#daily-blog — Public Fediverse posts

Freshly Pressed.

Being a born cynic from the West of Scotland, it’s hardly surprising that when I noticed a distinct spike in blog hits yesterday, my heart sank.

Another bleedin’ scam, I thought. More time I need to spend monitoring, vetting and ‘cleaning up’ reactions, comments and subscribers to my wee blog of nonsense. I thought this was meant to be fun?!

But no! Further investigation revealed my blog post ‘Antisocial Media’ from 20th April, had been selected by WordPress for its daily ‘Freshly Pressed’ feature.

Yay!

Whoop-di-woo!

Nah – I’m still not buying it. So some wee spider-bot thing has stopped crawling over t’internet, and taken a breather on my URL Big deal! (Looks like I know what I’m talking about, eh?) 😉

Of course, I have no idea of what I’m talking about. None whatsoever, it appears.

So I contacted my pal AI for guidance and reassurance. And it seems ‘bots’ are not involved. Posts selected for the feature are picked by actual humans. Real people! Can you believe it?

Hmmnn. 🤔 Us Glasgow punters take a lot of convincing.

But, whisper it, despite our inbred ‘glass-half-full’ dour disposition, we do quite like a bit of praise for a job well done. It’s just we don’t generally shout about it and keep it very much to ourselves.

Sod that for a game of soldiers! Here’s what I found out about ‘Freshly Pressed.’

Freshly Pressed is a curated spotlight feature on WordPress.com that highlights standout blog posts from the community. Unlike the “Reader” feed or social media algorithms, Freshly Pressed is hand-selected by the WordPress editorial team. They look for posts that are “genuinely good”—thoughtful, well-crafted, and unique.

Wow! I’m uncharacteristically happy! That’s amazing! My wee blog! I’m so chuffed!

Ah … wait, a second, there, wee man. Your pal AI also says this:

* Approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages on WordPress sites every single day.

* Readers digest roughly 70 million new posts daily.

*Users leave about 77 million new comments each day.

I think that perhaps puts your 200+ hits and 99 ‘Likes’ into perspective, eh? Not feeling so chipper, now are we?

You know – sometimes I’m so glad of my Scottish upbringing. At least I knew the joy and elation would only be brief. (sigh!) 😮‍💨

***** But please do ‘Like and Share,’ and help spread the word – I did quite enjoy that momentary feeling of achievement. *****
😉

Campaign Against Camping!

Have I ever been camping?

Have I ever been camping?!!

You’re rootin’ tootin’, I’ve been camping. I’ll tell you – I’ve spent some of the most miserable days and nights of my life under canvas.

I’m cool with the notion of getting back to nature. I did, after all, spend eighteen years of my working life outdoors, in just about every kind of weather imaginable, when I was working with animals. That part doesn’t faze me at all. It wasn’t pleasant at times, for sure, but I knew come six o’ clock in the evening, I could head home for a hot bath, something nice to eat, and watch my favourite television programme.

That didn’t happen on any camping expedition I was on, that’s for sure.

You see, I was in the Boy Scouts. In the late 1960s and early ’70s. Camping was seen then as ‘character building.’ And I think that’s what turned me into the bitter and twisted wee character I am today.

The idea was we went on organised camps with the Troop Leaders to learn all sorts of useful skills.

Aye right! I’m not sure exactly how may tent pegs I’ve subsequently had to whittle from a damp log found in the woods, but I’m guessing if I were to count them, they’d come to less than a finger on one hand.

Map-reading? There’s another. Just jump in a taxi for goodness sake. Erecting a tent. Why? I’m never likely to go camping ever, ever again.

It was pointless. Why not just take us away for the weekend to a nice hotel in a distant city where we could all sneak out, meet up with the local Girl Guide unit , and blag a few illicit beers. That would have more of a practical life experience.

But no – not only were our parents so happy to pack us off for random weekends with the Scout Leaders, so they could … well … they were also happy to let us go without the adult supervision. And so off we’d go, maybe six of us from our own patrol; off to show the Leaders what great Scouts we were. Off to live under canvas for a weekend at the arse-end of the Earth.

One time, our ever-so-inexperienced band of idiots pitched our tent at the foot of a wooded slope. With a river about fifty yards away.

And it rained. Big, Scottish rain. Scottish rain is like rain the world over. Only more miserable!

At two o’clock in the morning, with our sleeping bags already soaked, we had go out in the dark, with some crappy wee torch thing (the wick in the lanterns we’d brought were too damp to ignite) and dig a bloody big, deep trench around the tent and divert the cascading water away.

Over the next two days, we replaced the rainwater in our clothes with smoke from the campfire which we eventually managed to restart.

And we couldn’t just break camp and head home, because we were in the middle of bleedin’ nowhere, and weren’t due to be picked up until the Monday afternoon.

And see all this palaver about digging latrines or using the bushes in the woods like a bear does??!! Whaaat?!

That was the last time I went camping.

