The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Just to comment that the numinous often isn't found in the set pieces. If St Paul's Cathedral has any, I have missed it. 100 yards away St Vedast and St Martin Ludgate have it to give away. More parish churches have it than cathedrals. Iona has it, but not the abbey. It doesn't happen by trying and takes you by surprise. Salle in Norfolk has it. And Walpole St Peter. Best keep the numinous in Lincolnshire a well guarded secret but follow signs to Whaplode.
Yes! I’m right because I totally agree, and you and I have never met
St Paul’s has zero Noom. Almost negative Noom. You walk in and think Ah, impressive, but you think that staring up at a rather good skyscraper or admiring a really fine supercar. It’s definitely not spiritual, it’s an appreciation of engineering and ingenuity. it ain’t Noom
And yes you can’t necessarily conjure it up. A few rare blessed architects can, weirdly the atheist fascist-Marxist Corbusier is one who could. Hawksmoor also, he dishes out intense Noom. Christ Church Spitalfields, fuck
I've been to Salle. And I agree. I used to ring church bells so have visited a lot of churches (including a fair few in Lincolnshire.) Most are nice buildings, but nothing more. But some give you the tingle. It's not about size, or architecture, or place, or age. I've got it in isolated villages and towns and suburbs and churches ancient and not ancient. It's not just churches. Stone circles, too. Hilltops. Little hidden away wooded valleys. Some places just feel special.
Exactly! You get it totally. That is the Noom
it can surprise you in the weirdest places. Even the crappiest urban environments can, occasionally, invoke it. I slightly disagree on age, I do think that helps, especially for buildings/townscapes - nonetheless it’s not essential
Eg I experienced Noom on the roof of Corbusier’s Unite in Marseilles, built in 1952
It is genuinely weird that this atheist architect made such powerfully religious buildings, but he did. What’s more, people recognised this, hence the commissions for him to design the chapel at Ronchamp and the priory of La Tourette
Well I agree old places have a greater tendency to be noomy. I've never felt Noom in a modern church. Mostly they give a feeling of anti-noom - utter mundanity in somewhere which should feel at least a bit noomy. But age isn't the criterion. Chester cathedral is ancient, yet just feels pleasant.
Canterbury is full on noom though.
Fair enough. Never been. What it feels like is the sum total of all the people who have ever thought 'this is a special place'.
Indeed, Larkin (of course) was surely describing an atheist’s encounter with Noom in a church, in Churchgoing, here:
“For, though I’ve no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognised, and robed as destinies. And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground, Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, If only that so many dead lie round.”
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk inyp somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Well if it becomes a thing as a word then hoorah for you. I guess 'meme' got there (Dennet was my first encounter with it)
I feel your noom about great battlefields not because of the suffering and endeavour, but because of the huge collection of great hopes that fired brightly and were snuffed out.
Meme was coined by Dawkins, surely
This whole discussion has been very illuminating, it’s also led me to this place where I am now desperate to go, and which looks like - despite being French - it has a high Noom Factor, requiring Noomblock
An absolutely brilliant concept and insight, which makes him immortal by itself. Fair play
He’s quite an odd figure now. I see he has taken to praising Christianity because he is frightened of the rise of Islam in the west. This is the same Christianity which he has been effectively deconstructing for five decades. Oops
If he’d asked, we could have told him that if you destroy one religion, it doesn’t mean it will be replaced by cold secular logic, it means it will be replaced by other religions. In our case this is either Wokeness or Islam, and Dawkins is right but rather late to see that this is not necessarily progress
'People who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything.'
G K Chesterton
Wokeness is so obviously a religion. It actively states that “feels” are what matters, not “facts”. It is the leap of faith, the problem is it leaps somewhere very dark, where we are all obsessively racialised and guilt ridden and also super weird about gender
Once it has led to centuries of warfare, the deaths, torture and mutilation of millions, and countless wrecked, abused, repressed lives, that clickbait might have some point to it.
Another remark that could easily have made in response to someone calling communism a religion at the beginning of the 20th century.
Guns, even artillery barrels, are not easy to make, even nowadays. The greater pressure they have to withstand, the harder they are to make. And the further you want to the thing-that-goes-boom to go, the greater the pressure. Unless you put the 'further' into the 'thing', and create a missile hittile. Where the pressure has to be contained within the thing...
I've never quite seen the logic in abandoning battleships and going for carriers.
USS Arizona, Oklahoma, HMS Repulse, Prince of Wales (1941), the Roma, the Yamato, Musashi, and the Tirpitz say Hello!
Less than a minute in and the first inaccuracy. Apparently, Reform were polling at 3-4% in November - no, they weren't. Ipsos had them at 4% but most polls already had them at 7-10%. Her sacking (let's call it what it was) wasn't the catalyst for the Reform polling rise.
Less than two minutes in and apparently Labour and the Conservatives are the same. Needless to say, Spectator TV are idolising her and giving her the softest of questions thus far.
That strikes me as the deliberate (or possibly accidental) deployment of a cut-off point that supports the argument, not an inaccuracy.
I am sure her sacking wasn't the sole cause for Reform's rise, but in combination with the resuscitation of Cameron, it all served to confirm that Sunak wasn't serious about immigration or other totemic issues for Tories, with the abysmal figleaf of Esther Mcvey being made 'Common Sense Tsar' or whatever she was adding insult to injury.
As for Spectator TV, Katy Balls is not going to do a Jeremy Paxman on Suella, but she wouldn't grill anyone anyway - the format is very much letting the interviewer get their point across.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
I rather like that.
I’ve encountered quite a lot of Noom in the industrial north, but I’m afraid it is often Dark Noom, the Noom of human suffering - married, in this case, with awesome change
Coalbrookdale is off the Noom dial. Also Blaenau Ffestiniog
Patriotism compels me to point out that most of the north is neither industrial nor scarred by human suffering, of course. And I offer you Castlerigg Stone Circle as the best examole of good noom. Lud's Church in the Peak District, too. Which is not a church but a natural ravine but was used as a secret churchy meeting place for reasons which now escape me. Richmond parish church, North Yorkshire. And a personal one: the summit of Latterbarrow, near Ambleside. Makes me want to weep with joy every time I go there.
Yes totally. Castlerigg is fantastic - I’ve been trying to remember its name all day, as I’ve developed this theory. Carnac, despite its monumental scale, has zero Noom (like St Paul’s Cathedral). Castlerigg has oodles of Noom. The Lake District in general is laced with Noom, despite the tourists
Yorkshire is pretty much terra incognita to me (apart from York); I need to fix that. York Minster I found has subdued Noom, not zero, but not a lot
York Minster was badly damaged by fire in 1984, of course, so that probably doesn't help.
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
Guns, even artillery barrels, are not easy to make, even nowadays. The greater pressure they have to withstand, the harder they are to make. And the further you want to the thing-that-goes-boom to go, the greater the pressure. Unless you put the 'further' into the 'thing', and create a missile hittile. Where the pressure has to be contained within the thing...
I've never quite seen the logic in abandoning battleships and going for carriers.
Projection of power, IMV. Your vessel is a massively costly beast, and it needs protection. Battleships can only project power twenty miles or so, with decreasing accuracy. Carrier-based planes can project that power hundreds of miles away, and can 'see' much further than a battleship that is not practically above sea level, even with radar.
The difference is cost: if you need to bombard a coast, a battleship is excellent. For everything else, it is sub-optimal.
But both are expensive and vulnerable. So you need even more assets to defend them. Unless you're the RN...
The thing though is that now (capital ships) they are mostly about defending themselves. A battleship really delivers when it's there - carriers far less so.
Capital ships could not defend themselves at all when carrier-based aviation came about. The early years of WW2 showed us that all too clearly. Carriers allow both defence (from surface and aviation, not generally subsurface), *and* allow longer-range offence.
The Zumwalt class and similar have not exactly taken us the other way.
It's quite possible that carriers show themselves as vulnerable as battleships did in WW2. But we've not tested that yet, and until we do, the carriers are king.
However it's not logical that carriers are somehow better defended than battleships. What has happened is that carriers have been far better protected and seen as the great thing to protect. That's just about air defence, and it's very likely that it is possible to almost guarantee air defence for a ship for some while now.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Just to comment that the numinous often isn't found in the set pieces. If St Paul's Cathedral has any, I have missed it. 100 yards away St Vedast and St Martin Ludgate have it to give away. More parish churches have it than cathedrals. Iona has it, but not the abbey. It doesn't happen by trying and takes you by surprise. Salle in Norfolk has it. And Walpole St Peter. Best keep the numinous in Lincolnshire a well guarded secret but follow signs to Whaplode.
Yes! I’m right because I totally agree, and you and I have never met
St Paul’s has zero Noom. Almost negative Noom. You walk in and think Ah, impressive, but you think that staring up at a rather good skyscraper or admiring a really fine supercar. It’s definitely not spiritual, it’s an appreciation of engineering and ingenuity. it ain’t Noom
And yes you can’t necessarily conjure it up. A few rare blessed architects can, weirdly the atheist fascist-Marxist Corbusier is one who could. Hawksmoor also, he dishes out intense Noom. Christ Church Spitalfields, fuck
I've been to Salle. And I agree. I used to ring church bells so have visited a lot of churches (including a fair few in Lincolnshire.) Most are nice buildings, but nothing more. But some give you the tingle. It's not about size, or architecture, or place, or age. I've got it in isolated villages and towns and suburbs and churches ancient and not ancient. It's not just churches. Stone circles, too. Hilltops. Little hidden away wooded valleys. Some places just feel special.
Exactly! You get it totally. That is the Noom
it can surprise you in the weirdest places. Even the crappiest urban environments can, occasionally, invoke it. I slightly disagree on age, I do think that helps, especially for buildings/townscapes - nonetheless it’s not essential
Eg I experienced Noom on the roof of Corbusier’s Unite in Marseilles, built in 1952
It is genuinely weird that this atheist architect made such powerfully religious buildings, but he did. What’s more, people recognised this, hence the commissions for him to design the chapel at Ronchamp and the priory of La Tourette
Well I agree old places have a greater tendency to be noomy. I've never felt Noom in a modern church. Mostly they give a feeling of anti-noom - utter mundanity in somewhere which should feel at least a bit noomy. But age isn't the criterion. Chester cathedral is ancient, yet just feels pleasant.
Canterbury is full on noom though.
Fair enough. Never been. What it feels like is the sum total of all the people who have ever thought 'this is a special place'.
In Canterbury and other places it connects with pilgrimage. People think this is a special place now, it was, people knew so in the past, and it will be, and people "will" know so in the future - and it all wraps together.
The church fathers go completely over the top in Canterbury:
Noomheads should take a look at the leylinology of the site near the Clermont where those horses got spooked. Just sayin'.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
I rather like that.
I’ve encountered quite a lot of Noom in the industrial north, but I’m afraid it is often Dark Noom, the Noom of human suffering - married, in this case, with awesome change
Coalbrookdale is off the Noom dial. Also Blaenau Ffestiniog
Patriotism compels me to point out that most of the north is neither industrial nor scarred by human suffering, of course. And I offer you Castlerigg Stone Circle as the best examole of good noom. Lud's Church in the Peak District, too. Which is not a church but a natural ravine but was used as a secret churchy meeting place for reasons which now escape me. Richmond parish church, North Yorkshire. And a personal one: the summit of Latterbarrow, near Ambleside. Makes me want to weep with joy every time I go there.
Yes totally. Castlerigg is fantastic - I’ve been trying to remember its name all day, as I’ve developed this theory. Carnac, despite its monumental scale, has zero Noom (like St Paul’s Cathedral). Castlerigg has oodles of Noom. The Lake District in general is laced with Noom, despite the tourists
Yorkshire is pretty much terra incognita to me (apart from York); I need to fix that. York Minster I found has subdued Noom, not zero, but not a lot
York Minster was badly damaged by fire in 1984, of course, so that probably doesn't help.
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
No, I entirely agree. Stonehenge used to be Noomy, now it’s devoid. Yet Avebury has it is spades. You can interact with the stones, yet they survive, regal and lordly, impervious to your feeble impudence
Of stone circles I recommend the twin stone circles of Grey Wethers on Dartmoor. Fairly small - photographs don’t deliver it - but Noom factor 8.6 in reality
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
She has all of the calm composure under fire of Mr Sunak, all of the hard-headed practicality of La Truss and all of the person management skills of Mrs May. All the assets required for a Con Party leader at the moment then!
Guns, even artillery barrels, are not easy to make, even nowadays. The greater pressure they have to withstand, the harder they are to make. And the further you want to the thing-that-goes-boom to go, the greater the pressure. Unless you put the 'further' into the 'thing', and create a missile hittile. Where the pressure has to be contained within the thing...
I've never quite seen the logic in abandoning battleships and going for carriers.
Projection of power, IMV. Your vessel is a massively costly beast, and it needs protection. Battleships can only project power twenty miles or so, with decreasing accuracy. Carrier-based planes can project that power hundreds of miles away, and can 'see' much further than a battleship that is not practically above sea level, even with radar.
The difference is cost: if you need to bombard a coast, a battleship is excellent. For everything else, it is sub-optimal.
But both are expensive and vulnerable. So you need even more assets to defend them. Unless you're the RN...
The thing though is that now (capital ships) they are mostly about defending themselves. A battleship really delivers when it's there - carriers far less so.
Capital ships could not defend themselves at all when carrier-based aviation came about. The early years of WW2 showed us that all too clearly. Carriers allow both defence (from surface and aviation, not generally subsurface), *and* allow longer-range offence.
The Zumwalt class and similar have not exactly taken us the other way.
It's quite possible that carriers show themselves as vulnerable as battleships did in WW2. But we've not tested that yet, and until we do, the carriers are king.
However it's not logical that carriers are somehow better defended than battleships. What has happened is that carriers have been far better protected and seen as the great thing to protect. That's just about air defence, and it's very likely that it is possible to almost guarantee air defence for a ship for some while now.
Perhaps. The issue is that we've not seen a conflict (thankfully) where the current 'best' has been challenged. But the issue remains that a battleship can only project power twenty to thirty miles (*), whereas carrier aviation can project it for hundreds of miles.
I hope we never see a war where the current carrier orthodoxy is tested...
(*) Missile-equipped ships can project much further. But missiles are far more expensive than even 16-inch shells for the same boom.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Just to comment that the numinous often isn't found in the set pieces. If St Paul's Cathedral has any, I have missed it. 100 yards away St Vedast and St Martin Ludgate have it to give away. More parish churches have it than cathedrals. Iona has it, but not the abbey. It doesn't happen by trying and takes you by surprise. Salle in Norfolk has it. And Walpole St Peter. Best keep the numinous in Lincolnshire a well guarded secret but follow signs to Whaplode.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
She has all of the calm composure under fire of Mr Sunak, all of the hard-headed practicality of La Truss and all of the person management skills of Mrs May. All the assets required for a Con Party leader at the moment then!
No, she's a lot better than Sunak in almost every conceivable respect. That's not a terribly high bar to clear I grant you. She speaks a lot better and is a more comfortable presence in her own skin than Truss - though Truss has improved. May was a professional class of politician, though with her own oddities. The problem with May was what she was saying was crap, not that she was particularly bad at saying it.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Just to comment that the numinous often isn't found in the set pieces. If St Paul's Cathedral has any, I have missed it. 100 yards away St Vedast and St Martin Ludgate have it to give away. More parish churches have it than cathedrals. Iona has it, but not the abbey. It doesn't happen by trying and takes you by surprise. Salle in Norfolk has it. And Walpole St Peter. Best keep the numinous in Lincolnshire a well guarded secret but follow signs to Whaplode.
Yes! I’m right because I totally agree, and you and I have never met
St Paul’s has zero Noom. Almost negative Noom. You walk in and think Ah, impressive, but you think that staring up at a rather good skyscraper or admiring a really fine supercar. It’s definitely not spiritual, it’s an appreciation of engineering and ingenuity. it ain’t Noom
And yes you can’t necessarily conjure it up. A few rare blessed architects can, weirdly the atheist fascist-Marxist Corbusier is one who could. Hawksmoor also, he dishes out intense Noom. Christ Church Spitalfields, fuck
I've been to Salle. And I agree. I used to ring church bells so have visited a lot of churches (including a fair few in Lincolnshire.) Most are nice buildings, but nothing more. But some give you the tingle. It's not about size, or architecture, or place, or age. I've got it in isolated villages and towns and suburbs and churches ancient and not ancient. It's not just churches. Stone circles, too. Hilltops. Little hidden away wooded valleys. Some places just feel special.
Ringing bells and Lincolnshire... ...Sextons have their own traditions... Old Shuck says hello...
Less than a minute in and the first inaccuracy. Apparently, Reform were polling at 3-4% in November - no, they weren't. Ipsos had them at 4% but most polls already had them at 7-10%. Her sacking (let's call it what it was) wasn't the catalyst for the Reform polling rise.
Less than two minutes in and apparently Labour and the Conservatives are the same. Needless to say, Spectator TV are idolising her and giving her the softest of questions thus far.
That strikes me as the deliberate (or possibly accidental) deployment of a cut-off point that supports the argument, not an inaccuracy.
I am sure her sacking wasn't the sole cause for Reform's rise, but in combination with the resuscitation of Cameron, it all served to confirm that Sunak wasn't serious about immigration or other totemic issues for Tories, with the abysmal figleaf of Esther Mcvey being made 'Common Sense Tsar' or whatever she was adding insult to injury.
As for Spectator TV, Katy Balls is not going to do a Jeremy Paxman on Suella, but she wouldn't grill anyone anyway - the format is very much letting the interviewer get their point across.
Fair enough and I've not listened to it all.
I don't accept the argument Suella's sacking (or some of the other events) in and of themselves contributed to the rise of Reform. That seems built on the (I think) mistaken assumption Reform supporters are automatically disillusioned Conservatives.
Most people don't move on totemic issues (some do of course) but it's a more gradual approach. My view is Reform has a strong element of pro-Boris Johnson in its DNA and those who supported Johnson in 2019 weren't and didn't become Conservative - they voted Conservative because that was the party of Boris Johnson. Previously, these supporters of Johnson weren't all Conservatives - many were Labour supporters, Lib Dems or hadn't voted at all.
The polling suggests up to half of Reform's supporters would stay at home absent a Reform candidate in their constituency.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
She actually believes the stuff she says and it shows. There is an intensity and earnestness about her that most other right wing Tories don’t have - they always seem to be performing for the crowd. Now, I find what she says pretty objectionable and the anger she shows scares me, but it wouldn’t do if she weren’t an effective rhetorician. Her style reminds me of Melanie Philips. Never going to be a popular politician but will influence others on her side.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
Guns, even artillery barrels, are not easy to make, even nowadays. The greater pressure they have to withstand, the harder they are to make. And the further you want to the thing-that-goes-boom to go, the greater the pressure. Unless you put the 'further' into the 'thing', and create a missile hittile. Where the pressure has to be contained within the thing...
I've never quite seen the logic in abandoning battleships and going for carriers.
Projection of power, IMV. Your vessel is a massively costly beast, and it needs protection. Battleships can only project power twenty miles or so, with decreasing accuracy. Carrier-based planes can project that power hundreds of miles away, and can 'see' much further than a battleship that is not practically above sea level, even with radar.
The difference is cost: if you need to bombard a coast, a battleship is excellent. For everything else, it is sub-optimal.
But both are expensive and vulnerable. So you need even more assets to defend them. Unless you're the RN...
The thing though is that now (capital ships) they are mostly about defending themselves. A battleship really delivers when it's there - carriers far less so.
Capital ships could not defend themselves at all when carrier-based aviation came about. The early years of WW2 showed us that all too clearly. Carriers allow both defence (from surface and aviation, not generally subsurface), *and* allow longer-range offence.
The Zumwalt class and similar have not exactly taken us the other way.
It's quite possible that carriers show themselves as vulnerable as battleships did in WW2. But we've not tested that yet, and until we do, the carriers are king.
However it's not logical that carriers are somehow better defended than battleships. What has happened is that carriers have been far better protected and seen as the great thing to protect. That's just about air defence, and it's very likely that it is possible to almost guarantee air defence for a ship for some while now.
Perhaps. The issue is that we've not seen a conflict (thankfully) where the current 'best' has been challenged. But the issue remains that a battleship can only project power twenty to thirty miles (*), whereas carrier aviation can project it for hundreds of miles.
I hope we never see a war where the current carrier orthodoxy is tested...
(*) Missile-equipped ships can project much further. But missiles are far more expensive than even 16-inch shells for the same boom.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk inyp somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Well if it becomes a thing as a word then hoorah for you. I guess 'meme' got there (Dennet was my first encounter with it)
I feel your noom about great battlefields not because of the suffering and endeavour, but because of the huge collection of great hopes that fired brightly and were snuffed out.
Meme was coined by Dawkins, surely
This whole discussion has been very illuminating, it’s also led me to this place where I am now desperate to go, and which looks like - despite being French - it has a high Noom Factor, requiring Noomblock
An absolutely brilliant concept and insight, which makes him immortal by itself. Fair play
He’s quite an odd figure now. I see he has taken to praising Christianity because he is frightened of the rise of Islam in the west. This is the same Christianity which he has been effectively deconstructing for five decades. Oops
If he’d asked, we could have told him that if you destroy one religion, it doesn’t mean it will be replaced by cold secular logic, it means it will be replaced by other religions. In our case this is either Wokeness or Islam, and Dawkins is right but rather late to see that this is not necessarily progress
I always found Dawkins a bit odd as a polemicist as he often asserted rather than reasoned. He was a far less convincing advocate for The New Atheism than Christopher Hitchens - who acknowledged value in religion while considering the drawbacks outweighed the positives, and that we should outgrow it.
Or that for every kind, considerate person or great artist who makes the world better as they are inspired by belief, there's a nutter or grifter and they often make the world far worse, and that the wide acceptance of irrational foundational beliefs are core to the problem.
On irrational foundational beliefs, there are basically two sorts of knowledge theories. Foundationalism says that everyone has beliefs that are not based on other beliefs and are axiomatic - and can't be demonstrated - they are irrational. Its opposite says there isn't a foundation at all, let alone a rational one. This is as true of non religious systems as of religious ones; so good luck with solving the problem you identify.
I know, I studied philosophy. You'd say you get around the problem with Coherentism based around scientific theory - which allows for revision when we discover new truths and junk old ones that become false. It's always the maximal collection of beliefs that can be true together. You have to exclude God until you provide a proof of his existence that coheres with the wider theory on the grounds that (to simplify) a non-corporeal entity can't impact on the corporeal is one of your truths as a basic tenet of physics - so its negation can't be included.
Not the point there though I suppose, as Hitchens point was that even the most globally popular religions are based on myths that our greater understanding of the world now makes look deeply irrational, absurd or even dangerous and wicked. Whereas a foundational belief in say, theoretical physics or the human mind, has its basis in observed reality and measurement.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with him but it's just far more convincing than Dawkins blunt rejectionism (which he now seems to be rowing back on a bit).
Thanks. Incidentally I think the argument from our USA epistemology friends that among the properly basic foundational beliefs (a belief not based upon other beliefs) a person may rationally hold, belief in God is a perfectly respectable candidate, is not uninteresting.
The R&W poll in Wales looks interesting - it's the lowest Labour share in Wales since the autumn of 2021 and takes the party back to around its December 2019 vote share.
Back then,. Labour won 41% in Wales with the Conservatives on 36%, Plaid on 10%, the LDs on 6% and TBP on 5.5%.
The swing in this poll from Conservative to Labour is 8.5% with Reform more than trebling the TBP vote share. It would be good to see Welsh polling from other pollsters.
I believe the decline is down to Gething's involvement with a waste company whilst he was Environment Minister. Even if there is nothing to it, the train of events is about as bad as an accusation of corruption can evolve. The donations appear (probably by accident) to get bigger as the company is mired deeper in unfortunate events.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
Reducing immigration is pretty much a far right opinion these days. Think of the ethnic restaurants.
Woke is a far bigger issue in the US. Crime is effectively out of control in San Francisco now as they've basically decriminalised larceny.
Here we've basically made peace with it, by and large, over the last couple of years.
Checkout police response rates for shoplifting in the UK. Nowt to do with woke, everything to do with resources, poverty and drugs. Unless you think they’ve blown all the money on rainbow flags.
It was an industrial building with a loading dock, in a chemical plant, built in wartime under wartime shortages. It was, to the casual observer, a building. Nothing more.
But to someone who had a nascent interest in civil engineering, being told by someone who had a little expertise, it was magnificent. Probably designed to last a decade at most, it had lasted four or five with relatively little maintenance. The demo was only occurring because it had outlived its use, and was not easily repurposed; not because of any structural issues. It looked fugly in some ways (though I'd disagree), but from an engineering viewpoint, it was magnificent. Most of all, you could almost visually trace the way forces, stresses and strains transferred from the roof to the ground.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Just to comment that the numinous often isn't found in the set pieces. If St Paul's Cathedral has any, I have missed it. 100 yards away St Vedast and St Martin Ludgate have it to give away. More parish churches have it than cathedrals. Iona has it, but not the abbey. It doesn't happen by trying and takes you by surprise. Salle in Norfolk has it. And Walpole St Peter. Best keep the numinous in Lincolnshire a well guarded secret but follow signs to Whaplode.
There's St Botolph's in Skidbrooke too.
I was there recently. What an awful fate it has fallen to.
The R&W poll in Wales looks interesting - it's the lowest Labour share in Wales since the autumn of 2021 and takes the party back to around its December 2019 vote share.
Back then,. Labour won 41% in Wales with the Conservatives on 36%, Plaid on 10%, the LDs on 6% and TBP on 5.5%.
The swing in this poll from Conservative to Labour is 8.5% with Reform more than trebling the TBP vote share. It would be good to see Welsh polling from other pollsters.
I am not sure this poll really passes the smell test in that the data given for the Welsh Assembly - both Regional and Constituency votes - show Labour increasing its vote share over the last month. There is no obvious reason why the party's Westminster vote would drop sharply against that background. It is rather counter intuitive.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk inyp somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Well if it becomes a thing as a word then hoorah for you. I guess 'meme' got there (Dennet was my first encounter with it)
I feel your noom about great battlefields not because of the suffering and endeavour, but because of the huge collection of great hopes that fired brightly and were snuffed out.
Meme was coined by Dawkins, surely
This whole discussion has been very illuminating, it’s also led me to this place where I am now desperate to go, and which looks like - despite being French - it has a high Noom Factor, requiring Noomblock
An absolutely brilliant concept and insight, which makes him immortal by itself. Fair play
He’s quite an odd figure now. I see he has taken to praising Christianity because he is frightened of the rise of Islam in the west. This is the same Christianity which he has been effectively deconstructing for five decades. Oops
If he’d asked, we could have told him that if you destroy one religion, it doesn’t mean it will be replaced by cold secular logic, it means it will be replaced by other religions. In our case this is either Wokeness or Islam, and Dawkins is right but rather late to see that this is not necessarily progress
'People who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything.'
G K Chesterton
Wokeness is so obviously a religion. It actively states that “feels” are what matters, not “facts”. It is the leap of faith, the problem is it leaps somewhere very dark, where we are all obsessively racialised and guilt ridden and also super weird about gender
Once it has led to centuries of warfare, the deaths, torture and mutilation of millions, and countless wrecked, abused, repressed lives, that clickbait might have some point to it.
Another remark that could easily have made in response to someone calling communism a religion at the beginning of the 20th century.
You'd say it's less a religion, more a symptom of a deeper belief - namely that reality can be reshaped rather than just described if you theorise hard and well enough. An endpoint of certain types of postmodernist theory.
Which is of course why it's so popular in universities - it centres the academic as incredibly important. Like a priest in helping show you the way and 'solving' problems by theorising correctly. Want to solve racism? Read Ibrahim X. Kendi and understand 'whiteness' as a concept. Want to solve the myriad complexities around sexuality and gender? Just wade through your Judith Butler until the porridge prose makes sense.
Exists on the right too - with its self-help guru types who promise that you too, can shape the world around you to your liking by learning from them. There's a reason both Andrew Tate and Trump pitched grifting online courses as their own 'universities'.
All basically play off the idea that we don't have a proper shared reality so need to reshape it to suit us. Which is the religious bit.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
Reducing immigration is pretty much a far right opinion these days. Think of the ethnic restaurants.
That was a one of the more bizarre PB lefty outrages. 'Brexit means restaurants are struggling to maintain their racially pure recruitment policies!!!'
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
The core beliefs of the Tories for the last 14 years have been cut taxes and reduce immigration. If it was possible, at a reasonable cost, it would have been done. Of course it can be done, but not without huge damage to health, care and the economy, which are the things the government is responsible for and relies on for funding.
Noom means I totally understand that loads of people are shit scared and ignorant and hence need to create a creator which helps them to alleviate their fear on the one hand and explain the inexplicable or undesired on the other.
Edit: no one is disputing the magnificence of the creations ofc, people are in a corner here.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk inyp somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Well if it becomes a thing as a word then hoorah for you. I guess 'meme' got there (Dennet was my first encounter with it)
I feel your noom about great battlefields not because of the suffering and endeavour, but because of the huge collection of great hopes that fired brightly and were snuffed out.
Meme was coined by Dawkins, surely
This whole discussion has been very illuminating, it’s also led me to this place where I am now desperate to go, and which looks like - despite being French - it has a high Noom Factor, requiring Noomblock
An absolutely brilliant concept and insight, which makes him immortal by itself. Fair play
He’s quite an odd figure now. I see he has taken to praising Christianity because he is frightened of the rise of Islam in the west. This is the same Christianity which he has been effectively deconstructing for five decades. Oops
If he’d asked, we could have told him that if you destroy one religion, it doesn’t mean it will be replaced by cold secular logic, it means it will be replaced by other religions. In our case this is either Wokeness or Islam, and Dawkins is right but rather late to see that this is not necessarily progress
'People who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything.'
G K Chesterton
Wokeness is so obviously a religion. It actively states that “feels” are what matters, not “facts”. It is the leap of faith, the problem is it leaps somewhere very dark, where we are all obsessively racialised and guilt ridden and also super weird about gender
Once it has led to centuries of warfare, the deaths, torture and mutilation of millions, and countless wrecked, abused, repressed lives, that clickbait might have some point to it.
Another remark that could easily have made in response to someone calling communism a religion at the beginning of the 20th century.
You'd say it's less a religion, more a symptom of a deeper belief - namely that reality can be reshaped rather than just described if you theorise hard and well enough. An endpoint of certain types of postmodernist theory.
Which is of course why it's so popular in universities - it centres the academic as incredibly important. Like a priest in helping show you the way and 'solving' problems by theorising correctly. Want to solve racism? Read Ibrahim X. Kendi and understand 'whiteness' as a concept. Want to solve the myriad complexities around sexuality and gender? Just wade through your Judith Butler until the porridge prose makes sense.
Exists on the right too - with its self-help guru types who promise that you too, can shape the world around you to your liking by learning from them. There's a reason both Andrew Tate and Trump pitched grifting online courses as their own 'universities'.
All basically play off the idea that we don't have a proper shared reality so need to reshape it to suit us. Which is the religious bit.
Indeed you can argue things like equality between the sexes are pure social constructs in modern western societies that have no correlation in nature.
It was an industrial building with a loading dock, in a chemical plant, built in wartime under wartime shortages. It was, to the casual observer, a building. Nothing more.
But to someone who had a nascent interest in civil engineering, being told by someone who had a little expertise, it was magnificent. Probably designed to last a decade at most, it had lasted four or five with relatively little maintenance. The demo was only occurring because it had outlived its use, and was not easily repurposed; not because of any structural issues. It looked fugly in some ways (though I'd disagree), but from an engineering viewpoint, it was magnificent. Most of all, you could almost visually trace the way forces, stresses and strains transferred from the roof to the ground.
Noomy to the max.
(end geeky architecture talk.)
You’re in danger of crossing from the Noom to the Sublime, or mere rhapsody….
However Noom - as you rightly say - is subjective. If these buildings give you a genuine buzz of a sacred presence - and you don’t have to believe in God, to get that, not at all - then fair play
Here is C S Lewis on the numinous, it’s quite good
“With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.”
I don’t agree with “prostration”, Noom does not make you feel abject. It can be elevating, and make you feel better and bigger, when it’s really good. But he’s absolutely right on “disturbance”. The whole point is that it should bring you up short, you stop and think Whoah, what is this place?
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
They are an argument for a specific audience which included yourself I suspect.
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
The core beliefs of the Tories for the last 14 years have been cut taxes and reduce immigration. If it was possible, at a reasonable cost, it would have been done. Of course it can be done, but not without huge damage to health, care and the economy, which are the things the government is responsible for and relies on for funding.
No it wouldn't, because the Tory Party has been divided, with those in favour of continued high immigration and high taxes in the driving seat for the vast majority of its term in office. The following facts about large scale un-skilled migration have been shown to be true:
- Despite many misleading claims to the contrary, the research consensus is that immigration overall has been and continues to be a significant annual fiscal cost for the UK. A paper published by the government in 2018 estimated that the immigrant population in the UK added £4.3 billion to the UK’s fiscal deficit in 2016/17. - Immigration into lower-skilled work does not benefit the UK’s GDP per capita, a key measure of economic performance. Indeed, growth in GDP per capita effectively stalled over the past decade, despite the fact that during this period net migration into the UK reached an all-time record level (of 342,000 in 2015). - Arguments that immigration UK is vital for the UK economy, in particular that it is bound to enhance productivity, are often exaggerated. Productivity has essentially flat-lined in recent years despite the number of immigrant workers growing by more than two million since 2006.
Labour 40% (-9) Conservatives 18% (+2) Reform UK 18% (+3) Plaid 14% (+4) Lib Dem 6% (+1) Green 4% (-1) Other 0% (-1)
Changes +/- 23-24 Mar
A nation yearns for its father.
Actually Drakeford's ratings were plummeting and Gething has quite good ones
Indeed Gething and his transport minister, Skates, have announced that from September the 20mph will be reviewed with 30mph zones reinstated and also Drakeford's refusal to agree to road improvements and the 3rd Menai Crossing are to be revisited
Vaughan Gething's net approval rating stands at +10%.
Vaughan Gething Approval Rating in Wales (22-23 April):
The outgoing First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford receives a net approval rating of -18% in our latest poll, down one point from last month, and the lowest rating he has recorded in our Welsh monthly political tracker. Our poll finds 28% (–) of voters approve of his overall job performance as First Minister of Wales against 46% (+1) who disapprove.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
The core beliefs of the Tories for the last 14 years have been cut taxes and reduce immigration. If it was possible, at a reasonable cost, it would have been done. Of course it can be done, but not without huge damage to health, care and the economy, which are the things the government is responsible for and relies on for funding.
No it wouldn't, because the Tory Party has been divided, with those in favour of continued high immigration and high taxes in the driving seat for the vast majority of its term in office. The following facts about large scale un-skilled migration have been shown to be true:
- Despite many misleading claims to the contrary, the research consensus is that immigration overall has been and continues to be a significant annual fiscal cost for the UK. A paper published by the government in 2018 estimated that the immigrant population in the UK added £4.3 billion to the UK’s fiscal deficit in 2016/17. - Immigration into lower-skilled work does not benefit the UK’s GDP per capita, a key measure of economic performance. Indeed, growth in GDP per capita effectively stalled over the past decade, despite the fact that during this period net migration into the UK reached an all-time record level (of 342,000 in 2015). - Arguments that immigration UK is vital for the UK economy, in particular that it is bound to enhance productivity, are often exaggerated. Productivity has essentially flat-lined in recent years despite the number of immigrant workers growing by more than two million since 2006.
Labour 40% (-9) Conservatives 18% (+2) Reform UK 18% (+3) Plaid 14% (+4) Lib Dem 6% (+1) Green 4% (-1) Other 0% (-1)
Changes +/- 23-24 Mar
A nation yearns for its father.
Actually Drakeford's ratings were plummeting and Gething has quite good ones
Indeed Gething and his transport minister, Skates, have announced that from September the 20mph will be reviewed with 30mph zones reinstated and also Drakeford's refusal to agree to road improvements and the 3rd Menai Crossing are to be revisited
Vaughan Gething's net approval rating stands at +10%.
Vaughan Gething Approval Rating in Wales (22-23 April):
The outgoing First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford receives a net approval rating of -18% in our latest poll, down one point from last month, and the lowest rating he has recorded in our Welsh monthly political tracker. Our poll finds 28% (–) of voters approve of his overall job performance as First Minister of Wales against 46% (+1) who disapprove.
DON’T FORSAKE THE DRAKE
His will be seen as a golden age, that of the Winter King tragically sacrificed to the Moloch of the Motor-Car.
The latest polls suggest that lead is increasing slightly. I think we need to be cautious in claiming we understand Americans. We don't.
I don't claim to understand Americans, but I can read an opinion poll. Biden is deeply unpopular.
Talk of him winning Florida is a fantasy when he's currently on track to lose Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Is it so hard to believe that Trump will defeat an unpopular Democrat candidate? He defeated Clinton in 2016.
No, it's not so hard to believe at all. It's a damned close-run thing.
But your OP was somewhat misleading (unless you were referring specifically to FL and AZ, in which case fair enough, but Biden doesn't need those states in any case).
Biden's behind in the sense that he would lose an election held today, and needing to make up some ground. People are in denial that he is heading for defeat, and quibbling about the national opinion polls doesn't change that.
Biden won the popular vote by 4.5% in 2020, but the tipping point state, Wisconsin, by only 0.63%.
Neck and neck on the national polls likely puts Biden 4 points behind where he needs to be. He's behind.
Okay, now you are conflating opinion with facts. Fine. But your OP was misleading.
"polls currently show Biden some way behind".
He is behind on the average by 0.2%! And the latest poll has him +3%.
No. The opinion polls in the states put Biden behind and Biden likely needs to win the popular vote by several percent to win the Electoral College, and therefore the election.
So he's behind in the polls.
National polls (frequent, synchronous, less informative) vs state polls (infrequent, asynchronous, more informative). This is where the fun comes in.
Noom means I totally understand that loads of people are shit scared and ignorant and hence need to create a creator which helps them to alleviate their fear on the one hand and explain the inexplicable or undesired on the other.
Edit: no one is disputing the magnificence of the creations ofc, people are in a corner here.
No, you’re’ totally misconstruing. Noom is the experience of the sacred in place. The tingle on the nape. Dark Noom hangs over battlefields and genocide sites and Cornish tin mines where children toiled. Bright sweet Noom infuses the best churches - or forest glades or stone circles. You can completely get that while being a massive atheist, indeed that’s the point
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk into somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
The core beliefs of the Tories for the last 14 years have been cut taxes and reduce immigration. If it was possible, at a reasonable cost, it would have been done. Of course it can be done, but not without huge damage to health, care and the economy, which are the things the government is responsible for and relies on for funding.
No it wouldn't, because the Tory Party has been divided, with those in favour of continued high immigration and high taxes in the driving seat for the vast majority of its term in office. The following facts about large scale un-skilled migration have been shown to be true:
- Despite many misleading claims to the contrary, the research consensus is that immigration overall has been and continues to be a significant annual fiscal cost for the UK. A paper published by the government in 2018 estimated that the immigrant population in the UK added £4.3 billion to the UK’s fiscal deficit in 2016/17. - Immigration into lower-skilled work does not benefit the UK’s GDP per capita, a key measure of economic performance. Indeed, growth in GDP per capita effectively stalled over the past decade, despite the fact that during this period net migration into the UK reached an all-time record level (of 342,000 in 2015). - Arguments that immigration UK is vital for the UK economy, in particular that it is bound to enhance productivity, are often exaggerated. Productivity has essentially flat-lined in recent years despite the number of immigrant workers growing by more than two million since 2006.
Which senior Tories are pro immigration and high taxes? Why do they never, ever articulate this?
Now you have definitely gone into a pie in the sky fantasy world where you can just make things up.
Most senior tories are pro immigration. They just pretend to be anti immigration to pander to their base. Its not serious though however the tory base isnt that bright and is easily fooled.
Labour 40% (-9) Conservatives 18% (+2) Reform UK 18% (+3) Plaid 14% (+4) Lib Dem 6% (+1) Green 4% (-1) Other 0% (-1)
Changes +/- 23-24 Mar
ReformUK seem to be doing better in Wales than in England, which is slightly unexpected.
Drakeford's speed limit change has been a political albatross around labour, and right across the political divide changes have been demanded and to give Gething and Skates their due they have acknowledged it and are actively taking steps to reverse some of the zones and to address transport links especially in North Wales
Have recently returned from a four day holiday in Pembrokeshire. Couldn't really see a problem with the 20 mph limits. They mostly seemed perfectly reasonable. Motorists were mostly complying, despite the absence of enforcement cameras.
Am I missing something?
No. They are fine and you get used to them very quickly. We’ve had them pretty much universally in north London for a couple of years now. They actually make driving more pleasant, as because, as people don’t rush as quickly into bottlenecks, the flow improves.
I was against the idea when they launched it. But, like most round here, I wouldn’t revert now.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
They are an argument for a specific audience which included yourself I suspect.
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
I am not angry like her on the Palestine protests, but I've never watched one. I'm not interested. I do feel very sorry for Jewish people feeling unsafe, because Israel's prosecution of the war isn't their fault. I respect her passion on it but don't necessarily agree.
I do agree with her that we need less unskilled migration. I find the left-wing posture on this issue insupportable. In 2010, had the current migration levels been envisioned, left wingers would have sworn blind that they would never support such levels. Yet now it's happened, it's just racism and 'far right' accusations at anyone who wants to stop it. Is there just no level of immigration at all that left wingers will acknowledge we cannot sustain?
The R&W poll in Wales looks interesting - it's the lowest Labour share in Wales since the autumn of 2021 and takes the party back to around its December 2019 vote share.
Back then,. Labour won 41% in Wales with the Conservatives on 36%, Plaid on 10%, the LDs on 6% and TBP on 5.5%.
The swing in this poll from Conservative to Labour is 8.5% with Reform more than trebling the TBP vote share. It would be good to see Welsh polling from other pollsters.
The Welsh have realised that greatness comes but once in a lifetime.
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
They are an argument for a specific audience which included yourself I suspect.
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
I am not angry like her on the Palestine protests, but I've never watched one. I'm not interested. I do feel very sorry for Jewish people feeling unsafe, because Israel's prosecution of the war isn't their fault. I respect her passion on it but don't necessarily agree.
I do agree with her that we need less unskilled migration. I find the left-wing posture on this issue insupportable. In 2010, had the current migration levels been envisioned, left wingers would have sworn blind that they would never support such levels. Yet now it's happened, it's just racism and 'far right' accusations at anyone who wants to stop it. Is there just no level of immigration at all that left wingers will acknowledge we cannot sustain?
As for tax cuts, everyone knows what I think.
There are different types of left wingers who support high immigration. One is the limousine liberals mainly based in London who just want cheap nannies and builders and can buy their way out of diverse areas. The kinabalu types. Then there are the Corbynite true believers who really hate the old britain and want to see it transformed into a mult cultural melting pot as a matter of principle. Then there are those often in the public sector whos pay cheque depends on them spouting pro immigration platitudes so believe in it for this reason. So a mixed bunch with varying motivations.
Most U.S. presidential polling is giving 8-14% to Kennedy. To me, this creates huge uncertainty about the eventual outcome.
Key is to look backwards I think. When Kennedy’s rise happened, who fell in lockstep? (I don’t know, I’ve not looked).
Similar to how I look backwards to the Rise of Reform and see them taking around 5-6% from Con and 1-2% from Lib Dem. That’s where I think the votes will go back if they decline.
Geoff Garin @geoffgarin In the new Marist national poll, Biden leads Trump by 3 points among all registered voters, but among the 78% who say they are definitely voting Biden's lead grows to 6 points -- 53% to 47%.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
Not a word that feels right to me - always imagine it's lots of things religious (although that isn't it's meaning). "Noom" - I presume you made that up?
I made it up, by taking numinous and making it mean exactly what I mean, that unplaceable shiver, that unmistakable tingle, when you walk inyp somewhere or you gaze up at something and you think Oooh, God has been here, for some reason
And it’s not always a good reason, there is Noom in the Great War Battlefields because of all the human suffering and sorrow, the landscape of cemeteries is a prayer in pale green and bone-white stone
What’s more, I haven’t had a drink yet
Well if it becomes a thing as a word then hoorah for you. I guess 'meme' got there (Dennet was my first encounter with it)
I feel your noom about great battlefields not because of the suffering and endeavour, but because of the huge collection of great hopes that fired brightly and were snuffed out.
Meme was coined by Dawkins, surely
This whole discussion has been very illuminating, it’s also led me to this place where I am now desperate to go, and which looks like - despite being French - it has a high Noom Factor, requiring Noomblock
An absolutely brilliant concept and insight, which makes him immortal by itself. Fair play
He’s quite an odd figure now. I see he has taken to praising Christianity because he is frightened of the rise of Islam in the west. This is the same Christianity which he has been effectively deconstructing for five decades. Oops
If he’d asked, we could have told him that if you destroy one religion, it doesn’t mean it will be replaced by cold secular logic, it means it will be replaced by other religions. In our case this is either Wokeness or Islam, and Dawkins is right but rather late to see that this is not necessarily progress
'People who don't believe in God don't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything.'
