He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
Why the eff don't airports etc have back-up computer systems that don't use this software?
There'll be various reasons. cost being one.
But there's also the problem of testing backups and ensuring they're available and work reliably in an emergency. An anecdote:
A small Midlands power station used an independent power from the National Grid to run its systems: the idea being that if the power station had a problem, it still had power coming in. If the power from the grid failed, there were diesel generators that could start at a moment's notice to provide power for the systems. They were never to use their own power.
This is sensible and logical. The backup generators were regularly tested. Then one day, they lost grid power and the backup generators started. They were kept going until the mains supply came back and was deemed stable. A while later, it was noticed that temperatures on some of the bearings in the turbines were very high. It turned out that when the generators were switched off, the power supply to a lubrication system failed, meaning the turbines were running unlubricated. The end result were a couple of ruined turbines, a couple more badly damaged, and millions in costs.
That's a problem with backup systems: they're hard to test, and when they fail, they can leave you in a worse situation than if you failsafe without them.
(AIUI air traffic control do have backup systems, including the old paper system. I think they still use that in parallel.)
Air traffic control and nuclear power plants have ridiculous backups, and the Space Shuttle famously had a fourth backup flight computer that was developed independently from the other three, which were the same and would vote on problems.
But for everyone else, they just have to deal with it.
It is believed by quite a few that the Space Shuttle software was, eventually, bug free.
Every line in the code was reviewed and tested in multiple ways. At the end of the program they actually wrote a whole framework to torture the code with random inputs to see if they could find anything - after years of no bug reports. Still nothing.
Cost about $10 per line - back in the 1980s..
Indeed. And yet they still developed a completely different system to be switched on in case of an emergency. No computer has ever been as bug-free and redundant as the Space Shuttle flight computer.
I actually took part in a PhD study of this method. It’s not that great, actually.
You have to ensure zero interaction between the groups writing the software. Just to the same spec. Even then, errors from common mistakes can get through - fence post errors etc…
Today's the day we find out who's silly enough not to have installed any back-up systems.
Today is the day somebody got a taxi to the shop, bought a memory stick and charger, came back, disabled the WiFi, started the PC, copied everything to memory stick, emailed all my colleagues and reset appointments to later today/Monday, and should be back to normal by 1pm. And then I'll go to lunch. 😎
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
Labours work from home plans will devastate the high street.
The vendors in Newcastle I have eaten at some of them in the Grainger Market. They are really good and many here are waiting for the 6,000 HMRC employees to move into the city.
Still, I guess there will be winners and losers in this.
We can't just force people to commute to save the high street. If people are as productive as they are in the office and there is no reduction in service people should be allowed to work from home.
True, I do say there will be winners and losers. This may very well revitalise towns like the one I live in which, although I like where I live and live in a nice part of it, the town centre has markedly declined really since Durham became a single council as the prior Labour regime really focussed on Durham and Bishop.
City centres will have to re-invent themselves. I would hope Labour are sensible enough to look at the impact of this policy and look at putting in place measures to mitigate.
Also businesses can mitigage. Acropolis, in that article, also do street food. For example.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yep, they usually have a box to rummage through. Always nice to hear of a hanger doing what it's supposed to do - save the expensive bits of your bike.
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
Honestly? It might just be because he's a Republican. I hate to use the word "intersectional" (please kill me now) but it's the venn diagram overlap between the religion and the politics that's the driver. Vance has done a volte-face over everything he believed in, and I suspect that happened when he became politically active.
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
FWIW, I get the impression that Vance is something of a chameleon, who will adopt whatever guise suits for advancing his career, and the interests of his billionaire backers.
The USCatholicism question is an interesting one. I don't pretend to understand whether the theology of the MAGA right Catholics is sincere, or otherwise (and the current adulation of Trump border on the blasphemous from a Christian perspective), but there's a good article exploring some of the cross currents here:
The strange world of Catholic 'integralism' — and Christian nationalism
https://www.ncronline.org/news/strange-world-catholic-integralism-and-christian-nationalism ..Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian "strategic adviser" to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised "pagan kings."
And while Vermeule has argued that "nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated," he has conceded that nationalism can be a "second-best defensive strategy" against liberalism.
Indeed, for all their differences, integralism shares many of the same policy goals as popular forms of Christian nationalism. Referring to Christian nationalism as "bargain store integralism," Vallier said the two movements generally find common cause when it comes to opposition to abortion and support for blasphemy laws, blue laws and banning pornography.
And support for Trump.
"All of these vectors converge at Trumpism," said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.
Many prominent integralists and hard-line Christian nationalists ultimately share support for Trump, whom Vermeule has likened to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Vallier has stated previously that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine.
Support for Trump is foundational for hard-core Catholic Christian nationalists. People waving flags branded with the America First logo were among the first to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Fuentes himself did not enter the Capitol that day.) Fuentes, meanwhile, often uses extreme rhetoric widely decried as racist and antisemitic on his various internet livestreams, such as calling for "Catholic Taliban rule."
There are also prominent Catholics who champion forms of Christian nationalism that are fairly indistinguishable from Protestants who have rallied around Trump. This includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a Catholic who has headlined a traveling Christian nationalist roadshow known as the ReAwaken America Tour and promoted Christian nationalist organizations.
Similarly, onetime Trump aide Steve Bannon, who is also Catholic, has identified himself as a "proud Christian nationalist" and described the U.S. as a "new Jerusalem."..
Today's the day we find out who's silly enough not to have installed any back-up systems.
Today is the day somebody got a taxi to the shop, bought a memory stick and charger, came back, disabled the WiFi, started the PC, copied everything to memory stick, emailed all my colleagues and reset appointments to later today/Monday, and should be back to normal by 1pm. And then I'll go to lunch. 😎
I was about to be glib then I realised you were making a point about whether the word "violent" can be directed against a non-living thing. I think it can, so I don't have a problem with the phrase.
I am not sure that you can.
I think planting a bomb counts as violent, regardless of whether anyone gets injured
What about if you are legally destroying an unsafe derelict building?
You have legal permission from the buildings owner to destroy it. And by planning it properly, the risk of hurting humans is as close to 0% as possible.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1814246314709758121 Imagine waging war against a country that provides critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then pissing off their allies so much that they ban the export to your country of even more critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then conscripting the linemen and engineers who maintain your electrical infrastructure.
..and then targeting the electrical infrastructure in the other country, which makes them hit yours back, but you can't repair things because you need the country you’re at war with to produce the replacement parts for you.
..so then you look around at the countries still willing to do business with you, but none of them make components that are compatible with your electric grid, and if you used their stuff it would make the problem even worse, so you just stew in rolling power outages...
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
Our town used to have three cycle shops, all closed down. Including one for a restaurant that never happened.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
LOL. That's how I learnt about restoring houses - I did everything once, including things like building and roofing a conservatory.
Then one is capable of effectively supervising traders, talking intelligently and hopefully dodging BS.
The talk of monocultures reminds me of the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople. Nigh on invincible (*cough*4thCrusade*cough*) but when cannons got sufficiently developed the Eastern Roman goose was cooked.
Still, worked with only a single failure for around a thousand years. Not a bad investment.
Just at the moment Crowdstrike is the modern equivalent of a plague-ridden cadaver delivered by trebuchet.
A ‘plague-ridden cadaver delivered by trebuchet’ is an artisanal problem and thus probably preferable.
Nearer a trojan house welcomed into the inner sanctums of the castle
I was about to be glib then I realised you were making a point about whether the word "violent" can be directed against a non-living thing. I think it can, so I don't have a problem with the phrase.
