iMovie - Making your first movie

 File Management:  Movies are often huge files.  Movies contain duplicates of the movie clips from cameras or phones.

• Create a folder on the desktop named after your movie project e.g. "2020-12-31 Boys Trampoline"
• Copy into this folder all "source" files (movie clips, still photos and audio files) that you want to use in your movie. 
  If you don't want to keep an editable version of the movie project, then delete the movie clips after you copy them to the folder so that the new finished movie will replace them in your "Photos" app.  
  (Yes I know iMovie will connect to the "Photos" and "Music" apps automatically, but, if you wish to archive an editable version of the project, we cannot rely on the same track existing in your "Music" app, or the same photo remaining in your "Photos" app.)
• Open iMovie - File - Open Library - New

In the moment with COVID-19

Every school morning, my brother John and I would escape the cocoon of 4 Ivy St, Burwood and set off towards Ely Road. 

I remember vividly, the carefree childhood saunter where each foot was thrown forward in the approximate direction of travel while the schoolbag was swung in exploratory arcs that sometimes surprised others or oneself.  

Every morning was the start of an adventure and any option for meandering was to be taken. There was usually at least one house under construction somewhere along our street as suburbia smothered the Burwood fields.  Here were places to explore and things to pull, wield or throw. 

 At 6, I did not worry about destinations or deadlines.  Responsibility was not in my vocabulary. I was “in the moment” and scanned the world with the eyes of a tourist.  Somedays, there would be puddles to throw rocks into. On freezing mornings, panes of ice could be smashed. I was constantly scanning for objects to squash, scuff, pick up or throw. The freedom from adults was intoxicating. 

The Social Dilemma: Some proposals

As social media companies have grown throughout the world, there have been growing concerns that they are increasing social conflict by individually "feeding" information to "users" that moves their interest more and more toward extreme content. The most egregious of these are the murders and suicides streamed to large numbers of people.

The social media companies initially claimed that they were "neutral platforms" that hosted information but were not responsible for it.  Increasingly, they have accepted responsibility for "curating" extreme content, and employed large numbers of people and built AI to act as censors.  This response has failed to prevent abuses in many instances and also been criticised because of the growing political bias being included in the brief of the censors.

Review: Life is Elsewhere (Kundera)

Why young people are such passionate monists, emissaries of the absolute...

Powerful and seductive chronicle of the life of a sensitive and creative person who expresses his narcissism through writing poetry. Jaromil never escapes the cocoon of his mothers love. His desperate attempts to find recognition and love beyond his mother lead him to ape the sickening social and political trends of his time.

Kundera writes with wonderful imagery and deep understanding of how youth is inherently and often fatally vulnerable to political extremism: "In immature man the longing persist for the safety and unity of the universe which he occupied alone inside his mother's body. Anxiety (or anger) persists as well - toward the adult world of relativity in which he is lost like a drop in an alien sea. That's why young people are such passionate monists, emissaries of the absolute..." (p220)

This powerful polemic (sometimes sounding akin to a preachy movie voice over) is sprinkled throughout the book, and used explicitly to return the reader to the birds eye view of the dispassionate observer. 

Pro familia mori ?

 History is a testament to the inevitability of the rise and fall of cultures.

Those falling resort to military conflict - or just disappear.

Where conflict arises, survival is determined by many factors, but passionate commitment to a group is the most important.

Apart from a gallant but underappreciated few, most Australians born since 1930 have had a dream run.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - (Ode 3 -Horace) Dulce et Decorum est - (Wilfred Owen)

I wonder whether there are many Australian's left who Pro Patria Mori, or even Pro Publica Mori, or even Pro Familia Mori ???

Would capitulation bring peace ?  

