Willis's Walkabouts Top-Level Menu

  Newsletter 132, March 2025 - Willis's Walkabouts

Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 132, March 2025 ― Rational Optimism

If you ever start feeling depressed by all the bad news you see, how about looking at the good. bits, Rational Optimist New Posts. One of the best sources of good news that I've seen.

There are several special offers in the WW 2025 section. They expire two weeks after this newsletter goes onto the website.

If you are viewing this on a mobile, the newsletter and many of the links should work better in a horizontal format.

Restricted content. Articles marked * or ** are on restricted websites Click for more info, including how you can sometimes avoid the paywalls.

. Willis's Walkabouts logo

WW 2025

The wet season is still with us but we have nothing available until Bangkerreng ― The Knock Em Down Storm Season. It's not the Wet. It's not the Dry. If you want to know what it is, click the link above and learn a bit more about our climate.

The following trips all have bookings. Special offers below will remain in effect until 2 weeks after the newsletter goes onto our website.

  • Kakadu Highlights No. 3: 6-13 April. List price $2695.
    This is the first section of what had been a two week trip. We visit many rock art sites in an amazing landscape.
    Definite departure. Guide: Russell Willis. It's a very small group so we're making a
    Special offer: $500 discount.
  • Bungle Bungles and the Osmond Range: 19 April - 10 May. List price $9995.
    Two sections, either can be done on its own. The Osmond section includes helicopter transport in and out. This will be the first time in many years we've been able to visit the Osmond Range. We may or may not be able to go there again.
    Definite departure. Guide: Cassie Newnes. It's a small group so we're making a
    Special offer: $1500 discount.
  • Kakadu Highlights No. 4: 11-24 May. List price: $5395
    Two sections: Baroalba Creek plus Koolpin & Freezing Gorges. Spectacular scenery and a wealth of rock art. Either section can be done on its own.
    Definite departure. It's another small group, so another
    Special offer: $1000 discount on the full trip or $500 on either section.
  • Limmen, Lorella and the Abner Range: 11 May - 4 June.
    A celebration of Russell's 80th birthday.
    Definite departure, almost full. Guide: Russell Willis.
    There are additional expenses. Please make sure you read the PDF trip notes before booking.
  • Kimberley Highlights No. 1: 24 May - 7 June. List price: $6995.
    Three sections, any of which can be done on its own. The original sections 1 & 2 will not run this year.
    Special offer: We are leaving the 20% advance purchase discount open for two weeks after this newsletter goes onto the website. After that, the trip, or part of it, will be confirmed or cancelled.
  • Kakadu Highlights No. 5: 22 June - 5 July. List price: $5495
    Two sections: Koolpin & Freezing Gorges plus Jim Jim & Twin Falls. Spectacular scenery and a wealth of rock art. Either section can be done on its own.
    Special offer: We are leaving the 20% advance purchase discount open for two weeks after this newsletter goes onto the website.
  • Mitchell Plateau No. 2: 20 July - 3 August List price: 7995
    Transport includes both light aircraft and helicopters. Two sections, either of which can be done on it's own.
  • Kakadu Highlights No. 8: 7-20 September List price: $5295
    Three sections, any of which of which can be done on it's own.

International

We now have four international trips on offer. Notes for Patagonia and Southern Africa are new since 12 March. There is a lot of reading in the new notes. If that seems too much, those trips are probably not for you.

  • South Africa & Namibia: August-September Price: $2495
    Guide: Russell Willis. There are many links & photos so you can see what it will be like.
    We can't finalise the exact dates and exact itinerary until we have bookings.
  • New Caledonia: 5-26 October Price: $4460
    Guide: Sébastien Heritier. 3 sections, any of which can be done on its own
    The political situation that forced the cancellation of our 2024 trip has eased so there should be no problem.
  • Chilean Patagonia: 17 December 2025 - 18 January 2026 Price: $2995
    Guides: Judy and Rob Clayton. There are many links & photos so you can see what it will be like.
    Judy was there in January and checked out a number of new things for us.
  • Patagonia Day Walks: December 2025 - January 2026 Price: $2495
    Guide: Russell Willis. There are many links & photos so you can see what it will be like.
    We can't finalise the exact dates and exact itinerary until we have bookings.

Return to top

Rational Optimism

The news vs the truth

I recently came across the chart at left. (Click the image to see a much larger version.) It compares what people actually die from (left) vs. what the media covers (right). Terrorism, murders, suicides .... watch too much news and you'd think the no. 1 cause of death is humans killing each other. "The easiest way to shove away cynicism? Turn off the news. The corporate media falsely makes us fear things and people."

