At first I thought this was about keeping them as pets ('linked to the pet trade', but I think it's actually about using them as pet food: More than 100,000 live exotic cockroaches have been seized from a commercial breeder in New South Wales in a record-breaking bust linked to the pet trade

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Things actually not quite working (or likely to work) as touted:

Tesla's Full Self-Driving is so ready for the future that some of the people who trained it reportedly will not get in the car.

“Model collapse” threatens to kill progress on generative AIs: When AI eats its own product, it gets sick. Back in the day I think this sort of thing was known as photocopy syndrome - copies of copies of copies getting more and more degraded?

Mathematical modelling suggests that it is theoretically possible to reduce risk of common diseases using heritable genome editing. Scientists argue that the technology involves considerable risk and uncertain benefits.

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Not really surprised by this: New study: Most people are not actually worried about trans women in women's bathrooms.

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Wow. 1935 French case in which a man was acquitted of murder because the man he had shot was 'a well-known “witch” who had caused all sorts of harm'.

Nostalgic pop music post....

I've been thinking for some time about pop songs featuring places in London - in the title, which lets out 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion' poncing around various parts to be admired, or 'Lola' down in Old Soho - and having a bit of a struggle (maybe one would do better with Ye Olde Music Hall numbers?) but anyway, came up with these:

This one is perhaps pushing it a bit, as it was actually spoofing 'Rock Island Line', a cover of which was a UK mega-hit for Lonnie Donegan:

Take it away Jim Dale, on the Piccadilly Line!

and to continue the London Underground motif, suburban pastoral from the New Vaudeville Band:

further Tube mentions, this time more urban pastoral, with the Kinks:

Getting down and dirty in Soho with Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich:

And finally, rocking down to Electric Avenue with Eddy Grant:

And surely that would include realising that things were not always the exact same way they are today?

For decades, publishers have swapped out cultural references in new editions of books to appeal to younger readers. Fans aren’t always thrilled.

This seems so weird to me. I grew up on reading books that had lingered for however long on the shelves of the children's dept of the local public library - which were all bound in that standard hard-wearing public library binding so one did not have any sense of shiny newness or otherwise - along with my mother's old books, some of which were works of a yet more previous generation which she had loved in her youth.

And that's before we get into the oddness of the Alice books and the talking animals and so forth.

Do they have no imaginations? Are they only supposed to identify with recognisable experiences?

Read somewhere about (in this case I think actually adult readers) who could not deal with subtext, foreshadowing, and other Litry Devices.

I was a bit beswozzled by this chap, too, though perhaps from a rather different direction. I devoured classic novels as a teenager. In a world of distractions, can I relearn how to read them?.

Sometimes books have their time and it is past. And sometimes they are just not the right thing at that moment.

And I also think of times in my past when I had fairly long commutes and other stretches of otherwise dead time that I could fill up with doing perhaps rather dutiful reading of those things One Ought To Read, and whether this is not only my experience. And then one's life shifts and these spaces go away.

Took my wonky knee to the GP this afternoon - the GP, as they are these days, appeared to be about 12 years old from my advanced perspective, but v competent, did a thorough interrogation and examination, and came to the conclusion that it looks very like a damaged meniscus -

- and guess what?

We treat that with PHYSIO! like what I am doing for other assorted bits of anatomy. They are sending letter to appropriate quarters and no doubt it will take 6 months at least to get an appointment.

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In entirely other news:

An investigation into acts of self-pleasure among parrots and other birds has reached a climax, with the results providing welcome relief for vets and researchers, not to mention the birds themselves.
Bird keepers are often advised to discourage and even punish birds for masturbating, but the study found the activity was more common in the wild than in captivity, with researchers concluding it is part of a bird’s natural behaviour.

'Don't forget to feed pleasure the parrot!!!' (so that nature will not turn sour in its veins.)