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Aborting a second Trump presidency – politicalbetting.com

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  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735
    The Israel-Hamas war, which is dividing the left and posing a huge political problem for President Biden, has allowed Republicans to put the academic left on the spot and position themselves as the party more concerned with the safety of Jewish students.

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/24/us/columbia-protests-mike-johnson
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,373
    These things happen. Less problematic than nodding off in court.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,420

    These things happen. Less problematic than nodding off in court.
    I think my favourite candidate flub was still George H. Bush, who unintentionally announced that he and Ronald Reagan had been in a gay relationship during their time together.

    https://youtu.be/eySs4Iu8dV4?si=xPLwL7ZVYHnZEjCi
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559
    AP (via Seattle Times) - Arizona House advances a repeal of the state’s near-total abortion ban to the AZ Senate

    SSI - Which voted for repeal recently HOWEVER re-vote by state senators may NOT happen before end of current legislative session May 10.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    Man Utd behind again to the mighty Sheffield Utd, who have gleaned 19 points from 34 games.

    Oh ETH, go, go now. Please.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    1) I haven't seen it repeated aside from on here, and on the political Twatter. In other words, it hasn't gained currency.

    2) As comments earlier showed, it's by someone on the left about someone on the right, therefore funny and true, not insulting. But if anyone made stereotypical comments based on Rayner's red hair or breast size, that would be AWFUL!!!!!

    ;)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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”.
    No, numinous definitely does NOT explicitly and only refer to place, hence my coinage of Noom

    Dictionary.com: Numinous: of, relating to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous.

    Cambridge: Numinous - having a deep spiritual (= religious) quality or connection

    You can have a numinous dream, or encounter, or moment, but Noom is “place plus Numinosity”. A building can be roomy, and noomy

    Also, saying “numinous” sounds pretentious, but saying “it’s got great Noom” just means you’re a hepcat dude who’s reading PB and it’s cool

    OK, I really will watch Masterchef now
  • LennonLennon Posts: 1,779
    dixiedean said:

    Hands up who has an Everton Sheff Utd double?

    Given Man U's form at the moment, surely Sheff Utd were comfortably odds-on at the start?

    Reckon Liverpool will pull a draw out the bag, but not the win - still have Citeh just nabbing the title from Arsenal though
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,978

    Carnyx said:

    How can anyone get romantic about a roof.

    Said everyone until they'd stood in (say) Westminster Hall. Or Ely Cathedral Lantern.

    Or Maes Howe. Or, when one really thinks about it, a Nissen hut.
    Particularly this Nissen hut (technically two).



    The Italian Chapel in Orkney?
    Si!
  • TresTres Posts: 2,702

    Suella keeps impressing me every time I see her.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__pM_1XiMY

    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.

    Her problem is her wedding photos look like a deleted scene from Get Out.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noom
    So "Noom" is literally measuring, just how much crap (including bullshit) some consumers are consuming?
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,919
    edited April 24
    A big part of the collective experience thing for me has been the power of Hola

    When I started out in the dark in Santiago on Saturday morning it was just me. As the sun came up I started to see a few other walkers; they all gave me an hola

    I decided that I was going to hola everyone

    It soon became rather overwhelming. As I'm going the wrong way, I'm passing thousands of other peregrinos

    But I stuck at it, and came up with some hola rules for myself

    Smile
    Say hola to everyone; don't discriminate
    Don't just say it, sing it a bit
    Sing it like you mean it
    Smile some more

    I think that being a relentlessly cheerful postie has been as good training for this walk as all the walking has been
  • TimSTimS Posts: 12,996
    edited April 24
    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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”.
    No, numinous definitely does NOT explicitly and only refer to place, hence my coinage of Noom

    Dictionary.com: Numinous: of, relating to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous.

    Cambridge: Numinous - having a deep spiritual (= religious) quality or connection

    You can have a numinous dream, or encounter, or moment, but Noom is “place plus Numinosity”. A building can be roomy, and noomy

    Also, saying “numinous” sounds pretentious, but saying “it’s got great Noom” just means you’re a hepcat dude who’s reading PB and it’s cool

    OK, I really will watch Masterchef now
    Though when I asked you if the apocalyptic London horses were numinous you said no, because not related to place.

    Definitions don’t get tougher than this, as Greg Wallace might say.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,316
    edited April 24

    Omnium said:

    As an aside, earlier we were talking about military weapons and long-lead items:

    The excellent Drachinifel has just published a video on naval guns, and how much complexity they have in them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwsl_BH1Gs

    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!
    DK Brown put simply - in the age of the carrier, battleships were useless. A 1% chance of hitting anything, meant that 100 rounds per gun… didn’t mean much. The armour couldn’t stop an aircraft bomb. The shells had a range of 10 miles.

