Picture of Judge Victoria McCloud with her grey Maine Coon cat

I have made a presumption here that judge Victoria McCloud has been pictured with a Maine Coon cat because the cat does look very much like a Maine Coon cat with that square muzzle and those lynx-tipped ears. The coat is shaggy and medium-long and therefore the cat ticks the boxes in terms of appearance for being a Maine Coon cat.

Picture: Richard Pohle.

The reason why I have stolen this picture from the Internet - and I hope the photographer doesn't mind (the photographer is, I've discovered, Richard Pohle of The Times) - is because this lady is in the news. 

She is the only transgender judge in Britain and she has resigned because, in her words, 

"I have reached the conclusion that in 2024 the national situation and present judicial framework is no longer such that it is possible in a dignified way to be both 'trans' and a salaried, fairly prominent judge in the UK."

I can't add to that. Except to say that the transgender discussion is all over the news media these days. I've recently written about JK Rowling who states that the notorious cat and person killer, Scarlet Blake, should be referred to as a man in the reports about her regarding her trial and imprisonment for 24 years without parole.

JK Rowling is a gender-critical feminist and she feels that writing about Scarlet Blake as a woman denigrates to a certain extent women in general. She wants the news media to refer to her as a man because she's a man who transgendered to a woman. Click on the link below to read about this:

JK Rowling says that Scarlet Blake the cat-killing trans murderer isn't a woman.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

The domestic cat is NOT weird as stupid newspaper journalists claim

Online newspaper journalists have a tendency to claim that the domestic cat is "weird". It just plain stupid. Domestic cats behave as they instinctively have evolved to behave. They behave differently to humans and from a cat's perspective, no doubt humans behave weirdly. 

In fact human behaviour is far more weird than cat behaviour. Look at what humans are doing to the planet at the moment? They are destroying the planet upon which they rely for sustenance and for all their needs. If that isn't weird I don't know what is.

But a website called Your Tango says that cats are weird and they list 15 facts to prove it. So what are these facts? I will touch on a few of them to illustrate my argument.

Perspiration

The first one they list is that "cats sweat through their paws". What is weird about that?! That's perfectly normal. Cats can't sweat through their bodies because they have a coat which is highly functional. And they keep their coat clean all by themselves without having to go into the shower! Far more practical than human behaviour. 

Also when they groom themselves it helps to cool them through the same scientific process which makes sweating effective: the latent heat of evaporation.

Tasting sweetness

And they add that "cats can't taste anything sweet". So what? Cats are obligate carnivores. They've evolved to eat meat. They don't need to be able to taste sweetness. 

Look, if humans couldn't take anything sweet just like cats there would be much less human obesity. Around 40% of Americans are obese. It is a similar percentage UK residents. This obesity is nearly always caused by overeating and eating the wrong foods including foods high in carbohydrate i.e. sugars. Sugars and salt are addictive to humans.

Ironically, the only reason why domestic cats can be obese (and there are too many obese domestic cats thanks to poor human caregiving) is because of the high carbohydrate content in the unnatural dry cat food that they are given so often. Humans have passed on their obesity to the domestic cat.

Grooming exaggeration

Then Your Tango begins to get things wrong. They add that "cats spend up to half their lives grooming themselves". Wrong! Completely wrong! Cats are fastidious groomers but they don't spend half their lives grooming themselves.

Sleeping exaggeration

And they say that cats spend 70% of their lives sleeping. This is incorrect as well because cats, particularly full-time indoor cats, spend a lot of their time perhaps even more than 70% sometimes of their lives not sleeping but snoozing. That's because they've nothing to do thanks to full-time indoor living and a sterile environment. They are not sleeping in the proper sense. We know this because they leap into action at the slightest activity near them.

DNA

The journalist also adds that domestic cats shed 95.6% of their DNA with tigers. That's probably correct and there is also nothing weird about it at all. It's what you would expect because thanks to millions of years of evolution both the tiger and the domestic cat stem from the same ancient cat-like animal. 

Their evolutionary paths split millions of years ago but their ancient origins are the same. Nothing strange about that. It is all nature, evolution and scientific.

I won't bother to go on because I'm wasting my time. I've made my point. Online journalists need to be more careful and stop using click bait words and tactics. I've seen too much of it; too much stupidity and carelessness.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Secret Service agents bitten by President Biden's dog 24 times!

NEWS AND COMMENT: it is astonishing to read in The Times today that President Biden's dog, Commander, bit Secret Service agents 24 times in all before the dog was removed from the White House. The number of bites may be higher if all staff are included.

Commander. Photo believed to be in the public domain.

The Times reports that, "For members of the Secret Service guarding President Biden, the most crucial weapon to protect themselves was not a gun but a bag of dog biscuits!"

The newspaper reports that one agent required six stitches to his hand after Biden's two year old German shepherd, Commander, bit him.

After that encounter, the agent was given a "care package" for "safety purposes". The care package included pepper spray, a muzzle and dog treats!

The world now knows that Commander was banished from the White House last October to an undisclosed location after reports of 11 similar encounters.

But now newly released documents reveal that he bit agents at least 24 times.

The documented reports cover the period October 2022-July 2023 and they only cover members of the Secret Service rather than all of President Biden's staff. This indicates that the true number of aggressively/defensive encounters could be far higher.

