Getting wet. Walking away from Netanyahu. What AI does to us.

 My weather app promised me the slight chance of drizzle when I went out running this morning so I took the risk of leaving my waterproof at home. Silly! It did start to drizzle and then it turned to light rain. I was a bit damp when I got home! One of my nodding acquaintances assured me that it was forecast to brighten up by 11.00. It’s past midday now and it’s not happened yet.

I hear that large numbers of delegates stood up and walked out when Benjamin Netanyahu made his speech at the United Nations Assembly. Quite a lot of people have been demonstrating outside the Assembly, and quite a lot have been arrested, including the actress Susan Sarandon. One of the arrestees tells us this:

“Israel has killed more than 73,000 people in Gaza. It has bombed hospitals, schools, places of worship, fishing boats, and refugee tents. It has collectively starved an entire population as a tool in its genocide.

It has subjected men, women and children to systematic sexual torture and imprisonment. It has threatened to kill people for flying kites, killed more than 1,000 people since its so-called ceasefire, and fired 335 bullets into a car carrying five-year-old Hind Rajab.

And when it comes to consequences, world leaders offer carefully worded statements that don’t even amount to a slap on the wrist.”

For more of her reasons for protesting, here’s a link to her article.

Amid growing fears that “smart glasses” are being used to film people without their consent, here is Ben Jennings cartoon on smart glasses and AI hacks.

(Smartglasses or smart glassesa re eye or head-worn wearable computers. Many smartglasses include displays that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Alternatively, smartglasses are sometimes defined as glasses that are able to change their optical properties, such as smart sunglasses that are programmed to change tint by electronic means. Alternatively, smartglasses are sometimes defined as glasses that include headphone functionality.)

And here is a link to an article about what AI might be doing to our brains,

Such is the modern world!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Just another Thursday. Activist arrested. AI defended. Cracking down on misinformation.

 Thursday did what Thursday often does and sort of slipped by. I got up and put a load of washing in the washing machine. I went for a run, stopping on the way back to purchase a couple of items in the village. I came home and hung out the washing. I put another load in the washing machine. I showered and eventually organised breakfast. I hung out the second load of washing. Well, that’s most of the morning gone.

Then Granddaughter Number Two arrived. We set the world to rights as I organised food for later in the day and even managed to sit and chat for a while. And suddenly it was time to go and collect the small people from school. Bus services are still disrupted locally, which meant that we had a long walk down Greenfield’s main street to the school and then another longwalk back to the bus stop with two small people in tow. Fortunately I was prepared, with a jam sandwich picnic to give us all energy. 

And finally we had tea, my daughter gave Phil a lift to chess club and then came back for coffee and a chat. And at 8.30 in the evening peace and quiet is restored. Sometime in the next hour and a half Phil will return home and we’ll have a quiet beer together. Thursday evening ritual!

Out in the wider world, I read that the polioce arrested the far-right activist Daniel Thomas after he slashed that dinghy in the Channel. The thirty-seven-year-old is now in custody on suspicion of crimes including criminal damage with intent to endanger life. It must be hard being a far-right activist.

Here’s something about a rather nicer guy. I used to quite like Nick Clegg when he was leader of the Liberal Democrats … until he got into bed with the Conservatives and messed things up. Sir Nicholas Peter Clegg now has a different role in life and is reportedly playing down fears ‘that godlike’ AI could exterminate humanity. He is now busily involved in the tech industry and says many within sector are ‘winding themselves up into a lather’. I suppose it’s inevitable he’ would stand up for AI; formerly the president of global affairs at Meta, it seems he owns more than 917,000 shares in Nscale, a UK-based datacentre, and is a cofounder of the AI startup AMI Labs.

At the UN general assembly PM Andy Burnham promised to crack down on misinformation prior to his meeting with Donald Trump. Here is Ben Jennings’ cartoon on Andy Burnham’s meeting with Donald Trump.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Indian summer? Boats in the Channel. Trouble in the White House press room.

 Yesterday proved to be an excellent day weatherwise, warm and sunny, almost but not quite HOT  - even Granddaughter Number Two who ALWAYS complains when that it’s too hot when the temperature reaches 25° told me that it was a perfect day, ‘what summer should really be like” - but hot enough to dry the washing in the garden.

