Things about cows that have amused me

This is a stub...

This was never intended to be thematic (see my equipedia 'Things about horses that have amused me') but while searching my own tweets for an article I read on cows in Switzerland I realise I've tweeted or retweeted enough entertaining articles on cows to create a post for them.

What do cows think about? (~November 2013)
https://www.quora.com/What-do-cows-think-about
Tim Zweber's answer is delightful. A later answer also included the video embedded below.

Cows might fly: what Swiss flying cows tell us about the environmental future (17 December 2013)
http://aeon.co/magazine/science/what-swiss-flying-cows-tell-us-about-the-environmental-future/
"When the land is all filled up, it’s time to get creative with it, as small countries like Switzerland already know"
Due to changes in Swiss agricultural policy affecting payments that could be made to farmers the Government tried a different tactic and instead paid farmers for their guardianship of the land and cows.

"[They are] paid for, among other things, keeping the mountain pastures clear of trees, keeping the forests clear of the cows, and keeping the water clean. They would be paid for keeping land in agriculture, for treating their animals well, and for maintaining the social structure in rural areas. It is a way of thinking about the use of the land that environmental scholars and policymakers call ‘payments for ecosystem services’. In essence, the Swiss government rewards farmers for the maintenance of the landscape — both environmental and cultural."

Ninety flatulent cows start fire at dairy farm in Germany (28 January 2014)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ninety-flatulent-cows-start-fire-at-dairy-farm-in-germany-9089801.html

Cows chasing a small radio-controlled car


How not to get killed by a cow (2 February 2016) Inkfish
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/inkfish/2016/02/02/how-not-to-get-killed-by-a-cow/
"Murderous cattle are an understudied phenomenon" so the authors of a scientific study had a look at newspaper reports of walkers killed or injured by cows over a 22 year period (1993 to 2015) to see what patterns might emerge, and they also looked for information on "best practice for walking among cattle". Cows, particularly those with young calves, can feel threatened by humans but particularly by dogs. If your dog spooks cattle and they start charging don't pick your dog up or they'll attack you, let go of the dog's leash and let it run away.

Cow walks on wild side with Polish bison (24 January 2018) BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42803471
A cow ups and leaves her own herd and heads off with some bison, in Poland.

Related post
Things about horses that have amused me

Unrelated post
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Memo to self on how to set up a page redirect on a website

Couldn't get the bit of HTML code that goes before and after another bit of HTML code, that you want to be visible without running as HTML code, to work on Blogger, so a screenshot will have to do. Here's the file with the text below in it for actual copying and pasting purposes. This is really just a blog post for me, to remind me how I did a small thing on the work website in case I want to do it again.

It works perfectly so if you've got neater ways of doing it... alas, I don't care :)

While we're at it, I can never remember where the local image folder is, it's here
C:\Jo Brodie QM\shared-local-site\images

How to watch #Elf in London in December 2015

Elf, best Christmas film ever. Rarely seen on regular UK terrestrial television now, due to Sky buying the rights to it (or at least that's what I heard). Fortunately it is in plentiful supply in cinemas and there are many screenings in London over the next few weeks.

Locations
Backyard Cinema - Winterville, Stratford: Victora Park
The Gaucho - Fitzrovia / Goodge St: 60A Charlotte Street,W1T 2NU
Nomad Cinema - Victoria: Ecclestone Place Courtyard, Victoria
Pop Up Screens - Notting Hill: 20th Century Theatre, 291 Westbourne Grove London W11 2QA
Prince Charles Cinema - Leicester Square
Rooftop Film Club - Kensington Roof Gardens
Underground Film Club - Vaults, Lower Marsh, Waterloo

