I’m fascinated to discover how many of the books I’ve chosen for my morning reading practice have turned out to be about time. I started with Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, just finished Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and have just started Jenny Odell’s Saving Time: Discovering a Live Beyond the Clock.
None of these books is about how to be more productive, which is good because my morning reading is not remotely about efficiency and productivity. It is, even though I’m reading words and writing down some of the ones that strike me as important, a kind of meditative practice.
It started out as a practical thing. I like to do some movement when I first get up – some physical therapy exercises that keep my body moving right along with my Tai Chi form – but I also want to keep an eye on my blood pressure. It’s best to check blood pressure when you’re relaxed, so I started reading for about 15 minutes before I dug out my cuff.
Reading quickly became important in its own right, and over the six months I’ve been doing this, I’ve figured out how to get the most out of it.
First of all, the ideal books are ones best read for a few minutes at a time. Rovelli’s on time was an excellent starting place, since it addressed time as approached by physicists with a philosophical bent and required me to think rather deeply about it when I read.
Books of essays are also good – I read Rebecca Solnit’s latest collection No Straight Road Takes You There before I started on Burkeman. Basically, any book in which reading a few pages gives you something to think about works.
And interestingly, most of the books I’ve ended up really appreciating in this practice are ones I’ve had for some time, but hadn’t read much of, because in truth they are books best read in small doses. If you keep reading to finish the book – as I am prone to do with novels or with nonfiction that’s more reportorial – you miss a lot of the point.
While I’ve been a serious reader all my life – I not only cannot remember not knowing how to read, I do not have any idea how I learned to read except that I already knew how when I started school – I’ve never read this way before.
I might have read school assignments a bit at a time and even taken some notes, but that was for a completely different purpose. In general, I’ve always been the person who buried her nose in a book and kept it there until the end or until interrupted. And I hated being interrupted.
I still read that way, but not first thing in the morning.
And among the things I have learned – especially as I read about time – is that doing this particular bit of reading every day is an incredibly important way to spend my time. Continue reading “Creating Habits”…
In today’s digital world, people routinely turn to the internet for health or medical information. In addition to actively searching online, they often come across health-related information on social media or receive it through emails or messages from family or friends.
It can be tempting to share such messages with loved ones – often with the best of intentions.
Although there is a fire hose of health-related content online, not all of it is factual. In fact, much of it is inaccurate or misleading, raising a serious health communication problem: Fake health information – whether shared unknowingly and innocently, or deliberately to mislead or cause harm – can be far more captivating than accurate information.
This makes it difficult for people to know which sources to trust and which content is worthy of sharing.
The allure of fake health information
Fake health information can take many forms. For example, it may be misleading content that distorts facts to frame an issue or individual in a certain context. Or it may be based on false connections, where headlines, visuals or captions don’t align with the content. Despite this variation, such content often shares a few common characteristics that make it seem believable and more shareable than facts.
Another marker of fake health information is that it presents ideas that are simply too good to be true. There is something appealingly counterintuitive in certain types of fake health information that can make people feel they have access to valuable or exclusive knowledge that others may not know. For example, a claim such as “chocolate helps you lose weight” can be especially appealing because it offers a sense of permission to indulge and taps into a simple, feel-good solution to a complex problem. Such information often spreads faster because it sounds both surprising and hopeful, validating what some people want to believe.
In a study on vaccine hesitancy published in 2020, my colleagues and I found that controversial headlines in news reports that go viral before national vaccination campaigns can discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated. These headlines seem to reveal sensational and secret information that can falsely boost the message’s credibility.
The pull to share
The internet has created fertile ground for spreading fake health information. Professional-looking websites and social media posts with misleading headlines can lure people into clicking or quickly sharing, which drives more and more readers to the falsehood. People tend to share information they believe is relevant to them or their social circles.
In 2019, an article with the false headline “Ginger is 10,000x more effective at killing cancer than chemo” was shared more than 800,000 times on Facebook. The article contained several factors that make people feel an urgency to react and share without checking the facts: compelling visuals, emotional stories, misleading graphs, quotes from experts with omitted context and outdated content that is recirculated.
Visual cues like the logos of reputable organizations or photos of people wearing white medical coats add credibility to these posts. This kind of content is highly shareable, often reaching far more people than scientifically accurate studies that may lack eye-catching headlines or visuals, easy-to-understand words or dramatic storylines.
How to combat the spread of fake health information
In today’s era of information overload in which anyone can create and share content, being able to distinguish between credible and misleading health information before sharing is more important than ever. Researchers and public health organizations have outlined several strategies to help people make better-informed decisions.
