Food tourism in Italy is a growing sector, notwithstanding the fact that Italians have been producing some of the best food in the world for centuries. Producing great food is one thing, making it accessible to visitors is another, and for many years it was not necessarily easy to plan your whole Italian holiday around […]

The post Food Tourism in Italy – A Guide appeared first on Three Monkeys Online Magazine.

The Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig was once among the most popular and most translated writers in the world. English Heritage's widely criticised refusal to commemorate his residence in London provides an entry point into a discussion on the role of the intellectual, Brexit, and the meaning of Europe.

The post Unseasonably Speaking – Stefan Zweig, Brexit and the meaning of Europe appeared first on Three Monkeys Online Magazine.

The Government stepped up its plans to introduce biometric ID cards this morning with the appointment of Alan Bladder, MP as the new Biometric Tsar.

Bladder, no stranger to controversy, immediately issued an urgent statement to encourage people to take their dead skin home with them in the interests of National...

The Department of Social Scrutiny has unveiled the second part of its thorough investigation into your financial circumstances - Your Money and Your Life.

The Minister of Truth and Other Information (MOTOI), Alan Bladder, has announced the Department of Social Scrutiny's new 5 year plan for education, following the acquisition of the Ministry for Indoctrination (mFi) in a back street knife fight in Peckham last week.

MOTOI will now...

Can you tell me a little bit about the DoSS website?

This website incorporates 150 cubic yards of JavaScript sprayed onto a lightweight superstructure of broken promises and Cryptically-Encoded-Hyperbole (CEH) - the new super-smooth non-stick material that lines the Space Shuttle lavatory and the press briefing room at Downing Street.

In the light of the recent security breach at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), The Department of Social Scrutiny (DoSS) has issued the following statement on the subject of Identity Theft (IT) on behalf of The Government. This statement contains vital advice and the answers to a number...

You should read the following information carefully, then completely destroy the computer you are reading it on.

Lest we forget the Minister of the Substandard

Listening to Geoff Hoon on the Today programme this morning, having been sacked from his advisory position in NATO and thrown out of the Labour Party for being caught seeking a 3000 GBP a day job with a lobbying form, he insisted he was "trying to demonstrate my knowledge and experience, background in a...

Our favorite operating system is now changing the default shell (ksh) to enforce not allowing invalid NUL characters in input that will be parsed as parts of the script.

The commit message reads,

List:       openbsd-cvs
Subject:    CVS: cvs.openbsd.org: src
From:       Theo de Raadt <deraadt () cvs ! openbsd ! org>
Date:       2024-09-23 21:18:33

CVSROOT:	/cvs
Module name:	src
Changes by:	deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org	2024/09/23 15:18:33

Modified files:
	bin/ksh        : shf.c 

Log message:
If during parsing lines in the script, ksh finds a NUL byte on the
line, it should abort ("syntax error: NUL byte unexpected").  There
appears to be one piece of software which is misinterpreting guidance
of this, and trying to depend upon embedded NUL.  During research,
every shell we tested has one or more cases where a NUL byte in the
input or inside variable contents will create divergent behaviour from
other shells.  (ie. gets converted to a space, is silently skipped, or
aborts script parsing or later execution).  All the shells are written
in C, and majority of them use C strings for everything, which means
they cannot embed a NUL, so this is not surprising.  It is quite
unbelievable there are people trying to rewrite history on a lark, and
expecting the world to follow alone.

Read more…

Version 0.104 of Game of Trees has been released (and the port updated).

* got 0.104; 2024-10-22
  see git repository history for per-change authorship information
- gotd.conf: document the macro syntax
- tog: prevent a segfault upon unexpected object type in ref list view
- fix pack file creation in the presence of tagged tag objects
- plugged some memory leaks
- fix a crash when unstaging a file which has been removed from disk
- gotwebd: fix out of bounds access while handling the configuration

Long term MSX user and wife of MCWF chairman

read more

A noodly adventure

read more

The FutureDisk crew release an expanded cartridge version of their Sokoban game "A Lone Wolf".

read more

Diogo Patrão's Alley Cat remake for MSX2 will be available for sale soon.

read more

I recently wrote that Facebook should be regulated like a utility, but maybe social media is more like an addictive, harmful drug than a utility. The companies that push social media on us are like drug dealers. Given my libertarian sympathies, adults should generally be free to use the drugs they want, but society should regulate promotion and distribution of the substance and protect children from being preyed upon by the dealers.

