Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
I've never understood why people dogmatically think it's either/or.*
Surely the simplest explanation is that both are correct - I.e. that samples from the lab were being illegally sold in the wet market due to internal corruption?
*Well, actually I understand why Leon does, and it's because he can't understand complex chains of causation.
If it came from the lab, accidental leak is most likely. Lots of things have leaked from labs with higher bio security levels. From there, the wet market would be an ideal place for it to spread.
"A quite stupefying ignorance that makes him unfit to be the President of the United States."
David Lammy strikes again.
Oh no, it was Boris Johnson.
What role does Boris have in government now?
I am just wondering if anyone brought up his past comments on Trump when the Tories were dealing with Trump. I certainly don't remember you doing so but I may be wrong.
The past is another country. Here and now is worth talking about. Lammy is potentially a problem, indeed there are many Labour MPs who will find the need to work with Trump quite difficult. Let's hope they can be grownups.
So why can't Lammy's comments also be in the past?
He's now Foreign secretary!
You want him to resign because he said negative things about Donald Trump in the past?
Where did I say that?
Even the Telegraph has reported that Lammy has spent months preparing for the possibility that Trump would win. As govt in waiting they were preparing for the worst outcomes, that has the scent of competence...
David Lammy is worth a punt for next Labour leader if, as I expect, Keir Starmer will step down either just before or just after the next election. That said, he is not even named in Betfair's next PM market so the wisdom of crowds is against me, and him.
Now it really must be April the First !
10 of them all at once
Is this a reference to Leon's prolificity going nuclear or to David Lammy's chances of being PM?
Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
I've never understood why people dogmatically think it's either/or.*
Surely the simplest explanation is that both are correct - I.e. that samples from the lab were being illegally sold in the wet market due to internal corruption?
*Well, actually I understand why Leon does, and it's because he can't understand complex chains of causation.
To be honest I thought that was the lab leak theory. That the contaminated bodies of the bats they had been experimenting on were being sold in the wet market by corrupt employees. As you say, it seems by far the simplest and most obvious explanation.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
I don't know, because I didn't see his post. That would make more sense if it did, but the qualification was absent in this one.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
TimS's tour was Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham - At least 2 of which are towns that over took the original nearby Cathedral Cities (Chester and Ripon)..
So neither have medieval cathedrals because they were originally small towns which just happened to have the perfect location when the industrial revolution came..
...the further point being that this is true of almost all large British cities because of our unusually industrial growth.
Liverpool is a counter example, but Tim's point was that Liverpool cathedral is not a centrepiece - because it was built late on what was then the edge of town. (Good cathedral, though.)
Pelosi is accusing others of clinging on until too old an age? Well I never.
She at least still had all her marbles intact
Dementia really is incredibly sad, I know many people in their eighties who have a mind as sharp as anyone half their age, and then people in their seventies who really have lost it. Away from the politics of it, it is desperately sad that we watched a president go down, and clearly go down a severe dementia way. It is possible/probable that Reagan had very early indications of dementia towards the end of his presidency, but that was a time where there was no real medication that could hold anything back. Biden is so visibly gone, and his friends and family must have known the scale of how far gone he was for a number of years, but all colluded and covered up (even on here we had those who said Biden was fine and all this was just bigotry of a man who had overcome a debilitating stammer), not just to get him to the end of his term with dignity, but to actually attempt to seek a further four years.
It is slightly concerning that the systems you would think are in place such as regular medical testing didnt force the issue and invoke the necessary constitutional processes to hand over to his VP. And this should have probably been done quite some time ago.
So when do you reckon he will hand over to Vance, on that basis?
I am not entirely convinced that Vance will be minded to wait until the inauguration before he makes his move. Trump had so obviously lost it in the last few weeks of the campaign but his momentum carried him through. He is in a far worse state now than Biden was in 2022, let alone 2020.
What serves Vance and co better?
Ditching Trump now he's done his job and is just an embarrassing old man, or keeping him as a popular figurehead (to some) and lightning conductor (to others) while they get on with running the country?
A shootout seems likely, but it's less obvious who wins it.
They could just let Trump go to jail for one of the state offences of course.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
How can you miss Salisbury, some foreign tourists come a very long way for a tour.
It was a long list already, I couldn't Putin every one.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
Pelosi is accusing others of clinging on until too old an age? Well I never.
She at least still had all her marbles intact
Dementia really is incredibly sad, I know many people in their eighties who have a mind as sharp as anyone half their age, and then people in their seventies who really have lost it. Away from the politics of it, it is desperately sad that we watched a president go down, and clearly go down a severe dementia way. It is possible/probable that Reagan had very early indications of dementia towards the end of his presidency, but that was a time where there was no real medication that could hold anything back. Biden is so visibly gone, and his friends and family must have known the scale of how far gone he was for a number of years, but all colluded and covered up (even on here we had those who said Biden was fine and all this was just bigotry of a man who had overcome a debilitating stammer), not just to get him to the end of his term with dignity, but to actually attempt to seek a further four years.
It is slightly concerning that the systems you would think are in place such as regular medical testing didnt force the issue and invoke the necessary constitutional processes to hand over to his VP. And this should have probably been done quite some time ago.
There is definitely an issue with age that is not directly dementia related.
How many people do you see who go off the rails in early old age? See the discussion of Tom Clancy, above? The stereotype of the angry old man shouting at birds has something to it.
See various, once serious, political figures who’ve gone MAGA.
If you look back at historical figures (such as Captain Cook, Lord Charles Beresford etc) their biographers keep saying the same thing - they were different men from 10 years before, almost becoming parodies of themselves.
It is the death of hope.
At some point you realise that no matter what you do the stupid people will always win out. The only choices left are to rail against the world or creep away and try to pretend it doesn't matter. The latter is certainly easier of you can do it.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Top tip: When you get to Swansea, don't say anything positive about Cardiff.
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Cardiff does have a Cathedral - but it is at Llandaff a little further upriver from the stadium but still very much in the city.
Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
I've never understood why people dogmatically think it's either/or.*
Surely the simplest explanation is that both are correct - I.e. that samples from the lab were being illegally sold in the wet market due to internal corruption?
*Well, actually I understand why Leon does, and it's because he can't understand complex chains of causation.
To be honest I thought that was the lab leak theory. That the contaminated bodies of the bats they had been experimenting on were being sold in the wet market by corrupt employees. As you say, it seems by far the simplest and most obvious explanation.
There's Strong Lab Leak- Bad scientists deliberately released a virus to cause global chaos. Rarely said out loud, but often hinted.
There's Weak Lab Leak- Scientists were foolishly playing with fire they couldn't control. Carelessly leaving windows open, or corruptly selling samples at the wet market.
The attraction of both of those is that they imply there is a guilty man. All this is someone's fault.
Then there's that it came from the wild. There's a massive reservoir of bad stuff in nature, if you catch wild animals and bring them to a wet market then occasionally something truly horrid will mutate and jump into humans. That's actually all the explanation needed.
We don't like that thought. It implies that there are natural forces that we can't control, even now. (Actually we can and we did, through a mixture of quarantine and vaccination, and that's remarkably brilliant. But it was horrible for a while.) Much easier to blame one baddie.
Pelosi is accusing others of clinging on until too old an age? Well I never.
She at least still had all her marbles intact
Dementia really is incredibly sad, I know many people in their eighties who have a mind as sharp as anyone half their age, and then people in their seventies who really have lost it. Away from the politics of it, it is desperately sad that we watched a president go down, and clearly go down a severe dementia way. It is possible/probable that Reagan had very early indications of dementia towards the end of his presidency, but that was a time where there was no real medication that could hold anything back. Biden is so visibly gone, and his friends and family must have known the scale of how far gone he was for a number of years, but all colluded and covered up (even on here we had those who said Biden was fine and all this was just bigotry of a man who had overcome a debilitating stammer), not just to get him to the end of his term with dignity, but to actually attempt to seek a further four years.
It is slightly concerning that the systems you would think are in place such as regular medical testing didnt force the issue and invoke the necessary constitutional processes to hand over to his VP. And this should have probably been done quite some time ago.
So when do you reckon he will hand over to Vance, on that basis?
I am not entirely convinced that Vance will be minded to wait until the inauguration before he makes his move. Trump had so obviously lost it in the last few weeks of the campaign but his momentum carried him through. He is in a far worse state now than Biden was in 2022, let alone 2020.