There are apparently 400 pages of documents. They show that many of the agents required treatment after incidents at various locations including at the White House, Camp David in Maryland and at the President's family home in Delaware.

One unnamed agent wrote in June 2023 that, "the recent dog bites have challenged us to adjust our operational tactics when Commander is present. Please give lots of room."

Colleagues were warned that they must be creative "to ensure our own personal safety."

The Bidens were apparently heartbroken according to a source by the frequency of the incidents. The source said that:

"They've apologised to those who have been bitten, taken flowers to some. They feel awful. Commander was overprotective. Even though they tried and tried to work on it, they had to let him go [and] live with other members of their family."

It didn't work out. And it is put down to the fact that the German Shepherd is a particularly protective dog of his pack i.e. the Biden family and he was living in a situation where there were lots of strangers coming and going which instinctively brought forth his protective nature. 

It also clear to me that these attacks were not hugely violent but nips which broke the skin as indicated above. Commander isn't naturally aggressive but simply instinctively defending his pack.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Scarlet Blake alleged murderer and cat killer claims she killed and tortured to please partner

NEWS AND COMMENT/OPINION: This is the continuing story of Scarlet Blake. It is a muddled story and it is unfolding in court at the moment in the UK. You may have read that she has been accused or it appears that she copied the behaviour of Luka Magnotta about which a documentary was made and aired on Netflix called Don't F***with Cats. 

Click this link for an earlier report about Blake before she attended court for her criminal trial.

And click this link to read my argument that her former partner Ashlynn Bell probably should be charged with aiding and abetting Blake's murder - she has been found guilty of murder in a British criminal court.

Scarlet Blake. Image in the public domain.

Luka Magnotta is notorious for suffocating two kittens in a plastic bag and then going on to kill a man and he uploaded the videos to the Internet. I have the video of the suffocation of the cats but I can't present all of it because that would be against current Internet rules. But if you want to see the beginning of it then please click this link.

Video of alleged cat torturer and man murderer walking the streets looking for a victim.

Inspired by docuseries?

We are not sure if Blake was inspired by this docuseries but her behaviour indicates that it was. But there are complications. She claimed that she is transgender and she told her parents that she was transgender when she was 12 and her parents rejected her and her feelings. This appears to have had a severely detrimental effect on her mental health and development.

My interpretation of the story, is that she hates herself and wants to be destroyed. She is obsessed with blood and destruction. She claimed that she self harms. She is a very troubled woman/man.

Transgender

As mentioned, she claims that she is transgender and has been taking testosterone blockers and has taken these drugs for a long time. We don't know whether she is a woman transgendering to be a man or vice versa. On the basis that she is taking testosterone blockers it indicates that she is a man transgendering to be a woman. If that is correct, this individual is a young man but the news media does not say this.

Did it to please partner?

And with respect to the cat that she tortured and allegedly put into a blender, she claimed that she did this to please her then lover or partner who apparently she met on a forum. Her partner's name is Ashlynn Bell who lives in Colorado, US. It is seems that her relationship with Bell was on the Internet through this forum but I don't know.

She claims that she dissected and put a neighbour's cat in a blender to please Bell. She feels guilty about it. She claims that she did not want to kill the cat but carried out this gruesome killing to put on a show for her partner/lover as it was her birthday or it was Valentine's Day.

She claims it was to make Bell happy because it was something that Bell wanted her to do. She pretended to enjoy it. The whole thing was choreographed she says.

She was asked in court whether she was concerned or aware of the cat's suffering and her response apparently, according to the report, that she felt "awful and guilty". She ended the cat's suffering by stabbing the animal in the heart.

She is also accused of killing a man who ultimately drowned apparently. It's not clear whether she hit him over the head and he subsequently fell into a river or a canal. But on social media there are claims that she strangled him but that would be impossible with the strength that she has or claims to have because she claimed that she has the strength of a unfit woman.

So it appears that she hit the man over the head and then pushed him into this canal or river. He drowned. She said that she was unable to refuse Bell's requests to harm others.

The court also heard that her name was previously Alice Wang. She claims that she suffers from dissociative identity disorder. She says that she has different parts of herself and feels like there are various people in her head. 

She lost her sex drive because of the drug she is taking and in response to a question about her sex life at court, she said the following: "Giving myself up to someone who would take pleasure in destroying me was something I was, I don't know, drawn to".

She involved herself in role-play with Bell in which she was strangled. This indicates that Bell was in the UK at the time? Confused.

Comment

This is an update, and as you can see it's a bit vague because the reporting is not that great in my opinion. But my conclusion about Blake is that she is a very emotionally disturbed woman or man I don't know which; obsessed with perhaps her own death and the killing and death of others. It seems that she wants to die and has very low self esteem. That is my personal assessment on what I read in reports and I'm a layperson not a psychiatrist.

Source of information: various but mainly Mail Online.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

AI-generated scientific paper illustration of a rat with a giant erect penis shocks the scientific community

This is a warning about the dangers of AI-generated images and documents. It concerns a research paper published by a leading scientific journal online about the "signalling pathway of sperm stem cells" which was illustrated with a picture of a rat with a giant erect penis and four giant testicles with gobbledygook labelling.

