The Blogger Himself

When Mark Zuckerberg announced an overhaul of fact-checking on Facebook this week, he was damning in his assessment of independent verifiers.

“Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created,” the billionaire said.

One of those little things. I’m known – well, as far as I am known – as a fairly online sort of guy with more than a touch of pendantry. In a couple of areas I’m an actual experts as well.

I’m also regarded as pretty right wing (which I’m in fact not but there we are).

So, in this factchecking boom of this past few years, as they scoured the world for people able to do the work. How often did I get approached to see if I might be able to help, or would be interested in doing so?

You’re right, not once.

Now, it could be I’m just not famous enough. Or, perhaps, that my views on whaty are facts doesn;t accord with those running fact checking organisations. I’d suggest, lightly, that one doesn’t have to be a total conspirazoid loon to think it might be that second reasons. A bit, maybe.

533,000 visitors
33,000 Potential Hacks
1.03M Pages Delivered over all

Whether that’s good or bad I don’t know. But that appears to be what this blog has done this year. Not bad for what I regard as the regulars’ corner of a decent pub – where fat gets chewed and grumbles made among sensible people.

Was just on GB News and has to be said, hanging around for 30 minutes in order to be one for 30 seconds might not be a future way of spending a morning….

Not sure what the specific problem was but apparently someone, somewhere, somehow, changed the DNS entry.

And, erm, well……..

” the DNS was changed overnight from numbers to
numbers”

Tim Worstall is a British economist

As it goes wrong by word 6 of the description perhaps we shouldn’t pay all that much attention.

So I ordered a selection of stuff online for the house. Bits and bobs, through Leroy’s (sorta, Homebase type place). Some coming direct and some from folk who use the platform to sell.

The first to arrive is the bit coming from Bergamo, in Italy. The furthest source arrives first, of course.

Ordering something off Amazon. And the bank insists that they can only authorise the payment via app on my phone.

I don’t want a bank app on my phone. Phones get lost. They’re not secure either.

UK bank demanded one for a debit card payment. Portuguese bank for a credit card one. Even though they’ve got my phone number on record and send me confirmation numbers for online payments for that. Still must have the app. Which doesn’t, by the way, work anyway.

Wise, now Wise still works with the SMS confirmation. So, I could put money into Wise, pay Amazon, confirm on SMS.

But this is insane, right?

These columns still feed the kiddies at the street kitchen.

Effectively, we have to remove politics from detailed control of the economy. Then those who would seek power or privilege through politics won’t even attempt to seek it because they’ll not be able to get it.

That is, a simple set of rules for the economy. Simple taxes, simple rules; taxes and rules that don’t vary. The other way of describing this is the rule of law. It’s the same for everyone no matter how many politicians you know.

To put it very cynically — why would anyone buy, bribe, or even befriend politicians if there was nothing that could be bought from politicians? So, the method to clean politics and a clean economy is not to allow politicians to have anything to sell.

True, it’s only about £80 a month but that’s something, right? Current costs seem to be about 20p for a gutbuster of boiled eggs, veggies and rice. Almost certainly the best paid job I’ve got in fact – when measured by meals that is.

Variously reported at 5.4, maybe 5.9. About 5.11 am this morning. Some way from us, 50 km out at sea from Sines – so, hmm, 130 to 150 km away from us.

Could deffo be felt but not hard – and heard. A proper grumble to it.

From what I understand it’s the same fault that set off the Great Lisbon quake (the real damage from which was the tsunami) which is nice and reassuring, eh?

And those tossers not allowing fracking because of 1.0 quakes can suck my…..well, you know.

So, this new house has a well. Which isn’t containing much water at present. It’s deep – we’re also in a drought. So, could just be that.

I’ve had a bloke around who is adjacent – irrigation systems – and he says that he doesn’t know this well but usually they go to bedrock. Which may well be so. So making it deeper might not make much difference.

It’s also true that there’s a layer of mud at the bottom of it. Which, he says, if we clear that out then we might get more water.

The sides – not that I know about such things but I’ve read it somewhere – look right. Brickwork, but with gaps. The water supposedly seeps through the gaps into the well from the surrounding earth. The thing is the walls of the well continue to look dry. So, I’m assuming that the water table is a long way down. Maybe we do need a deeper well?

So, that’s then the set of questions. If we’ve a well. But not a lot of water. What’s the next step? Get the mud cleaned out then see? Get it dug deeper? What?

As you all know I have fun doin’ this stuff here. But thanks mightily to those who decided to send some beer money as well.

There’s enough to repair one bicycle (chain flew apart on the crest of a hill, possibly me cresting the hill just that bit too much) and get another properly overhauled into usage again plus beer and vino money. Even a steak dinner as well. I will enjoy all of those things almost as much as I enjoy here. So, thank you.