Whether health care consumers come across health information on social media, in an email or through a messaging app, here are three reliable ways to verify its accuracy and credibility before sharing:
Evaluate the source’s credibility. A quick way to assess a website’s trustworthiness is to check its “About Us” page. This section usually explains who is behind the content, their mission and their credentials. Also, search the name of the author. Do they have recognized expertise or affiliations with credible institutions? Reliable websites often have domains ending in .gov or .edu, indicating government or educational institutions. Finally, check the publication date. Information on the internet keeps circulating for years and may not be the most accurate or relevant in the present context.
If you’re still unsure, don’t share. If you’re still uncertain about the accuracy of a claim, it’s better to keep it to yourself. Forwarding unverified information can unintentionally contribute to the spread of misinformation and potentially cause harm, especially when it comes to health.
Questioning dubious claims and sharing only verified information not only protects against unsafe behaviors and panic, but it also helps curb the spread of fake health information. At a time when misinformation can spread faster than a virus, taking a moment to pause and fact-check can make a big difference.
I’m back from my daring adventure in Perth and Adelaide. I discovered – to my great happiness – that antisemitism in Australia is far more closely targeted than it looks. The bigotry in the media and on the Left surrounded me where I live and so I was inundated and so were many people I know. That inundation is targeted, not at me, but at anyone Jewish. I happen to be local to it and know too many people who share those politics. This is not me, personally (though a part of it is also me, personally) but most Jewish in Sydney and Melbourne and Canberra. Sydney and Melbourne have the largest Jewish population in the country, and that has been very precisely targeted with hate, but Canberra? It’s where the politics happen and the media mocks. I’m mostly collateral damage. That’s the good news. The other good news is that, outside Canberra, the science fiction community has a normal mix of politics and does not carry hate. The Arts, however, does carry hate. More and more I mix with other Jewish writers and editors because they don’t demand I hate myself. There are many writers and industry professionals who do not make those demands, but they leave me alone because I’m either politically perilous because of my upbringing or they simply don’t want to worry about it. “Jew cooties” strike again.
The moral of this story is that we can be trapped in a fishbowl where haters surround us. It’s only a fishbowl. It’s not even a whole city. Most non-Jews in Canberra want to tell me how awful Israel is and inform me about their views on genocide. They don’t want to talk about my end of things, not my murdered cousin, not everyone I know caught up in the war (Israeli and Palestinian) and most certainly not how alone I’ve been in Canberra, because they don’t want to reach out to me as friends. This is the problem I’m facing. Not even our “I talk to the Jewish community” Senator has sorted out how this affects local Jews and that we are the ones forced to explain ourselves every day and remind others that we’re still human.
I’m very glad that this is specific to certain circles in Canberra, even as it hurts to be dumped and deserted and hated. I now have ten days when I rediscovered that I hurt, but am still me, and that I have more friends than I knew and (if I can get past the hate) even have a life. I was less ill when I didn’t have to reach out and hope that the person I emailed wouldn’t come back to me with a demand that I denounce whatever (that day) they wanted me to denounce. And I have chats with taxi drivers to sustain me.
I have been saying for a while that the antisemitism is part of a wider problem of not seeing people for their actual cultures and religions. Jew-hate is a symptom of a wider disease. I was (locally) silenced and left out of things because I am wrong because I’m Jewish and Gillian (some people dislike me, and I may not enjoy this, but when it’s a personal thing it’s not the same thing as bigotry at all) and could see how so many people translate ‘Jewish’ into “Zio’ and ‘person who murders’ and other excitingly false tags and stories. Every time they think along these lines, it’s as if a slab of historical understanding is wiped from their brain, by choice.
I could also see that Muslims in Australia are mostly assumed to be Palestinian Australian (the actions of the certain Pakistani Australian senator do not help with this, at all). So many people assumed that there was a single Muslim voice and vote, when Muslim Australians are… Australian. We are such an independent mob. Why should Muslims not think for themselves? In fact, they did, and voted in a bunch of ways during the election. The media, being its current slow self, did not pick up on this. It also did not realise that so many Australians belong to other religions. The taxi drivers were Hindu, but from quite different parts of India. In Canberra, I’m more likely to run into a Sikh or Coptic Christian, but I have Hindu friends here. The only religion numerous enough to change an election outcome is Christianity. Australia is closer to a secular country than other Christian countries, but it’s still Christian. I lie to explain that the Lord’s Pray opens Parliament and that our ruler is also the ruler of the Church of England, but the truth is that, everyday, Christmas and Easter are times the country stops. Many atheist Australians still live the Christian year. They don’t do it in a religious manner, but they will eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and see Christmas Day as a day on which no-one should work.
