Death Slide Reopened

A video of a slide in Detroit went viral because it showed people hurtling down the slide banging into the hard surface. It’s a heath and safety nightmare but that’s entertainment these days.

It's 40 feet high, six lanes wide and probably invalidated medial insurance. It’s like someone has invented “extreme” playgrounding. There has even been a rap song inspired by it, which doesn’t help break the link between rap music and violence.

It’s reopened after a slight redesign, which the organisers claim will have slowed it down. Either that or they may have built a hospital nearby just in case.

Here’s a video to explain more.

@mrstevenallen #DeathSlide #HealthAndSafety ♬ original sound - Steve N Allen

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They Have Invented A Material That Can Think

In overstated science news: “Scientists discover material capable of ‘thinking’”.

It’s probably not actually ‘thinking’ or that would elevate that material about many animals and quite a few people.

The researchers behind it said that this is the “first example of an engineering material that can simultaneously sense, think and act upon mechanical stress without requiring additional circuits to process such signals”.

This is a great step forward in material science if you want a kitchen counter that can be in a mood with you.

At Penn State University that created this technology that is based on integrated circuits, which process information in a way that is similar to the way the human body does it. From personal experience that will include burying the feelings deep down inside and overeating to compensate. It’s amazing what circuit boards can do.

The team found that integrated circuits capable of performing computational tasks could be achieved using “nearly any material” around us, which makes you feel special now, doesn’t it?

The material can perform complex arithmetic, but it can also be used to detect radio frequencies to communicate light signals for applications like autonomous search-and-rescue systems.

Yeah, but it won’t do any of that, it’ll turn against humanity and enslave us all. That much we can workout without needing a computer to do it for us.

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Finnish PM Sanna Marin Has Backup Dancers

Hundreds of Finnish women have posted to social media supporting their prime minister Sanna Marin. She was caught up in a scandal when video emerged of her dancing at a private house party. Is dancing outlawed in Finland? Did they think the film Footloose was a documentary?

Sanna faced criticism of her behaviour when two videos appeared in which she sings and dances at a party with friends and another enjoying herself in a private VIP room of a well-known club in Helsinki.

She defended herself by saying she did nothing but “dance, sing, hug my friends and drink alcohol”. “I hope that in the year 2022 it’s accepted that even decision-makers dance, sing and go to parties.”

In 2022 yes. But in 2021 that hugging part would have been the problem.

Watch more coverage in the video below.

The #FinlandPrimeMinister #SannaMarinVideo somehow nearly caused a scandal. pic.twitter.com/XiOxhbxMNH

— Steve N Allen (@mrstevenallen) August 21, 2022

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Trump and the FBI

A little while back Donald Trump had his home raided by the FBI. It made Trump fans very upset with the FBI because he has been elevated to the status of a man who can do not wrong in their eyes. Sadly for them, the same week the FBI said that Alec Baldwin did fire the gun in the fatal film set shooting, and they don’t like Alec, but they’d just gone off the FBI. Oh no. Awkward.

How do you square that circle? Donald has found a solution.

The former president has claimed rank and file FBI agents “love” him. Well, I bet they love the overtime.

He said this on Truth Social, his own platform, which doesn’t seem that “social” as it’s not free for just anyone to join, but that’s probably not the biggest problem with its name.

Meanwhile his new lead attorney, a future person he hates who’ll write a book about him, Jim Trusty promised to “come out swinging” as he prepares to file a new legal challenge against the breadth of the Justice Department search warrant.

The warrant says that while searching for classified documents, if you find some, you can confiscate the boxes around it. That’s the complaint. Not, “How dare you! There are no classified documents here.” The defence is, “When you find what you’re looking for you shouldn’t be able to take the other stuff.” We’re in a post-innocent era.

Mr Trump wrote: “I hear the the great Agents and others in the FBI are furious at FBI leadership for what they are doing with respect to political weaponisation against a President (me) that always had their backs, and that they like (love!) a lot.”

Will the FBI find the proof they’re looking for? Certainly not the proof-reading.

@mrstevenallen #Trump #passport snatched by the #FBI ♬ original sound - Steve N Allen

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How Not To Give A Birthday Gift

If you enjoy the misfortune of others but wish you had an exact value for that fortune here’s one for you. Someone was given £100 for her birthday but it ended in disaster (for her, but a nearby seagull has probably ended up living it large).

Here’s a video that explains it all.

@mrstevenallen How not to give a #birthday gift. #comedy #schadenfreude ♬ original sound - Steve N Allen

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Get Ready for 50-Year-Mortgages

If you like owing money but wish it could go on for longer we have some good news for you.

A new lender is to offer 50-year fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers looking to beat inflation. They will have rates of around 4.5%.

With a retirement age of 66, this is great news if you’re a 16-year-old buying your first house. The youth have it so lucky when it comes to buying property these days.