Was this a deliberate plan by the people who submitted the research report to undermine the scientific journals online with the intention to shed light on the lack of oversight by these journals?

AI-generated scientific paper illustration of a rat with a giant erect penis shocks the scientific community. The words of the labelling is rubbish. The words are made-up. Image: The Telegraph.

This AI cock up of a scientific paper created by an artificial intelligence computer got past the journal's peer reviewers and other checks that they are meant to be running and ended up being published. It's been ridiculed of course and it's become a news media story of interest because it provides us with a warning about the potential deficiencies of artificial intelligence.

It also tells us about how artificial intelligence can deceive people because sometimes these images are very good despite being fake. You end up not being sure what is real and what is unreal which in the hands of unscrupulous people can be dangerous.

The research paper was supposedly written by researchers at the Honghui Hospital in China. It's been removed from the journal and the administrators have issued an apology and confirmed that they are working to "correct the record".

Scientists have expressed their concern as to how it was published in the first place. Adrian Liston, Professor of pathology at Cambridge University and editor of the journal Immunology and Cell Biology said: "Generative AI is very good at making up things that sound like they come from a human being. It doesn't check whether those things are correct."

The research paper has been likened to an actor pretending to be a doctor and then delivering medical advice to a patient. Other scientists have described the illustrations as 'shameful' and 'devastating' while some said that they weren't sure "whether to laugh or cry".

The illustrations have been described as "objectively funny" but "[they] have no place in science journals."

The story is a warning to anybody researching online. What is troubling for me is that this fakery has occurred on a science journal. Science is meant to be objective and accurate. It's meant to be as precise and truthful as best as it can be. 

And therefore this AI-generated craziness has infiltrated a bastion of science. You might expect it to occur in less precise and scientific environments but it hasn't and this is troublesome.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Emma Raducanu laughs as a ginger tabby cat interrupts the commencement of her Abu Dhabi Open match

I am able to combine Emma Raducanu, who I have written about recently when I predicted that she'd retire from professional tennis within 2 years and a cat! It's hard to do that in a video but we have one here from the Daily Motion website. It is no big deal. 

The only query I have is how did a cat get onto the tennis court at a professional tournament at the commencement of play when there are players on court and spectators in the stands?

Does this indicate that there are lots of stray cats in Abu Dhabi or that the management of the tournament is a little slack? Or perhaps it was just bad luck. Maybe it was good luck as it made Raducanu laugh. 

I have seen her look sad too often after losing matches in the early round of recent tournaments. She has not progressed beyond round two so far this year; her first campaign after her three operations - two on her wrists and one on her foot. She has returned to the UK to practice. I think she's returned to also discuss her future as a pro tennis player. It is not working out. She is way off the mark to beat the top 10 players.

This is an embedded video which means that it may stop working as I have no control over its presence on this website.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Impending roof collapse forces animal shelter to clear the building

NEWS AND VIEWS: Cape Breton Shelter was forced to clear the building of dogs, cats and one rabbit over fears that the roof might collapse under the weight of heavy snow that fell during a snowstorm that lasted four days.

The Cape Breton SPCA in Sydney, N.S., as it appeared on Tuesday. The organization says there are concerns the roof could collapse under the weight of snow. (Sarah Lyon - image credit)

When Sarah Lyon was interviewed by CBC's Main Street Cape Breton in an interview on Wednesday, she said that staff were "prepping the animals and getting them ready for evacuation."

At the time the shelter had 45 animals including 19 dogs, both adults and puppies, and 25 cats and one rabbit.

The snow storm lasted four days as mentioned and staff stayed with the animals as they heard creaking sounds coming from the roof while it bowed under the weight of the snow.

Sarah Lyon said that the ceiling was starting to look structurally unreliable.

The shelter animals will be placed in other shelters until it safe to return. In the meantime a contractor went to the shelter to remove snow and ice from the roof. The building is 47 years old. Comment: that isn't very old but I guess they had to evacuate the building out of an abundance of caution. Questions should be asked about the original construction.

The report by CBC implies that the building will need work in order to test the structural integrity and potential repair. Comment: repairs might be expensive which is the kind of expense that an animal shelter does not want.

Further comment: is the first time that I have encountered a news story about an animal shelter where the roof might collapse under the weight of snow. I've been reading stories about shelters for the last 15 years so this is a novel situation which is why I am reporting it.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

UK police community support officer orders man to clean up his dog's urine

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is another very strange indeed ridiculous story because the behaviour of the police community support officer is extraordinary and ridiculous.

Steve Schuurman, 56, an NHS worker, was walking his dog in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England (information provided for non-UK citizens) last week. His dog cocked her leg to relieve herself which is what we expect dogs to do.

Dog urinating in typical style! This is not the dog in the story. Image: The Telegraph.

In the UK, the modern policies to pick up dog faeces which makes a lot of sense and people do it all the time these days. But there are no rules about trying to scrub off urine from surfaces. That's entirely impractical and ridiculous.

However, a police community support officer became aggressive towards Steve Schuurman, according to him. He claims that the Dorset police community officer told him to "clear [up] your F*****g dog p**s".

He challenged her at which point the officer threatened to have him arrested if he didn't move on.

