Broithe

Few people are 100% innocent. I lived about an hour from the SVR for 40+ years and I've never been there... (Yet?) If it was further away, I might have made the effort, but I could "always go next week". I could see the Wrekin from my house - "I must go up that one day!" - I only finally did it at the end of last year, because, otherwise I might never do it. It is fairly standard in all aspects of life that 10% of the people create 90% of the output. And vice versa. During the lockdown, on my cycling trips within the expanding radius, I started noticing there were far more roadside pumps around than I had previously realised. I started recording the locations and photographing them. One of them was this cosmetically restored deep pump. That picture is from 2021 and the mechanism down the well had collapsed long before, but it was a nice pictorial relic. However, the wooden structure was destroyed in the Big Storm 18 months ago. The metal parts were saved and a few locals have decided that it should be rebuilt into a fully functional form. Parts from another similar pump, where the top parts were stolen, are available for the subterranean mechanism, apparently. The recording of the pumps around the area, plus having a (distant) engineering background, has elevated me the the position of Senior Roadside Pump Expert for the local area. I was summoned to inspect the project the other day and we looked into the well, finding the remains of the the old mechanism. Personally, I think another cosmetic rebuild would be best, but I'll go along with the prevailing view towards a fully functional recreation. But this will involve some serious work and a bit of expenditure, if it ever actually happens. If we do get it working, we'll end up with 'Don't drink the water' signs plastered around it, etc. The concrete cap is not in the best condition - replacing it with a new one will make it look a bit less 'heritage' for many years.

A lot of it as about what people are really interested in and prepared to make some genuine effort about. Not about what they talk about. I'm back to living in Rathdowney, mostly. Amongst the people I know, who have lived their whole lives here, well over 50% have never been to the Rock of Dunamase. The Slieve Bloom mountains, clearly visible on the northern horizon, might as well be on the Moon. Someone decided to start a walking group and, with no idea where anywhere was, quickly decided that I was the local expert. We did a good few and usually, nobody else in the group had ever been to the places we went to - often not even having heard of them. When I was away for a few weeks, the onus fell on the next most knowledgeable person. She's a German who had not been living here for even a full year at that point. We have a decent museum in the old workhouse in Donaghmore. Most people have never been there, but would be up in arms if "they" decided to close it. Etc...

To some extent, AI is just automating a style that has been going on for decades - selecting things that are 'near enough' to be used in a presentation. One of my favourites was in a TV programme around 25 years ago, about a bombing raid on Romanian oil refineries. The bombers flew from Libya and there was an issue with one which had to divert and "landed safely in Malta". A clip of film was used to illustrate this. The clip did at least have the correct type of aircraft in, a Liberator, but it was completely unrelated to the subject of the documentary. What gave it away initially was the large range of mountains in the background as the plane descended onto the runway. These mountains must have taken a lot of work to remove before I lived on Malta in the late 50s/early 60s, as they certainly weren't there then. The film clip was only a few seconds long, showing the main gear engaging the runway, enough to illustrate what "landing safely" meant, I suppose, but it was ended before the rest of the landing was shown. This was presumably because the clip was long enough, or, as the plane had no nosewheel deployed, it would have ceased to illustrate "landing safely" quite abruptly. There's a huge amount of this kind of stuff around and it gets cited as evidence over and over again, as it is endlessly regurgitated - to the point where it eventually becomes the truth.... A lot of things are intended as 'infotainment', rather than real education, and it might not matter in small doses, but there's a lot of small doses around. If you watch, listen to or read anything 'popular' about a subject that you actually know about, it's usually full of simplistic misinterpretations, often for presentational effect. It's a large part of the whole conspiracy theory culture.

