Having a bit of a hectic Monday, but (or maybe so?) I’m finding time for this live performance of I Giorni (The Days) from blog favourite Ludovico Einaudi last year.
Honestly, everything else can wait. Take just six minutes out to reset, regroup and regather your thoughts with some beautiful, peaceful music, and some stunning visuals of a special piece at a special concert.
I’ve torn a muscle in my lower left leg, and never has a truer Instagram thing been plonked on my feed…
How do they know? How?!?
It’s really so irritating. I can’t run or play football – I can’t really walk very well at the moment – and it’s all just very frustrating. What did I do to cause this problem? I went for a run: not even a fast run, not even a hard run. Just an ordinary run and now my leg doesn’t work properly.
I’ll have a review of how things are going tomorrow morning and maybe give the Physio a call, but I’m thinking that not running and not playing football will be right up there amongst her advice, and all of the Southern Suburbs will know if she tries to massage it. It’s quite sore.
Still – let’s look on the positive side of things. Things could be worse: I don’t have chronic plantar fascia pain…
…and (thankfully) my legs don’t look like that.
I think he’s going to need more than just a bit of dry needling to sort them out.
Always be kind to service industry workers. Often, the conditions they work in and (especially these days) the abuse they face really isn’t worth the money that they are paid. And yet they still have to smile and be polite and look after you.
The best way that you can understand exactly what working in that sort of job entails is to do it yourself for a while. I’m close to suggesting that it should be mandatory, like some sort of National Service Industry Service. A deeply upopular idea, perhaps, but it would definitely make the world a nicer place.
And so fair play to the guys that turned up for this shift, despite the – somewhat concerning – issues with the refrigerator.
Wow. Whiny, entitled customers, hard work, long hours, poor pay and now there’s a bloody demon in the fridge.
Enough is enough.
You can really understand why some of the staff didn’t show up. But those who did, those who stepped up to the plate when the chips were down, well, they deserve a medal and – at the very least – your understanding and respect. Because (like it says) no one wants to work anymore, but they still are doing. Serving you.
So just remember:
And no, obviously Socrates didn’t say this, but still, this is good practice. Because God only knows what’s going on in the fridge behind the counter.
Because of the politics behind the funding behind the science:
And the details thereof:
The administration proposed a massive 55% reduction for NSF’s FY 2027 budget, cutting funding from $8.75 billion (FY 2026) to $3.96 billion. This includes sharp reductions to graduate fellowships and the elimination of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences directorate.
…it’s perhaps unsurprising that alarm bells are beginning to ring in the USA. And even the anti-science demon in charge of tearing the US apart has noticed – but he can’t quite put his finger on why it’s happening:
So close.
I love the confused look on his face here. Like a baboon that is contemplating why it can’t get into a locked car at Cape Point.
There’s a great op-ed by Sally Kornbluth – President of MIT – which is well worth a read, but let me just share the final couple of paragraphs here:
Now, I don’t really mind if the US falls behind in its scientific research. But while everyone is bombing and hating everyone else on the widely-publicised political stage, there are a lot of international scientific collaborations that quietly continue – often despite the politics of the countries concerned – and work to advance healthcare, technology and our understanding of the world around us, and – through those things – to advance humankind.
Those collaborations are also now falling apart because of the lack of funding. And that’s hurting everyone.
We’re already seeing the effects of the USAID cuts in Africa, and now we’re watching a brain drain from the USA because of the same policies.
And it’s equal parts of hilarious and terrifying to watch them repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot.
And it’s not good news.
This from Dr Craig Spencer:
And he should know:
To be fair, this assumption means that I should be a bit of an authority on a lot of illnesses. And – because people do ask, my Top 3 worst ones from a personal experience point of view would be: Covid at number one, with Malaria and Influenza rather close behind. I’m guessing that if I managed to get it, Ebola might top the list quickly and (in all probability) finally.
Anyway…
The combined confirmed and suspected Ebola cases in DRC are now more than 1,000.
All signs are pointing to a very long and catastrophic outbreak in Central Africa:
Next door in Uganda, the case count is seven. While this number is low compared to DRC, a concerning development is that two health care workers recently tested positive with uncertain exposure histories. If they weren’t treating known Ebola cases, this means it’s spreading undetected in Uganda as well.
As ever with outbreaks in less developed areas of the world, we’ll likely never know the true scale of this outbreak. And we definitely won’t have an accurate handle on what is going on day-to-day. That makes it very difficult to direct whatever resources might be available in order to help those on the ground. And all of this has been compounded by the withdrawal of USAID in the region. We can’t say for definite that this caused the outbreak to occur, but it’s fairly well accepted by those in the know that it will be playing a big part in not being able to control it more quickly and efficiently.
The US plan to bury their heads in the sand, and direct anyone from the affected region to a (as yet unbuilt) field hospital in Kenya is a worrying and bizarre decision (at least when compared with previous presidencies).
But whatever the causes and whatever the complications, it’s clear that this outbreak is – at the present time, at least – completely out of control.