It’s Perenna, a UK-based specialist lender, that has said it would initially launch 30-year loans before later rolling out longer terms. As long as life expectancies suddenly go up in the next few year this will work out just fine.

Clearly the idea is that you don’t pay it off the long way. You sell the house and with a 50 year mortgage there is sure to be lots of the debt still attached. You pay off the leftover debt with the sale, which basically means it comes out of any money your kids would have got from your estate.

Yes, we have found a way to use the money of the next generations to fuel our house buying now. We’re unstoppable.

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Will Smith Says Sorry For Slap Heard Around The World

Will Smith has posted an apology video in which he discusses slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in March. He says he "reached out" to Chris, but that just sounds like he was going in for seconds.

In the video on his YouTube channel Will said, "So I will say to you, Chris, I apologise to you." Shame he didn't act like that during his acceptance speach, but I suppose there are two types of acceptance.

In the five-minute video, Mr SMith talked about his decision not to immediately apologise saying he was in a fog. He didn't mention why he is doing this now, but after a ten year ban from the Oscars maybe he's thinking there's some work to do.

Here's a video looking at Will Smith's video.

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Tory Leadership Race – Update

What a time to be looking at politics. Boris Johnson hasn’t caused such an angry race since probably some comment he made in the Telegraph years ago.

Already the daggers our out for anyone who might do well. There’s an anti-Rishi ‘mucky memo’ being sent round Tory WhatsApp groups. In it they call Rishi Sunak a “schoolboy” and a “liar”. Oh, you wouldn’t want someone with a track record of lying to be PM. What a culture shock.

It also says, “There is nothing Conservative about the ‘Big Tax and Big Spend’ agenda of Rishi Sunak”. His track record on spending may have been slightly skewed by some sort of bug that went round.

It’s interesting to see how the Conservative Party works. We always knew the front-runner never wins the leadership and now we’re seeing why. As soon as someone stands out they’re brought down.

What’s great is that all of this name calling and attacking is done on Whatsapp like they’re teenagers doing some cyber bullying.

Meanwhile Nadhim Zahawi is being investigated over tax issues. The National Crime Agency investigated Nadhim Zahawi’s finances in 2020, and are understood to have now passed information to HM Revenue and Customs. The taxman investigating the chancellor. It’s not a good luck.

As soon as we talk about offshore tax someone will say, “It’s not his fault if he uses a loophole. If you have a problem with it, close the loophole.” Brill, who do we have to convince to close loopholes? Oh, the Chancellor who loves a loophole.

He is the second richest Tory MP, after Rishi, and the Times says, “Who better to place in charge of the nation’s finances than the second-richest MP?” Not if he got that rich through fraud and dodgy tax like he’s Neo in The Matrix.

As other candidates start to do well more information will be released about them, no doubt. It’s a great system to make sure the only one who survives and becomes leader is the most slippery politician out there.

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AI Knows Too Much About Your Face

In worrying computer news: Clearview AI, a facial recognition company used by Met Police, has been fined £7.5m by the information watchdog and ordered to delete billions of Facebook photos after breaking data protection laws.

It’s a bit creepy that they went through out Facebook pages looking at old photos. That’s what you’re meant to do when you fancy someone and try really hard not to accidentally click “Like”.

They harvested images from social media accounts without the owner's knowledge or permission and used them to train its computer algorithms to recognise faces.

I’m personally not worried because most Facebook pictures of me are when the OH has wanted to take one, and she edits out of the ones where she doesn’t like how she looks but leaves the ones in of me looking like I’m mid-yawn-and-tricky-poo.

Its database has more than 20 billion faces and its service is used to identify people and track their movements. People say why are you worried if you don’t do anything wrong? Well, I do things wrong. Lots of things, and I don’t want this company finding me.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that all of these law enforcement agencies had been offered the technology on a “free trial” basis. That is the part of the story that feels like it doesn’t help. You can’t claim you did nothing wrong because you were offered the service on a free basis. “No, I’m not guilty because that hit-man was doing a first hit free promotional offer.”

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Will Robots Replace Doctors?

New research has found that robotic surgery can lead to quicker patient recoveries and cut down on complications.

Is anyone shocked? Machines are precise. I can sit and watch videos of Jaffa Cakes being made by machine for hours. Robots also have the advantage that they don’t need sleep or several afternoons off to play golf like a human doctor. It’s the future.

In a first-of-its kind clinical trial led by scientists at University College London and the University of Sheffield, researchers divided 338 bladder cancer patients to receive either normal or robotic surgery. All patients had their bladder removed and a section of the bowel taken to make a new bladder.

There’s a chance that there was a third group who had that last stage done by someone who is good at balloon animals.

