St Helena
On X
2017
If, like me, you're obsessed w/ small nearly inaccessible islands like St. Helena in the S. Atlantic, this is great: https://t.co/Qw2ojsIYfc
2018
Some of us are obsessed w/ St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension islands in the south Atlantic because of their beauty & preposterous level of isolation.
If so, @KUDOS_info actually shot a music video on St Helena, the prettiest of these lost worlds: https://t.co/O8tsdcH7Bb
@KUDOS_info You gotta tell me more about this.
How does one just end up there for 4 years?
Is it as beautiful and reasonably complete as a mini world as it seems?
What is the effect on culture from isolation?
DM me please. Dying to visit.
@STHELENANEWS1 @KUDOS_info So, make it happen: fly us out & I’ll livestream your praises from Tasty Bites in Half-Tree, Anne’s Place in Jamestown or even that heart shaped waterfall of yours. Stop messing around. Let’s tell the world SH is magic.
You can’t live off Napoleon forever. Your move St Helena..
@KUDOS_info @JasonElander You going?
@sthelenatourism Stop teasing me @sthelenatourism. You know you want me to share your secret with the world. Are you not the ultimate Seastead? Shouldn’t you be building a world of entrepreneurs on that isolated paradise? Don’t send me to a website. Send me to the S. Atlantic via Airlink. Woo me.
@sthelenatourism Hold a conference to explore what could be done on St Helena to make it the ultimate destination hideaway for the world’s most adventurous minds to create new industries, ideas and technologies. Invite my friends. What would Saul Solomon do in 2018? Stretch.
Your move St Helena.
2020
My favorite island (if you don’t count Sulawesi) is commemorating the one thing that folks know about it...if they know anything at all.
But it is really a freakishly wonderful miniature world. Would love to put St Helena on the map for the spectacular remote anomaly that it is!
@DohoGg Isn’t it fairly warm there?
Happy St Helena Day to all the friends I’ve never met in the middle of the South Atlantic. Your isolated yet complete world in miniature has been in my thoughts for decades.
I must find a way to visit you. Be well.
@Digenes_Akrites I think Pitcairn and Tristan da Cunha are slightly too small and insular long term although both are beautiful and fascinating. St Helena is just the size of a miniature world.
@brookedallas Some say his real name back in the Seychelles was Oogway.
@GradyPenning Not focused on him. It’s the island.
@brookedallas Well, he is 187 years old so it’s not fair to pull up old pictures...
@nuanceislost I’ve been to Sulawesi. Never to St Helena.
@SeljakPravi Been.
@NickDharmadi Well, it’s beyond beautiful in Torajaland where I spent most of my visit. But south western Sulawesi is all pretty astounding. And id love to explore the diving around manado in the north.
@Crangle That’s a great one. Naturalist?
@CaitlinPacific @GadSaad Oh honey. If we’re gonna go Irish, let’s step it up a bit. As my heart belongs to Rockall:
@TylerMGoldstein @CaitlinPacific @GadSaad “May the Seagulls rise and pluck your eyes...”
Ah.
@jlmannisto Two of my other favorites! And don’t get me started on Ile Amsterdam...
@Impatient_Brian @SpongeBrainBob1 Say more ??!
@SpongeBrainBob1 Say more?
The Portal Podcast wishes to raise the profile of St Helena in the South Atlantic as one of the world’s most interesting destinations. If you are on St. Helena and interested, please DM?
Or invite our team for a beer at Donny’s, Rosie’s or Anne’s to discuss. Either way. Thanks.
@lukeburgis I have never been there physically.
@Alexihkal Not the Real Sasha of course...but I met his widow once.
@sydbarrett1965 @PamelaParesky Well, Half Tree Hollow, Jamestown, Longwood, St Paul’s, and Alarm Forest don’t look half bad.
@sthelenapodcast How does one become a guest on this podcast?
The number of hours during COVID that I have spent actively daydreaming about escaping to St Helena is not insignificant:
@DohoGg They do at Anne’s Place just off Castle Gardens in Jamestown.
@ngriffin360 The interior is too inaccessible. Otherwise: yes.
Happy Carnival to all the good folks in Jamestown!
St Helena is a complete miniature world that has escaped COVID-19.
I adopted it as my COVID fantasy escape & learned so much more about during quarantine. How it escaped world fascination is itself fascinating.
Beautiful Isle.
@difmeister You’ve been? You are there now?
@Rob_Kimbell @sainthelenainfo Have you been?
