Category: politics

The Drama of The Doomsday Clock

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It’s 89 seconds to midnight. It’s the closest that humanity has ever been to self-wrought extinction (well, since 1947, anyway). At least, that’s what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is telling us, anyway. They’re the ones that get to inform us about where The Doomsday Clock is sitting this year.

And what exactly is The Doomsday Clock?

The Doomsday Clock is a design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet.

And look, I get that in a day with 86,400 seconds, being just 89 from complete destruction isn’t a great place to be. But then also, looking at things another way, we started just 420 seconds away from annihilation back in 1947, and we’ve only ever been 17 minutes away at our very safest. And then add to that, the fact that we’ve “only” moved one second towards complete obliteration in this year’s update:

In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, the Science and Security Board sends a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.

Yep. Awful. But then, this also suggests that we could keep going at the frankly horrendous rates of killing each other and destroying the environment that we’ve been working so hard upon for the last 12 months for at least another 88 years, and we’ll still be ok. Just.

See, they’ve gone in all too dramatic, and now they have no wiggle room at all.

If they’d started back in 1947 with an hour instead of seven minutes, it would mostly have been fine. They could have knocked off a few minutes here and there, added on a few when things were looking better. The only issue with this approach would likely have been that people would have looked at the thing and basically not given a toss. So sure, there needed to be a bit of drama in there, I get it.

But they went in too hard, too soon. And now we’re all supposed to be scared over a 1.11% increase in the likelihood of self-inflicted destruction? Nope.

Look at the warnings that The Doomsday Clock is sending us, and look at mankind’s reaction.

I’m calling for a reset of The Doomsday Clock: stick it back to 15 minutes to midnight or something so that we can actually move the hands a significant distance and see where we actually stand when there are important developments one way or the other.

Although, honestly, they’re really only likely to go one way, right?

Because a second here or there is really not going to put us on edge and give us the wake-up call that we so clearly need. In fact, it might take actual planetary ruination before someone important (and no, it won’t be him) pipes up and starts wondering if we should do (or should have done) something to stop it all.

Tick tock.

More on that thing that’s happening over there

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As a scientist, I have written a lot of stuff which is detailed, well referenced, and (I think, at least) explains things in a straightforward, step-by-step manner which can be understood by the layperson. Sometimes, I write them on the blog. Like this, maybe. However, recently, those sort of posts have been few and far between. They take a lot of research and effort and this blog is something of a hobby for me, not a job. I simply don’t have the time to lob out 2,000 words on stuff very regularly. I’m sure this is a relief to some of you and a bit of an annoyance to others, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, much to the beagle’s delight.

Other people do write stuff for a living though, and so I’m going to piggy back on a really well-researched, really nicely written post here today. It’s from Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE), which is a sceince communication website:

Providing a direct line of “translated” public health science to you.

And they do exactly that: cutting through the big words and the jargon…

Scientists, Engineers, Lawyers and, most of all, Medical Doctors have been using unnecessary terminology to maintain their lofty positions in society for years. I hate it. One of the most important things I have learnt during my career is that presentations, explanations, even informal chats about work and technical stuff should always be pitched according to one’s audience. Sure, chat to the Prof about Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamase producing Gram Negative Bacilli, call them ESBLs – he’ll understand. But when you’re explaining it to your mum, call them “superbugs” – and then she’ll understand too. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.

…to give a easy to understand – and so a useful and easy to learn from! – version of what’s happening in public health at the moment.

And that’s exactly what Kristen Panthagani has done here.
[PDF mirror here for anyone struggling with the Substack website]

She describes in intimate detail and open, honest language why Trump’s health policies – in the hands of the loony RFK Jr. – are based on inconsistencies and nonsense, and the huge and very real costs of getting this sort of thing wrong. Which they are clearly doing.

It’s a really great read with fundamental concepts which apply to so many other of the dodgy internet health cowboys and grifters plaguing us out there, and I’d fully encourage you to take a few minutes out to read through it and follow some of the links which support her watertight case.

I’d write more of this sort of thing if I could.
For the moment, though, please enjoy someone else’s fine work.

Today’s chuckles

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We had a lovely school concert last week (as briefly documented here), but what if school concerts were like festivals?

I mean, no offence intended, but yeah, you might think twice.

We’ve been through this one before.

Just with slightly different terminology. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

In fact, if anything, the mental images conjured up by these descriptions are actually more accurate.

Look, Climate Change is a real thing…

But don’t worry. Whoever the Big Orange Goon puts in charge of the USA’s Environmental Department will surely sort it all out. After all, President (Elect) Spanky McLiarface is doing wonderful work already, putting a rabid anti-vaxxer in charge of Health, doubling the number of wankers in charge of Government Efficiency, and putting this tosser as head of Defence:

Of course, he later claimed he was joking about that (you decide), but he’s still deadly serious about…

Women in the military:

“I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he explained. “Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally—not traditionally, over history—men in those positions are more capable.”

