am hardly surprised to see the above in today’s news. Out of three dozen choices one has except Farage the media chooses to obsess over a faceless joke of a candidate.

This has gone on for weeks already.

Wetherspoon’s (Spoons) fun while it – the ‘choc offer – lasted

N the summers of 2024 and 2025 we spent every week going out to take advantage of food and unlimited drink offers at one of 5 (or 6 if one counts Trafford Centre) “Spoons” in central Manchester. We enjoyed those every time, except maybe in Piccadilly because there’s almost always some drunkard there who ruins the atmosphere for everyone around him (yes, it’s always a him). The place has extra security staff because the Piccadilly “Spoons” attract some unpleasant people. It’s about the location.

As part of the inevitable changes we decided to spend more time chatting in other settings. All the “Spoons” were phasing out mocha and chocolate anyway (new government regulations came into effect) and we were approaching winter.

Looking back at 2.5 years of weekly “Spoons”, I have fond memories. The sunny days meant sitting outside with lots of coffee and hours of constructive chats. The weather is good this August, but we no longer go out for drinks. We make better use of our time.

Ruben Schade regularly writes about coffee shops he fancy, so why can’t I?

Yesterday: Swatting People Who Write About Corruption, Misogyny, Criminal Misuse of Funds

Days ago:

llison Pearson had the same lawyer as us at around the same time. It was also around the same time a bunch of misogynists were trying to attack my wife and I by ‘swatting’.

Pearson found justice at the end. As the news puts it, “Police and crime commissioner to pay Allison Pearson ‘substantial damages’“ (they can afford it) and to quote the summary:

Telegraph columnist receives five-figure sum in complaint against Essex police boss.

This matter was previously covered by the BBC [1, 2, 3, 4].

In the news today

‘ve unfortunately had to deal a lot with bad, rogue, mentally-defective (by their own admission) people in recent years. Misogynists were among them. They think women are nothing. They believe they can strangle, drug, sexually abuse them and so on.

Misogynists are the sorts of things that stand in the way of societal progression (upwards, higher standards). Misogynists are an enemy of civil society.

N 2023 I rebooted my HP laptop, which was acquired a year earlier. Since then it has not been shut down or rebooted even once, so its uptime will soon eclipse 1,000 days:

Today: 08:23:41 up 963 days, 23:35, 2 users, load average: 7.52, 7.19, 7.07

New epic record on the way. Should a reboot be done after then?

consider Richard Stallman to be a sort of friend. It’s not like some person who lives next door and I play Chess with (or against). It’s someone with whom I share understanding and despite meeting him several times (in person, for chats and recording videos) I mostly converse with him over E-mail.

Richard Stallman has a behaviour many rightly regard as “different”. This is something that he openly acknowledges and deems to be involuntary.

History shows that some of the most brilliant people were “eccentric”, but their peers didn’t mind that and in some ways their eccentricity worked to their benefit.

People who blast Stallman over minor cues and micro’aggression’ are themselves a-holes. They say a lot about themselves, not about Stallman.

Crossposted from Tux Machines

This photo has a sort of nostalgic feel to it. On that chair, in that ‘office’, half a decade ago I made almost all my videos (maybe 80% of them) and published a lot of high-impact articles. It’s also where I kept myself safe or sheltered from COVID-19 for nearly 4 years (eventually my wife and I both got infected) after leaving the gym/spa. Many things we thought might last forever came to an end. Coronavirus was the “trigger”.

Months after I left that ‘office’ I also quit my job (I had planned to for years already) and in August of the same year we moved Tux Machines to an SSG that we had developed.

Remember: nothing lasts forever. Explore change.