#crackpots

“As a dermatologist, this decision is deeply disappointing and frankly dangerous,” said Anthony Rossi, a dermatologist, professor and researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“This rule took many years to get traction, and now it’s been pulled. That’s not deregulation, that’s a step backwards for children’s health,” he told HuffPost.

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the U.S. Tanning beds can emit up to five to 15 times more concentrated ultraviolet (UV) radiation than the midday sun. This intense exposure directly damages skin cell DNA, triggering mutations that cause those cells to multiply uncontrollably and turn cancerous.

As the Bulwark noted, the proposal the FDA pulled was similar to the FDA’s initial move to ban youth cigarette sales back in 1997. (UV radiation is a carcinogen in the same class as cancer-causing substances such as tobacco and asbestos.)

The FDA’s notice, signed by Kennedy, said the move “does not mean that exposure to UV radiation does not cause skin cancer.” But Kennedy ― who has been spotted frequenting tanning salons around D.C. ― has previously said that he wants to end the government’s “aggressive suppression of ... sunshine,” without specifying what exactly that means.

What makes the FDA’s ruling especially alarming, Rossi said, is the timing. It comes as followers of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement increasingly embrace the idea of building a “solar callus” through gradual sun exposure instead of using sunscreen, which many in the movement see as unnecessary.

(formerly the Citizens Electoral Council and forever the CEC in our hearts)

Running where: Senate in every state and the NT, plus both House divisions in the NT and a smattering of House divisions across five states (not SA)

Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “While other parties may be ignorant or regressive, the CEC are actually destructive. It is fortunate that their ideas are so absurd, their rhetoric so laughable, and their narratives so incoherent that they have been unable to develop even the most microscopic base despite being electoral pests for over two decades.” (federal 2016)

What I think this year: The Australian Citizens Party (ACP), as part of their rebrand from the CEC a few years ago, launched a new website that appears to try to present the party as more sane and mainstream than they actually are. My 2013 and 2016 reviews, linked above, discuss this party when they were full mask-off and shoving their wackiest beliefs in the face of anybody who glanced in their general direction. I recommend reading those reviews if this party is new to you. Today, the ACP's website is more slick and the 2025 election page begins with motherhood statements opposing corruption and policies about housing affordability and healthcare mingled with their pet economic interests (please enjoy an archived version from March 2019 here for what they used to be like).

I worried this might make it less obvious at first glance that the ACP have some of the oddest beliefs of anybody on the ballot, but last week while having lunch and catching up on my emails I was sitting beside some undergraduate students chatting loudly about the different parties they’d seen on the ballot. One mentioned the ACP, so they looked it up, to great mirth: their collective reaction was that this was obviously a party of nutters. What did strike me, though, was that these young people all thought one of the most absurd ACP ideas was that for a Post Office “People’s Bank”. They were all too young to have even considered going to Australia Post to pay bills or do any other banking. To quote one of them: “Australia Post, run the banking system? Do they want to lose my money as well as my parcels?” (I must say here that I far prefer when my deliveries come via Auspost over any one of those dreadful courier companies, but I got why they were baffled—older generations might either use the Post Office for banking or remember doing so, but it’s not an experience these 20-somethings have had)

In general, the ACP promote ludicrous banking/financial proposals in the tradition of Lyndon LaRouche, a man for whom “heterodox” and “conspiratorial” vastly understate the peculiarity of his ideas. The ACP's past predictions that their "exposés" would bring down Australia's banking and mortgage sector have of course not come true. They were also touting conspiracies that cash would be banned well before this became a popular anxiety of far-right parties who want to commit some light tax fraud. Indeed, they even claim they stopped a cash ban singlehandedly (dig deeper and what they claim to stop was not a ban on cash, but a ban on cash transactions over $10,000, ditched in late 2020).

