It has become big business for the mafia in southern Italy for example.

Usually it is just individuals or people from small businesses that tip rubbish somewhere they are not allowed to and then ‘fly’ from the scene: just leave it and run. This is usually so that they don’t have to pay to dispose of it - but sometimes just because they can’t be arsed to go to the actual waste disposal site.

Increasingly, criminal organisations are finding that they can make money from this: charging businesses for the disposal but then just dumping it - as this case seems to be, from the scale of it.

I have read comparisons in the past. I don’t have them to hand, but the conclusion was that dishwashers were more efficient in terms of water use and energy. However, the type of hand-washing that it was being compared to was itself a very inefficient style of washing (tap running continuously? two full sinks for rinsing? I can’t recall, but not the way that we do).

So handwashing the way we do is probably more efficient but it seems that there isn’t THAT much in it either way, and given the time taken and that we cook from scratch almost all the time, we use a dishwasher for the vast bulk of stuff.

One that is very good but not as widely known as I’d expect is The Americans from 2013.

As a kid, in the UK, back in the '70s, I was watching Roots and was wondering why they were so keen to get to Scotland. I eventually realised that this was set in the US, of course, and the north there was different.

So I suppose that was my default then but, these days, I typically find myself trying to work out exactly when and where a thing is set, if it isn’t obvious, automatically - before I actually settle into the plot or anything.

That’s nothing. I have no granadillas, rambutans or mangosteens either.

I guess that you might attract some - but it is going to depend where you are as much as the light source. I’m in the UK, for example, and wouldn’t get a lot of moths right now as we are well into autumn.

However, even with glowsticks, I’d expect that you will find something - just not a lot.

Film - The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) - it had been decades since I last watched it through. Still as wonderfully grotesque, and the influence on Tim Burton is clear.

TV - Pluribus - The first episode could pretty much be a standalone, with an excellent performance from Seahorn. Overtones of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and a lot of '50s sci-fi. Really interested to see how this develops.

TV - Down Cemetary Road - another Mick Herron adaptation but, unlike Slow Horses, this one doesn’t seem to have found a consistent tone and some of the Darren Boyd scenes, particularly, were really over-egged. I’ll continue though.

TV - Leonard and Hungry Paul - cozy and heartwarming are woven through this one. If that’s what you are looking for, it definitely delivers.

TV - Wolf Hall - season 2 continues with writing and performances just as good as the first. Excellent and intelligent drama.

With our current one, it really isn’t a lot - it is more taking the the garden furniture apart and getting in the shed and that kind of thing really, although Mrs Greyshuck is going for a bit of winter planting this year, so there are a couple of cold-frames that I will be building for some of the seedlings - partly from the temperature, partly from grazing deer etc.

We are very unlikely to get much snow - or even too much cold, given the climate situation - but it will probably be below zero some of the time and we’'ll definitely get rain if nothing else so we will need to protect some things from that.

From today, I will be using my remaining holiday days to have Fridays off for the rest of the year leading to the fortnight off over Xmas and New year.

I’m not going to be doing much with these 3-day weekends beyond winterising the garden, doing a few household jobs and reading etc, but that’s pretty much the point as far as I am concerned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortina_d'Ampezzo

Because I became curious about why the car was named that.

I have no idea where you are or how possible it might be, but I’d suggest volunteering for some local thing: soup kitchen, wildlife conservation, charity shop, whatever.

That will get you out of the house, meeting people - basically without any commitment on your part, so you can walk away, potentially learning new skills and making connections that could lead to a job.

I’m a Direction can be Left and can be Right, with Other Danger on the cusp.

And of 14 other commonwealth realms, if it comes to it.

We had the civil wars a century and a half earlier.

They resulted in the king being killed, although no-one wanted thay at the start, and a commonwealth being established for a while. Then a king was restored.

It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 people were killed over that period.

At the start of the French revolution, no-one wanted the king to be killed, but he was. Following the revolution a king was restored.

It is estimated that around 100,000 people were killed across France.

Looked at like that, the two were not so different.

I have a selection of natural scenes - some that I have taken myself, other found on the web - that rotate each two hours around the day. Night shots at night etc.

Yes, carp and other fish will eat it but not in the artificially high quantities that are occurring in pollution-induced bloom events like this. It would not be remotely sustainable to have a high enough population of fish to deal with these events - they would starve for the rest of the year for one thing.

Nope. I still have From LA to New York etched into my brain in bile and loathing from it playing on a cheap crappy clock-radio alarm I had when it was first released in '76 or whenever. Actually waking up to that song probably only happened a couple of times, but it was enough. I found that I preferred the brain-piercing built in alarm to having any other songs or drivelling DJs hypnogogically imprinting themselves.

These days I have either birdsong or Tibetan chimes instead.

Ha! The name actually comes from their ‘jarring’ or churring calls. The Old English name was Night Raven - and another name is Night Hawk. Both win over Nightjar, I’d say.

I probably wouldn’t.

From the first RSS feeds onwards I have found that anytime I curate a list like this, 6 weeks later I am ignoring the entire thing. Either the individual feeds contained a few items of interest that one time, but basically nothing since, or else there are a lot of interesting items - but they are buried in a tidal wave of uninteresting ones.