Mark J

One thing I did take away from the chainsaw incident: My mate was using a Spiderjack and I had no idea how it worked when he came within reach, I was about to cut the rope and drag him out the hedge but I worked it out. Make sure you're familiar with the mechanism a climber is using if you want to stand even the slimmest chance of rescuing them; cutting their rope and transferring them onto your setup might not be an option.

It is crackers. If the death penalty was a thing she'd probably be swinging by now.

I've only had to deal with one chainsaw bite, my mate was already on his way down the hedge when he let me know we might need the first aid kit (****************ing battery toppers, they don't help a groundy to know what's getting cut and where). Odds are if you're rescuing someone from a tree they're either stuck or dead.

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I'd use my own throwline.

Do you think any of that any of Trump's 'tarrifs' will benefit the UK? If so, why?

If it does the job on a decent size tree it'll pay for itself. If it's shite it'll get in the way.

Another Angry Voice Rachel Reeves "new approach" is just "more of the same" In her latest economic speech Rachel Reeves claimed that "at the election people voted for a whole new approach". That’s possibly true, although a more realistic interpretation could be that Labour won by default because the Tories imploded, and millions stayed at home in despair at the lack of alternatives to the failing status quo. Even if we accept Reeves’ interpretation of the election result at face value, it’s still deeply problematic. If people "voted for a whole new approach" then where are the new ideas? Where are the policies designed to make life better for ordinary people? And why does Rachel Reeves’ economic rhetoric sound indistinguishable from the succession of Tory Chancellors who preceded her? Let’s look at some of the Labour government core positions under Keir Starmer’s leadership. Austerity One of the first things Rachel Reeves did was to launch another economically debilitating round of austerity cutbacks, pinning blame on the previous government for her actions. That’s pretty much identical to George Osborne’s strategy in 2010, of blaming Labour’s supposed economic mismanagement for his ruinous programme of austerity cuts. Conclusion: "More of the same" Privatisation profiteering Starmer’s Labour outright refuses to countenance taking vital services and infrastructure away from parasitical privatisation profiteers to run them as not-for-profit public services. In fact Starmer’s health secretary Wes Streeting is salivating at the mouth at the prospect of carving the NHS open for even more private profiteering, to the benefit of several private health figures who have donated hefty sums to Starmer’s front bench. Even Labour’s renationalisation of the railways is a sham which keeps the trains and freight services under the control of greedy private profiteers. Labour are on the side of the privatisation profiteers, just like the Tories before them. Conclusion: "More of the same" Wittering on about "growth" Rachel Reeves keeps going on and on about creating "growth" but without setting out any kind of realistic framework to get the economy growing in real terms, and without defining any redistribution strategy to ensure that any additional growth isn’t simply hoovered up by greedy corporations, exploitative landlords, financial speculators, and the tax-dodger brigade, leaving the rest of us even deeper in the mire of inequality. Without redistribution policies Reeves’ "growth agenda" amounts to the same old trickle down economic bunk that neoliberal political grifters have been spouting for decades. ’Just let the rich get richer, and eventually some of it will trickle down to plebs like you’ - It didn’t work in the 1980s, it didn’t work in the Tory austerity years, and it’s not going to work now. Conclusion: "More of the same" Child impoverishment One of Keir Starmer’s first acts as Prime Minister was to purge seven Labour MPs from the parliamentary party for the crime of voting to scrap the Tories’ diabolical poverty-spreading Two Child Policy. Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that child poverty is due to rise in England and Wales under Starmer’s leadership, due to Labour’s draconian welfare policies. Meanwhile in Scotland, child poverty rates are set to fall as the SNP government works to mitigate the terrible consequences of Reeves’ poverty-spreading agenda. If Labour were to follow the SNP example and scrap the Two Child policy, it’d raise 800,000 kids out of poverty, but they don’t want to do that because they’re too busy pandering to the rich. Labour aren’t just sticking with Tory child-impoverishment policies, they’re wittering on about how growth is magically going to fix everything while a third of all British kids grown up in poverty. Conclusion: "More of the same" Welfare scapegoating One of the most depraved things about the 2010-2024 Tory governments was the way they continually attacked the most vulnerable people in society. Not just whipping up public hate against the poor, the unemployed, and the disabled, but implementing cruel and draconian policies to drive the most vulnerable people in society deeper into destitution (Bedroom Tax, Two Child Policy, Benefit Sanctions, "Fit For Work" assessments …). Rachel Reeves has been copying from the same Tory playbook by distracting from her own economic failings by whipping public resentment against disabled people, and pledging yet another round of austerity cuts to the disability welfare system. Conclusion: "More of the same" The panacea of deregulation Reeves bangs on and on about deregulation, as if giving powerful corporations even more leeway to do whatever they like is magically going to result in prosperity for the rest of us. Look at the Grenfell tragedy. Look at our rivers and coastal waters full of raw sewage. Look at the life-ruining Post Office Horizon scandal. Look at the outrageous P&O sackings. Look at the collapse of Carillion. Look at the orgy of corruption going on in Teesside. Who on earth thinks that any of these things would be have been made better by even less regulation than there was? And who can forget David Cameron endlessly fulminating against "red tape" and promising a "bonfire of regulations". How is Reeves’ anti-regulation rhetoric any different from what came before? Conclusion: "More of the same" Brexit Reeves only mentions Brexit once in her speech to say "we are pragmatic about the challenges that we have inherited from the last government’s failed Brexit deal". But what does this even mean? Keir Starmer whipped Labour MPs into backing Boris Johnson’s Brexit shambles, and he’s repeatedly insisted that the country is stuck with it now, and there’s nothing to be done to try and mitigate the damage. How can anyone give a speech on "growth" without acknowledging the diabolical impact that Brexit has had on the British economy? It doesn’t matter how many pensioners, children, and disabled people Reeves drives into destitution in her cruel and counter-productive austerity book-balancing exercises, when the Brexit sanctions we applied on ourselves are such a massive millstone on the UK economy. Conclusion: "More of the same" More of the same In conclusion Reeves is pretending to offer the change that she says the British public wanted, but in reality whole swathes of her speech, and Labour’s policy agenda are indistinguishable from the rhetoric and policies of preceding Tory governments. And when people are handed the cold gruel of "more of the same" when they’ve been promised that everything will change for the better, that’s the environment of disillusion that the extreme-right absolutely thrive in.

