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Starmer’s approval rating no change at -2% – politicalbetting.com

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  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Scott_xP said:

    If you've not not broken the law you've nothing to fear. https://twitter.com/donaeldunready/status/1523758694739357697/photo/1

    In a long day at the Dual Thick Short Planks Congress this deserves at least a mentioned in dispatches

    Bozos for BoJo really do have their collective knickers in a twist and then some.

    And are busily hoisting their flapping, somewhat- soiled undies on their own splintery petards.
    Worlds smallest violin for bozos like Harry Cole, a man who is quite literally a cuck for the Prime Minister.
    Boris is having sex with Harry Cole's wife?
    Coles's ex
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815
    edited May 2022

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Yep, they just decided one day to stop being hunter gatherers and to start a collective community level mass construction project in stone relying on structured organisation and farming that didn't exist yet immediately after we exited the last ice age.

    Edit - they had help or early human history is very wrong
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    I think the percentages are off too - the likelihood of two brown-eyed parents having a blue eyed child is higher than the likelihood of two blue-eyed parents having a brown-eyed one.

    Incidentally, I believe all iris colours are actually the same eye colour anyway - just more or less. It goes black, brown, hazel, green, blue, grey, white, according to how much or little pigment you have.
    Here you go: a table full of statistics

    https://www.babymed.com/tools/baby-eye-color-calculator-predictor?p1=Brown&p2=Brown
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Now there’s a lad who understands marketing.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,909
    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    Ukraine, NOT "The Ukraine".

    "The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,080

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.

    Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.

    (If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876
    dixiedean said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    All this assumes the parents are the biological parents.
    Call me cynical.
    Can’t remember the stats but rather more people are not the child of the person they think is their dad than would be expected.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
    Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Now there’s a lad who understands marketing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,227
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.

    The Northern Ireland Secretary has already ruled out granting a border poll and Unionist parties still won more seats than Nationalist parties at Stormont even if SF came first
    I'm struggling with this one @HYUFD but I'm not an expert on how it calculated but surely it is as follows although I am not confident I have this right:

    SF & SDLP & PBP 36 Nationalist
    DUP & UUP & TUV 35 Unionists

    Alliance 17 Non aligned

    You forgot Independent Unionist Alex Easton elected in North Down and Independent Unionist Claire Sugden elected in East Londonderry. That makes 37 Unionists in total ie more than the 36 Nationalists (though PBP designate as socialist not nationalist anyway)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Northern_Ireland_Assembly_election
    Cheers. Yep I saw 4 in the Other column but only counted 2 of them. Silly me.

    PBP are pro a unification so should be in the nationalist column, but are you saying that as they haven't designated as such that doesn't count? Silly of them if that is the case if that is what they stand for.
    With respect to People Before Profit position on Irish unity, this from wiki (two sources):

    >Both the PBP and the Socialist Party (SP) are all-Ireland organisations but do not form part of a single electoral alliance in elections in Northern Ireland. The PBP contests elections under its own name, while the SP is part of the Cross-Community Labour Alternative. The electoral alliance between the PBP and Solidarity supports anti-capitalism, democratic socialism, and eco-socialism, and promotes Irish reunification through a socialist European federation.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Before_Profit/Solidarity

    > Solidarity believes that Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales should merge and form a socialist federation, which should aspire to be part of a Socialist Federation of Europe. The Phoenix has opined that this position is a "bizarre fusion of Trotskyism and British Unionism" that "articulates a unionist outlook dressed in socialist rhetoric"
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Ireland)

    SSI - note that Cross-Community Labour Alternative (CCLA) did field a candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Donal O'Cofaigh

    So would seem that lumping PBP with nationalist contingent is problematic?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies.
    I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please.
    Thanks.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    Or ukelele: I salute you, I really do. Truly remarkable.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.

    Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.

    (If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
    Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    The Scottish Conservative Party has announced a new chairman and deputy leader after last week's bruising council elections.

    South Scotland MSP Craig Hoy to take over as chair and Central Scotland MSP Meghan Gallacher becoming the deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives.

    Departing chair Rab Forman said it is "time to move on".

  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    Ukraine, NOT "The Ukraine".

    "The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
    I do call it Ukraine (mainly because it's quicker). But the official Italian position is that it's 'Firenze' not Florence. I still call it Florence.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
  • BigRichBigRich Posts: 3,489
    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    :(
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    dixiedean said:

    Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies.
    I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please.
    Thanks.

    Hooray, but the question is or rather are: did your mum, dad, and or milkman have blue or brown eyes at the relevant time?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
    Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
    I have literally posted the statistics table, and the probability of blue/brown resulting in a blue eyed child is very, very far from unusual.

    You aren't trying to move the goalposts are you?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS

    My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,695
    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    BigRich said:

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    :(
    Good job the Putin stooge didn’t win the election…
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    Ukraine, NOT "The Ukraine".

    "The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
    I do call it Ukraine (mainly because it's quicker). But the official Italian position is that it's 'Firenze' not Florence. I still call it Florence.
    Ignore the Sunil, he has a bee in his bonnet about this
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,458
    edited May 2022

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Mills & Boon is highly read but I wouldn't expect it to be considered accurate reflection of peoples love lives (not that I have read any to judge).
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.

    A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,227

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Now there’s a lad who understands marketing.
    Even now, kiosks in Sanliurfa and on the way to Gobekli Tepe are selling eager tourists six-fingered gloves "modeled" on those actually worn by ancient alien invaders. Or were they just holiday campers?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited May 2022
    GIN1138 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
    I expect the French would allow Russia, the US and UK to destroy each other and Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe and then hope to emerge as the new superpower in their place leading a Federal EU on foreign policy and military matters with Germany providing the money. Remember in WW2 half of France was happy to collaborate with the Nazis in Vichy France while the other under De Gaulle led the resistance and De Gaulle also withdrew France from NATO
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
    I guess if it was really big and offended your newer religion, it might be easier to bury than destroy? Makes you wonder what else is out there in less hospitable locations for peaceful archeology
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Leon said:

    It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS

    My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day

    I've been to St Kilda. In Melbourne mind.
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578
    On topic, wasn’t this the side in the early days of the scandals with the Conservatives when there were the headlines and a good number claimed (including myself probably) that the voters didn’t care about this issue? Until they did.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815
    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    There are several iterations all buried. A curious ongoing project they then repeatedly buried 5000 years before any other appreciable homo sapiens projects discovered
    I guess if it was really big and offended your newer religion, it might be easier to bury than destroy? Makes you wonder what else is out there in less hospitable locations for peaceful archeology
    And what age it goes back to
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    Ukraine, NOT "The Ukraine".

    "The official Ukrainian position is that "the Ukraine" is incorrect, both grammatically and politically."
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
    I do call it Ukraine (mainly because it's quicker). But the official Italian position is that it's 'Firenze' not Florence. I still call it Florence.
    I struggle to move on from the World At War and it’s use of The Ukraine.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    IshmaelZ said:

    dixiedean said:

    Well. I've got very blue eyes. I'm told it is an attractive feature which makes a little dent in other deficiencies.
    I wouldn't like this to be over-complicated, please.
    Thanks.

    Hooray, but the question is or rather are: did your mum, dad, and or milkman have blue or brown eyes at the relevant time?
    I'm the only blue eyed member of my immediate family.
    Make of that what you will.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
  • MrEdMrEd Posts: 5,578

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
    No, he can just say, if Durham Police say I committed an offence, I will resign regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not. How about that?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,080
    dixiedean said:

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717c177089880065

    But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.

    Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.

    (If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
    Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
    He did that by becoming Labour leader.
    To an extent, but that's strictly business.

    If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed created by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Now there’s a lad who understands marketing.
    Even now, kiosks in Sanliurfa and on the way to Gobekli Tepe are selling eager tourists six-fingered gloves "modeled" on those actually worn by ancient alien invaders. Or were they just holiday campers?
    Sean’s on commission.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456
    edited May 2022

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I wonder what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,458
    GIN1138 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
    No.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    dixiedean said:

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717c177089880065

    But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.

    Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.

    (If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
    Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
    He did that by becoming Labour leader.
    To an extent, but that's strictly business.

    If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
    Well indeed.
    But. At some point someone has to draw a line.
    I'm astonished SKS was the one with the balls.
    It probably won't end well. But it needed to be done.
    The next time it won't be novel.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456
    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    Or maybe we are right.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
    Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
    I have literally posted the statistics table, and the probability of blue/brown resulting in a blue eyed child is very, very far from unusual.

    You aren't trying to move the goalposts are you?
    I didn't see the table. And I am not trying to move any goalposts. If we take the table at face value, it does indeed demonstrate that a brown eyed baby is the likelier outcome of a mixed eye colour couple. But 'unusual' is perhaps overstating the case.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
    I heard he was a less successful Dan Brown. And has a legendarily small penis. Hence knowledge of the Singapore sling or whatever it was.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    I’m a bit of a comics nerd.

    What most folk furth of Scandinavia probably don’t know is that we are a thriving hub of talent in the comics world. Not quite in the Franco-Belgian league, but definitely a notable social phenomenon. Norway in particular has an extraordinary number of amazing cartoonists, comic artists and writers, and graphic novelists. Mind-bogglingly good stuff.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    HYUFD said:

    GIN1138 said:

    HYUFD said:

    Macron tells Europe to spare Putin from humiliation and warns the Ukraine it will be decades before it is allowed into the EU

    https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1523747474434895873?s=20&t=9aKF6axzAvzXvkmoNR1ctw

    If Ukraine did spiral into WWIII it makes you wonder exactly which side France would be on doesn't it?
    I expect the French would allow Russia, the US and UK to destroy each other and Ukraine and much of Eastern Europe and then hope to emerge as the new superpower in their place leading a Federal EU on foreign policy and military matters with Germany providing the money. Remember in WW2 half of France was happy to collaborate with the Nazis in Vichy France while the other under De Gaulle led the resistance and De Gaulle also withdrew France from NATO
    Which is what we used to be good at, letting the continent get on with its wars and standing behind our Navy.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.

    A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.

    It is being sped into EU candidate status, which is not nothing (even if nations can then just sit in there). If they retain the political will to want to join the EU, then with the influx of foreign help they will hopefully receive, and a burning desire to move quickly on the quesiton, then it seems possible to me that Ukraine could rapidly transform and this make faster progress than Macron currently predicts.

    That's not guaranteed, decades seems like a cautious prediction to reflect that, but hopefully Zelensky and his successors can marshal the country into achieving what they need to in a way which they might not have been able to before.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815
    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    They had to. Having randomly given up hunter gathering to engage in this community level multi decade/century stone construction effort someone noted they were 4 to 5000 years or so early. Real face palm moment
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,955
    I see the PM of Sri Lanka has resigned.

    Had she had a curry?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    ...BBC News at 10 erring towards the notion Starmer should already have resigned. A Conservative MP called Pow, who I have never heard of said he is a hypocrite and should have gone. Did she not get the memo?
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815

    I see the PM of Sri Lanka has resigned.

    Had she had a curry?

    No she saw the price of it and did a runner
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited May 2022
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
    Lousy made up name. Should be something fancier, french sounding, that's how you get acclaim.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,695

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.


    So many questions about that photo, and also surely they should have a spare title for NI and go as the Mcgillycuddies of Armagh or sinilar?
    You're much more au fait with that kind of thing than me but is that St Kilda?
    No
    Its the Pitons of St Lucia, I think.

    Smells a bit sulphorous from the volcano, but very pretty. Best food in the Caribean too.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,042
    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    Very harsh on Mrs. Dickson and Mrs. Kjh.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717c177089880065

    But that's the actual boring law, elitist judges and whatnot.

    Dan's talking about the real law, where The Mail (embodiment of what right-thinking people are thinking) don't like the cut of Starmer's jib. He's had the temerity to not do what they have told him to. That's clearly far worse.

    (If Starmer gets out of this alive, the relationship between him and the press is going to be fascinating.)
    Your earlier point about Starmer earning the lasting enmity of the Sun and Mail was extremely well made, btw.
    He did that by becoming Labour leader.
    To an extent, but that's strictly business.

    If he sucessfully defies them, it becomes a lot more personal.
    Well indeed.
    But. At some point someone has to draw a line.
    I'm astonished SKS was the one with the balls.
    It probably won't end well. But it needed to be done.
    The next time it won't be novel.
    SKS needs to give them a narrative to salve their butt-hurt. Something about coming back from being on the ropes.

    A morsel about tax cuts might help too.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206
    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Who sez that the younger royals are neither use nor ornament? Bit miffed that BJ & co think Scotland is so much in the bag that they don't need to send the duchess to live in Edinburgh.


    So many questions about that photo, and also surely they should have a spare title for NI and go as the Mcgillycuddies of Armagh or sinilar?
    You're much more au fait with that kind of thing than me but is that St Kilda?
    No
    Its the Pitons of St Lucia, I think.

    Smells a bit sulphorous from the volcano, but very pretty. Best food in the Caribean too.
    Yes, good guess
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,695
    edited May 2022



    The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.

    Raab in tights??? Grabacoque (formally of the parish) would enjoy that! :D
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.

    Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    I think the percentages are off too - the likelihood of two brown-eyed parents having a blue eyed child is higher than the likelihood of two blue-eyed parents having a brown-eyed one.

    Incidentally, I believe all iris colours are actually the same eye colour anyway - just more or less. It goes black, brown, hazel, green, blue, grey, white, according to how much or little pigment you have.
    Also, iris colour changes with age. If you look at 80 year old white people near 80% have blue eyes. Like skin and hair pigmentation, eye pigment fades with the years.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,815
    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Trying to get us and her through platinum weekend
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,007
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
    I hear that his novels are ghostwritten by @LadyG
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    GIN1138 said:



    The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.

    Raab in tights??? Grabacoque (formally of the parish) would enjoy that! :D
    Grabcoque, if you are reading this, do come back. Your contribution is missed.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876
    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,007

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.

    Now THAT I would like to see!
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    GIN1138 said:



    The last two times the Queen couldn’t make it, she was represented by the Lord Chancellor, apparently, but unfortunately that’s now Dominic Raab.

    Raab in tights??? Grabacoque (formally of the parish) would enjoy that! :D
    Grabcoque, if you are reading this, do come back. Your contribution is missed.
    He was smart and funny. Much missed

    Also he got arrested for a campaign brawl, which was excellent value
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530

    Ukraine was never going to be sped into the EU, and quite right too.

    A smart UK would be trying to figure out an institutional architecture for EU refuseniks or can’t-get-in-niks (EFTA, Switzerland, Ukraine, maybe even Turkey and Israel) to be able to secure access the single market without forfeiting sovereignty to the ECJ.

    The Macron proposals were quite interesting in allowing a form of looser membership and this would allow Ukraine to join that much more quickly before full membership .


  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,227
    MrEd said:

    I love that legal eagle Dan Hodges has rumbled the evil Starmer's plot: to "get away with not breaking the law"

    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1523717177089880065

    If Starmer really had integrity, then if the Durham Police don't find him guilty he should appeal, and keep appealing until they succumb and give him an FPN to shut him up. I think that's how it should work?
    No, he can just say, if Durham Police say I committed an offence, I will resign regardless of whether I am issued with a FPN or not. How about that?
    If Keir Starmer pledged, that he not only resign as LOTO if the cops give him as much as a hard stare, but also quit the House of Commons, rend his garments in Trafalgar Square, don sackcloth and ashes, and hurl himself from atop the Marble Arch (or Millennium Dome) - the Daily Mail would STILL say, it's NOT enough!

    How's about you?
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    If Brenda is so awesome why on earth is Prince Andrew her favourite child?

    I mean that's a great big red flag that she's got terrible judgment.

    Sometimes attributed to his striking resemblance to her very close friend Lord Porchester
    Thanks, I googled him and I got this.


    It's not easy to see from that photo, but he looks like he's got brown eyes. It would be unusual for a child with a brown-eyed parent to have blue eyes, as the brown-eyed gene is dominant.
    Not that unusual, otherwise the number of blue eyed children would be trending towards zero*.

    FWIW, my wife has brown eyes, and I have blue/green. One of our two children has my coloured eyes, and the other my wife's.

    * Unless, of course, those with blue eyes were significantly more fertile.
    Due to the dominance of the brown eyed gene (or ukelele or whatever Ishmael would like us to call it), it is very very rare for the child of two blue eyed parents to have brown eyes. Because they don't have any of the brown eyed gene. It's bred out. So its recessiveness is its strength in that regard.
    OK. Let's build a very simply model.

