underling health issues, you should be holding off until more data comes in.
Total amount of locally acquired active cases in Australia is 3, and all 3 is in NSW where it was transmitted in hotel quarantine, so not really in the community. Borders might never open even if the whole country is vaccinated is the message offered by the federal health minister. And ScoMo is in no hurry to let you go on holiday overseas even if you are vaccinated. The question this raises is why has the government become a bunch of Anti-Vaxers?!? They are sending out the message that they don’t trust the vaccine and have zero confidence in it . This is an anti-vaxer view. The economic fall out is going to be significant. Goodbye universities without international students. Goodbye tourism with no foreigners allowed in. Goodbye international travel destination. Goodbye smart people as they leave and never come back. Goodbye skilled migrants – there is currently a brain drain from the country that I’m seeing personally with some friends packing up and leaving the country soon. Goodbye to our economy.
Russel Brand laid out all the issues with a Vaccine passport, and this is really worth a listen to.
The hotel and tourism sector has been destroyed in Australia with some not expected to get back to anywhere near normal levels for 3 years. I’m not sure how they plan to boost local levels of domestic travel to a point where it can make up for the lack of the WORLD coming to Australia.
There are currently 18,363,707 active cases worldwide with 107,167 (0.6%) of those cases are considered serious or critical. World death toll is at 3,026,932 (i.e 2.4% of cases resulted in death). The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan rolled out vaccine to 93% of adults in 3 weeks. Bhutan is a one of those places I would love to visit one day. It feels like Tibet minus the communism. Fascism has arrived in Canada and hearing those officials talk make it sound a lot like Nazi Germany. The UK’s contact tracing app‘s latest update was blocked by Apple and Google for breaking the rules. If you use the protocol that Google/Apple developed then you are not allowed to share the data with anyone. “Privacy matters because the lack of it gives others power over you. Even more than monetary gain, personal data bestows power on those who collect and analyze it, and that is what makes it so coveted.”
Finance and Economics
Bitcoin was as high as $84,000 AUD ($65,000 USD) last week before dropping and currently trading at $73,152 AUD or $54,812 USD. Price drops like this are not unusual in an emerging asset. Is still a reminder that you should only buy the amount you are willing to lose with the intent to hold for 20 years.
If you want to click on the button then go to https://www.bitcoinisdead.lol/
Coinbase, the biggest crypto exchange listed in the NASDAQ last week, with a opening price of $381. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sold $291.8M in shares, which represents about 1.5% of his holdings. It’s a fast growing industry, take for example another exchange – Binance. They went from 0 to 3000 employees in 3 years. Is the industry you are in growing that fast?
Christine Lagarde the president of the ECB think people want their personal freedom stolen, as Europe look towards implementing their CBDC. Just a reminder that M2 money stock has gone through the roof in the US.
Tech
I enjoyed this story about when money is the only motivator at work it makes you do irrational things. I put this in the tech section because I don’t know how technical it is for the average reader, but if you skip over the technical bits the story is actually about expectations.
Other Stuff
Stop throwing your soft plastics in the recycle wheelie bin, instead find out what you can do about your soft plastics. (for those in Australia)
How to spot burn out, and what to do about it – do some meditation (ie spend some time along in silence), and some stretching like yoga.
Looking for a new kitchen knife? you don’t really need an expensive set, you just need 4 basic knives. A Chef knife, a paring knife, a bread knife and maybe a vegetable cutter. I’ve read good things about the inexpensive Victorinox knife over the years that is mentioned in the article. Otherwise if you are want to go hardcore Japanese knives, there’s a place in Richmond, Victoria called Chef Armoury that sells and delivers the authentic Japanese knives, and they even run lessons on how to sharpen your knife.
I found this interesting list of Wikipedia of emerging technologies from various industries that I think would be interesting to go through.
The blog / weekly newsletter will be lighter in content for the next 3 weeks as I will be resisting the urge to consume news or read books. I have my DELF B1 exam that I need to cram for! It’s one of my of the things on my checklist that I’m looking to get done this year. Since we talking about French and exam, I’ll leave you with this French video from Cyprien about all those things you probably have done in school (L’école) You will need the subtitles turn on. Have a great week!