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You may well be right about our being more comfortable with "Sherlock" partly because we're so familiar with that name. To paraphrase somebody, "we hear of Sherlock everywhere." The name-change that I'm happiest about, though, is ACD's sacking of "Ormond Sacker" in favor of John Watson!

He was in a brown dressing gown, and a mere 21 seconds later, he's wearing a black suit coat or dinner jacket. Either it's a continuity error or else he's a quick-change artist! I'm tempted to guess the latter, since they do seem to be expecting an important potential client (the King, I suppose) to call at any moment. Perhaps the scene as originally filmed gave Holmes somewhat more time to change, but then some of that time had to be left on the cutting-room floor?

I think most, if not all of us are glad that Arthur Conan Doyle ended up calling his fictional detective "Sherlock Holmes," rather than "Sherrinford Holmes" as he had originally intended: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Sherlock_Holmes I suppose, though, that we prefer "Sherlock" because we're used to it and "Sherrinford" sounds strange. If it had been the other way around, presumably "Sherlock" would sound strange. In either case, I think the name "Mycroft" sounds vaguely fungal...

In keeping with our long history of picking nits out of Sherlockiana, I'd like to show you all a continuity error I have discovered in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes episode "A Scandal in Bohemia." I'm referring to the Granada Television series starring Jeremy Brett. Here is a link to the episode on YouTube: Observe Holmes seated at the mirror at time index 7:22. The camera shifts to Watson reading the note. When the camera shifts back to Holmes at time 7:43, note his attire! BTW, this is an excellent episode, one of my favorites!

OK, that's still hot-linking. The actual image lives on Imgur and you simply provided a pathway to it. The forum used to provide an option to host images right here in the forum's webspace, but that could take a whole lotta bytes, so of course the forum imposed a limit to each person's total. That system may have eventually proved to be unmanageable -- in any case I don't know how to do it now. Well, there is one vestige of that system remaining -- the posting/editing box has a drop-down menu (in the lower right-hand corner) to access "Other Media", and one option there is "insert existing attachment," which brings up a catalog of all the images that the member has ever embedded. (If you've never embedded any images, your catalog is presumably empty.) Anyhow, here's one of the smaller images from my catalog:

Thanks for that link. I had heard that Facebook was changing its rules, and now I'm trying to understand what that article says about the new policy. Please let me know if I'm misinterpreting the article, but apparently what Facebook did was remove a bunch of very specific former rules, and instead will create "community notes" from members' reactions to posts. That may actually turn out to be more adaptable to specific situations that arise. (And I assume they've still got the basic politeness rules that every forum has.) The new system may take a while to evolve fully, but hopefully it'll be able to detect and deal with a wider range of rudeness than the old rules could.

Nah, it needs to be out in the net for embedding to work. Used VBS‘s own pic at imgur, same as she did, only I added that .jpeg so the forum knew what to do.

Speaking of Facebook, I'm considering deleting my account because of this: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/07/tech/meta-hateful-conduct-policy-update-fact-check/index.html

OK then, HOW did you do that? Specifically -- assuming that the jpg file is living on your own computer -- how do you tell the forum software what folder it's in? Or whatever?

eta: seems to work for me, so I went ahead and edited the cute doggo in

Now I don't feel quite so bad -- at least I have company! That doesn't sound the least bit off-base to me, and I suspect you're right about quite a few of them. Others may be maintaining databases for search engines or doing other reasonable chores. There's a lot of non-member activity on this forum, some of which I suspect is by bots.

Aww, cute! When I click on the top link in your post, it loads just fine. The second line thinks it's an image, but doesn't bring up anything significant. Near as I can tell, there is no longer any way to embed new images. If you had embedded an image back when that was still possible, there's a way to display it again, but at the moment that's apparently all there is. I have queried Tim about this, just to be sure, but I'm not hopeful.

Yay, VBS! You are one brave woman! I have also written a book (and have ideas for a couple more), but *unlike* you, I have made no attempt whatsoever toward getting it published, even though it's been basically finished for years (decades, actually). And I can't even imagine writing a book in Spanish (my "second language," though I'm not nearly as good with it as you are with English). I know what you mean! I did show mine to three relatives -- *one* of whom liked it. The other two said they just don't care for that type of book, which spares my feelings a little bit -- but what if that's what they were intending to do? (Yes, I'm paranoid.) As for your "real life" reason, I think that's very logical. One of the people who read (part of) my book complained that it didn't sound like me. I suppose I should take that as a compliment, because I wasn't actually trying to sound like me, but that comment kinda threw me off balance anyhow.

I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right. They're just fine at first, then start acting like an idiot until you tell them to go away, then they claim to have seen the light and they behave pretty well for a while, so you take them back -- and then they go totally bonkers and keep pestering you. I'm sometimes tempted to click the "stop sending me these emails" option that's at the bottom of each message. But I'm curious to see how long they'll string it out. It's not like they're disrupting my life or anything. And it's cheap entertainment.