    Let's assume that we have a population of 100, split equally between blue and brown eyes. Let's assume that 85% of blue/brown parents have a brown eyed child, that 99% of brown/brown have a brown eyed child, and that 1% of blue/blue have a brown eyed child.

    Does that sound reasonable?

    Would you like to tell me how many blue eyed children there are after a dozen or so iterations of the model?
    I couldn't do so even if I wanted to.
    The point is that it can't be *that* unusual for blue/brown to produce blue, otherwise the number of blue eyed babies would rapidly trend towards zero.
    Well, the fact that two blue eyed parents are the less likely to have a child of a different eye colour than two brown-eyed parents pulls things in the opposing direction.
    Don't blue eyed people carry two copies of the blue eyed gene, so two blue eyed parents should both pass on a copy of the gene and their children should therefore also have blue eyes? In other words if two blue eyed people have a kid with brown eyes, the "father" should probably have a word with the mother?
    Whereas two people with brown eyes could each have a copy of the blue eyed gene and so could have a child with blue eyes?
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited May 2022

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XIV.
    Then I can die a happy man.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876

    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.

    Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
    Wow! You get that he’s just posting shit that runs through his head don’t you? He doesn’t really want to do those things. He also loves to wind people up and stir the pot.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,227
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
    Does he write for the Beano?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XVI.
    Then I can die a happy man.
    Looked like the first was nailed on, but I’m not so sure now. How long for Louis?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,206

    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.

    Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
    Alternatively, I was joking and you are as stupid as you are humourless. I understand humourlessness is not unknown in the ranks of Scottish Nationalism, in the same way that mange is not unknown in the stray cats of Cairo
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    kle4 said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    What are the latest expert views on why it came to be buried? Naturally or by man? If the latter, is there another likely explanation beyond preservation?
    Quite brilliantly - no one has a fucking clue

    In his novel The Genesis Secret, Tom Knox presents the theory that they buried the temples as an act of propitiatory shame, as they felt punished by the Gods for having gone from hunter gathering to farming, with all the stress that came with this revolution, and the distancing from other species. The Gods seemed angry and demanded a sacrifice, so the builders of the Tas Tepeler sacrificed the greatest possession of all, these amazing structures - the same way Celtic warriors would throw precious swords into the Thames 8,000 years later, to appease the heavens

    It’s as good a theory as any

    Why else would they do it. To hide it? From whom? It’s a superb mystery
    Who the hell is Tom Knox? (I know really)
    Lousy made up name. Should be something fancier, french sounding, that's how you get acclaim.
    Jean Cerveau-Zizi
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 20,695

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XVI.
    Then I can die a happy man.
    Looked like the first was nailed on, but I’m not so sure now. How long for Louis?
    Two years for both I reckon.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XVI.
    Then I can die a happy man.
    Looked like the first was nailed on, but I’m not so sure now. How long for Louis?
    2024
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XIV.
    Then I can die a happy man.
    I have been softening up my kid for London Bridge, given how barmy the country is likely to go. “The queen is a very old lady, when she dies we will have a King etc…”.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    I’m a bit of a comics nerd.

    What most folk furth of Scandinavia probably don’t know is that we are a thriving hub of talent in the comics world. Not quite in the Franco-Belgian league, but definitely a notable social phenomenon. Norway in particular has an extraordinary number of amazing cartoonists, comic artists and writers, and graphic novelists. Mind-bogglingly good stuff.
    Yes but why did I pick Mills and Boon that is the question that is bothering me?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876
    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
    It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch. I am not looking forward to it when it comes.
  • Leon said:

    It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS

    My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day

    I used to live near St Kilda and adopted the Saints AFL team as the team I supported while I lived there. Don't recall it being that dangerous.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,456

    Leon said:

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    moonshine said:

    moonshine said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Taz said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    I am on way back north, my meeting in the Bucks countryside being over (very close to Chequers as it happens), having driven down this morning. I am having the largest strongest coffee I can stomach and find that Sir Keir has laid down the gauntlet. Good for him!

    Those Covid lockdown rules are having a hell of an after-life.

    I assume nothing else has happened - like Putin declaring war on us or anything.

    I am currently listening to Mary Beard read her book "Twelve Caesars". I thought it would tell me about the Roman Emperors and what they did. But no. It's all about how they've been portrayed in art. At best it could have amounted to a 30 minute podcast. Instead of which it is endless chapter after endless chapter saying that

    1. Suetonius made up a lot of what he wrote.
    2. No-one really knows what Julius Caesar or others looked like.
    3. Artists made it up.
    4. Aristocrats liked having busts of them in their house.
    5. Er .... that's it.

    In TWELVE chapters. I don't think I've ever listened to anything so long and learned so little. In fact most of the time a I have no idea what she is talking about - it's like having a bath of warm words with occasional bubbles of names I recognise - Titian, Mantua, Charles 1st, Caligula etc.

    My admiration for my daughter who did a classics degree has increased significantly if this is what her lectures were like.

    That's a shame, as it's literally the next book on my reading pile (though I go in knowing it is about imagery).

    I could see a little of that party pooping tendency in her book SPQR, when talking about ancient battles and essentially going 'Things would have been far too chaotic for people to really know what was going on, so most of the detail we hear about, say, Cannae, is probably wrong' without really offering up any insight about that. I did enjoy the parts pointing out how the Roman foundational myths are really quite unusual in some ways (an unnecessary twin, outsides and outcasts founding the place etc)
    For those who have not seen it (and who care about the relative merits of Greece vs Rome) here is Mary Beard in a 90-minute debate against Boris Johnson.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k448JqQyj8
    Doesn't seem like a fair fight, one the face of it. She generally knows what she's talking about.
    An academic expert in their field vs a former journalist and MP who did classics at univeristy 30 years before and likes it is presumably designed as an entertainment event not an even intellectual contest.

    But did he win?
    Johnson has also had books published about Rome and presented TV shows on the subject.

    Erich von Daniken also had books published about ancient history. Dunno about TV, mind.
    Apparently he is still alive - and probably very happy about how much TV and movie material seems inspired by or influenced by his ideals. People love ancient astronaut theory.

    I remember Paul Merton joking about how the answer was always No to Erich's questions.

    Could this be a UFO from the 12th century? No

    Could this be a landing platform for an alien scacecraft? No

    Could this... "No, no no"
    He seems very happy when he's on Ancient Allens. Given the US are paying to study UAPs and have conceded one possibility is they are of non terrestrial origin then its no leap at all to their having been visiting since human records exist. The possibility of human interaction with aliens is somewhat beyond cheesy 'and finally' stories about stereotypical yokels in backwoods America now
    Not only is it not a leap, but it would be far more plausible that if UAPs are ET origin, that they have been here for a very long time rather than pitching up only recently. Unless you think nuke testing is some special intergalactic marker at a quantum level and the speed of light has been conquered, allowing them to get here toute de suite after 1945.

    Ergo, if UAPs are indeed non terrestrial, then the thrust of the ancient aliens theory is probably right, if not of course the finer detail about Pharaohs being aliens or whatever it was. A self replicating autonomous Von Neumann probe might have been indifferently monitoring Earth since time immemorial. Not intervening but quietly cataloguing, feeding back info to a central hub on behalf of a civilisation long ago lost to time.
    It's very much all in or not at all, yes.
    Although speed of light isn't really an issue, I'd imagine any interstellar travel isn't done by actually traversing the empty space between two star systems.
    I’m aware it makes you sound like a Kubrick obsessive to say so but if you accept that a) UAP are intelligently controlled and non human, b) have likely been here a very long time, then c) there is strong merit in serious academic study into the cloudy past of human evolution and the cognitive revolution.

    I would start by looking for non natural patterns and changes over millennia in junk DNA, the portion of our genetic code that does not have an obvious physiological function, making it presumably fairly stable against mutations that stick thanks to conferring no evolutionary advantage. Chances are there’s nothing to find of course. But it would still be worth allocating a small drop of the sea of money humans spend on nonsense every year.
    To tie several threads together, the mayor of Sanliurfa is claiming that Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler were indeed crested by aliens. Probably with blue eyes, and six fingers, so definitely related to the Smithsons

    https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/gobeklitepe-may-be-made-by-aliens-says-mayor-173262
    Nah, they were made by humans. Just because it was 11,600 years ago doesn't mean they lacked the know-how (and the inclination).
    Explain the six fingers then? And the entire thrust of that brilliant article on the Spectator, which has been their Most Read article for 36 hours?

