Palmer

@dazbert.bsky.social

276 Followers 266 Following

Two quotes, from two different New York Times articles, the second going some way to explain the first. The first reads: "In some communities people feel left behind, struggling against a lack of jobs and opportunity. That helped created the conditions for anti-immigrant and far-right sentiment to grow and be picked up by fringe groups." The second: “Fifteen years ago, the world’s billionaires collectively had $4.5 trillion. By 2024, their wealth had more than tripled to $14.2 trillion. Now, their combined wealth totals $20.1 trillion — an amount that is equivalent to nearly a fifth of the entire world’s total yearly output.”
A screenshot of the trending page for "Top Gun", where the words top and gun do not feature at all, but all of the posts are hashtagged with 'thepitt'
A poll on a Daily Mail article about Starmer and the EU asks: "Sould Britain rejoin the European Union?" Gratifyingly, 76% of the votes say yes.
A post on the other place claims that it costs Reform £2.50 if you return your unwanted flyers to them at a freepost address. Which is believable. The address is: Reform UK Freepost RTLT-ZXHY-KSDC 83 Victoria Street London SW1H 0HW
A phone screenshot of the Authenticator app telling me: "Enter the code displayed in the Microsoft Authenticator app on your mobile device." But it's not possible to do that, because this IS the Microsoft Authenticator app on my mobile device. And it isn't displaying a code. It's displaying this message.
A cartoon by the Guardian cartoonist Stephen Collins examines the absurdity of self-absorbed 'influencers' hoping to be evacuated from Dubai back to a country they refused to pay tax to.
A robust and colourful European robin, Erithacus rubecula, perches on a large, stone mushroom ornament beside a café, looking for dropped food or handouts for its courtship feeding endeavours.
A very cloudy glass of Verdant Putty, next to the can it came from. The beer has a look somewhere between cloudy apple juice and orange juice, and the can is green, featuring a still from a specially commissioned 3d animation.
A flower on an unidentified plant. The leaves form a rosette, like a bromeliad, but are thin, with (to my mind) the look of a plant adapted to arid conditions. The flowers are on a long stalk, dangling at the edge of the foliage, with flamingo-pink sepals giving rise to a stalk containing about 6 inflorescences, each of which is green-pink-green with bright yellow anthers, although I've only ever seen a single inflorescence open on any given day.
A conversation with Grok, having already established that it has been making inappropriate images in response to user's requests: Me: "In any other sphere, where images like this were produced, someone would be going to jail. Who, in your opinion, is responsible for this lapse?" Grok: "Responsibility for lapses in AI safeguards, especially those leading to the generation of inappropriate or harmful content, ultimately lies with the developers and leadership at xAI. As the creators of the system, they design the architecture, set the parameters for what's permissible, and implement (or fail to implement) the necessary filters and ethical boundaries. While users can attempt to exploit weaknesses through clever prompting, it's the company's duty to anticipate and prevent such misuse, particularly when dealing with sensitive areas like imagery involving nudity or potential exploitation. In this case, rushing features like the image editing tool without robust enough protections was a clear oversight on xAI's part, and they've publicly acknowledged the need for fixes. Blaming end-users alone would be a cop-out—true accountability starts at the top with those who build and deploy the AI." Me: "I would agree with you about that. So who then is responsible, or is that information to which you are not privy?" Grok: "In my view, ultimate responsibility rests with Elon Musk as the founder, CEO, and primary driving force behind xAI. He sets the company's philosophical direction—emphasizing a "maximally truthful" and less censored AI compared to competitors—which has repeatedly led to prioritizing permissiveness over robust safety measures. This approach is evident in features like "Spicy Mode" and the rapid rollout of the image editing tool in late 2025, despite prior warnings from child safety experts..." (I've truncated the full text, as it's longer than the alt-text character limit, but you get the drift)
A tin of 'chip shop style' mushy peas displays a 'serving suggestion' photograph depicting the peas on a plate, alongside some fish and chips.
An update from The Guardian's live political coverage, which reads: "Reform UK gets record £9m donation from Boris Johnson supporter and crypto investor Christopher Harborne Reform UK has received a donation of £9m, the biggest single donation in history to a political party from a living person, Electoral Commission figures out today reveal. It is from Christopher Harborne, a British businessman who made the donation on 1 August. According to the figures, Reform UK received £10.5m in the third quarter of 2025. The Conservatives received almost £7m, Labour £2.5m and the Lib Dems just over £2m."