Today, in seeming contrast, began cooler, dull and damp, deteriorating into a massive downpour when I was talking to the fishmonger at his solitary stall in what used to be Uppermill Market. The downpour didn’t last long and by midday things were shaping up nicely. Maybe the Indian summer is not quite over. But my sunflower is beginning to look a little past its best.

I read yesterday that Danny Tommo, aka far-right activist Daniel Thomas, purchased a boat, with the intention of disrupting rescue boats helping asylum seekers. His boat sank. Karma! 

By the way, why do such people have to give themselves odd names? Do they want to emulate influencers, giving themselves a “handle” to be known by?

Today I read this article about the same Danny Tommo caught on camera slashing a dinghy in the Channel with a knife, while a rescue worker was on board. Fortunately the asylum seekers had already been rescued. I suppose it’s easy for me to comment as we’re a long way from the English Channel but on the whole I think I’d rather have some refugees in my village than the likes of Danny Tommo and the thugs he encourages to protest at the Channel ports.

A friend of mine posted this on social media: 

“BREAKING: OMG. Fox News announces it REFUSES to cover Trump’s events in stunning show of solidarity with CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO after Trump BANS them from the White House Press Pool!

Wow, did not see THIS coming…

In a truly remarkable development, Fox News’ Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton announced this morning that “This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President."

“This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.” 

This means no press coverage of any White House events, no press coverage of Trump’s trip to the UN, nothing.

All five networks – CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS – are refusing to participate in the press pool, meaning there will be no coverage for any of the affiliate stations across the country. 

This also means the only coverage we will see will come from the White House, essentially creating Trump-regime state media. 

But we know Donald Trump very well at this point, and we know he LOVES the media and he won’t be able to stand knowing that his stupid words and stupid face aren’t being blasted into every TV screen across America. 

We anticipate a very short resolution to this standoff. Trump’s ego will not be able to stand not being on TV for more than six or so hours. 

We hate to hand it to them, but good for Fox News for standing up for the First Amendment and our right to a free press.”

Maybe Donald cut off bus nose to spite his face!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Oversleeping. Odd messages. The cost of live music. Family quarrels. Pests. Rude awakening.

 It’s been a funny sort of day so far. First of all, I switched off my alarm and woke up about an hour later! I think what woke me finally was a series of pings on my phone. One after another came four notifications, all telling me that my AIRBNB verification code was …. a series of four numbers. Each time the code was different. Of course, I haven’t made any AIRBNB bookings. Is somebody somewhere waiting for a code they have not received?

To add to the weirdness, I then had a phone call, purporting to be from the USA, thanking me for using their telephone verification service and trying to give me yet another code! I hung up before thy could fire more numbers at me.

So my day began rather later than planned. I didn’t go for a run. But it’s actually a beautiful day, quite warm and sunny. I shall have to go for a long walk later. 

Further to my comments the other day on Lucy Mangan declaring her disappointment on discovering that Bruce Springsteen wears pyjamas (But does he sleep in them? Or are they just to wander about in over breakfast or to relax in to watch telly?) here is a link to something about the madness of fans. 

Fans are paying thousands of dollars/pounds to get VIP tickets to performances. This gives them the chance to be right at the front, close to the stage. Now, I can appreciate wanting to be close to your much-admired singer or band. The very best concert I ever attended was Leonard Cohen at the Manchester Opera House, which is quite a small venue. Quite by chance we had seats about only four rows from the stage. Absolutely brilliant! But the tickets cost less than £50. Mind you, that was back in 2008. I doubt that tickets even for a small venue are so cheap nowadays! 

However, wonderful as it is to attend live music events, it’s hard to justify the prices of tickets nowadays. They try to justify such prices by saying it compensates for singers and bands losing revenue as sales of CDs have plummeted. Even so, I can think of better things to spend thousands of pounds or dollars on.

It may be that those big spenders are doing the right thing, living for now, enjoying concerts while they can. After all, the political leaders of the world seem to be heading madly towards a possible armageddon!

A friend of mine used a similar argument to justify spending an inordinate amount of money on a walking holiday in the mountains of Canada. And to justify flying hime business class. Spending her children’s inheritance, she said, having helped her various offspring financially through university and later to purchase houses! So now she feels she can treat herself to expensive adventures. 