I am not sure that you can.
I think planting a bomb counts as violent, regardless of whether anyone gets injured
What about if you are legally destroying an unsafe derelict building?
You have legal permission from the buildings owner to destroy it. And by planning it properly, the risk of hurting humans is as close to 0% as possible.
Also demolition work needs to be licensed in the UK, project by project. Things such as garden sheds aside, of course.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
The new route winds around the outskirts of the works site, and is easily over double the length. It only opened earlier in the week, and parts are already flooded, boggy and rutted. The rest of it (which to be fair is the majority) is flat locally, but undulates in a way that is really uncomfortable on a road bike.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
Labours work from home plans will devastate the high street.
The vendors in Newcastle I have eaten at some of them in the Grainger Market. They are really good and many here are waiting for the 6,000 HMRC employees to move into the city.
Still, I guess there will be winners and losers in this.
We can't just force people to commute to save the high street. If people are as productive as they are in the office and there is no reduction in service people should be allowed to work from home.
True, I do say there will be winners and losers. This may very well revitalise towns like the one I live in which, although I like where I live and live in a nice part of it, the town centre has markedly declined really since Durham became a single council as the prior Labour regime really focussed on Durham and Bishop.
City centres will have to re-invent themselves. I would hope Labour are sensible enough to look at the impact of this policy and look at putting in place measures to mitigate.
Also businesses can mitigage. Acropolis, in that article, also do street food. For example.
Are you talking about Durham - I will say that Silver Street and elsewhere went seriously downhill but things are improving - and none of it was the councils fault.
Elsewhere I've commented in the past that the problem everyone has in Durham is that councillors are making decisions on areas an hour or more from where they live so they simply wave things through because they don't understand the local impact.
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
It seems in the USA that Evangelicalism in the US culture is associated with denial of science and intellectualism that Vance couldn't accept. He is quite dismissive of the shallow religiosity of his fathers Pentocostal Church in Hillbilly Elegy for example. It seems too that Catholicism and Mormonism are the seen as aspirational for the upwardly mobile like Vance, in a way that Episcopalean or Presbyterian Protestantism is no longer for the upper class there.
Worth noting too that there is a Charismatic Movement in Catholicism in America which isnt too far from Charismatic Protestantism. Amy Coney Barratt is part of that movement for example.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
LOL. That's how I learnt about restoring houses - I did everything once, including things like building and roofing a conservatory.
Then one is capable of effectively supervising traders, talking intelligently and hopefully dodging BS.
My dad was in building and demolition, so I was around traders since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and would like to think I had a good handle on them.
As an aside, my dad always said that you could generally tell the quality of a tradesman by his van. The nature of the work meant that you couldn't expect them to be clean, but he always liked them to be tidy. If a tradesman's tools are all over his van, he may not be able to find what he need and use something else instead. He said a good sign of this was whether there were week-old newspapers and chip papers on the cab's dashboard. If a workman cannot take care of his van, he won't take care of your job. I've used this approach a few times as an adult...
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
FWIW, I get the impression that Vance is something of a chameleon, who will adopt whatever guise suits for advancing his career, and the interests of his billionaire backers.
The USCatholicism question is an interesting one. I don't pretend to understand whether the theology of the MAGA right Catholics is sincere, or otherwise (and the current adulation of Trump border on the blasphemous from a Christian perspective), but there's a good article exploring some of the cross currents here:
The strange world of Catholic 'integralism' — and Christian nationalism
https://www.ncronline.org/news/strange-world-catholic-integralism-and-christian-nationalism ..Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian "strategic adviser" to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised "pagan kings."
And while Vermeule has argued that "nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated," he has conceded that nationalism can be a "second-best defensive strategy" against liberalism.
Indeed, for all their differences, integralism shares many of the same policy goals as popular forms of Christian nationalism. Referring to Christian nationalism as "bargain store integralism," Vallier said the two movements generally find common cause when it comes to opposition to abortion and support for blasphemy laws, blue laws and banning pornography.
And support for Trump.
"All of these vectors converge at Trumpism," said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.
Many prominent integralists and hard-line Christian nationalists ultimately share support for Trump, whom Vermeule has likened to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Vallier has stated previously that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine.
Support for Trump is foundational for hard-core Catholic Christian nationalists. People waving flags branded with the America First logo were among the first to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Fuentes himself did not enter the Capitol that day.) Fuentes, meanwhile, often uses extreme rhetoric widely decried as racist and antisemitic on his various internet livestreams, such as calling for "Catholic Taliban rule."
There are also prominent Catholics who champion forms of Christian nationalism that are fairly indistinguishable from Protestants who have rallied around Trump. This includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a Catholic who has headlined a traveling Christian nationalist roadshow known as the ReAwaken America Tour and promoted Christian nationalist organizations.
Similarly, onetime Trump aide Steve Bannon, who is also Catholic, has identified himself as a "proud Christian nationalist" and described the U.S. as a "new Jerusalem."..
Thank-you - yes, that is some of the things discussed from a different angle in the interview I posted this morning, which added to my interest in @MrBedfordshire 's comment.
The Taliban comparison has some resonance, especially around the desire now being implemented in part via the Supreme Court to impose a new order on society.
The current generation of Trump-supporting evangelicals seem to be very skilled in doublethink; one would hope that Trump's crimes would be a red flag, but apparently not.
That's one of the problems with a rootless evangelical theology - it can drift; it is vulnerable to manipulation due to the absence of checks and balances, whether that is by leaders who have lost their own way, or by leaders who are cynical.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
Our town used to have three cycle shops, all closed down. Including one for a restaurant that never happened.
Cheap shit bikes are harder to work on than expensive bikes because the fasteners are all crap and there is a lot of play in cheap derailleurs. Some really crappy 3x systems are physically impossible to index correctly over the full gear range.
If your bike isn't Dura Ace Di2, Sram Red AXS or Campag Super Record EPS then throw it in the woods and get one that is.
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
FWIW, I get the impression that Vance is something of a chameleon, who will adopt whatever guise suits for advancing his career, and the interests of his billionaire backers.
The USCatholicism question is an interesting one. I don't pretend to understand whether the theology of the MAGA right Catholics is sincere, or otherwise (and the current adulation of Trump border on the blasphemous from a Christian perspective), but there's a good article exploring some of the cross currents here:
The strange world of Catholic 'integralism' — and Christian nationalism
https://www.ncronline.org/news/strange-world-catholic-integralism-and-christian-nationalism ..Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian "strategic adviser" to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised "pagan kings."
And while Vermeule has argued that "nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated," he has conceded that nationalism can be a "second-best defensive strategy" against liberalism.
Indeed, for all their differences, integralism shares many of the same policy goals as popular forms of Christian nationalism. Referring to Christian nationalism as "bargain store integralism," Vallier said the two movements generally find common cause when it comes to opposition to abortion and support for blasphemy laws, blue laws and banning pornography.
And support for Trump.
"All of these vectors converge at Trumpism," said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.
Many prominent integralists and hard-line Christian nationalists ultimately share support for Trump, whom Vermeule has likened to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Vallier has stated previously that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine.
Support for Trump is foundational for hard-core Catholic Christian nationalists. People waving flags branded with the America First logo were among the first to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Fuentes himself did not enter the Capitol that day.) Fuentes, meanwhile, often uses extreme rhetoric widely decried as racist and antisemitic on his various internet livestreams, such as calling for "Catholic Taliban rule."
