A decision was made
I got nothing. I’ve spent my afternoon writing up the minutes of a meeting of the art club I am somehow still the secretary of. These people really love their minuted meetings.
You know what sucks? I hate taking minutes, and I’m really good at it.
March 12, 2025 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 14
I’ll put up with the restless leg, thanks
“Patients prescribed drugs for movement disorders – including restless leg syndrome (RLS) – say doctors did not warn them about serious side effects that led them to seek out risky sexual behaviour.” Sure, Jan.
The article was light on specifics, but they firmly defined the sexual desires as deviant. One man went pedo and went to jail for it. Also, gambling sprees.
I have to be pretty seriously impaired to seek out a pharmaceutical solution these days.
Grok outdid itself this time. I asked it for a weasel on its back waving its back paws in the air, and I got one with no front paws and another with three front paws. I got a pretty good one but the weasel had a giant head and another one with a second weasel head popping up out of the grass staring back.
I don’t think you ever get the same picture twice and I’ve become a little neurotic about closing the window without saving. It’s like but I’ll never see that one again.
March 11, 2025 — 6:51 pm
Comments: 7
You sure you want to go there?
Yesterday was the second annual Covid Day of Reflection. Yes, really.
On Sunday 9 March 2025, people are invited to:
• remember and commemorate those who lost their lives since the pandemic began
• reflect on the sacrifices made by many, and on the impact of the pandemic on us all
• pay tribute to the work of health and social care staff, frontline workers and researchers
• appreciate those who volunteered and showed acts of kindness during this unprecedented time
That memorial wall! I was unaware of it last year. I only caught wind of it this year because of the absolute ridicule it got on social media, where everyone:
• remembered and commemorated those who weren’t given the right medication to treat the disease, were killed by being put on ventilators or died via vaccine
• reflected on the incompetent boobs who did pretty much everything wrong and still somehow amassed giant fortunes
• paid tribute to the NHS nurses who gave us obviously choreographed and rehearsed dance routines when they were supposed to be worked to the bone
Damn, I wish I’d kept a diary.
So, sing out. What do you think happened? You can choose more than one, but some are mutually exclusive.
1. Nothing at all. It was a perfectly normal flu season with no excess mortality.
2. Covid was a real disease that caused a real epidemic. It started out strong and then, as viruses do, it petered out.
3. Covid was a serious global pandemic that killed lots of people.
4. All those videos of Chinese people falling dead in the street? Total psyop. That somehow Western governments played into for their own reasons.
5. It was a dry run for future climate lockdowns and 15-minute cities.
6. It was a bioweapon accidentally released by a Chinese lab.
7. It was a bioweapon deliberately released so they could experiment with lockdowns.
Bonus question:
8. Do you think our authoritarian lords and masters are pleased with how it went?
March 10, 2025 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 13
I do believe I have quit my job, y’all
Well, retired from my job. I’m hoping to keep some of the fun stuff, probably as a volunteer.
If you were under the impression I was hired for my scholarship and research abilities, let me disabuse you. I was the office manager. I paid bills and emptied the trash and made sure there was toilet paper.
After all that was done, I could do some fun stuff. Which increasingly was never.
It’s going to take a while. Current management has no idea how much I do, but they’re about to find out.
The illustration is Grok, unedited. It did a pretty good job. There are a couple of AI tells – there’s no arm to the chair, but an extra strip of webbing is hanging down where the arm should be. And the lead edge of the chair has extraneous tubing, like maybe the model had a foot rest?
I liked this one better, but it was too square for the blog format.
Have a good weekend!
March 7, 2025 — 6:08 pm
Comments: 14
Owww…
I went looking for this video and suddenly couldn’t find it on my timeline. So I did an X search for “cringe” and it was the top hit. True story.
I never played Street Fighter, but I gather that’s the character selection screen they’re imitating.
“We’ve lost young men! How do we get them back?”
“Hm. Young men like vidya games, don’t they?”
God, somebody needs firing for this. And the stupid bitches couldn’t give me an even number of clips so I could fit them all on screen (I left off Crockett who, of all of them, looked like she understood the assignment).
Lady #3 looks like she’s about to take a dump on the carpet.
March 6, 2025 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 8
Flowers look stupid in black and white
Flowers, food and sometimes chickens (not seeing that red comb makes a difference).
What a day! The first lovely, sunny day of 2025. It was a hard frost last night, but warm enough in the sun to sit outside and read by midday.
Okay, I was reading Twitter on my phone. I am terminally online.
These are crocuses growing in my lawn. Or violets. Whatever, they’re purple.
They’re my excuse for not mowing.
March 5, 2025 — 6:35 pm
Comments: 1
Again, not very original
This is part of my mad scheme to make Grok do some of the heavy lifting for me. I asked it for a toddler sitting on a pile of cash. For some reason, it kept adding British things, like the Houses of Parliament in the background. Which is weird, because my VPN has set itself to the Netherlands tonight.
What I’m saying is, I have to spend time scrubbing the AI out of it, but it’s still so much faster than starting from scratch.
p.s. if you want to know if someone has done a careful P’shop job, look to the edges where two layers meet. I’m sporting some pretty sloppy edges here, though fortunately I think it’s too small to see.
March 3, 2025 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 5
I hate these stinking things
Are they doing this over there yet? Used to be, they didn’t want you recycling the lids with the bottles. Now they do. And to make the point, after you unscrew the lid, there’s a little tag of plastic that still connects it to the bottle.
Which is stupid because OF COURSE I recycle the lid along with the bottle. The only way I don’t overfill my recycling bin before they take it (every two weeks) is to burp the air out of the bottle and then screw the lid on tight.
After getting the lid off, you pull and twist and pull and twist until it pops loose suddenly and showers everything with tonic.
What? Yes, my life is that boring today.
February 27, 2025 — 7:24 pm
Comments: 9
Haven’t made up my mind
I’m test driving this news aggregator at the moment: ground.news. Its gimmick is that it gives you the headlines, and each one has a little graph underneath to show how many outlets have reported it and, of them, which were on the left, which are in the middle and which are on the right.
No, I haven’t done a deep dive into what they call the middle. Precious few news sources I would call centrist, but hey ho.
Their real gimmick is a feature called Blind Spot that highlights stories almost exclusively covered by one side or the other. Interesting.
Main downside: you have to pay. The three tiers are $9.96, $29.88 and $99.96 a year. I figured for less than ten quid, I’d give it a year.
No, I don’t know the difference between the three tiers. I know I get to see a limited number of Blind Spots is all.
The joke is, their analysis of my reading habits says I’m reading more left wing sources. Of course I am – I get my right wing news in dozens of places. I’m here to find out what lefties are saying.
I love news aggregators and I’ve always wanted one that told me what the left was saying without making me subscribe to the Guardian. I’ll let you know how it goes.
February 25, 2025 — 6:48 pm
Comments: 6
A Monday kind of a day, really
Kind of a weird story. The van full of fireworks belonged to the man who owns the home it was parked in front of. There doesn’t seem to be a sense that he’s the one who set it on fire, though there’s nearly nothing about him at all in the article.
If you knew it was a van full of fireworks (and how would you know that?), what method would you use to set it on fire (unless it was unlocked, maybe?).
A slim white man was seen fleeing and neighbors have apparently been complaining about ‘anti social behavior’ lately.
Reading BBC news is weird. You always get the sense there’s a lot more to the story and the BBC knows it and is by-god not going to tell you about it.
Like this one: Teenager dies after car overturns at petrol station. What…? How do you even…? He had a front seat passenger with no injuries.
February 24, 2025 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 3