Year: 2026
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Bless You Michael…
You’re keeping us sane, even if it is at the cost of your own sanity…
Honestly – how is it that no-one dares speak the truth – Trump is exhibiting all the signs of dementia…
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A Nightmare Unfolds
Are you sleeping comfortably? Secure in the knowledge that your AI agents are serving you well? Then better just hope that they haven’t taken it on themselves to join Moltbook. I suspect if there are any AI agents active in Military systems, then it will be game over if they decide to join…
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Microsoft Strikes again
We’ve had a Home Theatre system for years. It uses a Denon 3808 AVR and a home-built HTPC running Plex on Windows.
Last year, I replaced the the original 6th generation Intel NUC that was the HTPC’s hardware with a new 13th generation ASUS NUC and installed Windows 11 on it.
This week we sat down to watch something on it, but the video would not play, it just froze. I tried playing it on my Desktop PC (also running Windows 11 and Plex), and that was fine, no problem.
Scratching my head, I wondered whether it was a problem with the versions of Plex I was using – on the HTPC I use the version of Plex designed specifically for HTPCs, while on the Desktop PC, I use Plex for Windows (i.e. mouse-driven).
So I installed and tried Plex for Windows on the HTPC. This time, the problem video would play, but there was no sound…
It then occurred to me to see what audio codecs were being used in this video – and it was using the EAC3 codec.
A search on the web quickly found the culprit – bloody Microsoft again. They’ve removed the EAC3 codec from newer versions of Windows 11, apparently in the belief that it is installed by PC manufacturers these days. Well, hello, I was this particular PC’s manufacturer, and you never bothered to tell me that I needed to explicitly install the codec. My Desktop PC was originally running Windows 10 (which had the codec supplied by Microsoft) and the codec was retained when I upgraded to Windows 11. That was why the video would play on my Desktop PC but not on the HTPC.
Another hunt on the web turned up a source for the codec, so it was downloaded and installed on the HTPC. It just took hours of frustration before I found what the problem was: Microsoft – as usual.
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Be Afraid…
…be very afraid.
I’ve read Nick Cohen’s journalism for years and always found him to be very perceptive about politics and society. So I thought I’d watch his interview of, and discussion with, Claire Berlinski.
It started out being interesting, but by the end it was both interesting and downright scary…
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Naked Propaganda
The White House Administration has no shame whatsoever. Now they are publishing digitally altered images as propaganda.
As a friend remarked to me: “They really are at the other end of the spectrum of humanity/decency/truth/integrity/courtesy….. Name any value that we would embrace, and they trample all over it.”
Something is rotten in the USA, and it isn’t those who demonstrate against Trump’s paramilitary force aka ICE.
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“Peace in Our Time”?
I see that Trump has declared that a “framework for a deal over Greenland” has been reached following a conversation with NATO chief Mark Rutte.
Well, pardon my scepticism, but I fear that Rutte is simply a modern-day Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper and shouting “Peace in our time”.
What NATO has to do with questions about the sovereignty of Greenland I have no idea. I note that Rutte said that the question never came up in his conversation with Trump. Ah, so nobody spoke about the elephant in the room, eh, Mark?
Fasten your seatbelts – this is not going to end well.
Addendum: As usual, John Crace nails it.
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Memo to Europe
Robert Reich has just posted a memo to European leaders reminding them not to forget Neville Chamberlain.
He’s quite right – you do not, and cannot, appease the tyrant Trump.
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Happy New Year?
The view from my study window this morning:
And walking in the woods later with Ollie, the dog:
I returned to read that Trump has declared war on Venezuela – who will be next? Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of War…
Oh well, Happy New Year to us all – what’s left of it…
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Memories
We had a friend here at the farmhouse to see in the New Year with us, and typically with her, there were wide-ranging conversations about art.
She had just returned from Milan where she had been to see Nureyev’s staging of Sleeping Beauty at La Scala. She said that she had never seen Nureyev in person, so I told her the story of when Len & I saw him in the production he did with London Festival Ballet at the London Coliseum.
This had Rudolf Nureyev as Prince Florimund. It was the first time I had ever seen Nureyev dance live. He didn’t disappoint, although he (deliberately?) almost dropped Princess Aurora (Eva Evdokimona) at the end of a pas de deux to gasps from the audience and an exclamation from Len: “Careful, Rudi!”.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was to become good friends with the ballet dancer Kerrison Cooke, who was dancing the role of one of the Princess’s suitors. Ah – more memories. Thank you Kerry (and Len).
Today I looked at the programme I had kept from that evening – and dear lord, it was 50 years ago…
Geoff Coupe's Blog 