The Hooverville Hexagon's Weekend Edition

 

Things That Bug Us (In a Good Way)

 

I saw this beauty on my Buddleia this week... Who knows its name?

Carl Bovis

 

Carl Bovis, bird photographer extraordinaire, lives in Somerset. Along with the quote above he posted an excellent photo of a Jersey Tiger Moth. I knew I recognised it – Robbie Stamp had one land on his clothing in the London Underground a few years back, I remember. But I couldn't remember the name for it. So I scrolled down.

 

I sort of wished I hadn't.

 

Oh, I got the name, all right. I also saw the reply that went, 'His name is George. George Walter Theodore Propter-Ffellows III to be precise.'

 

Ha, ha, and also, ha. This is exactly why I have forbidden the phrases 'Can you name this?'' and 'What is it called?' from appearing on picture quizzes in the h2g2 Post. Because otherwise The English Joke will rear its repetitious head.

 

As Superfrenchie has remarked, they can't help themselves, the English. If you ask for a bird or insect ID they will be drawn ineluctably to The Joke. You would have to shackle their hands and put duct tape [gaffer tape] over their mouths to prevent it. And then they might explode.

 

As Concerned Foreigners, the half of the Hexagon staff who are not English have decided to give the rest of Youse a break.

 

Today's your chance.

 

Name this bug. We dare you.

 

Featured Insect of the Weekend

 

Paigetheoracle found this on a footbridge in Alness, Scotland.

 

 

Deprecated Expression of the Day

 

Deep dive: Stop it. Just stop it. You aren't diving. Most of you are skimming the surface in a leaky kayak, but you can't help it. You're babbling and you can't stop. A patchwork of factoids you copied from all the other websites does not constitute a Gesamtkunstwerk. My advice: more discriminating reading, less talking. Engage brain before opening mouth.

 

(I have heard or read this phrase a dozen times today. This level of cliché is unprecedented in the annals of modern writing. It can only be matched by a bad skop reciting a late-medieval Viking saga and putting in way too many 'whale-roads'.)

 

Featured Cartoon

 

Bluebottle's Increasingly Fruitless Soap Operetta:

An Unfortunate Curse

 

 

Video of the Day

 

Moorhen with Chick

By SashaQ,

(Our resident

waterbird expert)

 

CU l8ter, , Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

Breaking News (Well, It Broke Us Up) from the Hooverville Hexagon

 

Newsflash: Bollywood is Filming in Exotic Liverpool

 

FWR wrote: Filming a Bollywood movie. New York taxi on a trailer, getting some pics... security guy turns round.

 

Obviously!

 

Editor: Great pics! Has anybody burst into song yet?

 

FWR: No, but there is fake snow covering the cars today! Gotham must have its own climate.

 

I was talking to a colleague (who is actually from Kerala) on the way home yesterday about that very thing. Its a misconception that Bollywood films are all musicals. Rom/coms and action movies have overtaken them in India. He blames Netflix and Prime.

 

Editor: I blame my Afghan friend Namir, who used to take me to those three-hour song-and-dance spectacles when I was in grad school in the 70s.

 

Deprecated Expression of the Day

 

It changed everything. No, dammit, it did not. If whatever you're describing changed the rotational axis of the Earth, say This changed the rotational axis of the Earth. But stop using this maddeningly vacuous cliché. It only alerts us to the fact that we should not waste time on your blog, essay, or Youtube video. It was probably written by generative AI, anyway. Our view of generative AI essays is: AI wrote it. Let AI read it. Cut out the middleman.

 

Featured Beauty

 

These are not Monet's waterlilies. These are Superfrenchie's waterlilies. But they might be related, you know. And they are très beaux.

 

Video of the Day

 

Welcome Clouds (with suitable music)

Note: People on Youtube have really bad taste. Our great video of the punch-drunk Stag Beetle? 12 views. Twelve. All day.

Me pointing a camera at the church steeple and then playing Stairway to Heaven with 3 fingers on a keyboard? Seven hundred views in an hour and a half. I'll never figure it out: that carpenter bee was worth more than a lousy 48 views.

 

CU l8ter, , Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

Notes and Opinions from the Hooverville Hexagon

 

Thought for the Day

 

Your Editor shares from the inbox: I really do get how much you dislike AI! wrote a friend.

