Get a job, you wastrels!

Once again, we see an example of the British royal family living high off the hog at taxpayer expense.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are under attack for extravagance on Tuesday after the annual publication of the royal accounts showed they have already spent £2.4m ($3m) of public money renovating their new home, Frogmore Cottage—and work on the property is still not complete.
…

Courtiers have moved to defend the spending, saying that a significant portion of the money would have needed to be spent anyway to preserve what is, they argue, an important part of the country’s built heritage.

However, critics dismissed this argument, saying the house, which was previously divided up into five individual staff flats, was only converted at such huge expense into a single home because Harry and Meghan turned their noses up at the prospect of living in Kate and William’s shadow at Kensington Palace.

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Cat filters

I kept seeing news report headlines that a speech by a leading Pakistani politician Shaukat Yousafzai had been passed through a ‘cat filter’. I was not sure what that was and, because I am an old out-of-touch fogey, had the vague impression that he had used a physical filter like a surgical mask designed to catch cat dander to prevent his allergies triggering. It was only when I saw this video that I learned what this cat filter did.

The filter had apparently been turned on by accident by Yousafzai’s social media team when they live-streamed the event on social media. Yousafzai has apparently taken the mistake with good humor, which is nice to hear in these days when some prominent people are so full of their sense of self-importance and so sensitive to their image that they react furiously against any aide who even inadvertently does something that makes them look foolish.

Incidentally, did anyone else feel that the voiceover for that video sounded like it was computer-generated? It had a curiously flat affect.

Trams always win in collisions with cars

In cities where trams share the road with cars, they can be involved in collisions when cars swerve into their lanes. The only option a driver of a tram has to prevent a collision is to brake. But since the tram is so much heavier than a car, the occupants of the tram feel only a slight impact. Both those factors may explain the calm manner in which tram drivers respond to car drivers trying to cut them off.

Puzzling text exchange

I almost never use my cell phone, keeping it largely for emergencies, and I give the number out to just a few people, mostly close friends and family members. Hence I get many fewer junk calls on the cell phone than on my landline. But a few days ago, I received the following text message from a number that I did not recognize but was from my own area code.

The message said, “Dr. Singham, [name] here. What time do you think you’ll be on campus today? Thx”

The [name] was unfamiliar to me so I replied, “I’m confused. What is this about?”

I then got the following, “Just touching base. Then we came upstairs and found you”

This puzzled me even more since I had been at home the whole day and so I replied “I think there must be some mistake. I have not been on campus for some time.”

I did not hear from the person again.

It does not seem like a bot that was doing this. There seemed to be no point served and I have been puzzling over what it was all about.

Any ideas?

The dehumanizing effect of the Everest crowds

This year has brought to light the large number of deaths on Mount Everest and the massive overcrowding taking place there. One would think that the danger involved in this climb would result in people who find themselves together on the peak being solicitous of one another and helping those in distress. Instead it seems to have bred a kind of callousness as people become so determined to get to the top that nothing, even the sight of others in obvious distress, will deter them. This article describes what the crowding has done to people.
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The Spelling Bee is broken

As long time readers know, I am not a fan of the Spelling Bee competition for many reasons. I have also been puzzled by the dominance of people of South Asian ethnicity in this competition. That community seems to be willing to spend enormous amounts of time and money to coach their children to do well in this competition. This year’s competition that ended yesterday resulted in an unprecedented result in which eight students, seven of them with South Asian names, were crowned co-champions because of a sudden rule change. The reason apparently is that the organizers were running out of difficult words.
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