Seen in the News

[Tizer]

... what's wrong with the brains of such people. Are they mad, paranoid, disturbed or just downright liars who love creating havoc?

They're just Yanks, they believe anything! They must be amongst the most stupid people on Earth.

That woman was American, China, but there now seems to be many such people worldwide and that's perhaps where the answer lies - they all now have access social media.

[Stanley]

I suspect they are people who were never taught how to think. They just react to things and as Peter says, today they have access to all sorts of plausible conspiracy theories on the WWW.

[Tizer]

Here's another person who's been spreading evil rubbish...
`Twitter suspends Naomi Wolf after tweeting anti-vaccine misinformation' LINK
`American author Naomi Wolf has been suspended from Twitter after spreading vaccine misinformation. Dr Wolf, well known for her acclaimed third-wave feminist book The Beauty Myth, posted a wide-range of unfounded theories about vaccines. One tweet claimed that vaccines were a "software platform that can receive uploads". She also compared Dr Anthony Fauci, the top Covid adviser in the US, to "Satan" to her more than 140,000 followers. Most recently, she tweeted that the urine and faeces of people who had received the jab needed to be separated from general sewage supplies while tests were done to measure its impact on non-vaccinated people through drinking water...'.

A lot of this probably boils down to greed for money (attract more people to your web pages and then charge others for advertising on your site) and greed for celebrity status. There must be a word for the behaviour of such people (Tripps, where are you? )

[Cathy]

Unfortunately idiots recognise each other and like follows like. It doesn’t matter to them in what way that is.

[Stanley]

"There must be a word for the behaviour of such people"

Cathy is right and the word is 'influencers' I think. Your celebrity status depends on how many people read and believe your blogs....

[Tizer]

They're influencers but so are many other, innocuous people and some folk on the Web influence for the good of us all (e.g. Joe Wicks, the exercise man?). What we need now is a specific word for those who peddle the dangerous lies and conspiracy theories. We also need to know why they are doing it, what their state of mind is, are they deranged or cunning. There must be psychologists somewhere studying these issues. At least I hope there are!

[plaques]

We also need to know why they are doing it, what their state of mind is, are they deranged or cunning.

Trumpism ????

[Tripps]

Rejoice- we have another Royal Princess. Only took two days to let us all know. Probably negotiating the photo rights etc. I can't wait to get the first pictures of her little toes.

From a 'parody site'.

We didn’t ask the Queen if we could use her deeply personal nickname that was only ever used by her dear father King George VI and her loving and loyal late husband Prince Philip.
Why would we?

[plaques]

The Royal family must be increasing exponentially. I wonder what the 'R' rate for them is??

[Tizer]

What's the betting that the rush into e-scooters will turn out to be like the rush into using the motorway hard shoulders for traffic - try it out and then when enough people have died the government will do a U-turn. Sounds a bit like the bright idea of leaving herd immunity to sort out a pandemic...
`When and where can I ride an e-scooter legally?' LINK

[Tripps]

try it out and then when enough people have died the government will do a U-turn

Has that happened yet - or is there still too much 'face' to save?

The scooters cost £13 for an hour's hire. As the Dragons say - "I won't be investing I'm out"

I'll give it a month. At least they have launched in June - not February like Sir Clice Sinclair with his version of the death trap.

[Stanley]

Naming that child 'Lillibet' seemed a bit desperate to me. I always thought it was a rather affected usage.
They should have christened her Brenda. I looked up why I use it, I suspected it was Private Eye and yes.... "Queen Elizabeth II is often referred to as "Brenda", and the Prince of Wales as "Brian". This is a result of the 1969 BBC documentary Royal Family, after which the magazine gave each member of the Royal Family working class nicknames, as though they were characters in a soap opera. The Duke of Edinburgh was "Keith", Princess Margaret was "Yvonne" and Diana, Princess of Wales was dubbed "Cheryl"."

[plaques]

The list of Royal Succession has revieled some interesting surnames.

(1) Charles, Prince of Wales (b. 1948) 1952 B D W
(2) Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (b. 1982) B D W
(3) Prince George of Cambridge (b. 2013) B D W
(4) Princess Charlotte of Cambridge (b. 2015) B D W
(5) Prince Louis of Cambridge (b. 2018) B D
(6) Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (b. 1984) B D W
(7) Archie Mountbatten-Windsor (b. 2019) B D
(8) Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor (b. 2021) D

I thought they were all Moutbattern-Windsor after Charles.

We didn't leave the EU after all.

[Big Kev]

More misleading headlines n the BBC again...

Headline says - 'Five-day office week will become the norm again'

Line 1 of the article says - 'The five-day office week could become the norm again within two years, the Centre for Cities think tank has told the BBC.'

BBC News Article

They seem to be doing this a lot lately, or is it just me? There are a lot of misleading headlines with 'retractions' further down in the articles, just seems like sensationalist journalism to me.

[Tizer]

It's become common throughout journalism but got worse during the pandemic because of journalists working from home and copy not being checked properly before publication. Lots of typos and errors too.

