Burn baby burn...

The above joke was posted (predictably) on Twitter by ex-kipper leader and Brexit fanboy Henry Bolton. Henry seems to play the text book estuary-gammon, for example he claims publicly to be very much against immigration but in his personal life seems to prefer foreigners? He's been married to a Danish model in the 80s, then a (much) younger Russian woman for a couple of years, then another young Russian woman for another couple of years (spawning kids all the way along) before finally in 2018 ending up on the right side of the Channel with a UKIP supporter/model/actress from Kent (24 years younger than him) whose racist tweets got him kicked out of UKIP (although he separated from her also in 2020).

I think I'm getting a picture of Henry and it's not one that's in any way punctuated by competence or reliability (TBH I feel sorry for his kids!) Henry can't even construct a simple Nationalist joke properly, the Spitfires in the picture are all from the Polish 303 squadron (the most successful in Fighter Command), you can tell by the little blue and white squared emblems next to the props. 

The Twitter burns in response to this post were brutal.

 

I'm not (quite) bitter

While making Sunday lunch yesterday I decided to pop open a can of beer from my local craft brewer Siren. It's a modern take on traditional English Bitter and delicious it was too! Made from traditional English barley and Kent hops the modern twist was the addition of Cascade (an American hop) into the dry-hop (while fermenting) and also Nitrogen rather than CO2 as a way of making it fizzy. This meant much smaller and less obvious bubbles, aiming to mimic the lower carbonation of traditional cask beer, it worked really well (with a hard pour), one to look out for!

 

Zombie stroll home..

 

It was my Wife's birthday on Friday so we decided to walk into town and have a celebratory drink at our favourite bar, it was most enjoyable after a hectic week of work. On the way home we picked up a take-away from our favourite Chinese (livin the dream!) and proceeded to stroll home. On the way we encountered an amazing sound and light show being projected onto the side of a house, it was incredible, hi-resolution and no obvious projection device! Clearly with a Halloween theme the video was showing all manner of ghosts, ghouls and zombies, brilliant! I bet the young kids in the area just loved it (and a few adults too!).

Peak Irony?

Looks like Kanye West has exercised his oversized mouth a little too far recently and spouting his ludicrous conspiracy theories about Jews (among other garbage) has got him dropped from key lucrative endorsement contracts, Adidas dropped him yesterday. Personally I can't see what people see in the bloke, every time I've heard him speak he's sounded like a complete knob to me, and for someone who makes a ton of money from shoes, putting your foot in your mouth has got to represent peak irony!

 

It's just a feeling..

Yeah, I feel like this quite a lot of the time these days...

 

Colours

Loving the Autumn colours around at the moment..

 

Good Advice

Product Advice 101: When you launch a new product into an international market it's always a good idea to check it's name in a few different languages! I remember working for a Canadian company whose name in Spanish translated as "CU Next Tuesday" (this is the SFW version, if you get my drift) - opening the Madrid office was fun, much amusement had by all..

 

Friday Smirk

It's funny what nonsense some people believe..

 

Mystery?

So, UK car production has fallen off a cliff since 2016, that's a shame for all those people in that industry, I wonder what happened in 2016 that could have precipitated this decline?

Walking on marbles

Is it just me or have others noticed an abundance of acorns this year? Perhaps it's something to do with the hot weather we had or perhaps there are natural cycles for these things, anyway, all I know is that traversing certain paths on my daily stroll feels like trying to walk on marbles and as the Autumn wears on it gets more like walking on muesli!

 

Modern Dilemmas

Yep, need one of these for the Women and Teenagers in my life! Although I'm proud to say that we still haven't had the central heating on at our house yet (so far this year), it's getting close though.🥶🥶.

 

Midweek Mirth

This is what I think about the new cabinet (especially the Braverman troll), about as much "integrity" as a cheap Ikea cabinet, should have had a general election!

 

Glass ceilings

One of the scary things about our current economic woes is the rapidly rising price of everyday items in our shopping baskets. One of those items (for me) is beer and it's of particular interest as I'm a keen craft beer drinker, it's one of my hobbies, there's nothing I enjoy more than geeking out over the latest new hop variety from the USA or yeast variant from the deepest darkest reaches of Hackney Wick. Many of the prices for ingredients of the humble pint are now climbing much faster than inflation, for example barley,  wheat, hops and other adjuncts, particularly those that need to be imported have all risen alarmingly in the last 12 month. Other related items such as the gas CO2, which is used to carbonate beer, have gone up a massive 3000% since this time last year. All of this means that pretty soon we're going to bust through the glass ceiling for the price of a pint. 