What does all this mean?
I think we need to reconsider Australia as a country. We should look at the hateful targeting of minorities (Indigeous Australians have suffered and still suffer what Jewish Australians are currently enduring, to give the most obvious example) and not accept the media and the Left as arbitrators of our lives. In my perfect world, the majority I discovered when I broke out of my goldfish bowl will know to reach out to people like me (my friend Anna did, which is why I was able to safely travel) and connect us again with a safer world. This connection can be done with coffee locally, or a chat, or a movie, or a walk in the park. It’s an acknowledgement that our lives matter and that we don’t have to self-hate in order to be allowed to live. Simple things with radical consequences.
There is so much shouting right now. For every shout, I think we need ten instances of community building. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m talking to other Jews who have become isolated and scared and bringing them into my suddenly-much-safer place. I’m writing fiction and essays that promote safe paths for people, and affirmation of cultural complexity. I’m still spending an hour a day analysing the rest-of-world, because it’s still not safe, but I’m taking the second hour I used to analyse and using that to analyse from a more productive and positive direction. I’m going to finish books and get them into the world, because that’s another path to reducing hate.
Finding publishers is the tough bit right now. Not all publishers are antisemitic, nor even half of them, but there are other crises happening and Jew cooties mean that many prefer works by someone other than me. Many, but not all – I need to find those who want my novels and non-fiction. Some of this is already happening.
A friend reminded me of a song that tells a story of how big change happened here, in Australia, when we were in a place that we thought we could never get out of. I was not one of the victims then. I was on the side doing the hurting and had no idea that I was part of something that awful. It wasn’t anything I intentionally did, it’s that I didn’t know that it was on me to reach out and be part of change. Vincent Lingiari and his friends and colleagues spearheaded that change when I was in the early part of primary school. Most of my life, then, has been spent seeing what changes can be made when we see people as themselves. A pop song helped and the use of the melody by an insurance company didn’t help at all, so I’m not sure how much today’s children know of what began when I was a child. Let me share that song, because it explains in the best way.
When I meditate – which I do sporadically, though I keep intending to get more regular about it because it always makes me feel better – I see myself as being one with the universe.
I don’t mean I’m the all-encompassing universe all by myself. I mean I’m a tiny speck of this amazing great whole.
I find this very comforting. It reminds me that so much of what is touted as of paramount importance is really meaningless.
It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try to do good in the world as best I can, but it does help me let go of too much attachment to the outcome of anything I do. These days, with so much damage being done to our lives every day, I find it helpful to remember that while doing is up to me, outcomes aren’t.
In his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman has a chapter called “Cosmic Insignificance Theory,” which I think is much the same thing as my meditation. He observes:
Truly doing justice to the astonishing gift of a few thousand weeks [four thousand weeks is an average human lifespan] isn’t a matter of resolving to “do something remarkable” with them. In fact, it entails precisely the opposite: refusing to hold them to an abstract and overdemanding standard of remarkableness, against which they can only ever be found wanting, and taking them instead on their own terms, dropping back down from godlike fantasies of cosmic significance into the experience of life as it concretely, finitely – and often enough, marvelously – really is.
Cosmic insignificance theory is diametrically opposed to the kind of world the broligarchs seem to be after, particularly the ones who think they’re going to live forever, perhaps uploaded and combined with some all-powerful “AI.” Continue reading “Time Is on Our Side”…
I have been playing around with the idea of writing a memoir about my colorful childhood for more than a decade, writing up brief, mostly comic episodes about bats and Christmas trees and the conversion of our family barn into House Beautiful. But I don’t seem to be able to find the connective tissue that would make those episodes into something cohesive. The problem, really, is that a lot of that connective tissue is pretty dark, and I haven’t been sure how to write that stuff. And that I am constantly aware of what I think of as the Rashomon factor.
Rashomon is a Japanese film from 1950 staring the brilliant Toshiro Mifune, in which the same story is told from four different perspectives. A samurai is found murdered in a forest; a priest, a bandit, the wife of the samurai, and the samurai himself (through a medium) tell their versions of the story, in none of which they are the villains. Every single event ever has many different versions. Especially in families. In writing a memoir you either have to be rock-solid in your conviction that your version is the true one, or ready to deal with the anger or anguish of family response.
