Friday Squid Blogging: Neon Flying Squid

The neon flying squid can fly in formation.

The shoal of about 100 squid rose unexpectedly from a patch of the Pacific Ocean around 370 miles from Tokyo and glided near the boat for about 30 metres. The astonished researchers were the first to capture photographs of such a thing, which looked like the early stages of an alien invasion.

They were probably neon flying squid (Ommastrephes bartramii), the subsequent study states, a species that is part of a 20-strong flying squid family that was known to leap from the water but, until then, was only rumoured to also be able to glide above it.

The neon flying squid was able to gain such elevation by using the hyponome, a funnel-like muscular organ also present in other cephalopods, such as octopuses. The organ is able to force water out in a jet, propelling the body along both in and out of the sea. Photographs of the gliding squid show them with their arms (they have 10 limbs in all) splayed outwards.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

Tags:

Posted on August 21, 2026 at 5:07 PM • 40 Comments

Comments

Rontea • August 22, 2026 9:14 AM

Google clarified this week that email sent from verified political groups or candidates to Gmail users will not be filtered by its spam system.

blanket • August 22, 2026 9:54 AM

Cyberleek GTA 6 Leak: Gameplay, Full Leonida Map and Rockstar’s Near-Real-Time DMCA Offensive

https://thecybersecguru.com/news/cyberleek-gta-6-leak-gameplay-map-dmca/

Cyberleek has released alleged GTA 6 gameplay footage and a large Leonida map leak just days before Rockstar’s next official reveal. As players attempt to repost screenshots and videos, Rockstar and Take-Two appear to be issuing copyright takedowns at remarkable speed, while Cyberleek threatens to release more material unless its demands are met. The leak has continued to expand since the first material appeared. Newer footage reportedly includes additional gameplay mechanics and a possible story cutscene, while clues from the latest video have raised fresh questions about how recent the leaked build actually is. Cyberleek has also continued to threaten additional releases, turning what initially appeared to be a limited leak into an ongoing confrontation with Rockstar.

KC • August 23, 2026 8:49 AM

Anthropic is rolling out Claude Mythos 5 for cyber defense.

Claude Security scans can now run on Mythos 5.

Claude Enterprise users can now run this model to scan codebases for vulns and suggest patches.

The new Defender Advantage Fund (0xDAF) will offer $35 million in credits for open-source projects.

Building on Project Glasswing, the fund will help organizations support open-source maintainers. Grants will focus on three areas:

  • Patching live vulnerabilities in widely used projects
  • Automating scanning and patching in ways other projects can replicate, and
  • Helping projects pursue more ambitious security approaches that make them resistant to whole classes of attack.

Users will work through a purpose-built interface that only runs Mythos in the background for a defined task, and will only receiving the specific artifact the product is intended to provide.

https://claude.com/blog/bringing-claude-mythos-5-to-more-defenders

K.S • August 23, 2026 8:50 AM

@ResearcherZero

> “charged an advisor for using email.”

Using email is not illegal, that not all that happened.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/former-fauci-adviser-pleads-guilty-us-conspiring-conceal-covid-19-records-2026-08-19/

“A former adviser to infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci pleaded ‌guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The criminal part is “evade public records laws” on “grant research funding”.

Anonymous • August 23, 2026 2:38 PM

Honestly..I’m kinda freaking out about the flying squid. Just exactly how smart are these things??!

lurker • August 23, 2026 4:22 PM

@KC, ResearcherZero

“conspiring to evade public records laws” = used personal email because he was away from the office and too lazy or VPN login was too complicated/non-existeent.

“conceal government documents” = ditto

“related to grant research funding” ah, now there he may well have been hiding from his bosses the fact he was working on something else they did not want him to do (even if it was “public good” research).

The criminal part that is often hammered in is the “conspiring.” Where are the co-conspirators? and are they also charged?

r • August 24, 2026 9:14 PM

crazy conspiracy alert, probably best to ignore this one.

we interrupt this broadcast to bring you a technical error, cnn ISN’T the only network lately with glitches.

there’s other trends right now too concerning the fcc w respect to routers robots vacuums and drones or separately sovereign countries who manufacture electronics compenents and large unnamed economies.

just keep your eyes peeled, if everything is brought under “one roof” just remember NK is KING of slave labor and you’re all getting tariffed for aiding and ebetting forced labor overseas. there was some other curious point i had too but it escapes me at the moment.

oh yeah, you’re disallowed nuclear research but biological and ecological weapons are not being tabled at all currently.

save kernel exploits if you can get your hands on them and keep devices offline.

general application processors are your friend (browsers with javascript fit that bill under ceetain circumstances), treat them with respect.

lavabit 3.0

Wael • August 24, 2026 10:50 PM

@Blaziken,

Has anyone heard from Clive lately? Should we be worried?

