Rayvin

Aye but in Newcastle atm flat hunting - I figure I've timed this just poorly enough that I'll get hit with the huge energy price hike before it has a chance to impact the rental market, and end up overpaying on both. Still though, I'm glad to be heading home.

I honestly think it's probably better in the cities, or perhaps if you go down to the stores themselves. Maybe online customers are back of the list in terms of availability. Whatever it is, it wasn't always like this. It's not causing huge problems I guess but it does also demonstrate how privileged we have been on this front for many years. Well, at my end anyway. Moving back to Newcastle soon, so maybe I'll see an improvement.

For me it's been a rolling thing - items I buy one week aren't available for the next two. It's extended right the way to fresh chicken tbh but has also included fruit juice, pizza, bread (of certain types), tomatoes, peppers, etc - it's almost like everything is on rotation. That said, I have been living quite remotely the past couple of years and I wonder if the limitations come from that to some extent. Although we do order for home delivery from Tesco... Not really keeping track of it hugely but since we're exploring it in detail, those items are all things that just show up as unavailable every other week.

I use 'was' more in the sense that we are no longer together. Possibly because of this April Fools

All the more reason we should attach ourselves to the EU which stands a far greater chance at a resurgence in a new mould than any of its component parts do individually. But yes, I think you might be right.

A slightly more sophisticated one that I used when casting from your PC to your TV was still something of an emerging technology and less widely known - I'd leave my home computer on and go to work while my partner remained at home. Screen off but tower on. From work, remote connect to the PC, had The Ring video on standby (where she's climbing out of the well) - cast it to the TV in the living room where my partner would be, it automatically turns on the TV and plays the video. I intended to do it several times so that it kept turning on when she turned it off, but once was all it took. She was out of the house and calling me from the car to claim the house was fucking haunted and I needed to come back home right this moment She was a pretty superstitious person tbf. Slept on the couch the next few nights but it was worth it

Aye. Ukraine war might boost climate change adaptations of course if we pivot to green or nuclear, but yeah. It just seems utterly hopeless on so many fronts. Maybe it's darkest before the dawn, maybe eventually this is going to go past the line of tolerance for right leaning people and something will be forced to change, but because it's coming on in stages over a longer period of time it's really difficult to shake people out of just accepting it. Imagine in 2008 if we woke up and the country suddenly looked like this - I honestly believe the government would literally be overthrown. Do it over 10 years though and people just accept it.

My two favourite office April fools pranks were: 1 - Take a screenshot of someone's desktop, remove/hide all their icons and folders, and then make the screenshot their background. Even someone reasonably computer savvy would take a few seconds to realise what had happened - and the less savvy are just fucking doomed ("My computer has frozen, I can't click anything") 2 - I don't think this is possible anymore (definitely not on this key combo anyway), but you used to be able to hit CTRL, ALT and the Down key to turn the screen upside down. So you could wait for them to get up for a coffee and then invert their screen - when they get back and raise it as an issue you can then ask how on earth they managed to break their PC so badly, etc. I think I was the only one who found it amusing tbf But isn't that normally the way with April Fools?

Man it's looking grim this morning on all fronts in terms of living costs. Could we possibly have a worse government in place to handle this than the one we have? Not only is it a Tory government, thus rendering it entirely unsympathetic to the lives of ordinary people (just work harder everyone, you lazy slackers) - but it's also a deeply incompetent one. About the only thing we have going for it in fact might well be how obsessed Johnson is with his public image, it's the only pressure we can apply at all. Brexit yet again looks like an absolute catastrophe of a decision for quality of life across the country, not that it's the sole cause of all of this now. I honestly don't think things will ever be 'normal' or stable again. I think at this point we might have to acknowledge that we have a lifetime's worth of instability and rolling disasters to get used to. Seems to just be a consistent thing at this stage.

No matter what his actual belief on this is, what he has made abundantly clear is that he can be talked out of or into anything based on which way the wind is blowing. He is the very opposite of a man of conviction.