At that time, Dorset Police and Bournemouth Council had a stall and a van in the town centre as part of a day of action and after several high-profile crimes in the area.

Steve Schuurman said he would have cleaned up his dog's urine but didn't know how to do it.

He reported the incident to the Dorset Police complaints department. They are looking into it! Steve Schuurman said that the woman "got really aggressive" and "was waving her hands around and putting her hands on her hips, saying it was disgusting."

He asked for an apology. Apparently there were two female police community officers as I understand it. On asking for the apology they told him that he would be arrested if he didn't move on.

As I said, it is extraordinary. And an abuse of police powers. For those living abroad, a "police community support officer" is a kind of lesser police officer with shorter training but they wear a uniform and have certain rights/powers but not those of police officers.

Further comment: obviously these officers were asking for the impossible and therefore they were acting stupidly. And of course if we are to be totally fair, nobody ever asks cat owners to clear up the cat's urine when they pee in public places. Not that it's practical or feasible but it's another point worth making about the idiocy of the behaviour of these two police officers.

There is one last point to make and that is this: of course, when an animal urinates in a public place it is not nice. It is possibly unacceptable but it happens all over Great Britain and other countries all the time. It'll be up to the government of any country to create a law which forbids it. But the police officers can't make up the rules as they go along.

Such a law would be very difficult to pass through Parliament in the UK and in any other legislature in any other country. In fact it would be impossible today but one day it may happen. It really might happen one day.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Putting domestic cats into a monkey enclosure to kill the rats backfires

Kunming Zoo is located in the Yunnan Province of China. In that zoo they have a monkey enclosure. And in the monkey enclosure there were rats which migrated to the enclosure after a food storage issue.

Because hundreds of rats got into the enclosure, the zookeepers decided to introduce domestic cats into the enclosure to get rid of the rats. In all 10 cats ended up in the enclosure.

Woman tries to jump into monkey enclose to save the cats placed in it to clear the rats but the monkey's molested the cats. Image by MikeB based on images from AsiaWire

A problem developed in that the monkeys started to abuse the cats with apparently some mounting the cats for sex and others pulling out whiskers.

A visitor to the zoo became distressed at what she saw and decided to jump into the enclosure to save the cats from abuse.

There is a picture on the Internet of a woman being grabbed as she tries to jump into the enclosure.

The upshot is that the cats were removed from the enclosure. The woman is okay and the cats are been removed except for 2 to deal with any remaining rodents.

Apparently there are no issues concerning cats and monkeys. They get on well we are told at the moment.

The zoo management "expressed their thanks to the public for their worries about the animal's welfare and emphasised their commitment to looking back on the things they did wrong and will consider public opinions." The quote comes from the Daily Star.

It appears that the remaining two cats will be rehoused in safer places by the China Small Animal Protection Association.

That's the story. The headline is rather more dramatic and it states, "Woman jumps in monkey enclosure to save cats being molested and mounted by animals".

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Frail, elderly cat survives encounter with the world's second most venomous snake

NEWS AND VIEWS - BRISBANE: The experts have decided that this was an Eastern Brown snake. It is described as having venom which is rated as the second most toxic of all snake venoms in the world. An untreated Eastern Brown snake bite can kill a person in under an hour and it is arguably the quickest killing venom in the world. An expert said that no other snake in the world has killed people so quickly and so regularly.

Frail, elderly cat survives encounter with the world's second most venomous snake. Picture: Rebecca Daynes.

And this snake was found wrapped around the neck of a frail and elderly cat by the cat's owner, Rebecca Daynes. It seems the stake came out of the bush as her home backs onto the kind of habitat where this snake lives.

She says that she was terrified which is entirely understandable and that she removed the snake from her cat describing that moment as "probably the most stupid thing I could have done". It is reported that she used salad tongs to remove the snake. 😊

The remarkable aspect of the story is that the snake didn't bite the cat or Rebecca Daynes. In fact, the story says that the snake was injured but survived the encounter as did the cat.

The snake wriggled off back into the bushland and Rebecca Daynes hopes that it will survive.

It's not known why the snake decided to wrap itself around her cat's neck but it is suggested that it was to defend itself.

RELATED: Do cats have the quickest reflexes of all land-based mammals?

A while ago I did some research on reaction times of snakes and cats. Cats have faster reaction times than snakes which is remarkable considering that snakes have a very fast reaction times. It's partly why cats can kill snakes and avoid a bite. When a snake lunges forward to bite a cat, the cat simply rears backwards and outpaces the snake's movements.

RELATED:  Domestic cat reaction times are scarily fast compared to ours and most other animals (comparison table).

An then the cat will bat the snake around the head and ultimately kill the snake. That is how the diminutive sand cat operates to kill snakes as prey animals.

This snake was injured so it looks as though it was attacked by the cat in defence. Of course domestic cats do get bitten by snakes from time to time perhaps partly because the domestic cat is out of practice with dealing with them.

The last point to make is that Craig and Jackie Adams who ran a Facebook group about snake and spider safety awareness said that "Snake identification isn't always straightforward and many factors can make identification from a photo difficult". This implies that they are not sure that they snake was an Eastern Brown snake on my interpretation.

