It’s educational, at least, to watch TV in different countries. In Germany, one channel is searching for the country’s next super model. It’s basically about young women walking up and down in front of some middle-aged men making comments about their suitability. The only excuse for such a programme I got think of was that they must have made it before the #metoo campaign started and women began to speak out.

I got my first birthday present today, from Pádraig’s OT who staid on with Pádraig after a session to give us a couple of hours to go out. When we came back Pádraig had done some amazing work like unscrewing the tops of some small bottles grabbing them with  his index finger and thumb. When we left, he waved ‘good-bye’ – with his right arm! Something he had never done before! It made it all an evening to remember, for many reasons – not last because of the the big heart of a very generous, enthusiastic, professional, down-to-earth and very well grounded person.

Earlier today, I had come across this article in the Scientific American reporting on how Facebook is moving full steam ahead on its “silent speech” program, according to neuroscientist Mark Chevillet, who leads the project.

Few people use voice assistants at work: “People don’t like to do it [speak aloud what they want to post] in front of other people,” Chevillet told a conference at the MIT Media Lab. But “what if you could type directly from your brain?” Early testing “tells us this is not science fiction,” he said. “There is signal in there [the brain] that you can harness.” Building 8, Facebook’s advanced-tech center where the thoughts-to-type project is housed, runs on two-year cycles; Chevillet joined in 2016 from Johns Hopkins, so 2018 could bring hints that the project is making progress toward turning thoughts into text at the hoped-for 100 words per minute, some 20 times faster than today’s brain-machine interfaces.

We have another couple of days and a night in Hamburg. Amazing how a week just passes by.