random thoughts to oil the mind

Category: General Page 1 of 25

[:en]For news and blog related stuff, and everything else that doesn’t fit.[:de]Ein Sammelordner für alles, was irgendwo anders nicht untergebracht werden konnte.

Lightroom Crashing on Import

Argh! One of those maddening adventures down the digital rabbit hole later, and the solution turned out to be quite simple. Every time I clicked to import files into Lightroom 5.7 (because yes I’m that old) the program crashed without so much as a smell you later. After checking plug-ins, corrupted preferences files and databases, and avoiding various people suggesting I needed to re-install Windows, the solution turned out to be rather straightforward:

Do you have an Android device attached to your computer? If so, unmount it and try again.

Jeffreytranberry

That was all there was to it. Сharging an old tablet was enough to cause Lightroom to fall over itself when presumably being refused access to read the attached storage device.

A linguistics professor was addressing his class one day, and made the following remark: “In some languages, like in English, a double negative will make a positive. In some other languages, such as Russian, the double negative will remain a negative. Yet there is no language on the planet in which a double positive becomes a negative.”

A voice from the back of the room popped up, “Yeah, right.”

Hubris

One of the key ways we know how genes work is to look at what happens when they go wrong. We do this deliberately in experimental animals, precisely or randomly disrupting genes to see what happens. For obvious reasons, we don’t do that in people, but the equivalent is to study the genetics of disease and disorders.

A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes by Adam Rutherford

I wonder how small a minority I belong to when I react allergically to such naval-gazing conceitedness as this (emphasis my own).

Daily Links

Who Wants to Live Forever? – Married happy-go-lucky outdoors-loving sex-mad hippy party-girls in senior management with cats. Apparently.

What If the EU Had 28 Member States With Equal Populations? – Rearrange the borders and build a new Europe!

Paul Ryan’s Long Con – An interesting article from Vox on this failed poster boy for an almost sane GOP.

See How Your Take Home Pay Compares to Workers Around the World – An unwieldy title for an interesting infographic.

[Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash]

6 Ways of Breaking the Brexit Deadlock

If at first you don’t succeed, you fail.

GLaDOS, Portal

Ardent Remexiteer Theresa May managed to spend the latter half of her illustrious spell as prime minister trying to ram her deal through the Commons like a skipping needle on a strong and stable turntable. Now she’s abandoning ship, the sycophants and navel-gazers are lining up around the block to be the next hero to try to pull the sword from the stone. Unfortunately, with yon parliament rejecting the deal, and selfsame parliament rejecting no deal, the likelihood of the next helmsman managing to successfully navigate this particular brown waterway looks slim. And with the public still split down the middle, even a new referendum would probably only turn back the clock as far as 23rd June 2016.

Meanwhile the EU looks on in amazement as the revolution eats its children. They can wait; it’s Britain that so desperately wants to leave… ish. If only the Conservative Party were thinking with Portals… instead they’re all obsessed with having/eating the cake. (Spoiler alert!)

Since Article 50 is turning into a euphemism for perpetuity, here are seven bloody ways to break the bloody deadlock.

1. Bosworth Field

It’s been far too long since the Glorious Revolution saw that conclusive and permanent defeat of the traitorous papist Tory party [wait, what?]. No doubt some of the current crop remember it well. In the spirit of fair play, it would only seem appropriate to give them another crack at the whip. Rather than assaulting one another with American cowjuice, maybe the hardest of Brexitards and Remoaniacs can meet on the field of battle for a glorious victor-takes-it-all decider. I’ve no doubt traditionalists like Jacobus Moose-Rogg have only been chomping at the bit to saddle up and fly the standard.

2. Partition Party

Cyprus, Israel, Ireland, India – Britain has its fair share of examples around the world for peaceable coexistence between loving neighbours. In fact, British meddling consultancy work was often instrumental in setting up those amicable arrangements in the first place. The next government could have the whole thing unravelled in two shakes of an ear of wheat, and Britain can both have its cake and allow someone else to eat it. We’ve already got a map. Maybe that nice fellow Trump can do us a deal on a wall pretty garden fence in part-exchange for some bits of the NHS in his free trade agreement.

3. Nigel Mandela

Gandhi marched to the sea, Mao slogged it around China, and the Crusaders of Jarrow trudged down to London. If only Farage had listened to The Proclaimers, he might not have flaked on his own little galumph to the capital.

But while marching is one way of showing your staying power, some long walks don’t need you to move anywhere. Instead of drowning the airwaves with their gobshitery flawless political debate, maybe our most impassioned politicians could give their mouths a rest and let their arses do the talking. All we need to do is lock up the loudest Remoaners and Brexiteers for as long as necessary; they can leave at any time, and whoever gives up last, gets to decide the outcome. Maybe while they’re in there the rest of parliament might be able to get some actual work done, and the rest of us can enjoy some semblance of normalcy. Well, at least for one morning… given his track record, Farage would be out by noon!

4. Toss a Coin

When things get too close to call, sometimes there’s no better way to prevent a logjam than call on the wisdom of chance. The London Eye would only need a quick lick of paint to make a wonderful symbol, dismounted and rolled into Trafalgar Square to decide the nation’s fate. The mother of parliaments can vomit its members onto the square to form the biggest assembly of tossers the planet has ever seen, while the nation watches the televisualised event as their alderpeople reinvent the time-honoured tradition of casting lots.

After all, more important things have been decided on the flip of a coin before now.

5. Neverendum

It’s been over four hundred years since Britain added something worthwhile to the national calendar, and what better way to commemorate buffoonery and intolerance than through an annual celebration. Every 23rd June should henceforth be rejoiced as Referendum Day, when the polity goes down to the ballot box to check if the political barometer has discernibly changed, before sitting around a burning effigy of David Cameron and celebrating the almighty fuck-up their greatest democratic achievement as a nation.

6. National Lottery Brexit Special

Lottery tickets have been changing people’s lives for a quarter of a century, ever since King Arthur granted his house a royal commission [is this right?]. Why not furnish one winning ticket the right to change everyone else’s lives? The Brexit EuroPhilians Lottery would give the lucky crackpot winner the right to decide exactly how the Brexit debate should be settled.((This would also make a great way of choosing the UK’s Eurovision participant. Surely they couldn’t do much worse than average.)) (Guaranteed no winning tickets to ensure the decision just keeps rolling over and over and over.)

[Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash]

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