Things are much simpler now we can buy tickets online.

Groaning under the chores this morning I throw the clothes into the washing machine and hit the button and turn to the next chore. As I do so I suddenly think of my great-grandmother who lived on a simple little farm with 8 children and had to wash the clothes by hand and with water carried from a nearby stream. Suddenly I stop groaning as I realise how easy I have it. I kick myself in my butt and straighten up and the sun starts shining and the day looks dead easy.

Meta AI builds detailed profiles of children from years of family posts. See https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/family-and-parenting/2026/09/meta-ai-builds-detailed-profiles-of-children-from-years-of-family-posts
Leaving Facebook is like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted but....
I'm so glad I was never on Facebook.

As you slurp your morning coffee pause to remember Alfonso Bialetti and the Italian inventor Luigi de Ponti who gave the Bialetti coffee maker with its famous octagonal shape to humanity in 1933. Thanks to these as-good-as-forgotten benefactors Bialettis jumpstart a large part of the world population each morning. Without them most of the world would be still asleep at midday.

Retired schoolteacher walking down village street. A Rolls Royce approaches, driver (a former pupil) sees teacher, stops, climbs out, effusive greetings. They reminisce for 30 minutes, then teacher says "Smith, you were the laziest in the class and refused to learn. Now you can afford a Rolls Royce". Pupil replies "Yes, Sir, I sell cardboard boxes". Teacher: "Whaat ? You make money out of cardboard boxes ?". "Yes, sir, I buy them for $1 and sell them for $3 and live off the 2% difference".

I had "Climb Everest" on my list of "Things to do before I die" but overheard some climbers mention in tones of contempt that "Everyone's climbed Everest (!) and, anyway, Everest is melting away because of climate change...". It seems that "this month's" challenge in mountaineering circles is Pobeda Peak (7439m) in Kyrgyzstan and, to be up-to-snuff one has to do it without oxygen. So I've deleted Everest and replaced it with Pobeda Peak. Next month, maybe. Now where's Kyrgyzstan ?

Using electronic door opening counters and washbasin tap detectors in a public washroom researchers established that 47% of people leaving the toilet cubicles and exiting the facility don't wash their hands. Remember that 47% when you next grab the faeces-contaminated rubber handrail on an escalator on your way into town (or even the toilet doorknob on the way out).

It's -3°C and the cold was making me miserable. But then I checked the weather in Oymyakon (eastern Siberia) and there it is a warm (for them) -37°C and immediately I feel better. To put things in perspective, last time I looked the temperature there was - are you ready for this ? - -49°C. Oymyakon lives from the tourists who go there to experience the bitter cold and go home to boast about their trip to their friends.

I keep trying to suggest to friends and acquaintances that they migrate from their spying/monetizing social media to Mastodon but a soon as I mention words like Fediverse their eyes glaze over. Can anyone here recommend a 10-line description of Mastodon in "...for Dummies" language. There must be one somewhere.

How to Upgrade your Family
Visiting a long-lost relative I was amazed to see his walls covered with formal portraits of long-gone generals covered with medals, lay people in ceremonial attire wearing orders etc., prelates, and other obviously up-market dignitaries. I had no idea that we had such people in the family. “Oh, no” he said. “I've no idea who these people are. I picked them up over the years at jumble sales, car boot sales, etc. They rather upgrade the place, don't you think ?"

Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure in England. It consists of a ring of vertical stones weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal stones. The whole is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice so it tells the time like a sundial. Twice a year the stones have to be moved to reflect summer and winter time. Presumaby done earlier by rocking the stones with ropes (see https://swiss.social/@evelynefoerster/115355169075854842 ) but now done with modern machinery.

Xenophobia rules ! 1986, UK, discussion about building the GB-FR Channel tunnel. BBC interview in a pub. Ten old men at a table, deep in their beers. Man says "If the tunnel is built rabid French animals and diseases will flood us". Murmurs and grunts of agreement round the table. Next man adds "...and all sorts of foreign ideas will come seeping in...". More murmurs and grunts of agreement.
That vivid idea of a poisonous miasma of foreign ideas seeping through a tunnel has never left me.

Toilet paper hoarding is the most sensitive and earliest and most accurate predictor of an impending war. A scientific survey of toilet paper sales has shown that when people start to buy in large quantities within a short period a war usually follows. Later they buy other essentials (pasta, oil, etc.) but toilet paper comes first. It is not known what causes this prescience.