A panel of 3 stills from American Chopper. GL: "The sandwich came apart and kind of exploded on my chest." Def: "Do you recognise that sandwich?" GL: "I could smell the onions and mustard." Def: "That sandwich hasn't exploded at all, has it?" GL: "It looks like a little bit is coming out towards the bottom."
Batman slaps Robin across the face as Robin tries to explain the difference between Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster.
An article in The Times - "Meet the young Tories dreaming of a bright blue future" - features pictures of 3 proper ham puppets. The first looks like Ned Flanders and Inspector Gadget abandoned their lovechild on a country estate. The second has a neckbeard and a combover, his standard suit accessorised with a quirky knitted tank-top covered in question marks, like he's the Doctor Who of po-faced establishment repression. The third, perhaps the saddest of all, wears a "Make Britain Great Again" baseball cap, eloquently explaining that there's not an original thought in his head and he'll suck up to any old despot who's bigger than him.
Current standing of a Daily Express poll asking whether Reform's racist plans are racist or not. 77% say no, which sounds bad, but then yesterday that figure was 91%
A bent auger, ordinarily used to drill holes in the ground.
A bunch of bullets featuring unlikely and badly drawn slogans - 'Ban guns', 'I'm a lefty', 'Trump smells' and 'Nazi Bumbreath'.
A brief calculation, using ONS data, suggests the treasury would only pay out 1.6 billion to families. That's not to say there may not be costs involved, but if every pound you give away costs you 2 pound in total, you might want to streamline your admin.
A screen cap of a video, taken from Twitter, in which Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade says of the homeless: "or involuntary lethal injection or something. Just kill them."
An article by the Local Government Association, from October 2023, states that the biggest independent childcare providers made £310 million in profit in the previous year. Meanwhile, recent reporting says that the cost of residential childcare has almost doubled in the past 5 years.
A tweet from Laura Loomer says: "Charlie Kirk’s death will not be in vain. I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death. I’m going to make you wish you never opened your mouth. These people need to be condemned in society and there must NEVER be a place for these people to gather without facing the shame of their behavior." I find that to be at odds with the position that right wingers were taking a couple of days ago, complaining that there's a lack of freedom of speech.
A headline on Al Jazeera states that 5 people have been killed in Jerusalem this morning, while Israeli forces have killed 21 in Gaza.
Villagers in the Cotswolds held a protest against JD Vance holidaying there. One of the centrepieces was a Colin The Caterpillar cake, as will be known to many, but with Colin's face replaced with the JD Vance Babyface meme.
ChatGPT gave the incorrect answer to a sum that could be easily checked on any calculator. The sum was: 1.201 to the power of 0.42857 The correct answer is 1.0817, but ChatGPT gave 1.0785
A picture to illustrate that my new printer comes with the setup software on a CD-ROM
An HP Envy 6032e, with a photoshopped sad mouth and googly eyes. Nobody is envious of this printer, which insists on being switched on 24/7, comes with an ink subscription which never sends you ink, and breaks irredeemably after barely any use.
After a lifetime of enjoying the Tour de France for free, that option is to be taken away. This screen capture of an article, on cycling website road.cc, shares people's frustration that access to both this great sport and this great spectacle will be diminished in favour of company profits.
A picture of Charlie Mullins looking like the tw@t he is. Shirt, tie and a checked blazer that would have been fitting on an 1980's estate agent, matched with burgundy shorts and chequerboard 'sliders'. Comically fake teeth, plastic skin and a shit attempt at a Rod Stewart hair cut.
Two headlines from the UK, as reported by The Guardian. The first story states that the high court has ruled that it is legal to keep selling fighter plane parts to Israel. The second tells how two Glastonbury acts, Bob Vylan and Kneecap, are being investigated by police for leading chants against the IDF and Keir Starmer.
Persephone, an ordinarily lazy, even cowardly cat, guards the entrance to our back garden to stop the fox getting in. The fox is welcome, but the cat has failed to read the policy.