Many people are lazy and/or gullible, yes, and many of those are likely to remain that way. But what worries me more is the politicians and activists who take advantage of that gullibility by intentionally pitting one demographic against another. That tactic may increase their power, but it does so at the expense of the rest of us, and (if not challenged) can lead to a failed society in the long run.

I may sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think the underlying purpose of bots is to train the AI behind them. I'm almost sure about the ones on FB. But they are taking them back AFAIK.

https://imgur.com/L6WvB50 I am not sure how to embed image anymore. Nothing seems to work. This my dog Locky enjoying his surf today in the beach. Moderator Comment: You need the .jpeg (or whichever it is) part of the link, or embedding won't work. Some browsers tend to swallow that bit.

I hide here so I don't clog more recent threads. I am in a very happy mood now. There are not many people I can share this with and you guys have been the ones who know me better. I guess I'm more comfortable hiding behind the keyboard. I used to work a decent job, but quit right before covid. There were multiple reasons. The problem of working my 'dream job' is the part when it ruins everything. I learned the ugliness of the industry and it didn't sit well with my conscience. It was also heartbreaking to see my dog waiting for me everyday and this was my biggest reason. I tried a small business that enabled me to spend 24/7 with him, but it was just my luck to start and end it with covid, wiping my life savings along the way. Starting that time, I revive my long-life passion for writing. I have finally received some royalty payment for my books. It's puny, probably won't last a few grocery trips, and I had spent much more than that in expenses, and this is the span of three-years work! However, it feels unbelievable that there are people out there who had spent their hard-earned few bucks and used their precious times to read my works. I am very grateful. I haven't admitted to many friends or family about this because for some reasons, it feels too personal. Weird, yes, but I don't feel comfortable because they know me in real life. Anyway, most of them are not readers. For those who read, they don't read English books. You guys also know I struggle forever because it's not my first language, therefore I still hesitate to reveal the books, but I am improving. It's nothing much, it's one of the hardest things I do (working purpose) and it's an emotional roller-coaster. For a few days I feel great, there are countless days when I feel worthless and inadequate. Today, it's great. Just want to share. You are all still my safe place.

Carol, this is like an ex who always lingers and being annoying. I am sorry but I have seen your war with it for years

There are a lot of ways to look into it, but yeah, I am on his side. I still care about people and feel for those who are the victims of war, disease, and injustice. I still worry about my loved ones and the future everyday. However, I'm hopeless about what ordinary people can do because we are basically powerless, pawns. Those with power are mostly greedy and don't blink an eyes about the misery they cause to ordinary people, but sadly, there isn't much we can do. Most are too easily distracted or pitted against each other, have no critical minds, or too narrow-minded to see the bigger pictures. I have no faith that this is ever going to change in my lifetime.

Oh good to know. I knew I would need to dedicate a lot of time so I haven't started, maybe I won't. I am the kind of person who would go sleepless to finish watching a show and it's not good for my timing. I enjoyed it but it doesn't leave much impression after I was done. Apparently there is a lot of things in the background from the moment it was still an unknown work until the messed-up production, to deaths etc surrounding it. Yes. There is a spin-off Yakamoz S-245 with the submarine. Story is still not concluded though.

Humans with below 40ish eyes, maybe? Some images are so blur and unclear there were more than two times when I had to do ten tests. Once I gave up because it was never-ending. I don't think they look at the camera (I hope not!). I am that kind of people who always have tape over the cameras. Judging by the amounts of bots frequenting almost every social media nowadays, I think they are not doing good jobs at separating humans and bots, although I strongly suspect bots are intentional. Just recently FB mentioned they are introducing bots to interact with humans. Not sure why, because they are already out there everywhere, posting propaganda, chatting users up, etc. I am 'quite new' to Twitter, in terms of knowing how it works. There are countless of sexy bots thinking I am sexy, sending dms, following in batch. At first I thought they were genuine 'followers' (hate that term) After a while, I am getting slightly smarter now and know I can't be that sexy.

You both are right, the term refers to someone being greedy, like they have a family, but want a mistress, or want to keep a double lives, things like that. Actually, it's quite obvious (after Carol explained it), not sure why I didn't get the logic . I know what they meant from the context, but every time I heard it, I got furious with the terms and my mind didn't work. The idea of not eating that cake somehow drives me nuts (still!). What did John or Sherlock say? Clot? I'd rather they don't use cake, maybe keeps the pants and wears it, too? No? Sherlock couldn't wear his pants and keep it too in Buckingham Palace, could he?

The ones I had seen were shelves of daily necessity being locked up or marked above 950 (with note to get the reductions on the cashier).

I guess I'm with VBS on this question -- cut the cake in half, put one in the freezer, and eat the other one. Or in J.P.'s analogy, save some of my money and spend the rest -- though hopefully I'd spend most of it on useful, necessary items. But the old saying apparently refers to situations where that's not possible. For example, if I were single and someone wanted to marry me, and I enjoyed his attentions but didn't like him well enough to marry him, I might string him along in hopes that he'd never realize I was taking advantage of him. In other words, he's the cake. Sooner or later, he'll probably realize what I'm doing, and might even quote that old saying when he dumps me.