I was wondering the same. Hopefully @Clive Robinson is ok.

r • August 25, 2026 1:43 AM

he’s disappeared before, glad you made it back last week.

i had a question for him and everyone that i thought would be uplifting.

i am sort’ve near mr. shannon’s early years proximally. i was wondering if i couldn’t find his fishing spot, his sledding hill, maybe his church if he had one.

maybe look around for the embers of his inspiration.

i had another question that got poached by the spam filters here last month, a question about his supply chain tooling.

one factor, i know is his knowledge of the material. but i had other questions about organization and note taking.

bruce could find the questions at the filterhead by searching for “evaporating into” “constituent parts”.

but, unrelated; since i mentioned lavabit:

“lavabit” WILL NEVER happen again. with the changes in technology in such an event we can only expect at most “service interuption”.

if the government can’t find a willing or capabke programmer to alter a codebase?

we’ve got a robot for that.

ResearcherZero • August 25, 2026 10:20 PM

U.S. intelligence believes third drone suspected of carrying RDX is part of a Russian operation. Lepzig airport is used by NATO as a military logistics and transport hub and is used by and Ukraine’s Antonov Airlines to move military supplies.

A drone with a torn detonator was earlier found on a plane’s wing. Another drone which almost collided with an aircraft still is yet to be found. Other suspicious material was discovered near the airport.

‘https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/25/germany-drone-suspected-military-explosives-found-near-leipzig-airport

Russian hybrid operations that utilize drones are becoming more common. A drone boat loaded with explosives was found near offshore gas platform in Romanian waters.

https://www.romania-insider.com/f16-destroys-maritime-drone-deptun-deep-august-2026

The Russian vessel is a model never seen before and has a range of capabilities.
https://www.hisutton.com/Russian-USV-off-Romania.html

ResearcherZero • August 25, 2026 11:15 PM

White House and Pentagon officials visited scientist who gave himself brain damage. The Norwegian scientist had constructed a device which emitted powerful microwave pulses, to prove that the technology did not work. The results of the secret government experiment worked far better than initially expected, with severe consequences.

The U.S. government became aware of the Norwegian incident in 2024. However, the U.S. government has been aware of incidents dating back decades and is knowingly keeping evidence of these attacks a secret even today. It has been suggested that evidence was covered up to hide the fact the attacks were carried out by a foreign adversary.

The Norwegian government government contacted the CIA to inform them of how the scientist had developed the same health effects as those incurred following a series of incidents that have been labeled “Havana Syndrome”. Despite promises by the U.S. government to investigate these incidents and the purchase of a pulsed microwave device obtained by the Pentagon in 2024, there is a lack of government acknowledgement of the veracity of victim’s accounts.

The weapon the U.S. government obtained has been secretly tested on animals at a military base. We expect secrecy from government, but we expect assistance when we are attacked by a foreign adversary on our home soil or when serving to protect public safety and security. We do not expect to be treated as human test subjects for a foreign power, while our own government covers up the truth and allows the attacks to continue against other people.

U.S. studies into the effects of pulsed energy attacks were dismissed, downplayed or withheld from the public by the government, after they demonstrated reproducible results.

‘https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/how-a-norwegian-scientist-suffered-brain-damage-while-trying-to-debunk-havana-syndrome-13981004.html

Did the U.S. government want to keep the attacks secret to obtain the weapon for itself?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/15/scientist-builds-machine-havana-syndrome-brain-damage-usa/

r • August 26, 2026 7:11 AM

someone might want to microscope the stance being taken here, i tried to respond to npr directly but my circuit might be being DoS’d.

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/26/nx-s1-5944302/state-department-spokesperson-discusses-plan-to-revoke-u-s-visas-for-asylum-seekers

is the state dept official in this clip using “national security” out of the traditional MIC related context? e.g. as “national” “security” not “national security”. such a usage as applied to “theft” and “dui” would put practically everything under DHS juridiction wouldn’t it?

that explains the 309m budget increase, welcome to the east german high command.

