Assistance sought in exchange for accommodation

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I am a mature lady living in Geraldton.

Due to slight physical problems (mostly back pain) I am seeking a kind lady to live in my comfortable home and give me a little help.  A small room with an extremely comfortable Queen size bed is available, together with complete use of the house, sharing a bathroom.  If it becomes necessary to increase the workload a bigger air conditioned room with a lockup automated garage may be offered.  The work load is sufficiently small that a full time job could easily be held.

It is envisaged that the person would become part of the "family" both receiving and giving courtesy and consideration.

A current Police Clearance is requested.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to speaking with you soon.

-J.

Please complete the form below. If you cannot see it, please visit our website www.everythinggeraldton.com.au on your computer. 

Video time lapse of Greenough River breaking over Phillips Road

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This time lapse video below was shared with Everything Geraldton today. It shows Greenough River breaking over Phillips Road. Shared by Andrew Hopkins. 

Click here if you cannot see the content. 

Here you can see the location of where this occurred. 

Some epic drone footage sent in a couple of days ago from Eradu. 

This was at depot hill on Jan 30. 

Water enters the Westbank road bridge - Sent in today by Mark Kennedy. 

Here's a few photos that were sent in earlier 

‎Paul andJo Luxton

Old convict bridge Greenough river

Convict bridge - Lynlee Turner 

Kris Nestoridis

Oh, and completely unrelated but just as interesting... This little guy was reportedly spotted at Sunset Beach recently. Not sure exactly what he is. 

We want to pay young Geraldton writers and video producers - here's how it works

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Everything Geraldton has launched a new youth initiative in Geraldton called Young Voices, to assist young people in Geraldton and the Mid West get published, and get paid. We want to encourage the next generation of engaged content creators.

The program is open to all primary and high school students in the Mid West. We are accepting written content and video content submissions, and if it's chosen to be published on Everything Geraldton, the student will receive $50. 

There's no limit to the number of times you can submit content. 

Teachers are invited to encourage their class to produce something to be published, and parents are welcome to help their kids upload content too. 

Submissions can be made via the Everything Geraldton website.

Click here to learn more about this new innovative program. We have a comprehensive Q and A section that may answer any questions you have. 

If you're excited already and can't wait to get started, here's the kind of things we're looking for, although we'll look at anything if it's interesting:

  • Articles about places in Geraldton or the Mid West that you have visited. Shops, cafés, skate parks, secret places you love to visit... that kind of thing. If it has some photos, it would be even better. Think about what you'd love to know about a place, and share that kind of information.
  • Stories about living in Geraldton or the Mid West. We'd love to know about experiences you've had or things that you have done while living here.
  • Your opinion on local issues. Things happen in Geraldton. You have an opinion. We'd like to share your thoughts and opinions with the world. 
  • Your ideas and suggestions for Geraldton and the Mid West. Maybe you think we need more schools. Maybe you think we need no schools at all. Maybe you think we need to give all teenagers in Geraldton a holiday to Bali. We want to hear about your ideas for improving life in our region. 
  • Videos showcasing local places. You probably have a smartphone. Or maybe your parents do. If you enjoy filming we'd love to see some short videos on places and things in Geraldton. Maybe you'd like to showcase your favourite shop. Or a short video on your favourite skate park or surf spot. We'd love to see what you can create, and we'd love to share it with the world. 
  • A story about an interesting person in Geraldton or the Mid West. Maybe you know an amazing man, woman or child who would be a very interesting subject to write about. We'd love to hear you tell their story. This could be done in a written or video format. 
  • A listicle! This is one of those "7 reasons I love Geraldton" type of article. They're short and sweet, and usually have lots of photos. There's a lot of possibilities here. Such as "My 5 favourite clothes shops in Geraldton" or "4 Reasons I love living in Dongara" or whatever you can imagine. You'll need a photo for each list item.
  • Teach us something. You might be an expert at kicking a football, baking a cake, or riding a surfboard. We'd love for you to give us some simple steps with photos on how to do what you're a pro at. Or maybe make a video. 

Maybe you've got a great idea to write or produce something that doesn't fall within the boundaries of what's listed above. That's ok. We'd still love to read it or see it. If we think it's something that could work on Everything Geraldton or would be of value to Everything Geraldton readers, we might just consider publishing it anyway. 