@sthelenatourism Where on island is this shot?
@njfoster @sthelenatourism Thank you Neil!
The reason I ask is that I want to know how many different uncorrelated populations we have on earth were an absolute pandemic to arrive...thinking of Covid as a forerunner to that. For the most part most all of us seem to be part of one mega experiment.
Not a great strategy...
St Helena in the south Atlantic remains Covid free to the best of my knowledge. It has over four thousand souls on island.
Q1: How many land masses are inhabited by more than 100 people and have been COVID Free for all of 2020?
Q2: What is the largest such population?
@kdscott10 @njfoster https://t.co/UaeqizOmwR
2021
Love listening to this modern spin on the aging legacy technology of radio given by Radio Garden.
Here’s remote Saint FM in the middle of nowhere in the south Atlantic; the heart of Jamestown St Helena, broadcasting to the world. [My favorite island is crazy for country music.]
Prince Philip visited St Helena on Tue. January 22nd 1957.
He expressed concern about the island’s economic dependence on Flax. He did not stay the night.
The most romantic/isolated part of what is left of empire, and he ate & ran? Never got that.
RIP
Let me also add that as an American, I am not at all caught up on the royal fam. I recognize the symbolic importance of the monarchy, but we are kind of against the concept of royalty on principle. As a result, I personally have almost no association with the Duke, good or bad.
@njfoster Wow. Just wow.
@EverywhereTrip How was it?
I want to thank my buddy @njfoster on the super remote island of St Helena for sending me some of the rarest and tastiest coffee in the world.
And thank you to a small island in the South Atlantic keeping Green Tipped Bourbon Arabica growing from the 1700s when Solomon’s began! https://t.co/mQEK5kA3vq
COVID destroyed Napoleonic anniversary tourism this year.
I believe that this may be a photo from 100 years ago tomorrow of commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of Naploean’s death on the marvelous truly remote island of St Helena.
Eager to see what the Saints do @ 200yrs. https://t.co/U0owPBjxka
@EverywhereTrip Cool! Link to your adventures there?
@STHELENANEWS1 How can we help?
Happy St Helena Day to the amazing island and islanders of St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic!
This is 200 yrs this year since Napoleon died in the Longwood district of St Helena. SH needs our tourism. Got to get over there...whadyathink: should we go? Gorgeous place.
It’s not that I’m not interested in stewardship of planet earth. It’s that we can’t rid ourselves of people who should *never* have power achieving god-like ability to screw up everything. Like the @EcoHealthNYC and/or PRC may have with their virus tinkering god-complex in Wuhan.
COVID could be climate destruction. It could be ocean poisoning. It could be nuclear fallout. It represents how what happens in one location will no longer stay there. It will get everywhere.
At this point we have physics, rockets & isolation if we want to avoid one shared fate.
What do PostEinsteinian physics, @elonmusk’s Mars agenda & the still COVID-free super remote Island of St Helena have in common?
COVID is a test showing there to be almost no true diversity on 🌍 left. They are 3 paths to escaping our shared fate when our human leaders screw up.
I’m overjoyed that St Helena has made it this far with 5k souls, flights, shipping & no Covid. But their strategy can work with viruses in a way it cannot with nuclear fallout. Plus, they’re not truly self sufficient in any way.
The rich planning escapes aren’t thinking clearly.
So that’s a large part of why tiny St Helena, @SpaceX and theoretical physics should be watched by all of us. I’m happy if Elon puts his eggs in SpaceX but if he is serious about what he says on saving humans, it is crazy not to save all of theoretical physics as a side project.
That leaves post-Einsteinian physics. And our theoretical physics community isn’t really even doing fundamental physics anymore as a focus of research. They do physics adjacent mathematics and call it physics if they want to be employed and keep their jobs. And no one steps in.
I’m not against @elonmusk’s rocket agenda. Super impressive.
But I totally disbelieve we are going to terraform Moon and/or Mars anytime soon using rockets. And if we do? We simply get two more spheres with rockets to safeguard the only know intelligent conscious life we know.
Stewardship has so-far worked w/ @StHelenaGovt and Covid. It’s just very extreme and hasn’t been effective at isolating larger land masses. Good luck trying to stop billions of people around the world tinkering with the twin nuclei of Cell & Atom as they get easier to manipulate.
So I hope this explains why, in part, I’m focused on physics, but am also keen on St Helena and @spacex / @elonmusk as well. I even care about people trying to upload us into silicon. Everyone working on diversifying away from a shared fate has my admiration. No matter how crazy.