    So they couldn’t defend themselves, couldn’t hit the enemy and couldn’t survive being attacked. Apart from that…..
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,462
    ...
    Tres said:

    Suella keeps impressing me every time I see her.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__pM_1XiMY

    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.

    Her problem is her wedding photos look like a deleted scene from Get Out.
    Cruel, but lol. She has a nice smile I think but glamour-puss she ain't.
  • EPGEPG Posts: 6,652
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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”.
    No, numinous definitely does NOT explicitly and only refer to place, hence my coinage of Noom

    Dictionary.com: Numinous: of, relating to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous.

    Cambridge: Numinous - having a deep spiritual (= religious) quality or connection

    You can have a numinous dream, or encounter, or moment, but Noom is “place plus Numinosity”. A building can be roomy, and noomy

    Also, saying “numinous” sounds pretentious, but saying “it’s got great Noom” just means you’re a hepcat dude who’s reading PB and it’s cool

    OK, I really will watch Masterchef now
    Though when I asked you if the apocalyptic London horses were numinous you said no, because not related to place.

    Definitions don’t get tougher than this, as Greg Wallace might say.
    Who's more of an expert in the yuminous.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,021
    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    More likely that she firms up those voters.

    In their support for Labour.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,994

    As an aside, earlier we were talking about military weapons and long-lead items:

    The excellent Drachinifel has just published a video on naval guns, and how much complexity they have in them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwsl_BH1Gs

    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 recently walked along the Coventry Canal. Literally the industrial heart of the City for over a Century it played its part in both World Wars, and is now one of the quietest places around.

    Anyway, it winds its way past many former industrial sites, including this one



    When it was built, it was the largest workshop in Europe, constructed for the manufacture of naval guns

    https://war-work.com/coventry-ordnance-works-limited-coventry-works/

    Here is one being transported by train through the streets of Coventry



    And how did they get it on the train?

    The railway runs through the site



    And I don't mean outside. It runs through the workshop



    The tracks are visible to this day

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.4181086,-1.4932678,3a,75y,45.2h,78.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sygufSb262gcfeI3_zEn_sA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,373
    edited April 24
    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    No.
    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    And no.
  • BlancheLivermoreBlancheLivermore Posts: 5,919

    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    1) I haven't seen it repeated aside from on here, and on the political Twatter. In other words, it hasn't gained currency.

    2) As comments earlier showed, it's by someone on the left about someone on the right, therefore funny and true, not insulting. But if anyone made stereotypical comments based on Rayner's red hair or breast size, that would be AWFUL!!!!!

    ;)
    Ginger Growler's Gallons are fair game now
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,518
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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”.
    Which reminds me that the universe is pretty numinous, especially when you reckon that realistically there ought to be nothing rather than something.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630

    Omnium said:

    As an aside, earlier we were talking about military weapons and long-lead items:

    The excellent Drachinifel has just published a video on naval guns, and how much complexity they have in them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwsl_BH1Gs

    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!
    DK Brown put simply - in the age of the carrier, battleships were useless. A 1% chance of hitting anything, meant that 100 rounds per gun… didn’t mean much. The armour couldn’t stop an aircraft bomb. The shells had a range of 10 miles.

    So they couldn’t defend themselves, couldn’t hit the enemy and couldn’t survive being attacked. Apart from that…..
    I agree, but one minor quibble: the range was much greater than ten miles. The problem was accuracy: from the dreadnought era onwards, the limits were not the distance guns could fire, but the accuracy, and how far the ship could see to target. Many ships of that era could fire guns further than they could target, which is kinda pointless - except those shells have more penetrating power on closer targets.

    Hence some rather ridiculous pagodas on Japanese ships to give them better targeting. And the greater the range, the more precise the necessary targeting (unless you're the Piorun...)
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,185
    Waterfall said:

    MJW said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    WTF does Noom mean?

    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

    https://mysearchformagic.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/the-megaliths-of-saint-just-brittany/
    It was. *The Selfish Gene*, 1976.
    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

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-if-wokeness-really-is-the-new-christianity/
    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.
    In nature, some species are matriarchal (like elephants at one size extreme, and bees at the other). Other species are patriarchal.

    There are a few species - like wolves - where packs can be led either by a male or a female.

    So, I'm not sure your contention holds up.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,021
    Feck me.

    He's done it again.

    Comrades, stop falling for it.

  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630

    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    1) I haven't seen it repeated aside from on here, and on the political Twatter. In other words, it hasn't gained currency.

    2) As comments earlier showed, it's by someone on the left about someone on the right, therefore funny and true, not insulting. But if anyone made stereotypical comments based on Rayner's red hair or breast size, that would be AWFUL!!!!!

    ;)
    Ginger Growler's Gallons are fair game now
    No, they're not. Or should not be ... ;)
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    edited April 24
    Scott_xP said:

    As an aside, earlier we were talking about military weapons and long-lead items:

    The excellent Drachinifel has just published a video on naval guns, and how much complexity they have in them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwsl_BH1Gs

    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 recently walked along the Coventry Canal. Literally the industrial heart of the City for over a Century it played its part in both World Wars, and is now one of the quietest places around.

    Anyway, it winds its way past many former industrial sites, including this one

    (snip_

    When it was built, it was the largest workshop in Europe, constructed for the manufacture of naval guns

    https://war-work.com/coventry-ordnance-works-limited-coventry-works/

    Here is one being transported by train through the streets of Coventry

    (snip)

    And how did they get it on the train?

    The railway runs through the site
    (Snip)

    And I don't mean outside. It runs through the workshop

    (snip)

    The tracks are visible to this day

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.4181086,-1.4932678,3a,75y,45.2h,78.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sygufSb262gcfeI3_zEn_sA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
    Thanks. I never knew about that. I haven't associated Coventry with naval guns before.
  • WaterfallWaterfall Posts: 96
    rcs1000 said:

    Waterfall said:

    MJW said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    WTF does Noom mean?

    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

    https://mysearchformagic.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/the-megaliths-of-saint-just-brittany/
    It was. *The Selfish Gene*, 1976.
    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

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-if-wokeness-really-is-the-new-christianity/
    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.
    In nature, some species are matriarchal (like elephants at one size extreme, and bees at the other). Other species are patriarchal.

    There are a few species - like wolves - where packs can be led either by a male or a female.

    So, I'm not sure your contention holds up.
    I think it proves my point that equality between the sexes is a social construct. You can have female dominance in nature of male dominance(much more common) but you cant have equality.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,518

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    Sometimes, but I find a couple of Alka Seltzer help.

    (The next Conservative PM is most likely someone who can say, with feeling, "2019-24? Nothing to do with me.")
    The next Conservative PM (assuming that isn't in the same category as 'the next King of France') is likely to be someone not currently an MP. It's not at all impossible that this is 15 years away or more.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,994

    Thanks. I never knew about that. I haven't associated Coventry with naval guns before.

    Me neither. If you follow the link, it was specifically set up to provide competition to the established manufacturers, but it's only one of the many fascinating* stories compressed onto a 6 mile stretch of water

    * for various values of fascinating. YMMV
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,185
    DavidL said:

    An excellent piece on the "accidental speaker" and, in many ways, the hero of the last week who put right ahead of party and even personal survival: Michael Johnson. The story of his father's injuries is truly moving.
    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

    Do you have a non-paywalled link? I'm not going to subscribe to the Atlantic for just one story.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735
    WASHINGTON — Testing conducted by the Food and Drug Administration on pasteurized commercially purchased milk has found genetic evidence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the agency confirmed Tuesday. But the testing, done by polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, cannot distinguish between live virus or fragments of viruses that could have been killed by the pasteurization process.

    https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/23/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-particles-in-pasteurized-milk-fda/
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    Scott_xP said:

    Thanks. I never knew about that. I haven't associated Coventry with naval guns before.

    Me neither. If you follow the link, it was specifically set up to provide competition to the established manufacturers, but it's only one of the many fascinating* stories compressed onto a 6 mile stretch of water

    * for various values of fascinating. YMMV
    There's a factory just off the A6 in the Peak District. A heavy-steel forgings plant, called Firth Rixons. The Peak district is not a natural place for steel; it is better known for lead over iron. Or even heavy industry. But the factory was built there during WW2, when there were fears that Sheffield might get heavily bombed.

    The Russians were not the only people to move their industries.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,567
    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,185
    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    I believe Liz Truss suffers from that particular delusion.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,021
    algarkirk said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    Sometimes, but I find a couple of Alka Seltzer help.

    (The next Conservative PM is most likely someone who can say, with feeling, "2019-24? Nothing to do with me.")
    The next Conservative PM (assuming that isn't in the same category as 'the next King of France') is likely to be someone not currently an MP. It's not at all impossible that this is 15 years away or more.
    So still reading PPE at Oxford then?
  • WaterfallWaterfall Posts: 96
    More bad news for Leons magnificent 7 tech holdings. META getting pounded after hours after disappointing on earnings. This is after the pummeling the mag 7 took last week.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,021

    WASHINGTON — Testing conducted by the Food and Drug Administration on pasteurized commercially purchased milk has found genetic evidence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the agency confirmed Tuesday. But the testing, done by polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, cannot distinguish between live virus or fragments of viruses that could have been killed by the pasteurization process.

    https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/23/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-particles-in-pasteurized-milk-fda/

    I'm going to stop drinking chicken milk. Just in case.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    algarkirk said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    Sometimes, but I find a couple of Alka Seltzer help.