There was a fascinating article in The New York Times on a new book by Molly Jong-Fast, about growing up as the daughter of writer Erica Jong. In the ’70s Erica Jong was sort of a literary “It” girl, the author of the novel Fear of Flying, and the creator of the phrase “zipless fuck.” Continue reading “Is Turnabout Fair Play?”…
This is a short note to let you know that, when you read this, I will have emerged from my second science fiction convention in a fortnight. I will have seen some of my favourite people and will be too tired to write anything.
I wanted to apologise for no blog post. Instead of that, let me give you a picture. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words. Actually, it’s worth more than 1000 words. I used this picture (and the memory of getting through that flood) in a story I set in Belanglo Forest. I stayed in the log cabin (and have a picture of the log cabin if you want to see it) and drank at the pub and, very fortunately, didn’t see any dead bodies. If you’re curious about the story (which probably classifies as sarcastic horror), you can find more about it here: This Fresh Hell – Australasian Horror Writers Association
1980s, Belanglo, at the time of the backpack murders
I’ve been saying that for years, and most people get the joke. We human beings aren’t immortal. Like all other life on this planet, sooner or later our physical being gives out.
I will confess that I would like to live a really long time mostly because the story of the world will still be going on after I die and I hate stopping in the middle of a good story (or, for that matter, a scary story). But I don’t want to outlive my mind and I know bodies can’t last forever.
I have often thought that it would be good if humans had a longer life span than we currently experience on the off chance that more of us would develop some wisdom while we were still capable of doing something with it. These days things that happened forty or fifty years ago are treated like ancient history and yet those very things have a profound effect on what’s going on today. Unfortunately, too many people making decisions right now don’t understand what happened fifty years ago, much less a hundred and fifty years ago.
When I think of extending human life, I’m looking at our increased understanding of human health and ability to deal with diseases. Some of that comes from major advances in biology and medicine, but some of it is much more simple and basic than things like CRISPR or even open heart surgery.
Cleaning up the air – indoors as well as outdoors – can have a large effect on our health, just to throw out one example. And that’s not to mention changing work situations so that people don’t literally work themselves to death.
But even with some real progress, even if more people continue to thrive into their 100s, we’re still not going to become immortal. We’re animals and animals don’t live forever.
Unless, of course, you believe in the singularity and transhumanism and think we’re all going to be uploaded into some kind of digital selves. Continue reading “Immortality”…
Misconceptions abound about Vikings. They are often depicted as bloodthirsty, unwashed warriors with winged helmets. But that’s a poor picture based largely on Viking portrayals in the 19th century, when they featured in European art either as romantic heroes or exotic savages. The real Vikings, however, were not just the stuff of legend — and they didn’t have wings or horns on their helmets.
This article sparked an online discussion about the myth that all Viking warriors were male. A friend posted:
A myth they didn’t cover is the one that says all the Viking warriors were male. Archaeology is finally recognizing that finding weapons and even a horse skeleton in a grave cannot ensure that the buried person was a man. (It was a myth nurtured by XY archaeologists, convinced they knew it all.)
By sheer coincidence, I saw the article below and mentioned it to my friend. I imagined her grinning as she responded:
Yes – Birka shook everything up in the field, and is making them reevaluate conclusions about a number of earlier excavations.
In Birka, Sweden, there is a roughly 1,000-year-old Viking burial teeming with lethal weapons — a sword, an ax-head, spears, knives, shields and a quiver of arrows — as well as riding equipment and the skeletons of two warhorses. Nearly 150 years ago, when the grave was unearthed, archaeologists assumed they were looking at the burial of a male warrior. But a 2017 DNA analysis of the burial’s skeletal remains revealed the individual was female.
Across Scandinavia, at least a few dozen women from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) were buried with war-grade weapons. Collectively, these burials paint a picture that clashes violently with the hypermasculine image of the bearded, burly Viking warrior that has dominated the popular imagination for centuries. And it’s possible that, due to gendered assumptions, archaeologists may be systematically undercounting the number of Viking women buried with weapons.
Archaeologists often guessed the deceased’s sex based on grave goods, such as mirrors, weaving tools and brooches, which archaeologists assumed were typically buried with females, and battle-related weapons, which archaeologists thought were typically buried with males. If a Viking Age sword was the only item recovered, for example, it was nearly always assumed to be a male grave.
Even with that potential bias, there is strong evidence that some women were buried with war-related objects across Scandinavia. Norway has several of what have been nicknamed “shield-maiden” burials, after the women warriors of Scandinavian folklore. One is the Nordre Kjølen burial in Solør, which had a young adult — likely a female, based on a skeletal analysis — interred with a sword, an ax head, a spearhead, arrowheads, a shield boss, a horse skeleton and tools.To put the burials of women with weapons into context, archaeologists have looked at historical texts.
