Hello my little poppets,
How has your week been?
If I had to pick one word for mine (and I don’t have to, but just let’s say I did have to), I’d choose the word ‘damp’. It doesn’t seem to have stopped raining. That said, we have it much better than a lot of people at the moment as a new hurricane hits America and the remnants of the last one hits France. Grim stuff.
I was half expecting tonight’s train to be impacted but, as Kirk crossed the channel, it dipped south which was good news for me but bad news for others. As I type, 64,000 homes in France are without electricity and 29 departments are under an orange weather warning for floods or violent winds.
It’s going to be a long night for a lot of people. Thoughts are with them.
In this week’s chock-a-block edition:
The Muppets
Perv-tech
Free speech
…and much, much more!
So, pull up a watermelon and relax into the best few minutes of your week so far! (Sorry if that’s true!)
Stay safe, everyone!
James x
Tech for the Sexpest in your life
I was very wary about this story, not because it didn’t pass the sniff test but because it seemed to only be picked up by the worst media outlets. However, the more I have looked at it, the more possible it seems.
It turns out that a couple of Harvard students have managed to add an extra functionality to a pair of connected Raybans that allowed them to be used for facial recognition, bringing up address and other details of the victi… sorry, person in front of them. This is something that has caused huge earnest privacy debates when we look at facial recognition in the hands of governments but it is a whole new level of dangerous if it can be simply replicated and put in the hands of individuals.
It’s no secret that I have always found connected glasses the tiniest bit creepy - an image that wasn’t helped when Robert Scoble decided to share a photo of himself in the shower in a pair of Google Glasses (and kill them off as a result) - and that was before we found out about Robert Scoble himself.
Anyway, back to the creepiness of the Rayban/Meta glasses. When the experiment by the Harvard students was put to Meta, their response was “Ray-Ban Meta glasses do not have facial recognition technology. These students are using publicly available facial recognition technology, called PimEyes, on a computer.”
This is, at best, sub-optimal. ‘You can do this with our product and that’s fine because you can do it elsewhere’ doesn’t really cut the mustard.
If the tech companies do not want to do it, and as much as it upsets me to say it, legislators might want to look at how connected glasses can be used to facilitate some pretty creepy activities, putting people (especially women) at risk and then pass some laws to ensure they have systems in place to ensure they take technological steps to block that functionality.
Braincleanse
Just to cleanse your mind from that shower photo, here’s Dirty Dancing to the theme tune of The Muppets. You’re welcome.
…that’s better!
Apologies
Sorry if this is a bit triggering!
I feel your pain.
Watermelons and Subversion
One of the things that I love about social media is that sometimes you find out that something you thought everyone knew isn’t as widely known as you thought - and you can tell them about it. This week’s experience of the phenomenon was particularly unexpected.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought some new shopping bags in Germany. They were either entirely innocent or subtly political - I’ll let you decide why I bought them!
It turns out that the humble watermelon is a highly charged political statement. It is part of the pantheon of visual ‘algospeak’ that includes the use of Winnie the Pooh to refer Chinese President Xi Jinping. The idea is to circumvent rules relating to censorship by using other symbols.
In this case, following an attempt by Israeli forces to suppress the use of the colours of the flag of Palestine, some people used to carry slices of watermelon - because it’s hard to ban fruit! The watermelon became a symbol of resistance and solidarity.
Subsequent attempts to control the use of the Palestinian flag were met with similarly subversive responses - including one taxi fleet which defied the authorities by displaying a sign which, helpfully, made it absolutely and explicitly clear that it was not displaying a Palestinian flag!
The best thing about this sort of subversion is that it almost always makes the relevant authorities look ridiculous.
Anyway, head to Rewe in Germany for excellent quality shopping bags.
Good News Corner
Want to buy a piece of history? Now’s your chance!
Following the lawsuit against world-class mouth-breather and cosmic-level grifter, Alex Jones, you can now put in bids to own a bit of his toxic former empire.
Jones, who (as far as I know) has never been photographed not looking as if he is in the middle of going for a particularly painful poo, is a conspiracy loon who was sued by the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting for peddling the conspiracy that it never happened.
Jones lost the case and ended up owing the families of the Sandy Hook victims $1.5bn - which he is unlikely to ever be able to pay but, on the upside, is likely to move things along with his perma-constipation.
So, now he has to sell everything off and rely on the kindness of his far right supporters to get by.
Anyway, before we get all teary for the poor chap, here’s the place to get your bids in for his toxic crap. Remember, all proceeds to go the Sandy Hook victims’ families.
That’s gotta hurt!
Beat The Stopwatch
The other day, I wanted to time something so I went to my mobile phone stopwatch and found that I hadn’t stopped it last time! And last time was a while ago…
Can anyone beat that?!
New UK Electronic Travel Authorisation
I am so much looking forward to the UK ETA.
Here’s why:
1) I'm a UK citizen so the rules do not apply to me.
2) I do not have a UK passport and I am not getting one.
3) See 1.
…and the law is pretty clear…
Apologies in advance if you are behind me in the queue. Blame Parliament.
Happy Halloween!
An early halloween treat as I write - James Cleverly has been knocked out of the Tory leadership contest. Apparently, he was so sure of himself winning that his campaign was lending vote to Robert Jenrick, thinking that he would be the easier candidate to beat.
So, the horror show continues - BadEnoch v Jenrick.
Sir Keir might as well fill his boots with free tickets because the Tory right psychodrama has just commissioned itself for a new series…
There it is…
…the green bar of doom! Telling me to shut up again! Cheeky is what it is!
Anyway, that’s it! Two days in Paris and then back home - hopefully to a new bed… Oh! Wait! I forgot to tell you about that!
Fortunately, there will be another package of random next week - and, if the rain lets up for a few seconds, I might even take some photos.
Have a fab one, lovelies!
James x
PS Liked it? Like it and share it! :) Thank you!
PPS Really liked it? I’d love a coffee! :) Thank you!
Endpiece
FINAL REMINDER
Boris Johnson’s autobiography comes out tomorrow - 10/10/2024. Get it quick because it’s getting cold and firewood is expensive.
As you haven't probably twigged my nom de plume, just to let you know this is Chris Drew from Bluesky (and our paths have crossed on FB as well)