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Okay Captain Hilarious, tell us a joke...

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My mate's the one on the right, she plays violin for them too. They're a mint band. Very Northumbrian.

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Fill yer boots: You might as well get used to it as it's here and it's useful. I will eat my hat if blockchain technology isn't being utilised in your sector by 2026. Just a moment... WWW.PERPLEXITY.AI What are the current and projected real world uses for blockchain technology? Blockchain technology is currently being utilized across various industries and is projected to have even more widespread applications by 2025. Here are some of the current and projected real-world uses for blockchain technology: Financial Services Cross-border payments: Blockchain enables fast and secure international transactions by eliminating intermediaries1. Decentralized finance (DeFi): Automated lending, borrowing, and trading platforms reduce costs and delays1. Fractional ownership: Platforms like RealT tokenize real estate, allowing individuals to invest in high-value assets2. Microloans and financial inclusion: Companies like BanQu extend blockchain-based financial services to the unbanked2. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs): By 2025, more central banks are expected to launch their own digital currencies37. Supply Chain and Logistics Product tracking: Blockchain enhances traceability by recording every transaction in the supply chain1. Food safety: Walmart uses blockchain to trace the origin and journey of food products2. Anti-counterfeiting: Companies like Chronicled utilize blockchain to verify the authenticity of pharmaceuticals2. Logistics optimization: VeChain integrates blockchain for supply chain optimization2. Healthcare Secure patient data management: Blockchain encrypts and securely stores sensitive patient information1. Credential verification: Learning Machine uses blockchain for secure issuance of digital diplomas2. Government and Voting Digital infrastructure: By 2025, government adoption of blockchain is projected to reach 90%7. Secure digital voting: Blockchain creates immutable records of every vote, enhancing trust in election results1. Real Estate Property transactions: Propy uses blockchain for secure and transparent real estate transactions2. Land registries: Countries like Georgia and Sweden use blockchain to manage land registries5. Energy Sector Peer-to-peer energy trading: Powerledger allows users to trade excess renewable energy with neighbors5. Energy trading optimization: Platforms like Vakt automate trade settlement processes in the energy sector5.

