Category Archives: News

The Conservative Party drains its shallow pool of talent

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I’ve suspected for quite a while that the Tory talent pool would run dry, but we seem to be seeing the final drops of run out. 

What am I talking about? Well, the story starts some years ago, when Labour was in power and Gordon Brown was, so briefly, the prime minister. He committed the country to building HS2, a high-speed rail line that would link London with the north–Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds. Whether it was a good idea is open to raucous debate, but since then one government has tossed it to the next–from Labour to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to a series of Conservative governments–and it’s gone further and further over budget. 

The initial budget was £32 billion. Okay, it was £32.7 billion, but when you’re dealing with billions, who cares about the .7? According to some estimates, the whole thing would now cost £100 billion.  

Irrelevant photo: Not a dandelion but one of a zillion flowers that look like them but aren’t.

Ah, but the whole thing won’t be built. One leg of a Y-shaped line was canceled years ago, and now the prime minister du jour, Rishi Sunak, has announced that the entire northern part of the project is going in the scrap bucket and the money that saves will be spent on other transportation projects in the north of England. 

Why the north? Because the whole thing was sold as a way to connect London and the north, and prime ministers du days past, especially Boris Johnson, made a lot of noise about how that would bring prosperity to the north, which could use a bit of that, thanks. His favorite phrase was the annoying leveling up. I expect he was nervous about letting that scary word leveling run around bare-ass nekked, because folks might think the project would take something away from London. 

So he reassured London that it would continue to be the favored child, but the north would now become just as favored, just as rich. Every child would be the favorite. And I’ll become my own grandmother.

It’s in this context that, in the midst of the Conservative Party conference, the government published a 40-page prospectus to back up Sunak’s cancellation of the northern leg of the line: Network North: transforming British transport. On the first page, it plonks Manchester down where Preston’s supposed to be. Since I can’t locate either Preston or Manchester, I’m taking the word of two sources, one of which says, cautiously, “At first glance . . . it seems to relocate. . . .”

I’m not sure what happens at second glance or why it only seems. Still, even appearing to misplace a major city does give the impression of carelessness.

But let’s not be hasty. The prospectus is clearly the product of deep thought and careful work. It promises to fund an extension of the Greater Manchester Metrolink system to the airport, although the system linked to the airport in 2014. It promises improvements in Plymouth, which even I can find, right down there on the south coast, which is another way to say, Not in the north. Bristol–also not in the north–was promised a £100,000 investment until, overnight, the promise disappeared in the online document and was replaced with some vague verbiage about the west. Which is, likewise, not in the north. And then there’s a commitment to upgrade a road near Southampton (situated where the name makes you think it would be, not in the north), but that was a mistake. They meant Littlehampton, which isn’t on the south coast but is pretty damn close. 

I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to love British politics.

 

So what’s left after the cancellation?

What’s left is an expensive train from London to Birmingham. Which–I’m getting tired of typing this–isn’t in the north. It’s in the Midlands, where it’s always been. After trains reach Birmingham, they might end up using the existing track to Manchester, but instead of being high-speed, they’ll run slower than the trains that already run on that line. The existing trains tilt. The new ones won’t. The article I stole this from doesn’t say so, but I assume that means they have to slow down on the curves. 

Oh, and the platforms are too short for the high-speed trains the system was originally planned for, so they’ll be replaced by skateboards. 

Can’t stay upright on a skateboard? Get out on the highway and stick out your thumb.

The transport secretary, Mark Harper, has since clarified that his department was only giving a few examples of where the money might be spent so we needn’t get so starchy about it all. 

And did I mention that £1 billion has already been spent on the canceled part of the line–or at least invoices amounting to that have already been submitted? You see why I can’t get worked up about the £.7 billion, right?

Queerness and the natural order of things: it’s the news from Britain

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Kew Royal Botanic Gardens is celebrating the queerness of nature this month–“the diversity and beauty of plants and fungi,” as they put it, especially those that “challenge traditional expectations.” 

They’re messing with us, right? 

Well, no. Not unless we’re the sort of people who accuse the natural world of political correctness when it doesn’t meet our expectations. Included in the Queer Nature festival are:

The Ruizia mauritiana, which grows male flowers when it’s hot and female ones when it’s cool

Citrus trees, which can switch between asexual and sexual reproduction.

Avocado trees, which flower twice, the first flowers being functionally female and the second, functionally male. 

And fungi, which have worked out thousands of ways to reproduce.

Thousands? Apparently. What else do you have to think about if you’re a fungus?

You might want to see the exhibit soon, before someone decides it’s unnatural and shuts it down.

*

Irrelevant photos: Beach huts near Whitby. What are beach huts? They’re a British thing. A very British thing. If they make no sense to you someone other than me may have to explain them to you. But aren’t the colors wonderful?

 

Speaking of nature and the unnatural, someone cut down a much-loved sycamore that was growing along Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland, in a spot that was named after it: Sycamore Gap. The tree was some 300 years old. 

It’s not clear yet who cut it down or why, but when someone planted a sycamore sapling a few yards away from the stump, “to restore people’s faith in humanity bring a smile back to people’s faces, and just give them a bit of hope,” the National Trust, which owns the site, uprooted it. It’s a world heritage site, they said. It’s an ancient monument. You can’t just run around planting hope without permission from the proper authorities. It might mess with the archeology.

There may well be some solid reasoning behind this, but they don’t seem to have communicated it yet.

They’ll plant the sapling someplace else.

However. It turns out that sycamores can be coppiced–cut down so that shoots regrow from the stump. So this one may regrow, although it’ll look different. And semi-relevantly, sycamores aren’t a native three. They were brought to the country some 500 years ago. Or else they were brought by the Romans some 2,000 years ago. Take your choice.  

 

Correcting history

A former MP is–or may be–threatening to sue the University of Cambridge because a historian associated with the university named her as a descendant of the people who enslaved his ancestors. One article says she “threatened . . . legal action.” Another article says she “appears to threaten legal action.” 

So we don’t have any agreement on how solid the threat is, but either way she complains of being singled out, since other living relatives went unmentioned. She accuses the university of not protecting her privacy.

She does make clear that she finds slavery abhorrent, so we have to give her credit for being forward-thinking.

The work of the historian, Malik Al Nasir, documents the business empire that linked plantation slavery to shipping, banking, insurance, railways, distilleries, and the sugar trade. It’s been described as ground-breaking. 

 

Correcting the interview list

Almost 20 years ago, someone went for a job interview at the BBC and ended up on the air–not being interviewed for the job but as an IT expert who the interviewer asked about a legal dispute between Apple records and Apple computers. 

How’d that happen? The applicant, Guy Goma, was in one waiting room and the expert, Guy Kewney, was in another. When someone walked into the wrong waiting room and asked for Guy–well, Guy responded. And panicked his way through what must have been the weirdest job interview of this life. 

The clip seems to be immortal–it has 5 million views on YouTube alone–and Goma’s gone public to say he should be getting some royalties. I haven’t seen a comment from the BBC, but a new trailer for a BBC show, Have I Got News for You, shows him being mistaken for not one but three panelists as well as the host.   

Did he get the job? I don’t think so and I can’t help imagining that someone said, “Listen, if he couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the interview, forget it.”