After the encounter, Rebecca Daynes said that her cat tried to go out again and hasn't learned any lessons! It looks as though she doesn't need to learn any lessons because she is well able to deal with snakes despite being frail and old.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Anxiety plagues Emma Raducanu rather than physical health problems

I believe that Emma Raducanu's retirement from tournaments because of all too frequent mystery physical illnesses are sometimes perhaps often caused by anxiety.

I've lost count of the number of times that Emma Raducanu has retired from a tennis match. Before she had her three operations - each wrist and a foot - and after her spectacular US Open win, she dropped out of about four tournaments because of so-called physical illnesses. I remember her dropping out of Wimbledon (before she won the US Open) because she was breathless.

Compared to other professional tennis players, female and male, she has more health ailments than almost any of them if not all of them. It is quite noticeable. The underlying cause needs to be addressed.

Update 6th Feb 2024: Raducanu has said that she is not too concerned about her tournament results this year. This seems to me to be an attempt to take the heat off herself. This in turn supports my thought that she is an anxious player and it often affects the match outcome.

Emma Raducanu feeling sick during her second round match at the Australian Open. Image: Sky News.

And she has had various muscular ailments forcing retirement. The world knows about them because they have been incredibly well covered by the news media.

Her most recent health problem has also been well-publicised. She was playing in the Australian Open as all tennis fans know. She was playing a second round match against a woman who was ranked 94. 

Emma Raducanu probably felt before the match that she should beat her. Okay, Emma is ranked below this lady because of a long absence but her potential is much higher than her current ranking and therefore her expectations would have been to progress well beyond the second round of this tournament. The public would expect and hope the same. This points to expectation pressures.

She was beaten because she said that she felt sick in the third set. As I recall, it was in the second game of the third set when she was 30-0 up when she said that she felt like vomiting. She felt sick and vomit was coming up into her mouth she said.

After that she called a doctor and there was a pause in play and she carried on. She was treated at the courtside within the rules of tennis.

Anxiety causing physical symptoms

Quick research indicates to me that anxiety can cause:

• nausea as experienced by Emma Raducanu in the Australian open recently
• breathlessness as experienced by her at Wimbledon
• muscular tension. Raducanu has experienced muscle problems in her abdomen for example.

These are good examples of how anxiety can cause physical symptoms as I state.

Are these always physical ailments?

But bearing in mind all these physical ailments, I personally cannot believe that they are actually physical ailments. I believe that perhaps some of them are but some of them are due to anxiety. Professional tennis at this level is incredibly competitive.

There are enormous expectations on Emma Raducanu because she is the only qualifier, male or female, to win a Grand Slam tournament. Perhaps she had hoped that the long break for her recovery from her operations would release her from those expectations. But they haven't.

The demands of these expectations are, I believe, making her anxious to the point where she feels sick. And they are also having other effects on her mental health to the point, where I believe she finds an excuse to retire from a match that she believes she might lose. 

She is not doing this consciously. It's a subconscious process converting anxiety, a mental health problem, into a physical problem.

Nobody has discussed this at all perhaps out of politeness. And I want to be very respectful of this woman. If I am correct it's entirely understandable. Recently, another tennis player, Caroline Garcia, discussed her acute anxiety with the news media. I am sure that it's a problem or at least a potential issue with all tennis players both male and female.

It just depends how you cope with it and that's why the top players have sports psychologists. I know that the top Italian player, Jannik Sinner, has a sports psychologist who has done some really good work with him and his game has improved to the point where he is expected to win a Grand Slam.

So, in conclusion, I believe that Emma Raducanu's retirement from tournaments because of mystery illnesses, occurring far too often, are underpinned or are caused by anxiety.

Note: I am neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist. I am just applying common sense and expressing an opinion

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

You have a one-in-three chance of being scammed when buying from Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace accounts for 73% of all purchase fraud cases at one British bank. TSB, a British bank, claims that more than one third of adverts on Facebook Marketplace are scams and consumers should avoid making purchases on that website.

TSB Bank added that Facebook Marketplace accounted for 73% of all purchase fraud cases and was the biggest driver of fraud by volume, as reported by The Times today Thursday, January 18, 2024.

Comment: I am flabbergasted because this is a very high percentage. I've just visited Facebook Marketplace to have a look at it for the first time and it looks perfectly normal with lots of free items by the way. Scams?

TSB Bank also calculated that £60 million ($76m) might have been lost by customers from all the banks using Marketplace in 2023. This would equate to £160,000 scammed every day on this Facebook platform.

The fraud spokesman at TSB, Matt Hepburn said: 

"You wouldn't shop at a supermarket if a third of the items were stale or counterfeit, so the same should apply to Facebook Marketplace, where you have a one-in-three chance of being scammed when paying online. Social media companies must act on their commitments under the Online Fraud Charter by urgently clearing up their platforms. Removing scam adverts is a good first test."

A TSB fraud team tested Facebook Marketplace. They contacted the sellers and concluded that 34% of the listings were fraudulent.

These allegedly fraudulent sellers used tactics such as:

• directing the buyer to fake websites and
• refusing to allow viewings of an item in person and
• demanding fees in advance.

Warning: nobody under any circumstances should send money in advance unless you are absolutely sure that the business or person you are dealing with is genuinely bona fide i.e. is behaving scrupulously and with integrity.