Some more tips:

  • Photographs help. Or drawings. But they need to be your originals. Don't download pics off the internet.
  • Don't overthink it. If you think something is interesting, chances are someone else will too.  
  • Don't get disheartened if your submission doesn't get published. We've all been rejected before. Just roll up your sleeves and have another go.
  • There's no limit to how long or short your submission should be. Our rule of thumb is: As long as it needs to be and as short as it can be. If it's interesting, that's what's important.
  • You get better by doing. Maybe your first submission won't be perfect. But you'll improve the more you create. Just start!

Some questions from Teachers:

I'm a teacher. Can my entire class submit something at once?

Absolutely. We may not publish everything, and the items we do publish may be staggered over time. But if you want to make it a class project for each student to submit something, we'd be most accommodating. 

I'm a teacher. Can I talk with someone from Everything Geraldton about the Young Voices program over the phone?

No problem at all. Give Jason Smith from Everything Geraldton a call on 0404 443 442.

I'm a teacher. I have some students with some great writing but for personal reasons we can't provide a bank account for them. How can those students get paid their $50?

Give us a call to discuss any outliers. We're flexible here. We can arrange for the payment to be made via the school if needed, or you might wish to make other arrangements. We want every student in the Mid West to have a chance to contribute. 

I'm a teacher. I have some younger students who have produced something that is in written form and can't be digitally uploaded. Can they still submit it?

Sure thing. You can post physical items to Everything Geraldton, PO Box 772, Geraldton WA 6531. We will scan or photograph it, and transcribe the text if possible or relevant. 

Some more questions:

Why is Everything Geraldton running this program?

We know first hand the power and value of sharing ideas and stories. It's one of the things that connects us as humans. When we publish something that resonates with others, we feel something special. We'd love for a younger generation to know that feeling too. And we'd love for our audience to have the opportunity to understand what the youth of Geraldton and the Mid West think.  

Why are you paying the students? Wouldn't they do it for free?

There's something special about getting paid for creative work you do. We'd like as many students as possible to know that rewarding feeling.

What format should the content be in?

Written content can be in a Pages document, or Word document, or similar, or may be a PDF. Images may be included in the document for layout purposes, but should also be uploaded separately so we can easily publish them. Video content should be in .mov or .mp4 format, but if you're having trouble with that, let us know. We are very flexible on the format of both the written content and video content. 

Who owns the copyright to the content that is submitted?

Whoever creates the content owns the copyright, and it stays with them. You grant us, Just Everything Pty Ltd, a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any content you submit to us. 

Will you make changes to my content?

We may fix minor grammatical errors, but won't change your work substantively. We may add things to help tell the story, such as extra images, maps, links, and things along those lines.

Where will the content be published?

Depending on the content and our editorial decisions, the content may appear in any product Just Everything Pty Ltd manages, or any platform of our partners. This will likely include the Everything Geraldton website, app, social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and any other Everything Geraldton products. 

How many Young Voices items will you be publishing?

As this is a brand new concept for Geraldton, we honestly don't know what the uptake will be like. We may receive 6000 submissions. We may receive 6. Our hope is to publish the content on an ongoing basis, with a certain number published each week. But we will be observing the amount and quality of content we get, and we'll have a clearer picture as we move forward. 

What if I'm no longer a student but want to write or produce something for Everything Geraldton?

You're welcome to contact us directly. We use free-lance writers from time to time, and would love to hear from you. We don't want to use the budget for this program for other publishing however. Email geraldton@justeverything.com.au and introduce yourself. 

How long will this program be running for? How long have I got to submit something. 

We will be receiving submissions at LEAST up until the end of April 2017. So you definitely have until the end of April 2017 to submit your items. We hope to carry on accepting submissions after this date, however if we're overwhelmed with submissions at that time, we will temporarily halt submissions so we can deal with the backlog. 

How long does the published item stay online for?

Indefinitely. We don't usually remove the items. We expect they will stay on our website as long as we stay in business. We may even republish some of them in the future to re-surface them.  

Can my friends and I submit a collaboration?

Yes. You can submit something that more than one person worked on. We will still only pay $50 for the item, and it's up to you to decide which bank account will receive the payment and how you'll split it. But if you want to produce a video or written item with your friends, that's fine by us. (Remember, there's no limit on how many items you can submit.)

