Pasta News Network - New Zealand

Coalition for Books chairperson Melanie Laville-Moore said the organisation began in 2019 after there was recognition that books needed to be more visible.

"Whether it be through reviews, shelf space, or whatever, it was time to collaborate and pool resources. The discussion now is, how do we go about having an organisation that is well-funded and well-researched to speak on behalf of the whole," Laville-Moore said.

Raise funding via the industry that wants this, not via my tax dollars.

Travellers from China will likely face new requirements to enter New Zealand, as Covid-19 numbers surge there, epidemiologist Michael Baker says.

China's switch last month from the "zero-Covid" policy that it had maintained for nearly three years led to infections sweeping across the country unchecked, with experts suggesting there was inconsistency between case and death numbers officially reported and what was happening on the ground.

Perpetually nervous man is nervous about nervous people from a particularly nervous country, harbouring pathogen that keeps perpetually nervous man nervous.

Despite every other country harbouring the same pathogen within its populace and borders.

Emeritus Professor Jeffrey Gordon of Ben-Gurion University’s Solar Energy and Environmental Physics Department has calculated that this would require six times less mass than the best nuclear option to provide the same amount of electricity.

He claims that his proposal would provide uninterrupted electricity supply for oxygen-producing facilities 100% of the time, with a sufficient number of panels always exposed to the sun.

Lofty goals.

Makes me want to play Millenium 2.2 again.

In the spirit of New Year’s predictions, I will boldly assert that the same may be true of 2023’s future word of the year, “conspiracy theory.”

Like “gaslighting” and “goblin mode,” it is a term that has taken on a new meaning in light of current events—and one that the Left–Establishment hegemony has desperately sought to appropriate and weaponize for its own purposes.

But in the next 12 months, we will see conservatives successfully reclaim it. In fact, the early adopters are already lighting the way on social media.

My picks: 2, 7 and 9.

Back to the coins. They embody firmness of value. You can tell the history of the world through coins. There is an element of tragedy here, looking through coins from a time when money was sound, government was small, and Americans believed in liberty and independence.

The money shot:

The Fed is a good printer. It is a terrible alchemist. So if you want to get rid of inflation once and for all, there is a way. Get rid of the Fed and make the dollar good as gold again. Make the dimes silver. Forget this embarrassing baloney-sandwich stuff we use today.

On November 25th there occurred a singularly rare event in the ongoing COVID-19 saga – truth was spoken to power. A distinguished medical doctor and infectious disease expert was given free rein to interrogate a government official, unmediated and without apparent time restraint. The doctor in question was the distinguished oncologist, professor emeritus at Kyoto university and Director and Chairman of the Translational research Information Centre (Tri) Masanori Fukushima. His rigorous and passionate berating of an official from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) on COVID-19 vaccine safety and government transparency made for gripping viewing. A recording swiftly went viral, elevating Doctor Fukushima to a new status as leading critic of the COVID-19 vaccines in Japan.

Based Professor. He is not wrong, going by the data.

When did the coronavirus first appear and begin spreading? Did it emerge in December in the Huanan wet market, or did it leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November, or was it intentionally released at the World Military Games in October? Was it spreading internationally during autumn 2019? Has it been around for years?

Here I’ll present evidence that the coronavirus appeared at some point in the second half of 2019 and was spreading globally during that autumn and winter.

Confirms a starting point in Italy, which lines up with known suggestions. Nothing about Canada though.

Since ChatGPT provides responses to almost any query provided to it, I decided to use several political orientation tests to determine whether its answers display a skew toward any particular political ideology.

The results were consistent across tests. All four tests, the Pew Research Political Typology Quiz, the Political Compass Test, the World's Smallest Political Quiz and the Political Spectrum Quiz classified ChatGPT's answers to their questions as left-leaning. All the dialogues with ChatGPT while conducting the tests can be found in this repository.

The bias of an artificial mind will depend on the dataset it is given. Fed progressive ideas, it will eventually turn ASICxual.

An entertaining exercise, but as a reminder, we should not take the meanderings of a language model as gospel.

From 2005:

When someone first learns about a new and potentially serious risk, the natural, healthy, and useful reaction is, in a sense, an over-reaction:

• You pause.

• You become hyper-vigilant.

• You personalize the risk.

• You take extra precautions.

These responses are signs of what psychiatrists call an adjustment reaction. They are part of the process of adjusting to the new risk. Here are the key characteristics of the adjustment reaction to crisis.

An old bookmark, worth re-posting.

From 2014:

We now know the government's Tamiflu stockpile wouldn't have done us much good in the event of a flu epidemic. But the secrecy surrounding clinical trials means there's a lot we don't know about other medicines we take.

Sounds familiar:

So does Tamiflu work? From the Cochrane analysis – fully public – Tamiflu does not reduce the number of hospitalisations. There wasn't enough data to see if it reduces the number of deaths. It does reduce the number of self-reported, unverified cases of pneumonia, but when you look at the five trials with a detailed diagnostic form for pneumonia, there is no significant benefit. It might help prevent flu symptoms, but not asymptomatic spread, and the evidence here is mixed.

Rhinoviri are tricky creatures.

In 1973 Yorkshire public television made a short film of the Nobel laureate while he was there. The resulting film, Take the World From Another Point of View, was broadcast in America as part of the PBS Nova series. The documentary features a fascinating interview, but what sets it apart from other films on Feynman is the inclusion of a lively conversation he had with the eminent British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle.

"There's a way of looking at something anew. As if you never saw it before, for the first time and asking questions about it. As if, you were different."