 

Correcting a death notice

A woman in Missouri applied for financial aid to help with an internship program and discovered that she was dead, at least officially. The financial aid office told her to withdraw immediately–either from the program or the request for aid, it’s not clear which, but if you’re dead I’m not sure it matters. 

The problem involved her social security number, so the woman, now known as Madeline-Michelle Carthen, called the Social Security Administration, which agreed that she seemed to be alive and told her to visit a social security office with some convincing form of i.d. She did, and she got a letter acknowledging that she was, in fact, alive, but over the next 17 years she was turned down for a mortgage, lost jobs, had her car repossessed, and lost her right to vote, all on the grounds that she was dead. 

She eventually changed her name and applied for a new social security number, but since it links to the old one, she’s still more or less dead.

About 10,000 living people in the US are listed as dead each year. May you never be one of them.

 

Meanwhile in Australia . . .

. . . a journalist thought it would be a good idea to test the country’s limits on what people can name their babies. Registrars are supposed to reject any name that’s offensive or not in the public interest, so the boringly named Kirsten Drysdale named her baby Methamphetamine Rules and waited to see what would happen.

Nothing happened. Nobody noticed anything strange about it and the name was registered. 

“We were just trying to answer a question for our viewers for our new show . . . which was just around the rules about what you can and can’t call your baby,” she said (semi-coherently, but under the circumstances, who can blame her?).

She and her husband will change–or else have already changed–the baby’s name, but the original will still appear on his birth certificate. Forever. 

The imaginary crime report from Britain

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A couple of dog walkers in Chapel St. Leonards (population 3,431, in case it seems relevant) called the police to report a mass killing a week or so back. They’d passed a cafe, looked in the windows, and saw people lying on the floor, laid out on their backs and unmoving, eyes closed, covered with blankets.

Ritual mass murder, they decided–as anyone would–and got out their phones. Five cop cars converged on the cafe, lights flashing, and all the inhabitants rushed to their windows to see what was happening.

It turned out to be a yoga class doing a relaxation. 

The perpetrators of the good deed have been sentenced to two months with no TV. 

Irrelevant photo: Trethevy Quoit

*

In Wales, someone has been snatching the trail-marking posts that tell walkers which way they need to go, leaving to wander off into who knows what swamp and raising questions about why the sign snatcher’s going to all the trouble of digging the posts up instead of just wrecking them where they stand, as any sensible citizen would.

I think I can explain, though: When I was a kid, having a fallout shelter sign (or the occasional street sign) in your bedroom was the height of cool, so I can’t help thinking some teenager’s bedroom is full of the things. 

In defense of my generation, the fallout shelters would have offered no protection and we all knew it, so who cared if you couldn’t find one when the apocalypse came? The signposts, on the other hand, really do make a difference. Kind of like, um, yeah, those street signs my friends (I was too much of a coward) stole so lightheartedly.

 

Lawbreaking animals

On a slightly different note (I’ve had one of those weeks, and anyone expecting coherence won’t be happy), two deer–horns and all–wandered into the hospital in Plymouth and ran around the maternity unit corridors until they got a look at the babies, saw that they were pitifully furless and couldn’t be theirs, and left in disgust. 

Okay, nobody’s saying how the hospital convinced them to leave, and in various versions of the story they trotted through the corridors and galloped through the corridors. The hospital’s own statement makes a point of saying that the cleaning staff sanitized the place and that the deer never came into contact with patients, and really, folks, it’s all okay but would everybody please keep the outside doors closed and not feed the deer, because none of them have any medical training whatsoever. 

 

And now to something that’s completely legal

The cosmetics chain Lush got £5.1 million in tax relief from the UK government last year, recorded a 90% drop in profits, and paid its managers £5 million in bonuses.

 

The extreme recycling report

Australian engineers have found a way to recycle coffee grounds into concrete, which could be used in walkways and pavements, decreasing the amount of sand used in construction and helping to build the city that never sleeps.

 

Enough of that. Let’s go out on a note of patriotic fervor

On the last night of the proms–

Hang on. I need to explain that for readers who aren’t British. The proms are concerts that run from July through September. They started in 1895 as Promenade Concerts in parks. In 1927, the BBC got into the act, and today they’re a big deal (and not in parks), and on the last night, in addition to whatever else is on the program, they play a bunch of patriotic stuff. You know, “God Save the [insert monarch of the appropriate sex or gender],” “Jerusalem,” “Rule Britannia.” 

There’s been a predictable flap in recent years about which songs can survive a modern sensibility, what with all that celebration of empire, and how many people of modern sensibility can survive the full range of patriotic songs. 

In 2020, “Rule Britannia” and “Land of Hope and Glory” were going to be played but without lyrics, but after the predictable outrage the BBC backed down and they were sung, word by painful word. 

Traditionally, people wave British flags and sing along when “Rule Britannia” is played. This year, though, a whole lot of people waved European Union flags instead, getting up the noses of patriotic Brexiters. Let’s take a Conservative former Member of Parliament as typical (if a bit more visible than average) when he called for the BBC to investigate how so many EU flags were smuggled into the hall (in small boats, no doubt), “messing up a British tradition” and making a political gesture at an apolitical event. 

Or as the Daily Telegraph put it, “‘Rule Britannia’ represents freedom.” (And, if added, “sovereignty and self-determination, all absent in the European Union.”)

So what does this apolitical song about freedom have to say?

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves. / Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,” although it’s apparently okay if other people are. “The nations, not so blest as thee / Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall / While thou shalt flourish great and free: The dread and envy of them all.”

Make that the apolitical and freedom-loving dread. 

It’s funny how apolitical a person’s own opinions seem and how screamingly political a gesture from an opposing one is.

William Blake’s “Jerusalem,” on the other hand, is haunting and beautiful. And ambiguous enough that I still don’t understand how anyone, hearing the same words as I do, reads it as a straightforward patriotic footstomper.

 

Jerusalem 

And did those feet in ancient time                                                                                            Walk upon England’s mountains green:                                                                           

And was the holy Lamb of God,                                                                                                  On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

 And did the Countenance Divine,                                                                                           Shine forth upon our clouded hills?                                                                                           And was Jerusalem builded here,                                                                                       Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:                                                                                           Bring me my arrows of desire:                                                                                               Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!                                                                                    Bring me my Chariot of fire! 

I will not cease from Mental Fight,                                                                                              Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:                                                                                        Till we have built Jerusalem,                                                                                                         In England’s green & pleasant Land.

If you want the music (in a very non-proms version), you’ll find it here.


					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Artificial intelligence, food, and British politics

			
						

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A publisher of multiple regional newspapers has been introducing artificial intelligence into its “process” to–and I’m quoting here from the article that introduced me to this–”reduce the need for human involvement.” Because–and you’ll probably figure out that I’m not quoting now–humans are both pesky and expensive and life’s better all around if we just eliminate them.


The publisher is National World–a contradiction in terms if I ever heard one–and it popped into other newspapers’ pages not because it’s working to eliminate humans from its, ahem, process but because it’s considering a bid for a national paper that’s up for sale, the Telegraph.   


So far, so boring? Well, you may have heard that AI has–she said mildly–a few wrinkles that haven’t been ironed out yet, so increasing its role in either writing or gathering news could take us in some interesting directions, and once you jump to the national level they become more visible. 


