Shamelessly lifted from social media, Merriam-Webster is making an effort to remedy the modern vicious circle (not cycle. Ed.) of misquoted adages.
One stands corrected
Merriam-Webster describes itself as “America’s most trusted dictionary“. It’s also the USA’s oldest dictionary publisher, whose presses first started producing reference books in 1843, according to Wikipedia.
Your ‘umble scribe hopes the company’s efforts are not in vain, as language skills generally seem to be declining. 🙁
The Tenovus charity shop on St Mark’s Road is currently closed for refurbishment.
However, this does not seem to have been noticed by the local members of the Hard of Thinking Club, who are continuing to dump their donations outside the shop’s door.
The operators/owners of the shop have recently decided to post a notice on the shop’s door shutter informing those generous but misguided patrons of the error of their ways.
Let’s ignore the writing on the wall.
Just like other notices in Bristol, e.g. the ones that say no parking, Tenovus’ sign has been ignored.
Is ignoring the notice due to illiteracy or plain, simple bloody-mindedness? Have your say in the comments.
Meanwhile, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and notify it of such problems.
Your ‘umble scribe is unaware how many times a week – if any – the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump (who is on a mission to Make America Grate Again or something similar. Ed.) catches either a number 77, 87, 196, 452 or N87 from the bus stop at London’s Nine Elms Underground station, but it will do his narcissistic personality disorder no good at all.
The poster below has this week appeared at the bus stop in response to the USA’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this week.
Of course, having the US military at one’s control does mean that The Donald, as commander-in-chief of the US armed forces, is able to call on their members to indulge in the ultimate ‘look over there‘ tactics when required to distract from his embarrassing local difficulties caused by his long-term friendship with the late American financier, human trafficker, child sex offender and serial rapist Jeffrey Epstein, as the thousands of documents known as the Epstein files slowly make their redacted way into the public domain and which he and his sycophantic subordinates seem very reluctant to release, despite the existence and imperative of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, not to mention the Tango Terrorists campaign trail promise to release the files.
There’s an old adage that says you can tell a man by the company he keeps.
Before we end, a quick translation from EN-GB for any American readers. You will not find the definition of nonce as used above in a standard American dictionary; you’ll need a British one. It’s British prison slang to denote a person who commits a crime involving sex, especially sex with a child. This definition is taken from the Cambridge online English Dictionary.
Which country will tRump invade next as a distraction from his next scandal? Have your say in the comments.
Yesterday the regular Barton Hill community litter pick took place on its usual day – the first Saturday of the month.
It was a cold but fine morning with a ferocious wind chill factor, so wrapping up warm was essential.
In addition, we had our best turn-out for a while with six hardy volunteers showing up outside the Wellspring Settlement.
Some of the litter pickers and their haul.
Overall, we picked for an hour and a quarter, with the areas covered including Ducie Road, Morley Street, Cobden Street, the Urban Park, Strawbridge Road and Tichbourne Road.
A good haul of both recyclable materials and landfill were removed, 4 and 5 bags respectively, in addition to which we collected a few bulky items – suitcase, printer/scanner and broken furniture – for removal by Bristol Waste.
Whilst working around the area, we also identified other matters that needed further attention (e.g. scruffy public open space) by either the council or Bristol Waste (e.g. properties that needed help with waste management and/or recycling).
After finishing most of us returned to the Settlement to tea and biscuits, with 2 cuppas proving to be the minimum dose for unfreezing fingers.
February’s pick will be on Saturday 7th February. Note it in your diaries!
In the meantime, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and notify it of such problems.
According to the Catholic version of Christianity, there are seven deadly sins, i.e. pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Although they are not explicitly listed in the Bible, they developed within early Christian theological tradition. Furthermore, Psychology Today speculates that their origins ‘are nebulous and likely trace back to before Hellenistic Greece‘, even though if offers no source for such an assertion. All evidence of their orin tends to point to the early Christian era and more specifically Evagrius Ponticus, a monk in fourth century Egypt.
These seven transgressions are also known as cardinal sins, although whether this alternative naming is derived from the sinning scarlet-garbed clergy committing them is not well documented. This naming is likely derived from the other definition of cardinal, i.e. fundamental, of the greatest importance (think the cardinal points of the compass. Ed.).
Anyway, a new revision of the seven deadly sins has been posted on social media updated for the early 21st century and it bears a distinctly technological character.
Is this an accurate rendition? Have your say below in the comments.
Bristol has what could be described as a bit of form when it comes to street art, with the city being the original canvas of the artist known as Banksy.
Indeed Bristol 247 today has a piece by John Nation, described as the city’s godfather of graffiti outlining why the city continues to be defined by the art form.
Another form of art for which the city is less recognised is fly-tipping. A couple of days ago, Bristol Live highlighted that almost 200 fly-tipping incidents are reported to the city council every day. Last year the council recorded 10,268 fly-tipping incidents, an increase from 8,556 or over 20% during the previous year.
The back streets of BS5 have once again provided ample evidence of the combination of street art and fly-tipping over the festive period, with festive fly-tipping attracting the spray can school of art. Look at what your ‘umble scribe found up St Mark’s Grove this morning.
