Paul Brownjohn @Paulos_the_fog@social.cleverlibre.org

Everyone is getting excited about the development and implementation of artificial intelligence; meanwhile Microsoft have been secretly developing artificial cretinism!

@interpipes

In the UK and where I now live in Luxembourg, the regulations preclude noisy work on Sundays, public holidays, before 08:00hrs and after 20:00hrs

@interpipes
You didn't mention what country you are in - many countries have regulations about what time noisy work may start and/or finish but it is normally up to the "victim" to register a complaint with the relevant authorities before the they will take action!

@neilmadden

As a sometime 'C', Java, C#, VB, VBA and PL/SQL programmer, I have never liked the concept of OO programming. It has always seemed to me that it obstructs rather than helps good programming! As a measure to stop programmers abusing global variables, it's massive overkill and it most certainly does not facilitate good programming practice!
However, as in all things in life, that which was the case when one started doing a particular task is what is normal, according to our brains. Thus, if you were raised on 00 programming languages, you will consider that to be the right and proper way to write code. The first language I learned was “C”; A very flexible language with nothing to impede bad programming habits other than self-discipline which I was taught alongside the language itself!
This all reminds me of a chap who applied for a post as a Visual Basic 3 programmer at a company where I once worked. He passed the interview by demonstrating most convincingly that he was the type who would fit into the team, he also passed the technical interview with flying colours and so the company made him an offer. Not satisfied with being offered the job, he insisted on sending the head of the programming team some of his code for informal review before starting work. The code he sent was an absolute horror story; it was littered with “GoTo”s making it almost unintelligible by modern standards and certainly not the sort of code the company wanted their programmers to produce. The offer of employment was swiftly withdrawn!
The “GoTo” instruction exists in most modern programming languages but everyone who learns to programme in a formal teaching environment is taught never to use it except in the most extreme circumstances when there is absolutely no other choice.
It has always seemed to me that object orientation was introduced to fix problems induced by indiscipline in coding practise and lack of rigorous code review.

Any entomologists out there?

Found this splendid looking beast wandering on my outside wall today but I have no idea what it is.

About 1.5cm - 2 cm in length

@proactivepaul

Ever since he came out out as a Brexiter, I lost all respect for him and his views. I'm therefore no interested in his 'opinion'

@ewdocparris

It's odd that Reagan is such a hero to conservative Americans in the same way that Mao Zedong is a hero to most Chinese despite the fact that as a result of Chairman Mao's extreme arrogance, utter stupidity and refusal to listen to experts, up to 50 million Chinese died of starvation!

@kg6gfq

A good start would be to do what the government in Luxembourg have done and make all public transport - trains, trams and buses - completely free!

I'm recounting this experience because I'd like to hear if it chimes with anyone else’s experience. I have already met someone who had a very similar experience in the same circumstances at about the same age and I'm wondering therefore if this is fairly common whether there was something about that particular place or situation that induced it to happen.
My parents were regular churchgoers but used to chop and change between churches, I’m not sure why. Eventually, they settled on a church called St. Andrews Presbyterian in my hometown. The minister Rev. Bellhouse was particularly famous for the quality of his sermons something to which I, myself, can attest.
I was aged around about 10 at the time and a feature of this church was that at a certain point during the service the minister would ask the children 5 – 14 year olds) to file out of the main body of the church and go to a separate meeting room where the Sunday school was held. There, a woman with a permanently angry expression and tightly pursed lips as if she were about to release a stream of invective at each and every one of us for our sins and misdeeds, would deliver a kiddie-sermon on some Christian topic, all of which I have completely forgotten. The other thing that was outstanding about her was that she wore a very strange hat; I don't know why I remember her hat, but I do.
One Sunday, whilst in Sunday school listening to her painfully dull interpretation of the love of Jesus and all the rest of it, I had an absolutely overwhelming feeling that I can only now really put into words. I suppose you could call it a reverse “damascene conversion”; like a sudden blinding light, I realised that Christianity was complete bullshit! Since that day, I have never had any reason whatsoever to change that view; quite the reverse, in fact, the passing of over 60 years since that moment have only served to reinforce what I perceived in a flash of blinding light at that very special moment. Since then, I have come to view most other religions and religious beliefs in the same light; I make only exceptions for Buddhism, which it is not strictly a religion as it does not postulate the existence of any sort of God, and Jainism which is the very distilled essence of a belief system based on peaceful coexistence with all other forms of life on earth. Aside from being vegetarian, many Jains refuse to eat root vegetables as harvesting them kills the plant along with many tiny creatures living in the vicinity of its root.
In what I consider to be a truly extraordinary coincidence, I recounted the above on Facebook and I received a reply from someone saying that they too were a member of the Sunday school group in that particular church and that they had had a very similar experience. To me, this begs the questions
“s this a fairly common experience amongst those people exposed to organised religion from an early age?”
“Was this revelation triggered by the miserable, angry old bat who ran the Sunday school?”
“Was there something particular about that church that induced my reaction and indeed a similar reaction in at least one other?”

@BobM @keir_starmer

He is being advised by wankwits aka the grey (wo)men Labour party HQ and in the unions who always hated the EU because of its supposed right wing policies. In reality, the EU is above all pragmatic and much prefers to point its members in a general direction rather than forcing them into specific policies. I should know, I spent 10 years working there!

@Kon

Yes but this is a tory govt - they are knee-jerk nasty and it is absolutely clear that they are deliberately delaying asylum applications as that is their policy!

@webhat @NiteThief@mindly.social

Yes, one of my uncles is buried somewhere in Normandy; a casualty of the Normandy landings.

@NiteThief@mindly.social

There's a huge American WWII cemetery here in Luxembourg; it contains the graves of 5,074 US soldiers who were killed during the battle of the Bulge and in the advance towards Germany; it's impressively scary to see the hectares of white crosses.

@vivsternz @Adrenochrome

Nah - it's just the world govt of reptiles trying out some new chemicals in their chemitrails, innit?