Thanks for Nothing Expatica, and Goodnight

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Hi. Did a foray, in my search for a soulmate, as neither myself nor Mr/Mrs Snail, has had much luck lately.
This is a recent attempt with Expatica. Maybe my words are too long for the AI ‘inspector’ to understand?

Click on the image to see it correctly in your browser.
The error message reads:
Error: description not submitted. Please edit your description and resubmit for approval

My ‘description’ reads: “Hi, Despite the vagaries of age, I’m fit and well. Fun-loving and a little naughty.”

My answer to Expatica. “On your bike, and take your AI rubbish with you.”

Thanks for the memory

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Yes. Thanks for the memory.
I’ll start this with a quip made of my old blog RFFT in 2016

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.
The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, ‘Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly.’
The other man said, ‘What is the name of the restaurant?’
The first man thought and thought, then finally said, ‘What’s the name of that flower you give to someone you love? You know, the one that’s red and has thorns.’
‘Do you mean a rose?’
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, ‘Rose, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to last night?’

Yes, I agree, the above is somewhat extreme, and in my view demonstrates not simply impaired memory, but preoccupation with something else. IOW He isn’t ‘in the room’.

As someone in their seventy-eighth year. It is obvious to me, that short-term memory problems are a clear and present danger for me. The results are usually not too bad if I’m at home, but are accompanied with foul-mouthed expletives leveled out loud at myself.
I’ve always been strict about placement of items I need, not simply everyday objects but tools, electronic components, and last but not least, code and other scribbling held on digital media.
The ‘help’ from individuals who apparently can’t remember where they took something from, and insist on finding a new ‘home’ for it is deeply unwelcome.
This is a feature I referred to above, one of pre-occupation. Their attention is on problems of their own, and lead to lack of focus on what they are currently doing.

My ‘outages’ are generally simply irritating, thankfully. The classic of writing out a shopping list, only to leave it on the table, are apparently not just a trait of mine, but other folks.
I get to the mart, and realize, I haven’t the list, but inevitably remember what I need in spite of this. Those occasions when I don’t write a list, can frequently end up forgetting something I need, despite the item count being relatively small.

Long term memories can be both a blessing, and a curse. I remember the squalor and discomfort of my early life in post-war Gateshead. But even then, there was beauty. Ringtons Tea merchants had a small fleet of hansom cabs, and some truly beautiful horses. I would walk to school early, just to stand and watch them leave in the morning. Mark Tony, who had an ice cream parlour on the High Street, also had a cart pulled by a lovely big grey, and I would stand and talk to it whilst eating my penny cornet.

Most of the pain came from people that should have known better. Teachers, and parents, and of course, the school bullies. Interestingly, I realize now, just how bad it really was. The truth is simple, everyone was suffering much of the same.

Well, I’ve mentioned now, and the dim distant past, what of the middle? To say too much here, would hurt too many folk. The memories are strong, and looking back, I wouldn’t be a subject for sanctification. Many mistakes were made, and not just by me. There is the gift of lovely children, and the apparent rancor of ex-partners and others.

So I have to accept that, despite circumstances, I can still remember the very good and the bad. In most respects, that hasn’t changed, nor would I want it to. I can’t ‘erase’ my mistakes, preferring to learn from them.

Now a bit of ‘old’ fun from someone really discombobulated.

‘I went to the pictures tomorrow
I took a front seat at the back
A lady she gave me some chocolates
I ate them. and gave her them back.
I fell from the pit to the gallery
And broke a front bone in my back
I called for a taxi, and walked it
And that’s how I never got back.’

The much derided Snot – O tão ridicularizado Ranho

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[English]
‘The boy stood on the burning deck
Picking his nose quite bad.
He rolled bits into little balls
And flicked them at his Dad‘.

Yes, and you’ve probably seen and heard worse,
One reference is in the quite naughty rhyme that has a young man asking permission to progressively touch the body parts of a new girl-friend:

‘Touched her on her nose, that’s my share.
That’s my snotter-box and you can play there‘.

As a kid, both sleeves of my school jacket had mucous trails on them. My mother was disgusted, but had stopped providing me with hankies, because I lost them, and they cost money. (No tissues back then)
A common sight on Gateshead High Street was to see an old man, standing on the kerb of the pavement, holding the top of his nose, and blowing streams of it, into the road.
Having been a City dweller for many years, I never suffered from ‘Hay-fever’, as it was known. Now, here in the foothills of The Serra De Lousa, in Portugal, a large part of the year brings on incessant bouts of nose dripping and requires the purchase of large quantities of paper tissues.
The ‘results’ if examined visually, are usually completely clear. No I can’t see the myriad spores of pollen and other irritants such as fungi etc.

The BBC recently published an article which is quite informative, and has some amusing artwork also. Look here: What your snot can reveal about your health

A Portuguese translation will be done a little later, but the verse, being idiomatic, will be omitted.
Será feita uma tradução para português um pouco mais tarde, mas o verso, por ser idiomático, será omitido.

Bearing Concrete Fruit? – Dando Frutos Concretos?

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Wikipaedia article

É difícil ler sobre a captura bem-sucedida de uma ave “extinta na natureza” como esta bela criatura.
Infelizmente, tentar subscrever a newsletter do Zoomarine foi um erro, o culpado de sempre — uma verificação de segurança “feita na primeira poste” porque a imagem a verificar estava disponível — aparentemente “bloqueada pelo cliente”, quando verifiquei a saída da consola do browser.

Agradeço ao Algarve News a publicação deste artigo, mas a metáfora ‘dar frutos concretos” é, na “minha opinião”, singularmente desadequada.

Atualização a 2 de junho de 2025.
Escrevi ao Algarve News sobre o uso desta metáfora e, aparentemente, o artigo foi traduzido pelo ZooMarine e passado ao Algarve News. Existe um perigo inerente à tradução de “expressões idiomáticas” de uma língua para outra e, por isso, as metáforas devem ser evitadas. Eu próprio as utilizei deliberadamente neste post, como demonstração de como podem ser confusas depois de traduzidas.

[English]
It is heartening to read about the successful hatching of an ‘extinct in the wild’ bird, such as this beautiful creature.
Sadly, trying to subscribe to Zoomarine’s newsletter was a failure, the usual ‘culprit’ – a security check which ‘fell at the first post’ because the image to check wasn’t available – apparently ‘locked by client’, when I checked the browser console output.

Thank you Algarve News for publishing this article, but the very questionable metaphor ‘bearing concrete fruit’ is in ‘my view’, singularly inappropriate.

Update 2nd June 2025.
I wrote to Algarve News regarding the use of this metaphor, and apparently the article was translated by ZooMarine and passed to Algarve News. There is an inherent danger of translating ‘idioms’ from one language to another, and therefore metaphors, should be avoided. I have deliberately used these myself in this post, as a demonstration of how confusing they can be, once translated.

Soccoro Chick Algarve News report

Adding a comment
Wordpress apparently expect readers of my posts to understand the rubbish about ‘blocks’, given when you attempt to make a comment. Simply ignore the inane instruction ‘Type / to choose a block’ and make your comment.

Nature’s Uncanny Beauty

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Alertado pelo meu amigo Martin, tirei estas fotos de um “pilar” solar ontem à noite. Embora aparentemente bem documentado, esta é a primeira vez que vejo este belo fenómeno.
Duas características distintas são a coluna vertebral em si e a cor vermelha. A coluna vertebral é provocada pelo reflexo de cristais de gelo em queda, e a tonalidade vermelha pela “dispersão de Rayleigh”, que se refere à luz que atravessa partículas muito mais pequenas que o comprimento de onda da luz, filtrando assim o azul e o violeta, deixando o vermelho.

Portanto, não é Deus a deixar a Terra enojado com o que Ele próprio criou, embora fosse útil se levasse Putin e Trump consigo ao partir. Boa viagem, para o mau lixo.

[English]
Alerted by my friend Martin, I took these photos of a sun ‘pillar’ yesterday evening.Although apparently well-documented, this is the very first time I have ever seen this beautiful phenomena.
Two distinct features are the column itself, and the red colour. The column is caused by the reflection of falling ice crystals, and the red hue by ‘Rayleigh scattering’, referring to the light passing through particles much smaller than the wavelength of light, thus filtering out the blue and violet leaving red.

So it’s not God leaving the Earth in disgust at what He himself has created, though it would be useful if he took Putin and Trump with him as he left. Good riddance, to bad rubbish.

AI, a latter day ‘Kings New Coat’ or God, Lord, Saviour et al.

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The current furore over chatGPT’s ‘sycophantic’ answers, is in itself, ridiculous. A game of ‘follow my leader’ by many companies, and apparently a large percentage of the population, that expects sensible and suitable results from them doing ‘naff all’, is not unlike praying to a God, for what they want, instead of simply doing it themselves.

True machine learning is a very useful tool. Using shit scraped from existing websites and hosted in an LLM, ends up as an aggregation, in other words, a bag of shit. My view is simple, users of these ‘bots’ get exactly what they deserve, nothing useful whatsoever.

