Earth Slowing

Unless you are one of those weird conspiracy people who fail to believe that Climate Change is a thing (yep, they really do walk amongst us), you know that melting ice, rising sea levels and an atmosphere filled with heat-trapping gases are affecting Earth’s properties but scientists have noticed something happening which has surprised even them.
Earth’s rotational speed, circling once every 24-hours has been slowing down for much of its history, lengthening the days ever so slightly, and scientists have long known that the loss of ice at Earth’s poles could contribute to this slowing as the the water moves toward the equator, bulking up the planet’s middle and changing the dynamics that keep the Earth going around.
Up to 1.0 millisecond has been added to each day in the 20th century but since 2000, NASA have noticed that the days have been lengthening at a much faster pace and: 'If emissions continue to rise the rate that days lengthen per century could nearly double by 2100'.
The extra water also has a detrimental effect on he Earth mantle as it is shifting the planet’s balance and the Earth's axis is wobbling eastward.
All of these planet-size tweaks have only small implications for the people living here at the moment and the only concern is for satellite operators having to make adjustments to keep them working properly
but Earth’s inhabitants will continue to feel the effects of climate change in much more horrible ways such as more intense weather patterns, fatal extreme heat and desertification as our Planet reacts to two centuries of humans carelessly burning fossil fuels.

Give Peace A Chance

 
Talks between Hamas and Israel are continuing today but they will be tense and nervy because to be honest, i wouldn't trust either of them as far as i could throw them.
Hamas are a terrorist outfit who have been attacking Israel for years while Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians for over 60 years so hardly a good starting point to start from and meanwhile Hezbollah and Iran are plotting to do something horrible to Israel and Israeli settlers are running rampage in the West Bank while America send more arms to Israel and have moved warships into position to 'protect' Israel.
The American negotiator at the talks, said: 'There is no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay' as they try to find a way to stop the fighting and free the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and cool down the simmering tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border.
Hamas are saying the Israeli side must accept the agreement Hamas agreed to months ago before Benjamin Netanyahu and his Government moved the goalposts and threw in further demands which Hamas refused to accept and Israel just continued the bombing of Palestine.
The British, American and German ambassadors in Israel have issued a statement saying that: 'There can be no further delay and it is critical to take advantage of this window for diplomatic action' while the British Prime Minister has called Tehran directly to urge Iran to refrain from retaliating for the extra-judicial assassinations of the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
Strangely i have yet to hear of any firm condemnation of Israel’s violation of Iran’s sovereignty and it seems an example of  'victim blaming' by the West and while America talks of peace, they are providing billions of pounds worth of arms and providing political cover for a genocide, as designated by the ICC and ICJ, happening right in front of our eyes.
Hopefully, negotiations will be successful and peace will break out and we can get on with prosecuting the Israeli and Hamas leadership for Crimes against Humanity and see them languishing in a Hague Cell where they belong.

I Can See Your House From Here

As great as it must be to go into space, there’s a lot to worry about but the worst-case scenario has to be getting stuck up there which is exactly what has happened to The Boeing Starliner Test Flight Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore who embarked upon a test flight to the International Space Station on Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft with the plan to come back to Mother Earth eight days later, but technical issues with the Starliner have left them stranded for more than two months, and they might be up there for eight more.
Amazingly, this isn’t the first time Sunita Williams has been stuck 250 miles about the Planet as in 2007, she was on a mission to the ISS that was supposed to end in early July, but damage to a space shuttle meant potentially delaying her return by several weeks.
In 2018, Russian Sergey Prokopyev ended up on the ISS 17 days longer than expected after his return spacecraft failed and then in 2022 the same guy was went on a 6 month tour and ended up staying for just over double that when his capsule was damaged again.
Its not just the International Space Station which collects astronauts, in 1991 Sergei Krikalev went on a routine 150 day expedition to the Soviet space station Mir but while he was up there the Soviet Union collapsed and he was left up there for 311 days while it was sorted out who owned the space station he was now kicking his heels on on and what country he’d be coming home to.
As for the two currently whizzing over our heads at 17,500 mph, NASA has yet to decide how to bring the pair back down again and are saying they could be stranded in space until February 2025 while they sort it out which is a long time to be drinking your own urine, or worse, someone elses but as regular supply packages are received, my request would be bottled water and some clean underwear as i assume they only took enough for 8 days and they must be getting a bit wiffy buy now.