Modern Monetary Theory - Only possible for countries with more foreign assets than debts

The following extract form Wikipedia  seems to summarise my  doubts:

" MMT argues that as long as there is a demand for the issuer's currency, whether the bond holder is foreign or not, governments can never be insolvent when the debt obligations are in their own currency; this is because the government is not constrained in creating its own fiat currency (although the bond holder may affect the exchange rate by converting to local currency).
MMT does agree with mainstream economics, that debt denominated in a foreign currency certainly is a fiscal risk to governments, since the indebted government cannot create foreign currency. In this case the only way the government can sustainably repay its foreign debt is to ensure that its currency is continually in high demand by foreigners over the period that it wishes to repay the debt – an exchange rate collapse would potentially multiply the debt many times over asymptotically, making it impossible to repay. In that case, the government can default, or attempt to shift to an export-led strategy or raise interest rates to attract foreign investment in the currency. Either one has a negative effect on the economy. "

The NIIP seems important in that it calculates the ratio of foreign debt to assets.  Many major countries have far larger foreign debts that foreign assets, making them vulnerable to printing money.  If (when ?) the USA loses its status as world currency they may also have to deal with their astronomical debt.

I suspect that countries receiving loans under the Belt and Road have negative NIIP's and as such will be "at the mercy" of China when they fail to repay.  I suspect that this is a deliberate strategy of the Chinese government.

So MMT sounds like it supports a strategy for countries with low foreign debt.

An analogy I thought of: 
Gambling in Australia moves money around within the country.  individuals get better or worse off, but the countries wealth is unaffected.  A gambler from another country either wins wealth away from Australia or loses wealth to Australia. When they leave, the country is materially richer or poorer.

Covid19 Pandemic - Australian Government Contact Tracking Phone App - Balancing privacy and precedent against safety

Balance the benefit (lower cost and potentially faster contact tracking) against the negatives (normalizing China style citizen tracking; potential data retention, potential data repurposing).
On balance, as manual contact tracking will still be necessary, and our infection rate is so low with less invasive techniques, I am not going to join.
If the infection rate looked like reaching Spanish levels, then all citizen rights are up for grabs and I could probably support mandatory use of such an app.


"When these Bluetooth chips do pass in the night, you should expect a large number of false positives.

If I am in the wide open, my Bluetooth and your Bluetooth might ping each other even if you’re much more than six feet away,” Mostashari said. “You could be through the wall from me in an apartment, and it could ping that we’re having a proximity event. You could be a on a different floor of the building and it could ping. You could be biking by me in the open air and it could ping.”

https://www.theverge.com/interface/2020/4/10/21215267/covid-19-contact-tracing-apps-bluetooth-coronavirus-flaws-public-health

Facebook happy to censor for anyone to keep growing

Many like to get upset about censorship in Vietnam, or China or Russia, but fail to see that these countries are enabled by the behavior of western governments and companies.
Facebook and Twitter are expanding their censorship technologies in the west against a wide range of specific views as demanded by “progressive” groups and governments.
Speech is becoming less and less free around the world - not just in commie countries.

Facebook, Google and Apple and many others are increasingly restricting the free flow of information everywhere to appease both governments and the tastes of the online mobs that Facebook wants to retain as customers.
As private companies, they have a  right to do that, but it is very sad to see that among all the bandwagons that companies love to be seen on, free speech is never one of them.  The reason for this is that they know that their customers do not value free speech.

“Facebook’s local servers in Vietnam were taken offline early this year, slowing local traffic to a crawl until it agreed to significantly increase the censorship of “anti-state” posts for local users, two sources at the company told Reuters on Tuesday.”
Amnesty International: “Facebook’s compliance with these demands sets a dangerous precedent. Governments around the world will see this as an open invitation to enlist Facebook in the service of state censorship,”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-facebook-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-agreed-to-censor-posts-after-vietnam-slowed-traffic-sources-idUSKCN2232JX

Medical staff risk jobs by speaking truth

Freedom of speech is so routinely compromised on issues of race, gender identity, sex and religion that it is no surprise to see a suppression strategy in a US hospital that mimics  the approach of the Chinese government.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/coronavirus-health-workers-speak-out.html

Fires Caused by humans completely overwhelm any possible climate change causes

As fires burn around Australia, it is worth remembering the likely main cause: the stupid or criminal acts of humans.
The damage to people and their homes is also likely to be overwhelmingly due to the increasing population spreading themselves through the bush.
Fires of the same intensity are going to impact more people than they did in the past.

“While Australia is particularly fire-prone, natural fires account for only six percent of known causes of vegetation fires attended by fire services. Over 90 percent are the result of people's actions, and more often than not the result of deliberate ignitions; incendiary (maliciously lit fires) and suspicious fires account for one-half of known fire causes in Australia, and are the largest single cause of vegetation fires”
https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi350