I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
This will be a pivotal test case. If Italy succeeds in stopping migrant boat crossings with a simple No Way policy, then the pressure on HMG to do the same will be intense and irresistible
It seems the Italians are saying that the responsibility lies with the flag country of the vessel, in this case Germany, much harder to apply to the Channel.
Has an NGO, British or otherwise, ever tried running these "rescue" ships across the channel? I wonder what would happen.
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
This will be a pivotal test case. If Italy succeeds in stopping migrant boat crossings with a simple No Way policy, then the pressure on HMG to do the same will be intense and irresistible
It seems the Italians are saying that the responsibility lies with the flag country of the vessel, in this case Germany, much harder to apply to the Channel.
Has an NGO, British or otherwise, ever tried running these "rescue" ships across the channel? I wonder what would happen.
Would you count the RNLI as an NGO?
Could the Libyan Coastguard volunteer to help?
Asking for some slave traders in North Africa.
EDIT: will the Italians be asking for money back from the Libyan Coastguard?
Bit of a mistake Mr Shapps going on about the ev charger's equivalence with red phone boxes ... almost Delphic.
'It was meant to join the red phone box, the London bus and the black cab as a symbol of modern Britain. Yet a so-called iconic design for a UK electric car charger commissioned by Grant Shapps, then transport minister, is likely to remain on the drawing board after the government admitted it may never be made. [...]
Shapps, who is now business secretary, said the bollard-like design, which featured the royal coat of arms and a round, light-up handle, would be “rolled out across the country”,would “stand the test of time” and be “as iconic and recognisable as the British phone box, London bus or black cab”. [...] However, the Department for Transport has now admitted that the charger may not be installed on Britain’s roads. It conceded last month that “the concept is not intended for manufacture or deployment” [...]. The tender had a budget of £200,000, but the winners provided the design at zero cost, a government spokesperson said.'
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
I would have thought that brought back fond memories of a childhood on the steppe?
This will be a pivotal test case. If Italy succeeds in stopping migrant boat crossings with a simple No Way policy, then the pressure on HMG to do the same will be intense and irresistible
It seems the Italians are saying that the responsibility lies with the flag country of the vessel, in this case Germany, much harder to apply to the Channel.
Has an NGO, British or otherwise, ever tried running these "rescue" ships across the channel? I wonder what would happen.
Would you count the RNLI as an NGO?
Why not? The Tories hate its guts and tried to pass laws to prosecute everyone involved. Then backed down pretending it was all a mistake.
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
I went into my local deli today after a day in the park and they were playing Nils Frahm. I hadn't listened to him for a couple of years - but it felt very suited to the sun going down and the cold, still air.
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
JR was an unhappy character.
Good call on Sultans of Swing. I might add Hotel California. And probably Donna Summer's I feel Love.
Bit of a mistake Mr Shapps going on about the ev charger's equivalence with red phone boxes ... almost Delphic.
'It was meant to join the red phone box, the London bus and the black cab as a symbol of modern Britain. Yet a so-called iconic design for a UK electric car charger commissioned by Grant Shapps, then transport minister, is likely to remain on the drawing board after the government admitted it may never be made. [...]
Shapps, who is now business secretary, said the bollard-like design, which featured the royal coat of arms and a round, light-up handle, would be “rolled out across the country”,would “stand the test of time” and be “as iconic and recognisable as the British phone box, London bus or black cab”. [...] However, the Department for Transport has now admitted that the charger may not be installed on Britain’s roads. It conceded last month that “the concept is not intended for manufacture or deployment” [...]. The tender had a budget of £200,000, but the winners provided the design at zero cost, a government spokesperson said.'
Given that red phone boxes are defunct and buses and taxis vary throughout the country (plus being much less important and iconic outside London) it was perhaps an accurate prediction.
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
JR was an unhappy character.
GR!
Bit of a see u next Tuesday when on the bevvy I believe.
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
and a big factor in male motivation to work is hot young women....if you are a young man surrounded by obese women i think you are much less likely to work hard than if you are surrounded by hot young women....it is human nature in action.....
You talking to yourself again
With just 70 posts under his belt he's hardly pushing the envelope. You on the other hand, with 37 thousand and barely a civil word.
You got your panties in a bunch Luv. Sound like a real saddo given I have had very little interaction with you so if you cannot be civil go have aeronautical sexual intercourse wiht a rolling doughnut, ie F off
It's a wet grey Sunday in November. The rain is coming again. The cost of living is forcing people to eat rocks. Nuclear war seems highly possible. Millions of people are crippled by Long Covid. The Russian army is raping eastern Europe. Ebola returns. Climate change means the seas will soon boil. AI threatens the jobs of anyone who isn't already on fentanyl. No one is having sex. Young people prefer dictators to democracy. The rain is coming again. A barrel of oil costs 33 trillion dollars. Illegal migrants are raiding Aldis across Kent. Trump is heading for re-election. America faces civil war. Woke people are ruining society. Pop music is finished. IQs are dropping. Sperm counts are falling. England lost the rugby. And the Queen is dead
This will be a pivotal test case. If Italy succeeds in stopping migrant boat crossings with a simple No Way policy, then the pressure on HMG to do the same will be intense and irresistible
It seems the Italians are saying that the responsibility lies with the flag country of the vessel, in this case Germany, much harder to apply to the Channel.
Has an NGO, British or otherwise, ever tried running these "rescue" ships across the channel? I wonder what would happen.
Would you count the RNLI as an NGO?
Good point. But the med rescue boats hang around just off the Libyan coast, signal their position to the traffickers, and pick up the boats at arranged spots, no emergency required. Not sure the RNLI are doing that.
I essentially think most of the problems of the West are economic: the fact that growth no longer occurs at 2-3% as a matter of course, and that it dominates and calls the shots in the global economy.
It's a wet grey Sunday in November. The rain is coming again. The cost of living is forcing people to eat rocks. Nuclear war seems highly possible. Millions of people are crippled by Long Covid. The Russian army is raping eastern Europe. Ebola returns. Climate change means the seas will soon boil. AI threatens the jobs of anyone who isn't already on fentanyl. No one is having sex. Young people prefer dictators to democracy. The rain is coming again. A barrel of oil costs 33 trillion dollars. Illegal migrants are raiding Aldis across Kent. Trump is heading for re-election. America faces civil war. Woke people are ruining society. Pop music is finished. IQs are dropping. Sperm counts are falling. England lost the rugby. And the Queen is dead
Did I miss anything?
All of this started when YOU voted for Brexit...
Quite, quite mad.
I was rather pleased about how few hardcore remainers (here and in general) blamed the Ukraine war on Brexit. Made me feel a tiny bit more well-disposed towards them.
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
and a big factor in male motivation to work is hot young women....if you are a young man surrounded by obese women i think you are much less likely to work hard than if you are surrounded by hot young women....it is human nature in action.....
You talking to yourself again
With just 70 posts under his belt he's hardly pushing the envelope. You on the other hand, with 37 thousand and barely a civil word.
You got your panties in a bunch Luv. Sound like a real saddo given I have had very little interaction with you so if you cannot be civil go have aeronautical sexual intercourse wiht a rolling doughnut, ie F off
6.5/10 on the insults there. Not a return to top form but a good effort.
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
That's the China which consumes over half the world's coal output ?
I was hoping not to have to deal with that rather stupid point.
China had severe brownouts and blackouts last winter. Like any country in the world including us it is going to do whatever it takes to prevent that happening, including burn coal.
Why don't you click the RH column to sort by per capita, surely the only sensible measure, and see that China is 12th by that measure? Australia 1st, USA 17th, so not a great win for liberal democracy.
And the UK is 37th.
Now perhaps we should consider how things have changed in recent years.
How about this from May 2019:
Here are two surprising facts which between them help explain why the UK steel industry seems to be in what looks like a perma-slump.
The first is that in the past two years (to be precise, the past 22 months) China has manufactured more steel than Britain has since the height of the Industrial Revolution in 1870.
Try, if you can, to get your head round that.
In the months since the last general election China has produced more steel than Britain - the country where modern steel manufacturing was invented - has produced. Ever.
This fact is all the more startling when you note that until relatively recently China didn't actually make all that much steel and used to get most of its steel from overseas.
I think its fair to say that China has massively increased its carbon emissions in recent decades.
Yes. Context is context, is it not? Are you completely incurious as to why China wants all that steel?
You don't seem to understand the per capita point. If you cannot grasp that China is bigger and more populous than UK I am not going to try to introduce any other relevant differences. What is the point of gross China vs UK comparisons?
in 1913 UK produced 292m tons of coal, pop 19m, 15 tons a head. China last year consumed 4.32bn tons, pop 1.4bn, 3 tons a head. What do you make of that?
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
JR was an unhappy character.
Good call on Sultans of Swing. I might add Hotel California. And probably Donna Summer's I feel Love.
Very different but I suggest Complete Control by the Clash
One of the greatest ever ENDINGS to a rock song, apart from anything else. Would not change a note
It's a wet grey Sunday in November. The rain is coming again. The cost of living is forcing people to eat rocks. Nuclear war seems highly possible. Millions of people are crippled by Long Covid. The Russian army is raping eastern Europe. Ebola returns. Climate change means the seas will soon boil. AI threatens the jobs of anyone who isn't already on fentanyl. No one is having sex. Young people prefer dictators to democracy. The rain is coming again. A barrel of oil costs 33 trillion dollars. Illegal migrants are raiding Aldis across Kent. Trump is heading for re-election. America faces civil war. Woke people are ruining society. Pop music is finished. IQs are dropping. Sperm counts are falling. England lost the rugby. And the Queen is dead
Did I miss anything?
All of this started when YOU voted for Brexit...
Try going back and reading a sample of the news from 2015. You seem to have been suffering from a kind of false consciousness at the time.
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
JR was an unhappy character.
GR!
Bit of a see u next Tuesday when on the bevvy I believe.
Gonna see the Fratellis next week talking of edgy central belt music.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
Seems to be an imminent shortage of diesel in the US
The U.S. Diesel Shortage Is Worsening 🚨
Reports of an impending diesel shortage could potentially lead to truckers running out of fuel, ultimately stranding shipments and hiking consumer prices.
David Allen Green, the deeply irritating Remoaner lawyer, has "migrated" to Mastodon
Nervously says he will keep Twitter for the odd "broadcast" comment
1/20 he migrates entirely back to Twitter?
When are we setting up Wnkr?
I think they already have. But it's called "Mastodon"
Lol!
it's poignant and bathetic to watch them try and get Mastodon working. They don't seem to have realised what I pointed out earlier on: Mastodon is already seen as a liberal-left Woke Remoanery bubble-chamber, so anyone who disagrees with the Woke perspective on everything will avoid it like the Covid. So there won't be any arguments to be had, and no outrage to be savoured, and no Twitter pile-ons to abhor. Mastodon will be a boxing match with one boxer. It will be a lame-ass failure
Of course, the same fate befell Gab and Parler. They're both empty pointless echo chambers.
Content moderation is hard. If you don't have it at all, you get violent threats, (unwanted) pornography, and advertisers fleeing your platform because they don't want to be featured next to an announcement from the KKK.
We have it to a lesser extent here.
You want to foster a community and to have a diverse range of opinions. You want to be light touch. But you also have to recognize that if people don't enjoy being on your site, they will find somewhere else to hang out.
I wish Elon luck, and think the move away from advertising is a good idea.
BUT. $8/month is a lot for Twitter. And fostering a community is hard.
surely the answer is to ban pornography and violent threats plus abusive words like n..g..r but otherwise allow free speech so that even wrong ideas can be tested in debate...twitters censorship was way too heavy handed during covid for example
Sure:
But what about Donald Trump calling for action against election officials? Is that a threat, or protected free speech?
If the line was easy to define, there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't.
And while one "you're a jerk" is obviously fine, how about a concerted campaign where you get 400 people to constantly send "jerk" messages to someone?
Or, let's use an example from here, what about if there was a poster who attempted to derail conversations by posting about the holocaust was a hoax? Would it be OK to ban that poster, or is that an idea that should be tested by free speech?
What about deliberate lies and fabrications? How do you deal with that?
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
It really is not. The Lincolnshire coast is not especially pleasant; when I was on my Coastwalk, I'd type up notes in my Psion 5 and the 'r' in Linconshire would become a 't'. And that pretty much sums it up, Shi*e.
Yes, there are a couple of nice towns in it, but even the Wolds are unprettily uninteresting.
(My dad spent several years growing up on the Lincolnshite levels. It is the part of his childhood he talks least about.)
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
Richard III?
Foxy!!!
I think it is fairly improbable that @Foxy is Richard III
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
I spent a brief moment at a pub this afternoon with a nice pint of Harvey’s best, and they were playing Jerry Rafferty - Baker Street. It struck me as being the ultimate autumn Sunday afternoon pub track. I had an almost Proustian response to it.
It was one of very few tracks that is absolutely perfect in every respect.
Pretty much the only other one being Sultans of Swing from I think the same year?
JR was an unhappy character.
Good call on Sultans of Swing. I might add Hotel California. And probably Donna Summer's I feel Love.
Very different but I suggest Complete Control by the Clash
One of the greatest ever ENDINGS to a rock song, apart from anything else. Would not change a note
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Brilliant, I have loved that for ages and not known what it was. Mainly because of mishearing some key lyrics as "Victoria" when I now find they are "Let go of your."
David Allen Green, the deeply irritating Remoaner lawyer, has "migrated" to Mastodon
Nervously says he will keep Twitter for the odd "broadcast" comment
1/20 he migrates entirely back to Twitter?
When are we setting up Wnkr?
I think they already have. But it's called "Mastodon"
Lol!
it's poignant and bathetic to watch them try and get Mastodon working. They don't seem to have realised what I pointed out earlier on: Mastodon is already seen as a liberal-left Woke Remoanery bubble-chamber, so anyone who disagrees with the Woke perspective on everything will avoid it like the Covid. So there won't be any arguments to be had, and no outrage to be savoured, and no Twitter pile-ons to abhor. Mastodon will be a boxing match with one boxer. It will be a lame-ass failure
Of course, the same fate befell Gab and Parler. They're both empty pointless echo chambers.
Content moderation is hard. If you don't have it at all, you get violent threats, (unwanted) pornography, and advertisers fleeing your platform because they don't want to be featured next to an announcement from the KKK.
We have it to a lesser extent here.
You want to foster a community and to have a diverse range of opinions. You want to be light touch. But you also have to recognize that if people don't enjoy being on your site, they will find somewhere else to hang out.
I wish Elon luck, and think the move away from advertising is a good idea.
BUT. $8/month is a lot for Twitter. And fostering a community is hard.
surely the answer is to ban pornography and violent threats plus abusive words like n..g..r but otherwise allow free speech so that even wrong ideas can be tested in debate...twitters censorship was way too heavy handed during covid for example
Sure:
But what about Donald Trump calling for action against election officials? Is that a threat, or protected free speech?
If the line was easy to define, there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't.
And while one "you're a jerk" is obviously fine, how about a concerted campaign where you get 400 people to constantly send "jerk" messages to someone?
Or, let's use an example from here, what about if there was a poster who attempted to derail conversations by posting about the holocaust was a hoax? Would it be OK to ban that poster, or is that an idea that should be tested by free speech?
What about deliberate lies and fabrications? How do you deal with that?
ok the problem is it is difficult to tell a deliberate lie from someone just being misinformed....this is where things can get very political....with regard to the holocaust i think there was a guy called David Irving who used to publish books at least minimising the holocaust...should those books be banned...i think not for the reason most people wouldnt read his books anyway....similarly lets say someone says the covid vaccines are a genocidal plot to kill millions of people....should they be banned because they have lied....well firstly in the absence of evidence most people wont believe them anyway.....so let them be questioned and ridiculed but still let them speak....there has to be a free market on ideas....
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
You’re looking at the top 0.1%.
Of 1.4 BILLION people
The West has a number not far off if you add it all up. Maybe just shy of 900 million?
They will get much fatter as they get wealthier and their diet changes and activity drops. Just like us.
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Those satirical top displayed youtube comments on classic pop songs are little works of art.
Tut
But they are. I love reading them when I do a deepdive. They might seem easy to do but they're not. Have to suck you in but with just enough 'jar' to flag to the cognoscenti.
Anyway, on pure pop that imo ought to be better known -
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
I meant the global economic golden age of rising freedom and prosperity
The Golden Age of Pop stretches all the way from the mid 1950s to around 2010. Half a century of magnificent music
wrt Trump and election officials....if he called for violence against them yes that speech should be banned....if he is just calling for say letters of protest to them that should be allowed....it is abusive and threatening behaviour which should be banned
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
You’re looking at the top 0.1%.
Of 1.4 BILLION people
Leon is worryingly obsessed with "hot teen girls".
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this slolong came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Those satirical top displayed youtube comments on classic pop songs are little works of art.
Tut
But they are. I love reading them when I do a deepdive. They might seem easy to do but they're not. Have to suck you in but with just enough 'jar' to flag to the cognoscenti.
Anyway, on pure pop that imo ought to be better known -
"When this came out in the summer of 1975 people listened to their radios without headphones and I remember being at the beach and there were a hundred little radios all over the beach tuned to the same radio station, playing this song, so as you walked along you could hear it just slightly, all the while you walked, like one long continuous play on all those tiny radios. It was magical."
I salute these miniature fiction writers (if that they are). Some of them are genius
wrt Trump and election officials....if he called for violence against them yes that speech should be banned....if he is just calling for say letters of protest to them that should be allowed....it is abusive and threatening behaviour which should be banned
the great thing about some new posters is their desperate desire to triangulate the attack points to understand the site they have been asked to infiltrate.
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
That's the China which consumes over half the world's coal output ?
I was hoping not to have to deal with that rather stupid point.
China had severe brownouts and blackouts last winter. Like any country in the world including us it is going to do whatever it takes to prevent that happening, including burn coal.
Why don't you click the RH column to sort by per capita, surely the only sensible measure, and see that China is 12th by that measure? Australia 1st, USA 17th, so not a great win for liberal democracy.
And the UK is 37th.
Now perhaps we should consider how things have changed in recent years.
How about this from May 2019:
Here are two surprising facts which between them help explain why the UK steel industry seems to be in what looks like a perma-slump.
The first is that in the past two years (to be precise, the past 22 months) China has manufactured more steel than Britain has since the height of the Industrial Revolution in 1870.
Try, if you can, to get your head round that.
In the months since the last general election China has produced more steel than Britain - the country where modern steel manufacturing was invented - has produced. Ever.
This fact is all the more startling when you note that until relatively recently China didn't actually make all that much steel and used to get most of its steel from overseas.
I think its fair to say that China has massively increased its carbon emissions in recent decades.
Yes. Context is context, is it not? Are you completely incurious as to why China wants all that steel?
You don't seem to understand the per capita point. If you cannot grasp that China is bigger and more populous than UK I am not going to try to introduce any other relevant differences. What is the point of gross China vs UK comparisons?
in 1913 UK produced 292m tons of coal, pop 19m, 15 tons a head. China last year consumed 4.32bn tons, pop 1.4bn, 3 tons a head. What do you make of that?
You think that the population of the UK was only 19m in 1913 ???
Congrats on making yourself look utterly ridiculous.
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
late 60s was a good time though travel was expensive....i would date the golden age as from the early to mid 60s to 2008....things have not been the same since 2008 though of course 2020 was a big step down
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
You’re looking at the top 0.1%.
Of 1.4 BILLION people
Leon is worryingly obsessed with "hot teen girls".
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
I meant the global economic golden age of rising freedom and prosperity
The Golden Age of Pop stretches all the way from the mid 1950s to around 2010. Half a century of magnificent music
I would suggest that the global golden economic age was from 1955 to 1973, after the recovery from WW2 until the first OPEC oil price hike.
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
I meant the global economic golden age of rising freedom and prosperity
The Golden Age of Pop stretches all the way from the mid 1950s to around 2010. Half a century of magnificent music
best music was in the 70s no doubt about it...a golden age
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
Note that Lincoln also has a very famous cathedral, although sadly no notably tall spire.
I'd never say that Lincoln does not have nice bits; it's just that as a whole, it's more than a little meh. I'd put Essex above it in terms of interesting countryside and towns.
I wonder if I'd got a permaban for suggesting the worst county is Bedfordshire?
I wonder if pop music from the Global Golden Age - 1989 to 2014 - the first Stone Roses album to the Sindyref - is becoming MORE powerful as we realise that life really is getting worse, and that - for the first time in a long time, Fings Really Ain't Wot They Used To Be, and the good old days were genuinely better, and more good
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
Golden age 1989 - 2014? You must be joking! 1968 - 1975, surely! Your era includes Radiohead, which must, by default, exclude it.
Note that Lincoln also has a very famous cathedral, although sadly no notably tall spire.
I'd never say that Lincoln does not have nice bits; it's just that as a whole, it's more than a little meh. I'd put Essex above it in terms of interesting countryside and towns.
I wonder if I'd got a permaban for suggesting the worst county is Bedfordshire?
i always think hertfordshire is boring and people from hertfordshire always seem really boring to me
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
That's the China which consumes over half the world's coal output ?
I was hoping not to have to deal with that rather stupid point.
China had severe brownouts and blackouts last winter. Like any country in the world including us it is going to do whatever it takes to prevent that happening, including burn coal.
Why don't you click the RH column to sort by per capita, surely the only sensible measure, and see that China is 12th by that measure? Australia 1st, USA 17th, so not a great win for liberal democracy.
And the UK is 37th.
Now perhaps we should consider how things have changed in recent years.
How about this from May 2019:
Here are two surprising facts which between them help explain why the UK steel industry seems to be in what looks like a perma-slump.
The first is that in the past two years (to be precise, the past 22 months) China has manufactured more steel than Britain has since the height of the Industrial Revolution in 1870.
Try, if you can, to get your head round that.
In the months since the last general election China has produced more steel than Britain - the country where modern steel manufacturing was invented - has produced. Ever.
This fact is all the more startling when you note that until relatively recently China didn't actually make all that much steel and used to get most of its steel from overseas.
I think its fair to say that China has massively increased its carbon emissions in recent decades.
Yes. Context is context, is it not? Are you completely incurious as to why China wants all that steel?
You don't seem to understand the per capita point. If you cannot grasp that China is bigger and more populous than UK I am not going to try to introduce any other relevant differences. What is the point of gross China vs UK comparisons?
in 1913 UK produced 292m tons of coal, pop 19m, 15 tons a head. China last year consumed 4.32bn tons, pop 1.4bn, 3 tons a head. What do you make of that?
You think that the population of the UK was only 19m in 1913 ???
Congrats on making yourself look utterly ridiculous.
Might I also point out that technology has moved on since 1913 and that there are other sources of energy available than coal.
Not to mention that 1913 was the peak in UK coal output and was followed by a steady reduction in consumption ever since.
Yeah, glitch there. The figure is still 7 tons/head, over 2 x China. The lack of other power sources is at least outweighed by the lack of demand for all the mechanised things which didn't exist yet, and the bulk of the coal went to power ships and locomotives and make steel. Which was my point. Your all the UK ever vs China this year stat is mere shrieky nonsense.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this slolong came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Those satirical top displayed youtube comments on classic pop songs are little works of art.
Tut
But they are. I love reading them when I do a deepdive. They might seem easy to do but they're not. Have to suck you in but with just enough 'jar' to flag to the cognoscenti.
Anyway, on pure pop that imo ought to be better known -
"When this came out in the summer of 1975 people listened to their radios without headphones and I remember being at the beach and there were a hundred little radios all over the beach tuned to the same radio station, playing this song, so as you walked along you could hear it just slightly, all the while you walked, like one long continuous play on all those tiny radios. It was magical."
I salute these miniature fiction writers (if that they are). Some of them are genius
Underneath the video of Peter Paul and Mary's version of John Denver's Leaving on a Jet Plane (another perfect pop song) there are dozens of comments by Vietnam vets saying how this song affects them very powerfully, as it was popular when they flew out for deployment, and therefore on radios everywhere, in the airport etc
I have my own story of this song. It was popular in the early 70s when my parents were miserable and divorcing and my family was bitterly unhappy, and so I associate it with great pain and emotional damage
Twenty years later I was doing heroin in a friend's flat in London about to get on a jet plane to Moscow in a last desperate attempt to quit the smack by going on the Trans Siberian to Japan and then staying there, I knew it was probably my last chance of saving my life.. and then my friend played this bloody song and all my memories of my mother quietly crying at night, and how that fucked me up as a human, leading to my addiction perhaps, came flooding back as I sucked the heroin smoke and I essentially dissolved into nostalgic despair.
And then I left on the jetplane, not sure if I'd be back again
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Brilliant, I have loved that for ages and not known what it was. Mainly because of mishearing some key lyrics as "Victoria" when I now find they are "Let go of your."
Babylon is indeed another autumn Sunday afternoon pub song.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Brilliant, I have loved that for ages and not known what it was. Mainly because of mishearing some key lyrics as "Victoria" when I now find they are "Let go of your."
Babylon is indeed another autumn Sunday afternoon pub song.
Strange season. The season of nostalgia.
season of nostalgia for what is gone and not coming back...a harder, colder world beckons
So here's what I've learned. Mastodon isn't Twitter. And that's by design. You've grown used to things designed to give you that anger rush. Mastodon is very deliberately built to avoid that. The temptation is to replicate your Twitter experience. Picking arguments, amplifying trolls. Please don't. This isn't your house, people here put time into building it. Content warnings, ALT tags. Don't turn it into a replica of the mess you just left. If you miss the fights, the birdsite is still there.
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
Richard III?
Very soft spot for Leicester - spent some weeks on courses there so had a look around. Classic Midlands red brick. New Walk is a Victorian, and now superbly wooded, notion of a pedestrian precinct all the way from the centre to the park with the University and a magnificent Lutyens Great War memorial like the one at Thiepval. And with Charnwood Forest to the north and the wolds and Rutland and Lincs to the east. Still envious of the Market all those decades later.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Brilliant, I have loved that for ages and not known what it was. Mainly because of mishearing some key lyrics as "Victoria" when I now find they are "Let go of your."
Babylon is indeed another autumn Sunday afternoon pub song.
Strange season. The season of nostalgia.
We are in the autumn of the world. The November of Human Civilisation. The fallen leaves crackle as we walk, to nowhere
if you put edinburgh on the south coast it would be perfect
Edinburgh *is* perfect. Except during the festival.
We just spent a few days there, and the little 'un was spellbound by the place. Not by the >6 hour drive, though ...
Did you take him to the museum or the castle? Both go down well with weans.
We did: Edinburgh Castle; an open-top tour bus; the Camera Obscura; Dynamic Earth; and a few other places. All excellent.
Dynamic Earth was surprisingly good. On the way up we stopped at Jedburgh to see the abbey (*), and there was a sign about Hutton's Unconformity there, which he loved.
(*) Why are so may of the ruined abbeys in the borders currently closed? Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh etc? Apparently it is for 'safety' reasons, but having them all closed at the same time does make me wonder what has triggered it.
David Allen Green, the deeply irritating Remoaner lawyer, has "migrated" to Mastodon
Nervously says he will keep Twitter for the odd "broadcast" comment
1/20 he migrates entirely back to Twitter?
When are we setting up Wnkr?
I think they already have. But it's called "Mastodon"
Lol!
it's poignant and bathetic to watch them try and get Mastodon working. They don't seem to have realised what I pointed out earlier on: Mastodon is already seen as a liberal-left Woke Remoanery bubble-chamber, so anyone who disagrees with the Woke perspective on everything will avoid it like the Covid. So there won't be any arguments to be had, and no outrage to be savoured, and no Twitter pile-ons to abhor. Mastodon will be a boxing match with one boxer. It will be a lame-ass failure
Of course, the same fate befell Gab and Parler. They're both empty pointless echo chambers.
Content moderation is hard. If you don't have it at all, you get violent threats, (unwanted) pornography, and advertisers fleeing your platform because they don't want to be featured next to an announcement from the KKK.
We have it to a lesser extent here.
You want to foster a community and to have a diverse range of opinions. You want to be light touch. But you also have to recognize that if people don't enjoy being on your site, they will find somewhere else to hang out.
I wish Elon luck, and think the move away from advertising is a good idea.
BUT. $8/month is a lot for Twitter. And fostering a community is hard.
surely the answer is to ban pornography and violent threats plus abusive words like n..g..r but otherwise allow free speech so that even wrong ideas can be tested in debate...twitters censorship was way too heavy handed during covid for example
Sure:
But what about Donald Trump calling for action against election officials? Is that a threat, or protected free speech?
If the line was easy to define, there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't.
And while one "you're a jerk" is obviously fine, how about a concerted campaign where you get 400 people to constantly send "jerk" messages to someone?
Or, let's use an example from here, what about if there was a poster who attempted to derail conversations by posting about the holocaust was a hoax? Would it be OK to ban that poster, or is that an idea that should be tested by free speech?
What about deliberate lies and fabrications? How do you deal with that?
ok the problem is it is difficult to tell a deliberate lie from someone just being misinformed....this is where things can get very political....with regard to the holocaust i think there was a guy called David Irving who used to publish books at least minimising the holocaust...should those books be banned...i think not for the reason most people wouldnt read his books anyway....similarly lets say someone says the covid vaccines are a genocidal plot to kill millions of people....should they be banned because they have lied....well firstly in the absence of evidence most people wont believe them anyway.....so let them be questioned and ridiculed but still let them speak....there has to be a free market on ideas....
Books are easier, because books sell copies and that is the revenue.
For Twitter (and to a massively lesser extent PB), it is advertising that is the revenue.
If Procter & Gamble and Unilever and Coke say "we're not happy advertising on your platform, if you're going to show our adverts next to posts claiming the Holocaust never happened".
And, by the way, that's not them being woke, it's them worrying about the impact on their sales.
Musk is surely correct that the only way to get around this is move the revenue model away from advertising, towards some kind of subscription stream, and that having users being authenticated probably cuts down on trolls, bots and abusive behaviour.
But it's hellishly hard to manage that transition.
Note that Lincoln also has a very famous cathedral, although sadly no notably tall spire.
I'd never say that Lincoln does not have nice bits; it's just that as a whole, it's more than a little meh. I'd put Essex above it in terms of interesting countryside and towns.
I wonder if I'd got a permaban for suggesting the worst county is Bedfordshire?
i always think hertfordshire is boring and people from hertfordshire always seem really boring to me
Oi! We suffer from being small and having to accommodate Watford, Stevenage and several motorways - though in point of fact most of Hertfordshire is really rather attractive. So there.
best home counties are buckinghamshire and surrey without a doubt
You’re doing well on the UK knowledge. Not as well as @DJ41 though. He/she is the best we’ve had so far despite the lapse earlier this afternoon.
Either @DJ41 really went to Winchester, given the PhD level thesis on the place he posted here a couple of weeks ago, or the Kremlin employs a world beating team of crack Wykehamologists.
Lefty Wyks are of course not unknown. Crossman, Milne.
if you put edinburgh on the south coast it would be perfect
Edinburgh *is* perfect. Except during the festival.
We just spent a few days there, and the little 'un was spellbound by the place. Not by the >6 hour drive, though ...
Did you take him to the museum or the castle? Both go down well with weans.
We did: Edinburgh Castle; an open-top tour bus; the Camera Obscura; Dynamic Earth; and a few other places. All excellent.
Dynamic Earth was surprisingly good. On the way up we stopped at Jedburgh to see the abbey (*), and there was a sign about Hutton's Unconformity there, which he loved.
(*) Why are so may of the ruined abbeys in the borders currently closed? Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh etc? Apparently it is for 'safety' reasons, but having them all closed at the same time does make me wonder what has triggered it.
I'd forgotten about the Camera! Of course he would *love* it.
AIUI the Borders abbeys have been closed because of a wider safety survey to check for unstable stonework - nothing specific to the Borders or abbatial heritage, just luck.
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Brilliant, I have loved that for ages and not known what it was. Mainly because of mishearing some key lyrics as "Victoria" when I now find they are "Let go of your."
Babylon is indeed another autumn Sunday afternoon pub song.
Strange season. The season of nostalgia.
We are in the autumn of the world. The November of Human Civilisation. The fallen leaves crackle as we walk, to nowhere
This made me think 'Road to nowhere' -> 'Talking Heads' -> Oddness of Autumn. Which brought back to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QtboIp12c8&t=31s (Once in a Lifetime with the vocals isolated)
Another obvious yet nonetheless perfect pop song. Babylon by David Gray. Has the same poignant quality as Baker Street
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Just noticed a tweet from @david_herdson talking about the Lib Dem MIRAS plans.
If you want to raise taxes and discourage buy to rent - remove the ability to deduct any interest from loans on residential property.
Davey is just flailing about trying to get some attention.
I’ve no doubt they’d be a beneficial check on either a Tory or Labour minority government. But they’re not doing much to justify voting for them in their own right.
Having been first to propose energy windfall taxes, a winter energy price cap, and now the only party seriously proposing a complete overhaul of Ofwat and tougher regulations on water companies I think they’re doing plenty of substance in 2022.
I don’t think the mortgage subsidy is a good idea though.
Still, we could list half a dozen policy ideas from Labour in the last couple of years that don’t stand up to scrutiny, and the same number or more from the conservatives that are utterly idiotic.
Some posters here may disagree with some of what the Lib Dems are saying. But at least they are talking about issues that matter to people.
I recognise that the PB Tories are all so wealthy that they do not have any financial problems, but what is the Conservative Party proposing to do to help people who are worried about the increased cost of their mortgages? Conservatives do not even realise that there is a problem.
If people have borrowed too much they need to recapitalise. That is a simple fact of life.
It may be that the government could set up a fund to, for example, buy a stake in qualifying properties (effectively the reverse of help to buy if I am thinking of the right programme) with all of the capital raised by the sellers going to debt reduction and them just paying an agreed amount on the state owned piece going forward.
best home counties are buckinghamshire and surrey without a doubt
You’re doing well on the UK knowledge. Not as well as @DJ41 though. He/she is the best we’ve had so far despite the lapse earlier this afternoon.
Either @DJ41 really went to Winchester, given the PhD level thesis on the place he posted here a couple of weeks ago, or the Kremlin employs a world beating team of crack Wykehamologists.
Lefty Wyks are of course not unknown. Crossman, Milne.
There is a below-the-line commenter on the FT by the name of DJ42, apropos of nothing.
David Allen Green, the deeply irritating Remoaner lawyer, has "migrated" to Mastodon
Nervously says he will keep Twitter for the odd "broadcast" comment
1/20 he migrates entirely back to Twitter?
When are we setting up Wnkr?
I think they already have. But it's called "Mastodon"
Lol!
it's poignant and bathetic to watch them try and get Mastodon working. They don't seem to have realised what I pointed out earlier on: Mastodon is already seen as a liberal-left Woke Remoanery bubble-chamber, so anyone who disagrees with the Woke perspective on everything will avoid it like the Covid. So there won't be any arguments to be had, and no outrage to be savoured, and no Twitter pile-ons to abhor. Mastodon will be a boxing match with one boxer. It will be a lame-ass failure
Of course, the same fate befell Gab and Parler. They're both empty pointless echo chambers.
Content moderation is hard. If you don't have it at all, you get violent threats, (unwanted) pornography, and advertisers fleeing your platform because they don't want to be featured next to an announcement from the KKK.
We have it to a lesser extent here.
You want to foster a community and to have a diverse range of opinions. You want to be light touch. But you also have to recognize that if people don't enjoy being on your site, they will find somewhere else to hang out.
I wish Elon luck, and think the move away from advertising is a good idea.
BUT. $8/month is a lot for Twitter. And fostering a community is hard.
surely the answer is to ban pornography and violent threats plus abusive words like n..g..r but otherwise allow free speech so that even wrong ideas can be tested in debate...twitters censorship was way too heavy handed during covid for example
Sure:
But what about Donald Trump calling for action against election officials? Is that a threat, or protected free speech?
If the line was easy to define, there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't.
And while one "you're a jerk" is obviously fine, how about a concerted campaign where you get 400 people to constantly send "jerk" messages to someone?
Or, let's use an example from here, what about if there was a poster who attempted to derail conversations by posting about the holocaust was a hoax? Would it be OK to ban that poster, or is that an idea that should be tested by free speech?
What about deliberate lies and fabrications? How do you deal with that?
ok the problem is it is difficult to tell a deliberate lie from someone just being misinformed....this is where things can get very political....with regard to the holocaust i think there was a guy called David Irving who used to publish books at least minimising the holocaust...should those books be banned...i think not for the reason most people wouldnt read his books anyway....similarly lets say someone says the covid vaccines are a genocidal plot to kill millions of people....should they be banned because they have lied....well firstly in the absence of evidence most people wont believe them anyway.....so let them be questioned and ridiculed but still let them speak....there has to be a free market on ideas....
Books are easier, because books sell copies and that is the revenue.
For Twitter (and to a massively lesser extent PB), it is advertising that is the revenue.
If Procter & Gamble and Unilever and Coke say "we're not happy advertising on your platform, if you're going to show our adverts next to posts claiming the Holocaust never happened".
And, by the way, that's not them being woke, it's them worrying about the impact on their sales.
Musk is surely correct that the only way to get around this is move the revenue model away from advertising, towards some kind of subscription stream, and that having users being authenticated probably cuts down on trolls, bots and abusive behaviour.
But it's hellishly hard to manage that transition.
And what was already going to be incredibly hard is going to be nigh on impossible given the speed and lack of planning with which Elon is trying to implement the switch.
Now I understand the need for speed - but the lack of planning and the fact it seems to be being planned in real time as it's implemented fills me with dread. It's likely to die for unexpected reasons more than anything else.
if you put edinburgh on the south coast it would be perfect
Edinburgh *is* perfect. Except during the festival.
We just spent a few days there, and the little 'un was spellbound by the place. Not by the >6 hour drive, though ...
Did you take him to the museum or the castle? Both go down well with weans.
We did: Edinburgh Castle; an open-top tour bus; the Camera Obscura; Dynamic Earth; and a few other places. All excellent.
Dynamic Earth was surprisingly good. On the way up we stopped at Jedburgh to see the abbey (*), and there was a sign about Hutton's Unconformity there, which he loved.
(*) Why are so may of the ruined abbeys in the borders currently closed? Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh etc? Apparently it is for 'safety' reasons, but having them all closed at the same time does make me wonder what has triggered it.
I'd forgotten about the Camera! Of course he would *love* it.
AIUI the Borders abbeys have been closed because of a wider safety survey to check for unstable stonework - nothing specific to the Borders or abbatial heritage, just luck.
Sorry, but that strikes me as b/s (their reasoning, not your excuse). They've been closed for fifteen months, and it's a wide range of sites in that list. How long does it take to survey them?
best home counties are buckinghamshire and surrey without a doubt
You’re doing well on the UK knowledge. Not as well as @DJ41 though. He/she is the best we’ve had so far despite the lapse earlier this afternoon.
Bucks and Surrey are the places most beloved of rich people, and probably where most of the Russian loot that's been invested in property outside of London has been "invested."
which county would you least like to live in i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Lincoln itself and Stamford are both very pleasant.
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
i always think leicester one of the most boring cities in the uk...nothing noteworthy there and in the middle of nowhere...oh and lineker is from there
Middle of nowhere? If you were to go to somewhere like Russia I'm sure the concept 'middle of nowhere' would be quite different.
I suggest Calfornia Dreamin by the Mamas and the Papas. It's a magnificent song, one of the greatest of its time (306 million views on YouTube) but the flute solo in the middle doesn't quite work, and goes on too long. Nonetheless, what a song
Watching the video you realise how much it owes to the Anglo-Scots-Irish folk tradition married with that Old Time Down Home American Religion, this is a hymn sung with intense and evangelical fervour - check all the references to preachers and churches and praying
The whole video is like a hallucination. A fever dream of optimism unthinkable today
As one comment says:
"This song makes me feel nostalgic for the times I wasn’t even born in"
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Not sure 9/11 really makes the cut. Like saving private Ryan and pearl harbor the cinematic centrepiece is so mind-blowing it obscures a pretty ordinary narrative.
I think there's an analogy with Pearl Harbor - Americans liked to think they were somehow invulnerable but 9/11 dispelled that with a vengeance. For London, 7/7 was awful but we'd lived with terror for nearly 40 years though not suicide bombers which was the new dimension.
It impacted American policy directly not only through the eventual Iraq invasion in 2003 and the cover the Bin Laden attacks but also the money successive Republican legislatures poured into defence (and the profits made by defence contractors) came home to roost when the Democrats won the House in 2006 and the extent of the economic exposure became clear.
I genuinely think there was a brief period of euphoria (remember Fukayama) in the early 90s where it was believed we now lived in a unipolar world where the triumph of western liberal democracy was inevitable. The reality of the conflicts which had in some ways been masked by Soviet imperialism was then uncovered as Moscow withdrew from Europe and Africa.
Fukayama lol, that End of History stuff was always hubristic nonsense
Worrying that when I start typing his name phone now autocorrects to fuck.
Read the book. There's nothing hubristic about it. 30 years later has anyone come up with a compelling alternative to liberal democracy? No.
Liberal democracy is Monty Python's black knight. You can be as compelled by it as you like, but it has given way to plutocratic demagoguery here, it is history in the US when Trump gets back in, India is under a racist tyrant and it doesn't seem to have been very good at displacing communism anywhere since 1989. Where has it triumphed?
Ditto "liberal capitalism" but more so. It has been shown since Fukuyama to be humanity's worst mistake. Either it destroys the planet via climate change or climate change destroys it. Because Truss was sort of right, enemies Of Growth are a thing and getting progressively thingier, because they have the only position it is rationally possible to have.
I’d say liberal capitalism is doing a pretty decent job of (finally) mitigating climate change through the twin forces of the market and democratic pressure.
We haven't mitigated it yet, have we? Bookmark this conv for 10 years time.
China is way ahead of most of the democratic world both on decarbonising itself and in design mfr and export of renewables kit, so not a huge win for liberalism there.
Whether through eugenic mating or cosmetic surgery, China is also producing more HOT TEEN GIRLS
The West is totally finished
and a big factor in male motivation to work is hot young women....if you are a young man surrounded by obese women i think you are much less likely to work hard than if you are surrounded by hot young women....it is human nature in action.....
So let’s compare the performance of the Russian army vs, say, the US one?
Just noticed a tweet from @david_herdson talking about the Lib Dem MIRAS plans.
If you want to raise taxes and discourage buy to rent - remove the ability to deduct any interest from loans on residential property.
Davey is just flailing about trying to get some attention.
I’ve no doubt they’d be a beneficial check on either a Tory or Labour minority government. But they’re not doing much to justify voting for them in their own right.
Having been first to propose energy windfall taxes, a winter energy price cap, and now the only party seriously proposing a complete overhaul of Ofwat and tougher regulations on water companies I think they’re doing plenty of substance in 2022.
I don’t think the mortgage subsidy is a good idea though.
Still, we could list half a dozen policy ideas from Labour in the last couple of years that don’t stand up to scrutiny, and the same number or more from the conservatives that are utterly idiotic.
Some posters here may disagree with some of what the Lib Dems are saying. But at least they are talking about issues that matter to people.
I recognise that the PB Tories are all so wealthy that they do not have any financial problems, but what is the Conservative Party proposing to do to help people who are worried about the increased cost of their mortgages? Conservatives do not even realise that there is a problem.
If people have borrowed too much they need to recapitalise. That is a simple fact of life.
It may be that the government could set up a fund to, for example, buy a stake in qualifying properties (effectively the reverse of help to buy if I am thinking of the right programme) with all of the capital raised by the sellers going to debt reduction and them just paying an agreed amount on the state owned piece going forward.
The Lib Dem property wheeze is, unsurprisingly, about state bungs that will disproportionately benefit mortgage payers in the wealthiest parts of the country. People already safely on the property ladder, and most particularly those in Home Counties target seats inhabiting large detached piles.
They know exactly which voters they're trying to target, and it's all part of what will doubtless emerge as an election manifesto devoted primarily to shifting wealth upwards. It's all of a piece with their Nimbyism, and no doubt a very staunch defence of the pension triple lock (if and when Hunt finally concludes that it is unaffordable.) In essence, they'll propose electoral reform as always, and some kind of red-green veneer (big on renewable energy, so long as it's nowhere near anyone's house, and some token bungs for poor people,) but the direction of travel is clear. Social security for the monied middle classes in Southern England, and the preservation and price inflation of their property wealth.
They're going to try to out-Tory the Tories, in the hope of capturing swathes of Surrey and other such places at the next election. Watch.
I've just found what I think might be my favourite live recording of all time
Bonnie Raitt and band playing a live broadcast radio concert (in 1971 or 72 - depending on whether you believe this youtube channel or the itunes date)
So she was a 21ish ginger girl singing blues
I don't think I've heard better. Blues fans let me know what you think
Comments
i plump for lincolnshire....flat and boring and not near any good cities and not as good weather as further south
Asking for some slave traders in North Africa.
EDIT: will the Italians be asking for money back from the Libyan Coastguard?
Bit of a mistake Mr Shapps going on about the ev charger's equivalence with red phone boxes ... almost Delphic.
'It was meant to join the red phone box, the London bus and the black cab as a symbol of modern Britain. Yet a so-called iconic design for a UK electric car charger commissioned by Grant Shapps, then transport minister, is likely to remain on the drawing board after the government admitted it may never be made. [...]
Shapps, who is now business secretary, said the bollard-like design, which featured the royal coat of arms and a round, light-up handle, would be “rolled out across the country”,would “stand the test of time” and be “as iconic and recognisable as the British phone box, London bus or black cab”. [...]
However, the Department for Transport has now admitted that the charger may not be installed on Britain’s roads. It conceded last month that “the concept is not intended for manufacture or deployment” [...]. The tender had a budget of £200,000, but the winners provided the design at zero cost, a government spokesperson said.'
JR was an unhappy character.
https://twitter.com/CaliforniaFrizz/status/1589234983713255426?s=20&t=Go5GUwbvWhrRSp6cocr7iw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3uCqG9Ffu4
Lincolnshire is a lovely oblast if you ever get there.
Bit of a see u next Tuesday when on the bevvy I believe.
You don't seem to understand the per capita point. If you cannot grasp that China is bigger and more populous than UK I am not going to try to introduce any other relevant differences. What is the point of gross China vs UK comparisons?
in 1913 UK produced 292m tons of coal, pop 19m, 15 tons a head. China last year consumed 4.32bn tons, pop 1.4bn, 3 tons a head. What do you make of that?
One of the greatest ever ENDINGS to a rock song, apart from anything else. Would not change a note
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU-QtcYWlTg
The Youtube vid of this song has this comment right underneath, posted a few months ago. I feel every word in my heart
"I remember in my late teens sitting in a stolen car with two of my childhood friends, in a car park taking heroin… this song came on the radio and we all paused in a moment of life evaluation… for those 2 minutes we shared this song and a magical moment. my two friends are no longer here… yet my life has ended up really good, great job, home, and a family that love me… I’m 40 years old on Sunday, I consider myself very lucky!"
Wow. Tingles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_SBAkdKzc
The U.S. Diesel Shortage Is Worsening 🚨
Reports of an impending diesel shortage could potentially lead to truckers running out of fuel, ultimately stranding shipments and hiking consumer prices.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1589076457195651072?s=20&t=dAcNVXlrzxzCY-nyXYzbwA
But what about Donald Trump calling for action against election officials? Is that a threat, or protected free speech?
If the line was easy to define, there wouldn't be a problem. But it isn't.
And while one "you're a jerk" is obviously fine, how about a concerted campaign where you get 400 people to constantly send "jerk" messages to someone?
Or, let's use an example from here, what about if there was a poster who attempted to derail conversations by posting about the holocaust was a hoax? Would it be OK to ban that poster, or is that an idea that should be tested by free speech?
What about deliberate lies and fabrications? How do you deal with that?
Yes, there are a couple of nice towns in it, but even the Wolds are unprettily uninteresting.
(My dad spent several years growing up on the Lincolnshite levels. It is the part of his childhood he talks least about.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IidsAntftwQ
I had half of this insight driving around Arizona ten days ago, listening to music from that era (and before), and being oddly overwhelmed by it. More than usual. Every song seemed to invoke a hint of tears. Happysad bittersweetness. At points I really choked up
I ascribed my emotionality to the sentiment of late middle age, and the booze, and to the beautiful sad glorious desert landscapes, but now I am not sure. I wonder if this music speaks to us in a firmer, more urgent voice, as we fray into the future. This, it says, THIS you have lost. And we come close to crying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MFlHGP0VAc&ab_channel=P3WP1N-444JAM
Of 1.4 BILLION people
They will get much fatter as they get wealthier and their diet changes and activity drops. Just like us.
Something to look forward to.
Anyway, on pure pop that imo ought to be better known -
https://youtu.be/w1h3AvaVNRw
The Golden Age of Pop stretches all the way from the mid 1950s to around 2010. Half a century of magnificent music
A bit sad for someone nearing sixty.
Right underneath the video of I'm Not In Love
"When this came out in the summer of 1975 people listened to their radios without headphones and I remember being at the beach and there were a hundred little radios all over the beach tuned to the same radio station, playing this song, so as you walked along you could hear it just slightly, all the while you walked, like one long continuous play on all those tiny radios. It was magical."
I salute these miniature fiction writers (if that they are). Some of them are genius
Congrats on making yourself look utterly ridiculous.
The reality was over 42m:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/adhocs/004356ukpopulationestimates1851to2014
Might I also point out that technology has moved on since 1913 and that there are other sources of energy available than coal.
Not to mention that 1913 was the peak in UK coal output and was followed by a steady reduction in consumption ever since.
I wonder if I'd got a permaban for suggesting the worst county is Bedfordshire?
We just spent a few days there, and the little 'un was spellbound by the place. Not by the >6 hour drive, though ...
Are they fake? Don't think so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVEATF7VNTk
I have my own story of this song. It was popular in the early 70s when my parents were miserable and divorcing and my family was bitterly unhappy, and so I associate it with great pain and emotional damage
Twenty years later I was doing heroin in a friend's flat in London about to get on a jet plane to Moscow in a last desperate attempt to quit the smack by going on the Trans Siberian to Japan and then staying there, I knew it was probably my last chance of saving my life.. and then my friend played this bloody song and all my memories of my mother quietly crying at night, and how that fucked me up as a human, leading to my addiction perhaps, came flooding back as I sucked the heroin smoke and I essentially dissolved into nostalgic despair.
And then I left on the jetplane, not sure if I'd be back again
Strange season. The season of nostalgia.
Gerard Cunningham @faduda@mastodon.ie
So here's what I've learned.
Mastodon isn't Twitter.
And that's by design.
You've grown used to things designed to give you that anger rush.
Mastodon is very deliberately built to avoid that.
The temptation is to replicate your Twitter experience.
Picking arguments, amplifying trolls.
Please don't.
This isn't your house, people here put time into building it.
Content warnings, ALT tags.
Don't turn it into a replica of the mess you just left.
If you miss the fights, the birdsite is still there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Uu5nsfmic&ab_channel=NocturnalVagabond
Dynamic Earth was surprisingly good. On the way up we stopped at Jedburgh to see the abbey (*), and there was a sign about Hutton's Unconformity there, which he loved.
(*) Why are so may of the ruined abbeys in the borders currently closed? Jedburgh, Melrose, Dryburgh etc? Apparently it is for 'safety' reasons, but having them all closed at the same time does make me wonder what has triggered it.
Available on bbc sounds app, repeated on R4/World service;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001dxt0
Well worth a listen, for those interested in the culture war side of US politics.
For Twitter (and to a massively lesser extent PB), it is advertising that is the revenue.
If Procter & Gamble and Unilever and Coke say "we're not happy advertising on your platform, if you're going to show our adverts next to posts claiming the Holocaust never happened".
And, by the way, that's not them being woke, it's them worrying about the impact on their sales.
Musk is surely correct that the only way to get around this is move the revenue model away from advertising, towards some kind of subscription stream, and that having users being authenticated probably cuts down on trolls, bots and abusive behaviour.
But it's hellishly hard to manage that transition.
Lefty Wyks are of course not unknown. Crossman, Milne.
AIUI the Borders abbeys have been closed because of a wider safety survey to check for unstable stonework - nothing specific to the Borders or abbatial heritage, just luck.
https://www.bordertelegraph.com/news/19359941.historic-environment-scotland-shuts-borders-sites-safety/
It may be that the government could set up a fund to, for example, buy a stake in qualifying properties (effectively the reverse of help to buy if I am thinking of the right programme) with all of the capital raised by the sellers going to debt reduction and them just paying an agreed amount on the state owned piece going forward.
Now I understand the need for speed - but the lack of planning and the fact it seems to be being planned in real time as it's implemented fills me with dread. It's likely to die for unexpected reasons more than anything else.
I suggest Calfornia Dreamin by the Mamas and the Papas. It's a magnificent song, one of the greatest of its time (306 million views on YouTube) but the flute solo in the middle doesn't quite work, and goes on too long. Nonetheless, what a song
Watching the video you realise how much it owes to the Anglo-Scots-Irish folk tradition married with that Old Time Down Home American Religion, this is a hymn sung with intense and evangelical fervour - check all the references to preachers and churches and praying
The whole video is like a hallucination. A fever dream of optimism unthinkable today
As one comment says:
"This song makes me feel nostalgic for the times I wasn’t even born in"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U-SHfpm5Bxk
(Sade, Is it a crime?)
(Yours is good by the way, first time I've heard it. )
https://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/press/7488/plans-for-new-coal-plants-in-china-rebound-with-8-63-gw-approved-in-the-first-quarter-of-2022/
Alternatively look at carbon dioxide per capita. I could only find 2016 stats easily but they make the point
China 7.38 tons per person
Uk, Italy, France, Spain all around 5.5-6.0
Germany worse and the US is awful. But we knew that anyway
https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/
They know exactly which voters they're trying to target, and it's all part of what will doubtless emerge as an election manifesto devoted primarily to shifting wealth upwards. It's all of a piece with their Nimbyism, and no doubt a very staunch defence of the pension triple lock (if and when Hunt finally concludes that it is unaffordable.) In essence, they'll propose electoral reform as always, and some kind of red-green veneer (big on renewable energy, so long as it's nowhere near anyone's house, and some token bungs for poor people,) but the direction of travel is clear. Social security for the monied middle classes in Southern England, and the preservation and price inflation of their property wealth.
They're going to try to out-Tory the Tories, in the hope of capturing swathes of Surrey and other such places at the next election. Watch.
Bonnie Raitt and band playing a live broadcast radio concert (in 1971 or 72 - depending on whether you believe this youtube channel or the itunes date)
So she was a 21ish ginger girl singing blues
I don't think I've heard better. Blues fans let me know what you think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7zkHKKPeU