retired still academic interest adaptive tech, Isle of Ely Fenvision, Chicago, maps
Cambridgeshire England
Joined December 2008
- Tweets1.1M
- Following3.9K
- Followers4.5K
- Likes107K
Jane Fleming retweeted
Daulat Bi Khan, an acid attack survivor and the founder of the Acid Survivors Saahas Foundation (ASSF), an organization that helps other survivors...
. . .
She went to the police about her own sister and brother-in-law. They told her to settle it in family court.
Then the acid came.
Daulat Bi Khan was a make-up artist in Mumbai 🇮🇳. When her mother died in 2009, she was left the family house. Her sister's husband wanted it, and he and her sister kept pressuring her to marry.
In October 2010, her elder sister and brother-in-law threw acid on her. Her two younger sisters and a one-year-old niece were burned too.
Daulat's face, chest and arms were badly burnt, and she needed 17 surgeries over the years. The treatment was not free. She sold her house and her jewellery to pay for it.
When the money ran out after about six months, she tried to go back to work. Her supervisor said a woman with her face could not make people look beautiful. She looked for work as a maid, but families were afraid their children would be scared of her. With her children to feed, she ended up begging outside a mosque in Bandra.
Some NGOs sent her for photoshoots and used her face to promote themselves, then gave her no real help.
By 2016, she and her sisters were still stuck in a long court fight, and said they had been threatened.
That same year, she started the Acid Survivors Saahas Foundation in Mumbai. It helps survivors with treatment, food, medicine and school fees. In 2020, when Covid made things harder, she opened a small supermarket to give survivors jobs. Reports say her work reaches more than 50 survivors, and the foundation is still active today.
She told NPR: "A woman's life doesn't stop because she's attacked with acid."
The people who hurt her were the ones she should have been safest with. The ones who helped her were survivors like her.
Jane Fleming retweeted
Christina Marie Plante as a young teenager in 1994, who was found alive in April 2026 after being missing for 32 years...
A 13-year-old girl Christina Marie Plante walked out of her house to see her horse. For the next 32 years, she was listed as missing.
Everyone called her Tina. She lived in Star Valley, a small community near Payson, in Gila County, Arizona. In May 1994, around midday, she left home to walk to a nearby stable where her horse was kept. She never came back.
At the time, Tina was living with her aunt and uncle. Her uncle reported her missing, and the family offered a $10,000 reward for any information about where she was.
The sheriff's office was told she had been seen with no one and could not be found. Deputies, volunteers and regional teams searched the area on the ground. They interviewed people. They found nothing they could follow.
Her case was classified as missing and endangered under suspicious circumstances. Investigators feared she had been kidnapped. Her details went into national missing children databases, and her flyer was sent across Arizona and to other parts of the country.
Years passed. The case went cold.
Then, on 1 April 2026, the Gila County Sheriff's Office announced that Tina had been found alive. The cold case unit had gone back through the file and used modern tools and new investigative methods. That was enough to give them new leads. They confirmed her identity. She was 44 years old.
What came out next surprised even the investigators.
Tina told Captain Jamie Garrett, the cold case investigator, that she had run away. Garrett said she was unhappy with where she was living and with the people she was living with. Garrett was dumbfounded and told her that investigators had believed someone kidnapped her. Tina told investigators that certain family members helped her leave.
Chief Deputy Jim Lahti said she has not explained who she was with when she left, or how she got out of town. He said she acknowledged running away and had contact with another family member at the time.
When the deputy reached her, she described that part of her life as "an old life."
The first deputy to work the case in 1994, Terry Hudgens, told NBC News something different from what the public had understood for 32 years. He said Tina's father had custody of her, but she wanted to live with her mother. According to him, the two arranged to meet while she was walking to the stable. Hudgens said the investigation was dropped once they determined she was safe.
The sheriff's office does not describe it that way. Lahti confirmed Hudgens led the first search, but said the case was never officially closed.
A newspaper from May 1994 quotes Hudgens saying Tina had mentioned running away to friends.
So for decades, a missing child poster existed for a girl that at least one deputy believed was safe.
The sheriff's office has not said where Tina lives now. NBC reported she is living under a different name. Officials say they will keep further details private, out of respect for her privacy and wellbeing.
Her father had custody. She wanted to live with her mother. She was 13, and she found a way out on her own.
Jane Fleming retweeted
The 1957 Chevrolet Corvette Fuelie made automotive history as the first American production car delivered to customers with factory-installed fuel injection, using a Rochester Ramjet system to produce 283 horsepower from a 283-cubic-inch V8 engine—achieving the landmark goal of one horsepower per cubic inch
he Corvette was nothing less than a game changer for Chevrolet. Overnight, it transformed the “Bow Tie” brand from an economical car builder to an excitement car maker. Up to that time, Chevrolets were considered staid commuters with six-cylinders and pleasing — but not necessarily exciting — style. Now, there was an exhilarating Chevrolet bodied in exotic fiberglass and made for just two people at a time when economy brands regularly touted a car’s maximum seating capacity.
