toucana

Dear Mr President - you know that Ohio Republican Senate candidate whose ass you were lusting over in public ? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jon-husted-body-comments-b3072952.html Well he lost … and talking of losers

I was down there this afternoon. Looks even worse from the other side :-/

Part of the damaged Pero’s bridge buckled and collapsed even futher into Bristol harbour last night. https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/peros-bridge-bristol-collapses-further-11223004 It happened on a Saturday evening in front of Halloween revellers heading off to busy harbourside bars and restaurants. Many of the revellers gathered to watch from a safe distance to see the sad spectacle from the Waterfront (I was down there myself for a day-long Riichi Mahjong meet-up on the Millenium Square side). Photos and video shared on social media this morning now show a central section of the structure crumpled in the water, including one of the horns that made the bridge so distinctive.

From IRC the other night:

The ‘Railway Hack’ mentioned in that video is described further here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmbz3BinijU Railway is a cloud-based platform used by software developers to deploy and update applications. Yesterday morning Railway announced that unauthorised third parties had gained access to user environment variables which in turn allowed them to compromise API keys. Railway advised users to rotate their credentials immediately, but many found themselves unable to do so because Railway had locked down significant parts of their system as they attempted to mitigate the effects of the intrusion. When news of the PHP2Shell compromise also broke yesterday, many developers who wanted to push critical PHP security updates to apps hosted on the Railway deployment platform found themselves unable to do so.

One problem is that code patches issued by PHP can themselves be reverse engineered by hackers using AI vibecoding tools to reconstruct the exact vulnerabilities the patches were supposed to be addressing, and the hackers can then retarget swarms of hostile AI agents onto those vulnerabilities with even greater force. This in part is what ‘doomers’ like this PHP programmer are talking about 24 hours after the “AI-pocalypse” began: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iMdoDZap7c

A YouTube video by a researcher called Dr Josh C. Simmons offers a reasonably accessible account of two newly discovered PHP vulnerabilities that have been shutting down government websites around the world in the last 24 hours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k-RksX8SR0 The two vulnerabilities CVE-2026-109-618 and CVE-2026-109-619 are both assigned a CVSS v4.0 score of 9.2(Critical) and are collectively known as “PHP2Shell”. They allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary code and potentially take complete control of a web server without needing any login credentials. They were first discovered back in August. Patches had been prepared in September and were scheduled for release on Thursday 22 October, but news of the vulnerabilities leaked early on Tuesday 20th, forcing PHP to issue an emergency bulletin yesterday before the patches were available. With up to 70% of the websites in the world relying on PHP code, the problem became so urgent that NSA among others was warning owners to to take their websites offline until they could be patched. Hence the worldwide scramble. The AI assisted research which spotted these PHP vulnerabilities has also flagged up a jaw-dropping problem with an Indian CA (Certification Authority) called eMudrha https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehcBwqyUGjo They were apparently using ‘4’ as one of their intermediate private keys.

Today I learned that Ciabatta bread is named after the Italian word Ciabatta meaning ‘slipper’. My surprise was compounded when I learned that it was invented as recently as 1982. I had always imagined that Ciabatta was one of those time-honoured Italian food names whose origins go far back into antiquity - like Prosciutto a dry-cured ham that dates from the early Roman empire, or Gorgonzola - a blue cheese named after a town in Lombardy where it was first created in the 9th century AD (allegedly by a love-sick cheesemaker who forget to cover a vat in the rush to meet his mistress). The backstory of Ciabatta is rather more prosaic. It was first produced by a baker called Arnaldo Cavallari who lived in Polesine in NE Italy. He was one of a number of Italian bakers concerned by the local popularity of sandwiches made with baguettes imported from France. He spent several weeks experimenting before coming up with a brand new bread recipe consisting of a soft wet dough made with high gluten flour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciabatta Ciabatta bread quickly became very popular in Italy, and was introduced to the UK in 1985 by Marks & Spencer, and to the USA by the Orlando Bakery of Cleveland.

A YT content provider who specialises in collecting odd warning signs was intrigued by a large one spotted outside a titanium factory which read “NO BALL POINT PENS ALLOWED ON PLANT SITE” https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R8lB6A-riIY Somewhat intrigued, he did some research to find out why, and discovered that ball point pens have tungsten carbide tips. If a production engineer has some of these in a breast pocket and leans over the railing of an overhead gantry, the pens could fall down and contaminate the feed-stock of a titanium furnace. The plastic components of the pen would be instantly destroyed, but the tungsten carbide ball in the tip which has a higher melting point could survive and introduce a microscopic inclusion flaw into a titanium casting. As these melts tend to be used for mission critical high precision components in the aerospace industry, possible points of failure have to be kept to an absolute minimum.

The Pero's Bridge on Narrow Quay Bristol was built in 1999 as a Millenium project - the Nazis stopped bombing Bristol over 55 years earlier..

A FOI request has led to the belated release of an engineering report from last year which included an inspection of Pero's Bridge by Arup in December - according to this article in the local press https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/inspection-report-reveals-lack-maintenance-11196758 The report discloses quite a litany of construction and maintenance failures that led to water penetration, severe corrosion, and regular flooding of the hydraulic pit and power pack. The bascule section of the bridge is shortly due to be removed for repairs, and will hopefully be put back into commission in March 2027 .

I’m not aware of any record of such an execution in the UK. Albert Pierrepoint’s own memoirs refer to only one unusual hanging early in his career where the convicted felon was a dwarf. Pierrepoint was the no. 1 UK executioner until his retirement in 1956. Capital punishment only continued for eight more years until 1964 in the UK.

The ladies who know me say it suits me, while my wife remarked it perfectly complements the Mad Scientist look I seem to be rocking atm. So I’ll probably keep the beard - (not least because I don’t ever want to go through the experience of regrowing it).

This was a handicap game of Go I played as Black the other night against an opponent who was 17 ranks stronger than me (16K v 2D). As often happens, this turned into a life or death fight over the fate of a ‘Dragon’. White resigned shortly after this move - Can you see what happened next ? Solution

According to CNN, President Trump and his advisers are now debating whether to call off plans to livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan . https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/13/politics/trump-fort-hood-shooter-livestream-execution President Trump who was not consulted before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the livestream plans last week has said privately that did not know that Hasan was paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the back by law enforcement during the Fort Hood incident in 2009, and now uses a wheelchair.

Thank you for all your various suggestions. Plenty of food for thought and further experimentation there. Beards have an interesting social history (in Britain at least). They became fashionable in Victorian England in the wake of the Crimean War which was fought between 1853-56 - mainly because the appalling conditions and extreme cold which gave us such novel woollen garments as the ‘Cardigan’ and the ‘Balaclava’ also led to an official relaxation of military field regulations that normally forbade soldiers from growing beards. In the wake of the Crimean War, so many military veterans returned home sporting long beards, that beards now became a symbol of military valour, and many patriotic civilians and public figures such as Charles Darwin took to wearing the longest beards they could possibly grow. It took another generation, and the passing of the Victorian era, for such long beards to be seen as an old-fashioned affectation.

According to BBC News hundreds of French supermarkets have been hit by a cyber attack that caused their fridges and freezers to heat up, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros. Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according to one supermarket chain affected. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crq5nzxv9q4yo The cyberattack targeted software provided by a Danish engineering firm called Danfoss that allows retailers to manage their cold units remotely. The company say the affected cold units were older models whose security software could not be updated to ward off a risk that was already known to them. Now who would do such a thing I wonder ?

Not long ago I found myself growing a beard for the first time in my life - and doing so on the advice of my doctor who asked me to stop shaving while an eczema like inflammation was being treated. This was a novelty. Not only have I never grown a beard before, but neither did my father or any of my male relatives, so I had no fund of beard-growing lore to fall back on. I have spent the last couple of weeks finding out the hard way by trial and error what is involved, and would appreciate any other tips people could pass on. Growing a beard seems to be quite a painful process at first. You suffer from intense itching which can apparently last from 10 days up until a full month or so. This happens because shaving stubble has quite sharp chisel-like ends which will abrade the the skin as it begins to grow out. It is also very stiff, and as it begins to grow, those sharp ends can curl around and puncture the outer skin and lead to the problem of ingrowing hair. This itching tends to be even more painful if you already have inflamed or sensitive skin. I have read about something called a ’90 Day Rule’ which advises people not to trim and shape a new beard for at least the first three months. This is so you can establish the natural line and density of the hair. Quite a few sources recommend using Beard Oil to soften the growing beard and ease the initial itching, but the problem I found is that most of the commercially available ones which are based on jojoba nut oil contain fragrances and other additives which can cause strong allergic reactions in sensitive skin. Pure olive oil is a little too viscous and tends to clog the skin pores - unadulterated sunflower oil is said to be a lighter and better alternative but should be used in very small amounts (3 drops or so) and warmed in the hands first. It seems that I need to avoid all forms of skin washes or creams that contain artificial fragrances or ethyl-alcohol to avoid irritating the skin, and rely instead on neutral wet-wipe cleansing tissues of the type women use for cleaning off makeup, and to use only pure vegetable soap when washing the face - (Some sources recommend pure Aloe Vera liquid soap).

And US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has now announced on ‘Real America’s Voice TV’ that the execution of Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan by a military firing squad will be live streamed on TV for anyone to watch on December 3rd. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmy0r96xygx6o This will be the first public execution held anywhere in the USA since the 1936 public hanging of Rainey Beatha in Kentucky for rape and murder by a volunteer hangman who arrived at the site intoxicated, wearing a white suit and a Panama hat, and was then unable to push the lever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainey_Bethea Critics such as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy have criticised the decision as “disgusting” and reminiscent of executions carried out by the Islamic State group. Other have likened it to public executions carried out in sports stadiums in Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea in recent years.