About who he thinks is going to command the military:

He wrote that “affirmative action posts have skyrocketed, with ‘firsts’ being the most important factor in filling new commanders. We will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”

About how stupid Ivy League graduates are:

“I have a new rule, the more elite the university and advanced a graduate is, the dumber they are. If you went to an Ivy League, prove that you have any common sense at all.”

Hegseth went to Princeton and Harvard, which actually does kind of prove his point.

And about how he just wants to get along with everyone:

“Next to the communist Chinese and their global ambitions, Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed,” he wrote in American Crusade.

Wait. What?

Voting for Donald: I’m swung!

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Ask any political commentator and they’ll tell you that the only states that matter in the United States right now are the swing states. And look for any Presidential candidate right now, and they’ll be in one of those swing states, trying to swing it their way.

North Carolina is one of those swing states, and yesterday, Republican candidate [checks notes] “Donald Trump” was there trying to swing it his way.

It’s worth remembering that this is a tough ask. The candidates for the two main parties are pretty much neck and neck, and of course they would be, since they are the best two people that America could find to choose between for the biggest job in the country and one of the biggest jobs on the planet.

And because these candidates are the best, because the job is so big, and because the race is so tight, literally every word counts. Everything will be analysed, broken down, fact checked and reported.
The voters think that they’ve heard it all before, and so it’s going to take something exceptional to put either one of the big guns into the all important driving seat.

With all that in mind, please enjoy Donald Trump’s closing remarks in Gastonia, NC this weekend:

“When I say insane asylums, and then I say, Doctor Hannibal Lecter, does anybody know? They go crazy they say, oh, he brings up these names out of – well, that’s genius, right, Doctor Hannibal Lecter.

There’s nobody worse than him. Silence of the Lambs. Who the hell else would even remember that? I have a great memory but they always hit me. I don’t bring it up too much because they have to take such a – he brought up Hannibal Lecter. What does that have to do with this? What is it? It has everything to do with it, right? He was – that’s who we are allowing into our country and we can’t allow it in our country.

So I’ve done something for you for you that I haven’t done in 20 speeches, I brought up Doctor Hannibal Lecter and we’re allowing him, you watch, you watch these fake people will say again, he brought up Hannibal Lecter has absolutely nothing to do. You know I do the weave, right, the weave it’s genius. You bring up Hannibal Lecter, you mention insane asylum. Hannibal Lecter. You go out, now there’ll be a time in life where the weave won’t finish properly at the bottom and then we can talk.

But right now it’s pure genius hey, I have an uncle, my uncle, Uncle John, my father’s brother, 41 years at MIT longest serving professor has so many degrees he didn’t know what the hell to do with them all in the most complicated, I understand a lot of this stuff, you know, I believe in that. Like, I mean, Jack Nicklaus is not gonna produce a bad golfer. Right you know, that’s the way it works it’s just one of those things and it’s in the family and it’s whatever.”

I know, right?

For me, it’s obviously right up there with MLK Jr.’s I Have A Dream or Churchill’s We Shall Fight On The Beaches. And thus, it will surely take its rightful place as the most inspired – and most inspiring – political monologue of the 21st Century. And I suppose that I could add “so far” on the end of that sentence, but really, who amongst us honestly believes that this will be outdone in the next 76 years?

Literally all of America has been crying out for something… anything: some sign or indication as to who should lead their country for the next 4 years. And if you read those words above and the answer isn’t clear to you… well… then I don’t know what needs to be done.

Of course, the real issue here is that North Carolina needed swinging, and so Trump came out with this absolute shitshow of rambling, nonsensical drivel in front of his supporters at the event – and all across America – and they will still choose to vote for him.

“Doomed” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Election Experts

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It seems that South Africa is full of political experts. Who knew?
What a country, though. Who could forget when it was full of microbiologists and vaccinologists not so long ago? And then, just after that, specialists on the history and geopolitical situation in the ex-Soviet Republics and then the same for the Middle East.

That’s the sort of pivoting and agility management that you only find in this remarkable population.

Who knows to what we will turn our collective hands tomorrow?

Right now, it’s spin doctoring of the highest order:


Explaining why this party’s 0.3% is actually a better result than that party’s 22.3%.
How that party winning this area doesn’t actually count for anything, because [stereotypical voter demographic] was always going to vote that way.
Calling for the head of a party they don’t even care about, while studiously ignoring the fact that they outperformed everyone’s wildest predictions.
Just making everyone aware that it’s someone else’s fault that the 68% of the population that support your single policy party’s single policy mysteriously morphed into 0.21% on election day.

Still, all this mental manoeuvering does at least distract us from the rather unpleasant thought of an ANC coalition with the EFF (ANC-lite) or MK (ANC-heavy), running what’s left of the country (into the ground).

And it’s also not leaving much space for wondering where local political phoenix has-been Patricia de Lille is going to emerge this time around. But then again, who cares?