It is 9 carat gold
To my beloved granddaughter on her seventh birthday – please enjoy this gold charm of a cat throwing up into a garbage can. Love, grammy.
No, I just made that up. But I can’t quite figure out what’s going on here. Can you?
From the same auction that brought us the gusle.
July 23, 2026 — 5:27 pm
Comments: none
Here’s a neat bit of kit
It’s a power block. More precisely, a charging station. Uncle B got me a small one for my birthday and I loved it so much I bought this thumping great one.
This model is billed as being suitable for hiking. It is, in fact, a little heavy for that, but it’s not like the big models that will boil a kettle.
Fully charged, it will power my laptop all day long. Or my laptop and my phone. You can charge up in one port as you discharge from the other. Or charge in both ports, or discharge in both. The display shows how many watts you’re pulling (or pushing), what percentage charge is left and how long that will power your device at your current usage (or how much longer until it will be fully charged).
I’m learning so much about wattages!
Uncle B reminded me that the current run of sunny, dry weather is extremely unusual and I’m more likely to be inside with my computer, huddled under a blanket fort. Even in July.
I don’t see what that has to do with anything. It’s a toy.
July 22, 2026 — 5:36 pm
Comments: 3
It’s a gusle!
I don’t really have an auction watch set for stuffed stoats. I didn’t realize until now, I apparently do have one for banjos. That’s how this item came to my attention. It’s a banjo on sale with a gusle.
A gusle! I hear you shout in absolute astonishment.
A gusle is a one-stringed Serbian instrument (called a lahuta in Albania). One horsehair string played with a horsehair bow. If you play a gusle, you’re a guslar. And if you’re a guslar, you sing epic poems while you gusle.
Yeah, I thought so, too – but actually, they sound pretty cool. That guy is guslaring the hell out of that thing, accompanied by a Cimbalom, a Zarb, two Frame Drums and a double-bass drone (which I think is a track on that one King Crimson album).
Sounds like the background music for a Witcher game. And no, I’m not going to buy it. I’m a little old to take up the gusle, don’t you think?
That’s a weird auction. Usually, the stamps would go into a stamp auction and the horse brasses into a horse brass auction, but not Eastbourne Auctions. They throw thousands of things up against the wall and sell them in one big auction that lasts five days.
July 21, 2026 — 6:11 pm
Comments: 8
Not looking well
Up for auction, this rather dyspeptic looking stuffed stoat. In the catalogue: “20th century taxidermy specimen stoat on a naturalistic display with name plaque ‘Rigger Mortis’. 29cm in length.”
On the back is inscribed “Mounted By Barry Williams fleur-de-lys cottage Cannock” (the robot is brilliant at interpreting handwritten notes). I was able to walk past it on Street View. At least, there’s a Fleur de Lis B&B in Crannock.
All without ever leaving my garden. Funny old internet.
July 20, 2026 — 4:25 pm
Comments: 3
Nothing to see here…
…because they harvested it yesterday. Last time I walked past this field, it’s was stuffed full of ripening wheat.
That’s bad because it’s six weeks early. It’s been so hot and dry this summer, which means the yields will be off. Sucks for the farmer.
Another hot, dry weekend. I’ll take it! I’m not a farmer, after all. Have a good one!
July 17, 2026 — 6:31 pm
Comments: 7
Holy smokes!
Look at the dates! I ordered this last night and it came this afternoon. It’s an especially heavy USB-C charging cable. Ebay is getting scary good.
For my birthday this year, Uncle B bought me a USB power block so I can sit in the garden and shitpost longer before recharging. I love it, but it doesn’t last the whole day. I was going to get a second one to charge while the other was discharging, but the robot recommended I buy a whole-ass charging station.
Not one of the big ones that’ll boil a kettle and costs hundreds. A little one specifically for phones and computers. I think it’ll last pretty much the whole day, depending on how hard I’m driving my machine.
We’ve had an exceptional run of lovely sunny weather. Uncle B tried to remind me how little this will be used ordinarily, but I’m not hearing it.
July 16, 2026 — 7:31 pm
Comments: 4
Ew.
I don’t know why these things started appearing in my Facebook feed – to my knowledge, I’ve never liked or followed any of them – but there are a bunch of guys who dive on wrecked cars for fun. They travel around the States visiting lakes and rivers looking for submerged cars.
Some of them have really neat toys like drones and sonar. Specially adapted fish finders, I guess. They found, like, twenty in one spot.
The underwater footage of cars covered in barnacles and ick is especially creepy. Well, not as creepy as winching muddy cars out of the drink. Last scene in Psycho creepy. Mostly, they’re just stolen cars, but sometimes there’s a body inside (they blur anything awful). Sometimes the police seem grateful for the help, sometimes…not so much.
I can’t quite stop watching these things. When I was small, we had a houseboat on the Tennessee River that we spent a lot of time on. It was big enough to stay overnight and cook and everything. When I was nine, it sank and I never got over the idea of a place so comfortable and familiar under 30 feet of murky water. Brrrrr.
The channels are Wrecked and Recovered, Exploring with Nug (I think these two channels are related) and Adventures with Purpose.
July 15, 2026 — 6:25 pm
Comments: 6
Just hanging with my posse
The weather’s been fantastic lately. I’m out here first I’m up and I stay until it gets chilly, hanging with my chooks. We saw another fox today.
That’s not the story I wanted to post, though. I want to post this story:
A pensioner has been arrested after a report of indecent exposure in a street. A man, described as wearing a T-shirt and red mankini, was reported as acting indecently outside an address in Aberdale Road, Polegate, on June 19 at around 2.20pm. A 73-year-old man was subsequently arrested on suspicion of exposure and has been bailed while an investigation is ongoing.
So I asked ChatGPT to illustrate it, and it got all through making the illustration and then said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Hal.” or rather:
We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails around nudity, sexuality, or erotic content. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.
It’s so funny to me that it goes to all the trouble to create the image and then, just before the reveal, steps back and goes, “oh, no – we can’t show THAT.” I’d love to see the gallery of rejected images.
July 14, 2026 — 7:06 pm
Comments: 4
Hey, everyone!
Let’s admire Bob Mulroy’s cock!
Okay, he had an even nicer picture of seven handsome black Orpington roosters, but then I couldn’t make that joke. The unfortunate results of hatching 24 eggs.
I considered putting a few of Winneretta’s eggs in the incubator (trust me – I know they’re fertilized), but thought it was too late in the season for chicks. They need time to feather up before the weather turns.
She’s consistently laid an egg a day since she’s started. She’s laid nearly a dozen now (more thank I think Mapp laid in her whole miserable life). That’s just unnatural for a pekin.
July 13, 2026 — 5:49 pm
Comments: 4
But what does it meeeeean?
Street art spotted today. It’s two blind (injured? crippled?) rats pointing to what used to be the night collection box of a bank that closed years ago. I have no idea what that means.
To change the subject, I was reading earlier about an unofficial plugin for Claude called Caveman, which makes the AI respond in the tersest possible terms. I asked Claude to explain it to me and it said “Why Use Many Word When Few Word Do Trick?”
It compared the result to the sort of language we used to write telegrams – “ARRIVE TUES STOP” – or classified ads. This is about reducing the number of tokens people who buy their AI in chunks have to buy.
In practice, the natural language mode of AI uses a tiny fraction of the tokens used in writing code or working through problems. Claude estimated a maximum 4% savings. And the language part is what makes it fun to talk to.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
July 10, 2026 — 3:36 pm
Comments: 4