Love This Video: "The Errorist"

A big shout out to Ashley R Pollard for posting this (see below, fantastic video by Elle Cordova on a subject often viewed as dry):

https://ashleyrpollard.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-errorist-strikes-again.html

Bonus: I subscribed to her channel and immediately saw and loved this short video, please watch to the end:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9lcBkGbxvtY

Abba: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme .. in Latin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b0dc70RRUU&list=RDPbEKIW3pUUk&index=3

I love this version! If anything you have got to say there is added meaning in Ancient Greek!

Revenge of the Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

Twenty five years on after his seminal book The Tipping Point, post "Covid pandemic" and maybe just maybe looking for his next income stream Malcolm Gladwell returns with The Revenge of the Tipping Point. It is interesting in its own right, he is not reviewing his old material in a new light but rather bringing compelling insights focus. How much change is needed to change a system? The answer seems to be between a quarter and a third of a population (from opinion, voting patterns or contagion). Beware also the superspreaders that break mathematical models of the scientific experts as the under researched "superspreaders" exhibit transformational powers to the system. It is scary, spooly and seemingly uncontrollable [chaotic] stuff - which relegates everybody to "watchers" rather than "controllers" (see below, he will make you think about simple stuff in a deeper way):  

Malcolm Gladwell always gives you an interesting conceptual framework to rattle, he fills it with interesting nuggets (thought experiments and facts), not overpopulated and invites you to to give it a good shake. The noise is pleasing and generates new ways of seeing things. Outliers, Blink, Revenge of the Tipping Point read. "The Bomber Mafia" is on my wish list. Maybe then I will go back to the original Tipping Point or turn to "Talking to Strangers", "What the Dog Saw" or "David and Goliath". Nice to know there is plenty of reading out there still to be done. 

Note: I do hold small reservations over believing everything I read, as the famous Shackleton advert (but then he is no different to many others who have fallen into that same pothole of urban myth).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton#cite_note-FOOTNOTEKoehn201730-113

In December 1913, Shackleton published details of his new expedition, grandly titled the "Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition". There is a legend that Shackleton posted an advertisement emphasising the hardship and danger of the planned voyage, so that he could better narrow down the selection of candidates for his expedition, but no record of any such advertisement has survived and its existence is considered doubtful.

The jury seems to be out on this!

AI Blog Bots Are Still Looking At This Blog .. But For What Rhyme or Reason?

Would non-human readers please go away! (see below, there is such a strange spike in things reading my blog, that I don't believe are human - but at best can described as automated screen scrapers): 

 

They would not be doing it if there was not money in it for them at the end of the road! 

What do they think they are learning?

I think that there is a real danger that they are learning pt collating is tantamount to pure "JUNK" - unreviewed postings across the wide blog-sphere, where people could be "legitimately" (as why not) saying anything they want to. If enough people say Pi is a rational number - it does not make it a rational number. 

Book: Hitler's Soldiers

This is certainly not a triumpiantalist book, despite what you might think from a first glance at the title. It holds no bars in describing the dark psyche of a German Soldier (in all the various combination of the land soldier, from Landser to Panzer Commander and all shades in between). How they lived and died for the Third Reich, fighting on well past the point of hope. It dispels any illusion of nobility, any fictional occlusion of the truth of what is meant to fight for Germany in WWII, with the underlying guilt and stain of the regime. It describes the fighting, successes and failures but also the underlying "why" they fought. There are too many chilling home truths to attempt to list here, but the nature of the whole hearted commitment of the German Army to the Nazi State is plain to see. From 1934 the German Army incrementally sold its soul to the Nazi regime, to the point where the two in the end in 1945 the two were indistinguishable from each other. A fascinating and shocking read, along the lines of Ordinary Men (see below, the compunction to a "duty" made them fight - by oath to see the Fuhrer, as the embodiment of Germany):  

Chilling reading. 

Like many good books, once I have listened to them on Audible and cannot stop thinking about them. I inevitably buy a paper copy for reference. This book is both chilling for the haunting message it tells and very informational in the sense of detail and context it gives. Highly recommended!  

The Sounds of Silence - Cover, in Latin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx3c4AjAO58&list=RDPbEKIW3pUUk&index=2

Again brilliant! Best listened to, in the still of the night with your favourite tipple in hand!

Airfix - F35B Lightning II

Something modern, the F35B Lightning II - RAF/RN flying off the Queen Elizabeth or Prince of Wales aircraft carriers (see below, the plastic has been put together, next grey paint scheme): 

It was a bit of a strange modelling experience as you can see that there is such technical complexity in the airframe, there is intricate detailing, but most of the tech stuff is hidden inside a smooth stealth anti-radar shape!