There are also prominent Catholics who champion forms of Christian nationalism that are fairly indistinguishable from Protestants who have rallied around Trump. This includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a Catholic who has headlined a traveling Christian nationalist roadshow known as the ReAwaken America Tour and promoted Christian nationalist organizations.
Similarly, onetime Trump aide Steve Bannon, who is also Catholic, has identified himself as a "proud Christian nationalist" and described the U.S. as a "new Jerusalem."..
This discussion brings to mind this comment from Matthew Yglesias yesterday:
This is mildly contrarian but I think Trump is a really smart and impressive guy who is constantly surrounded by people who overestimate themselves and underestimate him, convincing themselves that they are master manipulators when he’s actually playing them.
On PB my most likely candidate to hold one would be @Dura_Ace .
I don't have a licence but I have made loads of explosives in my time, including IEDs to remove stumps.
Tree stumps, I hope ?
Yes, I did loads on my grandfather's farm in South Africa but you could buy some amazingly dangerous Czechoslovakian explosive over the counter in the hardware shop there. All the ones I did on my other grandfather's farm in Ireland were home-brewed according to the family/PIRA recipe.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
Our town used to have three cycle shops, all closed down. Including one for a restaurant that never happened.
Cheap shit bikes are harder to work on than expensive bikes because the fasteners are all crap and there is a lot of play in cheap derailleurs. Some really crappy 3x systems are physically impossible to index correctly over the full gear range.
If your bike isn't Dura Ace Di2, Sram Red AXS or Campag Super Record EPS then throw it in the woods and get one that is.
Alternatively, my brother and I taught ourselves bike building, when we were kids, by gradually replacing the shit bits on cheap bikes.
Then graduated to buying a good frame to hang all the nice bits we’d accumulated on.
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
FWIW, I get the impression that Vance is something of a chameleon, who will adopt whatever guise suits for advancing his career, and the interests of his billionaire backers.
The USCatholicism question is an interesting one. I don't pretend to understand whether the theology of the MAGA right Catholics is sincere, or otherwise (and the current adulation of Trump border on the blasphemous from a Christian perspective), but there's a good article exploring some of the cross currents here:
The strange world of Catholic 'integralism' — and Christian nationalism
https://www.ncronline.org/news/strange-world-catholic-integralism-and-christian-nationalism ..Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian "strategic adviser" to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised "pagan kings."
And while Vermeule has argued that "nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated," he has conceded that nationalism can be a "second-best defensive strategy" against liberalism.
Indeed, for all their differences, integralism shares many of the same policy goals as popular forms of Christian nationalism. Referring to Christian nationalism as "bargain store integralism," Vallier said the two movements generally find common cause when it comes to opposition to abortion and support for blasphemy laws, blue laws and banning pornography.
And support for Trump.
"All of these vectors converge at Trumpism," said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.
Many prominent integralists and hard-line Christian nationalists ultimately share support for Trump, whom Vermeule has likened to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Vallier has stated previously that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine.
Support for Trump is foundational for hard-core Catholic Christian nationalists. People waving flags branded with the America First logo were among the first to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Fuentes himself did not enter the Capitol that day.) Fuentes, meanwhile, often uses extreme rhetoric widely decried as racist and antisemitic on his various internet livestreams, such as calling for "Catholic Taliban rule."
There are also prominent Catholics who champion forms of Christian nationalism that are fairly indistinguishable from Protestants who have rallied around Trump. This includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a Catholic who has headlined a traveling Christian nationalist roadshow known as the ReAwaken America Tour and promoted Christian nationalist organizations.
Similarly, onetime Trump aide Steve Bannon, who is also Catholic, has identified himself as a "proud Christian nationalist" and described the U.S. as a "new Jerusalem."..
Thank-you - yes, that is some of the things discussed from a different angle in the interview I posted this morning, which added to my interest in @MrBedfordshire 's comment.
The Taliban comparison has some resonance, especially around the desire now being implemented in part via the Supreme Court to impose a new order on society.
The current generation of Trump-supporting evangelicals seem to be very skilled in doublethink; one would hope that Trump's crimes would be a red flag, but apparently not.
That's one of the problems with a rootles evangelical theology; it is vulnerable to manipulation due to the absence of checks and balances - whether that is by leaders who have lost their way, or by leaders who are cynical.
A lot of the "Evangelical" vote in America is not particularly active as Christians, often not attending Church very often if at all, and not leading particularly Christian lives. It is more of a cultural identification that fits with a lot of other things like anti-intellectualism, cultural conservatism as to the role of women, gun ownership, country music etc.
Today's the day we find out who's silly enough not to have installed any back-up systems.
Today is the day somebody got a taxi to the shop, bought a memory stick and charger, came back, disabled the WiFi, started the PC, copied everything to memory stick, emailed all my colleagues and reset appointments to later today/Monday, and should be back to normal by 1pm. And then I'll go to lunch. 😎
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
The new route winds around the outskirts of the works site, and is easily over double the length. It only opened earlier in the week, and parts are already flooded, boggy and rutted. The rest of it (which to be fair is the majority) is flat locally, but undulates in a way that is really uncomfortable on a road bike.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
Just wait for your first top dressed road, extra points for a 10%+ gradient.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
The new route winds around the outskirts of the works site, and is easily over double the length. It only opened earlier in the week, and parts are already flooded, boggy and rutted. The rest of it (which to be fair is the majority) is flat locally, but undulates in a way that is really uncomfortable on a road bike.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
Just wait for your first top dressed road, extra points for a 10%+ gradient.
I've cycled my cheap and heavy mountain bike a fair few thousand miles, over all sorts of terrain, and the only thing I've had to replace are the tyres. This road bike's rear mech got bent after four months and (fx: checks) 780km.
I'm glad I got a cheap road bike at first. The ride is so radically different to my mountain bikes; it is like going from a shire horse to a second-class racehorse. It's allowed me to learn things like using the drops and get one race in. I've now a much better idea what I need if/when I go for an expensive bike.
It was fun racking my bike up in transition at the race, and seeing bikes worth ten or twenty times the price of mine! Although to be fair, they flew past me in the race...
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I've tended to just replace in similar circumstances. Never had much luck with straightening them for long.
That's what I intend to do: straightening it just seems like a bodge, and they're cheap enough. The only problem being I've got to work out which hanger is the correct type out of the hundreds on the market. So wheel out, draw shape, note holes and take photos. In fact, take photos before I do anything...
TBH I'd just give that to the LBS *, which is 8 minutes push for me. I could probably do it, but its a lot of pfaff.
* Local Bike Shop.
Yeah, we have a good bike repair guy with a van who does home visits. It's just that I'd like to do it once, in order to know *how* to do it. If I'm going to do a lot more triathlons (hopefully...) then I'll need to know more about how bikes work (tm), especially if I buy a more thoroughbred tribike. It's easier and cheaper to muck up my dirt-cheap road bike than a multi-thousand pound specialist jobbie (even if bought second-hand).
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
Our town used to have three cycle shops, all closed down. Including one for a restaurant that never happened.
Cheap shit bikes are harder to work on than expensive bikes because the fasteners are all crap and there is a lot of play in cheap derailleurs. Some really crappy 3x systems are physically impossible to index correctly over the full gear range.
If your bike isn't Dura Ace Di2, Sram Red AXS or Campag Super Record EPS then throw it in the woods and get one that is.
I guess, by the Dura Ace yarsdstick, my Carrera Crossfire should be consigned to the local woods.