    It’s fuckin aliens. The mayor of Urfa is bang on
    Dennis the Menace is the most read strip in the Beano. Doesn’t alter the fact it’s fiction.
    Great minds. I what it means that you went for Dennis the Menace and I went for Mills & Boon?
    Coz you’re both fucking boring idiots?
    I’d rather be boring than a violence fantasist like you. Your desire to drop nuclear bombs on Dublin and Glasgow last week being just the latest in a two-decade stream of worrying filth and aggression.

    Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler weren’t “boring”. They’re your kind of guys.
    To be honest I was just going for the gentle leg pulling of @leon
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    moonshine said:

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    She needs to outlast Boris and Louis XIV.
    Then I can die a happy man.
    I have been softening up my kid for London Bridge, given how barmy the country is likely to go. “The queen is a very old lady, when she dies we will have a King etc…”.
    My daughter is 7.

    I mention the Queen occasionally so that London Bridge will have some meaning for her, and she’ll be able to carry that memory into her own old age.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    I see the PM of Sri Lanka has resigned.

    Had she had a curry?

    No she saw the price of it and did a runner
    More or less. Rioting over the price of food and fuel, in part from a push for organic farming.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
    It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch.
    Succession planning must have been a nightmare.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    Macron talking about not humiliating Putin was in relation to when an eventual peace deal has to happen . He said trying to humiliate Putin at that point would be counter-productive. This seems pretty obvious and sensible .
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,876
    kle4 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:

    The Prince of Wales has no constitutional right or precedent to represent the Queen at tomorrow’s Opening of Parliament, apparently.

    It feels like HMQ might not have very long left with us and a "transition" is from her to Charles is very quietly taking place?
    Palace always tight lipped and rightly so, but it feels like an end game right now. Not convinced she’ll make the Christmas message this year.
    It feels kind of morbid and inappropriate to speculate but I think you are probably correct. She'll get to the Jubilee I'm sure (one final duty done) but after that...
    It used to be treason to even imagine the death of the monarch.
    Succession planning must have been a nightmare.
    Well quite! The idea that Henry the 8th was desperate for an heir at the same time as never intending to die seem particularly challenging.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    IshmaelZ said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If you've not not broken the law you've nothing to fear. https://twitter.com/donaeldunready/status/1523758694739357697/photo/1

    In a long day at the Dual Thick Short Planks Congress this deserves at least a mentioned in dispatches

    Bozos for BoJo really do have their collective knickers in a twist and then some.

    And are busily hoisting their flapping, somewhat- soiled undies on their own splintery petards.
    Worlds smallest violin for bozos like Harry Cole, a man who is quite literally a cuck for the Prime Minister.
    Boris is having sex with Harry Cole's wife?
    Coles's ex
    The Spectator/Tory metropolitan clique is amazingly inbred isn't it.
  • nico679 said:

    Macron talking about not humiliating Putin was in relation to when an eventual peace deal has to happen . He said trying to humiliate Putin at that point would be counter-productive. This seems pretty obvious and sensible .

    No, it doesn't. Any deal that is acceptable would be classed as a "humiliation to Putin" by apologists.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,743
    Leon said:

    It seems i am the only PB-er who has actually been to St Kilda? Because I can definitely confirm that photo is not of St Kilda, it doesn’t look anything like that. The angle of the slopes is all wrong, the vegetation is wrong, and, moreover, even on the calmest day you’d be in a life jacket, because Kilda is dangerous. She’s wearing a summer dress and he’s in a light jacket FFS

    My guess is the Caribbean on a cloudy day

    As (apparently) the resident PB St Kilda expert perhaps you could suggest a good point on N.Uist from which to view the islands?
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 4,530
    As expected the Daily Mail has had its memo from no 10 and is now accusing Starmer of trying to pressure police .

    It really is a despicable paper .
This discussion has been closed.