The Vikings left behind only a few thousand runic inscriptions. So most descriptions of warlike women and “shield maidens” come from semihistorical works written during the post-Viking medieval period. For instance, in “Gesta Danorum,” a semifictional history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus (who lived circa 1150 to 1220), the warrior woman Lagertha travels with a group of women dressed as men, marries a Viking king who later divorces her, and still fights with him in a pivotal battle.
And some sagas, such as The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, describe Norse women taking up arms to help protect family property, according to a 1986 analysis. Only men could inherit property, so if a man had only daughters, one was sometimes compelled to step into the role of a warrior as a “functional son” who could protect the family’s interests, according to the study.
The Icelandic sagas, written by people who were likely the Viking’s descendants in the 13th and 14th centuries, include stories about “women leading troops and engaging in acts of violence,” Moen wrote in a 2021 article.
But are these stories evidence that Viking women were warriors in real life? Or did some stories have other mythical or mystical significance? Some evidence points toward the latter. Sagas in which women wield weapons like axes often have magical overtones. In the Old Norse Ljósvetninga saga, for instance, a cross-dressing Norse sorceress strikes the water with an ax to see into the future. Axes are frequently associated with magic in folk traditions from Scandinavia, Finland and Central Europe, Gardeła noted in a 2021 article.
The weeks after a PhD is done are always peculiar. There’s a backlog of life and it rushes in and floods the everyday. This is me, right now. Ironically, New South Wales is also flooded right now.
My backlog of life includes so much to write and so much to read and (this weekend alone) six panels at one of my favourite science fiction conventions. Add the 25 pages of forms to fill in (only five to do this weekend) and seeing friends at last and… it’s a tad busy.
I have a new publication this week, along with a bunch of my favourite people. You can find it here: Issue 90 – My Favorite Museum – Journey Planet I’ve actually written about museums a lot. I wanted to work in one, but things became complicated and I never did. One of the books I’m writing (the non-fiction) includes analyses of museums.
One of the most reassuring things imaginable for me is to visit a museum and analyse and tear apart the exhibits and think about their cultural impact. This is nothing new. I first did this when I was about seven. There was a display of old irons and children’s clothes in a country museum and I looked at them and looked at them and there was nothing in writing that explained them and no-one to ask, so I told my parents (with such seriousness) that this was wrong and they could do better. I remember listing the information needed to describe those irons and clothes. I knew what I needed to know and I was upset that it wasn’t there.
I didn’t know I was going to be an historian then. I started collecting limestone from various places and thought I was going to be a palaeontologist and a writer. Then I was going to be an opera singer and a writer. Then a museum curator and a writer. Then I reached high school.
At high school I told I was too young to know my future. I said, “But it has to include history and writing.”
I was told, “No, you’re doing science.”
I was very argumentative. I did maths, but dropped the science and did every single history and English subject I was allowed, plus music and French. This worked.
I’m the person who has history and writing as core parts of her life, still… and I still love looking at the work in museums and I am even more opinionated about these things than when I was seven.
Even this month, when life is flooding me, I can stop and think about museums. There is one particular exhibit I’m hoping to see later this week: a seventeenth century German bearded jug. If I get to see it, I might report on it in a fortnight. Maybe. It depends on the flooding receding just enough to make reports possible.
“We are as gods and might as well get used to it,” Stewart Brand said back in 1968. I remember reading that in the Whole Earth Catalog back in the day.
The concept appealed to me, as did the catalog and its successor, the Coevolution Quarterly. I recall thumbing through the issues, finding gems of ideas amidst a lot of odd ones. In those pre-Internet times, it was a way – along with alternative comics, music, and the underground press, not to mention the Civil Rights and antiwar movements and second-wave feminism – to find something new to chew on.
We were definitely looking for something new to chew on.
I don’t remember exactly what I thought when I first saw those words, but l suspect that part of what I thought was that they were an admonition to human beings who were starting to unlock knowledge beyond that needed for basic survival. I heard “Be careful. We’ve got more power than we understand.”
After all, I grew up in the shadow of the Bomb. We were playing with things that could blow up the whole world, and far too many of the men – and it was mostly men – in positions of power were not the sort of person who was good at taking care or planning for the long term.
But these days as I look at some of what Brand has to say, I’m not sure at all that I was correct about what he meant. I’m starting to wonder if he was thinking more along the lines of the broligarchs who are out to spread humanity throughout the universe and even think they’re going to live forever.
After reading Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever, I think those people believe they are gods, or that they’re becoming gods. Continue reading “Not Gods”…
