https://becomeunshakeable.com/join-the-challenge
Free, five-day, high-energy, high-speed. Up for it?
You’ll always come away with a few good tips or some inspiration from these things, even though the situation in your country may be very different.
We are living in interesting times, as they say. Challenging times always mean “lots of opportunities, for thriving in the future and also for learning”.
This morning, I spotted this video in my Dutch news app (NOS News).
Daphne (22) used to live with her mother and brother and sometimes with her dad. After her brother moved out, it was soon time for her to leave too.
Now she’s living with Peter and Wietske, who’ve given her a room in their house in The Hague. Daphne rents this room. No other housing options were available to her.
Peter and Wietske have been taking care of children for a long time and say that they always manage to find a click with their young “charges”. They thought it was odd that the organization that arranges these matches asked them if they had a problem with tattoos. “That’s about the exterior, it says nothing about the child.”
Daphne feels free, confident and welcome.
This screenshot below shows Daphne (right) and Wietske (left), the woman in whose house she’s living.
https://nos.nl/video/2460386-daphne-22-was-thuisloos-nu-woont-ze-bij-peter-en-wietske
Watch the video below.
The reason why the birds were panicked when they saw all the dead fishes was also concern for their own safety. Birds are damn smart and if you, as a fish-eating bird, see loads of dead fishes, you know that there is something wrong that is likely to impact you too if you’re not very careful.
The likely problem? The probable cause? The United Utilities sewage works, apparently. United Utilities, however, refuses to release data. Instead, it targets or threatens campaigners with legal action. Why?
I received this update because I signed the petition: https://www.change.org/p/save-windermere-lake-from-sewage-and-an-environmental-catastrophe
For the breakdown of evidence that has been collected so far please visit: https://www.savewindermere.com
However…
So, you may have thought “bollocks” when you heard that inflation is down and if you did, nobody can blame you.
Lots more data on this page: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/18/uk-inflation-fall-masks-continued-price-rise-pain-for-households If you’re a man and have relatively small feet, you may want to try women’s shoes, for example. The inflation percentage for those is only 0.2%. For men’s shoes, it’s 5.6%.
The biggest problem currently seems to be the big staffing gap needing to be filled after so many EU citizens left the UK because of Brexit. It’s holding businesses back and even staunch Brexit supporters are now asking the government to be more lenient.
I’ve also just read that Workaway has dropped all UK listings because too many people now get stopped at the border and sent back to where they came from. If that happens to Workaway, I wonder if it might start affecting AirBnB too at some point, even though it works very differently.
Neither is Sadiq Khan.
As tax payers, we would all be funding “one of the worst sexual offenders in modern criminal history”. He’s a sadistic predator.
Do we already have a petition going on this? Looks like it won’t be necessary.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has vowed to seek the forfeiture of the state-funded pension, reported to be £22,000 a year, after Carrick admitted 49 offences against a dozen women.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supports the move and will consider Mr Khan’s application, arguing Carrick “should never have been allowed to remain as an officer for so long”.
Robert Jenrick, a minister in her department, said the subsequently sacked officer could be stripped of his pension because the offending was linked to his position in the capital’s police force.
I’m amazed that Braverman backs the idea.
He wanted to carry out an act of kindness to help people struggling with the cost of living crisis
Free pizza. As long as you turn up when the doors open.
Who in Portsmouth is going to follow this example and make a name for herself?
Be prepared that more people will show up than you expect. However, also notice what happened when many more people showed up at this pizza guy’s doors.
I was running my Crockpot overnight to cook a new batch of legumes. Different ones than last week. There are so many different legumes! This batch will last me about a week. I put it in pots and tubs once it’s cooled down. In the microwave, I then cook a batch of brown rice, with some white rice mixed in, every few days.
That Crockpot provided some heat, so there was no need to run a heater.
My feet were cold, however, and weren’t getting any warmer. So I got up, put the kettle on and filled a hot-water bottle.
