Paul Stevenson

Aug. 19, 1953: U.S. and Britain Topple Democratically Elected Government of Iran Democratically elected Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadegh was removed from power in a coup.

1953 - US and UK toppled democratically elected Iranian government - for oil.

"The Shah quickly returned to take power and signed over forty percent of Iran’s oil fields to U.S. companies."

Helsinki just went a full year without a single traffic death The capital city is Finnish’ed with car-related fatalities.

“Helsinki hasn’t registered a single traffic-related fatality in the past year…Citing data that shows the risk of pedestrian fatality is cut in half by reducing a car’s speed from 40 to 30km/hr, city officials imposed the lower limit in most of Helsinki’s residential areas and city center in 2021.”

Pat Summitt fans might have something to say about the statement!

I had no idea Kenwood was founded by Ken Wood.

Blue plaque for Kenneth Wood

But I did discover a real blue plaque a few doors away from Pizza Express. On what is now a Kwik Fit stood the original site of the Kenwood company, maker of kitchen equipment.

Greenery with a couple of skyscrapers visible in the near distance

… and a view of Woking’s tall buildings through the foliage.

House nameplate saying “Little Gumnuts”

… and a house with a weakly abusive name …

White blossom

Joking aside, I enjoyed my visit. I was taking my daughter’s clarinet for a service and got to enjoy some out of the way places. A road with some nice blossom …

Woking pizza express

A couple of hours to kill in Woking so figured I’d look for the blue plaques

bar chart with reflection symmetry

My Wordle win distribution is now completely symmetrical (modulo the cutoff at 6 guesses)

“Old Apple Store”

Saw this in the property section of a magazine in a waiting room. Took me a long time to realise the building used to store fruit and not sell phones

Lucy Powell MP - “only labour can beat reform”

Siri search for phrase “only labour can beat reform” and show results from last two days

Have I missed all the Good Win jokes?

The screenshot of the release notes reads: A new version of TeX Live Utility is available! TeX Live Utility 1.55 is now available-you have 1.54. Would you like to download it now? Release Notes: Changes Since 1.54 • Fix bug 137, homepage link in Help Book. • First release in a long time, since I don't use TeX anymore and resent the very idea of paying Apple annually for the privilege of giving away free and open-source software. Also, I'm really lazy. Please accept my apologies for all the annoying issues you've encountered in this mission-critical software. • Updated mirror list, which was three years out of date. • Added missing legacy mirrors, which was even more out of date. • Added an alert on startup when user tries Homebrew's lobotomized MacTex, because those lunatics left timgr but removed its database. Thanks for nothing, guys. Bug 142 and 144. • Use a custom user-agent to work around the Anubis bot trap on texlive.info. Can't wait to see what else breaks because of this, thanks to the profusion of degenerate Artificial Insemination fetishists scraping websites to feed their models. • Lists of countries in Repository/Continent are now sorted. No idea how you people let me get away with that one for the last fifteen years.

There's a "is anyone even reading this" sort of honesty you get in the software update release notes from a project that's been around for a long time.

I was going to post about what happened to me when cycling in Guildford yesterday … but of course almost any cyclist can come up with an example from almost any timeout on the road 😭

Official Team GB Paralympic photo, with the the crests and everything, and a professional headshot, but it's for "Pickle, A Very Good Girl", who is a black labrador, with a hi-viz harness and a red collar.

Some of you like dogs, in which case you may appreciate that guide dogs of Team GB for the Paralympics get official photos

Anyway I couldn’t care less about reach or influence or whatever. If I did, I’d be on TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and Substack. I currently enjoy this place because I like seeing witty, insightful people post text-based stuff & joining in sometimes. Also pictures of pets. I don’t want to talk to Nazis

All paper about Dark Matter now have to end with the line “Thank you for you attention to this dark matter”

YouTube video by GomezVEVO Gomez - Get Myself Arrested

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dra...

Siri, show me an example of collective hysteria

MOD confirms Palantir contract was direct award The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that its agreement with Palantir for defence data analytics was awarded through a direct award process, citing a lack of viable alternatives.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that its agreement with Palantir for defence data analytics was awarded through a direct award process, citing a lack of viable alternatives.
ukdefencejournal.org.uk/mod-confirms...

I like what you did there *taps nose*

But who is Whizzer, and who is Chips?

A paper from our group at Surrey - led by STFC postdoc Chandan Sarma

Days since I’ve started singing Baltimora’s Tarzan Boy as I walk along -> reset to zero

I remember telling a friend that I liked to drink undiluted squash and then feeling obliged to follow through

Waffles with berries and sugar

Half term breakfast 😍

I used to enjoy the Harlow library while my parents were in the Harvey Centre. Not that i wasnt also a fan of some of the shops there. Parrot Records in particular.

Aha my local cinema growing up!