Technology usually gets better, and the early stages can be a bit poor. Like automatic chokes forty years ago, but the systems generally work OK after a while and we forget how it used to be without it. I know an 'edgy journalist' who uses AI to write his articles. Having discussed some of the subjects with him over time, it's fairly clear that he knows so little that he wouldn't be able to tell if his articles were nonsense or not. But, I suspect a lot of his audience are much the same - they just want to hear the opinion they want reinforced. Facebook pops up a lot of stuff on aircraft for me and I noticed a nice picture of a Phantom the other day. I was about to click away, having seen enough Phantoms to last me into the grave, when I spotted something odd - the presumed occupant of the rear seat, from the way the two crew were standing, was a woman. Reading the caption, the picture was alleged to be from 1974, so this seemed a little unlikely. Looking at the picture more closely, it was full of errors, although they 'looked right', but were either very incorrect or even physically impossible. There are likely to be problems with people falling for incorrect AI output - a lot of people seem to not fully understand what is and is not possible - I have had somebody tell me that an obviously faked 'Victorian photograph' had to be real, because it was taken before Photoshop was invented...

Having had to nurse a good few dodgy draughtsmen in my time, I'm not sure I would get on a train that had been drawn by a horse.

The third battle of the Fa(u)lklands actually occurred around 2008. I agreed to pick up an old dear in Wolverhampton - "at the bus station", as she returned from a coach tour holiday. I knew where the bus station was, so no further preparation was necessary - I foolishly thought... I arrived and parked nearby - at the bus station, nobody knew what I was talking about when I enquired about the arrival of her coach. Eventually, someone suggested that she was probably at the coach station, not the bus station - "OK, where's that?" - "Falkland Street", I thought he said. I went all the way back to the car to look at the A to Z that I knew was in there - no Falkland Street, and nothing else with Falkland in the name. Back to the bus station to find out where this secret coach park was and I finally got enough info to set off in search of it. When I eventually found the well-hidden carpark with a few coach spaces, it was completely empty, except for one car, with a chap sat in it, so I asked him. He said there had been a coach a good while ago and a few people had got off. We both searched the area and eventually found her, sitting on a bench, almost completely obscured by vegetation - like a highly trained sniper. I considered just leaving her there. Anyway, the point of all this, as small as the point is - is that the 'coach park' was actually in Faulklands Street Carpark - with a bloody U and I just hadn't looked far enough down the gazetteer to find it.... And, there is actually no Faulklands Street - the carpark is on Faulklands Crescent, not that that would have caused the problem..

Even if the 'French', or Normans, were really Norsemen, or Scandinavian migrants, who had arrived in fairly small boats...

People living on the big island in the Orkneys might be confused by all this. I can't find the Community Map, to see if there is a member there.

It is also my personal experience, on the Big Island, that organisations using the word 'Trust' in their titles are often less than averagely trustworthy.

Not slang for a few sacks full of shillings..?

In Rathdowney, there is the Dawn Meats factory, in the old Perry's brewery, and a large proportion of the workforce there are Brazilian - Portuguese would be the second language in the town now. I spotted a chap with 'that sort of name' and the same 'sort of look', making local videos on YouTube - the videos had information and comments in English and Portuguese - fair enough - but, occasionally there was another language. Further investigations revealed that he was not Brazilian, as I had assumed, but from East Timor. Of course, that was also a Portuguese colony in the past, so he could travel halfway across the world and still end up working with people in the same language...

Whoops! There's two then...

I think you might be safe. Only France and Mexico have won every game so far - and only Mexico have done it without conceding a single goal. How long will people keep going on about 1966 for? I can remember when the Boer War was that far in the past. Trivia - eight countries have won the World Cup, but only one of those has not won it on home turf...

Lettuce pray that doesn't happen. Cos it would be a Titanic disaster, if it did...

At the risk of mentioning the World Cup, which appears to be going on at the moment, apparently, it seems to me to be fortuitous that Northern Ireland didn't get to the finals in the USA. It would be very confusing for the viewers and listeners, as Haaland and Wolfe seem to be playing for Norway, for some reason.