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
The new route winds around the outskirts of the works site, and is easily over double the length. It only opened earlier in the week, and parts are already flooded, boggy and rutted. The rest of it (which to be fair is the majority) is flat locally, but undulates in a way that is really uncomfortable on a road bike.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
Just wait for your first top dressed road, extra points for a 10%+ gradient.
I've cycled my cheap and heavy mountain bike a fair few thousand miles, over all sorts of terrain, and the only thing I've had to replace are the tyres. This road bike's rear mech got bent after four months and (fx: checks) 780km.
I'm glad I got a cheap road bike at first. The ride is so radically different to my mountain bikes; it is like going from a shire horse to a second-class racehorse. It's allowed me to learn things like using the drops and get one race in. I've now a much better idea what I need if/when I go for an expensive bike.
It was fun racking my bike up in transition at the race, and seeing bikes worth ten or twenty times the price of mine! Although to be fair, they flew past me in the race...
I have had my Carrera Crossfire for 6 years and done around 20,000 miles on it.
On PB my most likely candidate to hold one would be @Dura_Ace .
I don't have a licence but I have made loads of explosives in my time, including IEDs to remove stumps.
Tree stumps, I hope ?
Yes, I did loads on my grandfather's farm in South Africa but you could buy some amazingly dangerous Czechoslovakian explosive over the counter in the hardware shop there. All the ones I did on my other grandfather's farm in Ireland were home-brewed according to the family/PIRA recipe.
We used to dabble in explosives as kids, but gave up when a friend nearly blew his hand off. You could get all kinds of interesting stuff from chemical suppliers back then, with few questions asked.
Labours work from home plans will devastate the high street.
The vendors in Newcastle I have eaten at some of them in the Grainger Market. They are really good and many here are waiting for the 6,000 HMRC employees to move into the city.
Still, I guess there will be winners and losers in this.
We can't just force people to commute to save the high street. If people are as productive as they are in the office and there is no reduction in service people should be allowed to work from home.
True, I do say there will be winners and losers. This may very well revitalise towns like the one I live in which, although I like where I live and live in a nice part of it, the town centre has markedly declined really since Durham became a single council as the prior Labour regime really focussed on Durham and Bishop.
City centres will have to re-invent themselves. I would hope Labour are sensible enough to look at the impact of this policy and look at putting in place measures to mitigate.
Also businesses can mitigage. Acropolis, in that article, also do street food. For example.
Are you talking about Durham - I will say that Silver Street and elsewhere went seriously downhill but things are improving - and none of it was the councils fault.
Elsewhere I've commented in the past that the problem everyone has in Durham is that councillors are making decisions on areas an hour or more from where they live so they simply wave things through because they don't understand the local impact.
No, I am talking about Chester Le Street.
Now they are in opposition the remaining labour councillors, including Cllr Henig, are suddenly very keen to work with the indies to lobby for the town.
It was fun racking my bike up in transition at the race, and seeing bikes worth ten or twenty times the price of mine! Although to be fair, they flew past me in the race...
On the TdF broadcasts this year, ITV have been running a series of clips about Chris Boardman and the Secret Squirrel Club, the marginal gains program at British cycling.
The stat that struck me was the difference between elite riders based on physiology and training is about 1%
The changes they made in bike design, posture and clothing were about 5% which is HUGE
Iain Duncan-Smith, the only Conservative leader ever to lose a vote of Confidence is now seen as the answer.
Two thoughts, first, the world has clearly gone mad and second, if IDS is the answer, can someone please explain the question.
To be fair, if he makes it back to the top after 21 years, it'll be the biggest comeback since Lazarus or the Lib Dems.
Fun and games in the two local by elections in Newham yesterday. Labour holding both seats with just under 40% of the vote and the Newham Independents getting just over 30% so not the spectacular swing which saw Labour lose Plaistow South last November (46.3%) but a more General Election type 20% swing (too soon?).
I'd just observe it's not so much WFH as LFH these days. There was a time when for many "home" was the place where they slept (it was all about going out to work, out to socialise, out for recreation and possibly procreation) but now by dint of pandemics, economics and technology, we can work at home, eat at home, socialise at home and even play/recreate at home.
The balance between "going out" and "staying in" has shifted. That urban and suburban life where everyone left home in the morning and came home in the evening has gone, probably never to return. It's a cultural and societal shift. People do of course still go out but more selectively and that has economic impacts on the places everyone used to go.
On PB my most likely candidate to hold one would be @Dura_Ace .
I don't have a licence but I have made loads of explosives in my time, including IEDs to remove stumps.
Tree stumps, I hope ?
Yes, I did loads on my grandfather's farm in South Africa but you could buy some amazingly dangerous Czechoslovakian explosive over the counter in the hardware shop there. All the ones I did on my other grandfather's farm in Ireland were home-brewed according to the family/PIRA recipe.
We used to dabble in explosives as kids, but gave up when a friend nearly blew his hand off. You could get all kinds of interesting stuff from chemical suppliers back then, with few questions asked.
Got a photo somewhere. We had created a… thing. Lit the fuse. Nothing happened. One idiot decided to go back.
It was on the top of a mound, in a clearing in a wood.
Suddenly he jumped off the top of the mound. Startled, I pressed the button on my Polaroid camera.
The picture (it was around dusk) shows a completely white backdrop, with the idiot in perfect silhouette in the running style of a cartoon character.
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
That's an interesting* question
(*your definition of interesting may vary...)
It makes sense to buy cheap if you might wreck the tool before you figure out how to use it
The flipside is when using cheap tools might wreck the work piece, or be dangerous. Cheap spanners or screwdrivers might be an example here
I think I have more enmity toward people with cheap tools than people with cheap bikes. Ill fitting Chinesium 12 point sockets are basically nut lathes.
Of course, the real fucking scum are those people who use Philips drivers on the JIS heads of their derailleur limit screws.
Iain Duncan-Smith, the only Conservative leader ever to lose a vote of Confidence is now seen as the answer.
Two thoughts, first, the world has clearly gone mad and second, if IDS is the answer, can someone please explain the question.
If it's as an interim standin, it's not totally insane. The role is a one-way ticket to Palookaville, so why not pick someone who is already there? And if the plan is to hang the leadership election off the autumn conference, there's not that much politics to play out between now and then. And IDS (mediocre but not mad) can't do much harm in the time available.
The bigger question is that the substantive leadership is very probably an advance purchase one-way ticket to Palookaville. Will that realisation affect the list of runners?
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
It seems in the USA that Evangelicalism in the US culture is associated with denial of science and intellectualism that Vance couldn't accept. He is quite dismissive of the shallow religiosity of his fathers Pentocostal Church in Hillbilly Elegy for example. It seems too that Catholicism and Mormonism are the seen as aspirational for the upwardly mobile like Vance, in a way that Episcopalean or Presbyterian Protestantism is no longer for the upper class there.
Worth noting too that there is a Charismatic Movement in Catholicism in America which isnt too far from Charismatic Protestantism. Amy Coney Barratt is part of that movement for example.
Catholicism dosent do This book says this so you must do it, or "this book says this is bad so you are bad if you do it"
They say thats why there is a church magisterium, to correctly interpret what are often parables not literal word of God.
This does avoid rabbit holes like calling someone who found a millions of years old dinosaur a blasphemer because Genesis says the world was created in a week 5714 years ago.
The main difference between catholic and protestant bibles is that the catholic one is full of explanatory footnotes.
