Dr Mike Ward

4) I suppose I should have written "re-paired"

😂

I don't think you can eat those though? 🙂

3) To cut an an already long-enough story short, the problem turned out to be my hearing aids [sic]. Now I've "forgotten" them on my phone-bluetooth and phonak-app and repaired them with my phone-bluetooth and phonak-app, Spotify is working fine again even with Bluetooth on.

🤪

2) ... while faffing around with the reinstall and checking my 3 devices I turned off Bluetooth on everything. If you swap devices on Spotify it starts trying to connect to different stuff in ways you don't necessarily want it to. That fixed the play problem!

1) Well that was a weird one! Spotify stopped working. Play button wouldn't play. Same behaviour on phone and both PCs regardless of whether I used apps or web-clients.

Spotify were v helpful but had me uninstall, reinstall and empty caches for Spotify on phone. I knew that wouldn't help ... but ..

Why is it "better that meds are temporary" (as a general rule)? Surely this depends on the conditions in question and the meds?

Carl Sagan explains the 4th dimension

My experience is that AI can string together perfectly plausible English sentences; whereas most human CS agents can't. But human agents use scripts much of the time. One (from Amazon) just (I presume inadvertently) emailed me hers. It reads like pseudocode for a chatbot program :-).

I once accused a CS agent of being a chat-bot (back when these were a bit more novel). Whatever it was insisted that he/she/it was a real person. A case of a person failing the Turing test I suppose? Such experiences are going to become a lot more common I suspect.

I was too. But K has decided that "Lynx are boring" ☹️

4) Even back then, I didn't quite buy the argument that the MSM were pro-fascist. And, of course, this was a one-off experiment on my part. But I've wondered ever since why, if I could do a rough count, the MSM couldn't get the figure even roughly right, and erred very much on the side of small #s.

3) I counted the entire thing in (estimated) 100 blocks and, as a check, timed an (estimated) 1000 ppl and the whole procession. I got 10,000 (IIRC) +/- 1000. The "dastardly main stream media" (again from vague memory) reported about a 1/4 of that figure.

2) Even back then, I wasn't fully convinced and I once conducted my own experiment - must have been late 70s/ early 80s. I can't even remember what the demo was about. Prob anti-fascist. The demo began from a park in LDN and emerged from a wide gate which permitted people to walk about 10 abreast.

1) It's long puzzled me why there is so much disagreement over numbers on demonstrations. With modern tech and aerial photos it ought to be a simple matter to establish. Back in the day the word on the street was that the "capitalist press" and the BBC simply lied about numbers.

‘Things keep evolving into anteaters.’ Odd animals arose at least 12 separate times Findings speak to the dramatic impact ants and termites can have on mammalian evolution

Crab-like creatures are famed for having evolved five times in evolutionary history. But anteaters have evolved at least 12 times--in half the evolutionary span. Cool story by @jakebuehler.bsky.social for @science.org

The Top 10: Twitter jokes A collection of silliness for the holiday seasonal period, given that it is about to be August

From the archive, 5 years ago: more jokes www.independent.co.uk/voices/twitt...

Scientists mourn Tom Lehrer — nerdiest of singer-songwriters The mathematician’s memorable satires are beloved by generations of researchers.

Scientists mourn Tom Lehrer — nerdiest of singer-songwriters - - a great tribute, by @philipcball.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Also, the lines seem to be converging from the first year onwards.

3) You (it seems) are not in favour of this principle. You prefer rather that the 1st preferences of the biggest minority are imposed on everyone else.

That is, as they say, "a point of view".

But, either way, FPTP in single member constituencies doesn't even guarantee the result you prefer.

2) Now it gets more complicated when you have many people with many different preferences who (obviously) can't all have their 1st preference, but there are ways to calculate what might give the most people their highest possible preferences. (see e.g. Bentham on this principle)

1) I'm mystified by your latest remarks.

Let me try once more:

Surely you agree that, if you can't have your 1st preference, it's better to have your 2nd preference to your 3rd (or lower) preference? And better to have your 3rd rather than your 4th. And so on?

Oh yeah. Absolutely fine thanks. My experience just struck me as indicative of a more general problem.

AIUI, misfuelling used to be a far worse problem in the days when every filling station had its own colour coding for diesel, unleaded petrol, and super-unleaded, and has got better since they all adopted a std colour scheme. The tablets thing seems like an accident waiting to happen.

@bengoldacre.bsky.social Have you any thoughts/experience in this area? Is this potentially a serious and more general problem?

5) But it seems to me that we're not erring on the side of caution here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of "generic" prescription and thereby saving huge amounts for the NHS. But perhaps we should impose some broad rules on pharma suppliers so that there is less scope for confusion?

4) A workaround (which I normally follow) is to prepare a week's supply of tabs in broad daylight and put them in those plastic lidded trays with days of the week on them. (I gather a service along these lines is available for people like me once we start losing it a bit.)

3) When I made the mistake, I chose a statin tablet that was similar in size shape and colour and came form a blister pack that was almost identical in style and form to my PPI tabs and pack from my previous prescription.

2) Being an old git, I take several tablets each day. Because my GP and pharmacy source the cheapest versions of each drug they can get hold of at any one time rather than buying expensive branded drugs, my tablets arrive in different sizes, shapes, colours, and blister-pack styles each month.

1) T'other week I accidently took 2 statin tabs instead of one. No great harm done, but it could've been different if I'd accidently doubled up a strong pain-killer - or even paracetamol (v safe at right dose; quite dangerous if you OD).

What's interesting is why I made this mistake: