A couple of years ago, I got into a discussion about Artificial Intelligence (AI) with a couple of people who write computer code (in Python) as part of their jobs. They suggested that I could use it to kick-start rants on this blog. At the time, ChatGPT was the AI version in the headlines, and they suggested that I should use it. Initially, I wanted to find out how I could get it to work for me, so I queried it about its capabilities.
The decline in religion is something that interests me greatly, as anyone who reads this blog can attest. I originally wrote about in in 2019, with an essay on the decline of religion in the Anglophone world, wherein I tracked the proportion of the population who, according to the census, had no religious affiliation. In 1966, only 0.8% of the population reportedly had no religious affiliation whereas, at the time the last census for which data was available (i.e.
In 1998, gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues published a case study in one of the most highly respected medical journals, the UK’s Lancet. This paper suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine may predispose children to behavioural regression and pervasive developmental disorder (i.e. autism).
According to Yuri Shvets, who was posted to Washington by the USSR in the 1980s, Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow. Shvets was a key source for American Kompromat, a book by journalist Craig Unger. Shvets, a KGB major at the time, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass.
Alaric DeArment wrote an article in The New Republic in early 2023, where he noted that Americans from marginalised communities were looking to leave because of a rise in gun violence and far right (read Trump’s MAGA horde) politics. He wrote this article not long after he applied for German citizenship through his mother’s side of the family1.
After what happened in the US on January 20th and subsequently, I have found myself constantly scrolling through assorted writings on Substack, where a large number of reasonably literate Americans, and some very astute Australians (e.g. John Quiggin, Tim Dunlop) are fulminating, or at least aghast at the idiotic petulance from the Mango Mussolini. I also recently heard this sort of scrolling being appropriately termed ‘doomscrolling’.
The Mango Mussolini has refused to rule out economic pressure or military action to take over Greenland. Greenland is currently one of the two autonomous territories of the Kingdom of Denmark; the other being the Faroe Islands1. Inhabitants of both of those territories are citizens of Denmark and as Denmark is part of the European Union, they are therefore European Union citizens2.
Back when I was at university studying palaeontology, while quaffing our numerous cups of coffee during the day, I and a colleague used to muse about the ideal palaeontological job we wanted, and it usually came down to working at the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics (BMR) in Canberra. We didn’t think it would ever happen, and that we would initially be the most highly qualified ‘check-out chicks’ in a local supermarket.
Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe1 was a typographer by training and owned a printing business prior to entering the German Army in 1934, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant. After his service in the Army was over, he joined the Waffen-SS as an Untersturmführer on November 11, 1939, the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. On January 30, 1940 he was promoted to Obersturmführer and in 1942 he was promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain).
“Let them eat cake” (actually the strict translation is ‘Let them eat brioche’) is a quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution and wife of the last king of France, Louis XVI. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving subjects had no bread.