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    RIP Anthony Head: Our 10 favorite moments of Buffy‘s Giles

    Amidst all the love for his Buffy work, I’d like to record my bottomless appreciation for Head’s personification of Mr Gently Benevolent - ironically a complete bastard. A treat of a performance in the BBC radio series Bleak Expectations.
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    Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78

    As a massive fan of New Yorker and Omni covers, I'm saddened that I missed out on seeing these covers at the time. By timely coincidence I have a youngling expressing interest in getting started with airbrushing. I'll be pointing her in this direction..
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    Penisgate erupts at Olympics; scandal exposes risks of bulking your budge

    A side quest, you say?
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    Having that high-deductible health plan might kill you, literally

    The NHS is clearly not a disaster when seen from any viewpoint other than a very particular and blinkered one. Speaking from a native end user point of view: I’m rather enjoying my free prescriptions for asthma medication, regular checkups, eye tests, and invitations to send my poo in the post...
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    Did Edison accidentally make graphene in 1879?

    TIL: You can find "a small art store in New York City selling artisan Edison-style light bulbs" made with bamboo filaments. Artisanal bulbs..
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    Scott Adams, Dilbert creator, dead at 68

    The first couple of collections, particularly Build A Better Life By Stealing Office Supples, are golden. Universal stuff, but diminishing returns thereafter. I hope the delight of early Dilbert survives his creator's later fall from grace.
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    Discworld, Daleks, and Deep 13: A geeky holiday TV and movie watchlist

    Having read its Wikipedia page, Female Trouble has now entered my Pantheon Of Things That Live In Perfection Only In The Mind. That is to say, actually experiencing the thing would almost certainly ruin the imagined perfection of it. I shall slot it alongside things that definitely exist, like...
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    AOL will finally end 1991 dial-up Internet service that’s older than smartphones

    Baud - forever 1985. Has the world gone to pot since? Coincidence?..
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    Coding error blamed after parts of Constitution disappear from US website

    There seems to be no actual evidence for claims that James interfered in the use of the word in the KJB, so all this is a tad moot. Perhaps he objected to its use elsewhere, however I am unaware of it. Certainly his successor was the cause of much angry writing that employed the word in its...
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    Amazon Fire Sticks enable “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy

    This Enders report looks to be a routine industry-funded propaganda piece. I’ve not needed to sail the seas much since the kids grew up, but I try to keep up with events on TorrentFreak, and the recent influx of specifically American-led equity into sports rights in Europe seems to be driving...
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    14 reasons why Trump’s tariffs won’t bring manufacturing back

    Setting aside what I, as a Brit, might term the ‘somewhat questionable’ views of the author, there is one topic I rarely see raised in discussions like these: The bizarre federal nature of American government and politics. China presents as a single, coherent, entity, and one that is looking to...
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    Popular program to promote women becoming aerospace engineers is at risk

    @johnsonwax : An education. Thank you.
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    Bring the noise: F1 considering the return of the V10s

    Hobby horse time: This highlights how divorced the nature of F1 has become from the sport that I first watched in the early 1980s. I’ve experienced an F1 field of mixed turbos and Cosworth V8s screaming in anger. It was absolutely brilliant, but the point of the formula was to go faster. To...
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    Apple pulls data protection tool instead of caving to UK demand for a backdoor

    As a disappointed UK user it is somewhat baffling - the agencies involved must have known and advised their political masters that Apple could not acquiesce. I don't think anyone -except politicians and special interest campaigners - disputes that a backdoor is an extremely bad idea. And there...
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    UK demands Apple break encryption to allow gov’t spying worldwide, reports say

    And comments like this is where democracy dies. It takes a very - particular - kind of reading of the BBC reporting on this story to come to this conclusion. Not unsurprising though, given the unrelenting assault on the BBC, from all sides, over the past few decades.
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    The UK got rid of coal—where’s it going next?

    The UK grid would have to bulk up to cope with a slew of new renewable projects - but to add to the fun, there's the global shortage of transformers, with five year lead times, just as world power demand surges. I hear the canny Dutch have cornered a ten year supply as they build out their...
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    Top 10 moments of RFK Jr.’s reality-bending confirmation hearings

    His cousin called him a predator..
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    Trump’s new head of DOT rips up US fuel efficiency regulations

    Not allowed to buy zero emission, eh? As a go-go '80s businessman, I say to myself: How about .05%? Or 1%. Or 3.33%? A small add-on accessory - a mini brazier burning a single lump of coal, perhaps, with a tiny smokestack standing proud on the frunk. Awesome to the max.
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    NASA moves swiftly to end DEI programs, ask employees to “report” violations

  20. I

    There was a straight shot from Earth to the Moon and Mars last night

    It is one of the great - unalloyed - wonders of my lifetime that, if I look up at the night sky and notice something unusual (as I did last night), I can take out my phone, point it up, and instantly find out what it is. Mars hanging out by the Moon. Huh.