I feel like it was part of a commentary Dave was making on the attributes of... Ayoze Perez? I think?

I remember that

To be able to derive any value from the assessment of his stats we'd need to compare him with other 19 year old fullbacks tbf. In fact, probably also the stats of players who 'made it' but from when they were 19. We'd also have to somehow control for the leagues they played in, maybe a weighted scoring system that factored in overall strength of those stats across players and fullbacks in general in Serie A. Probably also applying similar mechanism for assessing the statistical strengths (with weighting) of the players he's gone up against and his colleagues in defence. - may even want a match by match assessment in there as well (if an opposition team isn't targeting 'his side' he'll have a quieter game in general, defensively, etc). This started off as poking fun but now I actually think it sounds enjoyable. Something is wrong with me.

That is great because it demonstrates firstly how much the police rely on intimidation to achieve what they want to achieve (and how much of their power shrinks away once challenged) and secondly because at no point during the whole thing did the guy seem to realise that this was a role reversal exercise.

They have to draw a line and start behaving in a socially responsible way at some point though. That said they'd never get away with it over this because Smith is black and the outcry would be incredible if he was the first person they make an example of. But the next white guy who slips up should have the book thrown at him and then standards can be enforced from there. These people are not too powerful to suffer consequences, should be the lesson.

I think he's just fighting the good fight for his own cause really. He's not wrong as far as I can tell. Aside from this particular line though, the main thing that really jumped out to me was his discussion in the first few paragraphs around the epistemic crisis or collapse of the shared frame of reference. Again, nothing we haven't discussed before, but that's probably the most concise description of it that I've seen.

Plenty know these things yes - but his contention is very few of the plenty who know these things are given platforms to make those views clear in mainstream discussion on current issues. David Attenborough has probably gotten further than most with his climate change documentaries but frankly, any attack on the finite nature of capitalism is being dismissed wholesale as Marxism at this point - if it even gets anywhere near a mainstream platform at all. I mean who is actually standing up and forcing these conversations to happen, out in the open where they can be seen? Johnson certainly isn't, and I don't recall Starmer ever raising such points. They're not vote winners obviously. When was the last time we heard anyone talk about how the overall model of perpetual growth is unsustainable, at the mainstream level? Plenty of Russians know that the Kremlin is full of shit too, but that doesn't mean that Russia is openly challenging itself on its assumptions and views. It's doing the opposite. And I think his point here is that on many issues, we're very much doing the same. Not you, or me, or most of the people on here maybe. But then we're not making the decisions. And we're also political enthusiasts which means our awareness exceeds those of people who are less motivated to explore these things.

I can only offer a reddit link but here:

Fair, and thanks. I did just see a clip of the laser pointers though, and fucking hell. They aren't punishing that shit?

Monbiot, as usual, superb. Really well worth a read on the basis that it cleanly identifies the single biggest issue we have as a society, the collapse of a shared frame of reference which is referred to apparently as an epistemic crisis. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/30/putin-lie-machine-history-untruths?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Damn, that's some take. How is he bringing the side down? I'm not challenging your view btw, I just want to understand it cos it's so rare to hear anyone say a bad word about Salah. Edit - except Wykiki ofc, but he has a bad word for almost everyone

You know, once upon a time I'd have argued with you about this but it's really getting to a stage now where I'm struggling to point to any 'good' that democratised journalism is doing in any field, anywhere

So Shearer benefited from playing at a time when there were no good goalkeepers, but that only he was able to benefit from it. That's his argument in full. If goalkeepers were shit, every other forward of his generation would look "better" as well. And so they would have all been worth more. And so Shearer, relative to other forwards, would have been worth... exactly the same. If he'd gone in claiming other forwards were shit then that'd be one thing, but calling out keepers as the reason Shearer looked so good is just fucking stupid.

Doesn't look like a lethal poison though? You would think someone of Putins "skill" would be able to organise a fatal poisoning.

Idk what to tell you - maybe I have no taste but he's generally been in roles that make me smile; find it difficult not to like the guy.