We need our physics community to work with 4 dimensional, 1+3 signature three generation models again and to stop pretending that they are doing physics when they work exclusively on toy models over a career. And we need to insulate them. It’s insane to nickel & dime our top 🧠s.
@Liv_Boeree I’d look at @peterwoit, @garrettlisi, @stephen_wolfram, Nima, @DavidDeutschOxf, @FQXi, @penrose, @JulianBarbour, myself and others who are trying new things. @DrBrianKeating and Curt Jaimangul are talking about this on their podcasts. @skdh seeks to be a counterweight to hype.
@PeterMcCormack @Breedlove22 You don't need to hustle.
@Liv_Boeree @peterwoit @garrettlisi @stephen_wolfram @DavidDeutschOxf @FQXi @penrose @JulianBarbour @DrBrianKeating @skdh Anytime Liv.
St Helena. Still Covid free.
Moral: there’s (almost) no diversity on Earth. We are all in one giant experiment now with shared fate. Whatever happens in Vegas (or Wuhan or Chernobyl…) won’t stay there anymore.
It is past time to diversify off this sphere before it’s too late.
And for those new to this issue I don’t mean Mars. And I don’t mean let’s stop caring about earth.
If we don’t solve post-Einstein physics we aren’t likely going anywhere good. And even if we do, there’s no guarantee it helps.
Take care of earth, but look for the exit. Now.
@b01dface It’s not about COVID obviously. It’s about X where X could be disease, radiation, climate, shortages, Revolution, etc. Everything spreads. Covid is simply proof of concept. What started in Wuhan got everywhere. Almost…
The island of St Helena isn’t a country.
But it is likely what you are looking for: https://t.co/BIxLdXTxMi
2022
@sainthelenainfo Ahem. Half Tree Hollow would like a word...
Happy St Helena’s day to my favorite anomalous island. There is no place on earth remotely like it. Perhaps because it is almost the most remote place there is. Still COVID free. Imagine.
@ralf00652823 What did you think of Jamestown and its pubs?
@AgramSeth That’s Tristan daCunha I believe.
An interesting decision. One of the last permanently inhabited “first world” settlements on earth to have avoided COVID, has just **decided** to open up by ending its mandatory quarantine on all new arrivals.
Welcome to post-COVID life on earth, to the “Saints” of St Helena.
I think what he captivated me is that the island bucked the world trend.
They made full use of their radical isolation. They held and kept a strict rule that was costly. And they succeeded until now to keep their entire island uncorrelated with the rest of our infected world.👍
@JakobRohrhirsch Huh? I don’t understand your point. I believe they avoided COVID up until now.
- I think what has captivated me…
I turned 57 a few days ago. Apparently I’d never seen a rainbow.
I thought I had. I’ve been to Maui. But apparently I hadn’t.
I saw one yesterday. There are rainbows that are…words fail me…different.
This life is so worth living. This world is worth saving as long as we can.
If you were in the Central Valley of California anywhere near Coalinga yesterday and saw it too through a real camera, please share it with me? Thanks in advance. 🙏
@BodegaJustice It was.
@Zynnwood Right. Who knew.
@noapologyUSA I thought about that. I was with my 17YO son. He was the one who caused me to pull over.
@WriteintheD My son explained that to me.
@Not_Elm0 I get it now.
@BrandonWatson Words failing. No thought at all. Awe.
@BrandonWatson I can’t get it exactly.
@barinkayaoglu Mersi Barın!
@andre1sk One of my few dream destinations.
@PecoraroJarrod A) Sulawesi
B) St Helena Green Tipped Bourbon.
@Amarcissa Where?!
@TomBilyeu Let’s continue ?
St Helena’s second most famous resident turns 190.
The Seychelles Tortoise is the oldest documented land animal in the world. Here, he is pictured on the grounds of Plantation House where he lives with the Governor.
Congratulations to St Helena Island and Saints worldwide!
2024
My buddy @ChrisWillx asked me to do a second podcast after our last one from 2023. It just dropped today, so I’m just having a listen myself. We cover religion, Harvard, St Helena, etc.
Join us and let us know what you found worthwhile for next time? 🙏
Just back from a (2nd) trip to St Helena, and stopped off in Johannesburg before the SA elections as a guest of the @PodcastPartySA and @GarethCliff to do a couple of private events.