 

My reply: I'm not a Luddite – heck, I've been around computers since the early 70s. I'm not anti-tech in any way. I use a lot of tech myself, from computers to hearing aids to those implants I've got in my eyes, and I'm grateful for all of it. Technology has enriched my life enormously.  

 

I'm only against people refusing to recognise a tool for what it is. Letting the tools call the shots is a common failing in some kinds of humans – notably the kind who tend to own the means of production. So I keep urging caution, and h2g2 people keep testing the limitations of AI writing and drawing 'tools'. It's an effort to keep everyone informed and help them make good decisions.

 

It's like what my late father said about CAD (Computer-Aided Design). As a civil engineer, he thought it was a fine tool when used properly. But he felt that budding engineers should learn to do their own drafting first. I agreed with this in spite of my own inability to draw a straight line with a ruler.

 

I once saw my dad design a house for an old farmer out in the country while we were at my grandparents' farm on a visit. He used a #2 pencil, a ruler, a quarter (that's a 10p piece, if you're British), and a piece of shirt cardboard. He signed it on the bottom with his licence number and it was official: my uncle the contractor could help the farmer apply for his house-building loan. And it was a good house.

 

I read yesterday that once the IMAX spare parts run out there will be no more IMAXes anywhere. Somebody lost the plans and nobody knows how to make the projectors anymore. They didn't think to save them when they went digital, you see.

 

I'm beginning to think I understand now why people claim the pyramids and cathedrals must have been built by aliens. Technical knowledge is a terrible thing to lose. So is your entire library – whether it's lost because you wrote on clay and it rained real hard, or because you stored it in the Cloud and somebody turned off the power.

 

Just now, I lost an argument with Google's AI. It went like this:

 

Me: Is a quarter the size of a 10p?

The AI, smugly: No, a US quarter is almost the exact same size as a British 10p coin, not a quarter of it.

 

That's me told. Having a conversation with that thing is like talking to Mr Kimball, the county agent on Green Acres. (Irish people: think Flann O'Brien.) I have family that used to live in upstate New York, and a Mr Kimball conversation tracks for that area, but I hate to see this level of surrealism spreading across the internet. It detracts from the novelty value, you see.

 

End of rant. Go on about your business.

 

Deprecated Expression of the Day

 

A big ask: this expression is deprecated because the Editor does not like it and makes fun of it. It became outdated about thirty minutes after the first guy in PR used it.

 

A 'big ask' is allegedly a bold request. But is it really? Usually, whatever the snake-oil salesperson of the week is asking you to do is inconvenient and/or expensive and/or risky for you but will confer an enormous advantage on the Big Asker, if only they can get enough people to do it for them.

 

Frequently said by politicians under the delusion that we still believe that if we give them our support, they will magically remember this when they get into power and then will go and fix the mess their new colleagues have been busy making. Dream on.

 

IT'S A SIGN

 

Paulh weighs in with a sign he made. The people of Boston are carrying on a grand tradition going back more than 250 years by letting everyone know how they feel about pretensions to tyranny. We appreciate the wildlife angle here.

  

Video of the Day

 

Galaxy Babe covers the gritty waterfront. At Cleethorpes. It gets rough in the city by the Humber. This is high tide.

 

 

hlude sing c-u-c-u, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

h2g2 Strikes Back: More Writers Join the Hexagon

Quote of the Day 

Everything is such a [bleeping] bummer and the only thing that makes me feel better is making things/spaces/art/events that are NICE you know? -        Sarah McAnulty, PhD, Bluesky

Sorry about the censorship. But after a quarter-century with that smegging BBC filther, it's second nature. Anyway, we appreciate the sentiment and are trying to make things and spaces, and maybe even art, that is nice. Sarah is a squid biologist and a Philadelphian who makes very nice things happen in her community. You should visit her at @sarahmackattack.bsky.social.

The Usual Suspects Return

No, the site's not back up yet. But our people are finding us and replying. This just eggs us on-…er, encourages us.

Paigetheoracle suggests that Superfrenchie's Mystery Plant is, in fact, burdock. Yep, that looks like the prickly plant in question. See? If we pool our brains, we might just add up to one big brain that could…I don't know, manage to come up with an idea or two?