The real problem with Facebook's behavior is the revelation of its rampant institutional lying. In the XCheck story, we learned that after Facebook spent more than $130 million to create an Independent Oversight Board to oversee its content-moderation decisions, Facebook executives routinely lied to that board. Facebook told the Oversight Board that XCheck was only used in "a small number of decisions," even though the program had grown to include 5.8 million users in 2020.

"We're not actually doing what we say we do publicly," and the company's actions constitute a "breach of trust," reads a confidential internal review done by Facebook.
We also learned -- shockingly -- that the CEO and COO of the trillion-dollar behemoth are regularly involved in decisions of what posts to remove when such posts are made by certain people who are exempted from Facebook's community guidelines and content-moderation procedures. This is all while Facebook asserted that it applied the same standards to everyone.

Apparently, XCheck was created to mitigate "p.r. fires" or negative media attentions when Facebook takes the wrong action against a high-profile VIP. Even worse than the existence of the XCheck program was Facebook's dishonesty about it, reflecting the state of mind of a company that knew it was doing something wrong -- and still did it anyway.

These revelations strengthen the case that Facebook likely serves increasingly as the censorship arm of the US government, just as it does for other governments around the world.

That last sentence gets to the heart of the matter, and explains why collective action against social media dealers has been so slow: the elite class wants to control our speech, and is happy to use social media dealers to do it.

Facebook is soma.

What is soma in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? In the context of the novel, soma is a recreational drug that several of the main characters take throughout the story. The government in Brave New World strongly encourages individuals to take soma as a way to increase the happiness and complacency of the population. Soma can be taken as a pill or as a powder and can also be released as an aerosol. It is freely available to everyone in the novel. Its inclusion in the text is central to the novel's themes of complacency and resistance in society as well as the theme of escapism.

I'm a big supporter of public education -- I went to public school and university for my entire education. Despite my libertarian leanings, I think taxpayer-funded, locally-directed public education can be a very valuable governmental function. However, I'm not a fan of the grift and graft that engulfs public education, for example the money laundering between teachers' unions and the Democrat party. I'm also not fond of the ideological indoctrination that many of the grifters seek to impose on American children, without the consent of the parents.

So I think it's great that the "get woke, go broke" trend is finally hitting the public education grift infrastructure.

Seventeen NSBA affiliates have cut ties with the NSBA over their coordination with the White House and Department of Justice in casting parental complaints over curricula "domestic terrorism." And as Axios reports, they're taking their checkbooks with them -- accounting for a 40% loss in revenue at the NSBA:

The National School Boards Association has since apologized, but the fallout could be seven figures in annual funding. At least 17 state affiliates have severed ties with the group -- and some are even considering establishing a competitor.

The 17 state affiliates accounted for more than 40% of annual dues paid to NSBA by its state association members in 2019, according to Axios' analysis of documents detailing those contributions.

Officials fear upheaval at the organization -- the nation's leading trade group representing U.S. public schools -- will handicap it just as national debates over school curricula and COVID-19 mitigation measures dominate the political conversation.

Good.

President Eisenhower famously warned America about the risk of the military-industrial complex, but he also foresaw the risk that public policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

(HT: American Experiment and Victory Girls.)

What else needs to be said? Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia gets straight to the point. When there is no fear of God, everything is permitted.

In this new era of stagflation it's important to remember that inflation is caused by expectations as much as by reality. If people and companies expect prices to go up, they'll start charging more for their products and services -- which is inflation. Inflation will only abate when expectations change.

So when we see a chart like this one it's not only that President Biden's policies created inflationary conditions, his policies also created the self-fulfilling expectation of inflation.

Presidents Obama and Trump spent boatloads of borrowed money and ran up the deficit, but something about President Biden (and, of course, the global environment) really spooked people.

Many people I talk to are eager for "prices to get back to normal", but that's not how inflation works. Medora Lee does a good job reminding us of that.

When talking about inflation, it's important to remember that inflation is a rate that measures how fast prices are rising. If the consumer inflation rate drops from its 40-year high of 8.6% in May, prices are still rising - just not as fast.

Consumers won't feel immediate relief even as the inflation rate slows because many of those elevated prices are likely here to stay, said Michael Ashton, managing principal at Enduring Investments in Morristown, NJ.