I got the chart from one of the Mauldin Economics Rational Optimist Society Newletters. Unlike their financial advice, this one is free. I enjoy my subscription and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to hear about some of what's right with the world rather than the mainstream "What's wrong." Here are a few links to things I found particularly interesting.

  • Why is no one telling you this?
    Lots of interesting graphs. The one about homicides didn't include America or Australia.
    Not as good in America but below recent highs and trending down.
    The Australian trend is down but even at it's recent highs, well below the US at its lowest.
  • Rational Optimist New Posts
    Scroll down the page and click the links that interest you. AI, biotech, turning air into jet fuel, university education, new energy sources and much more.
    If you can't find a single one of interest, you must lead a very boring life.

Return to top

Your Money

  • After you are gone.
  • Credit
  • Debanking
    • The Debanking of America
      The term "debanking" means a bank cutting ties with a customer deemed politically incorrect, extreme, dangerous, or otherwise out of bounds.
      What do Muslims, January 6 rioters, and Melania Trump all have in common? They were kicked off the financial grid.
      I found this link in
    • Martin Gurri: Trump Has a Mandate to Lead. What Comes Next? During his first term of office, Trump's energies were concentrated on negation. This time around, all thoughts are turned to action.
      "In Britain and Brazil today, you can land in jail for voicing antiestablishment opinions on social media. Here in the U.S., the Biden administration erected a censorship apparatus to mute online dissidence ― and, we recently learned, "debanked," or cast out of the financial system without right of appeal, those engaged in disfavored operations."
      "It has long been apparent that our current elite class must be replaced by people who feel at home in the twenty-first century."
      "the odds are stacked against them. Failure is more likely than not. But it would be the crowning irony of Trump's improbable trajectory if the motley collection of pirates and adventurers presently around him turn out to be the next American ruling class."
  • An incredible waste of your tax dollars
    • Australia's great gas giveaway
      Australia has ten facilities that export gas as liquified natural gas (LNG). Six of these projects ― both of the Northern Territory's facilities and four of the five operating in Western Australia ― pay no royalties, either state or federal.
      The jobs created are relatively short term. The jobs destined to be destroyed in tourism would have lasted for generations. The NT and WA governments have invested billions of dollars of taxpayer money to get these projects up and running but get no (NT) and next to no (WA) royalties from them. Your taxes are higher because of it. I can think of many better uses for my tax dollars. How about you?
      I can't help but wonder who is getting paid off and how? (How they get paid off could be something like a high paying job after leaving politics.) Neither major party is likely to change the situation.

    Return to top

Bushwalking Tips

Top 5 Travel Insurance Benefits for Older Travellers
It's not just older travellers who need travel insurance. We recommend it to all our clients on all our trips.

Return to top

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

With one exception, in Australia, if you are charged with a crime, the prosecution has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt before you can be convicted. The one exception is the Australian Taxation Office. "When the ATO produces a tax "assessment"the assessment automatically becomes a debt at law, whether the assessment is accurate or not. From that point on, the ATO charges taxpayers interest and penalties. Then the taxpayers must prove to the ATO they have paid the correct amount of tax."

The ATO decided that someone I know hadn't paid the correct amount of tax. He spent 8 years and thousands of dollars fighting it. In the end, he was able to prove that he had paid the correct tax and the ATO dropped the charge. He 'won' but it cost him an incredible amount of time and money. Most people wouldn't be able to afford to do that. In an article in The Australian on 29 January, Robert Gottliebsen had an article How to fix Australia's monstrously unfair taxation system which explained the current system in some detail and gave a good alternative. Both major parties have paid lip service to reform, but neither has done anything substantial. Maybe we need more independents to give them a push in the right direction.

