toucana

Still experiencing very slow response times here in UK for both logging in and navigating around the site - Is this a DNS resolver problem ?

Out in the rural wildneress of central Texas USA lies an astronomical telescope ranch where stargazers from around the world can pay to mount their instruments in a pancake flat landscape far from urban light pollution. Computer controlled equatorial mounts allow the owners to control, monitor, and process their astro-photography over the internet in real time. Star Front Observatories have been in business since 2024 and have almost 600 subscribers paying from $99 pcm upwards to have their scopes installed at the ranch. Some great examples of images taken there can be seen at the end of the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN48vEqaQs8

One of the more unusual consequences of the Strait of Hormuz crisis is an alarming shortage of naphtha which is currently causing much concern in Japan. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/19/japan-naphtha-shortage-explainer-iran-crisis Naphtha, an oil derivative, is used in the production of a wide range of materials including plastics, insulation foam, adhesives, medical supplies such as syringes, and also printing ink solvents. It was a sudden shortage of the latter that recently brought home the acute nature of an unexpected supply chain crisis when Japan’s biggest snack maker Calbee abruptly switched to printing their brightly coloured bags of potato chips in plain monochrome a week ago. ナフサ or nafusa as it is known in Japan has soared in price since April by around 79.4%. Japan which imports 90% of its oil from the Middle East was forced to respond to public disquiet and media questions by issuing government statements that adeqate supplies of naphtha for printing ink had now been secured, and that steps were being taken to find alternative sources of oil - plus a plea to the public to stop panic-buying plastic garbage sacks : another oil-based product now suddenly in short supply in Japan.

I found my original source for this : "Humour of Bulls And Blunders" - Marshall Brown (1906) - The University Press Cambridge Mass. USA

Stranger, pause and shed a tear, For Emily Church lies buried here, Mixed in some perplexing manner, With Mary, Matilda, and probably Hannah. Some centuries ago, it was said, a pious New England man outlived and buried four wives. When a cemetery was moved he undertook the exhumation and reburial himself, but accidentally mixed up the remains in the process. His conscience would not allow him to re-use the old headstones, so new ones were inscribed to reflect the confusion. The inscription first appeared in late-19th-century newspaper anecdotes, and was later catalogued in historical anthologies like Churchyard Literature. Other sources suggest it was an urban legend based on an epitaph found on the grave of one John Penny at the Minster Churchyard in Wimborne Dorset UK which read: "Reader, pause and shed a tear, For John Penny lies buried here; He is not alone, for it is the case, That Mary and Betty are in the same place."

Quite a bit as it turns out, in the wake of President Trump’s arrival on his current chaotic visit to China - (China’s President Xi Jinping didn’t even bother to come out to the airport to greet him). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfRYrXzMpHU President Trump has already garnered quite a number of unflattering nicknames on Chinese social media which include: 懂 王 dǒng wáng - “King Know-it-all” 万 税 爷 wàn shuì yé - “Lord of Ten Thousand Taxes” (a pun on 万 岁 wàn Suì - “Ten Thousand Years!”) 川 宝 chuan bao - “Baby Trump” But the latest nickname for Trump to go viral on Chinese social media is a back-handed compliment: 川 建 国 chuan jiàn guó - “Trump The Nation Builder” As Helen Ann-Smith the Asia correspondent for Sky News explains, the joke lies in the suggestion that it is China not America which has been made much stronger by Trump’s ill-advised tariff policies in particular. President Trump is now the supplicant at the gates of the Forbidden City in Beijing. America urgently needs access to China’s supply of REM (rare earth minerals) to maintain its own advanced technologies, and to restore the Pentagon’s much depleted stock of smart weapons that have been drained by the ill advised war on Iran. Xi Jinping by contrast will settle for any (or all ) of the “3 Big T’s —> “Tariffs/Technology/Taiwan.

Uno !

https://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm

No - "The Princess Bride" (1987) d. by Rob Reiner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Bride_(film)

Nah - He’d be more interested in feeling up Princess Buttercup :-P

Speaking at a rally in Florida on Friday, President Trump told his audience: The remarks came as the Strait of Hormuz remained a central pressure point in the current tit-for-tat maritime standoff. Multiple outlets described how the U.S. seized Iranian vessels after they left Iranian ports, including “sanctioned cargo ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters,” while Iran blocked nearly all ships passing through the strait apart from its own since the start of the war. The Indian NDTV news service reported that Iran reacted strongly on Tuesday, branding the move “armed robbery on the high seas” and accusing Washington of breaching international law, quoting Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei as saying the operation effectively endorsed piracy, calling it “the outright legalisation of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas,” “Welcome to the return of the pirates — only now, they operate with government-issued warrants, sail under official flags, and call their plunder “law enforcement.”” footnote - think we used to call them ‘privateers’ a couple of centuries ago.

According to a leaked recording published by the Financial Times on Tuesday, the UK ambassador to the US said : “I think there is probably one country that has a special relationship with the United States, and that is probably Israel” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1l25qd43nro The remark was made by the current UK ambassador Sir Christian Turner in a meeting with UK sixth-form students visiting the US, shortly before King Charles III arrived at the White House during his state visit to the US. The UK Foreign Office (FCDO) said the "private, informal comments" were "not any reflection" of the government's position. Another former British ambassador Lord Darroch said it was "hard to see anyone disagreeing with any of it" as it has been "the conversation in corridors across Westminster".

For anyone who wants to know what those Russian cartoon captions actually say, and quite why it was downvoted, an AI translation is attached below (obscenities redacted).

Should have gone to Specsavers ?

My paternal grandfather was the eighth son of a crofting family on Lewis - all mother-tongue Gaelic speakers and all ‘Wee Frees’. I heard quite a few stories about these hyper-devout Calvinists, but didn’t experience the culture first hand until I visited the Hebridean islands for the first time in the late 90s. I was at the Hebridean Folk Festival in Stornoway in 1999, and it was absolutely true, you couldn’t get off the island until the ferries started running again on the Monday. They also used to chain up the childrens' swings in the playground on a Sabbath, to make sure that absolutely no one had any fun on the Lords day.