sadams0 G+ Posts

The view from Simonstone Hall this morning. Celebrating 20th Wedding Anniversary in t'Dales with Mrs Adams. http://simonstonehall.com

Visas for 100 Indian doctors refused "As we reach the end of a winter where the NHS has been stretched to its very limits, partly as a result of a lack of medical workforce, we find it almost impossible to understand how this decision can have been reached." >>> Jon Rouse, chief officer of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership Can you think of a more stupid thing to do? Scheme enables: - Indian doctors to benefit from studying & working in the UK - UK hospitals/patients benefit by having more qualified doctors - (when they return) Indian hospitals/patients benefit by having more qualified doctors Beyond this we have intelligent, skilled people travelling, making friends, making professional connections, swapping experiences, providing service, becoming better doctors. EVERYBODY WINS! What does anyone gain by setting a quota which disables the world from functioning like this? What's the objective? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43898...

Happy 20th Wedding Anniversary Mrs alison adams https://goo.gl/photos/GUAAEBkXBTmfCDnA6

20 years ago tonight, on the eve of my wedding, my tooth came out.

Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match - New York Times Same problem here in the UK although so far not as widespread/extreme. I think the splits & divides were always there, social media has simply exposed it & tougher economic times exacerbated it. When times get tough, people find their tribe & defend what's theirs (from other tribes). Exciting times for would-be fascists! Reminds me of: -"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation"_ Douglas Adams H2G2 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/world/asia/facebook-sri-lanka-riots.html

Sharks, zealots and the apocalypse: welcome to Steve Bannon’s movie world >>> “What’s essential to realise about propaganda,” said Staal – who completed a PhD in propaganda art earlier this year – “is that it is not, actually, about sending a message. It’s about shaping our environment, engineering our reality. Propaganda is the performance of power; propaganda art – which is an important element of propaganda, because a reality has to be portrayed before it can be reality – is the performance of power as art.” >>> _"If you accept the idea that no reality is devoid of power, then propaganda is everywhere.Every society needs a narrative – where we come from, who we are, where we are going. The problem is that the alt-right gives us a very clear story, that ‘we’ are a predominantly white, predominantly Christian society that is under attack and needs defending. It’s the root of the present-day culture wars: they have effectively defined ‘us’ and ‘them’.” To counte...

This Wired article worth a read on how 'dark actors' used online ads to manipulate US voters. Lots of focus recently on "regulating the Internet platforms" (whatever that means) which we should find disturbing & worrying. What we DO need our governments to do is to ensure existing rules & regulations on political advertising (budget/spend, transparency) are extended to & enforced online as they should be offline. I think there are plenty of signs similar techniques were used to prey on voters in our own Brexit Leave campaign. https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/

Record Store Day #RSD2018 Things digital distribution of recorded music has solved: - scarcity - overpricing RSD appears to celebrate both of these & encourage victims (ahem, customers) to stand in queues for the privilege to overpay for an artificially limited release. How many mug punters are still prepared to be treated like that? *Note: I realise that RSD events also include other activities & live events etc. I wish the plastic & cardboard lovers a happy RSD! https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2018/4/20/rsd-2018-four-bowie-big-ones

Life. Don't talk to me about life... https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/potential-2 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/potential-2

Early start, drive through the Dales heading for Bradford. #ScenicRoute

More on Syria as I try to make sense of it. I think this article is helpful for context & recent history and to see what will happen next. Trying to understand our govts insistence on joining bombing raids without Parliamentary scrutiny or approval leads me to the conclusion: we still follow the US' policy now as we did under Blair/Labour. Our (the West's interests remain security over energy/oil supplies which drives the interest in the region's balance of power). As evidenced by our attitude to the few refugees who make it to the UK, we really don't give a shit about the people living in Syria or the region in general. Underlying it all though, if you do care about people, are some dreadful statistics: === The war is now arguably the world’s largest humanitarian disaster since World War II. The death toll now stands at nearly half a million, though the UN has stopped counting. Countless others are wounded and missing. A U.S. government report that the Assad regime...

Good, simple explainer on foreign actors in Syria. What a mess. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/the-syrian-war-is-many-wars/557990/

Ridiculous. The crime, conviction & sentence are all a matter of public record. Why would we allow convicted criminals to break search indexes by making them incomplete? It needs to be renamed: The right to pretend we didn't get caught. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43752344

We just watched The Last Jedi as part of the boy's Birthday Day. Out for dinner this evening with Granny Pam & Grumps.