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” That’s what I exclaimed when I saw this headline.
It turns out to be another policing horror story that is chilling to read. (Trigger warning for those with a trauma history.)
As if Wayne Couzens wasn’t enough yet.
In case you don’t know that, Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and killed Sarah Everard in 2021.
He was suspended and arrested in October 2021.
David Carrick ended up in the same unit as Wayne Couzens, namely the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, guarding embassies, Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament.
“Wayne Couzens, 48, worked in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command and finished a shift guarding the US embassy hours before he carried out a false arrest of Everard on 3 March and abducted her.” (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/03/sarah-everard-killer-wayne-couzens-worked-as-parliamentary-guard)
“Alarm bells also failed to ring within the force, which promoted Carrick in 2009 from patrolling the streets to being a member of an elite armed unit, the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, guarding embassies, Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament.” (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/16/metropolitan-police-officer-david-carrick-revealed-as-serial-rapist)
A quote from within the CPS: “scale of the degradation Carrick subjected his victims to is unlike anything I’ve encountered in my 34 years with the Crown Prosecution Service”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-64289461
Now imagine that you’re a woman in London and you’re being stalked or have been raped. Would you still report this to the Met, already knowing that the police in England have admitted that they fail stalking victims as a rule and that police officers also often give rape victims a hard time?
14 January: The phone that I bought on 6 January got a system update yesterday, oddly enough, and then it stopped doing data, similarly as what happened with my other two recently bought phones. Yes, I’ve just verified it. It’s not the SIM card, it’s the phone. Yes, I’ve reset it.
That is, the temporary SIM card (for a different network) that I used after my other SIM cards suddenly stopped working, that got activated remotely by a woman whose voice sounded like that of the woman in the flat below me (coincidence or voice cloning?) and who asked me a lot of questions such as where I had bought the SIM card and who had to call me back in order to activate the card and who told me at least twice that if I didn’t want to auto-top-up, even though I had no payment method registered, I had to log in on the day before the credit ran out, ran out of credit yesterday. After that, the phone stopped going online, but the system software update came first.
(During the call, she also kept asking me to go online, which I obviously couldn’t.)
I now have 5 phones, none of which are fully functional. These 5 phones can hold 8 SIM cards. When you set up these phones, the three later ones, it says that the phone network operator, phone manufacturer and Google can force updates onto the phones, whether you like it or not. You can’t stop these “updates”. This offers ill-willing folks a perfect avenue to mess with your phone.
Or is this all related to the phone make, somehow? I’ll explore that next. (Nope, can’t find anything on that.) (Will try something else next.)
A thought… Could it be some anti-crime or counter-terrorism thing that I am running into? Because I (am forced to) have so many different phones and SIM cards? And/or so many different gmail addresses? Or do they think I am a conspiracy nut because the utterly bat-shit-crazy stuff that goes on in Portsmouth indeed is beyond belief?
Remember, however, that several of my earlier phones actually got “fried” because of all the hacking and that it’s also happened that my phone – one of the ones I no longer have – no longer connected to the nearest cellphone tower for a while. I had to leave the flat and walk into Lake Road or into Fratton Road beyond Lake Road. That was at the end of 2016.
(See below; I’ve unsuccessfully tried to get wired broadband now to get around this nonsense.)
Health-wise, I am definitely starting to do a lot better. (Jeez, I’m in bad shape though. I really need to catch up on exercise. That’s what I am doing and I am also trying to eat as healthy as possible.)
Continue readingI first saw Eddie Marsan on “Ray Donovan”. He’s quickly becoming one of my favorite actors.
In a 2018 interview with The Scotsman, he said: “I thought, the Americans think I can do anything, and the British see me as a thief with two lines. So that’s why I don’t work much in the UK.”
He’s now narrated this two-part documentary about Broadmoor for ITV, though.
It, too, is about diversity and inclusivity, about the need to create a more compassionate world, in which children don’t suffer. That’s not the whole story. I know. But do watch it, please.