    (The next Conservative PM is most likely someone who can say, with feeling, "2019-24? Nothing to do with me.")
    The next Conservative PM (assuming that isn't in the same category as 'the next King of France') is likely to be someone not currently an MP. It's not at all impossible that this is 15 years away or more.
    What makes you say that? Even after 1997 they were back 13 years later?
  • MJWMJW Posts: 1,728
    Tres said:

    Suella keeps impressing me every time I see her.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g__pM_1XiMY

    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.

    Her problem is her wedding photos look like a deleted scene from Get Out.
    Braverman too often gets herself in hot water by saying the quiet part out loud or conflating a certain disquiet about her opponents/their positions, with support for her own extreme ones the other way.

    To take the Palestine marches as an obvious example. There's an awful lot of people - including those not on the right - who think they have a decidedly ugly element that needs to be confronted (preferably by organisers, but they haven't done so in 30+ years, so unlikely). And that some protesters really are taking the proverbial, especially after 6 months.

    Yet that doesn't equate with Braverman's rhetoric, which sounds like she wants to shut down almost any dissent from views she finds acceptable - which lots who might be sympathetic to more nuanced criticism of the protests will find just as if not more frightening than them.


    Or on immigration. The British public are immigration sceptics. The default is wanting it reduced, albeit with little understanding of its nature. But they also don't like performative cruelty. It's why Trumpism is so unpopular here and a British version remains marooned. It offends our sense of fair play and view of ourselves.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735

    algarkirk said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    Sometimes, but I find a couple of Alka Seltzer help.

    (The next Conservative PM is most likely someone who can say, with feeling, "2019-24? Nothing to do with me.")
    The next Conservative PM (assuming that isn't in the same category as 'the next King of France') is likely to be someone not currently an MP. It's not at all impossible that this is 15 years away or more.
    So still reading PPE at Oxford then?
    Will they never learn?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    Actually, as Firth Rixons at Darle Dale make jet engine components AIUI, then you can say the very start of the industrial revolution and the current end of that revolution are all within a few miles of each other, nestled in the quiescent Derwent valley.

    https://www.derwentvalleymills.org/discover/learning-for-all/learning-families/how-the-derwent-valley-changed-the-world/
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,994

    Scott_xP said:

    Thanks. I never knew about that. I haven't associated Coventry with naval guns before.

    Me neither. If you follow the link, it was specifically set up to provide competition to the established manufacturers, but it's only one of the many fascinating* stories compressed onto a 6 mile stretch of water

    * for various values of fascinating. YMMV
    There's a factory just off the A6 in the Peak District. A heavy-steel forgings plant, called Firth Rixons. The Peak district is not a natural place for steel; it is better known for lead over iron. Or even heavy industry. But the factory was built there during WW2, when there were fears that Sheffield might get heavily bombed.

    The Russians were not the only people to move their industries.
    A lot of industry moved out of Coventry during the war (famously Rover production moved to a shadow factory in Solihull and never moved back) which makes it all the more remarkable that huge workshop survived. From an architecture perspective, it's obviously a giant steel frame, so why is one half of the end wall made of brick? I wonder if there was something inside that demanded 'heavier' construction???
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362
    edited April 24
    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    A description of Lord David Cameron which has only gotten truer with time

  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    Which has taken over the world...

    Did you mean: “gaylording ponce boots”

    No results containing all your search terms were found.

    Your search - “gaylording ponceyboots” - did not match any documents.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,201
    algarkirk said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    WTF does Noom mean?

    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.
    Is he Epstein plaque still in place at St Vedast-alias-Foster?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362
    edited April 24

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    Which has taken over the world...

    Did you mean: “gaylording ponce boots”

    No results containing all your search terms were found.

    Your search - “gaylording ponceyboots” - did not match any documents.

    That only makes it more exclusive. Only the cognoscenti of PB have access to these coinages. It’s like being a Freemason but better
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    No!
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,845
    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    An excellent piece on the "accidental speaker" and, in many ways, the hero of the last week who put right ahead of party and even personal survival: Michael Johnson. The story of his father's injuries is truly moving.
    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

    Do you have a non-paywalled link? I'm not going to subscribe to the Atlantic for just one story.
    Oh, that didn't come up from my Atlantic account. Try this
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-accidental-speaker/ar-AA1nsO6X
  • WaterfallWaterfall Posts: 96
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    A description of Lord David Cameron which has only gotten truer with time

    Oh come on. When the brits hear that plummy voice they know to doff their caps and worship their betters.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 35,994
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    Which has taken over the world...

