03: Information Overload January 12 - 18
The world kept spinning chaotically, and I'm trying to keep up
This week has been an adjustment after the reality of back-to-work, and my digital detox is a faint memory.
It’s becoming harder to stay offline and avoid hearing about the chaos in the world.
Unsure of the answer to this yet, but asking the questions at least: how can I remain engaged with the world and not be overwhelmed by the onslaught of negativity? How can I remain focused on completing my PhD and achieving balance in every other part of my life?
What works for you?
BOOKS
Little Red Barns: Hiding the Truth from Farm to Fable by investigative journalist Will Potter
I read this last year, but it connects directly to the protein/food politics discussion below. Will spent 10 years investigating American factory farms (CAFOs) and the activists trying to expose them. His thesis: attempts to control our food supply and information are directly connected to the rise of fascism.
From his Publishers Weekly interview:
Why don’t people connect factory farming and authoritarianism?
“It goes back to a fundamental lack of awareness connected to the press not treating these issues as seriously as they should be. They treat it as a personal or lifestyle issue versus a serious political issue connected to our democracy. Talking about animals and the environment have always been the bastard child of progressives and the left. They’re not really seen as part of the traditional set of values we think of as social justice. These movements are centering the natural world and animals, and that pushes them out of the frame.”
You’ve described this as more than just a political threat. How do you see this as a threat to our actual lives?
“Our ecological crisis and the rise of fascism are intersecting directly and they’re going to fuel each other and speed each other up. As we use up water for things like AI and also just water scarcity in general, states are trying to close borders, keep out immigrants, restrict access. At the same time we see the rise of these authoritarian movements that are hostile to any idea of confronting the facts of these issues. I think we’re entering this kind of militarized situation if we’re not careful. It feels like we’re all becoming extinct. These are truly existential threats we’re facing.”
(This was last year before a lot more has happened in the US).
The Washington Post review nails it:
“The book is a lucid indictment of a food system whose normalization of cruelty on a staggering scale is rivaled only by the tightly controlled, government-sanctioned regime of non-transparency that enables it.”
Key stat: The U.S. agriculture lobby spends as much buying political influence as the fossil fuel lobby - $177 million in 2023 alone. Four companies control 75% of corporate beef packing, another four control 70% of pig slaughter.
This isn’t an economic inevitability - it’s the result of decades of deliberate policy to consolidate power and squeeze out small (often Black) farmers.
FITNESS & HEALTH
2025 was the year protein ‘jumped the shark’: In 2025, protein became a metabolic Jack-of-all nutrients
The takeaway: You do NOT need more protein unless you’re combining it with resistance exercise. The guideline is 0.8g/kg/day for most people, and 1.2-1.6g/kg/day if you’re doing resistance training - but benefits plateau at 1.6g/kg/day. Anything over that is not necessary.
“Protein is the bricks. Resistance exercise is the construction crew. You can deliver bricks all day long, but without workers and a blueprint, nothing gets built.”
The article notes that it takes about 17 years for solid scientific evidence to filter into public awareness and practice. Social media spin ≠ scientific breakthrough.
“The science of protein hasn’t been revolutionised; we just need to listen to it again”
Female Health Masterclass | Menopause, Hormone Replacement Therapy & How to Workout in Your 50's, 60's from Simon Hill’s The Proof
A deep dive into menopause, HRT effectiveness, and the impact of exercise on bone density.
“People need to have more information about their bodies and how their bodies work.” - Dr Jen Gunter
The episode covers the training and nutrition needs of women in their 60s and debunks myths about bioidentical hormones.
“Often [menopause is] the perfect storm: pressure at work, job dissatisfaction, worried about kids or elderly parents, and the onset of menopause. Oestrogen might help a bit, but it’s not going to help everything else.” - Professor Susan Davis, AO
Maternal paradox: ‘Scientific motherhood’ promised high standards for child-rearing. But it’s really a system designed to police women
Interesting history of maternal and racial hierarchical systems created by health officials with smatterings of eugenics and classism (moral hygiene = racial hygiene = imperial hygiene) to ensure that women are constantly surveilled and judged on their mothering.
“The apparatus of maternal surveillance that emerged in Edwardian Britain was never really about saving babies – it was about saving the idea of the nation itself. By transforming motherhood from an intimate, embodied practice into a technical skill to be measured and monitored, public health officials created something unprecedented: a system that could blame individual women for the structural failures of industrial capitalism. The power of this invention was its apparent reasonableness… But scratch the surface of any maternal welfare programme… and the same pattern emerges: middle-class solutions imposed on working-class problems.”
And a couple of articles on the updated USA Dietary Guidelines
The new guidelines promise to “replace corporate-driven assumptions with common sense goals and gold-standard scientific integrity” - but in a confusing way that only benefits meat and liquor lobbyists.