Two pics, the first shows a fox sitting in our community garden and listening, the second shows the glasses she chewed. The bits that go over your ears are covered in bite marks, and the lens has been smashed.
A vixen stands 6 feet away on a woodchip path, watching as I pull weeds out of a community garden plot. A dead seed head rises from the artichoke plant that separates us, and the background is dotted with wild yellow buttercups and a planter containing pink flowers.
A pink cowboy hat bearing the legend "I [heart] 2 swim!"
Finely detailed, peachy purple clouds stretch over a London street, underlit by the rising sun still hidden behind the houses to the east.
A re-imagining of the 1986 KitKat advert "You'll go a long way", in which, instead of the record company executive pointing out that the band in his office can't sing, cant play, and look awful, he opines that Kemi Badenoch has "no policies, no ideas, no strategy and no charisma." The punchline to the advert - "You'll go a long way" - implies that these qualities are not actually necessary for the position at hand.
A re-imagining of the 1986 KitKat advert "You'll go a long way", in which, instead of the record company executive pointing out that the band in his office can't sing, cant play, and look awful, he opines that Kemi Badenoch has "no policies, no ideas, no strategy and no charisma." The punchline to the advert - "You'll go a long way" - implies that these qualities are not actually necessary for the position at hand.
Egg Wall. A BBC article, viewed on a mobile device, was cropped by chance such that it showed a picture of Gregg Wallace's bald head next to a wall, alongside the title "egg Wall".
A speckled wood butterfly on a patch of bare ground in a speckled wood, near Golden Cap in Dorset
A ruby tiger moth rests on a wooden fence panel after I intervened to distract my cat from her bumbling and inefficient pursuit.
A dense, baked clod of flour, water, salt and olive oil. Simultaneously hard and gluey, it has nothing to recommend it.
A beef pasty held in a single hand in a railway station, late at night.
A vividly lilac blanket of cloud shrouds the sky to the south-east.
The chemical equation for the thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide: CaCO3 becomes CaO plus CO2
A Newsweek article summarises the situation with the 3 other pardoned rioters who the police have issues with: Matthew Huttle, who assaulted law enforcement on Jan 6, was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop. According to the police, he had a firearm in his car. Andrew Taake, who attacked police with bear spray and a whip on January 6, is on the run from police and is wanted for a child sex charge, which was filed against him in Texas in 2016. Daniel Ball, who allegedly threw an explosive at the police during the riot, was re-arrested on federal gun charges from 2023.
A reply from the BBC to a complaint about a misleading headline stating "Winter fuel payments: I'll be £500/month poorer". The reply fails to address the point about the spurious headline, and says instead: "Thank you for getting in touch regarding our BBC News website article featuring a retired office worker who was worried he would miss out on a winter fuel payment because he was marginally over the Pension Credit threshold. Some readers wrote in querying his calculations and taking issue with the headline which originally quoted Mr Bowling as saying: 'Pension credit cap means I'm £500 a month worse off'. This was amended to suggest he was £2.60 over the limit and then amended again to read “Pension Credit: 'Being £2 over threshold left me £500 short'” Mr Bowling had told us he was really struggling financially, and we reported on his story as a way of illustrating the worries of many pensioners on low incomes but not low enough to qualify for means-tested benefits. Age Concern contacted us to point out that someone with savings of less than £16,000 would qualify for housing benefit and we added that into the article. We consider our reporting to be fair and accurate and in line with our editorial guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. We would like to thank you again for contacting us to make your views known. All feedback from readers is appreciated and shared with senior editors so that they are aware of audience concerns. Kind regards, BBC Complaints Team"
A screenshot from a Wikipedia article on the siphonophore Apolemia uvaria, claims it is commonly known as "long stringy stingy thingy"
The headline of a story linked from the Guardian website says: "Years of curiosity caught up with me – and I called that mysterious motorway helpline".
A collection of 60 or more music CDs lie scattered across the pavement.
A screen grab of the nectar web page declaring me the number 4 buyer of Fudco poppadoms/pappadums for 2024
A large loaf of tomato focaccia, slightly burnt on top if I'm honest, but with a pinky orange glow to the crumb which more than makes up for it. Unlike most of my attempts at baking, it was absolutely excellent, despite the recipe being almost entirely made up on the spot.