The ACP believe their People’s Bank scheme can fund large-scale infrastructure projects that do not make sense. Now, I’m a big fan of government investment in public works, but everything that the ACP backs is completely laughable. Rather than things like better urban rail, cycle lanes, pedestrianisation, or improved regional rail, the ACP have terraforming fantasies to make the deserts bloom in Central Australia. These include the Bradfield Scheme (redirect rivers) and the Iron Boomerang (a half-formed idea for a mineral-and-steel freight railway in Northern Australia, which in 2023 a government inquiry found lacking in substance, with the conclusions on page 36 noting “significant implementation issues and risk”). At least they no longer seem to be talking about an Australian space programme or colonising Mars. Is Elon Musk too embarrassing even for them?

Despite the ACP’s attempts to avoid extreme language in speaking to concerns about housing and energy and things like that, you simply need to go to their publications page to find their underlying ideas and conspiracies are still in full bloom. We apparently live in a “bankers’ dictatorship” and the British Crown is directly trying to crush Australian unions (among various other conspiracies, the British royal family is a long obsession of the CEC/ACP). These publications also show their history of being fellow travellers with the current corrupt authoritarian regime in Russia. Elsewhere on their website, you can read nonsense about how Ukraine crossed Russia’s “red lines” and brought invasion upon itself; personally, I find blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion to be beneath contempt. I am yet to see a single pro-Russia (or purportedly anti-NATO and ~*anti-imperialist*~) argument that isn’t just the nation-state version of “but what was she wearing?” victim-blaming. Now, sure, the ACP’s foreign policy attitudes lead them to oppose AUKUS, but not for any sensible reason. Stopped clock, right twice a day, etc.

Recommendation: Give the Australian Citizens Party a low preference in the House of Representatives and a weak or no preference in the Senate.

[ Source. ]

"Racism is not dead, but it is on life support - kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as "racist."

-- Thomas Sowell

Racism has been on the decline in the west, including the US, for decades. No, it hasn’t gone away, and probably never will, but few black Americans regard it as one of their top issues.

Just as the Church invented “sin” and made it inescapable to foster constant guilt, even when you’re not even doing anything wrong and even as societies become more peaceful and less crime-riddled, rather than actually cure you of this undetectable illness, sell you on your need of the Church’s ongoing tithing-priced aura soul-cleansing and tune-up services...

... so too have race grifters like DiAngelo seen the demand for racism outstrip the supply and declared it, like sin, to be ever-present and inescapable. Her special formulation doesn’t even require the black person to have even been offended, nor the white person to have actually done anything wrong; it operates completely independent of people, and yet contradictorily, requires subjecting people to her preachments. So that she can sell you a training course or a book, not to actually resolve it, but so you can undertake “a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-critique, and social activism.” “No one is ever done.”

Third-wave “antiracism,” like “salvation,” is a premium subscription service.

No, There Isn’t A Black Hole At The Center Of The Earth

“Even under the most optimistic, realistic scenario, there can be no black holes that survive for more than a fraction-of-a-second inside the Earth. If we only have three spatial dimensions, the particles that exist — whether in terrestrial particle accelerators or from the natural cosmic accelerators found in space — can never create a black hole here on Earth. But if there’s a fourth spatial dimension, they can theoretically be created, although the LHC has been unsuccessful in creating and detecting them thus far.

Even in that exotic scenario, however, the laws of physics very definitively prohibit them from remaining stable, as they will decay away. Even if you contrive a scenario to maximize their growth rate, it’s extraordinarily unsustainable, as the growth rate will drop below the decay rate in short order, causing them to evaporate completely. We know enough science to robustly conclude that there isn’t a black hole at the center of the Earth, and any scientist or layperson can follow these same steps to figure out that same conclusion for themselves.”

There’s a paper that’s been identified from last year that’s nothing more than a word-salad of scientific terms, likely put together by an artificial intelligence to expose the sham peer review practices of predatory journals. But it began with the notion that there’s a black hole at the center of the Earth causing it all. Is that physically possible?