    Did you mean: “gaylording ponce boots”

    No results containing all your search terms were found.

    Your search - “gaylording ponceyboots” - did not match any documents.

    That only makes it more exclusive. Only the cognoscenti of PB have access to these coinages. It’s like being a Freemason but better
    Farmy farm ...
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735

    WASHINGTON — Testing conducted by the Food and Drug Administration on pasteurized commercially purchased milk has found genetic evidence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the agency confirmed Tuesday. But the testing, done by polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, cannot distinguish between live virus or fragments of viruses that could have been killed by the pasteurization process.

    https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/23/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-particles-in-pasteurized-milk-fda/

    I'm going to stop drinking chicken milk. Just in case.

    Eric Feigl-Ding
    @DrEricDing
    ·
    Apr 10
    Europe does not allow cattle to be fed poultry feed. US does. This helps explain why US is seeing a cow outbreak of avian flu.

    https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1778030457453449347
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 41,978
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    A description of Lord David Cameron which has only gotten truer with time

    No -ing as I recall. Gaylord ponceyboots is more punchy..
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    "Vapid bilge"
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 42,630
    edited April 24
    DavidL said:

    rcs1000 said:

    DavidL said:

    An excellent piece on the "accidental speaker" and, in many ways, the hero of the last week who put right ahead of party and even personal survival: Michael Johnson. The story of his father's injuries is truly moving.
    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

    Do you have a non-paywalled link? I'm not going to subscribe to the Atlantic for just one story.
    Oh, that didn't come up from my Atlantic account. Try this
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-accidental-speaker/ar-AA1nsO6X
    That's quite a story. And I can see why someone's religion might be reinforced by a loved one's survival after prayer. Though not his father leaving them shortly afterwards...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 55,362
    If I remember correctly, the late @SeanT of this parish invented the phrase, “wet as an otter’s pocket” when he wrote for FHM, using it as a sly sexual reference. That coinage (from 1999) was confirmed by the editors of the Profanisaurus and now you can find it everywhere

    indeed, in Viz itself


    https://www.moretvicar.com/products/viz-the-otters-pocket
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    What's happened in Wales to cause Labour to be -9? :open_mouth:
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,384
    Leon said:

    If I remember correctly, the late @SeanT of this parish invented the phrase, “wet as an otter’s pocket” when he wrote for FHM, using it as a sly sexual reference. That coinage (from 1999) was confirmed by the editors of the Profanisaurus and now you can find it everywhere

    indeed, in Viz itself


    https://www.moretvicar.com/products/viz-the-otters-pocket

    Oh, I didn't know SeanT was dead. How sad.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,751
    Leon said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Remember the phrase "flatulent pomposities"? First coined on PB about 5 years ago.

    Also, “gaylording ponceyboots”

    A description of Lord David Cameron which has only gotten truer with time

    Please. It's David, Lord Cameron. I thought you wrote for the Speccy?
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639
    Liverpool season over?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,408
    edited April 24

    WASHINGTON — Testing conducted by the Food and Drug Administration on pasteurized commercially purchased milk has found genetic evidence of the H5N1 bird flu virus, the agency confirmed Tuesday. But the testing, done by polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, cannot distinguish between live virus or fragments of viruses that could have been killed by the pasteurization process.

    https://www.statnews.com/2024/04/23/h5n1-bird-flu-virus-particles-in-pasteurized-milk-fda/

    I'm going to stop drinking chicken milk. Just in case.

    Eric Feigl-Ding
    @DrEricDing
    ·
    Apr 10
    Europe does not allow cattle to be fed poultry feed. US does. This helps explain why US is seeing a cow outbreak of avian flu.

    https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1778030457453449347
    Ah the man who has successfully predicted all one hundred of the last five pandemics…
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,190
    algarkirk said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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”.
    Which reminds me that the universe is pretty numinous, especially when you reckon that realistically there ought to be nothing rather than something.
    Why ought there to be nothing rather than something?
    It's true that nothing existing would be simpler, but why should simplicity be some kind of guiding principle? Why shouldn't abundance or confusion be the underlying principle of existence?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 57,185
    Waterfall said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Waterfall said:

    MJW said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    WTF does Noom mean?

    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

    https://mysearchformagic.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/the-megaliths-of-saint-just-brittany/
    It was. *The Selfish Gene*, 1976.
    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

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-if-wokeness-really-is-the-new-christianity/
    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.
    In nature, some species are matriarchal (like elephants at one size extreme, and bees at the other). Other species are patriarchal.

