radspeon

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171/365: The Public, West Bromwich
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...but before I get on to that, first and most importantly a big "Thank you!" to reynardo for the postcard! So glad your trip has gone so well. :D

Now, back to today's image. This is "The Public" (yes, just that) in West Bromwich. These days it's a sixth form college, which meant I had to wait until term was over to get a photo. It's a big building -- I had to use my phone's wide angle setting to get it in the frame at all. But it was actually built as an innovative arts centre, including a small theatre and much more besides. Sadly the project was fraught with problems from the start, with large cost overruns and underwhelming interior features -- think Millennium Dome, I suppose. Sandwell Council decided in 2013, after only five years, that they could not afford to keep it open, despite visitor numbers having risen steadily year on year, and it closed later that same year for conversion to educational use. During the brief time it was open, however, it hosted something of considerable interest to me: UK PonyCon 2010! The official UKPC site gives that year's host as Birmingham, but West Bromwich is not Birmingham. That's like calling Salford Manchester or Gateshead Newcastle! I didn't attend myself as I wasn't in the fandom in 2010, but as the con was held in late October that year it was, I think, the first ever Pony convention held after the start of Friendship is Magic!

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169/365: Historic NASCAR Chevrolet, Shelsley Walsh
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I was able to make it to the Shelsley Walsh hillclimb today for the annual Classic Nostalgia meeting. Although it rained a bit in the morning, things dried up thereafter and the day was a good one. A few old F1 cars, including Michael Schumacher's 1992 Benetton; several NASCARs, lots of old sports and rally cars, plus a slew of Colin McRae's old rally cars including the Subaru Impreza that carried him to victory in the 1995 World Rally Championship. My photo today is of one of the NASCARs showing off on a demo run as it leaves the start line. Afraid NASCAR isn't my thing, so beyond "it's a Chevrolet" I couldn't tell you exactly what it is or how old it is or who originally drove it or... anything much, really!

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167/365: Walled Garden, Jubilee Gardens, Bewdley
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I'm cautiously in favour of today's proposals, all the more so as it was a Labour manifesto promise and so it can't be claimed to be being sprung on people. I used to be much iffier about the idea, but the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was the first big vote to set the age at 16 and I was quite impressed by the quality of argument and debate -- on both sides -- I heard from 16/17-year-olds in the run-up to referendum day. Several other countries (eg Austria) already have votes at 16. The Tories' complaint about there being differential ages is silly unless they plan to standardise the age for absolutely everything (driving, sex, adoption, part-time work, the lot) at 18. Which, of course, they don't.

The expansion of acceptable voter ID to include bank cards was something I didn't see coming. I'm actually a bit surprised by this one, since in a reversal of many recent trends it means that not all ID at the polling station will need to be photo ID. As some have already speculated, that opens the door for the potential acceptance of things like NHS cards in the future. Those as old as me can remember when a bank statement was considered good enough for a lot of things, but so few people have paper statements now that I doubt that one's coming back! On a practical note: many, perhaps most bank cards don't bear the holder's full name. Instead of LOGAN BERRY BUNNY they just say L B BUNNY. That will need to be accounted for in guidance to election officials.

Today's photo is from the Walled Garden in Jubilee Gardens, Bewdley's small town park. It's a peaceful, secluded area in which to sit and read sometimes, though at this time of year it can be too hot because of the high sun. (Well, when it's out -- it was mostly overcast and humid today, which wasn't ideal.) Unfortunately this area's very seclusion has made it vulnerable to antisocial behaviour, and so its gates are locked at 4pm, whereas the wider park is open until around 8pm in summer. (It's all managed by the district council, with no rights of way crossing the park, so yep they can do that.) The houses in the background are the back of High Street -- which, as you may remember, in Bewdley isn't the high street in the usual sense. It's called that because it's high above the river.

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165/365: Stanley Baldwin statue, Bewdley
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I fear that today's revelations about 7,000 Afghans being relocated to Britain, but this being covered up for three years by successive governments, make it even more likely that Reform will win the next election. Superinjunctions are enormously unpopular (deservedly so) and immigration has become a major wedge issue in Westminster politics. Both the Tories and Labour will suffer politically for this, all the more so as parts of the (original, non-super) injunction remain in force. There's also the underlying data security issue, in that (it's been at least suggested) personal data of these Afghans was kept in a simple Excel file. That's absurdly bad practice for something as sensitive as this. As I've seen elsewhere, maybe this was a reason Ben Wallace (then Defence Secretary) refused to stand for Tory leader after Boris Johnson's exit. He'd probably have won -- but maybe he didn't want to be PM when this came out.

