Social Media | Steve Woods

Number Ten reacts to Signalgate

30/03/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

The international political news has been dominated in the last week by what has become known as Signalgate.

For a few days earlier this month a group of United States national security leaders used insecure communications services and personal devices to conduct a group chat on the Signal messaging service about imminent military operations against the Houthis in Yemen. Among the chat’s members were Vice President JD Vance, top White House staff, three Cabinet secretaries and the directors of two intelligence agencies.

However, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz erroneously added Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to the group.

Discussions in the group included sharing details of planned airstrikes, including types of aircraft and missiles, as well as launch and attack times. Furthermore, Vice-President JD Vance and Defense Secretary used the group to denigrate allegedly freeloading European allies.

Signalgate has raised concerns inter alia about US national security leaders’ information security practices, what other sensitive information the group might have revealed, whether they were following the Federal Records Act and other related legislation (they were not. Ed.), not to mention accountability within the Trump regime.

So far the British political establishment has either been silent or said very little about Signalgate with one notable exception. Alleged Labour prime minister ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer might not have approached this matter with an open mouth, but that does not mean that Downing Street has been completely silent: one just has to know where to look to find comment.

In this case it’s the Mastodon social media network.

Larry the Downing Street cat is a name not unfamiliar to this blog (posts passim). His latest tongue-in-cheek comment mocks the abject incompetence of the sycophantic MAGA louts the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump.

By so doing, Larry has done what the appeasing Starmer would never do: openly mock Trump’s extreme right wing regime.

Keep up the good work, Larry!
Mermaids, volcanism and… Google Translate!

18/03/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Social Media, Tech

Google Translate, the Mountain View behemoth’s translation service is noted for not being very good on technical terminology, even of the most basic kind. Furthermore, it also struggles with a little thin called context, i.e. the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood.

When Google Translate gets the context wrong and confuses protecting the public with ancient Greek mythological figures, the result is at the very least amusing and at must alarming and downright dangerous, as revealed by the following social media post by Prof. Jenni Barclay of the University of Bristol.

Prof. Barclay’s research is the reduction of risk and prevention of disaster in volcanic settings, with a particular focus both on volcanic processes and the social processes that amplify volcanic risk.

My question for Prof. Barclay is are mermaids a social process?

Mis-translations definitely are!
New street art in Brick Lane E1

16/03/2025 Steve WoodsOddities, Politics, Social Media

A new piece of artwork – a sort of fascist Who’s Who for 2025 – has turned on a wall in Brick Lane in London’s East End according to my social media feed.

Spot the genuine human being – if any.

With the characters all wearing German military uniforms from the Nazi era, the artwork features (from left to right) millionaire, public school-educated man of the people Nigel Paul Farage, South African-born naturalised American businessman (usually shorthand for crook. Ed.) Elon Reeve Musk, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the gangster regime in Russia, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, purveyor of genocide in Gaza and corruption at home and, last but not least, the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, who is now trying to turn the United States economy into his 7th business bankruptcy from the comfort of the Oval Office.
All of them are a waste of food and oxygen and could not form a single decent human even if their best parts were used.
No further comment is necessary.
All day?

06/03/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

A crime against the English language appeared in my social media feed today. It loomed out of a photograph of part of the menu from an unidentified McDonald’s drive through somewhere in the United States.

Dies irae* if you roll up at 1.01 pm?

It centres on the use of the word day whose meaning for this context is provided by Merriam-Webster:

“the time of light between one night and the next”.

When combined with the words all and breakfast one would expect the fare proffered to be provided throughout the hours of daylight between sunrise and sunset; or at the very least to be available between the business’ opening and closing times.
Not “ONLY UNTIL 1PM” as the menu shouts loudly.

The picture seems to have been taken some while ago, as the price of eggs in the USA has rocketed due to avian influenza and Walmart is rationing egg purchases. The egg shortage has not gone unnoticed under the golden arches either: Newsweek reports a customer of a McDonald’s in Fairfield, Connecticut was charged $7.29 per Egg McMuffin and complained about it on social media.