So-called social-media, facebook, ‘X’ plus a long list of other garbage sites that deliberately post news of this, so folks can ‘have their say’, is a simple scam, to promote discord and argument to sell advertising space, so that the weak-minded that follow, are lead like lemmings, into parting with their hard-earned dosh.
Latterly, Google puts a so-called ‘summary’ from AI, at the top of a search page, adding to the crap I have to ignore in front of me.

I advertise nothing. I believe in no ‘god’, and no hype. Frankly, I care not if folks dislike what I post, the truth apparently, can ‘hurt’. The bywords on my ‘compliments slip’ for many years, has been ‘Belief In Divine Intervention Proved Worthless, So I Did This Stuff Myself.”

Turn Our World Into A Garbage Heap – Transformar o nosso mundo num monte de lixo

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The following link indicates the trajectory that is sadly followed by big business and useless politicians.
El siguiente enlace indica la trayectoria que tristemente siguen las grandes empresas y los políticos inútiles.
Right To Repair Europe
Direito de Reparar a Europa

The endless flow of ‘Designed To Fail’ shit from China is my concern. An example being the multi-outlet mains block. Complete with input mains lead, and fitted with a switch.
Generally the casings are made of cheap plastic, and in two parts top and bottom RIVETED TOGETHER.
Attempts to remove the rivets usually destroys the case. There is simply no excuse for this, self-tapping screws could be used. Of course, that would mean folks repairing faults would be possible, thus negating discard of the product and purchase of a new one.
The Certificate of conformity should confirm that the item is repairable using readily available tools.
Claptrap about protective measures ensuring customer safety are nonsense. Anyone messing about with mains power should understand the hazards involved.

Singling out each individual product for legislative action is simply ‘jobs for the boys’. Right to repair should include every item in use by the public.
Chancers that think they know everything, can carry on tinkering at their own risk. Idiots that employ such individuals deserve everything they get.
Sample offer of help. “I can do that, have you got a screwdriver, and a pair of side-cutters?”

O fluxo interminável de merda do tipo “Desenhado para Fracassar” da China é a minha preocupação. Um exemplo é o bloco de alimentação com múltiplas tomadas. Completo com cabo de alimentação de entrada e equipado com um interruptor.
Geralmente, as carcaças são feitas de plástico barato e divididas em duas partes, superior e inferior, REBITADAS JUNTAS.
As tentativas de remover os rebites geralmente destroem a caixa. Simplesmente não há desculpa para isso, podem ser utilizados parafusos auto-atarraxantes. Claro que isto significaria que seria possível reparar as falhas, evitando assim o descarte do produto e a compra de um novo.
O Certificado de conformidade deve confirmar que o artigo pode ser reparado utilizando ferramentas facilmente disponíveis.
As conversas sobre medidas de proteção para garantir a segurança do cliente são um disparate. Qualquer pessoa que mexa com energia elétrica deve compreender os riscos envolvidos.

Selecionar cada produto individual para ação legislativa é simplesmente “trabalho para os rapazes”. O direito de reparação deve incluir todos os artigos em uso pelo público.
Os aventureiros que pensam que sabem tudo podem continuar a tentar por sua conta e risco. Os idiotas que empregam tais indivíduos merecem tudo o que recebem.
Exemplo de oferta de ajuda. “Eu consigo fazer isso. Tem uma chave de fendas e um alicate de corte lateral?”

Exchanging views with a snail – Trocando opiniões com um caracol.

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Bom dia, Sr./Sra. Caracol. Como se sente hoje?

Bom dia, Zé. Bem, eu sinto-me um homem esta manhã, por isso estou à procura de uma parceira atraente, e tu?

Bem, nada muda muito comigo, ainda estou à procura de um parceiro atraente. Começo a sentir-me um pouco solitário.

Sinto muito por isso, Zé. Eu faria isso se pudesse, mas não posso. Desculpe por isso. Infelizmente, o tamanho faz diferença. Quando chegar ao topo desta janela, ficarei de olho em si e informá-lo-ei.

Obrigado por isso. Cuidado com os pássaros, está bem?

Não te preocupes, Zé, eu trato disso e tchau por enquanto.

[English]

Good Morning Mr/Mrs Snail. How do you feel today?

Good Morning Joe. Well I feel like a man this morning, so I’m looking around for an attractive partner, and you?

Well nothing changes much with me, I’m still looking for an attractive partner also. I’m beginning to feel a little lonely.

I’m sorry to hear that Joe. I would, if I could, but I can’t. Sorry about that. Size does make a difference sadly.. Once I get to the top of this window, I’ll keep an eye out for you and let you know.

Thanks for that, watch out for those birds, won’t you.

Don’t worry Joe, I’ll take care, and bye for now.