Category: annoying people

Other people’s stuff

Posted on

A bit of a mishmash of stuff I didn’t write, but that I think you should read today.

But first off, a health warning. How’s your energy frequency today? I’m still recovering from the weekend and my bad back, so I’m only mid-50s.

Oh, and Fresh Food = Death. Who knew?

No photo description available.

Seems legit.

__________

Next: CLIMATE! SeeOhToo is huge, glaciers are melting, and it’s not quite as hot as it was 4 years ago. I’ve said before that I’m not going to get too deeply involved in this debate, but I enjoyed reading this article on the subject. Again, I’m not fighting the science, I’m fighting the reporting of the science.

I asked the Australian climate scientist Tom Wigley what he thought of the claim that climate change threatens civilization. “It really does bother me because it’s wrong,” he said. “All these young people have been misinformed. And partly it’s Greta Thunberg’s fault. Not deliberately. But she’s wrong.”

I would not like to see us motivating people to do the right thing by making them believe something that is false.

Been there, too.

__________

Here’s an interesting twitter account: FootyQuakes

Measuring the seismic effect of goal celebrations in the EFL Championship.
Amazing.

__________

A brief intermission here, as I just asked someone at a multi-million Rand business (we’re talking 9 figures here), and was told that I could pick it up in Bellville. I don’t want to go to Bellville, so I asked for it to be sent via email, and was told:

We do not send so many pages via email.

Wow. Should I ask for a fax?

__________

And – vaguely linked, actually – I’ve been using WeTransfer to share some files recently. While the files are uploading, you get offered links to wepresent – their photographic essay site. Some of the stuff there is pretty good.

I’d advise https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/nuuk-york-state-of-mind/ and https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/corey-arnold-aleutian-dreams/ but the whole site is worth a look.

__________

Enjoy your day!

Political hysteria

Posted on

It’s election time in the UK, and I’m really glad I’m not there.

If the hysteria and hypocrisy on social media is anything to go by (and to be fair, it’s probably not), it must be an absolute crapfest over there at the moment.

Taking a step back 6000 miles… away from the situation, it’s always interesting to me what the combination of acute politics, access to the internet and a glass or two of wine can bring out in people. In an age when we are trying desperately hard to educate our kids as to the dangers of poor social media etiquette, people – parents! – really don’t seem to think before they share and post stuff online.

Take this hilarious meme, for example. Yes, yes, I see what they’re trying to say here, and of course they’re entitled to their political opinions, but in stating one particular party in the slightly altered heading (did you even notice?), for me, they’re implying that any other party’s propaganda is fine.

That definition of propaganda for you:

information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

So if one party is lying, that’s [emoji poo], but for anyone else, it’s fine?
Ok then.

It’s another good example of the hypocrisy that is conveniently overlooked when shouting about these things. Because if you think that Labour or the Lib Dems (other parties are available) are going to deliver on their election promises, you really haven’t been concentrating on any election ever.
And yet the people posting this sort of crap are (mostly) well-educated, professional individuals who wouldn’t dream of saying something so clearly illogical in any other area of their life.

There’s some major sociological study just waiting for a suitable PhD candidate right here. (It’s probably already been done, to be honest.)

I’ve said it about sport:

…it’s fine to be irrational, as long as you know you’re being irrational. Sport brings out the irrational side in a lot of people…

The trouble is, much like sport, politics encourages this weird kind of behaviour as well. And, much like sport, it’s exacerbated by social media.

Take a look at your friends’ posts online now. And if you don’t see this phenomenon, you’ve either chosen good friends (well done) or you’re deep inside the echo chamber with them (oh dear).

Hidden message?

Posted on

I’ve been up and about for five hours today, during which time, I have made packed lunches, fed the beagle, done a decent 6.5km run, popped into the lab, picked up some keys from a block of apartments and answered four (yes, four) sales calls from three different companies, each offering me a funeral plan. Two of these companies were full on insurance companies, and this is part of their irritating bread and butter.

The other one was my cellphone provider.

I do recognise that times are hard and that businesses are having to branch out a bit, but Vodacom are notoriously unreliable on coverage and damn expensive on price, so why on earth would I use them to pay for my funeral?

But that’s the secondary issue here.

I don’t get offered funeral plans often. To get offered four in a single morning does suggest that someone knows something. Bit worrying.
Maybe they’d seen me after my run this morning. It is like a near death experience every time.

But then of course, for money to be made on funeral plans, it does rather rely on the insured individual living for as long as possible – or better still, not dying at all.

So maybe someone knows something else.

Glass half full, and all that.

Back in time with #RBOSS

Posted on

The Queen’s Pier in Ramsey in the Isle of Man is in dire need of restoration. First opened in 1886, 104 years later it finally closed and has been in a state of decay and decline ever since. But things are looking up – the Queen’s Pier Restoration Fund are slowly but surely making progress on bringing this impressive landmark back into use.

It’s painstaking, expensive work and you can help them out with some funding by clicking the link above if you so desire. And – if you’re local and feel the need – you can even volunteer to help with the ongoing work.

“Oh ya, and I also helped rebuild a 2,244ft long Victorian pier.”

Stick that on your CV and smoke it.

But there are some locals who are trying to assist in ways that you and I could only ever dream of: taking historic engineering from way back in time and dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21st Century: rejuvenating the superstructure of the Queen’s Pier via the means of #RBOSS.

This incredible image appeared on Facebook yesterday.

Amazing. You can literally see some of the stabilising cross-bars between the Victorian cast iron piles (over 40 feet in height (with 18 foot piles) on a 6° pitch) glowing brightly as they are heated to around 1200°C in order to remove impurities which might weaken the overall structure.

You can usually only do this is a specialised foundry. For the metal on the pier, this heating was last done in Stockton-upon-Tees in the 1880s: the RBOSS technology to repair these important stabilising braces on-site simply wasn’t available until now yesterday morning.

This revolutionary technique is not without risk, however. Primary dangers in flinging the saturation slider all the way to the right, saving the image and then doing it again include literally burning right through the iron which is holding the pier up (you can see this occurring on one piece of cross member) and also turning the corona of the sun a weird grey-green colour.

But in the hands of an RBOSS expert (as we undoubtedly are in this case), this method is a quick and easy way of mending a Manx landmark. It’s surely only a matter of time until Peel Castle gets an evening* makeover. Sure – that’s made of stone, which will only melt at 4000°C, but with the right software and a desire to make everything oranger than it actually is, anything is possible.

In the meantime, we’ll keep enjoying the seemingly almost unbelievable explosive colour of every daybreak in Ramsey via Facebook, while the Queen’s Pier gets rebuilt by whatever means are available.

* West coast, see?

Deturked

Posted on

Over the weekend, (almost) all my new found Turkish twitter followers clucked off.

I know, Turkeys don’t cluck. Can’e bothered to change it.

I’d love to explain what might have happened, but no-one really knows, so I’ll leave the summing to @Arfness (thanks again) with this thread here.

And while that thread makes interesting reading, here’s the tl;dr:

 So, what is going on? Why follow somebody en masse and then unfollow them 48 hours later?
I suspect that these are spam accounts that are looking for follow-back. By building a following of credible and “real accounts”, spam accounts can gain a veneer of credibility.
It may be something to do with Twitter’s automatic spam detection, or simply a method to look more legitimate to potential ad targets.

I love that I (perhaps inadvertently) got classed as “credible” and a “real account”. It’s two of the nicest things anyone’s ever said about me.

Join me again next week, as – for no apparent reason – my Instagram account is infiltrated by Russian hackers, posing as Iranians.