* = Day of wrath (usually divine. Ed.).
Muskrat less popular by the day

25/02/2025 Steve WoodsOddities, Politics, Social Media, Tech

With the inauguration of the disgraced 47th and 45th president of the United States, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, it has been noticed that a certain level of authoritarianism – or even fascism – has entered American politics in The Felon’s desire to Make America Grate Again (or something like that. Ed.).

Of course, The Felon is not implementing his far-right agenda in isolation.

One of his biggest aides and pro-tem best buddy is the fascist known as Elon Reeve Musk, a man of capable of wielding vast wealth but very few brain cells. He is currently leading the charge to destroy US federal government departments in the drive for alleged efficiency; and is messing up badly, on account of which his approval rating in the USA is rapidly declining, but has yet to reach the levels seen in the UK.

The Muskrat is of course best known for being the man who invested in Tesla cars, which was incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. The Muskrat was only involved in the company’s first funding round, i.e. he just provided the money, not the technical expertise.

Partly as a result of The Muskrat’s overt fascist sympathies, The Muskrat’s popularity has been adversely affected.

Tesla car sales have also been affected by The Muskrat’s links to The Felon and his fascist sympathies too. As The Guardian reports, sales of Tesla in Europe in January 2025 were half what they were the previous year.

In addition to this, the Tesla factory on the outskirts of Berlin has been used as a screen for another action by Led By Donkeys (posts passim), whilst showrooms have been targeted by demonstrators and even defaced.

In London, fake Tesla advertisements showing a saluting Muskrat and claiming the vehicles – renamed Swasticars – go from zero to 1939 in 3 seconds have started appearing.

Finally, in other news, The Muskrat, who also hold Canadian citizenship via his mother, is the subject of a federal petition seeking to revoke his citizenship. At the time of writing it has over 237,000 signatures.
A put-down from Linus

17/02/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Linux, Open Source, Politics, Social Media, Tech

Linux was once famously described as Communism by former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

The non-corporate, contributive and sharing nature of free and open source software and operating systems is one aspect that has always made it attractive to your ‘umble scribe, who comes from a family where both branches have been left-leaning for three generations and possibly longer.

Linus Torvalds, the creator and chief developer of the Linux kernel, the heart of the operating system, has a reputation for plain speaking, to put matters politely.

Linus has responded forthrightly – but mostly politely to someone who aimed the phrase “woke Communist propaganda” in his direction via social media recently and set out his political views plainly for all to see, as shown in the following screenshot.

Thank you, Linus, for your humanity, never mind the kernel.
Nanny meets fascism

09/02/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

In 1964, Walt Disney released Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, the man with the worst Cockney accent ever to be recorded for release on celluloid.

One of the film’s biggest song and dance tunes was a catchy little number sung by the two stars and entitled “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“.

According to the song’s Wikipedia page, songwriters the Sherman Brothers have given several conflicting explanations for the word’s origin, in one instance claiming to have coined it themselves, based on their memories of having created double-talk words as children. At another time they are on record as having written the following:

When we were little boys in the mid-1930s, we went to a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains, where we were introduced to a very long word that had been passed down in many variations through many generations of kids. … The word as we first hear it was super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus.

Scroll forward sixty-one years from Mary Poppins on the silver screen and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has become part of the English language.

Furthermore, as my social media timeline this week has revealed, the word itself has been parodied and used as a pun in connection with one person in particular, the disgraced 47th and 45th president of the United States, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, who is currently dealing enthusiastically and vindictively with punishing political opponents, as well as dismantling the federal government as part of his mission to Make America Grate Again (or something like that. Ed.)

Sounds about right!
Daleks preferable to Musk

06/02/2025 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

As part of the background to TV science fiction series Dr Who, which has graced TV screens since 1963, one learns that the planet Skaro, home of the Daleks, suffered a thousand-year war between two societies: the Kaleds and the Thals. During this period, many natives of Skaro became badly mutated by fallout from nuclear weapons and chemical warfare. The Kaled government believed in genetic purity and swore to “exterminate the Thals” for being inferior. Believing his own society was becoming weak and that it was his duty to create a new master race from the ashes of his people, a Kaled scientist named Davros genetically modified several Kaleds into squid-like life-forms he called Daleks, removing such “weaknesses” as mercy and sympathy whilst enhancing other behaviours such as aggression and the survival instinct.