The protestant reformations, both the Lutheran/Calvinist one in the 16th Century and the Eastern (arabian) one in the 7th Century* were down to issues in the Church that caused a split that then, sans magesterium, often went down a rabbit hole. After much murder. The C of E stdaddled both and came up with their own magesterium, the General Synod
*said prophets tract denouncing Christianity is actually a very good demolition of the Gnostic heresy. Unfortunately the Christians he encountered were Gnostic Heretics (Gnosticism has similarieties with western Liberalisms, not least the belief that us modern enlightened types are fundamentally better than savages of old, so things like old fashioned morality are irrelevant.
On PB my most likely candidate to hold one would be @Dura_Ace .
I don't have a licence but I have made loads of explosives in my time, including IEDs to remove stumps.
Tree stumps, I hope ?
Yes, I did loads on my grandfather's farm in South Africa but you could buy some amazingly dangerous Czechoslovakian explosive over the counter in the hardware shop there. All the ones I did on my other grandfather's farm in Ireland were home-brewed according to the family/PIRA recipe.
We used to dabble in explosives as kids, but gave up when a friend nearly blew his hand off. You could get all kinds of interesting stuff from chemical suppliers back then, with few questions asked.
Got a photo somewhere. We had created a… thing. Lit the fuse. Nothing happened. One idiot decided to go back.
It was on the top of a mound, in a clearing in a wood.
Suddenly he jumped off the top of the mound. Startled, I pressed the button on my Polaroid camera.
The picture (it was around dusk) shows a completely white backdrop, with the idiot in perfect silhouette in the running style of a cartoon character.
Nobody hurt….
We at least had the sense to use a rudimentary fume cabinet when making mercury fulminate. Would probably be a terrorist offence these days.
On PB my most likely candidate to hold one would be @Dura_Ace .
I don't have a licence but I have made loads of explosives in my time, including IEDs to remove stumps.
Tree stumps, I hope ?
Yes, I did loads on my grandfather's farm in South Africa but you could buy some amazingly dangerous Czechoslovakian explosive over the counter in the hardware shop there. All the ones I did on my other grandfather's farm in Ireland were home-brewed according to the family/PIRA recipe.
We used to dabble in explosives as kids, but gave up when a friend nearly blew his hand off. You could get all kinds of interesting stuff from chemical suppliers back then, with few questions asked.
Got a photo somewhere. We had created a… thing. Lit the fuse. Nothing happened. One idiot decided to go back.
It was on the top of a mound, in a clearing in a wood.
Suddenly he jumped off the top of the mound. Startled, I pressed the button on my Polaroid camera.
The picture (it was around dusk) shows a completely white backdrop, with the idiot in perfect silhouette in the running style of a cartoon character.
Nobody hurt….
We at least had the sense to use a rudimentary fume cabinet when making mercury fulminate. Would probably be a terrorist offence these days.
Did mirror silvering the old way. If you get the chemical mix wrong, you get silver azide. Which is not your friend. It has no friends. It gets upset by being moved. By sunlight. Spontaneously….
The recommended way to deal with it is to throw a heavy cushion onto the dish. Which absorbs the bang….
Iain Duncan-Smith, the only Conservative leader ever to lose a vote of Confidence is now seen as the answer.
Two thoughts, first, the world has clearly gone mad and second, if IDS is the answer, can someone please explain the question.
If it's as an interim standin, it's not totally insane. The role is a one-way ticket to Palookaville, so why not pick someone who is already there? And if the plan is to hang the leadership election off the autumn conference, there's not that much politics to play out between now and then. And IDS (mediocre but not mad) can't do much harm in the time available.
The bigger question is that the substantive leadership is very probably an advance purchase one-way ticket to Palookaville. Will that realisation affect the list of runners?
I think they may have learned the lesson of making Hague leader far too soon after the 1997 defeat and blowing up his career by 2001.
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
That's an interesting* question
(*your definition of interesting may vary...)
It makes sense to buy cheap if you might wreck the tool before you figure out how to use it
The flipside is when using cheap tools might wreck the work piece, or be dangerous. Cheap spanners or screwdrivers might be an example here
I think I have more enmity toward people with cheap tools than people with cheap bikes. Ill fitting Chinesium 12 point sockets are basically nut lathes.
Of course, the real fucking scum are those people who use Philips drivers on the JIS heads of their derailleur limit screws.
Oh good, more stuff for me to check before I do anything. Thanks!
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
That's an interesting* question
(*your definition of interesting may vary...)
It makes sense to buy cheap if you might wreck the tool before you figure out how to use it
The flipside is when using cheap tools might wreck the work piece, or be dangerous. Cheap spanners or screwdrivers might be an example here
I think I have more enmity toward people with cheap tools than people with cheap bikes. Ill fitting Chinesium 12 point sockets are basically nut lathes.
Of course, the real fucking scum are those people who use Philips drivers on the JIS heads of their derailleur limit screws.
Oh good, more stuff for me to check before I do anything. Thanks!
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
That's an interesting* question
(*your definition of interesting may vary...)
It makes sense to buy cheap if you might wreck the tool before you figure out how to use it
The flipside is when using cheap tools might wreck the work piece, or be dangerous. Cheap spanners or screwdrivers might be an example here
I think I have more enmity toward people with cheap tools than people with cheap bikes. Ill fitting Chinesium 12 point sockets are basically nut lathes.
Of course, the real fucking scum are those people who use Philips drivers on the JIS heads of their derailleur limit screws.
Oh good, more stuff for me to check before I do anything. Thanks!
Those derailleur limit screws are pissy little cheap-as-shit grub screws that require next to no torque at all. I like to use a small flat screwdriver, just because I can.
"Love’s Farm Community Association, St Neots – where the hustings event took place – has removed all exit poll results from its social media
“We have received evidence that clearly shows intentional and targeted efforts by some, to manipulate our General Election hustings exit poll,” the association said in a statement.
“Therefore, we have removed the polling results from our media."
The Labour candidate came a distant third at the GE.
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
Iain Duncan-Smith, the only Conservative leader ever to lose a vote of Confidence is now seen as the answer.
Two thoughts, first, the world has clearly gone mad and second, if IDS is the answer, can someone please explain the question.
To be fair, if he makes it back to the top after 21 years, it'll be the biggest comeback since Lazarus or the Lib Dems.
Fun and games in the two local by elections in Newham yesterday. Labour holding both seats with just under 40% of the vote and the Newham Independents getting just over 30% so not the spectacular swing which saw Labour lose Plaistow South last November (46.3%) but a more General Election type 20% swing (too soon?).
I'd just observe it's not so much WFH as LFH these days. There was a time when for many "home" was the place where they slept (it was all about going out to work, out to socialise, out for recreation and possibly procreation) but now by dint of pandemics, economics and technology, we can work at home, eat at home, socialise at home and even play/recreate at home.
The balance between "going out" and "staying in" has shifted. That urban and suburban life where everyone left home in the morning and came home in the evening has gone, probably never to return. It's a cultural and societal shift. People do of course still go out but more selectively and that has economic impacts on the places everyone used to go.
IDS to be fair to him polled no worse than Howard got in 2005 when he was ousted in 2003, he also saw his voteshare fall by less than the Tory average on 4th July in Chingford even with a Reform candidate
He is a traditionalist "Latin Mass" Catholic. More Jacob Rees Mogg than evangelical hardliner. A very big difference
The current MAGA movement, linked to what is termed "Christian Nationalism", has some of its roots in movements such as "Dominionism" and "Christian Reconstructionism".
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
Even in the UK many Baptists and Pentecostals would hold views supportive of Christian Reconstructionism
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
"Love’s Farm Community Association, St Neots – where the hustings event took place – has removed all exit poll results from its social media
“We have received evidence that clearly shows intentional and targeted efforts by some, to manipulate our General Election hustings exit poll,” the association said in a statement.