Will you really publish things written by little children?

We will be including the age on each Young Voices article we publish. We think our audience will be accomodating to the varying levels of skill if they understand who is writing the items. We think it will be great for children and teenagers alike to have their writing and videos shared. 

What about just a photograph?

We probably won't pay for just a photograph. BUT>>> If your passion is photography, there is a way you can get published on Everything Geraldton. Submit a listicle that includes multiple photographs of yours around a particular theme. Such as "10 amazing Geraldton sunsets" or "6 beautiful wildlife photographs from the Mid West".

How will you know if a submission is coming from a real student in the Mid West?

As part of the submission process, you must provide the contact details for a guardian/parent or a school teacher. We may contact that adult to confirm the authenticity of the submission, and if necessary, we may require more proof, such as a student ID card. We are also able to detect the IP address of computers making submissions. 

What about privacy? What information about each child will be made public?

The first name, surname, and age of each student will be published along with their submissions. Photos that are supplied in the submission will also be included. Parents/guardians should decide if they're comfortable with the name and age of their child being displayed publicly. We abide by our privacy policy which is linked to at the bottom of this page. If you wish to discuss any privacy concerns 

I have other questions that aren't listed here. How can I get in touch about Young Voices?

If you have a question that isn't answered here, we'd love to hear from you. Email your question to youngvoices@justeverything.com.au

Amazing images and video from yesterday in the Mid West

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There was some weird weather combined with a fire inland Saturday. The end result was some interesting images sent in to Everything Geraldton. Here are some of the pics and vids you shared with us. 

Anyone travelling to Mingenew please travel safe massive fire around 50km mark 👍🏽
- Bianca.


‎Darrien Jade Nightingale: Amazing cloud formation in Dongara tonight! 

View from Dongara Drive-in - Ruth Gilchrist

- Sharon Williamson

Deborah Shaw: Storm Brewing

Time lapse of "monster cloud of smoke" from Dongara Drive Ins by Hannah Griffin. 

Leonie Patman - Sunset.

Luke Thompson

Jasmin Chaye

Tayla Fairclough

Damage at the Chapman Valley sports complex from wild weather Saturday.

Surveillance footage of bedroom window smashed with baseball bat

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This is video surveillance of a couple of people who smashed a family's bedroom window at 12:45 Sunday morning with a baseball bat, causing about $500 damage.
The home owners are asking for the public's help in identifying the people involved. 
"This has really shaken us up."
If you know who was involved, please call Geraldton Police on 9923 4555. 

Aquarena closed due to power pole fire

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The Aquarena will be closed today as Western Power replaces a power pole that caught fire last night.

Works will take place today Thursday 17 November from 9am-4pm. The Aquarena will advise when the centre is back open.

Swimming classes that are missed today will be replaced at a later date.

For any inquiries contact the City on 9956 6600 or e-mail council@cgg.wa.gov.au

Warning: Asbestos riddled building in West End (Point Moore) is being demolished

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The old building in West End (Point Moore) near the lighthouse that until recently housed Tropicanos restaurant is being demolished. 

A concerned Point Moore resident claims her daughter was outside in her treehouse near the site on Tuesday, until she realised what was happening. 

Residents are advised that the building does indeed contain "a lot of asbestos". 

In a media statement issued regarding the demolition, City of Greater Geraldton Chief Executive Officer Ken Diehm said the poor condition the building was left in by the former lessee and presence of asbestos make it too cost prohibitive to repair.

“Regretfully, the former lessee completely gutted the building making it unfit for use or refurbishment,” he said.

“The building also contains a lot of asbestos and unfortunately, the cost to remove the asbestos and completely renovate the building to meet current compliance standards so it could be used for something else far outweighs the value of the building itself.”

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

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Written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taken from Skin in the Game (link)

Editor's note: I've long been a fan of Taleb, the philosopher, author and trader. His commentary on risk analysis, journalists, scientism, tail risk, anti-fragility, probability, and many other things has helped me develop a more critical eye when consuming media, dealing with politicians, and interacting with bureaucrats. Perhaps his most well known book is Black Swan. 