Example: a Ninja Air Fryer for sale on Facebook Marketplace was listed as brand-new at £65. The genuine retail price of the item is £249. Buyers were redirected to a fake website when they clicked on the link to purchase this product.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Google is getting worse as search loses the battle against spam?

The news, today, in The Times, is that "Google gets worse as search loses the battle against spam". This story not only refers to Google, the search engine that dominates the Internet with 90% of the market, but other search engines such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. The story is that there are online websites selling products which are dramatically over-optimised to beat the search engines so that they are listed on page one and high up in order to attract purchasers.

Image: MikeB

Google does not like to prioritise in their search engine listings websites which use "black hat" principles i.e. jammed full of keywords and using spamming techniques. Google wants to list on the first page of their search engine the best websites with the best content and the best products et cetera. It genuinely wants to find the best. Nearly everyone who uses the Internet and who uses Google click on websites listed on the first page i.e. 10 websites. And of those the first three get nearly all the clicks.

That's why unscrupulous people do all they can to be listed on page one and at the top of page one. But it appears that Google's algorithm is being tricked by these websites to be listed highly. 👎

The Times reports that a study concluded that "the top results were low quality reviews, filled with paid for links".

And therefore, if it's true, customers looking for products and using Google to find are not being served up with the best websites. And on a slightly separate but linked topic, we have to add in the fact that a lot of retailers pay for their website to be listed at the very top, in the first four places. 

These are websites which have not been ranked by Google but which have paid for the right to be listed in the top four. They might not be the best websites for the best products but people will click on them. I nearly always avoid the top four listings on Google for that reason.

This study on which this report is based, is titled: "Is Google getting worse". The report from that study says that "search engines seem to lose the cat-and-mouse game that is SEO [search engine optimisations] spam".

The researchers are based at the Leipzig University and the Bauhaus-University Weimar and the Centre for Scalable Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. They added that Artificial Intelligence would make matters worse by reducing the cost of producing spam content.

Barry Adams, a search expert at Polemic Digital, said: "Google continues to improve its systems to combat spam but it is a constant arms race where generative AI now means spammers appear to be gaining the upper hand. Having said that there is no current alternative to web search engines for finding accurate, reliable information online."

The search engines mentioned were approached for comment by The Times.

Our findings suggest that all search engines have significant problems with highly optimized (affiliate) content—more than is representative for the entire web according to a baseline retrieval system on the ClueWeb22. - Quote from the study

Full title of the study: Is Google Getting Worse? A Longitudinal Investigation of SEO Spam in Search Engines. Link: bevendorff_2024a.pdf (webis.de).

Advice: Don't ignore page 2 and 3 of search engine results. There is some better stuff on those pages sometimes.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Narcissistic veterinarian with an inferiority complex over his small phallus stabbed his girlfriend

Hodgkinson and Fioletti photograph I believe that this image is in the public domain at this time.

Alberto Fioletti, 31, had, it was claimed in his criminal trial, developed a narcissistic personality disorder. His defence barrister, as I understand it, claimed that he slept with many women to "validate" himself". And he had an inferiority complex because of his "small penis".

His state of mind contributed, it seems, to his behaviour when he stabbed his girlfriend six times in the chest and once in the back with a kitchen knife.

The murder occurred on May 5 last year after an argument. His then girlfriend, Stephanie Hodgkinson, 34, a veterinary nurse, kicked Fioletti out of her flat in Bournemouth, Dorset.

The pair had met on a dating app and then started their relationship in October 2022.

They were both employed in veterinary practices. After the argument Fioletti told Hodgkinson: "I hope you're happy with yourself. You're gonna have a death on your hands now."

Fioletti admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He denied murder but was found guilty of murder after a three-week trial.

Stephanie Hodgkinson's mother collected her granddaughter shortly before Stephanie was murdered. The grandmother, Sally Lloyd, said that, "I am tortured by the fact that as we played in the park, Stephanie's life was taken".

Fioletti's defence KC (King's Counsel - a top barrister) said that Fioletti had a severe personality disorder which affected his culpability and that he had been on suicide watch when on remand waiting for his trial.

The judge, Susan Evans KC, sentenced him to life with a minimum term of 15 years. She said to him that, "The damage you have done is immeasurable."

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Veterinary fees in the UK are often unjustifiably variable and inflated

NEWS AND COMMENT/OPINION: The Times reports today that veterinary fees in the UK have become a minefield because they unjustifiably vary tremendously from region to region, from place to place and in general they have increased many would argue unreasonably. 

The changes have come about because of the purchase of a very large number of independently owned and operated veterinary clinics by big corporations including equity funds which are managed by accountants; businessmen who's objective is to extract as much money as possible from these businesses whereas in the past the primary objective by an independent veterinarian was to provide a good service.

The Times reports that dog and cat owners are facing inexplicable variations in prices with some chains charging seven times more than others for the same procedure.

A new business/website has commenced which recently looked into this to try and help pet owners navigate the minefield. It was started by Susie Samuel and it is called VetHelpDirect.com. They have asked a large number of veterinary clinics and businesses owning and controlling these clinics to provide information about their pricing.

Three of the big six chains said that they would eventually provide all the information requested. However, the private-equity owned IVC Evidensia declined to provide the information. 