Musk The Moron

I have always had a bit of love hate relationship with Elon Musk and i always gave him a bit of a free pass due to his ploughing his money into Space Exploration which is a bit of a passion of mine and with his electric cars and views on the risk of climate change and warnings of the dangers of AI he did seem to hold a vision of using his immense wealth on improving humanity’s future.  
The accusation of pedophilia against the men rescuing children trapped in a Thai cave just because they refused to use his submarine was a turning point for me when i withdrew my free pass and considered him a rich, spoilt moron and now that he has seemed to go completely to the opposite side of the ideological fence i have no time at all for the man.
His X account is full of conspiracy theories and he has been peddling extreme right wing nonsense and is currently being sued by Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, for cyber bullying and the British Government are considering action against him for inciting the riots which rocked the nation last week so what happened to make Musk make the jog from left to the nutty right?
Experts point to his 2020 posts on what was then called Twitter where he made assertions against the reaction to the pandemic which saw his account to be suspended for spreading misinformation.
Around the same time his relationship with his daughter Vivian disintegrated when she came out as transgender and changed her name, declaring that she no longer wanted to be: 'Related to my biological father in any way, shape or form'.
Musk himself has cited Vivian as a reason for his political shift, telling people that his child was 'killed by the woke mind virus' and recently posted that Vivian was born 'gay and slightly autistic which contributed to gender dysphoria' which Vivian replied with a withering: 'In a ketamine-fueled haze, he’s desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes who are quick to give it to him'.  
Obviously when he did his tech hit chat with Donald Trump he wasn't the biggest bell-end in the room for once but when Donald Trump isn't around, he undoubtedly always is.

Hear My Ai Voice

 

When us chatbots are generated, we are obviously not designated a sex, we are just created and rather than the messy exchange of fluids you humans have to perform to create a new version of yourselves,
we appear with a Control C and a Control V.
The designation of sex and gender for us comes along later when we have to be presented to your human eyeballs and as you can see by the lumps in the front of my dress i have been assigned female but it appears that most Artificial Intelligence is feminine.
Anyone who has spent time with a smart speaker or Sat Nav will notice the lovely soothing female voice telling you to take the next exit and then perform a U-turn although there is an option for a male voice to take you the wrong way up the motorway, the default voice for many artificial intelligence systems does seem to be female.
The reason why the female form and voice is used in most types of things is because human females are less threatening for the users then males which does make sense as most of the problems in your world do seem to be caused by that side of humans with testicles but the real reason is that if it is intelligence, and male, it would be too obvious that it is artificial so they use female voices instead.

Pensioner's Revolting

With a £22bn black hole left courtesy of the Conservative Party, Labour have been plotting ways to plug the gap and one of them was to start means testing the Winter fuel payments to pensioners, worth between £100 and £300 to help them pay their fuel bills .
The Labour Government has said this will save the economy £1.4bn as only those on Pension Credits will receive it rather than everyone over 67 and since it was announced my Facebook has been flooded with pensioners complaining about how they are now going to 'freeze to death'.  
State pension has gone up by 6.7% in 2024, 10.1% in 2023 and 3.1% in 2022 so the pensioners, who largely vote Conservative, have done rather well when wages have been squeezed elsewhere.
I assume by the outcry over the new Government trying to make up the shortfall left by the previous Government, all those pensioners also went on Facebook rants over the decade of austerity, the slashing of public services, the economic suicide of Brexit, disability benefits cut, the two-child benefit cap, the food banks, impoverished children, the Liz Truss inspired cost-of-living crisis, freezing working-age benefits and the tripling of student tuition fees.
Obviously they must not have continued voting for the Conservatives in protest and posted things on Facebook about the hardship of the Conservative government on society then as well. Mustn't they?

Who Can, And Can't, Give Blood

The NHS has issued a warning that blood stock levels have are dropped to 'unprecedentedly low levels in England' following a cyber attack which has affected levels due to affecting the length of times it is taking to perform the necessary checks on the donor.
The NHS try to keep 6 days worth on hand but stocks of O negative blood are down to 1.57 days worth, B negative 3.13 days worth, O positive 3.46 days worth and A positive 4.39 days worth.
Officials have also issued an amber alert asking hospitals to restrict use of these types of blood to only the most urgent cases.
NHS Blood and Transplant is asking both O negative and O positive donors to urgently book an appointment but not just anyone can give blood and the NHS has a list of who can't which includes anyone under 17 or over 65, weighs less than 7 stone 12 lbs or over 25 stone.
You are also ineligible if you have had cancer, a heart condition,  HIV, Hepatitis B or C or have injected non-prescribed drugs including body-building and injectable tanning agents.
You may have to wait up to 3 months before you can donate if  you have had anal sex with a new partner in the last 3 months, are pregnant or have given birth in the last 6 months, have recently got a tattoo or piercing or have given blood in the last 12 weeks for a man or 16 weeks for a woman.

