COVID
In Australia as a whole there are 143 active cases, 140 are overseas acquired which is to say they are in hotel quarantine. Breakdown of the 3 that are in the community are – 2 in NSW, and 1 in QLD. There is a total of 1 case in Victoria, and that’s in hotel quarantine. One thing people have learnt trying to fly into Melbourne is that the Vic gov is unreliable, should prob fly into Darwin and get quarantine in a hotel with a lagoon. Lock down has had a huge impact the Victoria’s economy, with no migrants, few babies and people leaving, who will pay for boomer retirement? The eviction moratorium is going to end soon, it’s going to be interesting to see the effect on housing.
Seems like the majority of blood clot cases of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been women under 55 years old. More research and data is needed. Listening to politician assure you that it’s safe is NOT science. Australia is starting the next phase of the roll out of this vaccine to people who are over 70 or have a underlying medical condition.
The world is at 21,294,252 active cases and 2,723,682 deaths (3% of all cases). Pakistan’s prime minister got COVID a few days after getting vaccinated. More interestingly, I didn’t know that a former cricketer is now the prime minister! It’s like saying that Michael Jordan is now the president of the United States.
Goldman Sachs CEO is pissed at people working remotely, only he is allowed to fly the private jet to work from a tropical island. Everyone else needs to be in the office. Do what I say, not what I do.
Finance and Economics
The head of Bank for International Settlements wants to have “COMPLETE control” over money by banning cash in favor of central bank digital currency, which will allow them to control and see what you spend your money on. To that, I’d say F*** Off. The problem with banning cash is that it affects the marginal communities (who pays by tap and go at an Asian groceries? No one.), the elderly and excludes the poorer people in countries where they couldn’t get official identity papers. It also centralise power in those people who have not been elected, to have control of the money system.
If you happen to do nothing illegal but are perceived to go compete against the bank’s agenda, the bank can withdraw banking services from your business, you personally and your family – no questions asked. This is called being de-banked. The big 4 banks are loan sharks providing loans to people who cannot afford it, the government wanted to wind back responsible lending laws because the big 4 banks should not be prevented on lending money to people just because evidence of financial hardship exist. Déjà vu from 2008 anyone??
The evidence is pretty damning. The gov is trying to sell off Australia post based on some consulting company advising them, which will make the consulting company richer.
In a world where money is being printed at an ever increasing rate, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Few understand this, including that communist Bernie Sanders who is out attacking Elon Musk again for the amount of money he has, and Elon replied.
Bridgewater have an interesting article on why in the world would you own bonds? Also watch Ray Dalio explain the Fed’s effort to hold down rates creates inflation. It was interesting how the mechanics on how money printing and how central banks control interest rates works.
If you still have thoughts that bitcoin is a waste of energy, then this one is for you. Bitcoin goes to where power is cheapest, which often means it could be hydro-electricity where not all the power is being used, however water still needs to flow. Or power plants that were built to meet future demand but currently not doing that, and since a power plant does not have an on off switch, and must keep maintaining thermal output energy is being wasted so they are selling it cheap to bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin is now trading at $56,111 USD or $73,166 AUD. The world is changing behind the scenes, and I don’t want anyone to be caught out and say I didn’t know this was happening. Of course you didn’t know, its because you only follow mainstream news, mainstream news is not much different in a democratic society than what it is in a totalitarian society. The only different is the different way it is manipulated.
This is a reminder to never accept to pay money via banking details that you received via email. Basically this family was going to send their grandmother to an aged care facility, and hackers were in their email and put themselves in the middle by creating an email posing as the aged care facility and told them the banking details of where to send the $375,000. So they ended up sending money to the hackers. Always call to confirm banking details if the amount of money is meaningful.
Tech
I taught myself to program in Python from the free online book “Automate the Boring Stuff with Python” by Al Sweigart. And now he has another book called Beyond the basic stuff with Python. I plan on working through this book this year. Here is a video from the book. **Documenting so I can search my own blog later**
Reminder to self – update Audacity 3.0, no more stupid small files that become disconnected. Audacity for those who are not familiar is used to edit audio files.
Some research was done as to which was the worst web browsers in terms of privacy. From the best one in terms of privacy ended up being Brave Browser. Firefox is ok if you turn off some settings. Don’t trust Chrome, it automatically dials home.
If you haven’t setup the emergency SOS feature on your iPhone then do it now please. And learn how it works so that should you ever be in trouble you can have the mental clarity to stick your hand into your pocket and trigger it. I’ve trigged it accidentally and it basically texted all my emergency contacts sent them my current location, told them something similar to “I’m being kidnapped, attacked and in danger” and proceeded to automatically have emergency services 000 call me!!
State of the world.
Dutch police were unleashing their attack dogs on protesters, then a few days later they were smacking people with sticks. Can someone tell me are we are safe yet? People of London are marching on the streets in large numbers in protest of lockdowns.
The European Commission is proposing to create a Digital Green Certificate so people can travel safely. Maybe they should be reminded that freedom of movement is a fundamental human right. The idea is as bad as the Consent app that was proposed in NSW.
The government of Taiwan is begging its citizen not to change their name to “Salmon” to take advantage of free sushi deal, one person ate $300 worth of sushi and plans to change their name back once the deal is over.
Other Stuff
Embrace the Clothes Chair, so long as it doesn’t become the clothing graveyard. What is the clothes chair? That place where clothes land cause you put on a pair of pants to go get a bottle of milk, and then come back home to change back into your PJs.
Some people are animals! Clean up after yourself!
This article thinks that interstellar object Oumuamua that passed through our solar system was part of a planet and not alien. But that makes no sense to me, that’s like saying that Mt Everest grew rockets and blasted off into space, and achieved insane interstellar speed. Just admit it, it was an alien space craft.
Which bring me to the book that I’m 2/3 through and really enjoying. It’s called The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. It was recommend by Naval, and it might not be very easy for people to read because was written by a physicist for other physicist and philosophers. There are a lot of interesting principals in this book and goes into everything from the multiverse, to quantum theory, reality abstractions, artificial creativity and topics such as that. Highly recommended if you are interested in science and like to think deeply about things. Also it doesn’t feel like you need to read it cover to cover as each chapter covers a different topic. Anyway “Nullius in Verba” which means “Take no one’s word for it”, figuring it out for yourself is the only way to know anything.
Remember – whatever happens next is usually unexpected. Especially in this video. Whoa?!
Have a great week!