Typically the average pint would set you back around £4, obviously this varies from place to place in the country but it's a good marker, the ceiling for a pint in most places would therefore be around £5 beyond which most people would potentially feel uncomfortable (or ripped off). In big cities such as London these levels rise, pretty soon we'll be seeing £6-7 pints in larger towns and cities as the average goes up. 

In the case of craft beers things get even worse, the ingredients in this category are often much more expensive (exotic yeasts and hops etc.) and also used in much higher quantities (especially hops) the £6-7 a pint is quite normal for a craft-pint in London already, I wouldn't be surprised to see £10 pints becoming common for certain sought after brews, and fairly soon.

Anyway, I've concluded it's time I invested in some more industrial quality brewing equipment, my home brew set-up is OK but I lack a few important quality-focused items, for example water treatment, temperature controlled fermentation and kegging/canning, I reckon with an outlay of less than a grand I could make commercial quality brews for between £1-3 a pint (depending on the ingredients) With the current economic outlook, the DIY option might be the way to go for a year or two!

 

Go West

Spent a nice afternoon in Bristol today left a rain soaked Berkshire in the morning and managed to find some sunshine out West. Dropped into the LHG brewpub for one of their lush pizzas and a couple of crafty beers and met up with our Son who's down visiting from Scotland and a couple of his mates who go to Bristol Uni. Had a chat and a laugh hearing about the latest student drinking games and left them all to it around 5pm and headed back East, into the rain..

 

Jokes for old farts

Enjoyed this one :)

 

Inclusivity?

Glad to hear it, but why not just say "we welcome everyone"?

 

White van men

White van men, you have to love em, look at this geezer, he's parked his delivery van on a roundabout and swung the door open to block the footpath so that walkers (like me) have to either brave the traffic by walking in the road or navigate the thorny brambles in the verge. Since he was so inconsiderate and absent from  the scene, I did have a quick look in the van to see if there was anything worth nicking, but alas, it seemed to be full of junk so I just walked on..

 

Global warming hoax

Nah, this global warming thing is just a hoax by the military-industrial complex to make us buy more air-conditioning.. I mean this photo is Northern Europe in late October and it's barely scraping 21 degrees centigrade, come on who's kidding who?

 

Hazy City

A view of the City just before dawn on a hazy October morning, amazing photo, shows just how much London has changed in the last 20 years, this could easily be a US city.

 

Friday Smirk

J&M reminding us that we mustn't upset the latest wave of religious (gender) zealots who are convinced only they know the "truth" by pointing out their obvious flaws and fallacies..

 

Comment

A general comment on the UK at the moment, our Government, our standing in the World and in particular our general attitude to reality! We live in Europe, our beaches are covered in our own shit, our public services are on their knees, food, fuel, property and services are more expensive than most other developed nations and our economy is gradually being wrecked by inflation and incompetence; at this point keeping calm and carrying on isn't really a viable option! We need a general election and a clean break from the last 15 years of decline, in the past we've been a nation that campaigns and fights for fairness and equity of opportunity in our society, it's rapidly approaching the time we may need to take to the streets as our ancestors once did and make our voices heard above the politics.

 

You put your left one in, your right (wing) one out?...

I'll just leave this here..

 

Midweek Mirth

Apart from "Allison" apparently..

 

Time to go

So, nearly all of the measures planned by the incoming Prime Minister have now been reversed by the new Chancellor, the technical term for this is "cluster-fuck". This Government is a shambles, and an embarrassment clearly so far out of their depth that someone needs to call the RNLI!

They have to go, and go now, we need a general election before Christmas!

 

Can Art

Went out with some mates last weekend for beers and curry, we stopped off at a local craft beer bar where they've opened a new section of the building to customers, they've built a kind of "snug" with a couple of tables in it at one end of the ground floor that's accessed via a long corridor, it's a nice space. For decoration they've simply lined the walls with old beer cans, which sounds a bit cheep & naff, but the can art is such with craft ales these days that the effect is quite amazing, feels like you're sitting in a gallery at the Tate modern!

 

On steroids

I tried a new beer from Siren yesterday while making dinner, it's a riff on one of their core beers called "Soundwave", except that they made this one and double dry hopped it (hence the "DDH" label) This means that they added more hops to the brew after the boil or during the fermentation stage which adds a huge whack of flavour to the final beer as the delicate hop oils are not boiled off as they usually are since beer is normally hopped during the boil stage. It was really good, like an old friend, but on steroids...

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo on point as usual, it's funny how our biases often are invisible to us..