For 1953, the Corvette’s first model year, just 300 were hand built in Flint, Mich. They were expensive, and to add to the exclusivity, not everyone could buy one. These first Corvette deliveries were limited to celebrities and other people of renown who would bring added exposure to Chevrolet’s new halo car.
The new Corvette cost about 75 percent more than a new Bel Air convertible, which shared its conservative styling with all other Chevys — even station wagons. For 1954, the Corvette was hardly changed, although production (now at the St. Louis assembly plant) was bumped up to allow “average” Americans a chance at the Corvette dream. However, Chevrolet overestimated sales, and even though the price was dropped to $2,774, many of the 3,640 1954 Corvettes were still unsold going into the 1955 selling season. As a result, 1955 production was lower — between that of the 1953 and 1954 Corvettes — and not trending in the direction General Motors and Chevrolet had hoped. The low 1955 sales of just 700 cars was especially disappointing considering that the Corvette finally had a hot engine to match its looks with Chevrolet’s new and entirely modern, overhead-valve V-8. The new V-8 engine was an option, but was installed in nearly every 1955 Corvette.
For all three of those first model years, Corvettes were little changed from one selling season to the next. All wore the styling of the original GM Motorama dream car that was unveiled at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in January 1953. While the styling was exciting, some of the first-generation Corvette’s features were not. There were no side windows — the cars used antiquated side curtains for protection in inclement and cold weather. They lacked the security of exterior door handles and locks, so owners (and thieves) only had to reach into the interior to open the doors. While the first Corvettes of 1953 and ’54 had a hopped-up, triple-carburetor version of the standard Chevrolet mill — the Blue Flame Six Special — it was still a six-cylinder. Especially when coupled with a Powerglide automatic — the only available transmission until late in 1955 — the first Corvettes were not considered exhilarating to drive.
Corvette sales for 1955 were not only hindered by stale 1954s on the lots and side curtains for the side windows, the ’Vette was also facing new competition from Ford. For the 1955 model year, Ford launched its new two-seat Thunderbird competitor with roll-up windows, outside door handles, trusted steel construction, a removable hardtop and a V-8 from a proven builder of V-type engines.
Jane Fleming retweeted
The classic Hollywood entertainer Dean Martin and his second wife, Jeanne Biegger (Dorothy Jean Biegger), pictured together during their marriage...
“I married him knowing nothing about him. I divorced him 23 years later, and I still know nothing about him.”
Jeanne Martin made that extraordinary admission about Dean Martin, the man she had loved, married, raised a family with, and watched become one of the most famous entertainers in America.
They met in Miami in 1948. Jeanne was a young model and former Orange Bowl queen who had never heard of Dean Martin or Jerry Lewis. She attended one of their nightclub performances, and something happened that she would remember for the rest of her life.
Their eyes met. Jeanne later recalled that they fell madly in love.
They married in September 1949, when Jeanne was just 22.
Dean’s career was taking off. Soon he would become a Hollywood superstar, a member of the Rat Pack, and one of television’s most recognizable personalities.
Jeanne became the center of a large family. When Dean gained custody of his four children from his first marriage, she helped raise them alongside the three children they had together.
To the public, the Martins seemed to have everything. Wealth, beautiful children, glamorous friends, and a marriage that had survived the pressures of Hollywood.
But there was something about Dean that even those closest to him struggled to understand.
Behind the charming, carefree entertainer was a deeply private man who rarely revealed his feelings.
In December 1969, Jeanne announced their separation. Their marriage ended in divorce after more than two decades together.
In 1973, Dean married Catherine Hawn, a Beverly Hills salon receptionist nearly 30 years younger than he was.
Their marriage ended three years later.
Jeanne never married again.
For years, the former couple lived separate lives. Then came a tragedy neither could have imagined.
On March 21, 1987, their son Dean Paul Martin, a 35-year-old actor and California Air National Guard pilot, was killed when his military jet crashed into the mountains.
The devastating loss brought his parents back together.
Jeanne and Dean renewed their friendship and remained close until his death on Christmas Day 1995.
Jeanne died in 2016, having outlived him by more than two decades.
She had witnessed his transformation from an ambitious young comedian into an American entertainment legend. She had raised his children, shared his success, endured their separation, and grieved beside him when they lost their son.
And still, after all those years, Jeanne’s own words revealed how much of the man behind the famous smile had remained a mystery to her.
Jane Fleming retweeted
Gilda Radner (1946-1989) was an iconic American comedian, actress, and original cast member of Saturday Night Live (SNL)...