Embarrassingly, much of the media is not leading on that but on John Torode's "sacking" (actually contract non-renewal) from Masterchef. The BBC says it relates to "an extremely offensive racist term" being used in the workplace -- not specified, but I'm sure we're all thinking of the same word here. Torode says he can't remember the event. Myself? If he did use that word then it's clearly unacceptable -- but I still confess to being pretty uncomfortable with one stupid remark, eight years ago, which other people around for apparently didn't see as malicious, having these consequences. It's not "cancel culture" exactly, but I'm not sure anyone will have gone eight years without saying something out of line, even if not this kind of out of line. I do have to wonder if this is all there is to the Torode story. But we may see.

Then we have the 12-year-old girl prevented from giving a speech on a school's culture day when she wore a Geri Halliwell-style Union Flag dress (in a more school-and-age appropriate design). The school's apology and statement, reported in the Guardian article linked to, is boilerplate waffle and so it's hard to tell what actually happened. If the girl was prevented from talking about British culture purely because it was British then that wasn't fair. I don't think it's analagous to the old "But where's Straight Pride Day?" whines, not really. Now, if there were other factors -- some of which may not be reportable due to privacy, safeguarding etc -- then there may be more to it. The father's Facebook post, also in the article, can be read in various ways. But I'm absolutely certain Reform will make hay with it.

Anyway, talking of British culture, have that rare thing these days -- a relatively new statue of a British politician! Stanley Baldwin, three times Prime Minister, was born in Bewdley in 1867. Various local groups including the Civic Society had wanted a statue in the town centre for decades, but it was only finally unveiled a few years ago. As far as I can tell, it hasn't caused any controversy at all.

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163/365: The Holding Pens, Bewdley
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My cheery historical reading today has been on the ancient Neo-Assyrians of around 700 BC, who -- it turns out -- were absolutely detested for their apparent revelry in cruelty. They not only went in for flaying alive, impalement and much more besides, but unlike other harsh empires they made a point of depicting the atrocities on their monuments as a way of ruling by fear and terror. They called this "calculated frightfulness", and they were hated for this even by other civilisations in that violent age. From what I've gathered, which is inevitably partial (in both senses) this contributed to their downfall, with some other rivalries suspended for a joint assault on the Assyrians.

Meanwhile, back in the modern world, it was a mere 28 °C today. I still had an ice cream, though (orange and dark chocolate flavour) and was very glad to get it. Today's 365 photo comes from Wribbenhall (the part of Bewdley on the eastern bank of the River Severn), very close to the Severn Valley Railway viaduct -- in fact, that's just about visible in the extreme top left. This is what's left of the Holding Pens. Before the railway arrived in the 1860s, there was a butcher's shop close by, and this is where animals were kept before slaughter. The more regular of the holes you can see in the sandstone are artificial, and once held fence posts and the like.

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161/365: Hottest day of the year, outskirts of Bewdley
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As the subject line says, it was indeed 34 °C here today, and Astwood Bank elsewhere in Worcestershire seems to have taken the daily record at 34.7 °C. Looking quickly back, I think the temperature I recorded makes it the third hottest day where I am since I started keeping notice over 20 years ago. Only 18th and 19th July 2022 beat it, and then only by one degree. Certainly it felt unpleasantly hot when I briefly ventured outdoors. Tomorrow looks like being very similar, perhaps only a degree or two cooler at best. That said, it's probably the lack of rain that's bothering people more, especially farmers. You can see pretty well why that is in the photo. That grass is not often this yellow even at the height of summer. It certainly wasn't with all the rain last year!

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159/365: Armoured personnel carrier on back of lorry, Kidderminster
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Another very warm day. I saw this armoured personnel carrier on the back of a lorry in Kidderminster today. If you look carefully, you can see a Ukrainian flag near the front (left) of the vehicle. I'm afraid I know very little about military vehicles, so I can't tell you what model it is or anything. I have absolutely no idea what this thing was doing in Kidderminster at all, let alone this particular road; this area is a boring stretch of offices, commercial warehouses and the like with no obvious military relevance. I suppose it could be being repaired, but why here? You can't see the number plate in the photo, but I did check something: the lorry carrying it has an ordinary UK civilian number plate.

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("You" here is a general term, not aimed at any specific person.)

My feeling is that it is almost certain that you have already seen and liked and/or favourably commented on an image, song or video that has been created at least partially with AI, without knowing it. Unless you're in the industry and/or a specialist, I suspect you are quite a bit less good at picking human from AI than you think you are. I know I am. It's not 2022 any more. As an imperfect analogy, think back a couple of decades to when 320k MP3s first became widespread. Lab tests at the time demonstrated that most people, including self-professed audiophiles, couldn't reliably tell the difference between 320k MP3 music and lossless under remotely normal conditions, however much they'd previously insisted they could. I suspect something similar is going on with AI imagery/sounds. Cheerful, eh?