The Other David Harper

This is what happens when you don't read the label, and wash your Tube trains at 60 degrees instead of 30.

I recently watched the BBC's "Day of the Triffids" on DVD. I'm happy to report that it's just as terrifying as it was in 1981. And even now, hollyhocks give me the creeps.

Handsome
Ginger
Hungry

Oh, we did. And it still makes us want to barf.

Not yet, but I'm still a little congested. My wife suggested sinus rinses with sterile saline solution, so I'm trying that.

A stupid idea. What about people who want to buy a ticket ahead of time? What if the train is running late? So much fail in this idea.

There's really no excuse for this at the IT level. Databases, web servers, operating systems, programming languages all have Unicode support built in. Well, maybe not FORTRAN 77, but who writes people-data-handling systems in F77 any more.

I blame the Claudian invasion of 43 CE. What did the Romans ever do for us, eh?

If a tree falls on a comedian in a forest ...

If you've never seen "Dancing at Lughnasa", I can recommend it. I was lucky enough to be in Dublin in 1990 to see the original stage play at the Abbey Theatre. Whilst the film version doesn't have the immediacy of the theatre, it's a pretty good adaptation.

"I never thought the leopards would underpay me!"

Supersized stick insect discovered in high-altitude trees in Australia The 40cm-long insect, named Acrophylla alta, weighs slightly less than a golf ball and may be the heaviest insect in Australia

I guess we should be thankful that it isn't venomous!

It's funny because it's true.

Turns out that the one up-side to COVID zorching my sense of smell is that (unlike my poor wife) I cannot smell the appalling stench of untreated sewage that one local farmer has spread on nearby fields.

These MPs are pretty clueless when it comes to IT. I guess we should be thankful for that, though. They could do real damage if they actually understood this stuff.

You might want to read "Proto" by Laura Spinney. It describes the origin and evolution of Europe's many languages in the context of the many waves of human migration since the last ice age. In addition to the linguistic evidence, it looks at archaeological data and ancient DNA evidence.

I'm imagining a David Attenborough voiceover: As dawn breaks, the Northern Line train emerges from its burrow to gather food for its young. Predators are everywhere, and its bright colours could easily give it away!

It's the lampreys I feel sorry for.

I had to look up 'panmictic'. In my defence, I'm an astronomer who just wandered into genomics 26 years ago and never found the way out.

As a friend of mine is fond of saying, opinions are like a**holes. Everyone has one, and they all stink.

An infographic titled "How BIG are the BLACK HOLES we find with GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?" by @astronerdika. The graphic displays a range of black hole masses detected via gravitational waves, categorized by their size in solar masses (mass of the Sun) and represented with playful cat-like black hole illustrations. The categories from left to right are: 1. "<5 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "smol" - Very small black hole illustration represented by a curled up black cat - Arrow pointing left: "THIS WAY TO NEUTRON STARS" - Example: "Big component of GW230529 (~3.6 times the mass of the Sun)" 2. "~10 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "basic" - Slightly larger black hole cat illustration - Caption: "LOTS OF BLACK HOLES" 3. "~35–45 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "hefty" - Bigger black hole cat illustration - Continues the idea of a populated range 4. ">60 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "chonky" - Large black hole cat illustration - Caption: "FORBIDDEN TERRITORY? (can these even be made from the collapse of star cores?!)" - Example: "Components of GW190521 (~85 + ~66 times the mass of the Sun)" 5. ">100 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "oh lawd" - Very large, curled-up black hole cat illustration - Arrow pointing right: "THIS WAY TO INTERMEDIATE MASS BLACK HOLES" - Example: "Components of GW231123 (~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun)" Below the categories is a stylized black curve representing the inferred population of black holes detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. It rises sharply in the "basic" range and falls off toward the "hefty" and "chonky" ranges, with a note reading: "this curve is an artistic representation of the black hole population inferred by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA." This infographic draws from the “Chonky Cat” meme.

Heard the latest news from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration? We detected the collision of the most massive pair of black holes so far: #GW231123 weighing in at ~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun!

So to celebrate, here’s a handy chart ✨

Just how chonky are these black holes? 🤔

FACT OF THE DAY. 27 July 2012. The spectacular Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics took place in the Olympic Stadium in London. It was directed by Academy Award-winning British film director, Danny Boyle. Newspaper reviews praised it as a “masterpiece” and “a love letter to Britain”.

Looks like you both won the Cat Lottery!

How many potential participants from *outside* the US are also declining invitations because of the worsening political climate and concerns about detention of foreign visitors critical of Tr*mp by ICE?

Brutal, but fair.

Latest, and possibly funniest ever, spam sent to our web site: "We are a manufacturer and exporter of juggling balls. For pricing, kindly let us know the number of sets you require, and we will provide our best possible offer." Well played, Hasan from Sialkot in Pakistan, well played.

Pity the poor cleaner who would have had to go up a very tall ladder with a duster to clean all that fiddly glass!

I use Surfshark myself, and find it easy to use and reliable.

Oh, there's no doubt that Modi and Netanyahu are as bad as one another, and the thought of Modi copying Netanyahu's playbook is sickening. But knowing that Pakistan would take a terrible revenge might - just might - stay Modi's hand.

I don't think Narendra Modi needs any lessons in anti-Muslim violence from Bibi Netanyahu. Just look at Modi's track record when he was chief minister of Gujarat.