“Therefore, we have removed the polling results from our media."
The Labour candidate came a distant third at the GE.
So another example of Lab complaining about fake LD bar charts that claim LDs are the challengers when in fact they really are and Lab are nowhere and another example of Lab cheating in the hustings poll.
Honestly the hypocrisy. Why do they do this and in particular in seats they can't win. It is like they really want the Conservative candidate to win if they can't. Labour supporters, do you really prefer a Conservative MP to a LD? Really? Even if the consequences are you might not win an election (I grant you very unlikely this time around)?
It turns out I bent my rear mech hanger when I came off my bike at slow speed yesterday. (*) It's still ridable (I rode on for another fifteen miles after the off), but the chain comes off if I try to put it onto the largest cog. I hoped it was just the indexing of the gears, or grit in the system, but a thorough clean shows the hanger is bent. Another new thing I'm going to have to learn to do - and as I'm mechanically dyslexic, it's going to be fun...
(*) On a new temporary (3 year) path the road builders have put in to replace a tarmac path. But they made it from sand and fine gravel, and it's already flooded in places and boggy in others, despite only being open for a week. Not a good replacement IMO, and will be terrible in winter.
I wish someone would explain to road builders that cyclists, wheelchair users, roller skaters and pedestrians are even more sensitive to the quality of the surface than motorists.
The new route winds around the outskirts of the works site, and is easily over double the length. It only opened earlier in the week, and parts are already flooded, boggy and rutted. The rest of it (which to be fair is the majority) is flat locally, but undulates in a way that is really uncomfortable on a road bike.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
Just wait for your first top dressed road, extra points for a 10%+ gradient.
I've cycled my cheap and heavy mountain bike a fair few thousand miles, over all sorts of terrain, and the only thing I've had to replace are the tyres. This road bike's rear mech got bent after four months and (fx: checks) 780km.
I'm glad I got a cheap road bike at first. The ride is so radically different to my mountain bikes; it is like going from a shire horse to a second-class racehorse. It's allowed me to learn things like using the drops and get one race in. I've now a much better idea what I need if/when I go for an expensive bike.
It was fun racking my bike up in transition at the race, and seeing bikes worth ten or twenty times the price of mine! Although to be fair, they flew past me in the race...
For sure if you're racing to win then the bike makes a difference but as always its more about fitness and body weight than 1-3 kilos off the bike. Plus more expensive bike means like for like consumables add up if you're training on it too.
I'm sure an elite triathlete would take the local races on a vintage Peugeot with aero bars.
Waitrose self-scan checkouts were not working this morning; had to queue up at the ordinary people's checkouts. Taking the rest of the day off to recover.
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
Nota big fan of IPPs, but the question is always what their previous offences were.
A classic was the tale, in the US, of a guy who got x years under 3 strikes for stealing a pizza.
The back story was that, being stupid, he robbed a pizza delivery guy. Stupid because pizza delivery people don't carry cash. So, in a rage, he beat the delivery guy with the gun he was using in the robbery, severely injuring him. Then stole the pizza.
Waitrose self-scan checkouts were not working this morning; had to queue up at the ordinary people's checkouts. Taking the rest of the day off to recover.
"A spreadsheet issue" led to more than 6,500 votes being missed from the declaration of the election result in Putney.
Labour's Fleur Anderson held the south London seat in the 4 July contest, receiving what was announced on the night as 20,952 against Conservative Lee Roberts' total of 10,011. But on Wednesday, Wandsworth Council revealed that it had mistakenly failed to include 6,558 votes in the totals, publishing revised results on its website. The missing votes did not affect the overall result, with Ms Anderson still emerging as the winner and with a larger majority of 12,488 votes over Mr Roberts."
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
So the 10 additional years she served on top of her sentence started in 2010 and ended 4 years ago. Labour may have brought in IPPs initially, but why did the Conservatives choose to keep IPPs during their 14 years of their tenure, in the face of numerous cases such as this, all at variance with the stated intention used to create them? They are still in place today, hopefully not for much longer.
I've got a much more balanced book on Next President now, have shed my liability on Newsom, and am now OK for any winner except Obama and Clinton.
However, this has been done at the cost of laying off most of my Harris position, especially on Nom, so not hugely happy if she gets it as it's a teensy profit.
My read was she was just too short at 1.5 yesterday.
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
So the 10 additional years she served on top of her sentence started in 2010 and ended 4 years ago. Labour may have brought in IPPs initially, but why did the Conservatives choose to keep IPPs during their 14 years of their tenure, in the face of numerous cases such as this, all at variance with the stated intention used to create them? They are still in place today, hopefully not for much longer.
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
Awful since 2012 and before, when they were abolished by David Cameron's Government without making the measures retroactive.
I don't know what the Mail's original positioning on IPPs were when they were brought in in 2003 by David Blunkett. To their credit they have highlighted this over time, including at least one former occasion in 2010 when there was going to be a "rehabilitation revolution" to reduce the prison population.
Today's the day we find out who's silly enough not to have installed any back-up systems.
Today is the day somebody got a taxi to the shop, bought a memory stick and charger, came back, disabled the WiFi, started the PC, copied everything to memory stick, emailed all my colleagues and reset appointments to later today/Monday, and should be back to normal by 1pm. And then I'll go to lunch. 😎
2024 backed up. Now on 2023.
All done. Went to lunch. Bought WiFi back up but am working offline as a precaution (this is coming to you via tablet). Everything ticketty-boo so far and I now have a full set of backups.
Today's the day we find out who's silly enough not to have installed any back-up systems.
Today is the day somebody got a taxi to the shop, bought a memory stick and charger, came back, disabled the WiFi, started the PC, copied everything to memory stick, emailed all my colleagues and reset appointments to later today/Monday, and should be back to normal by 1pm. And then I'll go to lunch. 😎
2024 backed up. Now on 2023.
All done. Went to lunch. Bought WiFi back up but am working offline as a precaution (this is coming to you via tablet). Everything ticketty-boo so far and I now have a full set of backups.
Comments
It's been a good morning to restructure one's book.
I first met "Christian Reconstructionism", which briefly is an ideology that modern society should be patterned after what the proponents claim to be 'biblical norms' (TLDR: imo the claim is a theological delusion alongside Young Earth Creationism) in the late 1980s, when I was seeking to understand what in the UK was called the "House Church Movement" whilst at Uni in Bradford, where one of the major groups was based (then called "Harvestime", lead by an 'Apostle' called Bryn Jones).
In a theological-sociological study by a great writer called Dr Andrew Walker, it was characterised as something UK based New Church leaders "would not fall for", due to it's political and nationalist elements. He was right; they didn't.
I wouldn't normally expect Roman Catholics to fall for this stuff; they are immersed in a comprehensive and flexible tradition, and therefore have some checks and balances inside their heads almost from the cradle. There are exceptions where sections of the Church - especially renewal movements - can go rogue, but they are rare.
In the UK CofE and Evangelicals are in some ways similar - there is enough interlinking and debate / dialogue that going wholly off the rails is more difficult. Even the Bugbrooke Community, aka "Jesus Army", did not entirely lose its roots.
But USA Evangelicalism is fissiparous, almost in "Peoples Front of Judea" style - and can therefore more easily create unstable, narrowly based, ideological silos. Then American entrepreneurialism can do much of the rest. And the place is big enough and rich enough for such splinter groups to create self-sustaining movements.