This is not the first time that fly-tipped materials have attracted the spray can crew in that particular street (posts passim).
In the meantime, if you see fly-tipping, any other environmental crime or something that needs fixing, you can report it to Bristol City Council here, otherwise central government’s GOV.UK site has a handy page to find your local authority in England, Scotland and Wales and report fly-tipping.
Bristol ‘Live’, the city’s newspaper of (warped) record, has an unenviable reputation for finding a local Bristolian angle to news stories, whether that be by finding some vaguely connected person who just happens to have a BS postcode or by expanding the city’s boundaries into nearby or more distant local authorities or countries, whether there is any such angle or not.
How the story was announced and tagged on the paper’s main page is shown below.
Depending on one’s mode of travel, Bristol is over 100 km from Aberogwr and takes over an hour or even two. There is no way the latter falls within the civic boundaries of the City and County of Bristol, whose closest municipal boundary to Aberogwr extends as far as the low water mark on Ynys Echni / Flat Holm in the middle of the Severn Sea.
Looking at the facts of the story itself, the founder of the beach clean-up group that removed the shoes said the following:
“The strongest theory is that the shoes come from a shipwreck called the Frolic, that hit Tusker Rock about 150 years ago. It was carrying shoes and cargo from Italy. They were washed up the Ogmore River and every now and then they appear, especially when there has been erosion of the riverbank.”
It’s only when one gets to the mention of Tusker Rock (Cymraeg: Ynys Tysgr. Ed.) that the slightness of the connection becomes apparent: it’s a rock in the Bristol Channel 3.2km west of Aberogwr that’s only visible at low tide, but one that has been the end of many vessels over the centuries.
Most dictionaries – including Merriam-Webster – provide several definitions, including the following two which describe places that can be either real or imaginary:
a nether world in which the dead continue to exist;
a place or state of misery, torment, or wickedness.
The second definition may or may not be connected with the first.
These to have now been joined by a third – the current United States of America – courtesy of social media. Someone known as Vee posted the following on the federated Mastodon network yesterday.
The burning coals background is a neat touch.
Yes, you read that correctly, Vee believes hell on earth has been created by the second term regime (not administration. Ed.) of the disgraceful 47th and disgraced 45th president of the United States, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump.
That is an exhaustive list of calamities that have occurred in the world in the life of your average seventy-something. However, is the perceptive Vee being too hard on disco? Have your say in the comments below.
Austria’s Der Standard reports that Meta, the parent company of both Facebook and Instagram, must grant European Union users full access to all their personal data within 14 days. The Austrian Supreme Court (OGH) ruled so on Thursday 19th December, according to the Vienna-Based data protection organisation noyb. The lawsuit was filed in 2014 by noyb founder Max Schrems.
Schrems, an Austrian lawyer and data protection activist, started attempting to gain full access to his personal data stored by Meta in 2011. According to a press release from noyb, the company merely referred those affected to a “download tool” and its general privacy policy.
14 days term
According to a press release from the data protection authorities, the OGH has now ruled that Meta must disclose all personal data and provide information about this data, such as the source, recipients and purpose of the processing, within 14 days – i.e. by 31st December 2025.
The court also found that Meta had unlawfully collected data from third-party apps and websites, according to a press release. Personalised advertising may only be shown with the explicit consent of the individuals concerned. Meta must also ensure that sensitive data is not processed together with other data.
The case was heard three times before the OGH and twice before the European Court of Justice over the past eleven years. Schrems has been awarded €500 in compensation.
Situation has changed
Meta has told Reuters that it had taken note of the ruling. However, it referred to the situation as it existed at the time the lawsuit was filed. Meta stated that it no longer uses sensitive data for personalised advertising. EU users can now also use Facebook and Instagram for free with personalised or less personalised advertising or pay a subscription to prevent their data from being used for advertising purposes.
In December 2025 the EU competition authorities approved Meta’s proposal to use less personal data under this pay-or-consent model.
The new pricing for using Microsoft 365 will be applicable worldwide and as follows.
Image courtesy of Microsoft
Many people will no doubt be considering alternatives to this Microsoft subscription services to help keep business costs in check.
Fortunately, many free and open source alternatives to the services provided by Microsoft 365 are available, work just as well and won’t cost users a penny. Email provider Tuta.com (recommended! Ed.) has kindly provided a useful summary under the deMicrosoft your life banner which is shown below should you consider ditching Redmond’s overpriced office offering and its other software.
![1am 76 years old. | have lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the JFK assassination, the Vietnam War, the Turmoil of 1968, Watergate, the Hostage Crisis, two oil crisis [sic], disco, Reaganomics, 9/11. The covid pandemic....These past 11 months have been easily the most miserable era in America in my lifetime. The hatred, the bigotry, the lies, the racketeering and pedophilia are beyond anything I have ever seen. We are not going to hell as a nation. We are IN hell.](http://xislblogs.xtreamlab.net/slwoods/wp-content/uploads//sites/23/2025/12/hell.png)
Austria’s 