This business operates more than 1000 practices in the UK. They said that the "price is a single metric that does not reflect the quality of care or customer experience provided by our team." Comment: most people would see their response as trying to find a reason to not provide the information because it embarrasses them.

Here are some examples:

• The cost of a consultations varies between £20 and £120 in the UK.
• The cost of castrating a medium-sized dog varies between £100 and £760.
• Prescription charges vary between £12 and £31.
• The cheapest area for consultations is Dumfries and Galloway.
• The highest prices are found in West London.
• The most expensive prescription charge is in Canterbury.
• The least expensive prescription charges in Plymouth.
• Within the Birmingham post code, the cost of castrating a 35 kg dog varies between £155 and £500.
• The variations on the above in Torquay are between £40 and £120.
• As a whole, on average, the cost of a consultation in the UK is £47 but in Southampton it is nearer £60.

Veterinarians have been accused of failing to be transparent about their prices. It makes it difficult for customers to compare which is the major reason why, I suspect, that Susie Samuel has started her comparison price website mentioned above.

Her website provides visitors with the means to compare veterinary surgeries under a five-star review system. They found that the higher prices were not linked to better services. The 20 most expensive practices had an average rating of 4.4 out of five while the cheapest 20 has an average rating of 4.5.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Heartbroken man searches for his cats after earthquake in Japan

The video says it all. He is a cat lover and he wants his cats back. It is all that he cares about. He has lost his work but that's relatively unimportant because he's far more concerned about the living and life than the works that he created. He feeds cats that he hopes survived. He feeds all the cats lost in the quake, if they can find the food.

The 7.6 magnitude quake struck western Japan's Noto peninsula on the afternoon of New Year's Day, flattening homes, triggering a tsunami and cutting off remote communities.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

27-year-old woman adopted a rescue cat of the same age and becomes a record holder

The Guardian reports on an interesting story for me. I think that this story is actually unique in the world of cat adoption from a rescue centre. Vicki Green adopted Flossie from the well-known UK cat rescue charity Cats Protection in the summer of 2023. She adopted Flossie on the passing of her childhood cat, Honeybun, with whom she was very closely connected.

Vicki wanted to adopt another cat and had the opportunity when she finally purchased her own flat in London last summer. She wanted to adopt an older cat and a rescue cat. She achieved her objectives.

She was told by Cats Protection that Flossie was a 27-year-old tortoiseshell. She thought that the charity was mistaken and meant 17, but no, they meant 27 which is an extraordinary age for a domestic cat and particularly a rescue cat at a charity.

Flossie. Screenshot

At the time Vicki Green was 27 herself and so the cat world had that highly unusual situation where the adopter, a 27-year-old young woman, was the same age as the rescue cat that she was adopting.

Vicki thought that Flossie wouldn't live more than a few months but she wanted to give Flossie a good end-of-life experience which I think is very commendable. Some people like to do that and they play a valuable role in the cat rescue scene. It is altruistic. It is a very nice thing to do and there are in fact benefits for both the cat and the adopter although you have to deal with end-of-life issues which are tricky and distressing.

Flossie and Vicki. Screenshot.

Anyway, Flossie is still living and alert and very much alive. She likes to play and has her little routines like all domestic cats do. She's obviously a full-time indoor cat living in an apartment which probably suits her down to the ground at her age. She likes to go out onto the balcony which Vicki describes as Flossie's sanctuary.

She likes to jump onto Vicki's chest in the evening when she goes to bed and then she moves down to her lap and then finally settles down at her feet for the night. She wakes up at 6 o'clock looking for her breakfast with a loud and confident meow.

This is so typical of a domestic cat and one that is much younger than Flossie. Vicki bought her some stairs to get up onto the sofa but Flossie doesn't need them. And she says that "She doesn't look old at all."

"She never turns her nose up at the chance of a good meal," Vicki says.

 

She might make 30 and that would be very, very exceptional. It's nice to report on this unique story. Vicki believes that she owns the world's oldest living cat. She is absolutely correct because Flossie is recognised by Guinness World Records which has confirmed that she is the world's oldest living cat at the moment.

Details: The oldest cat living is Flossie (UK, b. 29 December 1995) who is 26 years and 316 days old, as verified in Orpington, UK, on 10 November 2022.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Britain's worst hoarder with bodies of up to four mummified cats on shelves wrapped in newspaper

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is certainly one of Britain's worst hoarding cases but I would doubt that it is the worst because there are some truly horrendous examples of hoarding. And the hoarding of inanimate objects spills over to the hoarding of animate objects such as domestic cats which is why you find both junk and the bodies of cats in a home occupied by a hoarder.

RELATED: Gabapentin substantially improves adoption rate of shelter cats rescued from a hoarding environment.

Image: Blanchards/Triangle News.

I just written an article about cat hoarding and the mental illness behind it which may interest people and if so you can click on this link. It's quite an in depth article. We have to be compassionate about cat hoarders although through their hoarding they often harm cats and sometimes kill them through neglect so they need to be criticised as well as treated for their mental illness.

In this case a 70-year-old man lived in a property in Lancashire, UK, alone. The home was so stuffed full of junk that the people commissioned to clean it had to enter the upstairs through a ladder set against an upstairs window. There was no way in to that part of the house as I understand it.

