Yep, and surviving longer increases cancer rates. Cancer used to be a death sentence, now it is far less so. Many cancers which were a short time from death at diagnosis are now routine to remove or fix. Others that were soon fatal have 5 year survival over 90%, and some are even higher.

We haven’t cured cancer just like we haven’t cured industrial accidents, but honestly, so few people are eaten by hungry machines and left disfigured that it is likely you know less than a handful. Not cured but reduced to a much more manageable level.

Honestly, more than a year ago nVidia drivers were absolutely nightmarish. It used to be such a frequent issue that I stopped updates for nVidia drivers until I could take a full system backup. Btrfs has been a game changer, allowing backups to automatically happen on updates and allowing you to boot into a previous state. And given the level of Linux growth through Steam/Valve pushing it nVidia seems to have been trying harder. Only one update issue this year so far and it was a simple roll back, make a change, apply updates again.

The crazy thing is we actually do have things that work in humans but not in mice. Mice are omnivores and are very different in terms of optimal energy state. They tend to run in glucose more easily than on fat and their whole biology is built to be small and fast, with short life spans.

Checking how DNA repair works in an animal which lives for maybe 2 years is great for understanding DNA repair in short lived organisms, but we have tk repair damage for 50 times as long. It is just so much more complex and requires such different tools when you switch from maybe 2 years to maybe 80 years, it really isn’t sane to assume it will all carry over.

Now for an accute toxin, say tobacco, sure, some things work just fine. There is not a huge difference between humans and mice when subjected to cyanide or arsenic. Being crushed by a falling piano is going to kill both of us. But a chronic poison? That will take decades to kill? That is very different. We can shed cells in a different way to how they can. We have more mass to store things. We have more energy storage. We have bigger kidneys with more opportunities for filtering. We are different.

When we enter ketosis we have some fairly significant cancer responses. When we maintain fasting for 5+ days we have a fairly large bump in autophagy, a state where the body kills off and recycles damaged cells. This state can cause some types of cancer to be more obvious to our immune systems and allow the tumor to be attacked. In some cases otherwise inoperable tumors can be removed after shrinking them through fasting. This does not replicate in mice. So yes, some treatments (not cures because that doesn’t really apply) do work in humans and not in mice.

So other people will detail all of the products which can assist you but I am going to recommend some exercises instead. Much of the pain comes first from fatigue of muscles and second from the soft posture that happens after fatigue. Both cause pain, though in different ways, and both can be helped by a few fairly simple exercises.

First, standing on your toes will build your arch. Going up and down, bouncing, slowly raising and lowering, all of these will help train your calves and the support muscles in and around your feet and ankles. This will help stabilise your ankles and that will actually cascade all the way up your legs, back, and even neck. Some people I have worked with have had a reduction in neck pain from simply bounding on their toes when possible.

Second, you need flexibility in your ankles. 6 hours standing is absolute abuse for your joints and they need your support to be OK after that. Squats, especially deep squats, can help with ankle flexibility and strength. Reaching your toes will lengthen the muscles on the back side of your body, all the say up. Getting to having your hands flat on the floor while having your legs straight will improve your back flexibility a lot. Rolling your ankle a little to the side while very very lightly loaded can train the stabiliser muscles for strength at extension.

I would also recommend going barefoot when possible, at home etc, so that your feet can do the work. This will help them train for when you have to wear shoes.

As for the ibuprofen, it is a tool but it has consequences. I would recommend using ice packs and hot water bottles to alternate the temperate of your ankles when they are sore. Spend about 5 minutes with the ice, then 5 with heat, back to ice again if you need. Ibuprofen removes inflammation but you actually need inflammation to heal well, so use it as needed but try to do the temperature methods first if you can. The same goes for paracetamol, use it when it is the best tool but try the other tools first.

Oh, and for your ankles and feet just feeling awful consider a bucket of fairly hot water. Soak your feet for as long as you like. It works really well and is mostly consequence free.

As a fellow Aussie I share your conclusion, though the Made in Australia plan from the Albanese government seems like it could change the game. Producing solar panels here would make purchasing them cheaper even if just from the shipping costs. Add the federal investment and the creation of demand and it should get cheaper again.

Now I do worry about things going the way of the NBN, starting with a goal of future proof fibre to the home being chipped away by the LNP until it was a small upgrade on internet service funded by the government but not anything like the goal. I want good green tech, not just barely solar sometimes.

Coal is dying as an investment but existing coal plants will likely run for a long while. Overall demand for energy is rising, the new demand is being met mostly with renewables, but there is a small amount of that increase that is being met by a small increase in coal usage. As renewable manufacture gets faster and more efficient I expect the coal growth will reverse, but it is all about when. If it happens quickly we have less apocalyptic damage. If it happens slowly then we will be more fucked.

Solar is far and say the cheapest form of new energy to roll out. Wind is a not so close second. Coal is getting more expensive by the day. The only reason to roll out coal is insufficient production of solar and wind. It takes time to increase manufacturing capacity but we are getting there and we can do this.