The Daleks are just about the nastiest characters ever to appear on Doctor Who: they are portrayed as violent, merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, completely absent of any emotion other than hate, who demand total conformity to the will of the Dalek with the highest authority. Your ‘umble scribe well remembers cowering behind the settee fifty-two years ago.

However, there are worse creatures in the universe according to your correspondent’s social media timeline.

Goose-step forward fascist man-baby Elon Musk, a man with a now undisputed reputation for gesture politics.

In a poll by British science fiction writer Charlie Stross, the South African-born man-baby and best buddy of the disgraced 47th and 45th president of the United States, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat, one Donald John Trump, is beating the Skaro aliens hands-down over the most evil incarnation of government.

You will obey or you will be exterminated!

Where’s a Tardis when one’s needed?
.
MP escapes Essex for some winter scum

19/01/2025 Steve WoodsPolitics, Security, Social Media

The dishonourable member for Clacton, one Nigel Paul Farage, has a reputation that stretches way back to his days as a member of the European Parliament of raking in his salary and not doing the work that supposedly comes with the job of being an assembly member in a representative democratic institution.

Indeed, as The Guardian noted over six years ago: “His voting record while a member of the influential European parliament fisheries committee is utterly dire – over three years, he turned up to one of 42 meetings“.

He is now treating the gullible burghers of Clacton with the same contempt. He has not so far organised a single surgery for constituents citing spurious “security” concerns, on which he later backtracked.

Furthermore, he seems to spend more time away from the House of Commons than actually in it, which might just be understandable given the frog-faced grifter earns far more money outside than his already generous MP’s salary of £91,346, according to both the press and his register of declared financial interests.

We are all aware too that the western shore of the North Sea can be a dismal place in the heart of winter; and Nigel definitely thinks so too, as he’s just decided to put the whole of the Atlantic between himself and his constituency, as he has posted the photo below on his on-off pal Elon Musk’s apology for a social platform.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Clacton anymore!

Farage is not the only right-wing British politician clogging the streets of Washington DC with their malign presence at the moment. The former MP for West Norfolk, one Mary Elizabeth Truss, whose term of office as prime minister was shorter than the shelf life of a lettuce, is also there, taking a break from sending cease and desist letters to one Keir Rodney Starmer via her lawyers.

Make America Grate Again

The reason for this outflow of talentless right-wing (ex-)politicians? The inauguration in Washington tomorrow of the disgraced 47th president-elect of the United States, the disgraced former 45th president, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat, one Donald John Trump.

The actions of both fake man of the people Farage and Lettuce Liz remind your ‘umble scribe of moths circling a lit candle…

In other news, Farage’s party colleague, the perma-tanned Richard James Sunley Tice, the ‘businessman‘ whose smile would be gleaming as he stole your granny’s savings, is now splitting his time between his original constituency of Boston and Skegness and his new bailiwick of Dubai.
Liability lost in translation

16/01/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

As this blog has pointed out previously (posts passim), it is not unusual for bilingual signage to have text that tells the speakers of one language one thing and those of the other language something completely different.

The bad advice given can cover such varied topics as how far one has to travel to legal liability for loss of or damage to private property.

The latter is the subject of a photograph which appeared in your ‘umble scribe’s social media feed this morning and concerns legal liability at an unknown railway station operated by Trafnidiaeth Cymru, also known as Transport for Wales.

In translation, the Welsh text on the sign reads:

You can leave your bike here for free, but at your own risk

On the other hand, the English text reads:

Bicycles may be left here free of charge but at our risk

Judging by the patina on the sign, it’s been there a long time and somebody has yet to take the railway company to court to determine exactly where legal liability lies given the sign’s bilingual ambiguity.

Your correspondent wonders how many of these confusing signs have been installed across Cymru.

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