 

UN Checklist

Interesting, the result of the latest vote in the UN on Ukraine, the motion defended the territorial integrity of Ukraine according to the principals of the UN charter. It ended up at 143 in favour, 35 abstaining and 5 against. A great result for the majority of countries who are clearly against this Russian atrocity and bone crushingly predictable that the 5 countries for it are the ones in the grip of dictators who themselves are in the pocket of Putin or feel aligned with his isolationist stance (like North Korea). The disappointments here are countries like India, Pakistan, South Africa and several commonwealth countries who abstained! I can understand why China would do that but are these other more liberal countries not for the UN charter? Still, this does provides quite a handy check list of countries to avoid when it comes to investment and aid, or at least those to be wary of.

 

Atheism, common misconceptions..

 

Here's an interesting thought. Most people who don't really think about these things too deeply often think that being an Atheist is akin to being religious in that we Atheists also have a belief system, i.e. that we are just another kind of "ism" like Theism or Creationism or Conservativism etc. Sometimes this even extends to a silly idea that because Atheists don't believe in a God or Gods that they must believe in Satan or some other anti-God figure and all that implies. Now, this idea might be true if you read the word as, Athe-ism, if that were correct you'd have to conclude that Atheists believe in something called "Athe"! Although this sounds like a lot of fun, in a kind of Athe vs Yahweh way, unfortunately it's not true.

The whole idea stems from a misunderstanding of the word and what it actually means, it shouldn't be read "Athe-ism" it should be read "A-theism" and in Latin (from where many of our words are derived) it simply means "not theism", in fact if you put an "A" in front of most words it just means "not" that thing! There are several widely used Latin prefixes still in use today, for example,

a        -     without, lack of, not

ante   -     before, earlier, in front of

anti    -    against, opposite of

auto   -    self, same

So, an Atheist is simply someone who isn't a Theist, or in other words does not believe that Theism is true or justified, and that's it! In every other respect an Atheist could hold any other belief, they could be left wing, right wing, nihilistic or simply an ordinary person, a lack of belief in theism implies nothing else.

Hard vs Easy

I'm frequently amazed at what non-technical people believe might be possible with things like software and computers. Opinions are often wildly optimistic for things that are near impossible (currently) and pessimistic for things that are trivial, there's almost an inverse correlation between reality and imagination. I blame Hollywood, the constant stream of teenagers breaking into military computers by "guessing" the single password on their second attempt is somewhat misleading, however sometimes what people think should be easy (because it is for a Human) turns out to be really difficult for reasons that are opaque to them. 

This xkcd cartoon sums things up nicely,

But, here's the rub, this cartoon was created 6-7 years ago and since then advances in AI have progressed to a point where it would take just a few minutes to tackle this specific problem, there are many reasons for this, mainly huge investments in time and energy in creating libraries of training data (involving pictures of birds) that have been built up over the years (it wasn't a single eureka moment!) Such is the nature of progress and one of the main reasons people struggle to keep up with the reality of what's computationally possible and what's not. We can calculate the gravitational force that the Eifel Tower imparts on a baseball in Boston but we still can't model the economy or the weather or even which team will win the World Cup particularly well, some things are just too complex and appreciating complexity requires an clearly requires an investment in understanding.

Hitchens' Razor

Reminds me a bit of the Government claims about growth..

 

Roofing Tuesday

One of the highlights of the lying in state of Queen Elizabeth II for me was learning about the hammer-beam roof of Westminster Hall, an intricate and fascinating piece of medieval roof support design which is essential when the span of the roof is wider than the maximum length of the wooden beams that you have or when a horizontal beam wouldn't be strong enough to support the weight of the roof etc. I understand that this may seem weird, but hey, there's only so much interest I can generate from looking at a box on a catafalque (which, like a lot of royal jargon, is a fancy word for something that really doesn't deliver much in the way of entertainment value). 

Coincidentally I visited the old town hall building in my town for the first time on Saturday, there was a craft fair going on and my Wife wanted to have a look around. Now, this particular building is an ornate Victorian centre piece in the middle of the town situated in a little square, it was built in 1860 but became somewhat symbolic once the council moved down the road to a modern building in 1972. I've lived in this town for nearly 30 years now and have walked by the building hundreds of times but I'd never ventured inside. The craft fair wasn't up to much if I'm honest but I was surprised to find a lovely example of a simple Hammer Beam roof in the main hall (see picture below)

I'm not sure that this design was entirely necessary in 1860 as the span isn't that large and they had cast iron back then, anyway, it does look pretty! You can see the outside of the building below..

 

Monday Mirth

 

"Time is absolute" - Isaac Newton

"Time is relative" - Albert Einstein

"Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so" - Douglas Adams

Deep Impact

NASA recently hurled a spacecraft into an asteroid at 14,000 mph to see what would happen, the James Webb telescope took a detailed picture of the impact site...

