The Off Topic Topic

[Jacob]

Two centuries old... so 1823. In England.

Doesn't strike me that the age is that significant. More salient if it's rare or hard to clean or something.

... though, as a parent with less than pristine walls I agree with the whole "who thought giving them crayons was a good idea" sentiment.

[Legbiter]

Achievement unlocked: Bronze Age Steppe Herder. 



From the Beeb.

A Dutch man suspected of fathering more than 550 children worldwide through sperm donations has been ordered to stop.

...He was banned from donating to fertility clinics in the Netherlands in 2017 after it emerged he had fathered more than 100 children.

But instead of stopping he carried on donating sperm abroad and online.

..."The point is that this kinship network with hundreds of half-brothers and half-sisters is much too large," a spokesman for the court, Gert-Mark Smelt, said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65429936

Archeogeneticists in 5 millennia or so will wonder at how his Y-chromosome lineage migrated to all four corners of the world so quickly. Multiple PhDs proposing various (hilariously wrong) migratory mechanisms will be written.  

[Josquius]

Beating Elon Musk at his own game the easy way..

Though I do wonder how he was able to do it abroad.

[celedhring]

Well, Springsteen was fucking amazing yesterday. He still levels arenas like it's no one's business at the ripe young age of 73. The setlist was very nice, too, several deep cuts and songs that he doesn't play live that often anymore, besides all of his arena rock classics.

Also, Michelle Obama and Kate Capshaw played the tambourine during "Glory Days" and it was quite magical   

Still love how can you go to his shows, in Europe,and people will be waving American flags.

[mongers]

Well, Springsteen was fucking amazing yesterday. He still levels arenas like it's no one's business at the ripe young age of 73. The setlist was very nice, too, several deep cuts and songs that he doesn't play live that often anymore, besides all of his arena rock classics.

Also, Michelle Obama and Kate Capshaw played the tambourine during "Glory Days" and it was quite magical   

Still love how can you go to his shows, in Europe,and people will be waving American flags.

Tres

edit::

And  they made a visit to your local restaurant as well:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65435879

Barack Obama and friends surprise Barcelona restaurant
Published
1 hour ago

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Former US President Barack Obama, singer Bruce Springsteen and film director Steven Spielberg with the staff at Amar's restaurant in Barcelona

A former president, a world-famous Hollywood director and a rock music icon walk into a restaurant.

It sounds like the setup to a joke, but staff at Amar restaurant in Barcelona witnessed just that on Thursday night.

Employees were left in shock when 44th US president Barack Obama, director Steven Spielberg and musician Bruce Springsteen walked in unannounced.

Chef Rafa Zafra said Amar had been suggested by Spanish-American celebrity restaurateur José Andrés.

"They came recommended by José Andrés, who has a very close relationship with Obama," Mr Zafra told Spanish radio.

Mr Zafra said José Andrés told him that the booking was important. It was then that he realised that Mr Obama and his wife Michelle were in the city to attend a Springsteen concert, as was Spielberg.

Staff member Pol Perello uploaded a photo of them posing with wait staff and chefs to Instagram with the comment: "The pleasure this job brings you!"

[Admiral Yi]

My local bank has a chalkboard on which they write a daily trivia question.

Today's question was what musician's real name is Peter Newell Osterberg.

[Sheilbh]

First Snooker World Champion from continental Europe! Luca Brecel who's Belgian won - he has never previously won a game at the Crucible and is now champion. Incredible story - and it's been a very good tournament (Just Stop Oil aside ).

[HVC]

First Snooker World Champion from continental Europe! Luca Brecel who's Belgian won - he has never previously won a game at the Crucible and is now champion. Incredible story - and it's been a very good tournament (Just Stop Oil aside ).

You're probably doing something wrong when make piers look like the good guy

[Jacob]

Has the Good News International deaths in Kenya made it to your local news? It's a pretty wild story, with more than a hundred dead (110 bodies found so far) - including many children - from starvation, strangulation, and other methods.

[Razgovory]

That doesn't sound like good news.

[mongers]

Has the Good News International deaths in Kenya made it to your local news? It's a pretty wild story, with more than a hundred dead (110 bodies found so far) - including many children - from starvation, strangulation, and other methods.

Yes it's been extensively covered by Al Jazeera English channel, I think the main reporter has been
 excellent Catherine Choi (sp?)

[Syt]

The ORF law, which governs the remit of the state broadcaster, its funding etc. has been changed again.

15 or so years ago, the law was changed to heavily curtail its online presence. The online newspapers were considering ORF to be unfair competition, because it could offer its content "for free" (i.e. paid for by the - mandatory - license fee). As a result, the government forced ORF to remove commentary options on its online news articles, set a 7 day limit for how long video/audio of its productions could be online, forced it to cut its (very popular and knowledgeable) section on digital tech and news.

Now, with a reform of the funding, the law changes again. ORF can leave its videos online indefinitely. However, its written online news articles (which, tbh, are one of the best, reliable sources for straight, unbiased news reporting in Austria) are limited to 300 or so per week (it currently publishes ca. 900-1000 per week, many of them in its local news subsections).

The newspapers insist this is still too many written words, and protest by publishing blank front pages this morning (across the spectrum from the more leftish Standard to the conservative Presse and the populist tabloids of heute, Kronenzeitung and Österreich).

Now, the main problem is that the online news media in Austria have been struggling and failing to get a viable business model going, including the "quality media" (i.e. Presse and Standard, whose quality has declined a lot in recent years in trying to get profitable). Currently it's a mix of burying the site in ads (Standard, Krone etc., usually offering a "Pur" option where you pay a monthly fee to hide most ads), or just going full paywall (Presse, Kurier - Presse monthly subscription is €14, Kurier €22.90).

Offered the option between freely accessible news and paywall/ad hell, sure a lot of people will opt for the latter. But at the same time the privately owned (but dependent on Austrian government's extraordinary discretionary ad spending) fail to make their content attractive/interesting enough to draw eyeballs willing to pay.

[Barrister]

That all sounds very familiar Syt.

My dad, who was a newspaper guy his entire career, always resented the CBC.  They got a whole bunch of government funding to compete with private broadcasters.

Skip to the modern day - CBC still gets a huge amount of subsidy, although candidly now so do private newspapers (though not to the same scale).  CBC now does a very credible online news business, all without ads.  If I'm posting about a news story about Canada on Languish I'll probably use a CBC link, just because there's no paywall of annoying ads. 

I don't know what the answer is.  It's proven to be very difficult to run a private news organization in 2023 at least on a local or regional (even Canadian) level.  Outfits like the NYT are able to do it but can leverage being an almost global brand.  But heaven help us if the answer is having to rely on government sponsored news like ORF or CBC.

[Josquius]

Sounds like the media in small countries face the same sort of issue local news faces in the UK, only on a national scale.

Austria needs a channel 4.

[Barrister]

My local bank has a chalkboard on which they write a daily trivia question.

Today's question was what musician's real name is Peter Newell Osterberg.

I saw this on Facebook.

Iggy Pop.