Fake news

These are not bees. Ophrys lutea, bee orchid.

It's been an interesting afternoon. It's a glorious day, so six of us turned out for the Monday afternoon walk. We did one of our regular ones, up to the lake on the slopes of the montagne d'Alaric and back down through now largely grubbed up vineyards. The sky was the brightest blue, with a light breeze, the only sounds that of birdsong and our nattering.

It was only a short walk: 4.2 km and about an hour. I'd already heard about the massive power outage in Spain and Portugal and after I got home I idly checked social media. The outage was ongoing, causing utter chaos, and imagine my surprise when I found someone on Bluesky reporting that it had been caused by a fire on the Alaric mountain in south-west France taking out the very high tension line that is the source for my love of pylons. To say I was surprised that on our walk on this very mountain an hour earlier we had seen neither smoke, nor flames, nor fire engines, nor Canadairs is putting it mildly.

The source appeared to be a Euronews story quoting a spokesman from Portuguese electricity company REN (you have to scroll a long way down to find it). While S went out to check that the six of us were not remarkably unobservant (we weren't) I did more googling, including checking status updates from the local fire brigade. Not a peep. I discussed it further with people on Bluesky, trying to find further sources. And eventually came to the conclusion that someone, somewhere, had stumbled across stories about an event in ... 2021. When indeed the massive fire on Alaric consumed hundreds of hectares and took out the high-tension line, resulting in power cuts in Spain and Portugal. All bets are off on whether it was an AI bot or an intern that made this elementary mistake, but it seems increasingly likely that it was one or the other. A spokesperson for the French electricity grid RTE subsequently stated that the problem did not originate in France (Euronews don't seem to have updated their page as of now though). Meanwhile it was interesting to see how the explanation spread around social media and had also made an appearance on Spanish national TV very early on, about half an hour after the power cut. And of course if it wasn't for the fact that I am literally on the spot, I'd have had no reason to disbelieve it. All fascinating stuff! And now la montagne d'Alaric has had its second five minutes of fame -- you heard it first here!