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Ian Kenway

I don't normally indulge in FB-style personal commentary. But I'm really glad we're now into April. Winter here on Symi has been long, wet and sometimes very cold, reaching down to 0 degrees C (such a contrast to last August when we exceeded 42 degrees). And yes the island experienced snow.

Spring has sort of arrived - though I'm still waiting for the my severely pruned vine and peach tree to start budding.

After Easter, the tourists will arrive in increasing number. Like most Greek islands, Symi has two aspects. November to April when the island is resident only to Greeks and a small number of ex-pats and then April-November when the population swells and sometimes groans with tourists. Fortunately, I live high up at the bottom of a mountain (Vigla) and can opt out of the tourism invasion as much as I want. Very few make it up here.

Sadly, my much-used ten-year old Samsung laptop started showing signs of its age about a month ago - the hinge broke, there were signs that the HD was on its last legs, the battery wasn't holding its charge well and I couldn't enter the BIOS because of the CMOS battery.

So I bought an HONOR MagicBook 15 (Intel® Core™ i5 processor version, 512Gb SSD version) from Germany for circa 750 euros. It arrived here in two weeks. I immediately got rid of the installed Windows 10 and installed the latest version of Linux Mint. It all went went well with just a few initial glitches - reflecting my unfamiliarity with the German QWERTZ keyboard as well as the soon-discovered need to manually upgrade the Linux kernel. But now all is fine. Compared to the old Samsung, it is incredibly snappy and responsive with no issues with hardware acceleration or running Pulseeffects. Also, I can enter and close down a legacy version of Windows 7 in VirtualBox in about 8 seconds or less. Nothing of course is perfect and, like many reviewers, I have reservations about the keyboard video cam despite its privacy plus point. Also I had to buy an external DVD/CD player.

Come on Spring, the Beach Awakes!

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Ian Kenway boosted
anniemo71

"Jeez. First MP’s get a £2,200 a year pay rise whilst NHS staff get a massive real terms pay cut & NOW MPs get free parking spaces at work whilst NHS have to pay from Friday!"

Welcome to Boris Johnson’s “golden age”

t.co/Np9mlWCTUZ

twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/st

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Ian Kenway boosted
Khurram Wadee ✅

#GhostFlights from #UK running at 500 a month, data reveals | Airline #emissions | The Guardian

This is crazy but it’s also because of the ridiculous #Laws regarding retention of #Landing #Slots for #airlines.

theguardian.com/environment/20

#Pollution #AirPollution #FossilFuels #Environmment #GlobalWarming #ClimateChange

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Ian Kenway boosted
Khurram Wadee ✅

Home #WoodNurning in #UK causes £1bn of #Health costs a year, report says | #AirPollution | The Guardian

theguardian.com/environment/20

#Environment #Pollution

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Ian Kenway

Food for Thought - March 2022

phidoc.net/food_for_thought.ht

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Ian Kenway

The Book of the Month for March is Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and the Track of the Month is the Sarabande from the Fifth Cello Suite by J. S. Bach.

phidoc.net/book_of_the_month.h

phidoc.net/track_of_the_month.

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Ian Kenway boosted
Khurram Wadee ✅

I had one of those “Why didn’t that ever occur to me before?” moments. The time between the #Equinoxes is not symmetrical. It’s about 186 days between the #March and #September equinoxes and about 179 days from September to March. This is because the speed of the #Earth in its #orbit varies as it’s #elliptical rather than circular. I never bothered to count the days and yet it’s “obvious” when you look at the calendar. This gives an eccentricity of the orbit to be around 0.015.

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Ian Kenway boosted
Nation.Cymru

Nuclear 'the wrong answer' says Plaid Cymru leader as new reactors mooted for Anglesey nation.cymru/news/nuclear-the-

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Ian Kenway boosted
anniemo71

This is shocking!

Peter Stefanovic on Twitter

Britain’s 14% fall in goods exports stands in contrast to 8.2% rise for rest of the world

Even more appalling is fact we have a weak Chancellor too terrified to even mention it let alone the word “Brexit.” How can we mitigate this disaster when Sunak sticks his head in the sand? t.co/FdFYZb3s2i

twitter.com/PeterStefanovi2/st

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Ian Kenway boosted
Nation.Cymru

Why it may take a UK Labour government to give Plaid Cymru a shot at victory. nation.cymru/opinion/why-it-ma

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Ian Kenway boosted
Nation.Cymru

Covid pandemic 'a crash course in nation building' for Wales, Adam Price says. nation.cymru/news/covid-pandem

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Ian Kenway

@anniemo71 No longer living in the UK, but I am certainly not happy about this decision on behalf of my family and friends. In short the decision is short-sighted and simply driven by ideology.

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Ian Kenway boosted
anniemo71

Dr Rachel Clarke on Twitter

"Is everyone aware that in one week’s time, the government is expecting all NHS staff either (a) to pay for their own LFTs or (b) to stop self-testing & potentially come to work with Covid, infecting vulnerable patients?"

"Is everyone really OK with this?"

t.co/hsY0zvsk2N

twitter.com/doctor_oxford/stat

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Ian Kenway

Ukraine uses facial recognition software to identify Russian soldiers killed in combat

theguardian.com/technology/202

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Ian Kenway boosted
muesli

Of all the multiverses, did I really have to end up in this one?!

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Ian Kenway

Toot Redux (first published 17th December 2020)

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Ian Kenway

Information processing tied to emergence of hierarchy in human societies

phys.org/news/2022-03-tied-eme

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Ian Kenway boosted
Khurram Wadee ✅

#JohannesKepler was a brilliant #astronomer who studied the motion of #planets. Like everyone, he also had some strange ideas about the heavens, no doubt as a person in the middle ages would about the harmony of worlds and their purported relation to things like the #PlatonicSolids, which was of course bogus. He is probably best known for his famous three laws of #PlanetaryMotion which he reluctantly formulated when he had to abandon the idea that planets only orbit the #Sun in perfect #circles.

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Ian Kenway boosted
muesli

JIIIIIIIIFFFF!

theverge.com/2022/3/23/2299206

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Ian Kenway boosted
anniemo71

Westminster scuppered the plans for a tidal lagoon in Swansea.
It makes much more sense as we are an island, to properly invest in our wind and waves.

I want my children and grandchildren to have a future without nuclear.

After all, with current world politics, and, we still no way of disposing of nuclear waste.

But....oh yes, I guess they thought of that. Perhaps Cardiff will take some of it!!! 😳😡 Fuming!

nation.cymru/news/wylfa-could-

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