What serves Vance and co better?
Ditching Trump now he's done his job and is just an embarrassing old man, or keeping him as a popular figurehead (to some) and lightning conductor (to others) while they get on with running the country?
A shootout seems likely, but it's less obvious who wins it.
They probably prefer the long game, I’d guess. Though if the GOP loses in the midterms, and Trump has further declined, that would provide an opportunity.
I now understand why it was so hard to get a drink at Incheon when I came through to Osaka (and had hours to stop over). Korea has no bar culture. Almost none. Basically none
You can walk for hours and there is nowhere to get a FUCKING GIN AND TONIC
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
Big cities. And Liverpool’s don’t count, they’re out of the centre and modern. All the rest are small cities or large towns with the exception of Bristol.
Neither Wakefield nor Coventry are small cities.
Though neither of them is the most important place in their area. Coventry is overshadowed by Birmingham, and Wakefield by Leeds.
Leeds is in the odd position of having an Anglican diocese but no Anglican cathedral (in theory, the Minster might get upgraded, but clearly nobody is going to risk that.)
What's the most "important" place that's on the civil map but not the church map? Southampton?
Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
I heard someone being interviewed on a podcast (possibly Spiked?) a few weeks ago who appeared to know his stuff, and was talking about how the Wuhan was playing with (iirc) adding spike proteins very similar to the one in Covid to SARS like viruses - then suddenly their records stop. I can't remember all the detail, jut presuming they guy knew his onions and wasn't just conspiracy theorising or making stuff up, it sounded quite slam dunk.
I think it probably came from the wet market too, because probably either an infected animal from the lab ended up there, or there was an early super-spreader event there. But I'm pretty convinced it was "made" in that lab and then leaked by some means or other.
Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
The early COVID-19 cases cluster around the wet market, and were nowhere near the lab. Environmental samples show SARS-CoV-2 was at the market in the right timeframe. There’s no evidence of the right sort of virus at the lab. China invested heavily in coronavirus labs after SARS, so there are a lot of labs around, meaning it’s less of a coincidence than lab leak enthusiasts believe. The viral genome shows no signs of being deliberately mutated. Novel virus outbreaks are almost always zoonotic. The early diversity of the viral genome shows it can’t have arisen from a single sample (as in the lab leak theory), but does match there being a reservoir of infected animals existing (as with the wet market).
Awwww. Bless
I’m starting to wonder if you are paid to make these entirely futile arguments
I’m on my 4th city in 4 days and enjoying comparing them. Today it’s Cardiff, then Swansea.
I wrote of the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in British cities. Well this one is of course centred on a castle, but the degree to which the principality stadium dominates the very centre of the city is quite unique. Slap bang in the middle.
I rather like Cardiff. The nightlife was by far the rowdiest and most joyous of the cities I’ve visited this week. Proper Magalluf-on-Taff.
Really? Lincoln, York, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Canterbury, Winchester, Exeter, Chester, Norwich, Coventry, Carlisle, Rochester, Bristol, Lichfield, Wakefield, Liverpool all spring to mind without any great effort on my part.
Wasn’t Tim referring to the lack of centrepiece cathedrals in major cities, seem to recall he gave a nod to cathedral cities as “large towns” with a cathedral which is true really.
Portsmouth is a large city with a prominent Cathedral. Arguably that has been 'industrialised' since Drake's time and earlier by being a major base of the navy.
Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.
Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.
Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyen's Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.
For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built in on half of the marketplace.
Yawn. Nothing will come out. It’s all grift and rumours of rumours.
As I have continually said.
Even if that turns out to be true, it’s notable that the likes of Schumer and Rubio are giving a very different impression. Why? It’s not because they’re morons. They’ve had +40 people testify under oath behind closed doors. Who? Why?
Why have they and many others pushed the UAP Disclosure Act now three years in a row, legally defining “technology of non human origin”?
It’s remarkable how few people on this forum see how notable that legislation is, even if you think the motives are different to what its sponsors portray.
Intelligent people can believe strange things all the time. From my perspective I find belief in deities weird, but I know many very intelligent people who do. It’s the same with UAPs etc. There are very many grifters and liars spinning yarns which suck people in. That’s all.