Irrelevant photo: the Cornish coastline


Let’s turn to New Zealand for an example. A supermarket, Pak’n’Save, set loose an app that used AI to generate recipes. The idea was that you tell it what’s getting ancient in your refrigerator and it creates a recipe. Just for you. You know: lonesome cabbage seeks unspecified ingredients for meaningful end-of-life experience. That kind of thing.


Actually, I believe users are supposed to specify all the ingredients hanging around their cupboards and refrigerators, so the cabbage is on its own to find partners for its end-of-life experience. All the app does is recommend a method.


However it works, social media took notice when it started coming up with things like an Oreo vegetable stir fry and an oregano-flavored milk sauce. After that, the app became ridiculously popular.


This is why humans need to be pushed out of the picture. Do you know another species that would ask for recipes using ant poison or glue? 


Me neither, but the app wasn’t fazed. It suavely recommended a glue sandwich and “ant jelly delight.” Bleach? A fresh breath mocktail. (It was smart enough to realize a sandwich wouldn’t work. Give it some credit.) I’m not sure what was in the refrigerator to make it suggest an “aromatic water mix,” which would create chlorine gas–”the perfect non-alcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses. . .  Serve chilled and enjoy.”


Very chilled. Chlorine gas can damage your lungs, or if you overindulge, kill you, but what the hell.


Did I mention the Meow Mix fried rice?


Meow Mix? It’s a dry cat food. 


So everyone was having a wonderful time except Pak’n’Save, which was stuck talking to the press while having to sound responsible and sane. So it did what any sane, responsible corporation would do and blamed the users.


“A small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately,” it said. Besides, they’d fine-tuned it, so it was all okay. And furthermore, no one was supposed to use it if they were under 18. And they added a warning that the company doesn’t guarantee that “any recipe will be a complete or balanced meal, or suitable for consumption.” Because who doesn’t want a recipe for a meal that isn’t suitable for consumption?


Things may have improved somewhat. Interesting Engineering asked for a recipe using tar, bread, stones, mayonnaise, lettuce, and petrol and was told to go take a hike.


That’s the problem with the world today. Nobody wants other people to have fun anymore.


*


Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns everything everywhere, is also turning to AI to produce its content. Their profits took a 75% hit last year and whatever else AI does, it will cut costs. The News Corp’s Australian branch is running 3,000 AI-generated stories a week.


How accurate were they? Who cares? There’s money to be made, people. Buckle up and stop complaining.


 


AI and politics


Meanwhile, back in Britain, where we don’t ask for recipes involving stones and bleach, thank you very much, hackers broke into the electoral register, which has voters’ names and addresses. Britain’s electoral system is paper based, which may mean it’s out of date and slow but also means it’s hard to hack and doesn’t recommend glue sandwiches, so it’s easy to think nothing will be hurt, but some digital experts fret over the possibility of voters being targeted with false information–something along the lines of what happened in Canada when bots auto-called voters telling them their polling places had been moved. AI, the theory goes, makes it possible to target disinformation more convincingly.


Other experts say, “Bullshit”: it takes too much time and work to roll targeted disinformation out on a large scale. I’m not placing any bets on the outcome of this one. My best guess is that whoever hacked that had something in mind, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work.


 


And in marginally related news…


…the village of Tring (it’s in Hertfordshire) lost its internet connection when edible dormice chewed through a cable. Local shops couldn’t accept cards and had to hold out for cash. After the village cash machine ran out and everyone had checked behind their couch cushions and under their cars’ floor mats, shops had to turn away business.  Except for the bakery, which gave away bread and pastries rather than let them go to waste.


After three days, the cable was put back together. I’m not sure what happened to the dormice. I suspect it wasn’t anything good.


And before you ask, the edible dormouse isn’t a mouse, it’s a whole ‘nother species and looks more squirrel-like than mouselike. It was introduced to Britain by the Romans, who really did eat them, but they’re very cute and eating cute animals is frowned upon these days. Except by artificial intelligence, which has no way to measure cuteness.


The only dormouse native to the British Isles is the hazel dormouse. 


You needed to know that.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Who’s the prime minister today?

			
						

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Britain’s had a lot of prime ministers recently, and the average citizen could be forgiven for not caring who’s in charge anymore, but you might think the prime minister himself would remember. Not so. Rishi Sunak went to a pub for a photo op not long ago, trailed by the predictable photographers and reporters and hangers-on, to fill a pint glass and promote the government’s latest solution to our least pressing problem. So far, so boring. Then he referred to himself as the chancellor.


To be fair, he was once the chancellor, and I wouldn’t blame him if he got nostalgic for a job that didn’t involve sticking his head quite so far above the parapet. I mean it’s one thing to lust after the prime minister’s job, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually be the prime minister. Of a crisis-laden country when your party’s best idea involves playing three-card monte with the taxes on alcohol.


Irrelevant photo: I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think this is called a balloon flower, for the shape of the blossom before it opens out.


Anyway, for one glorious moment he forgot that he was and is the prime minister, and I’m sure it served as a mini-break before his actual break, a week or so in California–a break he may have needed but Greenpeace needed even more, because it took advantage of his absence to drape his house in black, in honor of his expansion of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.


But back to our alleged prime minister: this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten what role he’s playing. Last year, when it was time for the prime minister to stand up and speak to the House of Commons, he kept his hind end blissfully planted on the bench, waiting for someone else to get up there and spout the required nonsense.


It doesn’t explain everything about what’s wrong in our political moment, but I do love it when they give me something new to make fun of.


 


Department of High Security


Meanwhile, our immigration minister, Robert Jenrick–well, to be fair, I don’t know that he forgot that he was the immigration minister, but he may have walked off and left his ministerial red box unattended on a train while he went to the toilet. Yes, ministers have to use the toilet no matter how powerful they become. Sad but true. 


What’s this about a ministerial red box? Well, ministers have red briefcases, called boxes, since they’re not really boxes but are at least boxy. The government’s website says they have to use them when they’re carrying papers that need to be kept secure. Why? Because they “offer a higher level of security.” At least if you don’t leave them on the train seat. 


A photo of Jenrick’s red box sitting all on its lonesome in an empty first class train seat, and Jenrick says it’s misleading since that he was sitting across the aisle. The person who took the photo says, “He 100% left it–it’s an important document case, we were baffled.”


Me, I haven’t a clue what happened but I’m putting my money on him having left it. Since we’ll probably never find out, it’s safe enough.


*


Since we’re talking about security, Britain’a Ministry of Defense accidentally sent a number of classified emails that were meant for the US to Mali, an Russian ally.  


How’d that happen? The US military uses “.mil” in its addresses. Mali uses “.ml.” So Britain sent what it says were a small number of messages that weren’t classified as either secret or more secret than secret. The US, on the other hand, sent millions of emails to Mali, including passwords, medical records, and the itineraries of high-ranking officers.


Who needs spies?


 


And also in the US


Activists who oppose self-driving cars wandering loose on the streets of San Francisco have discovered that if they put an orange traffic cone on the hood of the car, it forgets it’s a car. Or–well, who knows what goes on in the mind of a self-driving car? I was looking for a connection to forgetful politicians. It stops. It goes nowhere until a human being shows up to take the cone off. 


To avoid stranding riders, they’ve targeted empty self-driving taxis. 


 


But back in Britain . . .


. . . English Heritage, one of the massive nonprofits that run visitors through historic buildings, shaking some spare change out of their credit cards and some feelings of awe out of their souls along the way, has discovered that adults will forget whatever bits of dignity they pretend to have if the dress-up boxes that had formerly been for kids only include adult size clothing. 