You cannot decry corporate influence driving the decisions from previous DGAs and seek counsel from numerous individuals with potential conflicts of interest.
You cannot encourage consumption of saturated fat and tell people to restrict it to less than 10% of their calories…
You cannot encourage calorie restriction and discourage consumption of zero-calorie beverages.
You cannot claim to be the great reset and offer more limited, weaker dietary advice already provided 35 years ago.”
The good news? As healthcare professionals in America, they do not have to follow guidelines that fail to meet appropriate standards of evidence. Rather, follow the best available evidence, use good clinical judgment, and serve the people in front of you.
Rhonda Patrick’s Found My Fitness newsletter (My Thoughts on the New Dietary Guidelines for Americans) broke down what actually makes practical sense: quality protein distribution across meals, whole grains through “the lens of fiber” and macronutrients, aiming for 10 servings of fruits/veg per day (beyond the 2 fruits 3 vegetables minimum), avoiding sugars and ultra-processed foods (what Chris van Tulleken calls “industrially produced edible products” in his excellent book Ultra-Processed People) especially with the micro-plastic exposure of packaged and ready-to-eat foods. Though there’s a heap of Americans who can only afford to purchase cheaper food…
I think it’s mighty hard for fitness enthusiasts to understand how mainstream people live and eat without being judgmental and exclusionary. Not everyone can exercise or eat whole foods, and she notes that implementation changes health, not just the guidelines. Many of the companies involved in these updates have been allowed to sell cheaper products and self-regulate for years. Time will tell.
MOVIES
Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 (English) documentary
119 minutes
I saw this with Cat, Cam, Dan, and Johann. It was a great documentary based on George Orwell’s novel 1984 (published in 1949) that shows how the fictional language of a totalitarian country is used to control not just actions but also thoughts.
The reminder of their “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” sentiment was a bit too close for comfort with the various political unrest that seems to be spreading to new places each week.
It was interesting to see the man's family and work-life background, which shows why his need to write such a book was a priority. The old, grainy images of past world wars were followed by newer images of wars. A heavy reminder that “It has been said that history repeats itself. This is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.” (from psychoanalyst Theodor Reik).
Marty Supreme (English)
149 minutes (!!)
First up, I thought this was a movie about an entrepreneurial table tennis player who has business success with coloured (instead of the usual white) balls used in matches. It’s not.
My one-word review is: chaotic.
Timothée’s character is an American grifter with an inflated sense of self who treats family and friends as disposable when they can’t help him reach the table tennis world championships. He runs away from everything - family, friends, a partner he’s impregnated - using and taking advantage of everyone.
Great cast and acting. Exciting to see Fran Drescher and Sandra Bernhard (very 90s!). Odessa A’Zion (I Love LA) is just as problematic as Timothée’s character. Gwyneth Paltrow was the only character with any sense of logic or reality. The direction and filming are excellent, but there’s a ridiculous dog sub-plot that adds nothing, and this film was TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG.
The theme? Excess and narcissism leading you away from your responsibilities? Living “happily ever after” with your childhood friend despite leaving a trail of destruction? It felt preachy, but I’m not sure about what. I do not understand the fuss about this film.
Someone clapped at the end. That’s the second time now (My Brother’s Band being more understandable), and it’s weird, friends.
MUSIC
Mostly, I’m back to listening to Jason Lewis from Mind Amend while I work on finalising my PhD thesis. “Improve your brain power and mental wellbeing with isochronic tones”. Isochronic tones are “consistent, regular beats of a single tone… that is switched on and off quickly”. This is different from binaural beats, another method of audio brainwave stimulation, which produces shallow waveforms targeting the whole brain.
Some Ratboys songs are out already from their February release:
LIVE version of Bleak Squad: ‘World Go To Hell’ (Live) at the Melbourne Recital Centre in October. They are touring in Feb/March in Australia and I should be at the Brisbane show.
For some 90s nostalgia: this is a gorgeous meet-cute, friends-to-lovers story from TLC’s Chilli and Boy Meets World’s Matthew Lawrence. CUTE!
Portrait of My Heart by SPELLLING (Californian pop artist)
SAYA by Saya Gray (London artist)
More music from 2025, this time it’s The 50 Best Australian Albums of 2025 - I’ve got a lot to catch up on here!
What have you been listening to lately?
every movie is The Moment if you really think about it by Charli XCX
Gosh, this is funny! Such a tongue-in-cheek way to advertise Charli’s upcoming quasi-doco, The Moment, whilst advertising the A24 universe.