Part 1: https://www.itv.com/watch/broadmoor/2a2965/2a2965a0001
Part 2: https://www.itv.com/watch/broadmoor/2a2965/2a2965a0002
ITV also got Eddie Marsan to play John Darwin in its four-part series “The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe” (2022). The story is a little depressing, but this series is brimming with brilliant acting, from everyone involved.
List of authors.
This very determined future earth & life scientist got what she wanted!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64231245
Continue readinghttps://www.itv.com/watch/harry-the-interview/10a3975
12 January update
Read this too: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/12/opinions/spare-prince-harry-review-masculinity-culture-wars-staples/index.html
I think Harry is doing the right thing and I think that what he is doing will have a much broader impact than he imagines (because he moves in a small segment of society, I figured, but later in the interview, I realized that he does see that broader context very well).
He is right. Some things really need to change, how paparazzi behave being one of them. I sometimes see left-wing media do the same things that the tabloids do, twist things totally out of proportion and turn them into horror stories that get picked up abroad but that never really happened (not the way they were presented in those media). There’s too much mud-slinging and ethics are often absent.
He’s also on a healing journey. He is going through what some people go through after a horrendously bad relationship after they finally break away. He is owning his truth, his life. He’s choosing a life of his own.
I am one of the many many people who still remember what they were doing when his mother died. I was meeting a half-French friend of mine, in Amstelveen. I took the bus. I may have been late because of the news. I think so. (I think I called her before I left. Those were the days before mobile phones.) Together, we watched French TV. I don’t think we did much else than that that day, besides eat.
I too, until now, had always thought that the tunnel was a long one, like under the Meuse River or under the IJ.
I also still remember when my mother died. I was 14. Harry was 12 when his died. Mine had been ill for years. Harry’s perished because of a car crash.
Dads never know what to say, Harry. Mine woke me up, asked how I had slept and then said that my mother was asleep too (had fallen asleep?), something along those lines. I remember thinking “okay, that’s alright, then”, something like that. Next, my dad said that she was not merely asleep. “Oh.” I thought. “Oh.”
I went to school, stopped by at the office of the head of the school or whatever the guy’s role was, because I had been told to do so, and told him very calmly in a matter-of-fact tone: “ik kom u even vertellen dat mijn moeder vannacht is overleden”, sort of similar to how you and your brother felt when you had to shake all those people’s hands, I suppose.
(I think the guy was a little shocked because of my calm tone.)
(As if throwing a teary-eyed tantrum would have brought her back. Besides, she had been in a lot of pain and now all that pain was gone.)
One girl in my class asked me “maar vind je het dan niet erg dat je moeder is overleden?” and I thought to myself “how can you ask such a stupid question?”. (Did she ask that because I wasn’t crying non-stop?) My mother had been ill for years, seriously ill, but even then, it takes you a while to absorb it. That she’s really gone. It’s still sudden. The idea that someone close to you suddenly no longer exists is really odd when you’re still young. People have no idea. One of my mother’s sisters, my aunt, had passed away pretty suddenly shortly earlier. But she wasn’t part of our household. That’s different.
I didn’t go see her after she had died. At the funeral home. My sisters did. They were younger. I wanted to remember my mother the way she had been when she was still alive (and not ill). My sisters didn’t have the luxury of my memories.
But Harry needs to move on now, for his own sake. I think he knows that.
There are lots of people with the same (similar) story and there are lots of people who, like the paparazzi, just don’t get it. That’s life.
Maybe he can help change some things in society. Because of the impact he has, as a British prince.
I hope so.
Does it matter that Rishi Sunak is the shortest male UK Prime Minister since Winston Churchill? Of course not. I made a two-part video in response to this item in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jan/06/is-it-really-better-to-be-tall-we-ask-an-expert
Besides what I say in the video about fashion effects, could it even be that the more westernized a society is, the more emphasis it places on height? White people tend to be taller. Chinese people and other Asians have not only been undergoing surgery to become taller but also to make their eyes look more western (Caucasian).