Return to top

AI ― Artificial Intelligence

AI & Scientific Discovery

Deep Seek

Search Engines

AI Dangers

  • Will AI make you dumber?
    "Higher AI tool usage was associated with reduced critical thinking, defined as 'the ability to analyse, evaluate, and synthesise information to make reasoned decisions'."
    "An unthinking workforce overly reliant on AI is likely to trend towards the mediocre and unremarkable."
    "A similar thing had happened with GPS and Google Maps, undermining our ability to read a map and navigate our local neighbourhood."
    "I fear we'll be doing the same with AI, losing our ability to think critically", he said. "My AI dystopia is not computers getting smarter than us, but humans getting dumber than AI."
  • AI doesn't really 'learn' ― and knowing why will help you use it more responsibly
    it learns by encoding mathematical relationships between words (actually, tokens), with the aim to make predictions about what text goes with what other text. These relationships are extracted from vast amounts of data and encoded during a computationally intensive training phase.
    Most AI systems that most people use, such as ChatGPT, also do not learn once they are built. You could say AI systems don't learn at all ― training is just how they're built, it's not how they work. The "P" in GPT literally stands for "pre-trained".
  • Tech companies are turning to 'synthetic data' to train AI models ― but there's a hidden cost
    Some say, "the pool of human-generated data that's used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models such as ChatGPT has run out."
    When genuine data does run out, it will present a major problem for both developers and users of AI. It will force tech companies to depend more heavily on data generated by AI, known as "synthetic data". And this, in turn, could lead to the AI systems currently used by hundreds of millions of people being less accurate and reliable ― and therefore, useful.
    There are ways to avoid the problem. Will we use them?
  • The dispute mentioned below has been settled, for now. The issues behind the dispute remain.
    The dispute causing empty shelves at Woolies is a test case for companies using AI and automation on workers
    What kind of society do we want? Around the world, warehousing has become a test-case for conflict over the role of technology at work. Researchers are pointing to the dangers of an "Amazonian era". This refers to the growth of the US-based multinational e-commerce company, which critics say is characterised by low-paying jobs with exhausting workloads and high turnover.
    Given the high cost of living and falling real wages in Australia, much is at stake in this dispute locally.
  • Which Parts of These Images Are A.I. Generated? *
    As AI progresses, what photos will be seen as real? None? It's amazing what it can do.
    Maybe the fact that my photos and videos are less than perfect will make them seem more real. I can only hope.
  • The New Warfare: When AI Partners with Cybercrime
    Cyberspace has become the primary medium for both spycraft and warfare among advanced nations.
    The page above has links to a video of the interview plus a link to the transcript.
    99% of the population has no real idea of just how bad things can be.
  • When A.I. Passes This Test, Look Out *
    The creators of a new test called "Humanity's Last Exam" argue we may soon lose the ability to create tests hard enough for A.I. models.

Energy Use

  • Ultra-efficient AI won't solve data centers' climate problem. This might. **
    Despite DeepSeek's AI efficiency gains, data centers are still expected to gobble up huge amounts of U.S. electricity.
  • Why the world needs lazier robots **
    We need to get the increasing numbers of automatons ― industrial robots, drones, self-driving cars, self-learning AI algorithms, robots with ChatGPT brains and more ― to consume less energy.
    ChatGPT now uses 500,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a day, responding to 200 million queries. A U.S. household would need more than 17,000 days on average to rack up the same electricity bill.
  • The 19th-Century Technology That Threatens A.I. *
    "The total generating capacity that is not connected to the grid and is waiting to be connected has grown roughly eightfold since 2014. Adding that would about triple national generating capacity and help address the future needs of A.I."
    "The reasons for this sloth in the United States are varied: a skills gap and labor shortages in construction and engineering, a complex permitting process trapping projects in years of bureaucratic review across multiple agencies and high costs of capital. Local opposition compounds these delays, significantly slowing the rollout of new energy infrastructure."
    "Electricity is more than just a utility; it's the bedrock of the digital era. If the United States truly wants to secure its leadership in A.I., it must equally invest in the energy systems that power it."
    I suspect that the grid in Australia isn't much, if any better.

Three technologies interconnected with AI

  • Quantum Supremacy ― Three technologies interconnected with AI
    The first section talks about humanoid robots, links to a much more detailed paper on those robots
    "Khosla's guess of 1 billion bipedal robots by 2040 is actually among the more conservative estimates."
    At $20-$30,000, a robot would actually cost about $300 a month. Such a robot would be able to clean your house and do some of your chores. More expensive robots would be able to do more, of course, like working in factories and agriculture (although likely tailored for specific jobs) but as the cost of the robots falls, the cost of products and services will come down.
    Maybe robots are going to take some of the jobs many of us thought were secure.
  • A much more detailed look at what's happening with humanoid robots is The Rise of Humanoid Robots
    Even if you don't want to read the whole thing, if you have any interest in the subject, you should read pages 3 & 4.
    And, from page 15, "As costs continue to fall and capabilities rise, we're approaching a tipping point where humanoid robots will become not just technologically feasible, but economically compelling for a wide range of applications."
    Maybe your job will be one of those under threat.

Return to top

WW ― Last Chance

Worth repeating. Bungle Bungles and the Osmond Range: 19 April - 10 May. List price $9995.
This will be the first time in many years we've been able to visit the Osmond Range. We have been told that we may not be able to go there again. We hope we can, but we can't be sure.

The following trips will be cancelled two weeks after this newsletter goes online if we don't have the bookings we need to run them.

The Future For WW

Willis's Walkabouts has been a labour of love for the past 40 years. I am not sure how long it can continue. Approaching 80, I can no longer lead the hardest trips. I still love the easier ones and will continue to lead them for as long as I believe it is safe for me to do so. But, what I can do will continue to decrease until I can no longer go on most of the easier trips, even with a younger assistant to carry the extra gear. What then?

