WHAT ATTRACTED YOUR ATTENTION TODAY?

[Tizer]

Whatever next?...
`'Scorching hot hacked computer burned my hand' LINK

[Stanley]

"Last week, at least a dozen supercomputers across Europe had to be shut down after hackers targeted them with crypto-jacking attacks."
That was the bit that got me! God knows what is going on out there in the cyber jungle......
Usually in the afternoon after my reading spell I sit there in the rocking chair and review the day so far. Yesterday it was a good communication spell first thing, the usual household tasks and a very successful foray into the shed and the world of steam. Everything ready for the next stage, attending to Jack and making final preparations for tea followed by my TV injection then bed. I also reviewed my mental health and the state of my societal contacts. No problems there and I decided that my mental and physical health is as good as can be expected in the circumstances. "The unexamined life is not worth living"
Then it occurred to me that I have been doing my equivalent of the modern fashion 'mindfulness' for years. It just seems common sense to me.
Is introspection like this healthy? I think so as long as it is itself the subject of thought and assessment. Then I remembered something a valued friend once told me. "The only people who are mad are the ones who don't occasionally wonder if they are peculiar". A comforting thought.

[Tizer]

This is what caught my attention today... LINK

[PanBiker]

Yesterday, the Space-X launch of two astronauts on voyage to the International Space Station. A joint venture between NASA and Elon Musk's Space-X launchers. I think it was due to launch on Thursday but was aborted due to lightening in the area. Yesterdays launch was streamed on Facebook which is where I watched it from around T-20minutes. Absolutely flawless and described in detail for all the pre-flight stages of fuelling etc. The most remarkable thing to me about this launch is that there were cameras on all the stages of the launch vehicle and the recovery and landing of the first booster stage of the rocket. After first stage separation when the second stage fires to take the vehicle into orbit, the first stage falls back to earth but under a controlled and directed landing. It fires one of its seven Merlin rocket engines to decelerate onto the deck of a target recovery ship. It landed on its extended landing legs vertically and perfectly central to the landing target on the ship, fantastic technology.

NASA are paying Space-X for the launches but they work out at about 1/6th of the cost that they could do them at, even if they had the wherewithal which they no longer have. The astronauts are currently in orbit and making manual booster burns to higher altitude and to final docking with the ISS today.

NASA / Space-X, Dragon Launch

[Stanley]

A Bombardier Global passenger plane crossing over Barlick at 45,000ft and doing almost 500kts over the ground as I write.
The rage being evinced in the US at the moment. That's a very angry disturbed nation for lots of reasons but mainly because of racism. A warning to the rest of the world I think. Do not ignore the under-classes!
The way a combination of the lockdown and fine weather is bringing folks out on their doorsteps to talk to neighbours. Rediscovering that there are alternatives to electronic 'entertainment'.

[Stanley]

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories but cannot help noticing the similarities between the Covid pandemic and the two great Foot and Mouth outbreaks I have experienced. A massive difference is that F&M was not zoonotic, no transmission to humans. Apart from that there are features in common. The one that troubles me is that as there was no treatment or defence against F&M the decision was taken to cull and burn. With Covid the mounting evidence that elderly patients were transferred to care homes to free beds in the NHS without testing with the obvious dangers is worrying. Is it outside the bounds of possibility that the consequences of this would be in effect a cull? Did nobody realise this?
Whatever, the startling statistics for care home deaths was the equivalent and that only counts the ones with Covid on the death certificates. I have a suspicion that somewhere, in the darker corners of governance, this thought had occurred. We got glimpses of this in references to 'herd immunity' but these have been suppressed since. Too close to the truth?

[Marilyn]

Keep thinking. Keep dropping those little pebbles of thought into the pond and watch the ripples as they extend ever outwards.
( I’m still wondering where all the bodies of the wild animals are)

[Stanley]

[Stanley]

I was thinking about the regrettable fact that the necks of tee shirts get sloppy with washing. What we need is a can of aerosol spray that will tighten the weave up and restore a fit! Will some boffin please address this serious matter!

[PanBiker]

I was thinking about the regrettable fact that the necks of tee shirts get sloppy with washing.

I think they get sloppy not by washing but because our heads are bigger than our necks!

[Tizer]

Keep thinking. Keep dropping those little pebbles of thought into the pond and watch the ripples as they extend ever outwards.

Creative thought. I listened to a programme where they interviewed people at Ordnance Survey about their digital mapping which is updated continuously. Something said reminded me of when we got caught out on a Cornwall walk by a footpath on the map having been blocked by development. That prompted the idea that we should regulate to require all changes made to the environment that would alter what is on the OS maps should be put to the OS in advance. That way they could keep the maps more up to date. It could work in conjunction with council planning departments and help prevent `secret' alterations.

[Stanley]

That would work Tiz.
Two deaths in the family yesterday. First my 11 year old BP monitor bit the dust, I shall order a new one today. Then this...



The wind got it. The stem was only the thickness of the crack in the ground. Ah well it was interesting while it lasted!
I am now looking at my 35+ years old electric shaver and wondering if that is next...

[Tizer]

The wind has been bad here too, the poor trees are being driven crazy.

This will cheer you up...
`Nude sunbather mistaken for dead body near railway line in Essex' LINK

[PanBiker]

It's the 76th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the allied plan to invade mainland Europe which leads to the ending of WWII the following year. This is Eisenhower's pre-D Day announcement to troops made on the 5th June 1944 once the decision to go had been made.

1944-06-05 Eisenhower's Pre D-Day Announcement to Troops.mp3

[Whyperion]

Keep thinking. Keep dropping those little pebbles of thought into the pond and watch the ripples as they extend ever outwards.