G K Chesterton
I always thought that quotation was fabulously silly, so Chesterton rose in my estimation when I learned there was no evidence that he actually said it.
Yes it’s a moronic quote. Suspect GKC would think similarly.
I once camped out high in the Scottish highlands and woke up to a morning mist that lifted gloriously from a nearby loch with a wonderful morning sun that was breaking through. A beautiful vista coupled with that feeling that Leon’s describing.
And now I’ll spoil it by calling it “noom with a view”
I wouldn't say that's a heresy. I like Victorian high-gothic maximalism, but a preference for airy Georgian proportions is understandable - one shared by at least a sizeable minority.
The R&W poll in Wales looks interesting - it's the lowest Labour share in Wales since the autumn of 2021 and takes the party back to around its December 2019 vote share.
Back then,. Labour won 41% in Wales with the Conservatives on 36%, Plaid on 10%, the LDs on 6% and TBP on 5.5%.
The swing in this poll from Conservative to Labour is 8.5% with Reform more than trebling the TBP vote share. It would be good to see Welsh polling from other pollsters.
The Welsh have realised that greatness comes but once in a lifetime.
The longing for The Drake is palpable.
It makes little sense though that Labour's Westminster vote has dropped at the same time its Welsh Assemby vote has increased a bit!
Labour 40% (-9) Conservatives 18% (+2) Reform UK 18% (+3) Plaid 14% (+4) Lib Dem 6% (+1) Green 4% (-1) Other 0% (-1)
Changes +/- 23-24 Mar
A nation yearns for its father.
Actually Drakeford's ratings were plummeting and Gething has quite good ones
Indeed Gething and his transport minister, Skates, have announced that from September the 20mph will be reviewed with 30mph zones reinstated and also Drakeford's refusal to agree to road improvements and the 3rd Menai Crossing are to be revisited
Vaughan Gething's net approval rating stands at +10%.
Vaughan Gething Approval Rating in Wales (22-23 April):
The outgoing First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford receives a net approval rating of -18% in our latest poll, down one point from last month, and the lowest rating he has recorded in our Welsh monthly political tracker. Our poll finds 28% (–) of voters approve of his overall job performance as First Minister of Wales against 46% (+1) who disapprove.
DON’T FORSAKE THE DRAKE
His will be seen as a golden age, that of the Winter King tragically sacrificed to the Moloch of the Motor-Car.
Indeed. There are children, born just in the last few hours, that will one day say they remember aura, as the people’s king. And, in a way they will, because the magical touch of The Drake is woven into the very fabric of their nation.
I once camped out high in the Scottish highlands and woke up to a morning mist that lifted gloriously from a nearby loch with a wonderful morning sun that was breaking through. A beautiful vista coupled with that feeling that Leon’s describing.
And now I’ll spoil it by calling it “noom with a view”
I once slept for a night above a loch. When morning arose, there was mist on the water, and low cloud above. I was in a sandwich of cloud. Magnificent.
Loch Lyon, from memory. Might be wrong.
I've only ever seen a brocken spectre once (well, twice, within a few minutes). On Lulworth Ranges. Mrs J was with me, and thought it was a common occurrence. A few minutes later we came across an Adder - only the second time I've ever seen one.
Geoff Garin @geoffgarin In the new Marist national poll, Biden leads Trump by 3 points among all registered voters, but among the 78% who say they are definitely voting Biden's lead grows to 6 points -- 53% to 47%.
Indeed. As I regularly remind certain posters on here, stating opinions with absolute certainty doesn’t make them facts.
So nobody has had the foresight to set up an account under the username God, and after months of waiting swooped on the opportunity to make a first post saying 'I disagree'.
Or perhaps they have and have taken a day off! Bummer!
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
I rather like that.
I’ve encountered quite a lot of Noom in the industrial north, but I’m afraid it is often Dark Noom, the Noom of human suffering - married, in this case, with awesome change
Coalbrookdale is off the Noom dial. Also Blaenau Ffestiniog
Patriotism compels me to point out that most of the north is neither industrial nor scarred by human suffering, of course. And I offer you Castlerigg Stone Circle as the best examole of good noom. Lud's Church in the Peak District, too. Which is not a church but a natural ravine but was used as a secret churchy meeting place for reasons which now escape me. Richmond parish church, North Yorkshire. And a personal one: the summit of Latterbarrow, near Ambleside. Makes me want to weep with joy every time I go there.
Yes totally. Castlerigg is fantastic - I’ve been trying to remember its name all day, as I’ve developed this theory. Carnac, despite its monumental scale, has zero Noom (like St Paul’s Cathedral). Castlerigg has oodles of Noom. The Lake District in general is laced with Noom, despite the tourists
Yorkshire is pretty much terra incognita to me (apart from York); I need to fix that. York Minster I found has subdued Noom, not zero, but not a lot
York Minster was badly damaged by fire in 1984, of course, so that probably doesn't help.
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
The Grey Wethers, in thick low cloud, emerging suddenly close and large. It was cold and the wind was strong, so we huddled in the lee of a low wall nearby, but that was quite special.
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
I rather like that.
I’ve encountered quite a lot of Noom in the industrial north, but I’m afraid it is often Dark Noom, the Noom of human suffering - married, in this case, with awesome change
Coalbrookdale is off the Noom dial. Also Blaenau Ffestiniog
Patriotism compels me to point out that most of the north is neither industrial nor scarred by human suffering, of course. And I offer you Castlerigg Stone Circle as the best examole of good noom. Lud's Church in the Peak District, too. Which is not a church but a natural ravine but was used as a secret churchy meeting place for reasons which now escape me. Richmond parish church, North Yorkshire. And a personal one: the summit of Latterbarrow, near Ambleside. Makes me want to weep with joy every time I go there.
Yes totally. Castlerigg is fantastic - I’ve been trying to remember its name all day, as I’ve developed this theory. Carnac, despite its monumental scale, has zero Noom (like St Paul’s Cathedral). Castlerigg has oodles of Noom. The Lake District in general is laced with Noom, despite the tourists
Yorkshire is pretty much terra incognita to me (apart from York); I need to fix that. York Minster I found has subdued Noom, not zero, but not a lot
York Minster was badly damaged by fire in 1984, of course, so that probably doesn't help.
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
The Nine Ladies in Derbyshire certainly have Noom, if I grasp what Noom is. A wonderful place, albeit strangely named, given there are ten ladies (or were, by my count).
Five military trained horses freak out because a builder drops some concrete? I don't buy it. Here's the late queen riding a horse when she was shot at with blanks at close range. The horse is startled but it doesn't throw her:
A military trained horse freaks out because a builder drops some concrete? I don't buy it. Here's the late queen riding a horse when she was shot at with blanks at close range. The horse is startled but it doesn't throw her:
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Is it noom?
That, my friend, is Maximum Noom
This is one of the more interesting of your thread hijacks.
One of my undergrad mini dissertations (we did one big one and 2 little ones) was all about 18th and 19th century travel writers in Africa - Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley etc.
The proposition was that the writing told us more about the writer and their social context than the societies in which they travelled. Classic post-colonial theory. I said maybe, but it also tells us about the moment of contact between the writer and the society they are visiting. And also about their contact with and experience of place. All the best do that. At its best you find yourself sharing a moment of spiritual epiphany with the place the writer is describing.
Mungo Park did it best. His description of the landscape around him when left for dead, robbed of everything and beaten up by the Moors, is very intense.
I probably used the word numinous. I liked to use fancy words where I could back then. But it’s a very good word.
JUST IN: Columbia University has announced classes will be remote for the rest of the year as anti-Israel protests rock the school.
There are now growing calls for tuition refunds for the $70k a year college now that it has practically turned into an online school.
"It’s vital that teaching and learning continue during this time. We recognize conditions vary across our campuses and thus are issuing the following guidelines," the school said while making the announcement.
Most U.S. presidential polling is giving 8-14% to Kennedy. To me, this creates huge uncertainty about the eventual outcome.
Key is to look backwards I think. When Kennedy’s rise happened, who fell in lockstep? (I don’t know, I’ve not looked).
Similar to how I look backwards to the Rise of Reform and see them taking around 5-6% from Con and 1-2% from Lib Dem. That’s where I think the votes will go back if they decline.
Two guesses:
1) Most people saying they will vote RFK are currently disaffected Dems trading on his name recognition without awareness of how big a numpty he is;
2) As time goes on, he will lose some of those but maintain his share by picking up votes from Trump - people who hate Biden and have (ahem) interesting views but can't bring themselves to vote for a traitor, failure and criminal.
Most U.S. presidential polling is giving 8-14% to Kennedy. To me, this creates huge uncertainty about the eventual outcome.
Key is to look backwards I think. When Kennedy’s rise happened, who fell in lockstep? (I don’t know, I’ve not looked).