`24,000-year-old organisms found frozen in Siberia can still reproduce' Guardian
`A microscopic worm-like creature, labelled an “evolutionary scandal” by biologists for having thrived for millions of years without having sex, has now been shown to persist for at least 24,000 years in Siberian permafrost and then reproduce, researchers have found. Multicellular invertebrates that are solely female, bdelloid rotifers are already renowned for their resistance to radiation and ability to withstand rather inhospitable environments: drying, starvation and low oxygen. They’ve also existed for at least 35m years – and can be found today in freshwater lakes, ponds, streams and moist terrestrial habitats such as moss, lichen, tree bark and soil..'.

[Tripps]

`24,000-year-old organisms found frozen in Siberia can still reproduce'

Makes me feel a lot better about eating the leg of lamb which had been in my freezer for well over a year.

[Stanley]

"Makes me feel a lot better about eating the leg of lamb which had been in my freezer for well over a year"
I think I get close to that at times with my mutton David....
When I worked for the dairy we used to put butter into cold store and I know that some of the other butter in there had been there for more than a year. I also remember being told once that if the stores were ever allowed to thaw out they would collapse as it was the ice inside on all the surfaces that was holding them up.

[Tizer]

Have a look at what it's like in Carbis Bay at the moment - this time last year we would have been staying in a holiday cottage a few miles inland from there. I'm glad I'm not there now!
`G7 summit: A cycling tour of Cornwall's G7 village' LINK

[Stanley]

I wonder where they suddenly find all those police officers? Funny how all these international get-togethers are in prime locations with the best hotels and amenities.
Why have we finished up with a system that makes some quite ordinary (and often flawed) human beings so important?

[Tizer]

There's more to this spat than meets the eye. I hope the power of the Web (e.g. the so-called Reddit warriors) might come to the aid of the British company in this David v. Goliath issue. The British brand name, PureOaty, is quite different from the US brand name Oatly but the US company is big and owned by celebrities and investment firms and wants to kill off anything at all like their name...
`Oatly sues UK oat milk maker over trademark' LINK

Note the final paragraph: Other celebrity investors in the firm [Oatly] alongside Ms Winfrey include Jay-Z and Natalie Portman, It has also had investment from the state-owned China Resources and Verlinvest, a Belgium-based investment firm.

The British firm, Glebe Farm Foods Ltd, is based in Huntingdon. Their web site states: `We are an independent business led by sister and brother team, Rebecca and Philip Rayner, on their family farm in Cambridgeshire. We’re the only farm in the UK growing and processing gluten free oats into porridge flakes, oat flour and our delicious gluten free oat drink, PureOaty. Since we’re involved in every step of growing, milling and manufacturing our oats, we know exactly what goes into everything we produce. We are the premier supplier of gluten free oats throughout Europe and supply customers and manufacturers right around the world.' Glebe Farm Foods

[Stanley]

I wonder if anyone has ever encroached on the rights of the white goods company to the name 'Smeg'...? ( )

[Tizer]

A good explanation here of the cause of the Chamoli disaster, the Himalayan glacier that collapsed and swept away HE plants. And yet the countries around the Himalayas are building more and more dams and HE plants. This event was catastrophic but it will be even worse when Chinese dams start collapsing...
`Chamoli disaster: 'It hit the valley floor like 15 atomic bombs' LINK
`Nature often takes us by surprise. Its power is all too frequently underestimated, with catastrophic consequences. So it was with the Chamoli disaster back in February, when the flank of a Himalayan mountain failed and fell into the valley below. It set in train a cascade of debris that claimed over 200 lives and destroyed hydro-electric infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You may have caught some of the mobile phone footage that was shared at the time. A horrifying wall of slurry racing downslope, sweeping away everything in its path. An international group of more than 50 researchers has now published a detailed assessment of what happened. It's based on multiple data sources, from satellite imagery to field observations...'.

[Stanley]

That link reminds me of the failures of slopes I saw in California where the standard response to uneasy ground for building on was to send in the bulldozers. I knew a man involved in the trade and his wife was aware of the dangers and his response was to wave goodbye each morning and tell her he was off to rape another hillside.....
The failures there were caused by water getting into the boundary layers caused by ancient land slips and once lubricated, they let go.

[Tizer]

That's like the cliffs of the Jurassic Coast in England. The upper porous strata often have a lower bed of shale which acts as a lubricant and the upper cliff slips down onto the beach. The more severe wet weather makes the slips more common now.

[Whyperion]

Rejoice- we have another Royal Princess. Only took two days to let us all know. Probably negotiating the photo rights etc. I can't wait to get the first pictures of her little toes.

From a 'parody site'.

We didn’t ask the Queen if we could use her deeply personal nickname that was only ever used by her dear father King George VI and her loving and loyal late husband Prince Philip.
Why would we?

If you dont want to be royal, why use such a family name, does not make sense, I am certain Harry is on the autstic scale ( wasnt one of Eddie's kids that ?)