I spend many hours a week doing all the paperwork and updating the website. The business does not make enough money to pay someone else to do this. At some point, I will have to say enough. Unless there is a dramatic increase in profitability before them, the business is likely to either fold or become a hobby business for one of the guides. If you have been thinking about doing one of our trips, you might want to do it sooner rather than later. More will follow in a future newsletter.

Guiding for WW

I've had a couple of replies, but we need still new guides who are available for only a few trips per year. If you might be interested but haven't yet told me so, please let me know ASAP. Thank you.

Return to top

Coming Next Issue

I wanted to get this out last month but ran out of time. Several of the things I had hoped to include didn't make it. One of the reasons, I didn't have time is more and more paperwork being necessary to stay in business. That's a whole other story for another time, perhaps sitting around a campfire out on a walk.

  • Living a long and healthy life. I had hoped to get something into this newsletter, but much of what I wanted to share is copyright protected. It's taking me longer than I expected to get something ready.
    Cancer is a group of diseases we are finally beginning to overcome. Aging is the same. I'll share some interesting research as well as some of the implications that don't get talked about very much.
    To do justice to some rather long articles, I'll try and include some relevant bits to help you decide whether or not you want to read the whole thing.
  • Our sick society. You may disagree, but when I look at some of what's going on in the world today, I think 'sick' is an appropriate description.
    Before you decide whether or not 'sick' is a good term, you really should browse through some of the articles I'll include.
  • In the last newsletter I said,
    WW ― What Next? Times are changing. When the changes happen little by little, sometimes you don't notice just how bad they are. I got curious and went back to our trip program for 2004, twenty years ago. We offered 47 different trips.
      • We can offer only 15 of those in their original form.
      • We can no longer do 13 of them at all.
      • We've lost sections or had to otherwise modify another 14.
      • There are another four where all or part of the trip remains in doubt.
    Since then, we lost access to two other walks. I may get part of one back, but one of my favourites is gone for good.
    While I expect WW to survive for some years yet, given the above, I'm not sure that it has a long term future.
    If I don't manage to put something about this into the next newsletter, it will definitely make it into a later one.

Return to top

Wondrous Wildlife

Return to top

The Lighter Side

Nostalgia

A friend sent me this as an email Nostalgia. I remember most of the things in the list. When I look back, I see that materially we are much better off now, but that material wealth has come at a cost. There are a few things in the list that I wish we could go back to. History runs in cycles, maybe some of you will live to see a few of the non-material things in the list come back. I hope you enjoy the look back as much as I did.

Falling in love again with disposable cameras **
Gen Z and others find a nostalgic (if fuzzy) thrill in taking pictures and then waiting days to see the results.

Stories I Enjoyed That Didn't Fit Anywhere Else

Return to top

News About This Newsletter

Restricted websites. The NY Times allows non-subscribers to look at ten free articles each month. I've got more links than that in this newsletter so I've marked them with a red asterisk (*) so that you can choose which are of most interest to you. Bloomberg allows three free articles. The Washington Post and The Economist both have limits but I'm not sure what the current limits are so I've marked their articles with a double red asterisk (**).

How to Get Past a Paywall to Read an Article for Free
Even if you regularly support journalism by paying, sometimes you need to get around it.

As always, I welcome a bit of feedback about some of the things in this newsletter and suggestions for the next one.

Sending the newsletter

I'm now using a paid version of MailChimp to send all of the newsletters. I'm not sure what I'll do if the list goes over 2500.

walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au is the contact address on our website. If you would like to continue to receive these newsletters, please include this address in your "friends list" so that it isn't blocked.

Emails sent to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au are currently automatically forwarded to rrwillis at internode.on.net. If you want to send an email to that address, replace the word "at" with the symbol @. I am trying not to put that address any place where it can be harvested by spam bots.

We don't want to add to the mass of email spam. If you don't want our newsletter, please send us an email and let us know. We'll then delete your name from our newsletter list.

Our email address is walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au.

Note. Both MailChimp and the other program we use to send some of these newsletters have an automatic delete at the bottom. Clicking that link will delete you from the mailing list on the server but it will not delete you from our main database. One of the programs will not allow the auto delete to send me an email notifying me that a deletion has been made. If you want to be sure that you are removed from all further mailings, please send an email to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au

If you know someone you think would enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them. The more people who get it, the more likely it is that I'll be able to run the trips which might interest you.

I hope you enjoyed reading this newsletter as much as I enjoyed producing it.
Russell Willis

Return to top