So how and why did RCs such as JD Vance get into these worldviews?
You have to ensure zero interaction between the groups writing the software. Just to the same spec. Even then, errors from common mistakes can get through - fence post errors etc…
Harris has moved out from a low of 4 to 5.5
In theory they should pretty much sum to the same probability at any point.
It seems my laptop and desktop are working fine, so it's not all pcs affected then.
* Local Bike Shop.
City centres will have to re-invent themselves. I would hope Labour are sensible enough to look at the impact of this policy and look at putting in place measures to mitigate.
Also businesses can mitigage. Acropolis, in that article, also do street food. For example.
The USCatholicism question is an interesting one. I don't pretend to understand whether the theology of the MAGA right Catholics is sincere, or otherwise (and the current adulation of Trump border on the blasphemous from a Christian perspective), but there's a good article exploring some of the cross currents here:
The strange world of Catholic 'integralism' — and Christian nationalism
https://www.ncronline.org/news/strange-world-catholic-integralism-and-christian-nationalism
..Vermeule, who previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and was appointed in 2020 by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the United States, has written about the importance of a Christian "strategic adviser" to people in power, citing examples from the Bible where religious figures advised "pagan kings."
And while Vermeule has argued that "nationalism, in itself, is not a cause to be celebrated," he has conceded that nationalism can be a "second-best defensive strategy" against liberalism.
Indeed, for all their differences, integralism shares many of the same policy goals as popular forms of Christian nationalism. Referring to Christian nationalism as "bargain store integralism," Vallier said the two movements generally find common cause when it comes to opposition to abortion and support for blasphemy laws, blue laws and banning pornography.
And support for Trump.
"All of these vectors converge at Trumpism," said Steven Millies, professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union.
Many prominent integralists and hard-line Christian nationalists ultimately share support for Trump, whom Vermeule has likened to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Vallier has stated previously that integralists once viewed Trump as a figure similar to Constantine.
Support for Trump is foundational for hard-core Catholic Christian nationalists. People waving flags branded with the America First logo were among the first to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Fuentes himself did not enter the Capitol that day.) Fuentes, meanwhile, often uses extreme rhetoric widely decried as racist and antisemitic on his various internet livestreams, such as calling for "Catholic Taliban rule."
There are also prominent Catholics who champion forms of Christian nationalism that are fairly indistinguishable from Protestants who have rallied around Trump. This includes former Trump adviser Michael Flynn, a Catholic who has headlined a traveling Christian nationalist roadshow known as the ReAwaken America Tour and promoted Christian nationalist organizations.
Similarly, onetime Trump aide Steve Bannon, who is also Catholic, has identified himself as a "proud Christian nationalist" and described the U.S. as a "new Jerusalem."..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjYvdURv3Zw
I'm expecting to muck it up, and give the mobile guy a call afterwards. But at least I'll have given it a go.
https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1814246314709758121
Imagine waging war against a country that provides critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then pissing off their allies so much that they ban the export to your country of even more critical components of your electrical infrastructure, and then conscripting the linemen and engineers who maintain your electrical infrastructure.
..and then targeting the electrical infrastructure in the other country, which makes them hit yours back, but you can't repair things because you need the country you’re at war with to produce the replacement parts for you.
..so then you look around at the countries still willing to do business with you, but none of them make components that are compatible with your electric grid, and if you used their stuff it would make the problem even worse, so you just stew in rolling power outages...
Then one is capable of effectively supervising traders, talking intelligently and hopefully dodging BS.
It'd be okay atm on my old and heavy mountain bike, but it is essentially impassable on a road bike. And this is summer. The path it replaced was tarmac.
(For anyone mad enough to be interested the path is this one: https://maps.app.goo.gl/iJRKFQ712o2q5jEc8 . It was a bit narrow in places, but is far, far better than the temporary one.)
I'm wondering who to report it to, as the shortest alternative to the path is the adjacent dual carriageway...
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/new-mps-abused-fear-attacks/
Elsewhere I've commented in the past that the problem everyone has in Durham is that councillors are making decisions on areas an hour or more from where they live so they simply wave things through because they don't understand the local impact.
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/how-jd-vance-rejected-evangelicalism
It seems in the USA that Evangelicalism in the US culture is associated with denial of science and intellectualism that Vance couldn't accept. He is quite dismissive of the shallow religiosity of his fathers Pentocostal Church in Hillbilly Elegy for example. It seems too that Catholicism and Mormonism are the seen as aspirational for the upwardly mobile like Vance, in a way that Episcopalean or Presbyterian Protestantism is no longer for the upper class there.
Worth noting too that there is a Charismatic Movement in Catholicism in America which isnt too far from Charismatic Protestantism. Amy Coney Barratt is part of that movement for example.
As an aside, my dad always said that you could generally tell the quality of a tradesman by his van. The nature of the work meant that you couldn't expect them to be clean, but he always liked them to be tidy. If a tradesman's tools are all over his van, he may not be able to find what he need and use something else instead. He said a good sign of this was whether there were week-old newspapers and chip papers on the cab's dashboard. If a workman cannot take care of his van, he won't take care of your job. I've used this approach a few times as an adult...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T_WPuUCRm0
The Taliban comparison has some resonance, especially around the desire now being implemented in part via the Supreme Court to impose a new order on society.
The current generation of Trump-supporting evangelicals seem to be very skilled in doublethink; one would hope that Trump's crimes would be a red flag, but apparently not.
That's one of the problems with a rootless evangelical theology - it can drift; it is vulnerable to manipulation due to the absence of checks and balances, whether that is by leaders who have lost their own way, or by leaders who are cynical.
If your bike isn't Dura Ace Di2, Sram Red AXS or Campag Super Record EPS then throw it in the woods and get one that is.
https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1813789723946815582
This is mildly contrarian but I think Trump is a really smart and impressive guy who is constantly surrounded by people who overestimate themselves and underestimate him, convincing themselves that they are master manipulators when he’s actually playing them.
Labour to fund Hamas
Then graduated to buying a good frame to hang all the nice bits we’d accumulated on.
It’s a bit like tools - I’d always advise buying cheap for many things, first time. No point in buying your first set of wood chisels from Masahiro.
After a bit you work out what you really want/need.
https://www.churchtrac.com/articles/the-state-of-church-attendance-trends-and-statistics-2023#:~:text=The number of evangelicals that,Survey Center on American Life)
(*your definition of interesting may vary...)
It makes sense to buy cheap if you might wreck the tool before you figure out how to use it
The flipside is when using cheap tools might wreck the work piece, or be dangerous. Cheap spanners or screwdrivers might be an example here
I'm glad I got a cheap road bike at first. The ride is so radically different to my mountain bikes; it is like going from a shire horse to a second-class racehorse. It's allowed me to learn things like using the drops and get one race in. I've now a much better idea what I need if/when I go for an expensive bike.
It was fun racking my bike up in transition at the race, and seeing bikes worth ten or twenty times the price of mine! Although to be fair, they flew past me in the race...
Dig deep if you want to help out.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/jay-slater-s-mum-urges-more-donations-to-give-him-send-off-he-deserves/ar-BB1qemAf?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=ae62e29b47504c4fba3ce614bc4a07a0&ei=16
Now they are in opposition the remaining labour councillors, including Cllr Henig, are suddenly very keen to work with the indies to lobby for the town.
The stat that struck me was the difference between elite riders based on physiology and training is about 1%
The changes they made in bike design, posture and clothing were about 5% which is HUGE
Iain Duncan-Smith, the only Conservative leader ever to lose a vote of Confidence is now seen as the answer.