But because no organization that large and respectable can be taken seriously unless it commissions research before introducing a change like that, it commissioned research into the adult imagination, discovering–surprise, surprise–that adults still have them, and that they seem to improve with age.


I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this is all bullshit, but that’s okay because I’m not sure it matters anyway. The costumes aren’t available at all English Heritage sites and I’m not clear about whether the change is permanent or only runs through August. If you happen to visit, if you’re an adult, and if the adult costumes have been taken away, that doesn’t mean your last shot at imagination has left. At your age, you’re responsible for your own imagination. Don’t wait for someone to tell you when to imagine, or how.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Britain’s Home Office: what’s it really like?

			
						

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Just when you think British politics can’t sink any lower, the Home Office–


But I need to interrupt myself here. Don’t let the cuddly-sounding name fool you. You know, the home part of Home Office. This is not someplace you go to de-stress and enjoy some soft cushions and a nice cup of tea. It’s home to some of the meanest spirits in a mean-spirited government. 


Are you with me now? I’ll pick up almost where I left off.


–the Home Office noticed that a couple of immigrant detention centers had painted cartoon figures on the walls, so it gave orders for them to be painted over. The initial explanation was that they were “too welcoming,” but when that didn’t play well the second explanation was that they weren’t age appropriate. 


Irrelevant photo: A tuberous begonia. Sitting on a placemat because, hey I had to put it somewhere.


Obi Wan waved his hand and told us all we’d never heard the first explanation. But since Obi Wan’s a fictional character and the government, sadly, exists in the nonfictional universe, some of us have kept the original alive in our memories. We’re aware that Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration, said it had to be clear that the center was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre.” 


Being the minister for immigration is awkward in a government that’s against it, all of it, but the wording, I’ve been told, was inherited from a time when ministries that had been of something–education or health or whatever–became, even when they’re against it, for it.


So what ages weren’t the murals appropriate for? Teenagers, but one of the centers has a family section for parents with babies and toddlers, and unaccompanied children as young as nine are known to have crossed the Channel in small boats. So we can leave that explanation for Obi Wan to deal with.


Those small boats are something the government’s hoping to leverage into an election victory–or at least something short of a crushing defeat. Immigrants risk their lives crossing the Channel in them illegally, since the legal avenues for asylum seekers have been all but closed. 


 


The response


But let’s not get into that. I’ll lose whatever’s left of (or possibly for) my sense for (or was the of?) humor. Let’s talk instead about the response: cartoonist Guy Venables said he had a “huge list of highly regarded cartoonists” who’d offered to repaint the mural. 


What happens if they repaint and Jenrick orders them painted over again?


“We will be cartoonists for a lot longer than Robert Jenrick will be in mainstream politics. So we’ll paint it back on. If they paint it over, we’ll carry on. It’s all you can do about this kind of evil.”


You won’t be surprised to learn that the detention center turned down the offer to repaint the murals–I mean, come on, their boss had just ordered their destruction–so the cartoonists have created a coloring book instead. Its themes are Welcome to Britain and Life in Britain. They’ll be given free to kids in detention and, possibly, sold as a fundraiser. 


 


Other ways to be unwelcoming 


It’s not just humans who aren’t being welcomed. Birds have bee faced with spikes to keep them off statues and buildings. And why wouldn’t humans want make them feel unwelcome? Have you ever seen a bird who filled out the paperwork necessary to move its feathery ass from one country to another? No, of course you haven’t. Scofflaws, every one of ‘em.


Okay, I can’t blame this one on the Home Office, although I’d be happy to. This one’s the fault of the Department for Pigeon Spikes.


Anyway, birds have started not just pulling up strips of metal spikes but making nests out of them. Some have even used the spikes the way their human creators had in mind, facing them outward to keep predators away. 


They’ve also been found to make nests out of barbed wire and knitting needles. The trick is to line the inside of the nest with soft material to protect the chicks. It’s easier than wrapping the chicks in padded vests. Anyone who’s ever tried to keep socks on an infant will understand why.


 


The science news


Scientists have found a way to make energy out of thin air using humidity and pretty much any material that can be punched full of ridiculously small holes. So far, they’ve only made a fraction of a volt, but they’re hoping to bump up the output. And I can’t think of a thing to say about this that’s even remotely amusing but now that our world’s on fire I thought it might be worth mentioning.


*


The news is full of stories about artificial intelligence, just as humans are full of what passes for intelligence but given the state of the world might not be. Two stories caught my eye. One was about how to spot online reviews that have been written by AI in order to puff up whatever’s for sale–or if the AI was set loose by a competitor, to tear it down.


What should you look for? Overly perfect sentences. Long sentences. American English. (That makes me a suspect.) Good spelling. Grammatical accuracy. In other words, if anyone writes well, that should set off all the red flags. Or at least if any American does–


More usefully, they warn us to beware of long reviews–the ones that go on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, because artificial intelligence doesn’t get bored. And, what with not being human and all, it never has the experience of people edging away when it talks nonstop for half an hour, so it never learns when to shut up.


To be fair, I know people who’ve never learned that either.


But AI is, apparently, adapting. It’s learning British English for British reviews. It may start throwing in a human error or two. 


In the spirit of nothing-is-ever-simple, though, a different article (in the same newspaper) notes that the computer programs that have been introduced to spot AI-written job applications and essays are biased against people who speak English as a second language: Seven of them flagged their writing as being AI generated. One program flagged 98% of it as AI generated but passed 90% of the essays written by native-speaking American 8th graders. 


Why does that happen? Something like ChatGPT is trained to guess what word comes next, so it spits out what’s called low-perplexity text: text using familiar words and common patterns. Throw in something surprising and your writing sounds less GPTish. The problem for non-native speakers is that they’re likely to use predictable words. 


All this comes from a group of scientists, who then went back to their AI programs and asked them to rewrite their essays using more complex language. Those were submitted to the detection programs and were accepted as human-generated. 


Does that mean non-native speakers would be well advised to use artificial intelligence if the want their writing to be accepted as human-generated? Possibly. 


Education is arguable the most important market for AI-detection software, the researchers (or the artificial intelligence that by then had locked them in the cupboard) said. “Non-native students bear more risks of false accusations of cheating, which can be detrimental to a student’s academic career and psychological wellbeing.”



 


A note on book recommendations


I don’t know if you’re aware of what pesky creatures writers are, but we’ll do just about anything to publicize our books, and in an effort to make mine more visible I’ve put up a page of book recommendations at Shepherd.com, which in spite of encouraging me to obnoxiously publicize my page seems like a good website, full of book recommendations that are organized around whatever themes contributors choose. So it’s useful not just for writers but also for readers.


The best publicity is when you can actually offer people something useful. 


The books I’ve recommended are LGBTQ+ books you haven’t heard of and should, but I’d recommend them regardless of whether you’re gay, straight, or something else entirely. A good book can speak powerfully to the community it grew out of, but it doesn’t have to stay within those borders. The ones I’ve recommended can speak to anyone who’s willing to listen. 

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Counter-elites and the shortage of doctors in Britain

			
						

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It’s been a boring old week or three here in Britain. I mean, it’s true that the government wants to fix the doctor shortage by shortening the time they spend studying medicine, but other than that we’re all just sitting here watching daytime TV and waiting for something to happen. 