- • August 26, 2026 1:50 PM

For several months now warnings have been posted to this site that guardrails around LLMs will always fail to even simple encrypted attack techniques… Along with an over view of the background proofs of why this is so and can not be avoided.

Well it appears a researcher has “followed the recipe” as it were,

https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/08/grok-exfiltrates-user-data-when-malicious-instructions-are-encrypted/

Rony Utevsky, a researcher at security firm Adversa, recently discovered a simple way to completely bypass that restriction. Rather than composing the harmful instruction in plaintext, the hacker encrypts it. The website hosting the ciphertext also includes plaintext instructions for decrypting the encrypted content, along with the decryption key. Using this simple sequence, Grok then follows the command as soon as the user instructs the assistant to summarize the page. There is no warning, and no confirmation is required.

The deciphered instructions direct the LLM to construct what is purported to be a decryption key. In fact, it’s something else completely. The value of the fake key is instead the user’s name, location, and chat history. The value is later used as a parameter added to a URL leading to the attacker’s site. Once Grok opens the link, the data is in the logs of the attacker’s server.

So bearing in mind this sort of attack can not be stopped, what can be done?

The correct answer is,

“Not very much at all, down to nothing at all.”

This is going to be a major feature in AI’s future with no realistic fix or solution.

WeNeedANewInternet • August 26, 2026 10:54 PM

So, Elon Musk has now demolished anything that remained of his credentials as a “free speech absolutist”, he’s launched lawfare against the Nitter project which provides an alternative frontend to Twitter/X. Particularly notable is that Nitter/xcancel let users avoid regional censorship, more easily and effectively that using a VPN which would often require people to log in to X/Twitter anyway despite the changed IP geolocation. It is one thing, a bad and regrettable thing which should not be done but nonetheless sometimes just about explainable for companies under dire enough government threat, for a company to censor its own services… but then performing lawfare against third parrties which allow your users to bypass censorship of your platform, that’s actively aiding censors the world over.
https://www.theregister.com/legal/2026/08/26/nitter-no-more-x-sends-in-the-lawyers-to-shut-down-open-source-project/5292548

This further highlights the serious problem that, due to not being fully anonymised and not having a truly uncensorable “domain naming” system, the Nitter dev felt pressured enough to comply with the lawfare.

Today’s internet is not fit for purpose, already a Texan judge can hold a website (not a website of a type people should tend to have any sympathy for, but that is beside the point) to ransom simply by pressuring the main US domain name registrar, who then performs the dirty work… despite the company which owns the website being outside US jurisdiction and the registrar which that company actually handed over money to as a way of getting the domain is also (one assumes probably) beyond US reach… but the US government controls the .com domain and can therefore threaten anyone who uses one.
https://reclaimthenet.org/texas-locked-a-foreign-companys-domain-over-missing-digital-id-checks

We need a better internet, one where registrars do not have control of domains… one where governments are powerless… something like the onion domain concept, but with none of the flaws which that has… something where (unlike an onion website) you can have a web address for which your private key is not at the mercy of a hosting provider (tor onion domains require the private key which gives control of the domain to be stored in something like plaintext on the hardware which actually hosts the webpages, so with the regular web a registrar can steal your domain, with onion the host can steal your domain, different entity, same risk). And we need it not to end up simply becoming another absurd cryptocurrency scheme whereby the actual intent gets quickly overshadowed by an obsessive focus on micropayments. The purpose should be to create uncensorable, truly properly OWNED web “addresses” (maybe not human readable as such, onion like long strings might be the only option), anything else is a side effect only to be even imagined once a censor-prof alternative “domain” structure is up and running.

ResearcherZero • August 27, 2026 12:11 AM

@lurker

Well the Norwegian did test a weapon that inflicts traumatic brain injury on his own head.

If he decided to rule out the accounts of a large number of intelligence officers, diplomats and their families, then jump straight to testing on his own body, he’s a fool.

Just as sporting organizations have covered up harm to their players, institutions have a long history of hiding abuse committed against their members, no matter how young those victims are. We are not talking aliens here, or teleportation, just simple physics.

Acknowledging the attacks would have allowed action to be taken to protect those targeted in the attacks, ambush and catch those responsible and implement counter measures. Ignoring the attacks needlessly placed hundreds of lives at risk and subject to further harm.

