Name can't be blank

I was, and now I am.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

(Pawel Kuczynski)

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

I am a silly goose, but I am a happy goose.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

Song For The Day: https://t.co/4gNoPGSlKw

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

Gotta be fighting fit if you're fighting the good fight.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

Eden is seeking support for facial feminisation surgery to help with her transition and reduce internal dysphoria. The costs are high & every donation counts. Please consider sharing or contributing to this important cause. You can make a real difference. https://t.co/L35I0Z1lrz

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

OK, but why does nothing have pockets? This seems very badly thought out. Stuff needs a place to be. Poor show, everybody.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

So what have we learned so far this week? Turns out that if you can't grow your own, store bought IS fine.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

A parasite that has been eating people for 3,500 years is about to be wiped off the planet. It infected 3.5 million people in 1986. Last year, it infected 10. And I have not seen it make a single front page.

It is called Guinea worm. You drink contaminated water from a pond in a poor village. A year later, a worm up to three feet long starts coming out of your leg through a burning blister. There is no pill that stops it and no surgery that works. You wrap the worm around a stick and pull it out slowly, over days or weeks, inch by inch. If you rush, the worm breaks inside you and causes a fresh infection.

Guinea worm is ancient. Preserved worms have been pulled out of Egyptian mummies from around 1000 BCE. The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical scroll from 1550 BCE, describes pulling the worm out with a stick. For three and a half thousand years, that was the best humans could do.

Then in 1986, public health workers decided to kill the parasite off. They had no vaccine and no drug. What they had was cheap cloth water filters and a small army of volunteers willing to walk from village to village for decades.

The plan was simple. Give everyone who drinks from a pond a cloth filter to strain out the tiny water fleas that spread the parasite. Then send volunteers walking house to house, year after year, teaching people how to use the filters and keeping anyone with an emerging worm out of the water.

It worked. From 3.5 million cases a year to 10. Four were in Chad, four in Ethiopia, two in South Sudan. The other four countries where the worm used to be common, Angola, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Mali, had zero human cases for the second year in a row. The World Health Organization has already certified 200 countries as Guinea worm free. Six are left.

The last hurdle is dogs. Cameroon had 445 infected animals last year and Chad had 147, so a lot of the remaining work is on animals, not humans. Strays get leashed, and crews treat ponds to kill any remaining worms. The campaign keeps watching until the number hits zero.

When Guinea worm hits zero, it becomes the second human disease ever erased from the planet. The first was smallpox. It will also be the first parasite humans have ever wiped out, and the first disease ever ended without a single dose of medicine. Volunteers walked village to village with cloth filters for 40 years. Now a plague from the age of the pharaohs is about to be gone.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

Well, something has changed, but I'm not going to talk about it (yet). April 2026. Yes, I'm still here. Mysterious, eh?

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

@ZeroSuitDani Ah! Those glasses really suit you, you look great.

[Adam Sharp @AdamCSharp]

MUM: Let’s call him Ian
DAD: I prefer Greg
MUM: Ian
DAD: Greg
MUM: Give me an I! Give me an A! Give me an N! Ian!
DAD: Greg, Greg, Greg! Oi, oi, oi!
MUM: What do we want? Ian! When do we want it? Now!
DAD: Let’s go Greggg! Let’s go! Let’s go Greggg! Let’s go!

(Gregorian chants)

[Jen Handorf @JHandorf]

This is high art and nothing you say can convince me otherwise.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

@scottartrix @focusfronting It'd only be a 40 month war at that speed

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

@XenaWatch @JenLRossman That's incredible.

[James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️ @provisionalidea]

why do we keep doing superfluous rework instead of pushing the boundaries of knowledge

this is from 1972

they chose a tactile standard because they understood you wouldn’t always be able to look at your controls and should be able to tell what you were doing without looking

[Jake Landau (He/Him) 🇨🇦🇵🇸🇻🇪🇺🇦 @JakeLandauTO]

@thedigitalyenta @LawrenceDCodes I think it's important to explicitly say that there's nothing wrong with lying to your abusive partner to protect your safety.

[Name can't be blank @RatPiper]

@ThatEricAlper Planet Caravan - Black Sabbath

[Paul Powlesland @paulpowlesland]

Just returned from a 5 day pilgrimage, walking from London to Canterbury with no money, tent, phone, or much of a plan other than to keep walking until I got there. It was a hard but peaceful & rich experience, through layers of history & miles of exquisitely beautiful nature…

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Here's what the world looked like a century ago - thread 🧵

1. Kids on the streets of England in 1901

[Xavi Ruiz @xruiztru]

Germany: one country, two societies.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Reform supporter speaks to Lewis Goodall @TheNewsAgents

"This country is dead as you know"

Lewis Goodall, "What do you mean?"

"Two years ago my 16 year old granddaughter were woke.. Very woke.. But I've changed her.. She realises.. She's onto it.. She can see what is happening in our country.. We're in the minority now.. We Need to get our country back"

Lewis Goodall, "Back from who?"

"I know this sounds terrible and I'm not racist.. As soon as you say anything negative you're racist"

"You see all these mosques.. And the breeding rate.. They're going to take over"

"Every country that Muslims have gone into, they took over and sharia law is the king"

"If you come to England you should speak English"

Lewis Goodall, "Most British Muslims do speak English"

"I know, I love them, I love the lady that cooks" (there is more than one British muslim chef with a high profile 🤦‍♂️)

"But jihadis just the wrong sort of"

Lewis Goodall, "Most Muslims aren't jihadis"

"Exactly, that is brilliant. They must hate the ones that are.. We need all to unite against these Islamists"

Lewis Goodall, "Surely all the political parties agree with that.. Nobody wants Islamism"

"Why let them in them? Why let the buggers in?"