    There are a few species - like wolves - where packs can be led either by a male or a female.

    So, I'm not sure your contention holds up.
    I think it proves my point that equality between the sexes is a social construct. You can have female dominance in nature of male dominance(much more common) but you cant have equality.
    Errr: if there were no species with "equality", you would be correct. But there are a (admittedly small) number of species where pack leaders can be either male or female: wolves are one, bottlenose dolphins and bonobos are others. Yes, it is rarer than patriarchal or matriarchal species, but it does exist.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,408
    GIN1138 said:


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    What's happened in Wales to cause Labour to be -9? :open_mouth:
    Small sample sizes.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,409
    It's a grand old team to play for.
    And a grand old team to support.
    Sing-along @TSE .
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,408

    Leon said:

    If I remember correctly, the late @SeanT of this parish invented the phrase, “wet as an otter’s pocket” when he wrote for FHM, using it as a sly sexual reference. That coinage (from 1999) was confirmed by the editors of the Profanisaurus and now you can find it everywhere

    indeed, in Viz itself


    https://www.moretvicar.com/products/viz-the-otters-pocket

    Oh, I didn't know SeanT was dead. How sad.
    It’s ok, I heard they were similar to Time Lords and have the ability to regenerate.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    edited April 24

    GIN1138 said:


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    What's happened in Wales to cause Labour to be -9? :open_mouth:
    Small sample sizes.
    Oh hang on, isn't that an actual poll of Wales (with usual 1K sample) rather than a sub-sample from a GB poll?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,735

    Leon said:

    If I remember correctly, the late @SeanT of this parish invented the phrase, “wet as an otter’s pocket” when he wrote for FHM, using it as a sly sexual reference. That coinage (from 1999) was confirmed by the editors of the Profanisaurus and now you can find it everywhere

    indeed, in Viz itself


    https://www.moretvicar.com/products/viz-the-otters-pocket

    Oh, I didn't know SeanT was dead. How sad.
    Probably only for tax reasons though.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,567
    Interesting to see the big majorities in both the House and Senate for the Ukraine aid money. The GOP obviously isn't quite as isolationist as we were led to believe by the commentariat.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,059
    edited April 24
    Of course evangelicals really don’t care that much about Trump, he was a means to an end when they got behind him when he won in 2016. That end being the reversal of Roe v Wade in the SC which they achieved and which has now enabled them to start banning or severely restricting abortion in deep red states.

    If Trump wins in November for them all to the good, if he loses again and ends up in a jail cell never mind. Roe v Wade will still have been repealed and the SC as stands looks unlikely to change that anytime soon while they have a firm grip on the GOP platform ensuring pro life candidates and nominees for some time to come
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,384
    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    What's happened in Wales to cause Labour to be -9? :open_mouth:
    Small sample sizes.
    Oh hang on, isn't that an actual poll of Wales (with usual 1K sample) rather than a sub-sample from a GB poll?
    Yes. The sample sizes are about 850, which is small by GB standards, but not particularly small enough to airily wave away a 9pt drop. That said, if you look at the last three polls, the sequence in the Labour shares is: 45, 49, 40 - so that could be random variation around a mid-40s mean.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,567
    Is Bunco still around? From June 2016.

    "Bunco makes the case for Liz Truss as next CON leader and PM"

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160625200236/http://www2.politicalbetting.com/
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,384
    Andy_JS said:

    Interesting to see the big majorities in both the House and Senate for the Ukraine aid money. The GOP obviously isn't quite as isolationist as we were led to believe by the commentariat.

    I thought that, in the House, more GOP representatives voted against Ukraine aid than voted for? That's pretty damn isolationist.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,409
    rcs1000 said:

    Waterfall said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Waterfall said:

    MJW said:

    IanB2 said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    Omnium said:

    Leon said:

    WTF does Noom mean?

    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

    https://mysearchformagic.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/the-megaliths-of-saint-just-brittany/
    It was. *The Selfish Gene*, 1976.
    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

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-if-wokeness-really-is-the-new-christianity/
    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.
    In nature, some species are matriarchal (like elephants at one size extreme, and bees at the other). Other species are patriarchal.

    There are a few species - like wolves - where packs can be led either by a male or a female.