Art Installation of the Day

Paige wanted to contribute some High Art, as is his wont. Yankee Pier (on the Cromarty Firth of Scotland) offers uplifting found-art installations in a stunning natural setting, such as this striking juxtaposition. What do you think we should name it?

Eat your heart out, Banksy.

Awix has reported in to argue with me about cinema. He was taken aback when I called him 'sophisticated'. After all, he's a big Jason Statham fan. But for informed opinions about movies – and a cineaste who actually knows the correct meaning of fancy words like diegetic – Awix is our go-to writer.

 So we'll give him the…

Review of the Day

Homer Loan: This is a pun, or play on words. I always have to have them explained. This is about Nolan's Odyssey, so με υγεία. Find it on Awix's blog, which you should bookmark if you like cinema.

Video of the Day

Tavaron da Quirm brings us a fascinating glimpse of a carpenter bee fooling around inside a hibiscus flower. Beautiful. Carpenter bees are big. And look at that fuzzy butt. (We are easily amused.)

kthxbai, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

News from Around the Hexagon

 

We've had rain in Hooverville, lots of it. The tornado siren went off one day but the tornado hit twenty miles down the road. Reports are that France, Austria, and England are cooler, too, although they had less rain – and no tornados. Now that would be news.

Mark Twain famously said that everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it. Personally, your editor here feels that this doesn't mean Mr Twain would be against taking action on the climate change issue. I also recall something he said which would apply equally to today's media and to most of the government in Washington:

 

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

 

We'll let that be our Quote of the Day.

Mystery of the Day

Today's mystery is contributed by Superfrenchie, who lives in Reims. (That's in France, you Americans.) Although she is multilingual and very smart, like all of us in the Hooverville Writers' Hexagon, Superfrenchie is not a botanist. She would like to know if anybody knows what this plant is.

 If you know, please leave a comment below. We promise not to send you any emails.

Video of the Day

Today's video is courtesy of Tavaron da Quirm, who found this very combative European Stag Beetle in her garden not impossibly far from Wiener Neustadt in Austria. (That's Austria, not Australia: if they have a kangaroo, it's in the zoo. We will promote geographic literacy if it kills us.)

Anyway, he looks mad enough to take on the world. I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate us laughing at him.

Netflix Recommendation of the Week: 

Song Sung Blue

If you judge your music by the decibel level and your actors by how 'iconic' they are, go away and stop reading this now. If you understand why somebody might say that Neil Diamond is a good songwriter in the way that Cole Porter and George Gershwin were good songwriters, and if you remember that Hugh Jackman can do a lot more than play an excitable furry, then you might just find this movie a treat, as we did.

 It's a story that demonstrates that music can heal, that you don't have to be rich and famous to live fully, and that. . . well, RL is often way stranger than fiction. Please ignore the critics. They are paid to be jaded. Or else it suits their self-image. This is a moving (and true!) story – and the music is tuneful and well-performed. And if you've got Netflix it comes with the subscription, so enjoy.

CU2morrow, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor

Welcome to the Hooverville Writers' Hexagon

 

Why a hexagon, you ask? Because anyone can have a round table. But not just anyone can say they helped write the epic 30 Hours in Hooverville, available at fine stores - well, not everywhere, but certainly at Lulu.com. 30 Hours in Hooverville: A Novel Experiment

The Writers usually congregate over at the h2g2 Post. But the h2g2 Post is temporarily (we hope) homeless as the h2g2 site is down for an overhaul. This puts our novellas in abeyance. It is summer. We want to talk.

We also want to show everybody our photos and videos. Share our thoughts and flights of fancy. Even rant about this and that, like how silly we think AI is and how the tech people should concentrate their efforts on giving us things they promised, like hoverboards, and leave the writing to those of us with organic brains. (We're not 100% sure we're all human, but we're organic: we checked.)

If you'd like a daily distraction, bookmark us. We'll try to post something every day.

Quote for the Day

Il y a un spectacle plus grand que la mer, c'est le ciel; il y a un spectacle plus grand que le ciel, c'est l'intérieur de l'âme. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Spot of Beauty for the Day

Sheherazade Turban Lily by Tavaron. 

This gorgeousness comes to us from the Austrian hills. 

Video of the Day

Feeding Frenzy Dance by SashaQ. 

Blackheaded Gull chicks are nearly grown and still begging. The beat goes on.

CU l8ter, Dmitri Gheorgheni, Editor