When they looked at the results they found those who had normal surgery needed 10 days recovery time in hospital, compared to just eight days for the robotically assisted patients.

It makes sense. The cuts are smaller as you don’t need to get a whole hand in there. Robots don’t need to cut a hole so they can see in there too.

These aren’t automated. There’s a surgeon controlling the machine, and it’s a high-tech machine too. It’s not the one where you try to hook a stuffed toy out of the case at the seaside.

Currently, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that open surgery should be the first stop for highly complex surgeries, but the researchers said they hope the study would encourage greater use of robotics.

One day all surgery will all be done by machine, unless it’s a trendy hospital in Hackney that boasts it’s artisanal hand-performed surgery.

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A Quick Look At Beergate

We have all had some regrets after a beer and a curry and often it can leave a mark, but not like it is doing with the Labour Party.

Previously the excuse was that Keir Starmer had some curry and beers during a break with people who were working on the local election, which was allowed. But a memo has come out that shows it was pre-planned.

What? Someone planned to have breaks in a workday? How is that possible? Planning that food will be eaten by people in a day, what is he, Machiavelli?!

If planning a break is criminal then every theatre is going down.

In the plan the order of events looks like nothing else was planned afterwards, so could you call that a break? If you have your break at the end of the day did you day simply end earlier. These are philosophical questions up there with working out how noisy trees are when we’re not there.

There’s quite a difference between that and someone laughing at a fake press briefing about a party or someone sneaking a suitcase full on wine into Downing Street.

At least I hope there is. If your break from work includes a suitcase of wine you may have a problem.

It’s great to see people who have spent ages defending Boris Johnson from the pointlessness of such accusations suddenly do a 180. They were saying things like, “Was it a party? Just because there was a birthday and a birthday cake? If the presence of a birthday cake means it’s a party then the bakery aisle in Asda must be arrested. It’s nothing.”

They have all flipped to, “A curry and beer? The debauchery?!”

It’s another story where everyone has picked their side and they’re making the facts bend to fit their beliefs. It’s heading towards the big question, if fined should Keir resign. Boris has already had a fine and not resigned, so should Keir do any differently? Maybe they should agree go at the same time. But if every there was a man you wouldn’t tryst to “go on the count of three” with you, it’s the PM.

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Would A 50:50 Parliament Fix Sleaze?

There has been more fallout of the political scandal that we should called “Tractorgate” but we can’t because that’s actually just a normal gate.

Oliver Dowden said the Conservatives promise that half of their MPs will be women in the wake of the Neil Parish porn scandal.

Firstly, you can’t promise that because there’s a little thing called an election to worry about. You can have 50:50 representation at the candidate level but if they could control who wins each seat they wouldn’t be worrying about how they come across in the bad headlines of late.

It’s a strange reason to aim for a 50:50 parliament. We should want it to be made up of 50% women and 50% men because you think having more women is a good thing, not because you’re saying men are inherently porn-watching problems. If that’s your claim a 50:50 parliament will still have half of them watching The Hub. They’re going to need a better router.

As a man myself I’d like to point out we aren’t all sat around watching adult material. I am a few paragraphs into the story now and I haven’t looked at porn more than one or twice.

The same sentiment is also forgetting the women of this land who like a nice blue movie. They should be represented in Government too.

This is following the scandal of Neil Parish, the Tory chairman of the Commons environment committee, who claimed he accidentally watched porn while trying to look at tractors. It would have been more believable if he said he was searching for a garden hoe.

Everyone has been getting in on the story. Nadine Dorries, the Culture Secretary, told the BBC: “I always thought that if we get more women, then things will get better.” I’m now searching for a German word that describes someone managing to prove themselves wrong as they say a thing.

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Should We Have The Right To Sleep At Work?

A new survey has found that half of millennials would love to have a nap at work.

That’s the kind of result that could make you worried if you see a millennial is your pilot.

In the poll the 25 to 39-year-olds said an office kip would boost their physical and mental well-being. They’re not wrong. It’s only the fact that we’re stuck in our ways that makes us think it’s a bad idea. The same survey says that only one in ten over-40s like the idea. Why? We’re the age group that needs to snooze more.

For many people there is a stage in the afternoon when you start to flag. If we could take a nap and then return to work with a fresh mind we could get more done.

Instead we plough on with a brain that’s only half working and that’s how ideas like The Masked Singer are created.

Other surveys have shown that younger workers are more likely to be in favour of working from home instead of going back to the office. I think we can work out why. It’s harder for your boss to catch you sleeping when you’re doing it at home.

I know you still have to have Zoom meetings but if you record some video of you sitting at your laptop awake and then use that video as your Zoom backdrop you’re all set.

If you want a job where you can sleep all afternoon why not try working in a call centre? From the amount of time you have to spend on hold I presume they’re getting their forty winks most of the day.

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