Charles Flitcraft

@offmessage.com

97 Followers 146 Following

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks. he/him. York, UK. https://offmessage.com/

A post by me from 10 months ago saying "I am here for the new Arts and Crafts" in response to Emily Pawley saying: "In food history, we notice how super-refined foods--gelatin, vienna sausage, white bread--lose class and become horrifying once they become industrialized. Suddenly, fingermarks in bread dough demonstrate skill, not clumsiness. Post-chatGPT, I'm feeling this about writing. Smoothness feels gross."
Starquake on the ZX Spectrum
A post from me, months ago, saying "A VPN ban is the next logical step in this mess. How you distinguish 'VPN vital to the cyber security of your firm' and 'dirty shameful VPN' is whole other matter, of course. Only endpoints in the UK allowed? Need a VAT number to buy one? Good luck with all of that, none of it will work."
A cat. Pretending she wants her tummy rubbed, when in reality it's just a cunning ploy so she can climb up your arm.
Three days have the word fish spelled out in them.
Royale with cheese: cornerstone of a nutritious breakfast
Google Gemini not only mistranslating, but proudly incorrectly explaining the joke. The screenshot says: "My crêpe maker was telling me this morning that AI depresses him and that he doesn't see why there’s this obsession with replacing humans at all costs. Well, he shouldn't worry too much; Tesla Optimus robots don't know how to flip crêpes or play the bombarde yet." A Little Context "Se faire de bile": This is a French idiom meaning "to fret" or "to worry oneself sick." Bombarde: This is a traditional Breton double-reed instrument (similar to an oboe). Since crêpes are a staple of Brittany, the mention of the bombarde adds a very specific, charming touch of regional pride to the joke!" The actual joke is that "jouer de la bombarde" (play the Bombarde in Gemini's translation) is idiomatic slang for fart, loudly.
Father fuckin' Brown (played by that guy out of The Fast Show. You know the one)
A hardback edition of Noel Woodall's Car Numbers. Completely revised, with over 57,000 entries.
Two very opposing views on gen AI, next to each other in my blue sky feed.
A photograph of a deck of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies with the top card showing "Emphasize differences"
A photo of a deck of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards, with one card showing. It reads "Breathe more deeply"
A very ornate and fantastical clock
Cheltenham Town Hall
Taps that could be confused for anisocoria
A pair of Fox's Glacier Mints on a wicket tray
The end game screen of the Commodore Vic-20 classic, Omega Race (an asteroids knock off, let's be honest)
A bouldering guidebook, a brush taped to a stick, and a bag of chalk
Yet another newspaper article discussing yet another company struggling under the debt created by a leveraged buyout
The first issue of Unch magazine
Juggling balls. Why did it have to be juggling balls?!
Dear Parent/Carer We want to make you aware of a recent issue affecting some popular children’s books by Andrew Cope, including the Spy Dogs, Spy Cats, and Spy Pups series. Some editions of these books include a printed web address at the back. This link used to go to the author’s website, but the domain is no longer under his control. It has since been taken over by another party and now leads to inappropriate adult content. The publisher, Puffin, has paused sales and distribution of the books and is working with schools, libraries, and retailers to remove copies from circulation. They have stressed that the website has no connection to the author or publisher.
Jay and Silent Bob, from the 1994 movie Clerks
A screenshot of a Guardian headline that reads: "Larry Ellison overtakes Elon Musk as world's richest person "Oracle co-founder's shares rise by 40% in early reading, valuing his fortune at $393bn, just ahead of Musk's $384bn"
A LinkedIn search results page where every person has some version of "vibe coding cleanup" in their job title. There are 22 pages of them (at least).
A screenshot of two posts; realtors using ai generated images of houses rather than the real thing, followed by someone saying 95% of people's problems with ai should be directed at capitalism
Nathan Fillion. As Castle.
Shoes, not sandals
A picture of a cocktail glass, filled with delicious Hugo
The album cover of Sonic Temple by The Cult
A screenshot of some text, reading: As X user @tilehopper wrote, “The SCP Foundation unintentionally creating cognitohazard for LLMs and it causes a tech bro to have cyberpsychosis is the most SCP thing that ever happened.”
A Guardian headline reading: "UK economy shrinks unexpectedly by 0.1% in blow to Rachel Reeves"
An image from Duolingo, wishing me a happy 9th anniversary of me joining the platform
A headline from The Guardian saying "'I feel like a drug dealer': the parents using black-market melatonin to help their children sleep". Below which is an advert for melatonin, priced in pounds.
"It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that investor buying is at record lows, with just one in ten properties bought by landlords between January and April this year. That is the lowest level since 2007, when Hamptons started collecting data "Nearly a decade after tax reliefs for landlords started being phased out, many are asking a pressing question: is it still possible to make money from property?"
A map of the UK showing counties I've lived, visited, stopped within, or passed through. I scored 163, and - barring Cornwall - have failed to visit any of Britain and Ireland's extremities.
A ZX Spectrum. First released on April 23 1982
Wendy Craig as Ria, in the BBC sitcom Butterflies
An archive box, labelled "Madam Eliza Cholmondeley's book of receipts (1677)"
A Guardian headline that reads "UK economy shrinks unexpectedly in blow to Rachel Reeves"
Me. Outside The Oxford Bar, Edinburgh. If you know you know.
I would never suggest that current Tesla owners who regret their purchase should simply park their car on a public street and set it on fire, blaming “woke anarchists” and collecting the insurance payout, but it would undeniably be a tidy solution to several different problems at once.
A screenshot of a Guardian headline that states: "UK economy grows by 0.1% in unexpected body for Rachel Reeves. ONS data showing British national output rose in final quarter of 2024 confounds forecasts of 0.1% decline"
Do not machine wash or dry. Clean outside with mild detergent. Remove insert and air dry. Do not expose to hot vehicles.
A screenshot from the Strava app that shows the text "216m elevation gain indicates a rolling terrain with some moderate climbing challenges in the North York Moors"
Do you agree with Sadig Khan's knighthood? 52% yes, 48% no. But of course
A screenshot of highlighted text from a Guardian article that reads: "QR (quick response) codes will allow customers to instantly access more information about the product, including how to recycle batteries, clothes and building materials when tougher environmental regulations bite. But they will also put a greater demand on the world’s cloud computing resources, where the extra data they contain will be stored – meaning a potentially greater carbon footprint." The second paragraph has been highlighted by me
The delightful beige of a commodore Vic20. Objectively the best home computer of the early eighties
A selection of Japanese KitKats; flavours yet to be identified.
The original film poster for The Black Hole, a science fiction movie released in 1979
A van full of a twenty year old's collected possessions, piled all higgledy piggledy
In which we come to the incontrovertible conclusion that he just doesn't want the job any more
In which I ponder the relative importance of The Garrick story, and imagine that I'm not the only one who is genuinely confused by it's constant prominence. "Cultural dinosaur in it's death throes, news at 11," surely? I attended the club a few times, a decade or so ago. My host and his other guests were great company and fascinating people (to a man, natch), but they would have been so at any venue, and the sense of entitlement that permeated every corner of the place was deeply uncomfortable.
In which we stick two fingers up to the French
In which we stand by our choices
In which the surgeon asked me "do you want a copy for your socials?"