Similar to how I look backwards to the Rise of Reform and see them taking around 5-6% from Con and 1-2% from Lib Dem. That’s where I think the votes will go back if they decline.
Two guesses:
1) Most people saying they will vote RFK are currently disaffected Dems trading on his name recognition without awareness of how big a numpty he is;
2) As time goes on, he will lose some of those but maintain his share by picking up votes from Trump - people who hate Biden and have (ahem) interesting views but can't bring themselves to vote for a traitor, failure and criminal.
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Is it noom?
That, my friend, is Maximum Noom
This is one of the more interesting of your thread hijacks.
One of my undergrad mini dissertations (we did one big one and 2 little ones) was all about 18th and 19th century travel writers in Africa - Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley etc.
The proposition was that the writing told us more about the writer and their social context than the societies in which they travelled. Classic post-colonial theory. I said maybe, but it also tells us about the moment of contact between the writer and the society they are visiting. And also about their contact with and experience of place. All the best do that. At its best you find yourself sharing a moment of spiritual epiphany with the place the writer is describing.
Mungo Park did it best. His description of the landscape around him when left for dead, robbed of everything and beaten up by the Moors, is very intense.
I probably used the word numinous. I liked to use fancy words where I could back then. But it’s a very good word.
“Numinous” is too poncey. And also inexact - it means “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”
Noom is very specific to place, the terrible lovely or dreamy sensation of the sacred, in a specific place. Also it sounds like doom and loom, which is perfect. Noom can be doomy - Dark Noom in Angel Meadow - yet it looms the fabric of our souls always. And it’s a nice Anglo Saxon monosyllable
The Numinous. The tingle of the sacred, derived from place
I rather like that.
I’ve encountered quite a lot of Noom in the industrial north, but I’m afraid it is often Dark Noom, the Noom of human suffering - married, in this case, with awesome change
Coalbrookdale is off the Noom dial. Also Blaenau Ffestiniog
Patriotism compels me to point out that most of the north is neither industrial nor scarred by human suffering, of course. And I offer you Castlerigg Stone Circle as the best examole of good noom. Lud's Church in the Peak District, too. Which is not a church but a natural ravine but was used as a secret churchy meeting place for reasons which now escape me. Richmond parish church, North Yorkshire. And a personal one: the summit of Latterbarrow, near Ambleside. Makes me want to weep with joy every time I go there.
Yes totally. Castlerigg is fantastic - I’ve been trying to remember its name all day, as I’ve developed this theory. Carnac, despite its monumental scale, has zero Noom (like St Paul’s Cathedral). Castlerigg has oodles of Noom. The Lake District in general is laced with Noom, despite the tourists
Yorkshire is pretty much terra incognita to me (apart from York); I need to fix that. York Minster I found has subdued Noom, not zero, but not a lot
York Minster was badly damaged by fire in 1984, of course, so that probably doesn't help.
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
The Nine Ladies in Derbyshire certainly have Noom, if I grasp what Noom is. A wonderful place, albeit strangely named, given there are ten ladies (or were, by my count).
There's the Eagle Stone nearby, which I never got the balls to climb. And the shooting tower. And nibbling in to the edge of the moor, a short distance away, is a quarry. Which after my time, had an encampment of hippies trying to stop the quarry from being reopened.
A magical place for me. But I've probably been to more NOOMy places that I just wasn't in the mood for.
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
They are an argument for a specific audience which included yourself I suspect.
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
I am not angry like her on the Palestine protests, but I've never watched one. I'm not interested. I do feel very sorry for Jewish people feeling unsafe, because Israel's prosecution of the war isn't their fault. I respect her passion on it but don't necessarily agree.
I do agree with her that we need less unskilled migration. I find the left-wing posture on this issue insupportable. In 2010, had the current migration levels been envisioned, left wingers would have sworn blind that they would never support such levels. Yet now it's happened, it's just racism and 'far right' accusations at anyone who wants to stop it. Is there just no level of immigration at all that left wingers will acknowledge we cannot sustain?
As for tax cuts, everyone knows what I think.
I thought Labour had said they will reduce immigration from its current record levels?
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Is it noom?
That, my friend, is Maximum Noom
This is one of the more interesting of your thread hijacks.
One of my undergrad mini dissertations (we did one big one and 2 little ones) was all about 18th and 19th century travel writers in Africa - Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley etc.
The proposition was that the writing told us more about the writer and their social context than the societies in which they travelled. Classic post-colonial theory. I said maybe, but it also tells us about the moment of contact between the writer and the society they are visiting. And also about their contact with and experience of place. All the best do that. At its best you find yourself sharing a moment of spiritual epiphany with the place the writer is describing.
Mungo Park did it best. His description of the landscape around him when left for dead, robbed of everything and beaten up by the Moors, is very intense.
I probably used the word numinous. I liked to use fancy words where I could back then. But it’s a very good word.
“Numinous” is too poncey. And also inexact - it means “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”
Noom is very specific to place, the terrible lovely or dreamy sensation of the sacred, in a specific place. Also it sounds like doom and loom, which is perfect. Noom can be doomy - Dark Noom in Angel Meadow - yet it looms the fabric of our souls always. And it’s a nice Anglo Saxon monosyllable
Managed to get over 41km walked today, so now a bit more than 195km in on day five
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Is it noom?
That, my friend, is Maximum Noom
This is one of the more interesting of your thread hijacks.
One of my undergrad mini dissertations (we did one big one and 2 little ones) was all about 18th and 19th century travel writers in Africa - Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley etc.
The proposition was that the writing told us more about the writer and their social context than the societies in which they travelled. Classic post-colonial theory. I said maybe, but it also tells us about the moment of contact between the writer and the society they are visiting. And also about their contact with and experience of place. All the best do that. At its best you find yourself sharing a moment of spiritual epiphany with the place the writer is describing.
Mungo Park did it best. His description of the landscape around him when left for dead, robbed of everything and beaten up by the Moors, is very intense.
I probably used the word numinous. I liked to use fancy words where I could back then. But it’s a very good word.
“Numinous” is too poncey. And also inexact - it means “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”
Noom is very specific to place, the terrible lovely or dreamy sensation of the sacred, in a specific place. Also it sounds like doom and loom, which is perfect. Noom can be doomy - Dark Noom in Angel Meadow - yet it looms the fabric of our souls always. And it’s a nice Anglo Saxon monosyllable
My work is done! I’m gonna watch Masterchef
May everyone encounter Bright Noom tomorrow
I prefer numinous. It also refers to place. Sounds nicely like luminous, and lives in the same underused word universe as “liminal”.
A military trained horse freaks out because a builder drops some concrete? I don't buy it. Here's the late queen riding a horse when she was shot at with blanks at close range. The horse is startled but it doesn't throw her:
Her problem is she is toxic to the vast majority of voters
I don't think that's her only problem, but two plusses are that she does a good interview and a good speech - those things she's got in the bag.
Confident, self-assured nonsense is still nonsense.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
The interview is very low on nonsense. You can be opposed passionately to the argument that we should reduce immigration, clamp down on Palestine protests, and cut taxes, but they are still a coherent position. They cannot really be described as pie in the sky.
They are an argument for a specific audience which included yourself I suspect.
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
I am not angry like her on the Palestine protests, but I've never watched one. I'm not interested. I do feel very sorry for Jewish people feeling unsafe, because Israel's prosecution of the war isn't their fault. I respect her passion on it but don't necessarily agree.
I do agree with her that we need less unskilled migration. I find the left-wing posture on this issue insupportable. In 2010, had the current migration levels been envisioned, left wingers would have sworn blind that they would never support such levels. Yet now it's happened, it's just racism and 'far right' accusations at anyone who wants to stop it. Is there just no level of immigration at all that left wingers will acknowledge we cannot sustain?
As for tax cuts, everyone knows what I think.
I thought Labour had said they will reduce immigration from its current record levels?
I am not aware of such a pledge, but if they have, I struggle to find anything that Braverman says in the interview that someone of Labour-supporting sensibilities would find objectionable or unsettling.
Comments
“For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.”
I am sure her sacking wasn't the sole cause for Reform's rise, but in combination with the resuscitation of Cameron, it all served to confirm that Sunak wasn't serious about immigration or other totemic issues for Tories, with the abysmal figleaf of Esther Mcvey being made 'Common Sense Tsar' or whatever she was adding insult to injury.
As for Spectator TV, Katy Balls is not going to do a Jeremy Paxman on Suella, but she wouldn't grill anyone anyway - the format is very much letting the interviewer get their point across.
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/nine-ladies-stone-circle/
Tiny, but magnificent.
I've also slept near the Twelve Apostles on Ilkley Moor, which left me utterly cold. In more than one sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Apostles,_West_Yorkshire
Similarly, modern Stonehenge leaves me utterly absolute zero, with its English Heritage stage-managed shittiness. On the other hand. Avebury is superb. Not just because you can get a decent pint there. Others may (will) differ.
In February, two Black Horses flanked a ‘captured’ White Horse and a Black Flag outside Buckingham Palace.
Today, a bloody White Horse ran loose through London with a Black Horse. These events represent a shift in power dynamics.
Are you getting it yet?
https://x.com/CilComLFC/status/1783174519517003892
Weird things are happening.