It is reported that there were at least four mummified, pet cats wrapped in newspaper placed on shelves in the property.

The hoarding got so bad that he couldn't get rid of the cats he had killed through neglect or perhaps they died of old age, we don't know. It's likely that this man neglected the cats to the point where they were harmed and possibly died unnecessarily.

One of the great problems with hoarders - and I'm including cat hoarding here - is they don't look at things objectively. They don't have the financial means necessary to take a cat to a veterinarian, and they are sometimes unaware of the illnesses suffered by cats. They are blinkered because of their mental health problems.

It took a team of cleaners 45 hours to make some headway in cleaning the property.

In my view, the cause of hoarding of all kinds is anxiety and at worst fear. Hoarding reassures the anxious person. I've argued that everyone has 'the hoarding gene' as I've put it but almost everyone manages to control it. Most people like to possess objects. They enjoy buying objects. They don't like to get rid of them. Over the years they acquire objects and the home becomes fuller.

Occasionally we read about high profile celebrities having a mass clear out of high quality, expensive possessions. These people are - in an elegant and high profile way - hoarders of expensive possessions. Normally hoarding relates to inanimate possessions but as mentioned it can spill over to animals and interestingly we never hear about dog hoarding but cats are a prime target for hoarding perhaps because they are perceived as being independent and able to cope by themselves which they can't by the way.

And there is historically a looser connection between domestic cats and owners. Put it this way, it is easier to park a cat in a corner of a home and forget about them as a cat hoarder might do but much harder to do the same with a dog. A dog is more in your face.

And there are lots of cats that need rescuing. There are lots of stray cats, feral cats and unwanted cats from people who allow their cats to breed. We have to put some blame on the people who create unwanted cats which facilitates the activities of a cat hoarder.

RELATED: Cat hoarding – full discussion.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Elon Musk places free speech above financial profit

Elon musk is brave. As you know he owns Twitter X. He is a great supporter of free speech. He says that unless you can accept someone you don't like saying something you don't like you don't have free speech. 

He is obviously anti-the cancel culture movement. And thank God for that. Indeed, free speech is more important than perhaps anything else and is protected by the American constitution. All democracies should have free speech but the woke movement and the cancel culture movement and, in this instance, financial profit curtailed it.

Elon Musk. Image credit see base of article.

But Elon Musk has reinstated a couple of Twitter users who were banned. One is Tommy Robinson who was suspended in 2018 and the other is Katie Hopkins who was banned in 2020. They both thanked him on Twitter and Musk explained their reinstatement in a post: "Why are their account handles on this platform? Free speech is allowed, provided laws are not broken."

He has continued to restore controversial accounts. But this is despite the fact that there was an exodus of advertisers from his platform because of...free speech leading to controversial tweets. This tells me that he places free speech above financial profit. Twitter X is struggling to make a profit.

Tom Robertson is a very controversial figure. He founded the English Defence League which is a far-right group. He stepped down from that in 2013. And Hopkins is also very controversial. She is also a right winger perhaps an extreme right-winger and very outspoken. She has compared migrants to cockroaches and in 2017 said on the platform that "we need a final solution" after the bombings in Manchester.

Perhaps Musk believes that in due course, over time, advertisers on Twitter X will come back as they realise that free speech is so important. It is very shortsighted of advertisers and very stereotypical of them to withhold their business from a platform that advocates free speech.

Image credit: By (U.S. Air Force photo by Trevor cokley) - https://www.dvidshub.net/image/7132411/usafa-hosts-elon-musk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134662229

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Barbra Streisand got Apple's chief executive Tim Cook to change Siri's pronunciation of her name

This is nothing to do with cats afraid but it's a nice little snippet of a news story which I've picked up today thanks to The Times. It concerns Barbra Streisand. A wonderful lady. But you know she says that she wasn't happy in her life and she craves happiness now. She had a difficult time and I suspect that she found comfort in her dogs. There is a picture of her in the newspaper of three gorgeous white dogs and she loves her children coming over to play with them. That is one way she can find happiness today.

The great Barbra Streisand with her dogs. The picture comes from the Daily Mail. I hope the photographer does not object to me using it. 

And she says that one perk of her fame is that she got Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, to change the way Siri pronounces her name. She must have been slightly miffed at least by the fact that Apple phones pronounced her name incorrectly with a Z. And she said that: "My name isn't spelt with a Z. It's Strei - sand, like sand on the beach. How simple can you get?"

She said that Tim Cook responded really nicely. She said, "Tim Cook was so lovely. We had Siri change the pronunciation. I guess that's one perk of fame!"

I've just read her compressed biography in The Times. She had a really tough childhood because after her father died through illness when she was 15 months old her mother's new husband was cold and uncaring towards her. He was a used car salesman and he never talked to her. He never asked her how she did at school or how she felt. And her mother didn't see her passion for wanting to be an actress.

Barbra Streisand got on that great ladder to fame when she entered a 1960s talent competition with a $50 prize and dinner. She won it. People saw a wonderful performer which is not surprising because her voice is extraordinary. And she's a great actress too.

She is one of the very few Egots, those who have one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. She sold 250 million records and won 10 Golden Globe awards, five Emmys, and two Oscars. I wish her well and happiness for the remainder of her life. She is currently 81 years of age.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.