Fair enough! Maybe there will be no family arguments about inheritance. Family arguments are never good. Just look at what is going on with the Windsors, the Spencers, The Waleses and the Sussexes. Maybe it’s time to stop digging up old grievances and just get on with life.

The Guardian runs a feature they call something like ‘The Pet I’ll Never Forget’, in which people wax sentimental about a long lost family pet. In contrast they also have ‘The Pest I’ll Never Forget’. Here’s a link to one article about someone suffering from rats and a link to another about infestations of mice. I was transported back to my student accommodation in my second year at university. My bedroom was separated from the kitchen by a flimsy partition, which did not quite reach the ceiling. If friends and I had had fish and chips, late in the night I would hear mice scrabbling through the chip papers. If I stood on the table I could look down at them scurrying around the kitchen. All my food was kept in well-sealed tins. Eventually I moved out when I woke to find a cheerful mouse on my pillow!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

A bit of reflective Eurovision nostalgia.

 Here’s a link to an article about why the UK always loses the Eurovision Song Contest. 

Yes, the digital, culture, media and sport committee chair Caroline Dinenage wants MPs to look into why we don’t do better in this competition, especially as we are so good at music of all kinds. Surely there are better and more important things to investigate!

When I was a child, once we acquired a TV set, which wasn’t until I was 11 or 12, we watched the build up to Eurovision every year, all the excitement of choosing the right song and the right candidate. And we got quite excited about the contest itself. Some of the songs were very good. Those were innocent times. There were only two TV channels and even the music programmes were quite refined, with well-dressed David Jacobs in charge of Disc Box Jury.. Top of the Pops and Ready Steady Go were perhaps the most exciting music programmes we saw.

Have we actually won or even done well since Sandie Shaw came top with ‘Puppet on a String’ in 1967 and Cliff Richard came second with Congratulations in 1968? 

I think that what I really liked about Eurovision in my teenage years was the opportunity to hear songs in foreign languages and see how much I could understand. Yes, I was that kind of geeky kid, already obsessed with the languages I was learning at school and quite likely to stay on a bus beyond my stop so that I could eavesdrop if someone was speaking in French or Spanish.

Maybe it’s a generational thing because I seem not to be the only one. I attend an Italian conversation class online. Our teacher refers to us as I Vecchi Amici because all of us are in our seventies. Anyway, one day we were talking about the Festival di San Remo, very important to the Italians, and Gigliola Cinquetti was mentioned. Her song “Non ho l’età’ was the Eurovision winner in 1964. We had an Italian class group memory and every one of us remembered the words to the song! 

In 1968 another young female singer, Massiel, won with ‘La La La’, telling us that ‘Todo en la vida es como una canción’ and pipping Cliff to the post. Originally the Spanish had wanted Joan Manuel Serrat, a singer I later came to really like, to sing the song but he insisted that he wanted to sing it in Catalán. Uh, oh! Regional patriotism was not yet quite approved of and so he was dismissed and they opted for Massiel instead. Maybe it needed the appeal of a young female singer to win the points. 

That year I spent the summer term of the academic year in Murcia, Spain. A Spanish friend used to delight in singing a song about how we should give them back Gibraltar, adapting the words of Cliff’s “Congratulations”.

Nowadays I take no notice of Eurovision. Granddaughters Number One and Number Two keep me apprised of the “good songs”, which mostly don’t appeal to me. Most nations sing in English and it often seems that they just want to be outrageous. Maybe I am soing the contest a disservice.

Some people are now boycotting it because of Israel’s inclusion. Quite when Israel became part of Europe is a mystery in any case!

Isn’t it amazing, how one article about something silly like the governement getting involved in making us fit to win Eurovision could provoke such a lot of nostalgia!?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Scams. Banning gambling advertisement. RNLI supporters under attack from “doxxing”. Caitlin Moran.

 It was crisp and sunny when I ran this morning. Not exactly an Indian summer here but quite pleasant to be out and about in.

Do you know what a homoglyph is? I confess that I did not until I read an article about one of the latest scamming attacks that are going  on. A homoglyph is a character that looks very similar, or even identical, to another one. For example, the headline to this article read as follows: “Reαd carefully: how to spot – and avoid – a homoglyph attack”. In the original the letter “a” was in a slightly different typeface in just one of the words, only really noticeable if you looked carefully.  But now my copying and pasting has removed the anomaly.