Creative thought. I listened to a programme where they interviewed people at Ordnance Survey about their digital mapping which is updated continuously. Something said reminded me of when we got caught out on a Cornwall walk by a footpath on the map having been blocked by development. That prompted the idea that we should regulate to require all changes made to the environment that would alter what is on the OS maps should be put to the OS in advance. That way they could keep the maps more up to date. It could work in conjunction with council planning departments and help prevent `secret' alterations.

I think council have to inform when PP granted?

[Big Kev]

While I have sympathy for the family of this George Floyd , that everyone is protesting about, as well as blatantly flouting social distancing rules. I wonder how many are aware of his criminal history and that he was under the influence of fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time of his death. The initial autopsy stated cardiac arrest, possibly brought about by the drugs, whereas a second one, paid for by his family, stated mechanical asphyxiation. Official cause of death is still in dispute.
The police officers involved have all been removed from duty and charged.

These protesters aren't protesting they're just behaving like idiots because a career criminal died while being arrested.

[Whyperion]

I suppose the protest is much that the american system makes criminals, rather than good upright cititzens, and much of the spot the criminal tends to be based on their skin pigmentation. Though passing dodgy conterfiet dollars is a street crime and we could think of others in higher places dealing in laundering, general crimes against humanity and the planet. But protests (or the rent-a-mob kind) rarely get the social change desired, long term clever local and national politics, soft advertising, media on your side and high profile celebrities are a better route, less easy in a lockdown world and lots of noise on social media.

[Stanley]

You are entitled to your opinion Kev but I support anyone protesting against the injustices that are perpetrated on black and indigenous people all over the world and that was what the protest was about, not just George Floyd though that was bad enough.
And yes, cardiac arrest is the cause of death if you are strangled.
Later, heard on World Service. A doctor's representative in the US saying that many doctors are up in arms about the wording of the original verdict from the PM describing at as appalling.

[Big Kev]

You are entitled to your opinion Kev but I support anyone protesting against the injustices that are perpetrated on black and indigenous people all over the world and that was what the protest was about, not just George Floyd though that was bad enough.

I'm not condoning injustices against anyone, I just find it difficult to see the need to use the death of a convicted, violent, drug using criminal to flout social distancing rules in the middle of a pandemic. Will there be protests about the potential deaths as a result of these mass gatherings?

[Stanley]

[plaques]

I'm not condoning injustices against anyone, I just find it difficult to see the need to use the death of a convicted, violent, drug using criminal to flout social distancing rules in the middle of a pandemic. Will there be protests about the potential deaths as a result of these mass gatherings?

In today's circumstances, unless you are a Trump devotee, contagion is a real and threatening problem, How many innocent people who have not been involved in this particular demonstration will die as a result of it is unknown. Equally we can't have the people who we employ as bastions of law and order killing people without trial just because they are seen as potential criminals. For this single even to spark such a violent reaction points to something being seriously wrong in the American social system with those at the bottom getting a particular raw deal. Bob's Bits have been painting the background problem since the slavery days. Unfortunately it is still with us.

[Big Kev]

I'm not condoning injustices against anyone, I just find it difficult to see the need to use the death of a convicted, violent, drug using criminal to flout social distancing rules in the middle of a pandemic. Will there be protests about the potential deaths as a result of these mass gatherings?

Equally we can't have the people who we employ as bastions of law and order killing people without trial just because they are seen as potential criminals.

The police officers involved have been arrested and charged with murder, the 'victim' was under the influence of crystal meth so would have been very unpredictable. Surely the justice system will be in control of the outcome, not thousands of 'rioters' masquerading as peaceful protesters.

[Tizer]

Kev, I sympathise with some of your concern, there are always two sides to a story but one side often `gets legs' much faster than the other. However, the George Floyd death was like a spark in a cloud of petrol vapour. Racism is still rampant in America and the US police force is a mess and out of control*. Many of the cops already have a string of warnings to their name and even the police union leader is the same. Listen to the latest Americast programme and find out what's going on... Americast

*`There are 17,985 U.S. police agencies in the United States which include City Police Departments, County Sheriff's Offices, State Police/Highway Patrol and Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.' Wikipedia

[Stanley]

World Service 'Boston Calling' has done some very good in depth reporting as well. Until Bob taught me modern US history at Lancaster, my understanding of American indigenous people and slavery was limited to what I had seen in Hollywood films. That soon changed! When I was driving up Route 66 I had a wonderful hour with a Native American tribal elder on a bench in a reservation. He compared the forced settlement of the tribes in Kansas to the Highland Clearances and recommended I read Angie Debo's book on what she called 'American Indians' It was written in the 1930s and the language was different then. I told Bob about the meeting and he was delighted I had had the contact, he said the Debo book was accurate but the language dated. I slao did the same exercise in my time in Australia with the Aborigines... same problem.
I was in the town in N Carolina where Trump got into trouble for suggesting that the armed fascist anti-protest faction were 'good people' and asked in a bar one day if there were any blacks in the town, you could have heard a pin drop! Eventually one man said that he believed there were some 'N******' living behind the general store....
Even the mid West bible belt is questioning Trumps use of religion as an election tool after he used the police and tear gas to clear a way to the church where he stood, Bible in hand an attacked the rioters. (He isn't noted as a church goer). The mounting unrest over Black Lives has as much to do with Trump's electioneering as Floyd, he was only the trigger for far deeper problems. Tiz is right about that.
So for many reasons, whilst regretting the damage to social distancing, I support the protesters. The evil they fight is bigger and has caused far more damage and death than Covid.

[Stanley]

On another matter. I keep half an eye on flight movements each morning. East Midlands has been busy allk through the present period handling freight. KLM seem to be running regular services to North America, both US and Canada. Delta have never ceased running skeleton services from the Us to Europe.
Otherwise, the air space is dead as regards passenger traffic.