    So, I'm not sure your contention holds up.
    I think it proves my point that equality between the sexes is a social construct. You can have female dominance in nature of male dominance(much more common) but you cant have equality.
    Errr: if there were no species with "equality", you would be correct. But there are a (admittedly small) number of species where pack leaders can be either male or female: wolves are one, bottlenose dolphins and bonobos are others. Yes, it is rarer than patriarchal or matriarchal species, but it does exist.
    As is true of human societies. Matriarchal is rare but not entirely unknown.
    LFC ha ha.
    Klopp quadruple my shiny blue arse.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286

    GIN1138 said:

    GIN1138 said:


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    What's happened in Wales to cause Labour to be -9? :open_mouth:
    Small sample sizes.
    Oh hang on, isn't that an actual poll of Wales (with usual 1K sample) rather than a sub-sample from a GB poll?
    Yes. The sample sizes are about 850, which is small by GB standards, but not particularly small enough to airily wave away a 9pt drop. That said, if you look at the last three polls, the sequence in the Labour shares is: 45, 49, 40 - so that could be random variation around a mid-40s mean.
    Thanks for confirming. Next poll will be interesting.
  • Well done @dixiedean

    This has been quite a disappointing and anticlimactic end to the season, considering where we were just a few weeks ago.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,190
    ydoethur said:

    TimS said:

    EPG said:

    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.
    Simplest at this stage is just look at the Biden Trump head to head polling.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,059
    ydoethur said:

    These things happen. Less problematic than nodding off in court.
    I think my favourite candidate flub was still George H. Bush, who unintentionally announced that he and Ronald Reagan had been in a gay relationship during their time together.

    https://youtu.be/eySs4Iu8dV4?si=xPLwL7ZVYHnZEjCi
    How has the GOP gone from Reagan and HW Bush who won the Cold War and Gulf War, to Trump in just a few decades?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,695
    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    I believe Liz Truss suffers from that particular delusion.
    Great bit in today's Private Eye:


  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    The Tories moaning that Labour have stolen the name Great British Railways from them!

    I think the rail nationalization is a big story and will help shore up the left . It’s also not expensive as it’s simply waiting for the franchises to finish .
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    edited April 24
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,408
    Scott_xP said:
    Clearly after the horse’s vote.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,854
    TimS said:

    Leon said:

    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.
    CAme from the Borders, and has not been forgotten. I was intrigued to come across the plaque on his house in Peebles a few years back when having a wander around.

    https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g186508-d19922444-Reviews-Plaque_Marking_Mungo_Park_s_Residence-Peebles_Scottish_Borders_Scotland.html

    https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/505383
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,059


    Redfield & Wilton Strategies

    Labour leads by 22% in Wales.

    Highest Reform and Plaid %'s in our polling.

    Wales Westminster VI (22-23 Apr):

    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

    Reform now polling higher in Wales than across the UK and level with the Tories
  • ChrisChris Posts: 11,750

    Boris Johnson
    @BorisJohnson
    ·
    46m
    Frank Field was one of the best and most principled people in politics. He backed Brexit from a simple belief in British democracy and he attacked welfarism out of sheer Christian compassion. His ideas remain vital today.

    https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1783226820441014586

    Johnson is always worth listening to on matters of principle and spirituality.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    nico679 said:

    The Tories moaning that Labour have stolen the name Great British Railways from them!

    I think the rail nationalization is a big story and will help shore up the left . It’s also not expensive as it’s simply waiting for the franchises to finish .

    Lets hope Great British Railways works out better than British Rail lol!

    That said, I was never keen on rail privatization, personally.

    Coming at the bitter end of the 79-97 Conservative government, it always felt like Major and Hezza were desperate to try and find a "legacy" beyond the Cones Hotline (the the Tories worst defeat since 1832) and didn't give much thought to how it would actually work.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,286
    Chris said:

    Boris Johnson
    @BorisJohnson
    ·
    46m
    Frank Field was one of the best and most principled people in politics. He backed Brexit from a simple belief in British democracy and he attacked welfarism out of sheer Christian compassion. His ideas remain vital today.

    https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1783226820441014586

    Johnson is always worth listening to on matters of principle and spirituality.
    Ha! 😂
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    GIN1138 said:

    nico679 said:

    The Tories moaning that Labour have stolen the name Great British Railways from them!

    I think the rail nationalization is a big story and will help shore up the left . It’s also not expensive as it’s simply waiting for the franchises to finish .

    Lets hope Great British Railways works out better than British Rail lol!

    That said, I was never keen on rail privatization, personally.

    Coming at the bitter end of the 79-97 Conservative government, it always felt like Major and Hezza were desperate to try and find a "legacy" beyond the Cones Hotline (the the Tories worst defeat since 1832) and didn't give much thought to how it would actually work.
    I agree BR was crap . Whether GBR is better I really don’t have a lot of expectations but it’s very good politics and will help Starmer with the left of the party .
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    Andy_JS said:

    I wonder if Rayner has lost Labour the votes of a lot of shorter-than-average men with her comments today.

