My email has been sending out scam messages recently (advertising Amazon). I had to change my password. I hope it is now OK. Probably this was due to me being a former M&S online customer (their site was hacked).

Why don't we let Ukraine into NATO and call Putin's bluff? Stop all this pussyfooting around.

Is anyone still writing decent detective stories? Or is it all science fiction and fantasy and romance and superheroes these days.

It looks as though Netanyahoo and Trump are aiming for a single-state solution, where the Palestinians who stay in Gaza and West Bank become Israel citizens, assuming Hamas can be jailed or thrown out. Big struggle to come though.

Last Tusday my GPs called an ambulance to take me to hospital. After triage took blood tests I was left all night before seeing a docor in the morning, and did not get any sleep. This was before the current doctors' strike. Other people were attempting to sleep on the floor or on hard benches.

There was an interesting clip from the BBC radio archives earlier today which included Sefton Delmer's account of the Reichstag fire, where he happened to arrive at the same time as the German leaders and tagged onto their party.

Trinity House should look something like that I imagine.

The ear coverings are a bit like blinkers on a horse.

I can't find "Hymns of Modern Thought" in the online catalogue. There used to be several copies in the Library. My online version is however still available on the website: www.leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/PHP_redirect...

Since I was involved in cataloguing the LSS Library some years ago. I was hoping to come to this meeting but have not felt well enough to travel in this heat. It's good to see the improvements being made. I would recommend the biography of George Eliot.

Brilliant performance!

This has echoes of Escher.

Besides these 'reflecting' pieces which are treated like billiard balls it is also possible to have 'diffracting' pieces that are treated like point particles. They go right to the board edge. So they hit at the corner of a cell and come out on a different colour. No one has done much with these.

I think that's partly why I have not become a parent.

Surely if you invert the first two columns of the first example you get a 3x4 with 2 of each tile. Or is there an extra condition not stated?

It seems obvious that Trump has been brain-washed or hypnotized by Putin. He always comes back to repeating the Russian propaganda, that Ukraine started the war, despite knowing it was Russia that launched the attack.

This reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones where a dervish challenges him with a display of knife wielding, and he just gets out his gun and shoots him.

I've noticed that the same happes on YouTube, where a new related video (or a different version of it) follows immediately after the first one ends, with hardly a pause. I suppose it's all part of the algorithm which reinforces what ever you have been watching before, and offers more of the same.

You can also have a Slip-Bishop or Slip-Queen which goes to the 1st, 3rd, 5th, ..., cells. Similarly a Skip-piece goes to 2nd, 4th, 6th, ... (also known as Dababbarider, Alfilrider, etc). Also Ski-pieces (my own invention) are Rook, Bishop, Queen that miss out the 1st cell in the ride.

Fear of Ideas! The rule of Ignorance in the USA gets more alarming. Our openness to the free flow of ideas, and their rational evaluation, is one of our strengths in the UK.

Reminds me of this one I took from my flat window in St Leonards a few years ago. Storm Sentinel

I've started watching a few things on iPlayer. What I don't like is the way it automatically ends with a countdown threatening to start a new episode immediately after one has ended. Hardly giving one enough time even to sign out. Is the BBC so desperate to keep us watching?

The panda was introduced by David Parlett who described it as a rook that moves only to squares of opposite colour to that on which it stands. There is a problem by JJSecker in The Problemist 1977. Slip-Rook is my term for the piece.

An overly elaborate compass dial.

Very similar to staicase in Waterstones bookshop Crewe.

The roads in Google world sometimes look as fuzzy as that.

Picture of ‘Vassal State’ by Angus Hanton

There’s a book. Worth a read.👇

I'm finding it painful trying to make sense of the news, now that the crazies have taken over in the US of A.

Here's 42 in chess lettering

Recalled some old work I like: three 44 cell birotary tours with only four acute angles, and and two 48 cell rotary tours without acute angles. To count as tours the boards must be 'connected'.