"The price level has permanently changed," said Ashton. "Until your wages catch up (to inflation), it will continue to hurt."

Even when inflation returns to target 2% levels, prices won't return to "normal" 2019 levels. Prices will continue to grow, but at a slower and more predictable rate.

"Once core prices go up, generally they don't come down," Roussanov said. "In the last 40 to 50 years, we've never seen deflation in core goods. Most durable goods and services don't really come down in price."

And deflation is more dangerous than inflation because it can lead to a total economic collapse. When people believe that their money will buy more in a year than it will now, they stop consuming and just wait.

Additionally, modest, predictable inflation is seen as a sign of a growing economy. It incentivizes people to spend money now rather than waiting, allows wages to increase either in line or above inflation to boost the standard of living and makes it easier for businesses to plan, according to the Federal Reserve and IMF.

Ross Douthat says that this fact is the heart of the abortion issue, and I agree. Our tolerance, acceptance, and promotion of at-will abortion is a shame and humiliation for our generation and civilization. Our descendants will look back on this era with horror and disgust, much like we view slavery and the Holocaust. They will ask, how could any people kill a million of their own children every year? How did they talk themselves into accepting the slaughter of the weakest and most vulnerable among them? How did they dehumanize the unborn, to be exterminated like insect infestations?

As is often the case, the solution to abortion -- and the general mistreatment of children and other vulnerable people -- won't be found in laws or courts. The solution is for each of us to honor the divine spark in each other. To recognize that we are each made in God's image, and each uniquely valuable because of that likeness.

Deuteronomy 27:19 -- 'Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen.'

Exodus 22:22 -- You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.

Psalm 68:5 -- Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.

Self-identified liberals outnumber conservatives among Harvard faculty by 82-1.

More than 80 percent of Harvard faculty respondents characterized their political leanings as "liberal" or "very liberal," according to The Crimson's annual survey of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in April.

A little over 37 percent of faculty respondents identified as "very liberal"-- a nearly 8 percent jump from last year. Only 1 percent of respondents stated they are "conservative," and no respondents identified as "very conservative."

Academics usually explain this uniformity by asserting that liberals are smarter than conservatives and thus better suited for faculty positions in higher education -- particularly in self-identified elite universities. This explanation is relatively simple to assess by considering whether or not these same academics would entertain a similar explanation for a lack of sex or racial diversity in other institutions, such as corporate leadership or government. If one were to claim that "there are more male CEOs because men are smarter than women" that claim would be rightly dismissed.

(HT: Campus Reform and Instapundit.)

Louise Perry writes that she was betrayed by the lies of the sexual revolution. As a father of daughters this is heartbreaking to read.

It's precisely because I'm a feminist that I've changed my mind on sexual liberalism. It's an ideology premised on the false belief that the physical and psychological differences between men and women are trivial, and that any restrictions placed on sexual behavior must therefore have been motivated by malice, stupidity or ignorance.

The problem is the differences aren't trivial. Sexual asymmetry is profoundly important: One half of the population is smaller and weaker than the other half, making it much more vulnerable to violence. This half of the population also carries all of the risks associated with pregnancy. It is also much less interested in enjoying all of the delights now on offer in the post-sexual revolution era. ...

The new sexual culture isn't so much about the liberation of women, as so many feminists would have us believe, but the adaptation of women to the expectations of a familiar character: Don Juan, Casanova, or, more recently, Hugh Hefner.

It's almost as if our ancestors were wiser than we realized.

This is quality.

As John Hinderaker helpfully explains, The "Green Revolution" Is Impossible due to constraints on input materials (among other reasons). Courtesy of Professor Simon Michaux:

The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels, is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.

All this posturing is about control, not the environment or the earth. The long-term future of energy is space-based solar and nuclear.

(HT: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Italy's new prime minister Giorgia Meloni explains why so many people are afraid of her victory. American newspapers categorize her as "far-right", but Italian newspapers call her "center-right". Let's see what she does.

The new Prime Minister of Italy.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/fkKTM8I9Fs

— Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) September 26, 2022

(I posted this to the DnD subreddit also: link.)

The Open Gaming License fiasco with Dungeons & Dragons producer Wizards of the Coast is a symptom of a larger problem: our insane Intellectual Property system that currently protects material for the life of the author plus 70 years. As a comparison, patents generally only protect inventions for 20 years.

