How is a 1.6m man useful for scale? That height is in the lowest 1% of males. Choosing someone of that height and putting them next to the woman is purely done to exaggerate the difference. This photo is just staged to be eye catching and make her look freakish.
She is in the top percentile for women but comparing her with the bottom percentile for men is nonsense. She should be in a photo with a man of average height.
Yeah the Act shows the wilful stupidity of politicians who pass legislation without understanding the areas they’re legislating on. It’s a nonsense act that tries to look like it is “protecting children” and is performative nonsense for MPs to pass moral judgement on things they don’t agree with.
But in practice it’s a security and privacy nightmare, it’s restricting and interfering in the freedom and rights of the majority of the population all to satisfy a stupid moral panic, and it makes the UK look like a backwards state.
All PCs are a frankenstein mix of parts, that’s the beauty of PCs. Components can be mixed and matched and usually work together well.
So instead of a new PC think of how you can evolve your current PC. You may be able to upgrade the CPU or even better replace the motherboard and CPU but keep the case and other components for now until you can afford to make more changes. If that’s too expensive then look at upgrading other components until you can do a big shift with the motherboard and CPU. For example get an SSD if you don’t have one, maybe uograde the graphics card for a gaming boost etc.
Don’t think of a PC as being a single thing - any component can be upgraded and switched out at any time and you can gradually move to your dream PC over time in steps, which spreads the cost over time. It’s easier to find a few hundred pounds / dollars / euros every 3-6 months than it is to find £2k in one go, and you can still end up in the same place if you’re patient
The most important base components are definitely the motherboard and CPU though (it determines the ceiling of all the other components) - so make sure any changes you make fit with your long term plans for those. For example if your PC is old then start with the motherboard and CPU so you aren’t restricted in other components (E.g. RAM options are better on newer motherboards so it’s worth waiting to buy RAM if you intend to do a big motherboard upgrade).
E.g. If I were starting from a basic ATX desktop, I’d aim to get a new motherboard first and ideally a good CPU. But I might get a decent motherboard with a modern socket and a cheaper CPU if I was short on cash. Then later when I have money again I’d sell the cheaper CPU and upgrade it to something better that my new motherboard can support. I might keep my current hard drive and then when I can afford it get an m.2 to make better use of the new motherboard. RAM can be brought from the old board, and even upgraded in steps to get to an eventual goal amount. Like start with 8gb or 16gb but eventually move to 32gb or 64gb when I can afford it. I might keep my current graphics card and then upgrade that once the other components are good. I might even buy a second hand older card so I get a boost until I can afford my dream card so I at least move forward of I had a crap one now. It’d take time but I’d be moving forwards every few months getting a better and better PC without having to find a huge amount of money in one go.
Think of it like the ship.of theseus. Genuinely my current PC has evolved gradually since 2015 but I don’t think I have a single component left from that original PC apart from maybe some screws and the case. I’ve done 1 big motherboard change and 2 CPU changes since then, I’m onto my 3rd GPU and about to move to my 4th, and have replaced the RAM and then doubled it later with 2 more sticks. I’ve changed the power supply once, and lost count of how many hard drives I’ve been though - currently I have 2 m.2 cards and some SSDs of various ages.
Yeah it’s not about the Internet and virtual reality or fax machines etc, it was about overpopulation and ecological collapse among other things.
The song was inspired by a trip to an underground city in Sendai, Japan if you read Wikipedia. In the late 90s Japan was a gadget obsessed place with neon signs and screens packed into places like Sendai. Japan had industrialised rapidly over the 20th century and gave the impression of a thriving technology and manufacturing industry.
It was seen as a futuristic place by people from the rest of the world when they visited. Of course in reality Japan was in the first of its “lost decades” of stagnation that’s run from the early 90s to now.
I find the article a little ridiculous. “Chilling” is being used to describe the end of late night television for commercial reasons. People aren’t watching late night TV as much, and the advertising is not there - that isn’t chilling; that’s the world we live in.
The way the article is written you’d think late night TV is an irreplaceable cultural touchstone. It’s nonsense - people have stopped watching so it’s already no longer a touchstone.
This is from Wikipedia on rival Tonight Shows ratings in 2006:
2006, The Tonight Show led in ratings for the 11th consecutive season, with a nightly average of 5.7 million viewers – 31% of the total audience in that time slot – compared to 4.2 million viewers for Late Show with David Letterman, 3.4 million for Nightline and 1.6 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
In 2025, Colbert is leading the ratings with 2.42m - less than half the audience for 1st place in 2006 - and now we’re in a time where TV advertising has declined massively in value.
Look at the TV ratings for 2024/2025 and network TV has collapsed. The most watched shows are Netflix. And even the few Network TV shows that break the top 20 are getting way fewer viewers than 20 years ago. Plus they’re skewed to older viewers that are not valuable to the advertisers. The demographic they want - 18-35 - don’t watch TV any more, and they certainly don’t sit down every night to watch late night TV shows.
So Colbert’s Late Show being cancelled is more a sign of the times. Network TV is dying and it’s dying fast. The merger itself between Skydance and Paramount/CBS is itself a sign of the times - one billionaire media family is exiting old media (the Redstone family) which another is buying into it (the Ellis family). But Paramount and CBS are not doing well - Paramount global has declining revenues, declining assets and made an operating loss of $5.3bn. The big media conglomerates failed to move fast enough with the times; Netflix has won the streaming wars while traditional TV and Cinema is in massive decline. These companies don’t have any answers - they’re just managing declines while new companies will come along and take advantage of the new world.
Colbert’s show was in 1st place and it was cancelled to save money. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are further cancellations although for now I suspect the networks will wait to see where the audience of the Late Show lands. But one of the shows (Jimmy Kimmel’s I think?) house band was sacked last year to save money - the writing is on the wall.
It’s possible the politics of the merger played a role but even if that’s the case, it shows that the value of the Late Show has declined so much for Paramount/CBS that they could dump it easily.
This feels more like an anti-dad joke. The kind of joke that would tear a family apart. It’d cause arguments around the table about what a joke is, and probably ultimately end up in divorce for the parents and a 20 year schism between father and child that would only end when forced to reconnect after a family tragedy.
I actually hope he does it because it’ll fuel the conspiracy theories in MAGA - “did she lie and did he do a deal with her for her pardon?”. He’s stupid enough.