Obviously you have to be a certain age to appreciate this joke!

Reflecting on Brexit

I haven't commented on Brexit for ages, doesn't mean I still don't feel strongly that it was a huge mistake, anyway, take a look at this photo from the meeting in Prague of European leaders yesterday. The position of Liz Truss reflects the position that the UK has in Europe now, back row, out of sight.. sad..

 

Unsatisfied

 

I saw an interesting exchange on social media the other day between a theist and an atheist which nicely summed up my position on the topic. The theist asked the atheist,

"what gives your life meaning if you don't believe in God?"..

The atheist replied (exactly as I would) with the following answer,

"Love of my family, love of my friends, fulfilment in knowing that this is all there is and thus the importance of time and making the most of what we have. The joy in knowing you've won the lottery of life, cheese, wine, good food and a complete lack of unnecessary guilt."..

It's a good answer and concurs with most people's life experience, however, it leaves us with an unsettling question, i.e. does this mean that the theist is unsatisfied with these things to such an extent that she wants to embellish life with something unknowable?

Friday Smirk

What in the living daylights is going on here??

 

Exterminate!

While walking around in Fitzrovia this weekend we came across this chap lurking in a window, you don't see many of them around these days!

 

Birthday Beer

While up in London this weekend we dropped into one of my favourite pubs, The Dean Swift near Tower Bridge, I had a lovely pint of session pale hopped with Citra by "The Kernel" based down the road in Bermondsey, such a consistent and reliable brewery! Afterwards we went on to a swanky restaurant nearby and had some dinner (v. nice!) and finished up walking back to our hotel past the Shard (see below) and through Borough Market under cover of darkness.

A fine evening of food and drink to cap a great weekend of lounging about in our capital!

"Woman" is not a costume..

Scottish Women are protesting in Edinburgh today against new GRA legislation that aims to make it possible for people to acquire a new gender and birth certificate without the need to provide evidence of gender dysphoria over the age of 16. Currently the law allows people to acquire a new gender identity only if there is evidence for it and they are over the age of consent (18). Opponents of this move claim that the changes open up even more opportunities for men to access Women only spaces and services and abuse them, spaces such as changing rooms, toilets, prisons and rape/crisis centres that have traditionally been single sex only for reasons of safety and security, there are also outstanding questions on Women's sports and this potential new ruling. 

I'm with the detractors like JK Rowling on this topic (who is viciously, verbally abused on social media for her views on this) I believe it's unacceptable to roll back progress on Women's rights (51% of the population) to things like single-sex spaces for the infinitesimal (disputed) gains of at most 0.01% of the population (even less with bona-fide gender dysphoria), effectively putting the Women's movement back decades. People will claim that trans-women are "women" but as it says on the banner, being a Woman is not just about wearing a costume! We have perfectly sound and established scientific mechanisms to determine the sex of a person and sex is immutable (fact!). I simply don't believe the haters (mainly on Twitter) who are claiming that this protest is "anti-trans" or "transphobic", there's no evidence for that, it's about maintaining the rights of Women pure and simple.

 

Midweek Mirth

Sign in Whitby..

 

Birthday Weekend

Spent a lovely weekend with my Wife in London for my birthday, it was a big one (60) and so we splashed out a bit and stayed in a hotel for a couple of nights visiting several swanky restaurants for lunches and dinners and managed to squeeze in some retail therapy too! Fortunately the weather played ball as well and we had delightful (warm) sunny days and not too cold evenings (see picture above!) On one of the days we also went over to Fitzrovia and met up with my Daughter who is studying at UCL and has her digs over there, nice to catch up with her and hear all about her escapades during freshers week, she seems to be having fun, certainly burning the candle at both ends! 

My birthday corresponded with the London Marathon and so the centre of town was really crowded, lot's of people milling around in space blankets and lot's of public "hobbling" due to the inevitable strains and sprains that people get, still, it's certainly a spectacle to behold, amazing energy in the crowd even several hours into the event! I snapped a picture as we walked over the Embankment (Big Ben in the background) of the runners at the 25 mile mark, I felt very glad I wasn't running!

For lunch on Marathon day we popped into the "Lowlander" which is one of my favourite Belgian "beer" bars in London, got talking to some chap who'd clearly just finished the race and was getting stuck into some much needed calorific sustenance in the form of chips, mayonnaise and a funky glass of some strange (and probably really strong) Belgian beer! We asked him how he did, he said he was quite pleased with his run, completing the course in two hours and thirty minutes, our jaws nearly hit the floor, that's pretty much a professional/elite pace, we were suitably in awe!