Who Am I

Years ago, blogs were a thing, then came Vlogs, then Facebook, then Instagram, now it’s TikTok (OK if you want to be brain-washed and tracked by the Chinese but probably best avoided), X (formerly Twitter, if you spend $44 Billion you get to call the app what you want), and for the more literary Substack. Half the people that started writing Substacks because they discovered blogs are a thing of the past have already quit. I admit, I’m not a fan of quitting, except in certain circumstances.

A long, long time ago (2010) I wrote a post called “The Purpose Of Blogs” which was, in hindsight, strikingly uninformative. More useful, was this entry “Back To The Blog” which I wrote three years after I first started my blog (2007) which was fun to look back at as it turns out my blog hasn’t really evolved at all, it’s just changed locations. In 2007, I restarted the blog with “adventures in the West Kootenays, opinion pieces and general rants.” If you subsitute “adventures in Australia” for adventures in the West Kootenays, that’s still pretty much true.

What has changed is the level of offense people seem to be able to work up about things that are really not worth getting offended about. I used to be a lot more caustic and a lot less careful with what I wrote. These days, I’m much more careful not to use certain words – for example, I’m very careful using the word “fat” even though most Australians are fat (this is statistically true) – because we have the Health At Every Size movement which tries to pretend that being obese does not increase your risk of cancer or other health conditions (imagine that, being fat significantly increases your cancer risk!). The truth is, I have great sympathy for fat people because the only reason I am not fat is because I work hard every day to NOT be fat. And work it is. Our society is set up to not just enable but promote fatness and weakness.

Anyway, I was cycling home from the Park Run this morning – over 300 people!, compare that to the middle of June when the Park Run has 30 or 40 people – thinking I should write about a blog that has a little about me in it. What a change that would be from my barely disguised social commentary rants. So, first thing and this shouldn’t be a surprise, I am fascinated by human psychology. I think this reaches way back to my pre-school years when my Mum and I would watch this ridiculous TV show (small black and white TV) where the psychiatrist said – every episode – “I think it’s time for the couch.” A statement like that would be considered sexual harassment these days, or misogyny because, of course, the psychiatrist was a white male. Cue comments about the patriarchy, colonialism and oppression.

Truthfully, I think understanding a bit about the human psyche and human behaviour would be extremely helpful to people, more helpful than most of the ridiculous social movements that have sprung up in recent years, because we all need to be disabused of the notion that we act rationally and sensibly most of the time and realise that we actually make rapid emotional decisions which we rationalise later. Along the scale of “thinking fast and slow” it’s pretty clear that humans think fast and save most of our brain power for – well who knows what? Thinking fast made sense in evolutionary times but does not make sense in the modern world where thinking fast means being buffeted by the psychopathy of whatever the latest “thing” is.

But, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about what podcasts I listen to and, we both agreed (there’s not much else we’d agree on), that the podcasts/media/books you listen to/watch/read, actually reveal a lot about you. So, herewith are some lists:

Podcasts: 

• Joe Rogan if the guest is interesting (usually a book author, journalist or contrarian thinker). 
• Jordan Peterson with the caveats above (I have no interest in traditional Christian religions). 
• Peter Attia (The Drive). Most episodes and almost always very informative. Subversive Voices: What else would a contrarian thinker listen to. 
• Sensible Medicine is a podcast I would recommend for everyone to understand how the medical system really works before you become a victim (words used intentionally). 
• The Sharp End, fascinating tales of adventures gone wrong (mostly climbing and North American focused). 
• Rescued: An Outdoor Podcast for Hikers and Adventures is an Australian copy and I only listen to hear how cringe the host is (way too ABC for me) and how insular Australians can be (try not to be offended.) 
• Don’t listen to Endurance Planet for training advice as it is a train wreck which is the reason I listen to it – the latest episode was full of blatant contradictions and illogical reasoning, but that’s kind of why I listen.
• I dip into various climbing podcasts if they have interesting guests (The Nugget, The Enormocast, Lattice Training Podcast, Climbing Gold, The Run Out) but I miss the days when climbers were anarchists not obedient servants to the latest thing.   
• Finally, my guilty pleasure: Case Files, a true crime podcast that I listen to when I can’t concentrate on more intellectual podcasts. The irony of Case Files is that every single episode they issue a content warning about violence, etc. which summarizes modern day psychopathy succintly. It’s a true crime podcast, of course, it involves violence, etc.

Books: 

• The Real Anthonly Fauci (JFK Junior).
• The Politics of Suffering (Peter Sutton).
• Inventing the AIDS Virus (Peter Duesberger).
• Cynical Theories.
• Social Injustice.
• And a host of books by Theodore Dalrymple, Dan John, Pavel Tsatsouline, and Douglas Murray.

I’m sceptical of everything and everyone, (so don’t be offended if I question some claim that seems a wee bit outrageous), believe in the ubiquity and power of incentives, support your right to any kind of diet that you want, but wish we all collectively didn’t have to pay the consequences for the health outcomes of diets low in animal protein and high in sugar, grain and industrial seed oils, am dismayed by the deterioration in both mental and physical health of most people alive today, sadly but truthfully, think things are getting a wee bit worse over time rather than better, and despise with the utmost passion, our obsessive culture of (fake) safetyism. No-one who lives in overly “safe” environments is ever really safe because the buffer of what they can tolerate or even thrive under has become too narrow. Politically, I’m neither left (does anyone on the left have a sense of humour?) nor right (I’m no fan of Trump but think the whole “insurrection” is nonsense) preferring to assess each issue on its own merit. I am, however, not a happy person under the intolerant tolerants or the authoritarian and censorous left (nor right). And, finally, I cannot forget the utter lunacy of locking people in their homes for 23 hours per day during the ‘rona rounds because of “The Science."