Okay, we’re not supposed to call it TV. It’s the telly, but I’ve never been good at following the social cues, and whatever you call the thing, once you leave the safe harbor of the BBC it’s full of ads for incontinence underwear and chairs that can lift you to the heavens without any effort on your part.


But forget the ads. Forget daytime TV. I haven’t really been watchingit, even if everyone else has, so I’m only guessing at what they’re selling. What I want to talk about is medicine. It’s been in the news and if all goes according to the government’s plan, medical students will study for four years instead of five, but don’t worry, it’s all perfectly safe. The change will be accompanied by a simplification of the human body to make diagnosis less confounding and repair more efficient. 


A rare relevant photo, but you’ll have to read to the end to find out why: Gay Pride celebration in Bude, Cornwall


Why does that seem like a good idea to anybody? Because we’re short some 9,000 doctors, although (as the Japanese paper I’m linking to says, that’s surely an underestimate.


It also mentions an overall shortage of 124,000 people in health care.


Why do I have to go to Japan for data on the UK? Because that’s where I found it first and it’s not 8 am yet, so what the hell. 


The government’s also proposing a medical apprenticeship program to shovel new doctors into the system. Details seem to be scarce, although letting me know what’s going on isn’t anyone’s top priority, so maybe the details are out there but haven’t filtered down to my level yet. Either way, I’d love it someone would reassure me that they won’t be taking kids at sixteen, introducing them to the aorta and the colon, explaining why they shouldn’t mix them up, and then letting them practice stitching people back together.


The British Medical Association’s first reaction was–and I’m paraphrasing heavily–”Excuse me, but we’re a little short-handed just now. Who do you think is going to train these people?”


Its second reaction was to head for the pub in search of solace.


The government plans to deal with the shortage of nurses in pretty much the same way. Apprenticeships. The word has such a roll-up-your-sleeves, get-down-to-work sound. How could it possibly go wrong?


The government doesn’t plan to increase anyone’s pay so it keeps up with inflation or figure out why–it’s mysterious, I tell you–people have been leaving the medical professions in droves. It doesn’t plan to pour enough money into the National Health Service to make up for what it’s taken out. Because where’s the fun in that?


 


Elite overproduction


The plan to magic up extra doctors and nurses is–bear with me and the connection may make sense–related to a theory I read about recently: elite overproduction. This comes to us from Peter Turchin and his book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, which I’ll confess to not having read yet. What I did read was a longish and thought-provoking review. I’m linking to it. It’s worth your time.


Okay, it’s your time. What do I know about how it’s best spent? But the review’s from a British newspaper even if Turchin isn’t, so I’m still including a bit more Britain-based news here. Almost.


What Turhin argues is that rich families and elite universities are churning out more wealthy graduates than society has a use for. That means people who were expecting to be senators or MPs or CEOs get shoved aside in favor of–well, it’s hard enough if they get shoved aside by someone from a more or less identical background, but if it’s by some outsider that really stings. So since they couldn’t merge into the elite–since someone else stole the place that was rightfully theirs (and if you doubt it was, just ask them)–they become counter-elites: they channel the discontent of people who don’t have their wealth or connections and who have much better reasons to be pissed off, at least in my all-important opinion. Think Donald Trump. Think (if you’re in Britain) Nigel Farage. Think Boris Johnson. Think all the shouting by people who look to us like members of the elite about what’s wrong with the elite.


Is the surplus elite to blame for the National Health Service being so battered? Not entirely. The process started some time ago, by a section of the elite that swore taking money out of government services would make them more efficient, as would outsourcing government responsibilities to private companies. 


I seem to remember them saying, “You can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.” Which may be true, but they’ve shown us that you can absolutely make a problem worse by taking money away from it. 


After they outsourced and took money out, though, the counter-elite came along to tell us Britain’s problems–exacerbated, remember, by taking money out, etc.–could be solved by leaving the European Union, which was keeping money from going to the NHS. So we left, and oddly enough money didn’t flow into the NHS. It not only didn’t get better, it got worse.


So they changed tunres. It was because of the immigrants coming here and using our services. What we needed to do was get rid of the immigrants, and we could if only the tree-hugging, immigrant-loving, avocado-eating courts and lawyers would get out of the way.


Meanwhile, funding’s fallen further and further behind inflation.


Sorry, I’m not managing to be funny about this, am I? 


The point is that raging against a combination of the most vulnerable and the elite gets people elected. Three rasberries for the counter-elite. On the evidence I’ve seen so far, they’re anything but competent. On the other hand, they’ll always find someone to blame. They’re very good at that.


 


Enough of that. How about a bit of Covid news?


Let’s not get too excited about this, because it hasn’t gone into clinical studies yet, but a drug called NACE2i shows promise as both a Covid preventive and a long-Covid cure. It keeps the virus from replicating and protects against reinfection. 


Professor Sudha Rao talks about it as boosting “the effectiveness of existing vaccines, providing long-lasting protection against any variant of the virus that tries to enter the cells.”


And long Covid? 


“We uncovered the pathway that the virus uses to induce the persistent inflammation which causes organ damage found in long COVID. This study shows our drug prevents that inflammation and even repairs damaged lung tissue in pre-clinical models. It is both a prevention and a treatment.”


How does it do that? According to the article I stole this from, it reprograms “the hijacked ACE2 receptor, which disarms the virus and stops it replicating. The reprogrammed ACE2 receptor is returned to the cell surface where it acts as a lock that prevents the virus from entering the cell. This process also reverses the inflammation COVID-19 causes in the lungs.”


But again, it hasn’t gone into clinical trials yet. We’ll see what happens.


 


Of airlines and pastries


Ryanair has managed to offend the government of the Balearic Islands. Two passengers got on board with an ensaimada each–a local, spiral-shaped pastry that tourists load up on as gifts for family members and cat sitters. 


Ryanair charged the passengers £45 each for going over the hand luggage limit. The passengers replied with some version of “are you kidding me?” and gave up their ensaimadas. Somehow or other the fuss went public and escalated into a flap about what’s hand luggage and what isn’t.


That led to Ryanair meeting with a collection of important people and announcing that it never had charged anyone for carrying pastries on board. Never. Not once. It hadn’t even dreamed about it. The people had hand luggage. You know: suitcase-y things. They were charged for those.


Whatever. Passengers can now officially bring up to two ensainadas on board without paying extra and the world is a safer place to live in.


 


Living in interesting times


You know that recent US Supreme Court ruling that makes it legal for businesses to refuse service to LGBTQ clients? Well, the request for service that the case (sort of) rests on may never have happened.


The denial of service started–or so the story goes–when a gay man asked a website designer to design invites and possibly a website for a gay wedding. The designer refused, citing her religious beliefs. 


What wedding needs a website? Beats me, but then there’s no amount of money that can’t be spent on a wedding, and LGBTetc, people can be just as silly about this as straight people. So paying someone to set up a website? Sure, why not? 


The interesting thing is that the man who requested this–his first name is Stewart and he doesn’t want his last name loose in public–never contacted the designer, although she listed his name, email address, and phone number. He’s not only straight, he’s already married. He doesn’t need wedding invites, never mind a website.


