An excellent Academy Award winning short film in which a woman fails a CAPTCHA test multiple times.
Author Archives: Donncha
Malaysia, no 1 for recycling
it’s fitting that I was listening to the segment at around minute 18:00 of this podcast about recycling when I was putting the rubbish bins out.
Most of the recycled material in Europe ends up in Malaysia, apparently. And it sure isn’t completely recycled.
An EPA report stated that, “Plastics present a serious challenge. Only 28 percent of plastic packaging waste was recycled in 2021, a long way off the 2025 EU target of 50 percent. The majority of Ireland’s plastic packaging waste is being incinerated.”
If a portion of that 28% of plastics is being sent abroad, then our recycling rate must be even worse.
Dorothy Vs Hitler
I’d never heard of Dorothy Thompson, but I’m glad I’m listening to this podcast about her. She’s the, “woman who warned the world”.
In 1939, Time Magazine called Dorothy Thompson a woman who “thinks, talks and sleeps world problems — and scares men half to death.” They weren’t wrong.
Why don’t you know about her? She saw what happened to Palestinians after WWII. She spoke out about it and faced immediate pushback from Zionist organizations and the newspapers that published her opinion pieces.
We need more Dorothys now.
A pancake with lemon and sugar
It’s a simple thing, but it’s delicious. Some say Pancake Tuesday was invented by Big Sugar and Big Lemon to drive sales of their respective products.
Jane Fonda is an Inspiring Woman
“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak, or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
While I have your attention, watch this video, where Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson interview Jane Fonda. It’s a great interview where you’ll learn about her activism and her life.
Don’t blindly follow AI instructions
I’m trying to share a Time Machine volume with another Macbook on my home network but it’s not working. I’ve tried Google, and read through a few Reddit threads, but I haven’t been able to get it to connect. So, I asked Perplexity for help.
It helpfully listed a number of things I could try, but then I saw tip number seven.
When you look up advice online, don’t copy and paste any instructions into your computer without knowing what it does.
What does sudo rm -rf /Volumes/* do? It recursively deletes everything in your /Volumes folder. A little bit destructive.
I told it that was a dangerous command, and it went on to talk about using the mount command to list every mounted volume and then unmounting them with umount.
Me: Tip 7 is not helpful. That would delete all the data in /Volumes/
Perplexity: You’re absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for that dangerous suggestion. Thank you for pointing out this critical error. You are correct that deleting the contents of /Volumes/ would be extremely harmful and could result in data loss. Let me provide a corrected and safer approach.
PS. Otherwise, Perplexity is great. I’ve had great success with it and other AI tools when developing software.
Press F to pay respect
I only recently found out why people sometimes comment “F” on Reddit threads. It comes from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014).
At one point, you walk up to a casket at a funeral and have to press F to pay respects to the fallen soldier.
As others on that Reddit thread said, I thought it had something to do with following a thread to get notifications. Just to prove how out of touch I am, it even has a Wikipedia page where the viral meme is described as iconic, but the authors of that page describe it well:
“Press F to pay respects” is an Internet meme that originated from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, a 2014 first-person shooter in Activision’s Call of Duty franchise. It originated as a set of instructions conveyed during an in-game quick time event at a funeral service. Widely mocked by critics and players due to its forced element of interactivity that was not perceived to be tastefully executed, the phrase would later become a notable Internet meme in its own right. It is sometimes used by Internet commenters to convey solidarity and sympathy, either sarcastic or sincere, in response to unfortunate events.
I never thought I’d be tagging a post with “Call of Duty” again, but here we are in 2025!
Ireland is Red Tonight
Storm Éowyn is battering the country with winds gusting to 130km/h. Hope everyone stays safe tonight. It started raining here around an hour or so ago, and I can hear wind gusting outside from where I sit.
Status Red – Wind warning for Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Waterford
Met Éireann Weather Warning
Storm Éowyn: Gale to storm force southerly winds becoming westerly with extreme, damaging and destructive gusts in excess of 130km/h
Impacts:
• Danger to life
• Extremely dangerous travelling conditions
• Unsafe working conditions
• Disruption and cancellations to transport
• Many fallen trees
• Significant and widespread power outages
• Impacts to communications networks
• Cancellation of event
• Structural damage
• Wave overtopping
• Coastal flooding in low-lying and exposed areasValid: 02:00 Friday 24/01/2025 to 10:00 Friday 24/01/2025
Issued: 17:08 Wednesday 22/01/2025
Updated: 08:28 Thursday 23/01/2025
Dick Van Dyke and Chris Martin in Coldplay’s latest video
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started watching this video, but it is so sweet and lovely, you have to watch it.
Kennedy Quay development on hold?
Today I learned that the development of Kennedy Quay in Cork is on hold because An Bord Pleanála decided to refuse permission to develop Marino Point. To save you a click, it’s because they never had any plans for improving the roads in the area.
An Bord Pleanála decided this week to refuse planning to agricultural and chemical firm Goulding to develop port facilities at Marino Point in Cork Harbour, a decision that was two years overdue.
Despite being located in Cobh, the impact of this decision will be felt most harshly in the city centre, with hopes that these proposed developments at Marino Point would pave the way for the wider regeneration of Cork’s docklands and the construction of hundreds of new homes.
However, ABP refusal has brought ambitious redevelopment plans to a standstill and the construction of more than 1,300 city apartments indefinitely on hold.
That area is ripe for redevelopment. When everyone saw the massive R&H Hall building go down, we were sure it was only a matter of time before badly needed homes were built there.
Here’s a great video showing some of the development around the harbour in the last year. Things are moving slowly, elsewhere.