Kwajalein (the 'target' of the test Minutemans) has an interesting radar collection, If this sort of nerdery is your thing.

They do this all the time (at a low tempo)? Using a missile taken at random from a silo, istr.

Slight suspicion that just as LLMs flatter shamelessly, health tracking devices also tilt _at least a bit_ towards good news for their wearers.

So it won't alarm too many people who don't have it, but it will miss plenty who do.

I will say that my DBP (the low number) went up by 10 mm (although still a safe number) over approximately the same period that I became a parent, with all the rest. Exact cause a bit obscure. Booze? Highest BMI around then too.

Consultant said to get a BP device, so I did, and after getting over the initial burst of anxiety I have some readings that look normal (if you squint). But then health anxiety gets to work again. Are they normal _enough_?

‘The heavily gilded renderings of ballroom interior owe far more to the baroque, even the rococo, than to Thomas Jefferson. It sits on the city limits between Las Vegas and St Petersburg. It is, quite simply, not the sort of thing democracies build.’ — Will Wiles on the White House

I would like to see a YouGov poll on maximum allowable wealth differentials. Since most people (supposedly) think that they're comparatively much richer than they really are, I'd guess that the result from that would probably scare the shit out of some.

Estimates of maximum allowable wealth differentials vary quite a bit I suspect! If I say 3x, well probably that puts me on the meaner (more egalitarian) end? This person says that the wealthy could have quite a lot more. blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

Bait headline but still. 'They feel very attacked.' The wealthy failing again to understand that their money is a gift. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

But British politics and cultural cohesion is supposed to have improved since the 1970s! We spin congratulatory narratives about wiping out the NF, defeating the BNP, the rise of multiculturalism, the decline of racism. For these ideas to be mainstream and explicit for the Tories now is shocking.

Musk mangling some third hand Orwell.

So the $20,000 humanoid robot housekeeper actually just webcams your house to a random person in a call center with an Xbox controller www.wsj.com/tech/persona... @joannastern.bsky.social

Scant evidence also that Bluesky is any better than any other 'microblogging' platform. The format is a bad fit for humans. The whole internet is, tbh. Disaster.

I will say that I'm hoping that the rage and fury that's crept into online UK politics—on all sides, mind—is not going to be sustained all the way until the next GE. Starmer is not some antichrist. If you find yourself fulminating about _him personally_, something has gone wrong.

If someone could guarantee that _everyone_ now votes Green, then sure, I’ll vote Green. Otherwise I’d really rather not, thanks.

What’s vanity voting, you say? Well, any voting that assumes a protest vote is safe when the rightist threat is huge, as now. Regrettable situation: for sure.

Pessimistic take is that vanity Green voting collapses enough Labour seats to allow a Reform breakthrough.

It's funny, we were hoping to do a bit of tourism in that bit of New Mexico, partly on the basis of the O'Keeffe paintings. But it's not very well set up for visitors afaict. And now is not the time, probably.

UK wind power benefits and costs 2010-2023 : Lower energy bills through avoided gas: £14.2bn Avoided infra & new gas generation: £133.3bn Subsidies paid to wind power: - £43.2bn Overall benefit to UK economy **£104bn** Don't believe the wind power haters www.theguardian.com/environment/...

We are now in Daylight Losings Time, according to @sabsldn.bsky.social.

1/ Russian warbloggers are angrily denouncing General Valery Gerasimov for blatantly lying to President Vladimir Putin about Russia's military progress in Ukraine during a televised briefing. They note that the incident highlights the persistent problem of false military reporting. ⬇️

This idea ignores the physical activity paradox. Movement, when taken by choice or recreationally, has a net anti-inflammatory, calming effect on our systems. If you are compelled to take it with someone else deciding and dictating pace, the opposite occurs. www.thetimes.com/article/307a...

Reminds me of one of our masters (Latin), who insisted on a 19th C. schoolteacher's dais. The only master in the school to have one. I spent an entire term learning how to dodge his gaze, and was rarely asked any questions. Didn't help my Latin much though.

No radiation measured in Norway after Putin's nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile allegedly flew 14,000 km over the Arctic last Tuesday ☢️ 🚀 ⚛️

What’s funny about this is that you can close your eyes and hear Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider, patiently giving the local hoodlum a moral education. ‘Yer see, that can work for a while, for some folks, but …’

Here's a version of the Eames lounge chair that goes for about 20% of what Vitra will charge you (or less?). I'd count this as 'original' if the details are close. If someone wants to be a snob about it, they'll be defending ownership of a Vitra, not an Eames. decomica.com/product-cate...

Owen Hatherley with his combo of odd facts and class consciousness: "Most of us will never be able to live somewhere built by Le Corbusier or Mies, or own an original piece of furniture by Eileen Gray or Marcel Breuer ... you can buy ... a Panton chair or a set of Eames coat hooks".

'Incidentaloma' is a word, apparently.

Also, also … the private endo said that referrals for hypothyroidism are basically impossible via the NHS. But the NHS _won’t tell you that_, and instead either wastes your time with deflections, or attempts to manage it with low information (i.e. without knowing the cause).

A few hours spent at a private clinic reminds me how ineffective the NHS set up is. It costs a few hundred to buy a set of blood tests out of pocket. But then you’ll know, or at least know what it’s not. NHS GPs gatekeep tests like miserabilist bastards; a stroke or a coronary downstream costs £££s.

The State Department is the organ grinder, Trump is the monkey. In other words.

The circular dynamic: Putin calls the orange one, says let’s talk, the orange one makes positive grunts to the media, the US Foreign Office applies its own process—gets it in writing from the Russians that there’s no change really—and then formal talks are cancelled.

Ah, maybe. I would like this to be true because it would mean freedom from thinking much about what humans actually do when unsupervised.

Pizza is a fucking dreadful food, nutritionally. Even if it's 'sourdough'. I haven't bought a ready made pizza since the oven broke (around two years ago now) and I swear it's for the best, and I might never fix it / replace it now.

I guess you can't have Franco Manca _and_ this.

Hmm. Netflix when it was envelopes was better, I really do think. But the insidious part is how streaming restricts your horizons with a smaller than it looks catalogue. A really good DVD / Blu-ray shop didn't do that.

It goes on: "The East German government assumed that much of the population would acquire coffee from Westpakete sent by West German relatives. This increased the demand for the typical return gift, a Dresdner Stollen, which also caused difficulties in the East German economy ..."

Wikipedia isn't necessarily right, but I do enjoy (each one equally) these facts about the DDR: "By the 1970s ... gifts from friends and relatives in the West met about 20 percent of the country's coffee needs ..."

I feel this lady is concerned by how things have turned out, developmentallly.

Nobody in Prague visits the Rudolfinum (modern art museum). Which is a reason to go on its own. Here’s the cafe on a Saturday morning. Back to Le Carre world.

Outside the something. Energy for finding out what is dropping. Recommend 420 for dinner in Prague though.

From yesterday, @sabsldn.bsky.social explaining the ultra fashionably flat pediments of Gottfried Semper.

Tourist tack in Prague is next level.

Tram tunnel.

My cunning plan to make dinner healthy with broccoli but the broccoli is extremely fried.

Prague, and it suddenly goes full Le Carre.

No longer following the Elbe. Still in Bohemia, possibly?