On Tuesday afternoon, researchers’ fears were confirmed. The pod of almost 100 long-finned pilot whales rushed to the shore, stranding themselves on Cheynes Beach near Albany, in southern Western Australia.

By Wednesday, 52 of the whales had died, the authorities said. A team of local volunteer and conservation officials managed to move the remaining 45 back into the water and attempted to herd them back out to sea, using boats and kayaks to guide them. However, that afternoon, the whales re-stranded themselves further along the beach, the authorities said. The Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported that the whales had again formed a huddle before drifting back to shore.

Lord of War is a fantastic Nicolas Cage movie!

Wildfires driven by an extreme heatwave have encircled Palermo after temperatures in the Sicilian city climbed to 47C (117F) on Monday.

But while the heat stifles the south, northern regions continued to bear the brunt of bad weather caused by the arrival of cooler air from northern Europe, with more torrential rain and gales forecast in Lombardy, Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia.

Giuseppe Sala, the mayor of Milan, said residents endured a sleepless night as winds exceeded 63 mph (100 km/h).

Sala said: “What we are seeing is not normal. We can no longer deny that climate change is changing our lives. We can no longer turn a blind eye, and above all, we can’t not do anything.”

The civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci, said: “Climate change is not just a contingency and Italy must realise that it now has a tropical climate. On one hand, we are paying the price of climate change, for which we should have paid more attention several years ago, and, on the other, of infrastructure that does not seem to be totally adequate for the new context.

The COP28 will certainly be interesting.

Yeah, this feels like “premature optimization”. When you design your applications and databases, it should reflect your understanding of the problem and how you solved it as best as possible. Using DATETIMEOFFSET NULL when you actually mean BIT NOT NULL isn’t saying what you mean. If you already understand that you have a boolean option and you think you might need a timestamp to track it, use 2 columns. Or an audit table. So sayeth the holy SRP.

No