(Two bikes might seem excessive but am now out in the country and those country roads are fun. Two bikes is one for proper trips and mornings off doin’ biking. The other is a much simpler beast to go off for fresh bread etc. We’re so rural that the bread shop – as is the fruit, the fish and the meat, each separate – is a van comes around once a day. And we don’t actually like his bread. But the shop 10 clicks away, now, that’s good stuff. Which is an excuse for a little trip on the shopping bike, obvs).

Many thanks, I shall enjoy having spent this almost as much as I enjoy your company here.

Home Journal of Cultural Economics Article
The moral foundations of public funding for the arts. Michael Rushton. Palgrave MacMillan
Book Review
Published: 20 August 2024

Well, that’s science as it is described these days. Inna Journal, see?

One of the references is to this:

All of which leads to an interesting conclusion. There might, just, be an arguable justification for subsidy to education in the arts: youth orchestras perhaps, drama lessons. But it would appear that there really is no justification for taxing the dustman so that the Duke can have his opera or the demagogue his drama.

The conclusion being that we now have a policy prescription. The teaching of the arts, certainly, life enriching and part of any decent education. So put that in the education system and then we can close down the entirety of the Arts Council and all the luvvies that hang from it. A good half a billion in savings and as the man said, 500 million here and 500 million there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

I don’t know whether the reference is to approve of that sentiment or argue with it but still – nice to be a building block of science, right?

Bit of work I’ve got to do.

American withdrawal from Afghanistan. My mempory is that it wsa horribly rushed because Biden Admin cocked it up. Not sure of the details – I think accleration without telling everyone?

Anyway, what I need to find is progressive, woke, lefty, hell, usual media, sayin’ it’s just fine, really great!

Basically, those covering asses for political bias reasons.

So, any ideas on who this was? How to find those pieces?

Just to let you know (swank, swank, preen) my substack is being compared with those from David Friedman, Bryan Caplan and Arnold Kling. I am honoured, thank you, thank you and this is a lovely little statue.

One correction, Somerset (although born in Devon).

A Tweet – look, yes, I know you’re all terribly excited by this – went, as the kids say, “viral”. Currently some 1.1 million have read it, I’d guess that it’ll get to 2 million and more. Whoop, whoop, eh?

It’s not wholly exciting, just something that seems to have caught a wave. OK.

So, a little research. It’s possible to make money on Twitter – they’ll give you a share of their advertising revenue. A bit of investigation shows that I’d need to be getting something like that sort of volume of readership each and every day in order to make perhaps $1,000 a month.

This isn’t one of those career paths that is going to work, is it?

It’s very, very, like a gang. There’s the capo who has his little league of gentlemen. How the gentlemen do depends upon where the capo’s placed.

Lewis at The Register used to like my stuff so he employed me. Lewis got fired and so did I – no complaints, that’s just how the gangs work. Lewis got hired at the Telegraph, I start getting work from the T. Until a capo de capi decided he didn’t like my stuff and that then stopped. Oh well.

Two people at places I’ve done work for have just swapped jobs. One doesn’t like my stuff much and has gone from a place with a budget for freelance work to one without. The other likes my stuff more and has gone from a place without that budget to the one with.

Not that this is making hay time, it’s covers the household bills – water, ‘leccie etc – sums but still, that’s nice, no? One of my capos has just got a better place so I as one of the gentlemen……

And, really, that is how freelancing works.

So, I’ve a salt water pool. OK.

Water evaporates (it was 39 oC today and windy). OK.

Salt doesn’t evaporate. So, the pool should get saltier, then I top it up and it reutrns to normal.

But I’ve just had to add 75 kg of salt (it’s around and about 75 m3 of water).

What is it that I’m missing?

I also want the idiots guide to salt water pools. Looking for pages says “shock it once a week” and “read the ph levels” and I need something that starts the level behind that. At least one level behind it. What’s this box? What’s that machine? What am I trying to do other than keep it salty? What’s the whole story? In a for idiots guide.

A heatwave is defined by three or more days of very hot temperatures, ranging from 28C in London to 25C in other parts of the country.

As we call that around here, April. OK. OK, if you insist – May.

King’s second cousin Lord Ivar Mountbatten to star in US Traitors

I was trying to think of how they were second cousins. After I’d worked out who Ivar was of course. And while descent from Viccie, it’s trough the Battenbergs that they are second cousins.

All of which is very boring and not what got me wondering. Second cousings. So, one great grandparent or more in common, yes? Hmm, perhaps one pair of great grandparents in common? Same parents, siblings, same grandparents, cousins, same g g second cousins?

Now, I know I have second cousins. Vast tribes of them in fact, a very with it and trendy poet in Canada I believe, armies roaming New Zealand, Co. Down contains some ancestral stock and on and on.

But I have absolutely no idea who these people are (other than the poet) and no knowledge of even how many there are. Second cousin is out there enough for me not to know I guess.

Perhaps they just keep the stud books better if you’re famous?

Dunno why, maybe someone fed it some oats overnight…..so, comments might be delayed etc