A gold statue depicting Donald Trump fully naked and perched on the shoulders of a much smaller man has been unveiled in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/naked-trump-statue-european-parliament-strasbourg-b3062651.html The eight-foot installation, titled The Orange Plague, is designed by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt and covered entirely in 23-karat gold leaf. The exhibit has beeeen sponsored by Danish politician Per Clausen. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are entitled to host displays on parliament grounds, though all exhibitions must be approved by officials.

Well California in general, and Los Angeles and San Diego in particular seem to feature as the Sodom and Gomorrah of left-wing liberal wokeness and communism in the collective imagination of the MAGA movement (and don’t even mention San Francisco) - hence the rousing cheers Trump got at his rally in Nebraska last night. But as anyone who has visited California could testify, the political reality is a lot more complex and nuanced than these Trumpian caricatures would suggest. San Diego with its year-long Riviera climate is a major US Navy base and the home of the Marine Corps. Coronado island in San Diego Bay is said to have the largest population of retired Admirals per sq/ft to be found anywhere in the world. There is an enormous infrastructure of military industrial and aerospace related contractors all around the bay area. Not to mention some of the largest naval munitions stores in the USA, and berthing spaces for the enormous Nimitz class aircraft carriers based in San Diego. If you drive north to Los Angeles (a three hour drive from San Diego) you find yourself in a vast dystopian urban sprawl of endless freeway intersections and off-ramps - so confusing that even experienced drivers can get lost navigating it. But drive just a little way north beyond the city and you will find yourself in the San Joaquin valley, one of the principal citrus growing and vineyard areas of California, and I can tell you it is one of the most conservative Trump worshipping rural areas you could ever find yourself in. (I attended two large family weddings there a few years ago).

At a political rally in Nebraska last night, president Trump made the astonishing suggestion that he would “Let Iran take out Los Angeles or San Diego… It would be a small price to pay” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eltBhn7WV4 The context was that Trump was trying to defuse concerns that many Republican voters currently have about the impact of the Iran war in raising the price of their fuel and groceries. The president was trying to assure his audience that the economic hurt was a small price to pay for ensuring that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon”. Trump then went off on a tangent about another “small price” he would apparently be prepared to pay - that of allowing Iran to destroy two of California’s largest cities - a suggestion that this Republican audience cheered to the rafters. The most charitable assumption is that Trump was thinking of the plot of a Sidney Lumet film called “Fail Safe (1964). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail_Safe_(1964_film) In this Cold War thriller, Henry Fonda plays a US President who has to make a terrible decision to sanction the destruction of New York in order to prevent an all-out thermonuclear war, after US bombers have mistakenly destroyed Moscow. Los Angeles and San Diego have a population of some 10 million people. I have family and friends in both cities and have visited both of them on a number of occasions - so I’m not inclined to countenance or excuse Trump’s remarks under any circumstances. But I’m curious to know what others make of them ?

According to some online searches: There are are said to be inconsistencies across various older models, notably Hyundai, Kia and Genesis vehicles some of which required a near-complete release of the accelerator or high levels of deceleration before the brake lights illuminated. EU regulations and international standards mandate that brake lights must activate when deceleration exceeds 1.3 m/s² (approx. 0.13g) during regenerative braking. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:42023X0401

1885 was a particularly memorable year for the executioner James Berry because he inadvertently decapitated two other prisoners on the gallows that year by miscalculating the drop lengths at Worcester (25 May) and Norwich Castle (30 November). The latter was a particularly gruesome event that became known as the “Goodale Mess”. Berry who resigned his job seven years later subsquently became an evangelical christian and outspoken opponent of the death penalty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Berry_(executioner) Babbacombe Lee incidentally was said to have had a prophetic dream the night before his execution that he would not hang.

There was a famous case which happened in the UK back in 1885 involving a convicted felon known as John Babbacombe Lee (1864 -1945) who survived three attempts to hang him in Exeter prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Babbacombe_Lee Babbacombe Lee was a servant convicted largely on circumstantial evidence of the murder of his employer Emma Keyse at her home near Torquay. But when the hangman James Berry attempted to execute him, the trapdoors failed to open. The prisoner was removed and the gallows were tested and functioned perfectly. But when they tried again, the trapdoors once again failed to open. According to James Berry’s memoirs, prison staff used a saw and an axe to adjust the trapdoors between attempts, but after a third attempt failed, the medical officer refused to take any further part in the proceedings, and the prisoner was dismissed from the gallows and returned to his cell. Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and Babbacombe Lee was eventually released from prison in 1907. An enquiry found that the gallows at Exeter prison had been dismantled and reassembled incorrectly not long before the failed execution, but many people who had questioned the safety of the conviction took it as an example of divine providence at work. A folk/rock band called Fairport Convention released an album in 1971 called “Babbacombe” Lee, or The Man They Could Not Hang about him.