I don't think my parents were going for that look. Also, this was in Europe. Also, they didn't look thinner than in the 50s / 60s.

The first one is the pumpkin woman - I covered her already: Photo is distant, front on, fully clothed, wearing stripes so hard to judge her shape. However, she certainly doesn't look skinny.

The 2nd photo looks like a professionally shot photo, very likely for a magazine. Indeed, you can see writing in the bottom left corner, as if from a catalogue. It's suspicious that this photo is in there. If this photo hasn't been retouched, well it's certainly been shot to show this woman in the best possible light. Further, again, she's wearing stripes and its front on - making it hard to tell.

The 4th: He's got a slightly baggy shirt on, so hard to be sure, but from the way it goes in at his belt, he may well have a very slight paunch - which would be very consistent with 'overweight', no?

The 5th: He's about my height, and he's definitely heavier set than I am - you can see some spare subcutaneous fat between his neck and jawline.

I am right on the line between normal and overweight, FWIW. My face and neck and shoulders probably look like I'm not carrying much fat. However, I still have a slight spare tyre around my midriff. Further, under the skin is not the only place fat accumulates. It also accumulates around the organs. People can look relatively thin if judged just on the upper body or legs or skin, but still be overweight because of visceral fat.

I think the problem perhaps is that people have become accustomed to overweight being "normal". However, it wasn't. If I look through old photos, from my grandparents times when my parents when kids, in the 50s and 60s, to when I was a young child in the 70s, it is *striking* to me how people then were generally much thinner than people today, particularly pre-middle-aged adults (e.g. my parents).

Just because overweight has become "normal" in the sense that most western populations are now overweight, doesn't mean it is "normal" with respect to a healthy weight.

You can see this in the UK too sometimes.

Yeah, that's what I do too. When I'm at home I sometimes crave food, but I can control myself when shopping. So the trick is to buy only healthy and filling stuff. Unfortunately, my other half is the opposite - can't control herself in the shop, but has no problem not eating the junk once it's at home. ;)

Yeah, portions have increased. It's especially noticeable when you compare plate sizes. I did this last time I was at my mother's: We compared the old plates she still had from the 70s, to the more modern plates we use today. The modern ones are much bigger. The old dinner plates, you'd use them for lunch or cakes or appetisers today.

I grew up in the 70s and early 80s in western europe. We had sweets and sugar, but there wasn't the abundance of sweets then as there is today - is my vague memory. Least, I remember getting sweets being special, and not getting many of them when I did.

I went through the first 21 or so of those photos, and the BMI classification doesn't seem at all wrong to me. The most "contraversial" one might be the 3rd photo - woman in front of the pumpkin - but the photo doesn't really show you her shape, and the stripes also hide it. She doesn't look skinny though.

That photoset basically affirms the utility of BMI as a heuristic diagnostic, for me. (I'm a hair under overweight, which I think is pretty fair).

How old are you? Specifically, are you still in your twenties? I'm late thirties, ~178 cm and 73 kg, which I maintain by cycling and limiting sugar and snacking. Cycling alone is not sufficient to control my weight. To really not have to watch what I eat, I'd have to be doing professional-cyclist levels of it (i.e. many hours each day, and >500 kilometres / week).

Though, on the other hand, Cinnamon is built on top of the GNOME-Shell infrastructure, with much functionality built in JavaScripts, so it suffers the "continually leaking, ever expanding RSS" problems of GNOME-Shell.

Mobile GSM phones are well capable of talking to towers on the ground at 35k feet. That's only about 10 kilometres. There will likely also be several towers within roughly equal distance with good line of sight. Indeed, one part of the reason mobile phones have been banned in aircraft for so long is because they would interfere with the *ground*. The fear being that having thousands of stations moving fast overhead, in range of potentially dozens of towers at the same time and roaming across them, would be too taxing for GSM to handle, causing service issues.

I've had phone conversations with people in aircraft, at altitudes of around 20k to 25k feet (6.1 to 7.6 kilometres), with them ringing on their GSM phones and it worked fine.

Not just 6 digit IDs.

I've just had a look at the beta, and it's a bit bizarre. Pointless huge images. Lot more redundant white-space. No comment links. UIDs are not shown. The comment posting box is missing "Post anonymously". There doesn't seem to be any benefit to the redesign. It very much smacks of change merely for the sake of change, which is not good.

Note that this is taking place under the auspices of the Council of European Union, i.e. directly at the behest of the member state governments. The document mentions "Remote Stopping" just once:

Remote Stopping Vehicles
Cars on the run have proven to be dangerous for citizens. Criminal offenders (from robbery to a
simple theft) will take risks to escape after a crime. In most cases the police are unable to chase
the criminal due to the lack of efficient means to stop the vehicle safely. This project starts with the
knowledge that insufficient technology tools are available to be used as part of a proportionate
response. This project will work on a technological solution that can be a “build in standard” for all
cars that enter the European market.

So there's nothing agreed, there's nothing that is going to be imposed. The technology doesn't even exist. All they're doing is they're going to look to see what they could develop. Once they've done that, that doesn't mean it will be imposed. This working group doesn't have that power. If the public doesn't like it, the *member state* politicians (not EU politicians!) who make the decisions at the Council of the EU level would not put it forward. Even if these *state* politicians *did* want to impose this, they'd still need the agreement of the European Parliament (with its directly elected MEPs). The EP can delay and even block legislation (though, that requires a super-majority, ultimately).

tl;dr: the Dailymail are, as usual, blowing out their arse and making shit up about what's happening at the EU.

Polygraphs are unreliable generally in scientific tests, regardless of whether subjects know anything about how to circumvent them, for the simple reason that polygraphs are a load of bull.

The only way they produce reliable information is where the subject volunteers it, out of fear the polygraph actually works, or desire to please the interrogator.

FWIW, Chinese state TV is running news stories at the moment about the mass surveillance programmes that operate in the West. The Chinese state generally seems weaker in influence, than Western states like the US, UK, etc. Also, given that the US gaols a far greater number of its population than China, or pretty much any other country in the world, a random Chinese resident has a much better chance of being free than a US resident. To call the USA the land of the free smacks mildly of Orwellian double-think.

(Note: There are a good number of things I admire about the US, and things I don't).

This would be the China where a *lower* proportion of the population are in jail than the USA? I.e. you've a significantly better chance of being free in China than in the USA.