(Oh no, wait. My wife and I did stay overnight in one of these plush Arabian tent things in Goa, India, a couple of years ago. And I got bitten on the chest by a huge spider that I witnessed escaping from under the bedsheet. The bite left a dirty great welt that I had to bombard with antiseptic creams for a week.)

And caravanning is no better! I’ll post my ‘Caravan Holiday Hell‘ tale, taken from my book ‘A Space Hopper Killed My Hamster‘ in a day or two. Once I’ve gotten over the trauma of re-living my Camping experiences.

SO THAT’S IT – CAMPING MUST BE BANNED! I’M STARTING A CAMPAIGN. HERE AND NOW! ARE YOU WITGH ME, BROTHERS & SISTERS? ADD YOUR NAME IN THE COMMENTS SECTION BELOW, AND TOGETHER WE WILL CANVASS AGAINST CANVAS!

Totally Floored!

Today’s word was ‘floor.’

TOTALLY FLOORED!

She loved him, but couldn’t ignore
The sound of her husband’s loud snore.
But he dismissed all her pleas
And continued to wheeze,
So she forced him to sleep on the floor.

To have and to hold, for better or for worse …

I spent eighteen years as a professional dog walker, before retiring in the autumn of 2024. During that time, ‘technology’ continued to leap forward in great bounds like a playful golden retriever. However, it made no odds to my daily working life, other than my being able to order a delivered lunchtime pizza from my phone. *

*(This is mentioned for illustrative purposes only – there was no way I could afford pizza for lunch. And anyway, have you ever eaten pizza in front of several slavering dogs with pleading eyes? That’s one big guilt-trip right there.)

However, if you count my wee writing hobby as a ‘job’ – a very poorly paid, but fun ‘job’ – then I’d have to say technology in recent years has made a big difference.

For a start, technology has made me lazy. And for all its time-saving advantages, it has in many ways actually presented more time-related pressures.

Artificial Intelligence is wonderful, up to a point. I refuse point blank to use it for actually writing the content of this blog (it’s kinda obvious, isn’t it? 😉 ) or my attempts at books. However, what it does give me, is the ability to create wee, amusing cartoons and a programme that highlights over-use of certain words, punctuation errors and the like.

AI also helps big-time in research. For example, last week I disappeared down a rabbit hole of discovering what would be involved in inheriting a haveli in Rajasthan: what would be the tax implications; what grant funding would be available; the size of inner courtyards – all that sort of malarky. (Stay tuned, folks for my first attempt at a published novel. 😉 )

However, to a degree, I do miss spending my day in the Reference section of a large city library, poring through books to enhance my knowledge. And perversely, I feel compelled to use all that time saved by cramming more ‘stuff,’ more deadlines into my waking hours. I’m not really one for daytime television.

And … duh! ‘Technology’ has afforded me the privilege of entertaining you for these past couple of minutes.

But for every ying, there’s a yang. And that means you’ve just wasted another two minutes of your valuable time in reading this nonsense.

Never mind, time-saving ‘technology’ will help you balance it all out in the end.

🙂

Why is Bomber still giving this scammer a platform in 2026?

https://thedailyblog.co.nz/guest-blog-talk-liberation-panquake-founder-suzie-dawson-speaks/

Suzie Dawson has been collecting money from people and promising a groundbreaking social network for years now, and all Panquake has presented publicly is a social media dashboard, and a link shortener (in 2026 this is obsolete, as well as being a common tool of scammers). Both of these could have been built in an afternoon using unmodified code found on GritHub.

(1/?)

#SuzieDawson #Panquake #DailyBlog

#KieranMcAnulty loyally towing the Starmerist party line for Hipkins' ;

"If you're talking about the top end of town, then choose the other lot. If you're talking about everyday working NZers, then don't look at them, look at us. And if you give Labour the most votes then we'll have the most sway in govt, and we won't make the same mistakes that Luxon made and just give the small parties everything they ask for."

https://thedailyblog.co.nz/8pm-live-tonight-the-bradbury-group-with-kieran-mcanulty-on-labours-state-of-the-nation-matthew-hooton-david-cunliffe-and-quilae-wong-political-panel/

(1/?)

#podcasts #WaateaNews #DailyBlog #BradburyGroup

Not a lot to report. Feeling a smidge less flare-y, so that's something. Still extra exhausted though.

Mainly, amused AF that Voldemom (as I call my narcissist mother) has managed to alienate yet another member of the extended family -- this time, my one of my siblings' partners. I can't feel sorry for VM, but I can for my siblings and their spouses/partners that she failed them as well.

Anyways. Gonna enjoy an extra dose of caffeine, curl up with games, and enjoy discount heat. We were able to switch to a new tariff with the heat pump, and there are periods of the day when the electricity is cheaper; we're in one of those right now, so smug discount laundry washing, ha ha.

#deardiary #dailyblog #cats #caturday #catsofmastodon #halothecat