Be interested to hear the state of play on AI and anything else that sounds interesting

Not sure how much of struggle health insurance is in people's lives in the UK but in the US it's constant.

Any and every call to a private practice is spent exclusively talking about payment, and the insurance necessary to make that payment and the technicalities/predicaments that come from having health insurance.

My Jardiance diabetes medication costs $800 for a 30 day supply but luckily costs just $60 with insurance. Which I'm glad about.

But to handle any matter with the insurance company can take a week on the phone speaking to 7 different customer service reps. Any gap in coverage throughout the year results in a $500 fine (not sure if it's federal or state) that is automatically deducted from your yearly tax return.

The Prague Astronomical Clock was built in 1410 by Mikulas of Kadan. According to Wikipedia, this clock keeps track of three things. First is time, second is the position of the Sun and Moon, and third is the months. Four figures surround the clock; they represent vanity, greed, death, and pleasure. The clock-maker added these symbols to display things that were frowned upon at the time. The clock was mounted on a public building, which was quite controversial at the time. The church was not open to astronomy or zodiac signs because it was against religious belief. Charles IV, however, wanted the clock to be seen because it was a way of revealing new ways of thinking about the world.

1410
Doesn't seem possible

Wow yes I just looked at the bottle it is indeed Empagliflozin. Wow doctor never mentioned anything about that. Thanks Martin I'll look into whether or not I can get off of this. I recently had blood work dobe for an endocrinologist and the they were very happy with the results. Maybe I dont need this one anymore since I already take Metformin + Glyburide.

Wow. I didn't realize you are on insulin, Martin. Can you mention how that's going? Are you fine with it?

One time, few years back I was at the emergency room for an ulcer of some kind and they noticed my blood sugar was out of control so they hit me with insulin. I'd never felt more calm in my life than after getting the insulin.

You need the sound on for this one, and I dare you not to wince.

Specially for Mike:

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/feb/01/small-long-nosed-dog-breeds-live-longer-study

Good grief - got the dreaded red light on two BT WiFi mesh discs last night at my mum's. Going to say how I fixed it incase it helps anyone!

- first tried switching on and off each disc
- restarting the router
- resetting router
- resetting each disc individually
- using WPS to re-link each disc to router

All failed - the answer was to connect each disc to the router by ethernet cable to get a blue light and then put them back in original place where the blue light now remains and all working perfectly, touchwood...

Respect - Peter Butterworth

The star who helped World War II prisoners escape
Well worth reading

"The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse are two classic British World War II escape films, but what is perhaps less well known is that one of the team involved in both of the escapes that inspired them would go on to become a star of the Carry On movies.

Now, 80 years on, Peter Butterworth's recently discovered German prison identity card is going on display as part of an exhibition telling the story of his life as a prisoner of war.

Butterworth served in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm during the war but was shot down in 1940, spending the rest of it as a prisoner of war.

Butterworth, who appeared in 16 Carry On films, helped hide the sand for the escape tunnels featured in the Great Escape and was on the organising committee for the tunnels featured in The Wooden Horse, but it has taken decades for the full story to emerge.

It was his wartime role - working alongside Carry On screenwriter Talbot Rothwell whose plane was also shot down - that helped birth the Carry On humour Butterworth later became famous for.

A cache of prisoner of war documents recently released from a German archive is now going on display at the National Archives in London, which adds new detail to the gradually unfolding story.

The documents arrived from Germany and have been catalogued by a team of volunteers.

For his son Tyler Butterworth, it has been a revelation.

"They keep declassifying things and more seems to bubble up. It's remarkable."

In Carry on Camping, Peter Butterworth played the avaricious campsite owner, Josh Fiddler. In Carry On Up The Khyber, he was the libidinous preacher, Brother Belcher, and in Carry on Don't Lose Your Head, he was Citizen Bidet.

However, in Stalag Luft 3, he was an officer and code writer in MI9, the military intelligence agency responsible for organising escapes from prison camps. It was a mystery to even his own son until long after his death in 1979.

"He did suffer from what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He never said this to my sister and I, but my mother (the impressionist Janet Brown) told me about things that happened, especially right at the start of their marriage, after the war, where he'd suddenly leap out of bed at night and throw himself on the floor and start hiding. She had to barricade the bedroom door because the staircase was outside."

In the escape immortalised in the classic film The Great Escape, Butterworth helped hide the soil from the tunnels in the camp theatre. Inmates would be encouraged to smoke pipes near where the soil was stored to mask the smell.

In the Wooden Horse escape, in which a tunnel was dug underneath a vaulting horse, he was one of the organising committee. When the story was adapted in 1950 for the big screen, he auditioned for a role but was turned down for not looking sufficiently like a prisoner.

Carry On beginnings
Alongside him in Stalag Luft 3 was another prisoner, Talbot Rothwell, who would go on to write many of the best Carry On films. He and Rothwell convinced the camp commandant to allow them to build a theatre, with the sounds from the performances helping drown out the noise of digging the tunnels.

"It's where the (Carry On) humour kind of had its start, in this place surrounded by watchtowers and guard dogs," Tyler Butterworth explains.

"They worked out what made guys laugh. And that was the funny thing, he played these bumbling characters, always getting things wrong. And there's this complete flip side of this man that was totally focused writing code, working with his friends who were tunnelling on the other side of the compound."

However, all of this was never discussed within his family and it was only years later that the younger Butterworth began to understand some of his father's actions.

"He had all this going on in his mind in his life. My mother told me that when they first bought the house that we grew up in, dad would religiously put on a dressing gown and walk around the garden in the morning, every morning, because he could, because there (in the camp) he couldn't. And those are the sort of things he brought back. But I didn't know about this until after he was dead."

As the bewildered Brother Belcher in the shell-torn dining room scene in Carry On Up the Khyber proves, Peter Butterworth was a marvellous comic actor. However, given that he escaped from one camp near Frankfurt and helped two of the most celebrated escapes in World War Two, we should be perhaps remembering him for more than just Carry On.

The Great Escapes: Remarkable Second World War Captives is on at the National Archives in London from 2 February until 21 July."