On Terry Pratchett’s fictional Discworld, Ankh Morpork local newspaper publisher William de Worde remarks: “Lies could run round the world before the truth could get its boots on” in the novel The Truth.
That turn of speed definitely applies today to internet memes, whether AI-generated slop or otherwise.
It hasn’t taken long for the Farage fascist fan club otherwise known as Reform UK (Ltd.) to pick up on some of the latest garbage emanating from the White House (posts passim) and adapt it for their own Z-list candidate for mayor, Laila Cunningham, another Conservative Party defector who, amongst other things, want to dictate what women choose to wear.
AI from the hard of thinking. Since when have there mountains on the banks of the Thames? And why are the two figures shown leaving no tracks in the snow?
A number of years ago, wearable technology looked set to become all the rage.
Mention of it has declined noticeably in recent years. When, for instance, was the last time you heard of or encountered, say, Google Glass?
On the other hand, wearable animals – or parts of animals – have a history that extends back into prehistory, in particular that epoch known as the Palaeolithic, the longest period in human history.
Nevertheless, the manners in which animals or their parts have been used have adapted over the millennia in response to technological changes and development.
A recent example of such an adaptation is shown below. It cropped up in your correspondent’s social media timeline today, although a reverse image search indicates it might have originated a couple of years ago.
Why Is The First Letter of Each Word Capitalised?
Are other identity animals available? Comment below.
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.
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 ‘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.
For some reason beyond the wit of any rational person, a religious festival celebrating the birth two millennia ago of a man who advocated peace and love seems to call forth a wave of hate and bile from those on the right of the political spectrum, who become more than usually scathing, either bleating that the traditional festival has been cancelled or railing against alleged political correctness.
One of those who has taken to social media to vent her anger is one Susan Mary Hall, leader of the Conservative group in the Greater London Authority‘s London Assembly.
Note in particular the use of not one, but three exclamation marks. As for the biscuits being of a male persuasion, I see no evidence of genitalia in their depiction on the packet, Ms Hall!
Neverthless, have a happy Christmas, if you dare allow yourself such a luxury. 😀
For many years – longer than your ‘umble scribe chooses to remember – satirical magazine Private Eye has featured a column entitled Dumb Britain, which documents the hilariously wrong and ingorant answers given by contestants on television quiz shows.
However, dumbness in the form of lack of knowledge, intelligence or common-sense is not confined to the small screen; myriad examples may be found in real life, as evidenced by the photograph below taken in St Mark’s Road (note the apostrophe, Bristol City Council! Ed.) in Easton last week when the street was undergoing road works.
Maybe Private Eye should expand the criteria for Dumb Britain.
![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)
