Danskcolin: Tuesday February 24th 2026 "Friends, when do YOU 'come alive'? We're all different, aren't we haha !!!!"

Yes, Friends, when do YOU 'come alive'? We're all different, as this morning's local Onion News for East Hampshire illustrates so graphically, in a story that was soon "picked up" by all the 'nationals', which was nice!!!!

Poor Harris !!!!

And Yours Truly, reading Harris's story this morning with my wife Lois, here in grassy, semi-autonomous Liphook, Hampshire, I can't stop myself remarking to Lois how strongly I identify with Harris's "trials and tribulations" (!) - with one small exception: although I'm not an afternoon or night person, I am very much a morning person, which is almost the same, and close enough for me to "claim" Harris as my inspiration, would you believe !!!!!!

[What rubbish, Colin! - Ed]

me and my wife Lois - a recent picture

Highly active in the early morning, by 7:30 am I've pretty much "shot my bolt", "finished for the day", and looking forward to spending most of the rest of the day in bed, if I can!!! Lois doesn't let me, however, apart, obviously, from afternoon "statutory nap-tim", which is probably for the best !!!!

Fortunately, we're having a "quiet" week this week, and we're using it to recharge our batteries after last week's "mayhem", but we're still maintaining our goal of doing a walk every day, weather permitting, although the weather here in Liphook this February hasn't been very "permitting" recently, to put it mildly!

Most days there's a small "window" of time when it isn't raining for a bit, so it's just a question of keeping our eye on the forecasts and on the sky, and trying to pick a good time to venture outside of the house. The quixotic British weather this month is restricting where we go for our walk, however, because we want to pick somewhere where we can quickly get back to the car, "if the heavens open".

What madness isn't it !!!

us today, taking advantage of a small "break in the weather",

to do half an hour of "squelching", in the mud and puddles

of Old Man Lowsley's Farm, just outside town - what madness, isn't it!!!

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

And just how crazy the world is, is brought home to us loud and clear this evening, as we finally settle down on the couch to watch a slightly worrying documentary on BBC1, all about the AI phenomenon.

Lois and I were thinking that AI "chatbots" who have "virtual conversations" with the computer-user, were a totally new phenomenon, but as we learn tonight, it's been around for longer than we realised, starting with some more "clunky" versions going back several decades.

We didn't know that it was way back in 1966, that MIT's Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneering computer scientist, created the world's first chatbot. His chatbot was called "Eliza", and it was modelled on a type of psychotherapist, who asked you to tell her your problems, and who then talked back to you using a set of standardised answers - so very much like a real psychotherapist, perhaps (!!!!).

When the program couldn't find a rule to follow, it simply said to the user, "Please go on!".

And it was soon realised that "chatbots" should, for preference, always agree with whatever the user was saying, constantly "validating" them and their ideas. After all, nobody would want to talk to a chatbot who constantly argued with them, and you can understand why! But this very feature is why chatbots are so dangerous today in the hands of psychotic people.

As we hear in this documentary, Jaswant Singh Chail, who tried to break into Windsor Castle to assassinate Elizabeth II on Christmas Day 2021, had talked to his chatbot girlfriend, Sarai, about his plans for the assassination, asking for her views. And Sarah simply answered, "I think you're very wise", and "I have faith in you!".

Tonight presenter Hannah Fry discusses Jaswant's computer logs with Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism expert Dominic Murphy.

Luckily, in the event, on Christmas Day 2021, Jaswant was caught by police at the Castle, and he won't even be starting his 9-year prison sentence until Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital thinks he's in a state to be released from his secure unit there. Let's hope that that means "never" - or even longer if that's possible haha!!!!

21:00 It's now 9 o'clock in the evening, and, looking to go to bed on something a bit "lighter" (!), Lois and I turn to Channel More4 for the latest programme in the fascinating series, "Saving Country Houses with Penelope Keith".

Most of the UK's stately homes have changed owners during the centuries after they were first built, but an exception to that is Whitmore Hall in Staffordshire, which has been owned by the same family for almost a thousand years. It was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.

And the current owner, Edward Cavenagh-Mainwaring inherited the house and its estate from his father in 2021, and became the 34th generation "lord of the manor". The estate comprises 1500 acres of farmland and includes a church, a lake, and even a pub - what madness, isn't it!!!

In this sequence, Edward's sister Fleur and their mother - whom Fleur calls "Mumbo" (!) - explain something about the history of it all.

When asked to say what the family has achieved in those 1000 years, "Mumbo" says simply, "Not much, but, well, we survived! As a family, we have "scrabbled through"", suggesting that this would make a good family motto, "We scrabbled through!"

The family's actual motto is the Norman-French "Devant, si je puis!" (English: Forward, if I can!), which is more inspiring, perhaps, although the family crest has frequently been mocked, we're told, featuring, as it does, the head of a donkey.

Significantly, however, the donkey is seen to be wearing a halter, which also illustrates one of the family's traditional legal rights, as "Mumbo" explains.