    I really doubt it. Shorter than average men like myself will have thicker skin than that for a start.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    ydoethur said:

    These things happen. Less problematic than nodding off in court.
    I think my favourite candidate flub was still George H. Bush, who unintentionally announced that he and Ronald Reagan had been in a gay relationship during their time together.

    https://youtu.be/eySs4Iu8dV4?si=xPLwL7ZVYHnZEjCi
    Scandalous indeed.
  • londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,639

    Well done @dixiedean

    This has been quite a disappointing and anticlimactic end to the season, considering where we were just a few weeks ago.

    It's always good to front it out. As a Watford fan I am used to that!

    You have still got a trophy and Champions League football for next season 👍
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,102
    Andy_JS said:

    Is Bunco still around? From June 2016.

    "Bunco makes the case for Liz Truss as next CON leader and PM"

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160625200236/http://www2.politicalbetting.com/

    He was wrong, @Andy_JS. Theresa May was the next PM (July 2016), followed by Boris Johnson (2019)
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 5,288
    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Does anyone have an uncanny feeling that Truss will be back as PM again one day?

    I believe Liz Truss suffers from that particular delusion.
    Great bit in today's Private Eye:


    Leave the poor woman alone. Don't you know she's resting up after a very slight mishap with her pony this morning?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,104
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    These things happen. Less problematic than nodding off in court.
    I think my favourite candidate flub was still George H. Bush, who unintentionally announced that he and Ronald Reagan had been in a gay relationship during their time together.

    https://youtu.be/eySs4Iu8dV4?si=xPLwL7ZVYHnZEjCi
    How has the GOP gone from Reagan and HW Bush who won the Cold War and Gulf War, to Trump in just a few decades?
    It's more shocking how they've gone from backing Trump but some having reservations about his more outrageous comments and behaviour, to full throated worship in only four years. No potential crime, no behaviour, nothing puts them off, and even those who used to mildly criticise it bend knee and lick boot.
  • DonkeysDonkeys Posts: 723
    edited April 24
    Today's London horses event: calling those with photoint training - where is this?

    image

    https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uk/2024/04/24/army-on-the-hunt-for-escaped-horses-on-loose-in-london/

    The caption says it's in "Lower Belgrave Street in Victoria at the spot where a witness says the horses lost control", but I couldn't find a place in LBSt that looks like that - not even outside no.46 where Lord Lucan's nanny was murdered. Other sources give Belgrave Square.

    The Independent coyly say the route they show is "estimated":

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/london-horses-cavalry-running-loose-map-where-b2533971.html

    The map in the Daily Express is crap and the editors seem to have no care for leylinology whatsoever:

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1891846/horses-escape-in-london
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,316

    Omnium said:

    As an aside, earlier we were talking about military weapons and long-lead items:

    The excellent Drachinifel has just published a video on naval guns, and how much complexity they have in them:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLwsl_BH1Gs

    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!
    DK Brown put simply - in the age of the carrier, battleships were useless. A 1% chance of hitting anything, meant that 100 rounds per gun… didn’t mean much. The armour couldn’t stop an aircraft bomb. The shells had a range of 10 miles.

    So they couldn’t defend themselves, couldn’t hit the enemy and couldn’t survive being attacked. Apart from that…..
    I agree, but one minor quibble: the range was much greater than ten miles. The problem was accuracy: from the dreadnought era onwards, the limits were not the distance guns could fire, but the accuracy, and how far the ship could see to target. Many ships of that era could fire guns further than they could target, which is kinda pointless - except those shells have more penetrating power on closer targets.

    Hence some rather ridiculous pagodas on Japanese ships to give them better targeting. And the greater the range, the more precise the necessary targeting (unless you're the Piorun...)
    You could throw shells more than 10 miles. The problem was that the rate of hitting declined. A lot. A hundred rounds per gun, 1% hit rate. At a reasonable range….
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 22,102
    GIN1138 said:

    nico679 said:

    The Tories moaning that Labour have stolen the name Great British Railways from them!

    I think the rail nationalization is a big story and will help shore up the left . It’s also not expensive as it’s simply waiting for the franchises to finish .

    Lets hope Great British Railways works out better than British Rail lol!

    That said, I was never keen on rail privatization, personally.

    Coming at the bitter end of the 79-97 Conservative government, it always felt like Major and Hezza were desperate to try and find a "legacy" beyond the Cones Hotline (the the Tories worst defeat since 1832) and didn't give much thought to how it would actually work.
    The Cones Hotline was a good idea. Major was trying to formalise the idea of feedback: means whereby the governed could inform their governors of dissatisfaction and so improve governance. We're so used to it now that we've forgotten it was almost wholly absent outside of elections.
This discussion has been closed.