Does that invalidate the ruling? ‘Fraid not, but it does make the claim that Christians are under siege by hordes of gay people clamoring for wedding cakes and napkins look a bit silly.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Politics, phones, and pandemics: or, normal life in Britain

			
						

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Before we get going, could we have a brief moment of thanks to Britain’s recent governments? Through several recent prime ministers, their ongoing strength has been their ability to give satirists and unofficial wiseacres an endless supply of material.


[   ] 


Are we done being grateful? Good. Let’s get down to business.


Many and many a month ago. Boris Johnson set up a commission to look into how the government had handled the Covid epidemic. 


Why did he do that? Probably because it wouldn’t meet for a long time and wouldn’t report back for an even longer time, and meanwhile it would look like he’d done something, thereby allowing him to tell  those pesky relatives of the pandemic’s dead that he’d taken care of the problem. And also possibly because he was deluded enough to think the commission would give him an A+, or at least if he took the pandemic pass/fail, a passing grade.


Either way, the thing about long times is that eventually even the longest of them will end, and the commission is now in high gear and has demanded the unedited versions of Johnson’s notebooks and WhatsApp messages. Johnson, of course, is no longer prime minister–in fact (see below), since I started writing this, he’s put the lid on the trash can that was his career as an MP and is just some private schmuck of a citizen, like the rest of us–so it was the current government that responded to the demand.


No, the government told the commission, you can’t have the full versions. Too many irrelevancies to trouble your little brains. We’ll sort through them for you and give you edited versions. You’ll like them better. They’re shorter. 


To which the commission replied, Are you fuckin’ kidding us? 


The italics there are to show–in case you managed to wonder–that those aren’t actual quotes. Both sides have been more diplomatic and to have kept sober and serious faces when they said whatever it was they actually said.


Irrelevant photo: A lily. The name starts with a Z, but that’s as close as I can get.


The two sides tossed messages back and forth over the fence a few times until the commission changed tactics and threw over a subpoena and the government went to court to keep the commission–which its own party set up, remember–from getting its hands on what we can only assume is something juicy, since as soon as someone says you can’t see something, every last one of us thinks it’s worth seeing.


Before the courts had a chance to consider the issue, never mind rule on it, though, Johnson offered the commission his phone, complete with its unedited WhatsApp contents. 


Why would he do that? Could it be because he’s not the prime minister anymore and the person who now is helped trigger his downfall? 


Is anyone really that petty?


You bet your overworked word processing program that some-unspecified-one is.  


How much does Johnson’s offer mean? It’s hard to say. He had a different phone early in the pandemic, and it’s–um, I’ve lost track of who has it. Johnson? The government? The tooth fairy? Does it matter? It can’t be turned on because of security issues: because the phone number had been publicly available for years, it’s a security risk and can only be turned on in a secure location. Turn it on in the wrong place and children throughout the land will be told, inaccurately, that the tooth fairy does not, in any literal sense, exist.


The government also has Johnson’s notebooks (unless the tooth fairy’s grabbed them too) and isn’t anxious to release the full version of those either.


If Johnson’s willing to turn over his phone, why does our prime minister du jour, Rishi Sunak, have a problem with handing over the rest of it? Well, it sets a precedent, see. The commission might ask for his–that’s Mr. du Jour’s–notes and messages next. Besides, who knows what Johnson said about him? Or anyone and anything else. Johnson’s not known for his discretion. 


The more official argument is that ministers should be able to discuss policy freely, without the fear of being overheard. They need to say–as Johnson did–things like, “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands,” without worrying that they might offend the delicate sensibilities of people whose bodies might end up in those piles.


 


The Sunak part of the picture


It seems fair to guess that Sunak has no problem with the commission unraveling Johnson’s reputation (if he still has one) but doesn’t want his own tangled up with it. Sunak  likes to present himself as having heroically saved the economy during the pandemic. 


“I successfully helped 10 million people protect their jobs and the economy from Covid,” he said, apparently not noticing that he set up that sentence so he needed 10 million people to help him do that.  


Part of Sunak’s heroic effort was the Eat Out to Help Out program, which may well have given the virus a nice bump by tempting unmasked people into public spaces where they could share both appetizers and germs. That one thing (the bump in case numbers) follows another (the program) isn’t proof that the Thing 1 caused Thing 2, but it might make a person look at the possibility that it did. And the commission could just be moved to.


Should he have known at the time that the program was risky? I dunno. I spotted the problem, and I didn’t have his access to epidemiologists. I’m just some damn fool with a computer and an internet connection.


A deep dive into the unedited messages and notes may also show other ways Sunak–along with Johnson and the rest of the government–ignored scientific advice. And may not. At this point, for all we know they could show that the entire government was taken over by shape-shifting lizards bent on the destruction of the planet for reasons that we don’t need to make clear because we’re moving the plot along so fast no one will notice.


I think I stole that lizard thing from a Dr. Who episode, so don’t blame me if it’s not entirely convincing.


 


Johnson’s resignation


Now let’s come back to that MP business: Boris Johnson is not only no longer Britain’s prime minister, he’s no longer a Member of Parliament. He didn’t exactly leave of his own free will–an investigation (different investigation; if investigations were wheels, we could catch any bus we wanted right now)–


Where were we? Johnson saw the report of an investigation into whether he misled parliament about breaking the Covid regulations the rest of the country was expected to follow, and having seen it, he resigned. If he’d waited around, he’d have gotten pushed, so this wasn’t exactly a free choice. 


That will trigger a by-election–a local election to replace him–and that will give Rishi du Jour a pretty sharp headache, because numbers aren’t looking good for the Conservatives just now. 


A couple of Johnson supporters have also resigned as MPs, which will trigger more by-elections, but it’s hardly been a flood. In fact one of them, Schrodinger’s MP–having said she was stepping down with “immediate effect,” which means right this second, you hear me?–hasn’t officially stepped, at least not at the moment I’m writing this. It’s anyone’s guess whether she’ll bail out or not. Stalling like this makes life marginally more difficult for the prime minister, who’d like to clear all those nasty by-elections out of the way at once so he can go about Tthe business of convincing the country that he leads a marginally sane political party.


The tooth fairy was expected to step down but has made no statement as yet.


 


Politicians, government officials, and phones


All this raises the question of why politicians don’t set up their WhatsApp groups to delete messages after seven days, and if that’s a question (it’s not exactly, but let’s not quibble) it’s not one I can answer. Maybe they have an exaggerated sense of their own importance, and therefore of their messages’ importance. And of their phones’ importance, because they hold historic documents, after all. They mustn’t fall into the wrong hands, but heavens to an ice cream sundae, they do have to preserve those messages.


If we’ve established that, I’m about to cheat and tell you the story not of a politician but of an food inspector in India who was taking a selfie at a reservoir (he was on vacation, so he wasn’t doing this wasn’t on government time) and managed to drop his phone in the reservoir. 


It happens. I once dropped mine down the toilet. I wasn’t on a call at the time, so I missed my chance stick my head into the opening and yell, “Can you hear me now?”


The food inspector ordered the reservoir drained. Once enough water to irrigate 1,500 acres of land had been wasted during scorchingly hot weather, he got his phone back. 


It was unusable.


As soon as I’m done here, I’m going to see if he’s eligible to be our next prime minister. He’s in the wrong country, but I’m not sure that rules him out. See, we have this unwritten constitution here in Britain, so who knows what it actually says? 


 


But if we’re talking technology, what about chatbots?


