Spotted on a side street this morning
There was no cat, Flo or otherwise. Is this a joke I’m not getting, or is it a Brit thing?
I have nothing for you today. Have an excellent weekend!
March 21, 2025 — 7:51 pm
Comments: 5
Let there be collagen
So, I bought one of these. Yes, it was expensive. Shut up.
This is all part of weasel’s ongoing crusade to not look so damn much like her father.
I asked my buddy Grok what RLT will do and he do say:
Skin Health: It’s said to boost collagen production, which could reduce wrinkles, fine lines, and signs of aging. Some use it for acne, claiming it lowers inflammation and speeds up healing of blemishes or scars.
Pain Relief: People report it helps with muscle soreness, joint pain, and conditions like arthritis by reducing inflammation and improving circulation.
Wound Healing: There’s talk it accelerates tissue repair, making it useful for cuts, burns, or post-surgery recovery.
Hair Growth: It’s marketed for stimulating hair follicles, potentially helping with thinning hair or conditions like alopecia.
Mood and Energy: Some say it lifts mood, fights fatigue, or even eases symptoms of seasonal affective disorder by mimicking natural light exposure.
Muscle Recovery: Athletes often tout it for faster recovery after workouts, supposedly by enhancing mitochondrial function in cells.
Sleep Improvement: Near-infrared light might influence melatonin production, helping regulate sleep cycles.
This thing is big – much bigger than I could see in the picture. And heavy. And BRIGHT.
First session was yesterday. I did 20 minutes and afterwards felt like I’d had a touch too much sun on my face. You know the feeling. So today I did ten minutes and it was fine.
An hour later, I had my lunch and took my supplements (yes, I’m one of THOSE people) and immediately afterwards had my very first niacin flush. Been taking niacin for years and never knew what they were talking about.
That had to be what it was. It was terrifying (though, I gather, completely harmless). Do you get them?
I’ll let you know about my gadget.
March 20, 2025 — 6:57 pm
Comments: 6
I’m sorry I can’t do that, Dave
I’ve been using AI more and more lately for text answers (not just lurid pictures of weasels). It’s only a Google search with a synopsis afterwards, but that’s a surprisingly useful thing. Grok is my favorite so far. It has a colloquial writing style that reminds me of…well, me.
That’s an odd issue, but it’s not uncommon for computers to throw curveballs like this. Since rebooting fixes it temporarily, it’s likely a software glitch rather than a hardware failure. Here are a few potential culprits and things to check:
Curveball! Did you ever expect kind of chatty informality from your computer? (My new computer occasionally begins to spew [ and ] in the middle of my text. It’s done it twice and a reboot fixes it, so I’m not inclined to worry).
Not awfully keen on the Microsoft one (Copilot?). Never used ChatGPT. Uncle B is pals with Leo, the AI built into the Brave browser.
Someone suggested today that if you take your car to the garage and you’re not awfully good with cars, you can get AI to explain the problem and give you a hint if they’re telling the truth and what the costs should be.
I think this is going to be useful, after all. Not world shaking, I don’t think, but useful.
March 19, 2025 — 7:52 pm
Comments: 4
Look! It’s a ball!
Uncle B calls over his shoulder, “there’s a ball on flightradar24.” And I’m like “?” Sure enough, there’s a little round icon on the map and the site lists the aircraft type as “ball”.
Obviously, a hot air balloon of some kind. Probably unmanned, judging from the picture. Set out from Burghausen and it’s going about 20 mph, so it’s been up there a while.
Pink Aviation is a military aircraft spares website, so probably not them. Grok tells me there’s a helicopter training service in Austria called Pink Aviation. Probably not them.
I got Grok baffled on this one. If that’s the actual balloon in the picture, I see no place for gear or propulsion, though it must at least have a transponder. That’s roughly the way the wind is blowing today. Just a giant lost balloon?
Uncle B writes to add:
Apparently: “The STU1000 is a Worner Gas Balloon model, specifically the Worner Gas Balloon NL-1000/STU. It is used by Pink Aviation and can be tracked on Flightradar24.”
For some strange reason it is currently parked at an RAF base in Cambridgeshire. I think we can safely discount little green men, though I do hope the RAF hasn’t decided to buy them for interceptor duties. At a stately 20mph you’d be better off with tea leaves than radar.
March 18, 2025 — 4:31 pm
Comments: 9
Heh.
David Starkey is a historian (speciality: Tudor Britain), TV presenter and a waspish old queen. He was once described as “rudest man in Britain”. He’s another one that made the journey from left to right and he’s generally worth listening to.
He’s been cancelled more times than you’ve had TV dinners (are there still TV dinners?). Like:
Starkey suggested that people should not “go on about” slavery because it had been abolished in 1833 and that “slavery was not genocide, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many damn blacks in Africa or in Britain would there? An awful lot of them survived”.
And:
Starkey said that “white culture” is under threat from the Black Lives Matter movement and proponents of critical race theory who are “not what they pretend to be” and who he described are attempting to destroy “the entire legitimacy of the Western cultural tradition”. He stated that said conservatives had to defend the “uniqueness of the Anglo-American tradition” against “barbarians”.
He disputed the “idea that they are there to defend black lives” as “preposterous”, saying that “they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture” that they see as “fundamentally morally defective”, comparing it to “exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust”.
Anyway, he gave a great talk yesterday about the future of the right. It’s about British politics, so probably not of interest to many here, but I thought it was worth a post for the quote at the top alone.
March 17, 2025 — 7:17 pm
Comments: 7
Other things that don’t look good in black and white
This amazing sky. To be honest, it doesn’t really translate in color, either. Big landscapes don’t work on little screens.
We were driving across the countryside and it was alternately sunshine and squally clouds. This moment there was rain and dark cloud a head, but a shaft of sun came down and lit up the rain. It was extraordinary.
Did any of you see the blood moon? It was cloudy here.
Good weekend, all!
March 14, 2025 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 12
Sad stories
My first two chickens. The one on the right died at three and the one on the left lived to be eight and was never the same. Never made another friend, fed alone. Although, to be fair, she was always a little crazy.
Across the threshold this afternoon came this article from Backyard Chickens – “Do Poultry Mourn Over The Loss Of A Flock Mate?” It’s full of sad stories.
On second thought, don’t read it. It’s sad.
p.s. chickens are another thing that doesn’t work in black and white. You really need to see that red comb to figure out what the heck you’re looking at.
March 13, 2025 — 8:06 pm
Comments: 4
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