The church fathers go completely over the top in Canterbury:
Noomheads should take a look at the leylinology of the site near the Clermont where those horses got spooked. Just sayin'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVemGumEEgo
Of stone circles I recommend the twin stone circles of Grey Wethers on Dartmoor. Fairly small - photographs don’t deliver it - but Noom factor 8.6 in reality
I hope we never see a war where the current carrier orthodoxy is tested...
(*) Missile-equipped ships can project much further. But missiles are far more expensive than even 16-inch shells for the same boom.
She is as over ambitious and delusional as Johnson but without his merest hint of self-doubt.
...Sextons have their own traditions...
Old Shuck says hello...
I don't accept the argument Suella's sacking (or some of the other events) in and of themselves contributed to the rise of Reform. That seems built on the (I think) mistaken assumption Reform supporters are automatically disillusioned Conservatives.
Most people don't move on totemic issues (some do of course) but it's a more gradual approach. My view is Reform has a strong element of pro-Boris Johnson in its DNA and those who supported Johnson in 2019 weren't and didn't become Conservative - they voted Conservative because that was the party of Boris Johnson. Previously, these supporters of Johnson weren't all Conservatives - many were Labour supporters, Lib Dems or hadn't voted at all.
The polling suggests up to half of Reform's supporters would stay at home absent a Reform candidate in their constituency.
One ship. 500 vertical launch cells. Make enemy go away now.
Unless you think they’ve blown all the money on rainbow flags.
It was an industrial building with a loading dock, in a chemical plant, built in wartime under wartime shortages. It was, to the casual observer, a building. Nothing more.
But to someone who had a nascent interest in civil engineering, being told by someone who had a little expertise, it was magnificent. Probably designed to last a decade at most, it had lasted four or five with relatively little maintenance. The demo was only occurring because it had outlived its use, and was not easily repurposed; not because of any structural issues. It looked fugly in some ways (though I'd disagree), but from an engineering viewpoint, it was magnificent. Most of all, you could almost visually trace the way forces, stresses and strains transferred from the roof to the ground.
Noomy to the max.
(end geeky architecture talk.)
Said everyone until they'd stood in (say) Westminster Hall. Or Ely Cathedral Lantern.
Which is of course why it's so popular in universities - it centres the academic as incredibly important. Like a priest in helping show you the way and 'solving' problems by theorising correctly. Want to solve racism? Read Ibrahim X. Kendi and understand 'whiteness' as a concept. Want to solve the myriad complexities around sexuality and gender? Just wade through your Judith Butler until the porridge prose makes sense.
Exists on the right too - with its self-help guru types who promise that you too, can shape the world around you to your liking by learning from them. There's a reason both Andrew Tate and Trump pitched grifting online courses as their own 'universities'.
All basically play off the idea that we don't have a proper shared reality so need to reshape it to suit us. Which is the religious bit.
Noom means I totally understand that loads of people are shit scared and ignorant and hence need to create a creator which helps them to alleviate their fear on the one hand and explain the inexplicable or undesired on the other.
Edit: no one is disputing the magnificence of the creations ofc, people are in a corner here.
However Noom - as you rightly say - is subjective. If these buildings give you a genuine buzz of a sacred presence - and you don’t have to believe in God, to get that, not at all - then fair play
Here is C S Lewis on the numinous, it’s quite good
“With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.”
I don’t agree with “prostration”, Noom does not make you feel abject. It can be elevating, and make you feel better and bigger, when it’s really good. But he’s absolutely right on “disturbance”. The whole point is that it should bring you up short, you stop and think Whoah, what is this place?
Reducing immigration when we need Fillipno Doctors and Nurses in the short term is just pandering to prejudice. Her "Palestinian hate marches" narrative is rather odd for an ardent freedom of speech advocate, although the allegation has been made that she is verging on Zionism. And tax cuts when we are suggesting increased expenditure on things like defence is indeed pie in the sky.
- Immigration into lower-skilled work does not benefit the UK’s GDP per capita, a key measure of economic performance. Indeed, growth in GDP per capita effectively stalled over the past decade, despite the fact that during this period net migration into the UK reached an all-time record level (of 342,000 in 2015).
- Arguments that immigration UK is vital for the UK economy, in particular that it is bound to enhance productivity, are often exaggerated. Productivity has essentially flat-lined in recent years despite the number of immigrant workers growing by more than two million since 2006.
https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-papers/category/2
Now you have definitely gone into a pie in the sky fantasy world where you can just make things up.
I was, though, rather slow in the first half of the day. While I was up high in the mountains, I kept on feeling compelled to sit down and really take in the spectacular views in front of me
Somewhere along the way, I started to feel really strangely emotional. I actually cried a few times, but didn't feel remotely sad
I started to think about how, although I'm just doing this for me and on my own, I'm actually part of a collective experience with the thousands of people doing this right now, and with the millions that have over the last millennium
We've all shared that same stunning scenery, and all worked damned hard on the way up to get it
I've never felt quite like I did today, and I'm still buzzing from it
Is it noom?
There are three places I have felt it:
Musee de Nissin de Camondo
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musée_Nissim_de_Camondo
(Family murdered en toto at Auschwitz)
Terezin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto
And a small church in the Summer Country where I sat for 2 hours watching the sunlight play over the tombs. An incredible sense of peace and love.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/04/mike-johnson-speaker-ukraine-trump/678108/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20240422&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The+Atlantic+Daily
I was against the idea when they launched it. But, like most round here, I wouldn’t revert now.
I do agree with her that we need less unskilled migration. I find the left-wing posture on this issue insupportable. In 2010, had the current migration levels been envisioned, left wingers would have sworn blind that they would never support such levels. Yet now it's happened, it's just racism and 'far right' accusations at anyone who wants to stop it. Is there just no level of immigration at all that left wingers will acknowledge we cannot sustain?
As for tax cuts, everyone knows what I think.
Mrs J is a long-term fan of the series, having extensively played (*) all the games bar 76. I've never played it.
We're both loving the series: which probably means they did an excellent job for both fan and newcomer.
(*) Thousands of hours.
I dislike Pugin interiors.
In some cases, I detest them.
What's the opposite of 'numinous' ?
https://canmore.org.uk/collection/1920833
The longing for The Drake is palpable.
One is the limousine liberals mainly based in London who just want cheap nannies and builders and can buy their way out of diverse areas. The kinabalu types.
Then there are the Corbynite true believers who really hate the old britain and want to see it transformed into a mult cultural melting pot as a matter of principle.
Then there are those often in the public sector whos pay cheque depends on them spouting pro immigration platitudes so believe in it for this reason.
So a mixed bunch with varying motivations.
Similar to how I look backwards to the Rise of Reform and see them taking around 5-6% from Con and 1-2% from Lib Dem. That’s where I think the votes will go back if they decline.
And now I’ll spoil it by calling it “noom with a view”
Besides, look at the leylinology of today's horse spooking.
Brian is probably absolutely cacking himself. That's about the only aspect of all this that's amusing.
Loch Lyon, from memory. Might be wrong.
I've only ever seen a brocken spectre once (well, twice, within a few minutes). On Lulworth Ranges. Mrs J was with me, and thought it was a common occurrence. A few minutes later we came across an Adder - only the second time I've ever seen one.
Or perhaps they have and have taken a day off! Bummer!
https://youtu.be/SLgwQJ85bA4
TRUSS.
One of my undergrad mini dissertations (we did one big one and 2 little ones) was all about 18th and 19th century travel writers in Africa - Mungo Park, Mary Kingsley etc.
The proposition was that the writing told us more about the writer and their social context than the societies in which they travelled. Classic post-colonial theory. I said maybe, but it also tells us about the moment of contact between the writer and the society they are visiting. And also about their contact with and experience of place. All the best do that. At its best you find yourself sharing a moment of spiritual epiphany with the place the writer is describing.
Mungo Park did it best. His description of the landscape around him when left for dead, robbed of everything and beaten up by the Moors, is very intense.
I probably used the word numinous. I liked to use fancy words where I could back then. But it’s a very good word.
There are now growing calls for tuition refunds for the $70k a year college now that it has practically turned into an online school.
"It’s vital that teaching and learning continue during this time. We recognize conditions vary across our campuses and thus are issuing the following guidelines," the school said while making the announcement.
This just keeps getting better.
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1782809306272055640
(The next Conservative PM is most likely someone who can say, with feeling, "2019-24? Nothing to do with me.")
1) Most people saying they will vote RFK are currently disaffected Dems trading on his name recognition without awareness of how big a numpty he is;
2) As time goes on, he will lose some of those but maintain his share by picking up votes from Trump - people who hate Biden and have (ahem) interesting views but can't bring themselves to vote for a traitor, failure and criminal.
Noom is very specific to place, the terrible lovely or dreamy sensation of the sacred, in a specific place. Also it sounds like doom and loom, which is perfect. Noom can be doomy - Dark Noom in Angel Meadow - yet it looms the fabric of our souls always. And it’s a nice Anglo Saxon monosyllable
My work is done! I’m gonna watch Masterchef
May everyone encounter Bright Noom tomorrow
A magical place for me. But I've probably been to more NOOMy places that I just wasn't in the mood for.