The purpose of intellectual property laws is to balance public and private interests. IP law is an agreement between society and creators: the creator is guaranteed an exclusive right to their creation for a period of time, and in exchange the public gets rights to the creation afterwards. It's intended to be a balance of interests, but the balance has gotten completely out of whack thanks to (obviously) lobbying throughout the 20th century by major copyright holders like Disney.

In my opinion, the current copyright term, life of the author plus 70 years, is grossly unfair to the public. I believe that the internet era has demonstrated that creators would be incentivized to create even without such a long period of exclusivity. Think about it: would you create less stuff if your great-grandkids didn't get exclusive rights? I doubt it.

Listen: creators should be able to make money from their work. I don't think copyright should go to zero, but why not bring it in line with patent protection with a 20-year term?

Disney, DnD, and many other creations are part of our generation's cultural legacy, part of a 10,000+ year inheritance that has been handed down through time to our grandparents, our parents, and now us. It's morally wrong for our ancestors and corporations to lock our inheritance away from us.

Copyright protections must be re-balanced to protect both creators and the public. This problem with WotC shouldn't be just about a license, it should be about the IP laws that grant them exclusive rights to creations that are over 50 years old. Our generation should re-open these negotiations and come up with a fair copyright term.

It seems that most conservatives are calling the new Bank Term Funding Program a "bailout" for the rich, but as far as I can tell preventing a contagious bank-run is good for everyone. Shareholders and bondholders of any failed banks are not being guaranteed in anyway, only depositors (i.e., bank customers).

The additional funding will be made available through the creation of a new Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), offering loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging U.S. Treasuries, agency debt and mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral. These assets will be valued at par. The BTFP will be an additional source of liquidity against high-quality securities, eliminating an institution's need to quickly sell those securities in times of stress.

Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are being "resolved" and shareholders are being wiped out. Bondholders will probably get some of their money back, but they won't be made whole. Depositors will be fully protected. Bank runs are caused by depositors panicking and withdrawing their money, so the BTFP should be sufficient to forestall that catastrophe without "bailing out" banks using taxpayer dollars. I guess we'll find out.

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey explain why it's impossible for the United States to default on its debts.

Those who warn of default confuse debt payments with other spending obligations. "A failure on the part of the United States to meet any obligation, whether it's to debt holders, to members of our military or to Social Security recipients, is effectively a default," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January.

That's nonsense. Authorized and even appropriated spending isn't "the public debt." For constitutional purposes, promised benefits from Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements aren't even property, as the Supreme Court held in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), and Congress has as much authority to reduce them as to increase them. When lawmakers were drafting the 14th Amendment, they revised Section 4's language to replace the term "obligations" with "debts." If the Treasury ran out of money, the constitutional obligation to pay bondholders would trump all statutory obligations to spend.

Ms. Yellen also said that "Treasury's systems have all been built to pay all of our bills when they're due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another." But as the Journal has reported, department officials conceded in 2011 that the government's fiscal machinery certainly could prioritize payments to bondholders, and the Federal Reserve prepared for such a contingency. There's no question enough money would be available: The government collects roughly $450 billion a month in tax revenue, more than enough to cover the $55 billion or so in monthly debt service.

We've got plenty of money to make debt payments, but we may need to cut other spending to do it -- which we would be Constitutionally required to do.

(HT: Instapundit.)

I've been wondering for a long time why we haven't seen anything like this: X PRIZE Healthspan.

The XPRIZE Foundation is proud to announce its newest competition, XPRIZE Healthspan. XPRIZE Healthspan is a 7-year, $101 million global competition to revolutionize the way we approach human aging.

Modern medicine focuses on treating symptoms of injury, illness, or disease once they develop. This reactive system extends life, but doesn't proactively improve health, leaving millions grappling with poor quality of life and related economic challenges in their later years.

Success from XPRIZE Healthspan would profoundly change our approach to aging and positively affect quality-of-life and healthcare costs. Working across all sectors, we can democratize health and create a future where aging is full of potential.

The thing is... if I found a way to reverse aging I could probably make more than $101m selling it.

Spline Technologies Corporation announces a major update to SplineTech JavaScript Debugger PRO, an independent standalone Web development tool that enables Web developers to easily edit and debug JavaScript and VBScript inside HTML and AJAX pages, without the need for any add-ons, plugins or changes of their code to handle the debugging process. Client-side JavaScript, JScript and client-side VBScript debugging languages are fully supported for simple and complex HTML, DHTML and AJAX debugging scenarios.