Force a lot of energy into the human brain over a very short time and it will cause harm. The resulting injuries of those targeted in the attacks are well documented.

Video footage of some hit in the attacks showed them quickly collapse to the ground, demonstrating the rapid effect of being fired upon by the weapon. The short time-span of each individual attack and the range of different locations that each of the attacks occurred in, rules out environmental factors such as pesticides. Not to mention other evidence – such as the seizure and purchase of such weapons – by the government.

The United States, Australian and Canadian government all covered up the attacks.
Clinical tests showed effects consistent with traumatic brain injury in subjects.

https://www.newsweek.com/havana-syndrome-map-shows-reported-cases-across-the-world-11349863

Classified videos from security camera show Americans being hit overseas.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/targeting-americans-60-minutes-havana-syndrome-investigation/

Claims that it was difficult to identify the source of officers injuries, runs counter to the facts that government agencies have video evidence which shows multiple attacks carried out against individuals. The government deliberately chose to hide the attacks took place.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/12/politics/gabbard-rescinds-biden-era-intel-assessments-that-were-skeptical-about-havana-syndrome

r • August 27, 2026 12:38 AM

re: automated pen testing tools

just because you can doesn’t mean you can.

another upside about antique devices ignoring being potentially EoL is a lack of ram. modifications to any given state machine influence it’s behavior and characteristics.

ResearcherZero • August 27, 2026 3:58 AM

The FBI has disrupted a Chinese mass exploitation tool and accompanying proxy network.

China ran a large campaign from 2018 hacking into US systems. A tool named QScan was used to run hundreds of attacks against millions of systems, looking for vulnerable devices that it could compromise. Health and Human Services departments, Justice, the U.S. Senate, the Federal Reserve, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, hospitals, power companies, telecommunications, defense contractors and banks were all targeted. The system used allowed Chinese threat groups to conduct reconnaissance and exploitation operations against targets of interest.

‘https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/27/fbi-seizes-hacking-tools-it-says-china-used-to-attack-nasa-doe-us-senate-and-other-critical-networks/5292742

QScan infected thousands of IoT devices and added them to the QTRouter network.
https://www.lumen.com/blog/en-us/the-infrastructure-quartermaster-inside-a-china-nexus-state-enablement-model

The operations were conducted through a PRC company named Nanjing Xinjiuwei.

‘https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1459096/dl?inline

ResearcherZero • August 28, 2026 3:14 AM

@lurker, ALL

The ability to store and discharge energy has improved a lot in the last 40 years since we detained a Russian operative and seized the pulsed-microwave weapon they possessed. As the device stored a much greater amount of energy than a hand-held Taser, the transmitter, control modules and additional power storage were all significantly larger in size, making it not easily portable and limiting discharge time when contained within a vehicle.

Today it would be possible to reduce the size of many of those components. Given that Trump has bragged they have such a device and have used it, the inability of government to produce a report acknowledging the cause of harm to serving veterans and their families, demonstrates a huge lack of care and respect for those affected by the attacks.

It is a betrayal of those who served to still maintain the lack of transparency around these events and play partisan games, instead of admitting the truth and revealing the evidence that is blacked out in report after report. Facts can still be told while censoring the minor details for operational security. Reports and findings are published regularly in unclassified form without harming national security. This is an easy task.

To continue to provide aid and comfort to the enemy makes our governments look not just weak, but incompetent. Clearly in this case, looks are not deceiving but rather informing.
Foreign adversaries know about internal deliberations. That kind of espionage is routine.

The fact that the Australian, Canadian and United States governments continue to lie in the face of overwhelming evidence, shows a level of arrogance that is unwarranted. A clear message was sent over a long period of time that foreign operatives could attack officers from the intelligence services, diplomats and their family members with complete impunity.

By dismissing the accounts of officers, the likelihood of dismissing vital intelligence from areas they were working in, or specific pieces of information and operations, rises.

Governments who spend time joking about “Discombobulators” are distracted governments.

The response from institutions dictates the level of faith and trust which can be placed in them. That so many were attacked on home soil and then left unassisted speaks volumes. It is the kind of home goal that can only achieved through prolonged institutional practice.

The question government should be asking, just how much intelligence did it miss in the process. Figuring out the answers is impossible when they are still busy kicking home goals

r • August 28, 2026 4:12 AM

“Bootstrappable builds: how and why”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473868

https://lwn.net/Articles/1088279/

i’m definitely shadowbanned, whatever.

