This and that

+A few tech issues have crept up on me, like the failure of my hard drive. It's certainly one way of learning more about computers as one trawls through various searches for fixes and explores one's BIOS. Since my laptop was a few years old I guess its time had come. I gather this was to be expected. I'm now using another device which means a slightly limited freedom in what I can post here - until I learn how do things differently.

​+I was going to post a picture of Starmer in camoflage gear posing on manoeuvres in Estonia, with two officers who were both wearing face paint. Starmer looked even more inauthentic with his white face, as if to say to snipers 'Here I am! Shoot me! Starmer follows in the footsteps of Thatcher and Heseltine in revelling in camoflage gear, as if that enhanced their steely qualities. But he needs to do a bit more if he wants a veteran's badge.

+I was in the Hague last week and paid a visit to the wonderful Mauritshuis gallery, where a temporary exhibition called 'Loot' was on, about stolen art. Two designers behind the show      prepared some virtual reality stuff. They are quoted saying 'At one point during our tour of the [museum's] depot, we were taking reference pictures of the space with our phones, and noticed that these masks triggered our phones' facial recognition feature. Each face we looked at would light up our phones' screen with these little digital rectangles as the algorithm searched though our camera roll to see if we knew these people. There was something funny and eerie about it. Like, do you know Frederick the Great? Have you hung out with Beethoven before?' I would add the word 'sinister' to errie and funny. The potential for identity theft, coupled with the oncoming horrors of AI will mean many faces will be electronically 'looted.'