He was one of the very few people who consistently criticised those in the media and political scene who confidently predicted Hillary Clinton would win the US presidential election. Not because he necessarily betted on Trump, but because of sound mathematical reasoning when predicting a binary outcome. 

While the following piece was originally published well before the aforementioned election, it's points speak well to the collective freakout that has occurred since the Trump victory. 

The Intellectual Yet Idiot

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them. With psychology papers replicating less than 40%, dietary advice reversing after 30 years of fatphobia, macroeconomic analysis working worse than astrology, the appointment of Bernanke who was less than clueless of the risks, and pharmaceutical trials replicating at best only 1/3 of the time, people are perfectly entitled to rely on their own ancestral instinct and listen to their grandmothers (or Montaigne and such filtered classical knowledge) with a better track record than these policymaking goons.

Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They cant tell science from scientism — in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science. (For instance it is trivial to show the following: much of what the Cass-Sunstein-Richard Thaler types — those who want to “nudge” us into some behavior — much of what they would classify as “rational” or “irrational” (or some such categories indicating deviation from a desired or prescribed protocol) comes from their misunderstanding of probability theory and cosmetic use of first-order models.) They are also prone to mistake the ensemble for the linear aggregation of its components as we saw in the chapter extending the minority rule.

The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities — most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI.

Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry.

The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests, particularly if they are “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class who voted for Brexit. When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated”. What we generally call participation in the political process, he calls by two distinct designations: “democracy” when it fits the IYI, and “populism” when the plebeians dare voting in a way that contradicts his preferences. While rich people believe in one tax dollar one vote, more humanistic ones in one man one vote, Monsanto in one lobbyist one vote, the IYI believes in one Ivy League degree one-vote, with some equivalence for foreign elite schools and PhDs as these are needed in the club.

More socially, the IYI subscribes to The New Yorker. He never curses on twitter. He speaks of “equality of races” and “economic equality” but never went out drinking with a minority cab driver (again, no real skin in the game as the concept is foreign to the IYI). Those in the U.K. have been taken for a ride by Tony Blair. The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube. Not only will he vote for Hillary Monsanto-Malmaison because she seems electable and some such circular reasoning, but holds that anyone who doesn’t do so is mentally ill.

The IYI has a copy of the first hardback edition of The Black Swan on his shelves, but mistakes absence of evidence for evidence of absence. He believes that GMOs are “science”, that the “technology” is not different from conventional breeding as a result of his readiness to confuse science with scientism.

Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences (recall that he has no skin in the game and doesn’t pay for results).

The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.

The IYI is member of a club to get traveling privileges; if social scientist he uses statistics without knowing how they are derived (like Steven Pinker and psycholophasters in general); when in the UK, he goes to literary festivals; he drinks red wine with steak (never white); he used to believe that fat was harmful and has now completely reversed; he takes statins because his doctor told him to do so; he fails to understand ergodicity and when explained to him, he forgets about it soon later; he doesn’t use Yiddish words even when talking business; he studies grammar before speaking a language; he has a cousin who worked with someone who knows the Queen; he has never read Frederic Dard, Libanius Antiochus, Michael Oakeshot, John Gray, Amianus Marcellinus, Ibn Battuta, Saadiah Gaon, or Joseph De Maistre; he has never gotten drunk with Russians; he never drank to the point when one starts breaking glasses (or, preferably, chairs); he doesn’t even know the difference between Hecate and Hecuba (which in Brooklynese is “can’t tell sh**t from shinola”); he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.

He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.

But a much easier marker: he doesn’t even deadlift.

Not a IYI

Postscript

From the reactions to this piece, I discovered that the IYI has difficulty, when reading, in differentiating between the satirical and the literal.

PostPostcript

The IYI thinks this criticism of IYIs means “everybody is an idiot”, not realizing that their group represents, as we said, a tiny minority — but they don’t like their sense of entitlement to be challenged and although they treat the rest of humans as inferiors, they don’t like it when the waterhose is turned to the opposite direction (what the French call arroseur arrosé). (For instance, Richard Thaler, partner of the dangerous GMO advocate Übernudger Cass Sunstein, interpreted this piece as saying that “there are not many non-idiots not called Taleb”, not realizing that people like him are < 1% or even .1% of the population.)

Reproduced with permission.