There is also a north-south height difference within continental Europe. The southern countries tended to be poorer. People in prosperous egalitarian countries tend to be taller. But what about the Masai? As Majid Ezzati states, genetic factors also play a role. I’ll come back to that.
If you put too much emphasis on the belief that tall people are more capable, then you start disadvantaging shorter people. That way, the belief turns into reality. This is how discrimination works. It’s why black people suffered more during the pandemic than whites, for example.
Besides, having a lot of tall people carries a high environmental burden as tall people take up more space in transport and require more resources (bigger furniture, more fabric for clothes, more food).
For the record, I’m Dutch and my dad was a milkman until I was 12 or 13 or so, so I grew up on lots and lots of dairy. So did my two younger sisters, though it likely applied more strongly to me. I am as tall as Rishi Sunak. For a long time, I was the youngest and the tallest in my classes because I had relatively long legs (fast runner). As of my teens, that changed and I was no longer the tallest at all. Both my sisters are taller than I am. They are Nordic/Germanic types, whereas I have more southern European looks. We have French and Nordic as well as Germanic heritage in the family.
I remember the Dutch school milk program that Majid Ezzati mentions in item in The Guardian from when I was a child. I don’t think it’s still running. The UK should introduce it. Make it creamy Chocomel or the like. Then kids will see it as a treat, while they get important nutrients at the same time. They can have it during their 10:30 break or at the start of their classes in the morning. You can fortify milk too, can’t you? This way you get big benefits at a doable cost and it’s simple to implement. Lactose-intolerant kids can have oat milk instead.
Links
“Why no adult stunting penalty or height premium? Estimates from native Amazonians in Bolivia” by
Ricardo Godoy, Oyunbileg Magvanjav, Colleen Nyberg, Dan T A Eisenberg, Thomas W McDade, William R Leonard, Victoria Reyes-García, Tomás Huanca, Susan Tanner, Clarence Gravlee (TAPS Bolivia Study Team)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19766067/
“Why are the Dutch so tall?” by BBC
https://youtu.be/q_lDTOIJ4xA
About height reduction surgery in the Netherlands:
“7 centimeter korter: lange kinderen laten groeischijf kapotmaken” by NOS Nieuws
https://nos.nl/artikel/2298678-7-centimeter-korter-lange-kinderen-laten-groeischijf-kapotmaken
“Reduction of excessive height in boys by bilateral percutaneous epiphysiodesis around the knee” by
Roelof J Odink,Willem Jan Gerver, Minne Heeg, Catrienus W Rouwé,Willie M Bakker van Waarde and Pieter J Sauer
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16249931/
“Would you have your legs broken to make yourself taller? The men who go through hell for a little extra height” by Simon Usborne
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/nov/09/would-you-have-your-legs-broken-to-make-yourself-taller-the-men-who-go-through-hell-for-a-little-extra-height
“New insight on height, arthritis” by Peter Reuell
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/07/new-insight-on-height-arthritis/
“Science says being tall could make you richer and more successful — here’s why” by Shana Lebowitz
https://www.businessinsider.com/tall-people-are-richer-and-successful-2015-9
“The Stature of the Self-Employed and its Premium” by Cornelius A. Rietveld, Jolanda Hessels and Peter van der Zwan
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2483038
“The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height” by Nicola Persico, Andrew Postlewaite and Dan Silverman
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~apostlew/paper/pdf/short.pdf
“Stature and status: height, ability, and labor market outcomes” by Anne Case and Christina Paxson
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w12466/w12466.pdf
“The height premium in Indonesia” by Kitae Sohn
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24480546/
“Two by two, inch by inch: Height as an indicator of environmental conditions during childhood and its influence on earnings over the life cycle among twins” by Elisabeth Lång and Paul Nystedt
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1570677X17301715
“Long-term changes of socioeconomic differences in height among young adult men in Southern Sweden, 1818-1968” by Stefan Öberg
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25212182/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265128963_Long-term_changes_of_socioeconomic_differences_in_height_among_young_adult_men_in_Southern_Sweden_1818-1968
“Big and tall: Does a height premium dwarf an obesity penalty in the labor market?” by Wang-Sheng Lee
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29055650/
Could it be that tall people live shorter lives? Take a look at these five articles and decide for yourself.