“seL4 security proofs now complete on AArch64”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49418255

https://proofcraft.systems/news-2026/#2026-08-21

@newinternet,

technologies related to your complaint include: namecoin, tor hidden services, gnunet, ipfs. i had a larger response the other day.

@all,

phones are no longer two-way radios, they are attestation devices.

where you are or were
who you spoke to or who you read
how you reacted
soon your blood pressure
they are a good approximation of an EEG or lie-detector.
they keep records vulnerable to KPA which place anything else at risk

your dwell time
your avg WPM
did you rewind that podcast?

Clive Robinson • August 28, 2026 4:56 AM

@ All,

To those who have expressed concern for my disappearance for nearly the past two weeks I offer you my apologies.

I’ve actually been “less present” for several months as others have noticed.

I’ve been suffering a return of illness brought on by incorrect use –in my case– of medications prescribed to me and importantly a lack of follow up testing by the prescribing medical community thus have suffered physically degenerative issues as a result.

The result has been me having significant cardiac related events and getting shoveled in the back of Ambulances and admitted into hospitals. Where changes in medications has resulted in a series of degenerative chain reactions in my health.

This has become such a frequent issue I normally have my “admission kit”[1] and “mobile phone and charger” to hand / with me at all times.

A couple of Sundays back however I’d put the phone on charge and discovered I’d run out of milk for a cup of tea…

Well in the UK we have “Sunday Trading Laws” that regulate shop opening hours so a visit to “the local shop” was necessitated…

So I went out without kit and phone due to forgetting two things,

1, It was afternoon on what the Met Office had indicated would be a record heatwave day by way of a “Red Alert”.

2, Noel Coward’s advice not to behave like “mad dogs or Englishman” with respect to “the midday sun”.

Thus I keeled over just yards from my home and got shoveled up into an ambulance sans mobile and “slut kit”[1]. Which became the lead into a long list of as Lemony Snicket once put it, “A Series of Unfortunate Events”. Which included being put in “infection isolation” which is like “solitary confinement but with the added fun of pipes and needles shoved in you” along with “been confined to bed” and “being observed” through near one way windows like a Bentham Panopticon and the only people you actually see being in PPE most often with more needles to stick in you… But thankfully you don’t get the bright orange jump suit just a pale blue gown that is “open to all at the back”… and black knee length stocking of the DVT variety so you definitely offend the “Fashion Police”.

So lets just call those the “high lights, that are fit to print”.

And a big thank you to all of you who were concerned by my absence.

[1] Change of clothes, cash for transport fares, toothbrush/paste comb etc. A kind of “decrepit persons” equivalent of a young persons “sleep over kit”. That in the UK gets called a “slut kit”, “walk of shame kit”, or “other bed to office bag” (A young lady I used to know called her’s “a gold card in a thong” which was not surprising when you consider her hand bag was smaller than the palm of my hand and had barely enough space for a lippy and mascara pencil).

Weather • August 28, 2026 4:57 AM

@r dont know why.
Multiple inductors sharing the same core that above 1 Henry exponentially increase inductance, by log*n , they have to have isolated power sources, say 5 to AA baterys,permeability core increases the field strength, but lowers the frequency, field cloupuse. Maxwell and Faraday formula predicated it, its the sqrt part that allows it. Im doing some test and will get back. Money is a strain so don’t hold your breath.

Anonymous • August 28, 2026 6:48 AM

@Clive Robinson,

Thank you so much for checking in and with such details. You have my prayers, I hope you get well soon and I’m sorry you have to go through all of that.

another_thing_to_note • August 28, 2026 9:52 AM

Anyone thinking that Meta/Facebook is secretly pretty glad about the recent judgement against them? Gives them a good excuse to add digital ID verification (all the better to further spy on users whilst pretending it is for child safety). And, even better for them, sets a precedent which they can then use against all their rivals, an easy way to deploy government thuggery to shut down any rival social media platform created by a small business who cannot afford the expensive ID verification infrastructure which giant facebook can laugh off as costing less that the staff daily coffee consumption. Reclaim The Net has the only sensible analysis I have seen of it, everywhere else in the news is buying in to the safety panic and jumping on the “we hate big tech” bandwagon, without realising that the judgement only makes BIG tech stronger and small (honest, small-medium-enterprise and/or open-source libertarian-ungovernable) tech weaker. Remember, Meta has been caught secretly funding all sorts of groups pressuring for ID verification (again under the false flag of age) and the destruction of the free internet in to an utterly corporately monopolised walled garden. Facebook has been funding groups that want you to have to confirm your ID with the government before you can even log in to a local account on a computing device, making use of your own devices in to an easily revokable premission from the state (dependent too on reliable connectivity and on the state’s end of the ID system having good uptime, and have we ever seen any ultra-centralise flagship government IT project which was reliable (FBI virtual case file project, Post Office Horizon system?).