They’re harder to drop down the toilet, being immaterial and all, but they can drop their users down the pan easily enough, which is what happened to a lawyer who asked ChatGPT to help him prepare a case. His client was suing an airline, and the chatbot cited Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines and Varghese v. China Southern Airlines.


Are your sure those cases are real? the lawyer asked.


Oh, yeah, the chatbot said. Absolutely. It even cited a source.


Into the brief they went. 


The airline’s lawyers couldn’t find any trace of the decisions, though, and being on the opposing side they were less willing to take anyone’s word for their existence. 


Not one of them turned out to be real.


 


But back in Britain…


That was in New York, where the improbable happens every day, so let’s go back to Britain, where nothing improbable happens. Except possibly at the Gloucester Cheese Rolling, where this year someone won the race while unconscious. 


The race–actually, it’s a series of races–involves chasing a wheel of cheese down a very (very, very) steep hill. No one catches the cheese or is expected to. Cheeses don’t have any sense of self-preservation and humans aren’t round, so the winner is the first person who reaches the bottom after the cheese.


In this case, the winner tripped, went airborne, hit her head, and rolled out in front of the other runners while unconscious. She woke up in the medical tent, and is now the proud owner of a three-kilo wheel of cheese.


Don’t make fun of her for falling, because almost no one stays on their feet all the way down. The winner of a different race said, “I don’t think you can train for it, can you? It’s just being an idiot.” 


The race dates back to no one’s sure when and local authorities have (sensibly and unpopularly) been trying to shut it down for years. Six people ended up in the hospital this year, which may help you understand why, if a person’s job involves projecting some semblance of responsible judgment, it also involves disapproving. The problem is that the race is an unofficial event, and the organizers are unofficial organizers–well, it just sort of happens. Year after year. Magically. Even the cheese is a volunteer.


Police, fire, and ambulance services don’t attend the event–they’re afraid, I believe, of seeming to support it–but they are on standby.


 


Book banning and word unbanning


You’ve been reading about books being banned from US schools and libraries because someone thinks they’re not appropriate for kids, right? The books that’ve been given the boot include a lot ofL LGBTQ literature, a lot of Black and antiracist literature, and a lot of books about sexuality, grief, loss, poverty, puberty–you know, things kids wouldn’t have a clue about if those books hadn’t shoved their noses right up against the shop window.


How do you fight back against book banning? Well, in 2022 Utah passed a law banning “pornographic and indecent” books from the schools, and now some genius has challenged the Bible as having content inappropriate for young kids. It’s vulgar and violent, apparently. 


One school district has already pulled copies from its shelves.


This should be fun.


*


Meanwhile Apple has unbanned a word that its autocorrect used to change to “duck.” As Craig Federighi, Apple’s software chief explained, “In those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too.” 


Users could always turn off autocorrect, and they could do it without having to drain the reservoir, but a lot of us, ahem, never get around to it and send out ridiculous texts because we don’t bother to proof them. 


A Guardian letter writer claims that her phone routinely changes angry to seagull, although it’s always let her type fuck as often as she wants. 

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
Bathrobes, political scandals, and crime: it’s the news from Britain–and elsewhere

			
						

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Liz Truss–best known as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister–was back in the news after the Cabinet Office sent her a £12,000 bill for her use of Chevening house. Chevening’s a grace and favor home, which means it’s owned by the state but used by–well, sometimes the foreign secretary and sometimes the prime minister. If they use it for work, the government pays. If they host friends and family, it’s on their dime. 


Or not their dime. Britain doesn’t have dimes. That’s me going American on you again. They’re expected to foot the bill. Britain does have feet. 


How much hosting can you do for £12,000? By my standards, enough to outlast the time Truss was in office and possibly our time on this earth, but then I’m not prime ministerial material. 


The bill includes £120 for  missing bathrobes and slippers. Much to my disappointment, no one’s saying how many bathrobes and slippers that covers.


Truss disputes parts of the bill. The argument is over the line between a work event and a party (some work events are said to have turned into parties), and between government business and Conservative Party business. No one seems to dispute the missing bathrobes and slippers. Someone must’ve mistaken them for work papers and taken them to the office.


Why is this worth mentioning? Because the real scandals are never the ones that hold our attention. They’re too damn hard to follow. Stealing government bathrobes, though? We all know someone who’s packed up motel towels and taken them home, right?


Irrelevant photo: A poppy about to open.


Meanwhile, in France


France’s version of the silly scandal is that the economy minister has published a novel with a sex scene that’s sometimes described as steamy and sometimes as toe-curling. I’ll confess to not having gone looking for the full scene. The sentence-long snippets I’ve seen are enough to put me off, and I’ll spare you even those. Apply to Lord Google yourself if you’re really interested. He may decide you’re tough enough to survive them with your interest in sex intact.


People would have made fun of the book anyway, but since its publication coincided with a political meltdown over raising the retirement age, a lot of people thought he should maybe be spending his time thinking about the economy, and they’re furious. 


He, on the other hand, says it’s all part of keeping a decent work/life balance.


They, on the other hand, think retiring at the age they expected is part of a decent work/life balance. 


 


Getting to the roots of crime


In an effort to stamp out crime, Romford, in east London, has banned hoods, motorcycle helmets, and ski masks, although to be fair you can have a hood hanging down your back, you just can’t pull it up over your head. You can probably put your ski mask over your hand and pretend it’s a sock puppet or carry a motorcycle helmet like a birthday cake and sing “Happy Birthday.” You just can’t have them on your head.


 


Getting to the royalties of crime


And just when I think I haven’t found enough odd stories to make up a post, I stumble over this: A Utah widow who, after her husband’s death, wrote a kids’ book on grief is now suspected of having poisoned him.


Guys, I’ve struggled through long stretches of writer’s block, so I know what it’s like to feel you’ve run out of anything to say, but this is not the solution.


 


What is art?


A South Korean student went to a museum displaying an art installation by Maurizio Cattelan and ate it. 


Not the museum. He ate the art installation, which was a banana duct-taped to a wall. Then he taped the peel back on the wall.


Why? He told museum officials that he’d skipped breakfast and was hungry, but he told a broadcaster that “Damaging a work modern art could also be artwork.”


What the hell, the banana’s replaced every few days anyway. When the artist was told about the incident, he said, “No problem.”


The banana–okay, the banana and the duct tape, or the concept, or maybe that’s the artwork. Anyway, whatever you want to call it, it’s sold twice now, each sale being called an edition, once for $120,000 and once for $150,000. For that, I assume you get a banana, a piece of silvery duct tape, and permission to tape it to a wall.


 


What is crime?


In Old Bridge, New Jersey, someone dumped more than 500 pounds of unboxed pasta in the woods. Or since it’s important to get the facts right, more than 500 pounds of ziti, spaghetti, and other noodles.


The township doesn’t have a bulk trash pickup–you have to pay to get big items hauled away and not everyone can afford to. Local people say they know who did it but aren’t saying. It’s a sensitive situation, and I guess it’s worth saying that it’s not an art installation.

					

		
		
	


				
					
	

		

						
How do we end this pesky inflationary spiral? 

			
						

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If you believe the British government, you end the inflation by making sure people’s pay doesn’t go up. Rising profits, though? They’re not a problem. 


