Festivals

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Done the solo gigs, now it's a chance for the full on 3 day affairs, the festivals.
A collage of UK festival programmes

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The Difference Between One Million And One Billion

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It feels like a billion is just a bit bigger than a million. Obviously it's bigger but it fits on the same scale as a million, surely. It doesn't. A billion is so so so much bigger than a million. I've trawled the internet finding graphics and videos that show the VAST difference between one million and one billion. Oh, and just to finish with a different misconception about space starting with the classic opening line from the great Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy : “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Who Reads Your Messages Without You Knowing?

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We all send messages, a lot of us call them texts even though we might not be actually sending them via SMS. Not only do some of us send a lot of messages we now rely on them instead of phone calls, which might also not really be phone calls but you know what I mean. SMS ("text") - least secure The one we all started with, that we fall back to when nothing else works, the basic, the granddaddy of all messages. SMS / text is the one we know will get through when other fancy messaging systems may not, it covers the world. It's also totally insecure. Your message is sent unencrypted. You message carries all it's metadata (who from, who to, date & time sent, where sent from) is unencrypted. Think of text as sending a postcard in the post. Yes, it will get there but anyone and everyone can read it on the way, including it's address, stamp, and who from. If you have set-up 2FA / multi-factor authentication - you absolutely should for your Google , Apple ,  Facebo...

Buy A Volvo, Suddenly The Roads Are Full Of Volvos

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That's what happened to me, although I wasn't egotistical enough to think that because I'd bought a yellow Volvo that's why everyone else has - I was just noticing them more. The frequency illusion is another example of a cognitive bias that you can’t avoid; you can only be aware that it happens. However, you can lessen the effect by being more mindful of your surroundings, and when something does catch your attention and you start seeing references to it everywhere, you simply have to remind yourself that you are probably just noticing it for the first time. The Frequency Illusion: Why You’ll Probably Hear the Name Baader-Meinhof Again Soon   is a fantastic explanation of why there were so many Volvos being noticed by my brain, and how politicians and marketing people use this to fool us into thinking something is important. Not a Volvo, but yes this is the real one

W. C. Fields quotes

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The office has all been moved around - new desks (with starter handles to raise and lower them), new high(er) speed network and ... the same old work. At least I have a differing view of the world, my team (well, the team I'm a part of not "my" team) is a lot closer - finally - and it's like an office from the 80's ... or even a classroom. But I still have time to move the crap off the PC : ------ Any man who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't be all bad. Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad. Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??! Who stole the cork from my breakfast? Now don't say you can't swear off drinking, it's easy. I've done it a thousand times. Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. Then quit, no use being a damn fool about things. Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they alwa...

"Right Wing" Comedians

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How Did It Happen, Look Outside The Bubble

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Do We Live Better Than Medieval Royalty?

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[UPDATED] Listen to an audio summary of this post and all the outbound links, created using "AI", enjoy. It's an almost common phrase, "We live better than a king of old!" Ok, let's do some a lot of searching and see if that's true in any sense at all BUT first ... Some definitions ... "We all" Almost exclusively this is white, middle-class / middle-level, in the top 10-15%, sort of people. Also, European or of European descent, i.e. those that think being a medieval king is a thing to emulate. "live" Doing our general stuff but not one-off things like wars, marriages, and deaths. Think of it as the life we live on a Tuesday afternoon. "better" Hmmm, I think this is a combination of ease, ability, availability, and cost. "Medieval" The medieval period , also known as the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages, began around 476 A.D. and ended between 1400 and 1450. The term was first used by 15th-century scholars to descri...

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Yarn Bombing

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