“I Wish I Was a Little Bit Shorter. The research is clear: Being tall is hazardous to your health” by Brian Palmer
https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/height-and-longevity-the-research-is-clear-being-tall-is-hazardous-to-your-health.html
“Impact of height and weight on life span” by T T Samaras and L H Storms
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1600586/ (1992)
“Evidence That Short People Live Longer: What We Know” by Cory Whelan
https://www.healthline.com/health/do-short-people-live-longer#the-science
“Is height related to longevity?” by Thomas T Samaras, Harold Elrick and Lowell H Storms
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12586217/ (2003)
“Human growth, height, size: Reasons to be small” by Thomas Samaras
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20110315/Human-growth-height-size-Reasons-to-be-small.aspx
The Oprah Winfrey social experiment:
“The Daring Racism Experiment That People Still Talk About 20 Years Later” by Lisa Capretto
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jane-elliott-race-experiment-oprah-show_n_6396980
“Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” Anti-Racism Experiment”
https://www.oprah.com/own-oprahshow/jane-elliotts-blue-eyesbrown-eyes-anti-racism-experiment
“Why Oprah’s secret racism experiment is more relevant than ever” by Maddison Leach
https://honey.nine.com.au/latest/oprah-winfrey-racism-experiment-1992/a199b24b-892e-4bd1-b1c4-dde619eebbcd
For comparison, to show that views can change:
“Tattoos No Longer A Kiss Of Death In The Workplace” by Rachel Hennessey
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelhennessey/2013/02/27/having-a-tattoo-and-a-job/#6e1f131616dc
“Remarks on human biological enhancement” by Henry T. Greely
https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/20018/05-Greely_Remarks_Final.pdf
Extra:
“The Drive for Perfect Children Gets a Little Scary” Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-08-24/the-drive-for-perfect-children-gets-a-little-scary
Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
http://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/masculinity/
Geert and Gert-Jan Hofstede’s website
https://geerthofstede.com/
https://geerthofstede.com/landing-page/
We still have a few dozen years to go, but we’ve already made a lot of headway.
Every four years, the American Meteorological Society assesses the situation, with support from the United Nations.
If the recovery continues at the same rate, then the thickness of most of this protective layer will be back at its 1980 values in 2040.
The Arctic and Antarctic will take longer, however. Over the Arctic, the ozone layer will take only five years longer to regain its former thickness, but the hole above Antarctica will take until 2066 to recover from our actions.
How did we damage the ozone layer? We used substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in air-conditioning units and refrigerators and also as propellant in aerosol containers, such as for hair spray and deodorant. After their use, they didn’t magically disappear and cease to exist. They rose up into the higher layers of the atmosphere.
More on this: https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer-science
This shows that where there is a will, there is a way.
This too is an aspect of anthropogenic (human-made) planetary change. It’s not just climate change that we’re causing.
Related is the news of the return of the ERBS:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/09/world/nasa-erbs-satellite-return-scn/index.html
It was launched in the year that I started my earth science studies.
“Global pollinator losses causing 500,000 early deaths a year – study”
“Insect declines mean reduced yields of healthy foods like fruit and vegetables and increased disease in people”
(Except arrogance…)
Lots of interference on my computer again.
(I usually remove these posts after a while because I refuse to let someone else control every fucking minute of my life. Yes, sometimes, I am mistaken, which is always a relief, but I am only sometimes mistaken.)
When I get addresses via Freecycle, they’re always at a great distance from here these days, such as Old Rectory Road where I have been a few times to pick something up that had been left outside for me. (On the bins.) This means that I am away for a while. When I’m away then, the locks often get picked. The first time I went to Old Rectory Road, they certainly were.