 SplineTech JavaScript Debugger PRO offers following main features to address the most common Web development issues:

 - Advanced form debugging for JavaScript form validation - Programmers to cause order forms to validate in clients' browser windows before they are submitted.
 - JavaScript pop-up debugging
 - Debug DHTML menus and JavaScript menus
 - Debug JavaScript and VBScript events: Debug JavaScript Pop-ups, onclick, onmouseover, onfocus and any
 other event.
 - Debug DHTML behavior
 - Debug client-side JavaScript controls: Debug calendars and any other control
 - Multi-Functional VBScript and JavaScript script editor for HTML and AJAX
 - Full Support for native VBScript and JavaScript syntax (color-coded)
 - Explicit JavaScript runtime error information
 - Execution line highlighting: Display the current line of the code to be executed

 Aside from a vast array of main features, this major update of SplineTech JavaScript Debugger PRO includes these new and unique features:
 - Pause code execution in 3, 5 or more seconds (user adjustable)
 - Reformat unreadable JavaScript and AJAX scripts (turns large one-line AJAX scripts into properly formatted readable multi-line code)
 - Step Through multiple lines of code at once (user adjustable)
 - Go back (and forth) to any step within your code
 - Call Stack enables developers to view all function names taken from function lists (since IE reports most of them as anonymous)
 - View all current variables in a dedicated Current Variables panel

 Without requiring any manual configuration or network configuration, SplineTech JavaScript Debugger PRO runs on the Windows 7/2008/2000/2003/XP and Windows Server 2008 platforms (both x86 and x64) with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or better.

 SplineTech JavaScript Debugger PRO is priced at $90 per single-user license, and is available for purchase at
 http://www.RemoteDebugger.com/javascript_debugger/javascript_debugger.asp

 Immediate online product delivery and full support is included with all Spline Technologies products.

 ABOUT:
 Spline Technologies Corporation is a growing dynamic international software development company, specializing in web development tools, with headquarters in beautiful downtown Montreal, Canada, since 1999.

League tables revealing failing NHS trusts and cancelled pay rises or dismissal for managers who don't turn things around are part of plans to improve the health service.

Keir Starmer's arrival at COP29, with a promise to drastically cut the UK's carbon emissions by 81%, will be a small ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy start to the climate talks.

Headlights illuminate a group of soldiers smoking and drinking steaming cups of coffee on the side of a road in northeastern Ukraine.

A serving Gloucestershire police officer has been arrested on suspicion of a terrorism offence.

A 29-year-old man has been jailed for more than three years for loading illicit TV streaming services onto Amazon Fire Sticks.

Fines of £10,000 for social media bosses who don't remove illegal knife adverts are being considered by the government.

The Princess of Wales will host her Christmas carol concert this year, reflecting on "how much we need each other, especially in the most difficult times of our lives".

Donald Trump has confirmed Elon Musk will co-lead the new department of government efficiency as he named Fox News host and National Guard veteran Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.

The billionaire will partner with biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy to "dismantle" bureaucracy, Trump says.

The announcements should not be a surprise. Donald Trump said he'd do things differently this time. And yet they still prompt a double take.

An "unknown" explosion at factory in Louisville, Kentucky injured 11 people on Tuesday.

Some of Britain's biggest retailers have warned the chancellor that last month's budget will stoke inflation in the economy and spark job losses as tax hikes add nearly £2.5bn to the industry's annual tax bill.

Tweaking the routes of a small number of planes could reduce the warming effect of contrails by half and cost less than €4 per ticket, according to a study.

P&O Ferries spent more than £47m summarily sacking hundreds of seafarers in 2022, helping it cut losses by more than £125m and putting it on a path to profitability, according to accounts due to be published in the coming days.

A union representing Post Office staff has lashed out at proposals that could result in 115 branch closures and significantly more than 1,000 workers losing their jobs, by describing them as "immoral".

The Range, the privately owned general merchandise retailer, is closing in on a deal to snap up a large chunk of Homebase which will save close to 1,500 jobs but raise doubts about at least 1,700 more.

The Post Office has announced that more than a hundred larger crown branches - those owned by the company directly - could close with the possible loss of hundreds of jobs.

Some people in Spain appear to have covered their cars in plastic wrap ahead of another approaching storm.