The podcast we squeezed in, however, just dropped! Check it out here:
@HumbleFlow @PodcastPartySA @GarethCliff Drink, work, dance, hike, swim with whale sharks, fish, complain about government, and love life.
@tarik_markovic @PodcastPartySA @GarethCliff Making some moves.
@njfoster @PodcastPartySA @GarethCliff Come home. All is forgiven.
A podcast on the (truly) remote Island of St. Helena with SAMS (S. Atlantic Media Services) had me on while I was there recently for my second visit. This is likely *WAY* too niche for almost all of my followers...but what an amazing place it is.
@rollinwithbolin Uh…details please???
Long digression ahead. Please skip if not generally interested in interplanetary/interstellar issues.
We should hold a competition: who can figure out how to best make this argument and not sound crazy to the general public?
If I were to try to steelman what I find odd about Musk's position, I would say that anyone this smart is tempted to use Mars and Rockets to make "Interplanetary" *not* sound like "Interstellar".
Perhaps I have been uncharitable if this is the case. It seemed self-evident to my mind that anyone smart enough to be able to see the necessity of moving to interplaentary objectives would gamble mostly on post-Einsteinian physics and not rockets as the Moon and Mars are totally inadequate to diversify our risk and that rockets get us little else.
But maybe the issue is that Musk truly understands people and that he has found the best argument to make interplanetary not sound insane. I admit, that I never considered that the point of SpaceX is a gateway to getting normal people to dream about what I have termed "restoring an indefinite human future" which was lost due to thermonuclear innovations of the 1950s.
If humans were rational, a "go for broke" emphasis on finding the theory or theories beyond General Relativity would be our top priority. But somehow this apparently makes no sense to ordinary people who cannot contemplate that the speed of light may not be the last word in a larger theory that contains GR as an effective limit in the sense of field theory.
I listened to this and wondered: is it simply so hard to imagine interplanetary human life as a top funding priority for ordinary people, that Musk has worked backwards from people and not forward from 'interstellar'? After all, his idea of making dorky electric cars cool by emphasizing speed was more about people's cognitive distortions around making EV not sound like golf carts or boring battery specifications.
The thing I never understood was Musk's own zero allocation to post-Einsteinian physics. The best I can figure under this rubric is that someone could believe that the optimal research strategy is to first make make planetary diversification to avoid extinction sound as normal as possible. Mars already sounds crazy and he is clearly struggling here to make the world's most important point.
Sorry to bother many of you with this digression. But I was just touched by how hard it was for him obviously struggling to find any way possible to make such an important point seem sensible. If I have gotten him wrong on this point, then I understand better why he avoids interstellar post-einsteinian physics.
Said differently, perhaps he has figured out that man's first priority is convincing his fellow man that the only sane strategy for long term human survival through diversification is to make the sane goal of interstellar diversification not sound crazy to the people at scale.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is a difference in strategies and that "Occupy Mars" is syntatic sugar for ordinary humans who cannot contemplate interstellar diversification outside of a movie theater. If so, I understand where the difference in emphasis lies.
I may still disagree given my perception of the urgency, but I never considered the idea before seeing this clip. Which, under any circumstance, was my mistake.
I don’t think that is right. That is the argument that sounds slightly right. If a grizzly bear is starting to snarl from 100 meters, I don’t pick up and comit to the first twig I see. I scan the forest floor and environment while there is still time to think.
But thanks. I got your point.
@DrBrianKeating Since Saint Helena is a great isolated island to practice making a small colony truly independent on a terraformed Mars, why is he not there practicing?
That is not the point my friend. See what I did there? It is a portfolio problem With many zero allocations to be explained.
For those of you who follow me for St Helena Island content: @saintfmradio is apparently shuttering on Friday Nov 8th. Mike Olsson, the flamboyant trouble maker, muckraker, island character and SaintFM founder is apparently stricken with a terminal illness. This is an enormous loss to the wonderful people of this tiny island community.
My best thoughts to Mike, his family and the Wonderful People of SaintFM at this time. Thank you for being wonderful hosts and great interviewers every time I stopped by.
You truly are the beating heart of Jamestown and St Helena and made a huge impression on this visitor. 🙏 https://t.co/eqb6F6VOb6
@JamieBell116 It’s insane. Apparently you aren’t supposed to get a nightmare diagnosis or shutter a business during an election.
People are losing their minds.
Thank you.
@SaintsDidNext D&S! Did you guys record with them ? Would love to listen to your interview if so. Thx!
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