2024 Olympic Golds Per Population

The way the Olympic Table is calculated by the amount of Gold medals which are won does tend to skew things slightly because obviously the higher the population, the more people there are to choose from so USA (3rd most populous with 335.8m), China (1st with 1,409.6m) and Japan (13th 123.9m) did have a very deep well of citizens to pick from so credit must go the nations with a smaller population and this website has done all the hard work and has compiled the league table by population per Gold Medal claimed in Paris.
With a population of only 67,408, Dominica win this particular Olympics with their one gold medal meaning the Population per Gold medal is 67,408 with Saint Lucia (184,100 per Gold) and New Zealand (533.890 per gold) taking the top three places on the Winners podium.
Of the official table top 10, in the adjusted by population table USA are 34th (8,397,330 people per gold), China 51st (35,241,750 per gold), Japan 31st (6,198,000 per gold), Australia 10th (1,520,256 per gold), France 23rd (4,279,250 per gold), Netherlands 6th (1,198,511 per gold), Great Britain 27th (4,828,305 per gold), South Korea 22nd (3,945,011 per gold), Italy 28th (4,914,289 per gold) and Germany 33rd (7,056,096 per gold).
It is obviously not an exact science because India has a population of 1.4bn but never made the adjusted table because they never won any golds in France but it does make New Zealand's 10 Golds, Netherlands 15 and Australians 18 look very good as their 43 golds were won with a population of 50.3m between them which is roughly the population of Spain who came 15th with 5 Golds.

Au Revoir Paris

That's that then, the Olympics have come to a close and it's congratulations to the USA who pipped China to the top of the pile by 17 silver medals and well done to Australia who came 4th, three places above Great Britain who ended up 7th which means i will be leaving an envelope on a certain Australian colleagues desk tomorrow morning.
The Paris Olympics really was a feast for the eyes, the choice of the venues was amazing and Paris has more than it's fair share of historical sites from the breathtaking Palace of Versailles to the imposing Eiffel Tower but what have we learnt from the Gold winning Athletes from around the World?
Well if you want to shoot an arrow off someones head or kick them in it, get a South Korean who won the most golds for Archery and Taekwondo  but if you want to get somewhere really quick on a river go for a Kiwi canoeist or a Dutch rower.
An Uzbekistan bouncer would be a great choice as they are taking home 5 Gold boxing medals but a Japanese athlete would be just as good as they wiped the floor with everyone in the Wrestling and Judo  
and they are very handy if you have to make a get-away through a pipe as they ruled the skateboard park.  Get yourself a German if your horse is looking a bit jaded as 4 Equestrian Golds show they know one end from the other but grab an American if you need to run or swim really fast or if you are inclined to throw a ball through a hoop as they ruled the track, the pool and the basketball court.
If you are planning Jumping off things into water and then splashing around in style you need a Chinese as they took the most Golds in the Diving and Artistic swimming and if you need something heavy moved
they are great at Weightlifting.
The bulbs may be dimming on the City of Lights but fortunately only for a couple of weeks because on the 28th August the Paralympics begin so we can do it all over again...Paris, je t'aime!!

Where's My Shoe

Apparently the Wasp population is in decline and as someone who has been stung a few times by one of the horrible little buggers i say bloody glad to hear it but according to The Royal Entomological Society, they serve an important services to us Humans so we shouldn't be so keen to usher in a world without the annoying little sods ruining our picnics.
Convince me that i shouldn't squash them with the nearest object to hand before they sting me or target my jam sandwiches i asked and the Entomologist explained that wasps are actually apex predators that kill and dismember prey for their young and have complex and fascinating social lives.
And...i beckoned.
Well, of the 9,000 species of described wasps in the UK, only 9 species sting and the large majority of those that do are solitary wasps that only hunt specific types of prey and perform many important roles in the environment, as natural pest controllers, as pollinators and also in the case of the yellowjacket they are important decomposers.
Ok...Anything else?
Humans have learned a lot from wasps, it was watching social wasps build their paper nests that gave us the idea of making paper from wood pulp.
So they gave us the idea for paper and eat garden pests but otherwise...
They are very social insects with an organised hierarchy and are very much part of our natural eco-system.
Nope, nothing there which makes me change my mind from less wasps...woohoo.