Notices by Col (kibcol1049@mstdn.social)

I am always surprised when heavily tattooed couples have a baby and it comes out blank.

Tech companies will be given access to NHS data under new plans set out by the government to make Britain a “world leader” in artificial intelligence. The health service’s unrivalled archives of scans, biodata and anonymised patient records will be used to help train AI models in the hope of attracting billions of pounds of investment from American tech firms.

The English and Australian cricket boards have said they will not schedule bilateral series against Afghanistan, says Jonathan Liew in The Guardian. This is a stand against the “deterioration of basic human rights for women” in the Taliban-led country, where women are banned from speaking in public or being seen through windows. Yet they are happy to play Afghanistan in global tournaments, as if the dignity of 20 million Afghan women is “acceptable collateral damage”. What a cop-out.

Liz Truss, has sent the PM a cease and desist letter demanding that he stop saying she “crashed the economy”. Lawyers for her say the negative market reaction to her mini-Budget in 2022 – which was so acute she had to resign just 49 days into her premiership, did not constitute an economic crash because there was no fall in economic output or rise in unemployment. Starmer’s statements, the letter ends, are “defamatory” and “causing continuing damage to our client’s reputation”.

Many are worried about the emerging US “broligarchy”, says former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in Le Monde: the male billionaires around Trump, hoping to extract as much wealth and power as possible. The likes of Musk and Peter Thiel have struck an extraordinarily good deal: for a few hundred million dollars in donations, “mere crumbs of their fortune” – they reaped, within minutes of Trump’s election victory, “hundreds of billions in additional wealth”.

Hollywood has never been kind to older women, says Daisy Jones in Vogue, but this year’s Golden Globes were an exception. There was some “splashy red-carpet dressing” from the likes of Nicole Kidman (57), Viola Davis (59) and make-up-free Pamela Anderson (57), and 5 of the 7 best actress gongs went to women over 40. Demi Moore, picked up her 1st major acting award at the age of 62, ironically for her role in The Substance as a “fading star” who is dropped from her TV slot when she turns 50.

Richard Lacey, a retired breathalyser designer, has been banned from driving after failing a roadside breathalyser test. “I’ve really got nothing to say,” the 70-year-old, who had drunk a bottle of wine and several pints, told Llandrindod Wells magistrates’ court. “I misjudged how much I’d drunk.”

Life is all about perspective, I have a friend who has sex every day, works out in the gym 5 times a week, reads 3 books a month and still complains about how much he hates prison.

One minute you're young and carefree.
The next, you're turning down the stereo in your car, to see better.

I hate autocorrect.
It makes me say things, I didn't Nintendo.

A Nasa spacecraft will today make its closest-ever approach to the sun as it passes a record-breaking 3.8m miles from the solar surface. The Parker probe, on a seven-year mission to investigate space weather, will endure temperatures of up to 930C and will travel at around 430,000mph.

Do you ever think about what life would be like if you didn't overthink everything?
I think about it all the time.

Madeleine Riffaud celebrated her 20th birthday in 1944 by capturing 80 Nazis, says Sam Roberts in The New York Times. The Resistance fighter and 3 comrades ambushed a supply train, they pelted it with grenades and fireworks, trapped the Germans in a tunnel. She had joined France’s resistance 4 years earlier, after a German officer kicked her to the floor. She died last month aged 100. When she was 19, she volunteered for a mission to kill a Nazi soldier in retaliation for a German massacre.

The doctor asked me if anyone in my family suffers from mental Illness.
I said, "No, we all seem to enjoy it."

Assad has been granted asylum in Moscow on ironic – “humanitarian grounds”, says Mark Galeotti in The Spectator. Putin is offering a “rather opulent” life, if you don’t mind joining one of the world’s most rarefied zoos: “Putin’s collection of ex-dictators”, all cooped up in the village of Barvikha, a little way west of Moscow. From the road it’s unremarkable, but as you turn into the side streets you notice the oddly grand dachas behind high walls and “ornate but very functional” metal gates.

Contrary to what is often claimed, a plant-based diet is not always the better one. Because climate-friendly does not necessarily mean environmentally friendly. People who eat a vegetarian or vegan diet can harm the environment more than people who eat meat, a report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) found.

As a mum of young kids, she chose to combine wine and dinner.
It's called winner!

@Tharpa @placebo 😱

Trump’s diet is like something dreamed up by a child, says Gareth Davies in The Daily Telegraph: fast food with “no water”. He doesn’t have breakfast, but if he can’t avoid it then it's bacon and fried eggs. He skips lunch, having 12 cans of Diet Coke and occasional handfuls of Doritos instead. He makes up for it at dinner, which is McDonald’s (2 Big Macs and 2 Filet-O-Fish), KFC, pizza, or a well-done steak. I tried sticking to his diet for a week, and “I’ve never felt more unhealthy”.

Some people are like a software update...
When I see them I think, "Not Now."