(Things get destroyed, or taken.)
It’s also happened that I was at St Jude’s on Friday evening while the locks were getting picked and yellow stickers were left behind by whoever did that to make sure I knew about it, too.
The Person’s or persons’ lock-picking ability also means that there are 5 or 6 different routes to my front door, depending on who else is out and who isn’t.
I stopped keeping a record of incidents a long time ago. There’s nothing you can do with it, it gobbles up an immense amount of time and it hammers home how powerless you are.
You can’t take any evidence to the police either. “It will only get lost.” In Southsea, I kept one item in the freezer for some time and I’ve later tried to preserve a few others for DNA traces, but why bother? I threw them out in the end.
In a country where just about everyone over roughly 45 is automatically “demonized” (according to several reports), all crimes against you are effectively legal if you’re over 45 (and are not Rees-Mogg or similar). You have almost no recourse.
I just realized that I have a legal duty of care to warn my not-too-clever lock-picker NOT TO TRY a mock-assembled piece of equipment, with for example the main weight-bearing bolt still missing.
(It is merely loosely held together, with even some parts still completely loose, not fastened at all because of missing bolts, nuts and screws.)
So I just printed a note that I stuck to the thing.
Does that feel nuts? Guess what.
There is case law on this.
I gave all my law books to to Advice Portsmouth a few years ago, but there is nothing wrong with my memory about some things that were in them.
13:21: The browser now tells me that THIS site is off line too, just like my zoho mail. (See below.)
(I made a screenshot, but he stops me from uploading it.)
The image has uploaded, but he won’t let me add it to this post. (I keep getting some line about a missing alt attribute.)
He won’t let me paste the image URL either.
13:30: This site is still offline, according to my browser.
According to a text message received at 11:59, I have now – without having used it – zero data on the NEW SIM card yet 24 GB according to its website. (He did something similar with one of my GiffGaff cards last week.)
But for the ad at the top I get:
“Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site.
We can’t connect to the server at db1c7d3011fce211d1c9ff94e5854308.safeframe.googlesyndication.com.”
14:58: I can see this website again and I can access zoho again.
12:48: Unable to reach one of my mail accounts (Zoho). It’s interface is also totally different. Is it down? (No.) For the record, I have not had its app on any of my phones for a while.
12:57: The Zoho website suddenly changed its interface back to the old version, but I am still not able to access my messages. Mail.admin says “server not found”.
In the past few days, I also discovered once again that at least one small tool has gone missing.
I’ve just finally been able to activate that spare SIM card that I bought months ago.
The person I spoke – Iman – with sounded like the woman in the flat below me.
I am always buying new phones and other stuff and getting new SIM cards in an attempt to stay ahead of the relentless hacking.
Cash Converters used to think that I was constantly impulse-buying new stuff, such as that UPS before I discovered that my locks had already been getting picked for years. They had a bigger model, by the way, but it weighed too much for me.
As I couldn’t do much in the past few days, I did a lot of sitting in my lazy chair.
(I dug up some music CDs that I wanted to play but my 64-bit computer won’t play them and the speakers won’t work on the 32-bit computer that does play the CDs. The external harddisk that all this stuff was on is no more.)
I noticed some nice things that I took photos of. Colors, textures, that kind of stuff.
I just tried to upload the photos, but I can’t, for some reason.
(I later borrowed a few books from the library.)
Someone kept opening the page on this website in which I talk about some of the stuff that I’ve experienced here, hinting that I should edit it or remove it. (So instead, I edited the page so that it now starts with me calling Portsmouth vile and immensely sadistic. I have had it with this mafia intimidation and retaliation bullshit.)
I usually get punished for talking about what’s going on here. That’s been happening for over a decade, so I know that pattern well.
So maybe that is why they shut down my phones.
The stupid mafia-style shit in this place.