Here are some that I know about - 

• Sunday 29 November - Backyard Cinema - 2pm [tickets]
• Thursday 3 December - Backyard Cinema - 8pm [tickets]
• Saturday 5 December - Gaucho Charlotte Street - 12pm [tickets, £55 + film-related meal]
• Sunday 6 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 3pm [tickets], Quote Along
• Monday 7 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets]
• Tuesday 8 December - Backyard Cinema - 8pm [tickets] link is for TimeOut generic offer
• Wednesday 9 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets] 
• and Underground Film Club - 8pm [tickets]
• Thursday 10 December - Nomad Cinema, Ecclestone Place Courtyard - 6.15pm [tickets]
• Friday 11 December - Notting Hill (Pop Up Screens) - film 8.30, doors 7.30pm [tickets]
• Sunday 13 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 1.30pm [tickets] 
• AND Prince Charles Cinema - 3.30pm [tickets] 
• Monday 14 December - Rooftop Film Club - 7pm [tickets]
• Tuesday 15 December - Notting Hill (Pop Up Screens) - film 8.30, doors 7.30pm [tickets]
• Wednesday 16 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 6.10pm [tickets]
• Thursday 17 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets]
• Friday 18 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 3.25pm [tickets] 
• AND Prince Charles Cinema - 8.45pm [tickets]
• Saturday 19 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 6.15pm [tickets], Quote Along
• and Underground Film Club - 5pm [tickets]
• Sunday 20 December - Notting Hill (Pop Up Screens) - film 5.00, doors 4.00pm [tickets]
• and Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets], Quote Along
• and Underground Film Club - 2pm [tickets]
• Monday 21 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 6.15pm [tickets]  
• AND Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets], Quote Along
• Tuesday 22 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 6.25pm [tickets], Quote Along
• Wednesday 23 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 6.15pm [tickets] 
• AND Prince Charles Cinema - 9pm [tickets], Quote Along
• and Notting Hill (Pop Up Screens) - film 8.30, doors 7.30pm [tickets]
• Saturday 26 December - Prince Charles Cinema - 3.45pm [tickets]

Based on a previous post: How to watch #Elf in London in December 2013

A quick post for @colmsmyth about what you can see when someone blocks you

For the last 11 months I've kept a search open for people talking about the block on Twitter and if they say anything indicating that someone you've blocked can't see your tweets then I generally tweet back and point out, politely, that this isn't quite the case. I'm sure I am the most annoying person in the world (and occasionally people tell me to thrrppp, but mostly it's indifference and sometimes people are pleased to know about it and make their accounts private if they've been experiencing abuse from someone monitoring their tweets) but it bothers me a lot that Twitter's clarity on what happens when you block someone is so... turbid.

What you can or can't see when someone blocks you depends a great deal on what platform or software you're using. It seems that Twitter for Android behaves differently from Twitter for iPhone, and on Echofon for iPhone not only can you see all their tweets but you can see their profile too (but not on Twitter for iPhone). On desktop Twitter (Mac, Firefox) you can't see their profile page but you can see all their tweets by searching for their username (their hashtagged tweets would also show up if you happened to be looking at the hashtag search results).

Colm Smyth has also found a trick using an IFTTT (IF This Then That) script that sends all tweets from a blocked account to you. I was intrigued to discover that he doesn't see all tweets when searching their username though.

So we tried it out and he's blocked me for half an hour while I take some screenshots, so that I can show him what I see when I look at his profile and search for his tweets, while blocked. First I logged out and refreshed the page.

Here's me logged out...

Here's me logged in again and unable to see his profile when I go to his page...

Here's me searching for his tweets. I've typed from:colmsmyth into the search bar. If I type just colmsmyth then I see only my tweets until I click the 'Live' link. The 'Top' link is shown first by default, underlined in blue in the picture below, just above the avatar in the first of his tweets I can see. I'd just see more tweets (and in their correct order) by clicking the Live option.

It is quite possible that his system shows something else entirely. Twitter has given users inconsistent and incomplete information about how the block works.

As far as I can tell, from Twitter's point of view when you block someone you no longer have to see their tweets (they cannot contact you through that account). Given there are so many ways / workarounds for the blockee to see your tweets I have to assume that preventing that from happening was never really a 'thing'. Of course you can always log out of your account and view any public account. You might think 'everyone knows that' but I can assure you, from 11 months of chatting to strangers about it, that it's not actually obvious or intuitive to everyone until they considered it or had it pointed out to them. Of course once they realise, it's perfectly obvious.

