I accept the implications of the birthday paradox, but at the same time I find it hard to accept that there is no underlying cosmic meaning to the fact that Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldread and Anthony Ainley all shared the same birthday.

Sounds great, to be honest. None of your mistakes would ever come back to haunt you.

Matt Round@mattround.com · yesterday

Just remembered the former colleague of a friend, a coder approaching retirement who’d never had any of their code go live. Every corporate software project they’d worked on had dragged on for years then been scrapped or restarted with newer tech, a whole career producing nothing

Watching Pobol y Cwm for the first time in donkeys' years. One of the characters developing AI psychosis. Someone just mortally wounded when a firearm accidentally discharged. Cwmderi is a dangerous place.

People always moan about the fundamentalist Christians turning up at Chester Pride, but they're pretty easy to ignore. But yesterday we actually had some of the worst people in Britain turning up: that absolute scrote English Ned and a mate of his who goes by the name of Jardine.

Just to return to moaning: is there a reason why the entertainment at Pride events is always so unimaginative? It's almost like they devise the line-ups with reference to a check-list of cultural stereotypes, and it's really, really tedious.

Tom Jones was performing at Chester Racecourse last night. We went out for a bit of a walk to see if it was possible to freeload a bit and listen to his set. As it happened, you could get a reasonable view and hear pretty well from Nuns Road. Amazing how well his voice has held up, really.

Part of me wants to manufacture a placard reading "When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments." (2 Tim 4:13) and stand next to the fundamentalist Christian demonstrators and attempt to blend in.

Bought ticket for Chester Pride. Just looked at entertainment line-up and thought: oh God, why did I do that? It's always like stuff that you'd have to be either braindead or a child to enjoy.

I don't think that's an accurate Welsh translation of "Count Binface Party".

Kind of enjoying the glut of insane posts I'm seeing on FB along the lines of "did you research whether you actually need eclipse glasses or did you just blindly comply?". One just now: "I stared at the sun throughout the eclipse, I'll let you know if I go blind".

New PC has started doing a weird thing. You select 'shutdown' from start menu. It says it's shutting down, but then, it just restarts. Now, you can get around it by typing `shutdown /s /t 0` at the cmd prompt, but - why? Congratulations to Microsoft on a really stupid bug.

The thing I find strange about this is that you'd think that they'd understand that it's good politics to try and be seen as the party that gets things done. A friend from NI told me, for example, that if you want something done, you go to Sinn Féin about it, even if you'd never vote for them.

Stevie Bennett@steviebennett.bsky.social · 2w ago

What a surprise

The problem is, you really don't get anything like The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City in Welsh, do you?

Turns out that you can pick up Radio Cymru pretty clearly all the way until you get to the summit of the M62, beyond which BBC Radio York starts to cut across it. (I was doing a bit of an experiment while driving to Bradford.)

Yn dod yn fuan: Star Wars yn y Gymraeg. www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/ert...

Got week off work. Wanted to go away somewhere random for a couple of nights for change of scenery, but somewhere not too in-demand amongst 'normal people' because we're in the middle of the high season and everything is ridiculously pricey. I settled on Bradford.

The thing I love about LinkedIn is that you can post about having been awarded a first class honours degree, and barely anybody comments, but somebody else will post about having done a bit of running and it will get tonnes of engagement.

Terrific and rightly angry piece this:

Rory Waterman@rorywaterman.bsky.social · 3w ago

Some notes by little me on recent, hugely damaging, shamefully shameless events at Cambridge University. rorywaterman.substack.com/p/notes-on-a-cambridge-debacle If you read only one article about what has happened, try the new piece by Lanre Bakare in the Guardian, linked in my blog post.

The thing that pisses me off about Gary Stevenson isn't so much that he's often wrong or repetitive, but that so many people seem to get behind him in spite of this.

I've got so many courgettes to use that I seem to be having courgettes with everything.

Yesterday when I had a peek at the Eisteddfod coverage there was a brass band competition underway. Just had a peek at today's coverage; another brass band competition. tbf, it's alright. They're currently doing "It's Not Unusual". (Which I guess is permissable as its instrumental only.)

In other news, the bay tree (which I planted out yesterday) looks to me like it's a bit wonky despite me having got the root ball more or less level with the surrounding soil, and it's bothering me more than I should. Every time I look out of the kitchen window.

Yesterday I didn't go out, other than to do some stuff in the garden. Today I feel like it's imperative that I do go somewhere, otherwise I might start to go a bit nuts.

I have planted out the bay tree that my dad gave me, and started preparing the ground for the leeks. Then I realised I was out in the afternoon sun without any sunscreen, and thought I'd better get myself inside again. Now what?

Flicking through a primer on German. Whenever I try and think about German these days I find myself experiencing a thing where it's like the German and the Welsh are competing for space in my head.

I wish I found the Eisteddfod more interesting than I do. (I will probably try to go next year, when it isn't in the corner of Wales furthest from me.)

Greater Manchester mayoral by-election. Not even close. Obvz. very low turnout, and should be careful about extrapolating too much from a single event*, but - it feels like it puts the lie to the notion that Reform are unstoppable. * You wish ommentators would avoid this, don't you?

TIL that Gaza City is twinned with Tel Aviv.

I do not think that a man who successfully engineers his own return to Westminster through convincing another MP to stand down for him and fighting a by-election, then running for the leadership has 'imposter syndrome'.

The News Agents@thenewsagents.co.uk · 4w ago

"He's had imposter syndrome for many years, like most people from working class backgrounds." Andy Burnham's 'bezzie mate' Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram on how the new PM will balance 'imposter syndrome' and 'Catholic guilt' with his political ambitions www.thenewsagents.co.uk/article/will...

Heard a bit of a programme called Currently: Troubled Town on Radio 4 in the car about half an hour ago. Might have been worth listening if they could have got a less sanctimonious presenter.