For about two years you insisted Covid came from the wet market
Oh fuck off. We do not know the origins of covid and the wet market is still a valid hypothesis. Where did SARS come from? Or MERS? Novel pathogens almost always originate in animals before making the transition to humans, usually through humans in close proximity. You haven’t won the debate over covid origins, even if you think you have. A lab leak is entirely plausible, but so is origins from the wet market.
The wet market is not merely a valid hypothesis: it is the broadly accepted view among virologists. The genomic evidence of early viral diversity strongly supports it. You have to come up with some convoluted story to make the lab leak “theory” fit the evidence.
It's the broadly accepted view among virologists because the lab leak theory makes virology look distinctly dubious.
From an occam's razor POV, it looks like lab leak. Wet market needs far more coincidences. Now coincidences do happen, but thay doesn't mean we should write off the most straightforward explanation i.e. that ground zero for a new mutant virus being in a city where viruses were deliberately mutated in a not-very-well-secured lab wasn't a coincidence.
I heard someone being interviewed on a podcast (possibly Spiked?) a few weeks ago who appeared to know his stuff, and was talking about how the Wuhan was playing with (iirc) adding spike proteins very similar to the one in Covid to SARS like viruses - then suddenly their records stop. I can't remember all the detail, jut presuming they guy knew his onions and wasn't just conspiracy theorising or making stuff up, it sounded quite slam dunk.
I think it probably came from the wet market too, because probably either an infected animal from the lab ended up there, or there was an early super-spreader event there. But I'm pretty convinced it was "made" in that lab and then leaked by some means or other.
That's a good point, the wet market and lab theories are not mutually exclusive. It's quite possible a lab worker went shopping with a snotty nose and it spread from there
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Liverpool is a counter example, but Tim's point was that Liverpool cathedral is not a centrepiece - because it was built late on what was then the edge of town. (Good cathedral, though.)
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At some point you realise that no matter what you do the stupid people will always win out. The only choices left are to rail against the world or creep away and try to pretend it doesn't matter. The latter is certainly easier of you can do it.
There's Weak Lab Leak- Scientists were foolishly playing with fire they couldn't control. Carelessly leaving windows open, or corruptly selling samples at the wet market.
The attraction of both of those is that they imply there is a guilty man. All this is someone's fault.
Then there's that it came from the wild. There's a massive reservoir of bad stuff in nature, if you catch wild animals and bring them to a wet market then occasionally something truly horrid will mutate and jump into humans. That's actually all the explanation needed.
We don't like that thought. It implies that there are natural forces that we can't control, even now. (Actually we can and we did, through a mixture of quarantine and vaccination, and that's remarkably brilliant. But it was horrible for a while.) Much easier to blame one baddie.
Though if the GOP loses in the midterms, and Trump has further declined, that would provide an opportunity.
You can walk for hours and there is nowhere to get a FUCKING GIN AND TONIC
Leeds is in the odd position of having an Anglican diocese but no Anglican cathedral (in theory, the Minster might get upgraded, but clearly nobody is going to risk that.)
What's the most "important" place that's on the civil map but not the church map? Southampton?
I think it probably came from the wet market too, because probably either an infected animal from the lab ended up there, or there was an early super-spreader event there. But I'm pretty convinced it was "made" in that lab and then leaked by some means or other.
I’m starting to wonder if you are paid to make these entirely futile arguments
Nottingham is an important city with no old Cathedral, though the Roman Catholics have a pleasant neo-Gothic one built in the 1840s. Possibly also Newcastle, which is an upgraded parish church. And Sheffield. And Derby. I'm not sure about Leicester. These are all Dioceses created as part of Victorian population growth, and the corollary of the empty monumental wool churches, where the population has left, not arrived.
Don't underestimate parish church cathedrals - some of them are magnificent. I'd put both Derby and Sheffield on that list.
Not modern cathedrals I'd put Liverpool and Coventry at the top of that list, with Coventry on a pinnacle that equals almost anything from the medieval period. Lutyen's Liverpool is a last gasp of medievalism.
For "Cathedrals" in indutrial revolution cities, I'd suggest the place is occupied by those great Victorian town halls - Bradford, Manchester, and others have this phenomenon. In Nottingham they built in on half of the marketplace.