Many people form their mental model of the way Twitter's block works from the system that they use to implement a block or experience a block (and this is perfectly reasonable). It is not obvious that the way a block works on 'your Twitter' does not transfer to 'other people's Twitter' though, where blocks may be much leakier on different apps.

I've no objection to the block being leaky (there is actually no technological solution to this given that Twitter is public by default and there is no need to log in to view content), just the fact that Twitter implies that it isn't. It is.

Marketing: why don't venues promote events happening at their venue even if organised by a third party?

Summary: venues run their own events and also hire space for others to run events. While venues will promote their own events they don't seem to do much promotion for third-party events, why?

As an event-goer my main reasons for wanting to go to an event are that I like the work of the performer(s) or am friends or colleagues with them, that the event sounds interesting even if I don't know anyone involved, that I simply want to go and see an interesting or as yet unvisited venue (that's a reason isn't it?!) or that I've been cheerfully dragged along by a friend.

I rarely give much thought to who the promoter of the event is but apparently this factor can make a big difference to how a venue advertises or promotes an event happening there. Learning this has surprised me a lot and I'm not sure I can really make sense of it, to the point where I think that my perspective must be missing something and perhaps I'm just wrong (if you know, tell me).

Clearly the event promoter can pay for newspaper advertising as that shouldn't fall to the venue but I'm mostly talking about social media (Twitter / Facebook) and email. Things that cost time and effort rather than money.

When I'm at an event I don't know if it's been produced by the venue itself or an outside promoter and don't really care that much about the difference between the two which, for the purposes of event-attending, is irrelevant.

Here's why I think venues should also tweet or blog or post to Facebook about any event that's taking place on their premises, even if they're not the ones producing or promoting it.

a) Offer event-advertising as a perk to the event organiser 
"For a [£ reasonable fee] we'll promote your concert for you" - seems like an easy enough thing to upsell if a venue has lots of Twitter followers or Facebook people. A discussion could be had about the timing, content and frequency of tweets (10 am on a Tuesday morning might reach more people than 7pm on a Friday night etc). Or a budget option might be retweeting one or two tweets that mention the event and the venue.

Caveat 1: there can be a bit of red tape in sending a tweet or Facebook post particularly if you have more than one person managing the account. Some organisations have different sign-off procedures but I can't see very many problems with retweeting a simple "this event is happening at this venue" tweet or liking a Facebook post that someone's tagged the venue with.

Caveat 2: to ensure fairness in terms of not tweeting loads about one event to the exclusion of another it's very very simple to search from:CoolVenue EventName to see how many tweets have previously been sent about it. This does take a bit of extra work. But not very much.

Obviously this has to be balanced for a large venue that has a lot of events, otherwise followers will just be swamped by information. One way round this might be to send out a tweet with a picture that shows several events at once, and a link going to a page where the individual events are linked. Incidentally the BFI are were* very good at this and create a tweeted picture with all the films they're showing that day.

*I think they stopped during Covid and didn't restart

b) It might get more people in your venue, eating your food, seeing your flyers
Presumably the more people you get into your venue for any event the more likely they are to see your flyers for your future events, or eat your food and drink while they're there. 

c) Helping your audience to experience your venue at its best
Perhaps having more people present increases audience enjoyment slightly as they get to see a whole load of other people filling up your venue and having a good time. More people in the audience could also mean more audience tweeting and instagramming about how great the event and venue are, which you can then show off to people as evidence of awesomeness.

Bonus: all marketing emails should include subscribing information
This isn't that intuitive because if someone receives your email they've subscribed already but I often forward emails to friends so I think it's a good idea to include subscribing, just in case, not just how to unsubscribe.

Perhaps this is all too difficult
Given that the things suggested above aren't routinely done... is it because I've underestimated how much effort is involved in putting on events? All my events are fairly small - 20-100 people, pretty easy - or are there other good reasons why this isn't done very much? Or is it done loads and I'm failing to spot it?!