POLITICS
David Tyler on Trump’s approach:
“He wants the world to see grandeur; imperial confidence with a gold-leaf crust. He wants two victories at once, because one victory is never enough to feed the void. So he attempts to run the empire on two fronts: the Caribbean, where Venezuela is done over like a debtor in a back alley; and the Middle East, where Iran is treated as a prop in a morality play written by men who only know one kind of punctuation.
…
The empire is too invested in the drama to permit anything as boring as restraint. And it’s beyond desperate.”
On Stephen Miller and Palantir (from last week’s discussion):
“In this ecosystem, coercion becomes modular; outsourced, franchised, packaged as “security” or “enforcement support.” The line between government muscle and private muscle blurs, not through ideology but through invoices. The system doesn’t require literal hired killers standing by the door; it requires something more durable: a world in which violence is always available as a service, plausible deniability included.
His phrase “Trump is fireworks, the oligarchs are wiring” - you can understand why I love his writing.
The “Flood the Zone” Strategy and how it’s impacting us all
I’m totally over the constant American focus of news and media (of which I’ve just contributed to!). I’m trying to work out how to stay informed without being overwhelmed by the “flood the zone” approach Steve Bannon discussed in 2018 and Stephen Miller has amplified.
Ezra Klein nails it:
“Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.”
Joan Westenberg articulates this perfectly - the need to stay informed while struggling with the cognitive cost:
“The current structure of public conversation has the same effect on human cognition that a botnet has on a web server. It’s simply exhausting you. And an exhausted mind defaults to heuristics and tribal allegiances, aka whatever position allows it to conserve the most cognitive energy.
…
“False information spreads faster because it’s easier to process. It fits neatly into existing mental categories. True information violates our expectations and takes cognitive work to integrate. When attention is scarce and cognitive bandwidth is being DDoS’d constantly, we don’t have the resources to do that work.
Her conclusion:
“Orwell feared those who would ban books. Huxley feared that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. But the discourse suggests a third possibility: a world with infinite books, infinite takes, infinite content of every kind, delivered at such volume and velocity that reading any of it becomes impossible.”
STARTUP SPACE
Female Founders Pre-Accelerator with Startup Onramp
If you live in Queensland, Australia, this pre-accelerator is fully funded by the Queensland Government. Applications open now.
This is one of the pre-accelerators I was part of last year for my Daily PhD startup. I’m also a founding member of Colin’s Startup Onramp Founder Community.
Failure vs Success is the Wrong Frame by Joan Westenberg
“The fear that stops people from making things is almost entirely the fear of the performance frame. Nobody is afraid to experiment. We’re afraid to be judged. And the trick is to stop thinking of yourself as someone performing a skill and start thinking of yourself as a scientist in a lab, running tests, gathering data. The scientist isn’t brave for continuing after unexpected results. They’re just doing science. That’s what science is.”
TECHNOLOGY
In 2026, We Are Friction-Maxxing
The “machinal bypass” and how we’re using AI to avoid ourselves
Tesla FSD Goes Subscription-Only
You may not have seen my Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) video from Everything Electric last year:
Elon Musk just announced that Full Self-Driving will no longer be available for purchase outright - only as a monthly AUD$149 subscription. No word yet on what will happen to people who paid for FSD years ago or to those waiting for their AUD$10,100 refund.
In the tech and startup space, monthly subscriptions are great for long-term income, but I don’t agree that they’re great for customers.
TV SERIES
There are so many new shows coming out!
Industry Season 4
HBO Max & 🏴☠
Such a great series I never thought would get a large audience or exist beyond the first series! I’m keen to see how they wrap these chaotic investment bankers’ work and lives up in this financial thriller.
Love Island All Stars S3 just started on iTV2/iTVX and I’m not going to watch it this year! If you know me, you know that Love Island has got me through years of study, and maybe that I run the Love Island and Big Brother feeds on Bluesky with Adam from Seattle.
I’m just not feeling it this time, especially for this offshoot. I’m using Joan’s quote: “The problem wasn’t that Big Brother was watching us; it was that we couldn’t stop watching Big Brother” from the article on information overload above for inspiration to keep to my new goal.
PONIES
Eight episodes
Peacock & 🏴☠
POI are persons of interest, whereas PONI are persons of no interest. This is the setup for a series set in Russia where the POIs (husbands) are killed by the KGB and the PONIES (wives) investigate by also becoming agents for America. A lot of fun.
Wild Cherry
Six episodes
BBC & HBO & 🏴☠
The relationships between mothers and their teenage daughters, with the threat of hidden apps and losing control over how things online spread or are shared. Things are not what they seem, and do they really know each other?
I am grateful for a cinema time with Cat and others, more hot yoga with Luke, finalising my Bayesian analyses, chats with friends, progress with my physio, and an exceptional weekend with Kyle 💖