We are creatures, creatures of love We are creatures, creatures of love From the sleep of reason, a life is born We are creatures, creatures of love https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=mSNjHD8GcZU&u=/watch?v%3D2BMY7gG47fI%26feature%3Dshare

HAPPY 16th Birthday to the Boy. Here's an album of Birthday memories through the years... https://photos.app.goo.gl/oj3SfjZ9sKzXGHJB3

Lt. Commander Zuck's plans to study humans in greater detail has run into difficulties.

(BIG) Sam Allardyce takes his moneyball approach into oldskool comabat. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/moneybattle

Another recent release Nils Petter Molvaer + Sly & Robbie: "Nordub" See: https://www.okeh-records.com/2018/01/31/release-nils-petter-molvaer-nordub Also features Eivind Aarset on guitars. Here's a concert from 2015 which is good taster. #TopStuff #NordicJazzDub https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=z9bt6umdpoM&u=/watch?v%3DZFrq3zAybh4%26feature%3Dshare

https://youtu.be/J4pP9rd_pOA

Wow. First listen to the new album from Sonar, Vortex. It features & is produced/mixed by David Torn. It's an amazing album - Swiss Ritual Groove meets Torn-noise-fest. This video is a great introduction into the sounds & feel of the album & this interview by Anil Prasad (@Innerviews) is really interesting too. http://www.innerviews.org/inner/sonar-with-david-torn https://youtu.be/2w4Iw7RCKUI

This is a *good, longish read with great perspective on Facebook's longstanding, repeat pattern of bad behaviour followed by apologies. I've said since finally joining FB in 2009 (after holding out for a couple of years): Facebook don't deserve our trust. I'm still on it because others insist on using it, I recognise it is ubiquitous, people have accepted it. In this most recent scandal (Cambridge Analytica) I don't think FB have done much wrong actually. I think they behaved as expected (at that time) & it we who are responsible for the bad outcomes, via: - as FB users, adopting FB & embracing its awful business model (allowing it to pass on our data to third parties) - as citizens, by not ensuring our laws/rules on political ads (funding, transparency) are updated to take account of digital platforms (all of them, not just FB) & are enforced. Blaming Facebook is silly. You may as well blame a Great White Shark for biting you. It's what they do! See...

Sad stories of an awful development in our culture. When stag nights go wrong https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/apr/08/when-stag-nights-go-wrong I went on some stag weekends & football tours back in the 80s/90s which were fuelled by drink & included some daftness, but nothing like as obviously dangerous as this article describes. I think the group of lads I was with (works football club, some of whom I'm still in touch with on Facebook, many who still live in the south get together when they can) benefitted from being a mix of older & younger men, with a genuine bond & (tho it sounds silly!) a kind of 'duty-of-care' ethos which (mostly) ensured that damage was limited. Or maybe we were just lucky, and living through different times - before this "stag-do industry" was invented. I have some very fond memories of some very funny times & in my early 20s it was (I guess) a bit of a rite-of-passage/ritual thing & it wouldn't have hap...

Watched Annihilation this evening (on Netflix). Enjoyable & interesting. https://youtu.be/Gcnr6y6yqII

Doonesbury on aging... http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip/archive/2018/4/1

Whether you’re running a contest and looking for a winner or just need to pick a number between one and 10, having a random number generator can be a handy tool. Thankfully, you no longer need to visit a separate website as Google has a random number… http://9to5google.com/2018/04/04/how-to-use-generate-random-number-google-homepage-android-basics/

Caught up with Cunk on Britain this eve. Excellent stuff. Don't miss it. Cunk on Britain, Series 1: Episode 1: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09yp1hx via @bbciplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09yp1hx

https://www.citymetric.com/transport/some-german-fella-has-made-map-london-s-s-bahn-network-and-it-s-glorious-3805

How to use Google+ A Twitter friend of mine named Richard Williams tweeted that I convinced him to return to Google+ after a long hiatus. The site has changed so much, however, that he no longer knows how to use it. https://twitter.com/rlswilliams/status/980916982504742913 So here's how I recommend that people use it: 1. A blogging platform. Use Google+ as you would Tumblr or Blogger or any Squarespace blog. Post anything and everything. Use "Collections" to categorize your posts so you don't annoy the tech people with your food and the food people with your tech, etc. 2. A search engine. By all means follow people who post great stuff. But also know that every thing you look at inside Google+ is a search result. By following people, collections or communities, you're just looking at a search result packaged by Google. An even more powerful way to use Google+ is to do a search result, then use that as a "news feed" (minus all the Facebook bullshit). For ...

Sneaky visit to the Southbank, (that) London on Monday. More photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WfZqDk86QDyjVbuj1 #DaaaanSaaaaf