For ten months, doctors told Gilda Radner to relax. When they finally discovered what was wrong, her cancer had already spread.
In early 1986, Radner was one of America’s most beloved comedians. As an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, she had made Roseanne Roseannadanna and Emily Litella household names. She was married to actor Gene Wilder, and the couple were building a life together away from television.
Then something changed.
Gilda began experiencing sudden spells of exhaustion and mental fog. Sometimes she could barely keep her eyes open. An internist suggested Epstein-Barr virus and told her not to worry.
But the symptoms kept coming. She developed painful bloating, abdominal cramps and shooting pains in her thighs. On a trip to Paris, the pain became so severe that she doubled over on the street while Wilder searched for a taxi.
They consulted specialist after specialist. One suggested ovulation pain. Another suspected a stomach problem. Examinations and tests failed to explain what was happening.
According to Wilder, one doctor called her a nervous, emotional woman who needed to relax.
Gilda kept asking the same frightening question: Could it be cancer?
She was reassured again and again.
In October 1986, ten months after her symptoms began, doctors finally diagnosed ovarian cancer. During surgery, they discovered that the disease had spread to her liver and bowel.
Wilder later recalled that Gilda responded with relief as well as terror: “Thank God, finally someone believes me!”
She underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. After a period of remission, she returned to television in 1988, appearing on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and joking openly about having had cancer. The audience cheered.
But the disease returned. On May 20, 1989, Gilda Radner died at 42, with Wilder at her side.
Wilder spent years speaking about the diagnosis that had come too late. He helped establish a hereditary cancer program in her name. Gilda’s experience also inspired Gilda’s Club, offering support to people living with cancer.
For months, she had been asking doctors to find the cause of her pain. When they finally did, the answer was the one she had feared all along.
Jane Fleming retweeted
Israel is the only country in Middle East where Arabs can vote in free democratic elections.
Meanwhile, a polling station in an Arab city 👇
Jane Fleming retweeted
Babysitter who fatally smothered 9-month-old with pillow avoids life sentence ift.tt/Vvu3HJh
Jane Fleming retweeted
Trump admin asks court to toss out subpoena ordering Todd Blanche to testify about investigations into Jeffrey Epstein ift.tt/v4s9xU8
Jane Fleming retweeted
X ALGORITHM UPDATE 🚨
X just stopped cutting new posts first, and that should help small accounts (I check it daily with Claude and share updates worth sharing with you)
tl;dr:
- X can only check 2,800 posts each time you open your feed
- new posts used to be last in line, so they got cut first
- now everything gets cut equally, new posts included
- posts labeled low quality or misinfo now show a warning, and people can't like, reply or share them
- no score changes this time
lesson learned: your new posts now get a fair chance to be seen. Your first 2 hours still matter most.
full details:
- How it worked until this week
Every time someone opens For You, X collects around 3,700 posts it could show them: posts from people they follow, popular posts, posts liked by similar people, and brand new posts.
But X only has time to check 2,800 of them.
So it just took the first 2,800 in line. Brand new posts were at the back of the line. When there were too many, they were the ones left out... and a post that never gets checked can't be shown.
- What changed
Now everything gets cut by the same amount. 25% too many? Every type of post loses 25%, new posts included. Nobody goes first.
- Why small accounts should care
Those brand new posts are under 2 hours old, with under 8 likes and under 500 views. That's where most posts from smaller accounts are.
My read: they now get a fair chance instead of being cut first. How often X actually hits the 2,800 limit isn't in the code, so I can't tell you how big the difference is.
- Low quality and misinfo posts now show a warning
If X labels your post as low quality or misinformation, people who don't follow you see a warning on it, and they can't like, reply, repost, bookmark or share it. The code doesn't say what gets a post that label.
Here's a recap of what you should be doing:
- a new post gets its extra push only in its first 2 hours and first 200 views, so post when your people are online
- likes carry more weight than ever at 0.66 each
- people sticking around pays, the time-spent score is 50% higher than two weeks ago
- a read of 10+ seconds after someone opens your post adds 0.4
- the boost favors the post with the best like rate from its first viewers
- accounts up to 50K can get one fresh original lifted to roughly 16th
- nothing beats a copy link share, it scores 20
- replies, quotes and DM shares each score 5
- talk with your mutuals, replies between you score 20 instead of 5
- originals are the only posts that travel outside your follower base
- the 1st and the 32nd like each open a new route to strangers
- your 2nd post in the same feed is worth 62% of the first, so pick your best one
- videos still need 10+ seconds to qualify for the video lists
- earning a follow adds 4
- a pinned post with a bad link can flag the account for 7 days, worth a quick check
What you should NOT be doing:
- posts that get labeled low quality or misinfo now carry a warning, and nobody outside your followers can like or share them
- video alone won't carry you, an open counts 0.02 and the watch 0
- hide-worthy posts cost more, "not interested" sits at -52.27
- a post at 3am burns its 2 hour window before anyone sees it
- a tap that turns into a bounce is worth only 0.3
- replies and reposts don't get past your followers
- insults get your post hidden from anyone who doesn't follow you
- adult media in 3 of your last 5 posts puts a label on your account
- disguised content in videos gets checked from 64 likes, harder at 512
- self-reply chains under big accounts risk being zeroed
- one account label and non-followers stop seeing you entirely
- low-rated links don't belong in your pinned post
- recycled wording can get tagged as copypasta spam
- strangers tagged plus a low quality link is a pattern X flags
- engagement bait has no size exemption
- several posts in a row end up competing with each other
- hashtag stacks add nothing
- bookmarks are still worth 0
- 48 hours in, For You is finished with a post
Jane Fleming retweeted
Critics attack 'anti-democratic' French bill making rioters pay reut.rs/4iJK6bC
Jane Fleming retweeted
And it's not like they can claim they had no idea what they were like before importing them in.