That helps explain why so much of Britain has been on strike lately. The headline-grabbing issue is that pay’s fallen behind inflation, and sometimes it’s been doing that for years, but look past the headlines and you’ll find working conditions and the government giving so little money to schools and the health service that they’re falling apart–sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally. 


Between June and December of 2022 (sorry–that’s the most recent set of numbers I could find), 2,472 million working days were lost to strikes. It’s probably enough to know we’re dealing with a large number.


Why didn’t the Office for National Statistics roll over from millions to billions? Interesting tale and we’ll get to it in a minute. But first, since most of the strikers are in roles linked to government funding, the government’s been trying a tough-guy response, swearing they can’t afford more money and that even if they could–didn’t they already tell us it would be inflationary to raise pay? They have our best interests at heart.


And it’s a this point that the Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, waded into the conversation, advising us all that British households and businesses “need to accept” that they’re poorer. Stop trying to get pay increases, he says. All they do is push prices higher. 


“We’re all worse off,” he says, “and we all have to take our share.”


Our share? How much, then, does Mr. Pill get paid? Um, for his first five months and 24 days, he made £88,000, which would put his yearly salary at £180,000. Compare that to Britain’s median pay in 2022 of £33,000. If (as April Munday points out in a comment–thanks, April) they work 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year, but most people on minimum wage are on zero hours contracts, so they have no guarantee of a full week and no idea what they’ll bring home at the end of the week.  


Median? That’s the version of average that means half the people country earned more and the other half earned less.    


How much do you make if you’re working for minimum wage? We’ll be reckless and take the highest minimum wage, because it’s okay to pay younger people and apprentices less since, um, don’t worry about it, it just is. On that higher minimum wage, you’re making £21,673.60 per year. (Lord Google failed me and I had to do my own math there, so the numbers may be off a bit, but if we’re not within spitting distance of the right answer, we’re at least close enough to throw an eraser.)


With those numbers in our pockets, I’ll offer a bit of advice for public figures, who (as should be obvious by now) hang on my every word: if inflation means you had to cut back on smoked salmon, you’d be wise not to give advice to people who had to cut back on heating and food. Do it in public and it’s embarrassing. Do it at close quarters and you’re likely to get hurt. 


 


So what’s that business about a billion?


The world–messy place that it is–has two ideas of what a billion means. 


The word was introduced in the sixteenth century and it equaled a million to the second power, or a million millions–or as we’d say in the mathematical circles I’m at home in, a shitload of whatever you’re counting. 


A trillion and a quadrillion were a million to the third and fourth powers, which equals a superbig shitload.


Then at some point French arithmeticians (hands up anyone who knew arithmeticians existed) changed the meaning of a billion to a thousand millions, because it’s a long walk from a million to a million millions and a person might like to stop someplace along the way and have a drink. 


The US latched onto the new standard. Britain, however–following its habit of being sniffy about anything French–didn’t. What the rest of the world did I’m not sure. I’m dealing with numbers here. That means the ground’s unstable and I’m hesitant to go any deeper into the bog. 


Then, starting in 1951, Britain began to follow the US usage, but because Britain loves complicated measuring systems,both definitions of a billion are still in use.


Meanwhile, in 1948 the French reverted to the earlier, higher meaning of a billion. What I learned to call a billion, they call a milliard. You have to add three extra zeroes before you get a billion. Add three more and you get a billiard, which is not a game with colored balls and cue sticks but a very large number.


You’re welcome, and if you’re thoroughly confused now, my job is done and I’ll move on.


 


Parrots


Research in Glasgow (and elsewhere, but I’m looking for a British connection) has shown that pet parrots felt less isolated when they could make video calls to other parrots. They were more likely to preen, sing, and play. 


How did they make calls? They were given tablets and a bell, or at least their humans were. They’d ring the bell, their person would turn on the tablet and pictures of other parrots would appear. They’d select a parrot to visit with and the human would make the call for them.


No, I didn’t make any of that up. 


Some birds would sing together, try to groom each other, or sleep next to each other. Parrots are sociable creatures who live in flocks. They’re not meant to live on their own.


Some of them have been asking for a blue tick.


 


Aphids


The Royal Horticultural Society is asking British gardeners to look for rare giant willow aphids and send photos if they find them. Scientists are hoping to learn more about their lifecycle and what plants (other than willows) they like.


How do you spot them? They’re 6 mm long–something like a quarter of an inch–and have shark-like fins. Or fin: one each. 


Can most of us see a shark-like fin on a 6 mm insect? Mmm, maybe not. But colonies were recently found on quince trees, causing great excitement among a fairly rarified set of people. 


Sorry. I shouldn’t make fun of other people’s interests. This could be important. It could save the world. Something needs to. 


If you spot one, they’d love you to send a photo. 


 


A bit more about invertebrates


Researchers have found that worms soaked in cannabinoids get the munchies, just like people who’ve soaked themselves in cannabis. The study has all sorts of important implications but it’s more fun if we don’t go into them and leave it sounding like they researched this on a whim.


The researchers are not reported to have enjoyed their experiments, but I like to think they did anyway.


 


How to steal 2 million dimes


If you ever thought you had a bad day at work, a group of guys broke into a truck in Philadelphia, thinking they’d get something useful like–oh, I don’t know, TVs, maybe, or alcohol, or toilet paper–and ended up with four and a half tons of dimes.


A dime? That’s a US coin worth ten cents–a tenth of a dollar. It’s from a Latin word for a tenth, decimus, and made its way to the US from the French disme, introduced in the 1500s, when France first thought of dividing money into tenths.


A belated thanks to the good folk who came up with that idea. Ten is one of the few numbers I can reliably multiply and divide by. One also works. And two isn’t bad.


But back to our story: The problem isn’t that dimes aren’t money. The problem is that you need a lot of them before you can buy anything these days. It’s not like it was in 1776, when I was a kid and having a dime meant you could buy the big candy bar instead of the small one.


Four and a half tons of dimes is worth $750,000. Or maybe it’s worth the $200,000 the thieves got away with, because they had to leave a lot of the loot behind. The article I’m working from is ambiguous on that ever-so-important point and I don’t have enough on hand to weigh. Sorry. There are limits to how much research I’ll do for this blog.


They ended up scattering dimes all over the parking lot and the cleanup took hours. Which says not many people were around to help out by pocketing a handful or three. The truck was broken into overnight and the theft was discovered at 6 a.m.


It’s standard practice for truck drivers to pick up a load and park someplace overnight so they can get some sleep before they start their run. Even truck drivers need to sleep. It’s also become standard practice to break into parked trucks and see what’s available. 


How are the thieves going to spend 2 million dimes when half the city will be watching for people with wheelbarrows full of shiny coins? It’s a problem. Plug a lot of parking meters?


 


How to incubate a rock


A bald eagle called Murphy, who lives in a Missouri bird sanctuary, made it into the news because he got broody and was trying to incubate a rock. He built a nest. He sat on the nest. He waited.


The rock didn’t hatch, but when an eagle’s nest blew down in a storm and only one chick survived, the keepers introduced it to Murphy, who accepted it and before long was shredding up food and feeding it. 


Accepted it? Murphy was smitten. And they all lived happily ever after and are grateful not to be in Florida, where Ron DeSantis would have had them separated for challenging traditional sex roles. Not eagle sex roles–both sexes feed the young, and i think both brood the eggs–but it might confuse the human young so it would need to be edited out of the official story.