Do you get paid in cash? Like it or not you will engage with blockchain technology.

I am a firm believer in cash, I like to have a wedge of it in my pocket. Crypto currencies are good for buying things online as there is no middleman, at all. There are some online pharmacies that will only accept crypto based payments. Blockchain technology is here and established whether you like it or not.

Philip Low : "I have known Elon Musk at a deep level for 14 years, well before he was a household name. We used to text frequently. He would come to my birthday party and invite me to his parties. He would tell me everything about his women problems. As sons of highly accomplished men who married venuses, were violent and lost their fortunes, and who were bullied in high school, we had a number of things in common most people cannot relate to. We would hang out together late in Los Angeles. He would visit my San Diego lab. He invested in my company. Elon is not a Nazi, per se. He is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it. Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else. Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he acts as if he has all the solutions. All his talk about getting to Mars to “maintain the light of consciousness” or about “free speech absolutism” is actually BS Elon knowingly feeds people to manipulate them. Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control. That is also why he gave himself $56 Billion which could have gone to the people actually doing the work and innovations he is taking credit for at Tesla (the reason he does not do patents is because he would not be listed as an inventor as putting a fake inventor on a patent would kill it and moreover it would reveal the superstars behind the work). His lust for power is also why he did xAI and Neuralink, to attempt to compete with OpenAI and NeuroVigil, respectively, despite being affiliated with them. Unlike Tesla and Twitter, he was unable to conquer those companies and tried to create rivals. He announced Neuralink just after I invited his ex-wife, which she and I notified him about, to a fundraising dinner for Hebrew University in London (The fact that she tried to kiss me — I immediately pushed her away — while taking a photo at that event, even if playfully, clearly may have added to the alienation and possible emasculation he may have felt when she spoke to me in a pool at a party when they were together and she was naked. To not be disrespectful to her or to him, I stayed but looked at the sky whilst talking to her). I fired him with cause in December 2021 when he tried to undermine NV. It is ironic that years later, he clearly tried to undermine Twitter before buying it, and in my view, blowing it up and using it to manipulate the masses to lean to the far right in country after country, including the USA. [Here is more detail as some people asked. After he received a press release draft confirming NV never took a penny from the US Government, he asked to be removed from the Business Advisory Board, but then tried to give the stock he bought back, including for no money, which could have completely crashed NV’s stock price. I told him he was fired from the BAB, with cause, as he admitted he had not been participating. That also meant he had no ability to exercise his stock options (years prior, despite not being allowed to discuss his investment because of a solid NDA, he/his people leaked to the press that he had invested twice as much in NV as he actually did, as if the stock options had been counted as stock). This is the email I sent him around that time: “Elon, Only one of us apparently knows the difference between Science and PR, and between friendship and phonies, and unfortunately you ain’t it. Let’s cut ties here. Your NV stock is not being transferred, and if you try to transfer it without my consent, in contravention of your stock purchase agreement, I will have to shove my boots so deep up your derrière, legally, that your pissing contest with Bezos will seem like it was from another life, one you want to get back to. Good luck with your implants, all of them, and with building Pottersville on Mars. Seriously, don’t **************** with me.” Elon has less than 0.05% of NV and was never a principal or principal investor in NV as was falsely reported by some. I own between 80 and 90%. NV is the most valuable neurotech company in the world and does not regard Neuralink as a competitor because we have an arsenal of patents and introduced our technology to customers in 2009 and furthermore do not view their implantable technology as scalable. Moreover, the company is apparently under investigation regarding statements Elon made to investors and most of Neuralink’s co-founders ditched Elon and the company.] Elon did two Nazi salutes. He did them for five main reasons: 1. He was concerned that the “Nazi wing” of the MAGA movement, under the influence of Steve Bannon, would drive him away from Trump, somewhere in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, rather than in the West Wing which is where he wants to be. He was already feeling raw over the fact that Trump did not follow his recommendation for Treasury Secretary and that the Senate also did not pick his first choice; 2. He was upset that he had had to go to Israel and Auschwitz to make up for agreeing with a Nazi sympathizer online and wanted to reclaim his “power” just like when he told advertisers to “go **************** yourself”. This has nothing to do with Asperger’s; 3. There are some Jews he actually hates: Sam Altman is amongst them; 4. He enjoys a good thrill and knew exactly what he was doing; 5. His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen. Bottom line: Elon is not a Nazi but he did give two Nazi Salutes, which is completely unacceptable. ——————————————————————————- N.B. For the few whining about my post “sans connaissance the cause” and either trembling about my having shattered their illusions about their cult leader or thinking I am defending Elon: I. My point is that he is transactional rather than ideological; II. That being said, I am not defending him or his actions, just explaining them and confirming that he did, in fact, do two Nazi Salutes if anyone had doubts or believed the doctored footage of Taylor Swift doing the same thing to normalize what Elon did; III. At some point, it matters to few people if one is a Nazi or if one acts like one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. 32 out of 35 of his family members were murdered by Nazis. My mother’s grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz; IV. After Elon tried to manipulate NV’s stock in 2021, I fired him with cause, and he was unable to exercise his stock options. In the aftermath of the Nazi Salutes, I told both him and his wealth manager to **************** off. Any remaining friendship between us ended with the Nazi Salutes. He is blocked on my end and I am pretty sure I am blocked on his; V. I did not share what he told me in confidence. I just happen to know him extremely well, the person, the aspirations and the Musk Mask; VI. I know who I am, have no desire to be famous and give exceedingly few media interviews. I prefer to work in obscurity and let the work speak for itself. I am certainly not envious and would definitely not want Elon’s life, including living in a bubble and having to make one outlandish claim after another and manipulate the public, elections and governments to shore up my stock and prevent the bubble from bursting. Unlike Elon, I am an actual scientist and inventor and I am not pretending to be someone I am not, like a fellow who got his BA in Econ at 26 all of a sudden pretending to be an expert in mechanical engineering, chemistry, rocket science, neuroscience and AI and keeping the people actually doing the work hidden and paying people to play online games in his name to appear smart and feed his so-called “Supergenius” Personality Cult — the “Imperator” has no clothes, and he knows it. I am just very disappointed in what happened to someone I had a lot of deep admiration for and the first person to find out about my concerns about his behavior was always him; VII. He is the one who betrayed a number of his friends, including Sergey, and, given his actions, many other people who believed him and believed in him. I have no sympathy for this behavior, and at some point, after having repeatedly confronted it in private, I believe the ethical thing to do is to speak out, forcefully and unapologetically, whatever the risks may be, so as to not be part of the timid flock remaining silent while evil is being done, including propping up far right governments around the world in part to deregulate his companies and become the first trillionaire and otherwise to “rule the planet” — he knows Mars won’t be terraformed in his lifetime and he really wants his planet. No joke… Ethics matter. People matter. The truth matters. I took down Descartes (through the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness) and I am definitely not afraid of a so-called inventor whose greatest invention is his image. I will not be silent. You should not be either. I am a sovereign individual, and so are you. I stood up to bullies, and am stepping out of the dark to do it again. Stop working for him and being exploited by him. Sell your Tesla and dump your Tesla stock. Nikola Tesla was a great, creative and courageous man who led with ethics and by example and he would not have wanted for his good name to have been used by him and would agree with my principled stance. Sign off of “X” which is boosting far right propaganda, and of your Starlink as well. He is a complete babe (British slang not meant to be offensive to women) who doesn’t give a shit about you — only about power. Just ask Reid Hoffman. He only wants to control, dominate and use you — don’t let him and cut him and his businesses out of your and your loved ones’ lives entirely. Remember he is a total miserable self-loathing poser, and unless you happen to be one too, he will be much more afraid of you than you should ever be of him. He will probably come after me, and I am completely fine with that. I am a self-made multibillionaire with an armada of lawyers — literally — and most importantly, I know who I am and who I stand for, the people and their freedoms, whatever happens. He can send his dumb Proud Boys and Oath Keepers after me and they will be butchered on sight. Either way, I would rather die with honor than live as a coward. “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate."

Not surprising they got DDos'd in double quick time: DeepSeek hit with ‘large-scale’ cyber-attack after AI chatbot tops app stores | DeepSeek | The Guardian WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM Attack forces Chinese company to temporarily limit registrations as app becomes highest rated free app in US