Anyway, it seems that using a letter from a different alphabet or typeface in this way enables scammers to creat urls to tempt you into following a link into a system which will steal your details and generally get into nefarious activities in your name! Here’s a link to the article, where it is better explained.

I read something the other day about the House of Lords, or some members of that establishment, getting together to persuade parliament to debate banning advertisements for gambling.

“After hearing our evidence, the House of Lords Liaison Committee is today calling for a "comprehensive ban on gambling advertising."

Now the Government must act.

For I don’t know how long I have been shouting at the TV set whenever one of the numerous adverts for gambling pop up. Now ai wait to see if anything comes of this.,

Another new word for me is ‘doxxing’. This is apparently a form of online abuse where someone is marked as a target by publishing their name, address and identifying info online. It’s been used a lot recently by "Patriots" going after the RNLI - revealing the names and home addresses of volunteers - leading to further acts of violence and intimidation against them. Now Lisa Nandybhas reportedly announced that the government would be clamping down in “doxxing” attacks.

This information is from the Campaign to Rejoin the EU.

“All this comes in response to "Patriots" going after the RNLI - revealing the names and home addresses of volunteers - leading to further acts of violence and intimidation against them. 

That's the thing about doxxing. 

It's just the start for victims. 👇🏻

⚠️ they get sent things in the post

⚠️ their cars get vandalised 

⚠️ their windows get broken

⚠️ dog mess gets thrown at their houses

⚠️ people stalk and surveil them

And it can get worse from there. 

The problem with doxing is that once your details are out there, you have no idea who might choose to make use of them - and you have no way of controlling what they choose to do. “

This is the kind of thing that has Caitlin Moran railing against social media, expressing her disillusionment in this article.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Selective heatwaves. Getting on the housing ladder. Shattered dreams and illusions.

 I wore my light rain-jacket this morning when I went for a run. My weather app promised me rain within the next hour. Within 15 minutes the rain arrived, not heavy but enough to merit the rain-jacket. Later it rained more heavily. When I went out to the supermarket later the sun was shining but I wore my raincoat anyway, as an insurance policy. It didn’t rain on me. Indeed, when I came out of the supermarket it was positively hot! Now, midafternoon, it’s cloudy again!

Somebody quipped:

British weather today: coat on in the morning, sweating by lunchtime, raining at 3.

Maybe we are getting the promised Indian summer after all. Here’s the headline for a weather report in one of the morning papers: 

UK weather: Britain to be hotter than Athens next week as temperatures soar to 26C

And here’s a little detail from the report: 

“Met Office forecasts show Tuesday will be the hottest day of the week, with the mercury soaring to 26C across the south-east pf England. (My underlining)

Monday and Wednesday will also see temperatures above 20C across most of England, with the mercury only taking a slight dip towards the end of the week.”

Once again Britain = the south-east England. How odd. Here’s a weather map with temperatures:

And here are heatwave and post-heatwave pics of Hyde Park, London. They certainly got a lot drier than we did here.

Just because I found it, here’s a Stephen Ashman cartoon on the difficulties facing first-time homebuyers:

And here is a section of Lucy Mangan’s Digested Week which amused me:

“Monday

It’s funny, isn’t it, how many things we take for granted in life? How many things go wholly unmentioned, even wholly unconsidered in any even minutely conscious way – and yet, when they are suddenly kicked away you realise just how much of your internal organisation, your mental integrity, your structural soundness altogether, rested on these unexamined pillars.

One of mine, it turns out, is the belief – no, surely more than that? The sure and certain knowledge, in my bones if never alas vouchsafed by my mere mortal eyes – that Bruce Springsteen does not wear pyjamas.

This is fundamental, surely? The Boss sleeps naked. This is an eternal verity.

But no. According to what I can only describe as reports, he is a loyal customer of the venerable sleepwear shop Schostal in Rome, which was opened in 1870 by two brothers from Vienna. There’s a photo of Bruce hugging the manager, Shirley Braine – to whom he apparently sends regular postcards – and everything.

So. There you have it. The Boss sleeps in pyjamas. Acceptable province of 1950s boarding school boys, your worst boyfriend, and your dad. Please go carefully about your day and from the fragments of your shattered psyche may you rebuild better soon.”

And that’s how dreams are shattered. Maybe Lucy needs to accept that Bruce is getting older and maybe feels the need for pyjamas!

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!