Two thoughts, first, the world has clearly gone mad and second, if IDS is the answer, can someone please explain the question.
To be fair, if he makes it back to the top after 21 years, it'll be the biggest comeback since Lazarus or the Lib Dems.
Fun and games in the two local by elections in Newham yesterday. Labour holding both seats with just under 40% of the vote and the Newham Independents getting just over 30% so not the spectacular swing which saw Labour lose Plaistow South last November (46.3%) but a more General Election type 20% swing (too soon?).
I'd just observe it's not so much WFH as LFH these days. There was a time when for many "home" was the place where they slept (it was all about going out to work, out to socialise, out for recreation and possibly procreation) but now by dint of pandemics, economics and technology, we can work at home, eat at home, socialise at home and even play/recreate at home.
The balance between "going out" and "staying in" has shifted. That urban and suburban life where everyone left home in the morning and came home in the evening has gone, probably never to return. It's a cultural and societal shift. People do of course still go out but more selectively and that has economic impacts on the places everyone used to go.
Cheap screwdrivers and spanners are fine for most things. For small amounts of lightly loaded work etc.
Cheap wood chisels are fine (for small amounts of work) unless you are good enough to get the precision and finish.
It was on the top of a mound, in a clearing in a wood.
Suddenly he jumped off the top of the mound. Startled, I pressed the button on my Polaroid camera.
The picture (it was around dusk) shows a completely white backdrop, with the idiot in perfect silhouette in the running style of a cartoon character.
Nobody hurt….
Of course, the real fucking scum are those people who use Philips drivers on the JIS heads of their derailleur limit screws.
The bigger question is that the substantive leadership is very probably an advance purchase one-way ticket to Palookaville. Will that realisation affect the list of runners?
They say thats why there is a church magisterium, to correctly interpret what are often parables not literal word of God.
This does avoid rabbit holes like calling someone who found a millions of years old dinosaur a blasphemer because Genesis says the world was created in a week 5714 years ago.
The main difference between catholic and protestant bibles is that the catholic one is full of explanatory footnotes.
The protestant reformations, both the Lutheran/Calvinist one in the 16th Century and the Eastern (arabian) one in the 7th Century* were down to issues in the Church that caused a split that then, sans magesterium, often went down a rabbit hole. After much murder. The C of E stdaddled both and came up with their own magesterium, the General Synod
*said prophets tract denouncing Christianity is actually a very good demolition of the Gnostic heresy. Unfortunately the Christians he encountered were Gnostic Heretics (Gnosticism has similarieties with western Liberalisms, not least the belief that us modern enlightened types are fundamentally better than savages of old, so things like old fashioned morality are irrelevant.
The recommended way to deal with it is to throw a heavy cushion onto the dish. Which absorbs the bang….
But Elon Musk has some bloody funny posts on X about the assassination attempt.
(And for anyone who did not know the difference, here's a piccie: https://www.kz1300.com/index.php/forum/daily-chatter/992-jis-screws-screwdrivers-japanese-industrial-standa#gallery-1 . Yeah, just use a Phillips and laugh at @Dura_Ace's impotent rage.
Don’t use a cheap driveset on anything expensive, or under “all my body weight” force.
Always use the right tool - you can get cheap sets of all the head types pretty easily.
https://www.cambsnews.co.uk/news/exclusive-leaked-whatsapp-messages-show-labour-rigged-hustings-poll-at-st-neots/26919/
"Love’s Farm Community Association, St Neots – where the hustings event took place – has removed all exit poll results from its social media
“We have received evidence that clearly shows intentional and targeted efforts by some, to manipulate our General Election hustings exit poll,” the association said in a statement.
“Therefore, we have removed the polling results from our media."
The Labour candidate came a distant third at the GE.
"Young woman jailed for 16 years for breaking a plant pot and ripping up a betting slip under Labour government's controversial IPP sentence slams 'cruel, degrading and severe mental damage' it caused
By BEN ENDLEY
A woman jailed for 16 years after breaking a plant pot and ripping up a blank betting slip under a now abolished law his hit out at her 'cruel, degrading and severely mentally damaging' sentence.
Ronnie Sinclair was just 22 when she was locked up for robbery following a drunken row at a friend's barbecue which was caught by a neighbour's CCTV.
Ronnie pleaded guilty to one count of robbery but because she already had a youth criminal record judges at Newcastle Crown Court handed down a six-year sentence under now-abolished imprisonment for public protection (IPP) legislation.
The IPP meant she served her full sentence plus an additional 10 years which kept her behind bars until she was 38. She remains on an indefinite licence today.
Now aged 42, Ronnie suffered mental and physical health problems while in jail and believes: 'Even the strongest people don't come out of this unscathed.'"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13650781/Young-woman-jailed-16-years-breaking-plant-pot-ripping-betting-slip-Labour-governments-controversial-IPP-sentence-slams-cruel-degrading-severe-mental-damage-caused.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et
Honestly the hypocrisy. Why do they do this and in particular in seats they can't win. It is like they really want the Conservative candidate to win if they can't. Labour supporters, do you really prefer a Conservative MP to a LD? Really? Even if the consequences are you might not win an election (I grant you very unlikely this time around)?
I'm sure an elite triathlete would take the local races on a vintage Peugeot with aero bars.
Waitrose self-scan checkouts were not working this morning; had to queue up at the ordinary people's checkouts. Taking the rest of the day off to recover.
The back story was that, being stupid, he robbed a pizza delivery guy. Stupid because pizza delivery people don't carry cash. So, in a rage, he beat the delivery guy with the gun he was using in the robbery, severely injuring him. Then stole the pizza.
"A spreadsheet issue" led to more than 6,500 votes being missed from the declaration of the election result in Putney.
Labour's Fleur Anderson held the south London seat in the 4 July contest, receiving what was announced on the night as 20,952 against Conservative Lee Roberts' total of 10,011. But on Wednesday, Wandsworth Council revealed that it had mistakenly failed to include 6,558 votes in the totals, publishing revised results on its website. The missing votes did not affect the overall result, with Ms Anderson still emerging as the winner and with a larger majority of 12,488 votes over Mr Roberts."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjm9yye7ldwo
I've got a much more balanced book on Next President now, have shed my liability on Newsom, and am now OK for any winner except Obama and Clinton.
However, this has been done at the cost of laying off most of my Harris position, especially on Nom, so not hugely happy if she gets it as it's a teensy profit.
My read was she was just too short at 1.5 yesterday.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13649859/Leeds-Green-Party-Gaza-councillor-Mothin-Ali-heroically-stops-rioters.html
Who had that headline on their Daily Mail bingo card?
Awful since 2012 and before, when they were abolished by David Cameron's Government without making the measures retroactive.
I don't know what the Mail's original positioning on IPPs were when they were brought in in 2003 by David Blunkett. To their credit they have highlighted this over time, including at least one former occasion in 2010 when there was going to be a "rehabilitation revolution" to reduce the prison population.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319783/Thousands-prisoners-jailed-indefinitely-publics-protection-freed-immediately.html
I trust they won't reverse their position now when there is a Labour Govt.
They should virtually all come out immediately, if their time in prison is longer than a normal sentence for their offence.
"Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles any knot." - Harold Macmillan, quoting from Gilbert and Sullivan
https://news.sky.com/story/outages-latest-airports-business-and-broadcasters-experiencing-issues-worldwide-13180821
if you do make up for male politicians on tv, i would love to interview you!
(this is a serious request)
https://x.com/dieworkwear/status/1814089465662705856