Clash of the bakewell tarts

 You'll have to excuse that subject line; it occurred to me as a possible caption for the 'artist's impression' used by the BBC to illustrate...

<hmm>
(a flamboyantly inappropriate image, come to think of it, in the case of jousting black holes; on what is light being thrown ?)
</hmm>

... a cosmic event earlier today (the  newscast silly, not the cosmic event, which happened really quite a long time ago):

In a galaxy far far away, well two actually

Meanwhile down here in Harmless-Drudgery land, something cataclysmic (though not quite on the same scale) is afoot. In the early days of what I think of as 'the June Event' (a slight misnomer as it started in the dying days of May) I reported in updates to this post on a sudden resurgence in interest in the blog. As the end of June approaches I can say that those early comments didn't do justice to the enormOUSNESS (you 'eard; there is a special place in Hell reserved for abusers of enormi... (oops, is my closet prescriptivism showing? I blame my English teacher.)

June saw a blip in visits to HD that didn't just match the previous year's total, as shown here:

But since the blog's first days at the end of 2012, and even in comparison with the glory days of 2016-19 (when the blog deserved its name as I was doing wordy work), June seems to have been much busier (about twice as busy as the busiest, at the turn of 2016-17).

This is strange. 20-odd years of IT-related work has led me to suspect that something has changed in the way the data is collected and/or recorded (rather than any change in the quality or popularity of the writing). I'll keep an eye on it.

L'envoi

And while we're on the subject (of irrelevant and unrelated observations) I was recently reminded of my feeling (before I hung up my cycle clips) of quiet rage at this ubiquitous sign on the backs of lorries:
 

Grr. 😠😠😠
Subtext: 'If you get crippled,
you deserve it, thicko'

'Beware' doesn't work like that. You beware of a dangerous thing (a dog, say). There is danger when a cyclist overtakes on the inside of a left-turning vehicle, but the thing that does the damage is the vehicle. So the heart of the designer of this notice is in the right place; I wouldn't say the same for the hearts of the thousands of users who use it to assuage a guilty conscience: 'not my problem, mate'

But there's cricket to watch.

b

PS Listening to Chris Van Tulleken on last week's Infinite Monkey Cage on the subject of Ultra-Processed Food ...

<side-swipe>

(which is engineered not to be resistible, so although it seems to be  wholesome – and is more-ish – it intentionally overrides the body's satiety mechanism. Intentionally. In other words, there is an obesity crisis because the UPF-mongers want it that way)
</side-swipe>

... I was struck by the appropriateness (dictionaries recognize "appropriacy", and PGCE students can't avoid it [as I know to my cost], but there are limits) of the term "binge-watch". The streamers use the same ploy (of interfering with the sense of satiety).

/ends

Update: 2023.07.06.15:00 – Added PPS

PPS I've come across a very impressive website: steno.ai , which encourages me to quote Dr Chris verbatim, on the subject of obesity and will-power:

...[O]besity is nothing to do with willpower. Because all of the genes that affect our propensity to gain weight are all expressed in the brain. So they're all about eating behaviors. And people will be able to tell if they have any of these genetic risk factors because they will find themselves highly motivated by food. And we all know people who are somewhat indifferent to lunch and can skip dinner. Those of us with these risk factors are obsessed with food. We're prone to, you know, we'll plan dinner at breakfast time and we'll be foodies. And so that's how you can tell.... [T]he really interesting thing is that the way you inherit those genes, the way they're expressed, is entirely dependent on your family income. So obesity is heritable in low-income populations, and this was all sorted out with twin studies.

..[I]n high-income families, we don't see obesity being inherited. And that's because people who live in places with lots of money and have access to good food are much less likely to gain weight. So what the twin studies really tell us is that if we could get rid of inequality and get rid of poverty, we would deal with well over half of the problem of diet-related disease and obesity. 

Source

This is impressive, although the incidence of obesity in the USA shows that there's no slam-dunk here: a privileged background doesn't automatically guarantee a healthy diet (it just makes it possible to choose one). 

Update: 2023.08.08.15:45 – Added PPPS

The 'June Event', which I mentioned above (a sudden increase in reports of visits to the blog, starting towards the end of May and continuing into July) has died down:

I suspect that someone in Blogger-stats-land was playing with a new toy. Still, it was (mildly) exciting while it lasted.

Update: 2023.08.31.15:10 – Added P⁴S

P⁴S

I spoke too soon when I said it had 'died down'. HD Page Views in August are set to amount to wee over half as much again as those in July (although most of that increase is due to a sharp uptick in the last 10 days of the month):