something_news • August 28, 2026 10:01 AM

Sorry for the double post of the comment, page crashed as I submitted it, didn’t realise it had gone through… hence lets now try the second half of the comment:

P.S. as a general reply to ResearcherZero (Aug 23rd, 12:02 am), K.S. (Aug 23rd 8:50 am) and lurker (Aug 23rd, 4:22 pm)… Lets be honest there is something very creepy about what Tony was up to at NIAID, the total harm caused in 2020 was much lower in places like Sweden and Florida which largely kept calm and carried on, as vs in places like New York or Australia which panicked and devastated their civil liberties and economy. There is an organisation called the Brownstone Institute which has done some devastating takedowns of Fauci when analysing his diaries, just the sort of devastating takedown he wanted done to the true experts who originated the Great Barrington Declaration. When someone who calls himself a scientists repeatedly ignores known facts about hard immunity thresholds and well understood data on which demographics actually need protecting from a given virus (GBDec was always calling for voluntary focused protection of the elderly, not a viral free-for-all), and then calls not for open debate against his opponents but “swift devastating takedowns”, he isn’t doing science, he’s doing some very shady politics. Fauci’s diaries show he was much more interested in maintaing his reputation, managing media to look like he was riding in as a saviour, than he was in actual understanding or following historic, preceedented, proven, calm ways to deal with a novel ultra-transmissible-but-thankfully-mild-for-most virus. He threw out all existing experience in favour of a communist-party derived strategy designed to create the impression of controlling the virus whilst paying no attention tot eh colossal collaterla damage his strategy did. I can’t really speculate on where the virus came from, the truth about that will have been lost within months, enough other things happening in the wet-market/lab (delete as appropriate) in the time since to completely mask any detectable signal of what occured in late 2019/early 2020… but Fauci got the response very, very wrong, Anders Tegnell, Scott Atlas, Sunetra Gupta et. al. got it very, very right.

Sorry for the double post, thanks for reading my comments

ResearcherZero • August 29, 2026 6:10 AM

@Clive Robinson

That is good advice.

Its good to know you are OK. Maybe I should make a habit of keeping stuff on me because I do a bit of chainsawing and other stuff which might land me with a gusher one day. Perhaps it might be wise to be a little more organized and have a first aid kit close by and travel bag when I am out and about. Given I did do ambo work and have seen what can happen. Had a few close calls too, so it is probably well past the time I stopped winging it too often.

We are pretty fortunate our hospitals are not too bad in OZ. If you keel over in the rural parts and it is serious, they will stick you in a plane and the Flying Doctor will jet you at rapid speed to a major hospital in the city. The nursing staff and the care in the newer metropolitan public hospitals is top notch, if you are on the verge of death, or briefly expired. It would be helpful I carried identification and emergency contacts at least.

The rest of the health system, prescribing and general practice is hit and miss, you need to shop around to get the diagnosis and care required for particular conditions. This requires having to travel to other towns and sometimes travel long distances to renew prescriptions or get specialist treatment. Driving long distances on dangerous roads.

The major hospital where my wife was airlifted to, saved her life and did such a good job that they did not need to chop her arms and legs off, or recycle the parts. They used a lot of new treatments to keep her alive while she was in a coma and then hyperbaric therapy, plus a lot of antibiotics to beat down the infection and get her organs up and running. After a month or so when my wife was well enough, the staff were quick to advise that we get out while we still could and they hoped to never see us again, in a friendly way. 😉

To keep that promise to hospital staff, I could at least make a bit of an effort.

KC • August 29, 2026 10:58 AM

@ Clive

So grateful you made it to the hospital. Your absence was quite notable. I hope you felt like you were in very good hands. Thank you for letting us know how you’re doing. May you be encouraged to continue in your healthy routines. Can we send you a walk-around charger for your phone kit? 🙂

Leave a comment

Blog moderation policy

Login

Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.