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banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:
View of Mount Fuji and Lake Ashi from the Tenkakudai (天閣台) Observation Deck on the Tsubaki Line, a 38.8-kilometer section of Kanagawa Prefectural Route 75 that goes over the Hakone Pass (箱根峠) and runs along the southern rim of the Hakone Caldera.
This is a view I had been wanting to take for a very long time. I'm very happy that I was finally able to take it on a day with such a clear and dramatic view. The clouds make the photo more interesting; it wouldn't be as dramatic if the clouds weren't there.
On this day, there was no rain in weather forecast, but with the days starting to get much warmer in May, I wanted to come here very early (around 5:30am, sunrise was around 4:30am) to take this photo before all that moisture in the air formed clouds that would hide Mount Fuji from view. I rented a car to get here, but there are infrequent buses that start later in the morning.
OzGFK has added a photo to the pool:
February 2026, Hakuba, in the town area, just near the train station.
Kodak Gold 400, Ricoh 35ZF.
Vanbar dev, dslr scan.
BertvB posted a photo:
A telephoto shot captured from the Zuidpier (South Pier) in IJmuiden, looking across the water towards the Noordpier (North Pier).
This is neat: Robin Sloan is rewriting his 2009 short story, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. “The interplay between books and technology has changed since I wrote them…but also that I have become a different writer, and a better one.”
This evangelising of a wealth tax should have made for a truly amazing documentary. But it allows its host to be totally out-argued by all his interviewees. Why?
What do we do about a country in which the richest 56 people in the UK have as much wealth as the poorest 27 million? What do we do about a world that has just witnessed the birth of its first trillionaire? What do we do about an era in which you can interview the owner of a telecoms company in his multi-million-pound Hyde Park apartment and a frontline ambulance worker who is having to live in his van, parked on a suburban Bristol street?
Gary Stevenson knows what to do. He is evangelical about what to do. Gary was vouchsafed knowledge of exactly what to do after making a fortune in the city betting against an early economic recovery for the country after the 2011 financial and ongoing Eurozone crises. The UK needs a wealth tax – he recommends 2% on everything anyone owns above £10m. This would bring in around £24bn a year that could be spent on the NHS, affordable housing or (Gary’s preferred option because it would represent a more direct redistribution of the wealth those 56 and their wannabes have hoarded) tax cuts for “ordinary people”.
Continue reading...The one-woman phenomenon is typically outspoken in her new documentary series. But don’t expect much in the way of insight from this carefully manufactured show
‘In 10 years’ time,” muses 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy as he watches his employee Kenneth the page walk back to his desk, “we’ll either all be working for him or dead by his hand.” I have always felt much the same way about Katie Price, AKA Jordan, née Katrina Infield, the 90s glamour model turned celebrity turned businesswoman turned cultural behemoth who has dominated headlines, airwaves and, increasingly, television documentary slots over the last 30 years. Her ruthless commodification of herself and others around her, the vaulting ambition, the fortunes earned and spent, the battles fought, the sloughing off of abuse that would have broken any lesser being, the belligerence, the keen intelligence, the dead-eyed stare down any camera lens presented to her, the bizarre vulnerability when it comes to men, the flat monotone voice daring you to poke the basilisk … all of it together is as terrifying as it is fascinating. If she ever chooses to slip her tabloid bonds and turn her attention to wider world domination – well, I for one shall be the first to swear fealty and avoid a much more fatal kind of fate.
The latest documentary about the Price phenomenon is called Katie Price: Nothing to Hide. The Beckhams have done one each since Price’s last major outing, the Vardys have a reality show, Coleen Rooney is on the up and up – the correct pecking order must be restored. So here is Price again, on a giant sofa, vaping or chomping through snacks with her luminous giant veneers, swathed in a giant sweatshirt and pants, 10 days after her latest facial surgery and avowing honesty. “You can talk to whoever you like,” she tells the film-maker Paddy Wivell, who generally focuses on non-celebrity subjects (most recently, in Hell Jumper, on volunteers in the war in Ukraine).
Continue reading...ANKARA (ANP/AFP) - De Turkse president Recep Tayyip Erdogan heeft aan elke leider die deze week aanwezig was bij de NAVO-top in Ankara een pistool cadeau gedaan, zo liet de Britse premier Keir Starmer weten.
Starmer vertelde Britse verslaggevers tijdens zijn terugvlucht dat de pistolen voorzien waren van de naam van de betreffende leider en dat er ook een doos munitie bij zat.
De Britse premier gaf aan dat hij zijn geschenk in Turkije moest achterlaten, omdat het illegaal zou zijn om het wapen mee naar Groot-Brittannië te nemen, ondanks een brief van Erdogan waarin de exportbeperkingen voor de wapens werden opgeheven.
De NAVO-top was het laatste grote internationale evenement voor Starmer, die op 22 juni zijn vertrek aankondigde. Hij blijft in functie totdat er binnen de regerende Labour Party een nieuwe premier is gekozen. De voormalige burgemeester van Manchester, Andy Burnham, wordt gezien als de meest waarschijnlijke opvolger.