Mi6 know, Foreign Office know, CIA know, World Bank, Blackrock, IMF, UN, every institution under the sun knows how dangerous these regions are.
Jane Fleming retweeted
A jewelry thief was found guilty of robbery and grand theft after swallowing earrings. abc7chicago.com/story/jewelr…
Jane Fleming retweeted
Russia is running short of troops to fight Ukraine and is increasingly turning to Africa to fill the void bloomberg.com/news/newslette…
Just six days later, on March 17, the gaping chasm was gone.
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake tore a 150-meter crater into Japan's Joban Expressway.
In most countries, rebuilding a collapsed four-lane highway after the fourth-largest earthquake in modern history would take two years of committee hearings and contractor disputes.
In Ibaraki Prefecture, Japanese road crews did something that still makes Western civil engineers rub their eyes in disbelief.
Within hours of the main tremor, NEXCO East engineers arrived while deadly aftershocks were still shaking the ground. They did not wait for bureaucracy because this highway was the primary lifeline for emergency ambulances, food trucks, and rescue units heading north into Tohoku.
Working twenty-four hours a day in rotating shifts, crews excavated the shattered embankment, compacted thousands of tons of crushed stone reinforcement in layered stages, and poured fresh asphalt.
Just six days later, on March 17, the gaping chasm was gone. Emergency vehicles were rolling smoothly across crisp white lane lines, and full passenger traffic reopened on March 21.
When a society treats public infrastructure as a sacred promise to its citizens rather than a slow-motion profit center, miracles happen on a Tuesday.
Jane Fleming retweeted
🚨UPDATE: Mohmed Ahmad Abdulkarim has appeared in court today for suspected Iranian-linked terror plot at RAF Fairford.
🚨 BREAKING: Two men charged over suspected Iranian-linked plot at RAF Fairford.
• Mohmed Abdulkarim, 24, and Nouman Essghir, 24, have been charged under the National Security Act 2023.
• Abdulkarim faces a charge of assisting a foreign intelligence service, while Essghir is charged with entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the UK.
• Five other men arrested during the investigation remain on police bail.
Jane Fleming retweeted
@RupertLowe10 is the only leader true patriots want and need bring it home
Jane Fleming retweeted
A transgender pedophile has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for creating child sexual abuse material using online webcam chatrooms.
Joseph "Jada" Barnes had previously been convicted after sharing videos of children as young as 5 being raped.
reduxx.info/transgender-pedo…
Jane Fleming retweeted
Gateway, the new home of the UC Berkeley College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, has been designed to encourage movement, connection and collaboration. @FastCompany @gensler_design @UCBerkeley
The new College of Computing, Data Science, and Society blurs academic and architectural lines. trib.al/QWtbtOu
Jane Fleming retweeted
Has your life improved in the last 100 days? In any way?
Have your bills gone down? Do you feel richer? Safer? Has your local community improved at all?
For the average person, the answer is a resounding NO.
Burnham is making tweaks as broken Britain slides further into terminal decline.
He’s a talker, not a doer. He hasn’t changed the country one bit so far, and isn’t going to.
We need fundamental change - and that's what I will bring.
In our first 100 days, we will:
Put the Royal Navy in the Channel and stop the boats forever.
Begin the mass exit of over 1 million people who illegally entered Britain.
We will make it impossible to live here illegally, so many will leave voluntarily. But, make no mistake, the deportation of those who don’t will be enforced.
We will increase your tax-free personal allowance from £12,570 to £15,000 to keep money in your pocket.
We’ll reduce your annual energy bills by £250.
We’ll charge NO interest on loans for nursing students, lift the cap on medical school places and cut student loan issuance by 20%.
If my ministers fail to deliver, I'll sack them. Simple as.
The stakes have never been higher. It's time we have a government that acts like it.