The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I have had office days in the past where my only conversation with anyone else in the office has been "Can I have the milk after you".
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
And the only other person there has whooping cough/COVID/consumption and refuses to wear a mask.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yep. We have a day when most people try to be in and I do too - it's nice to catch up and check in on things/people that don't justify a normal call. Official policy is two days in the office. I routinely just do the one day a week and no one has bothered me about it. When I have been in on other days, I hardly see anyone (I come in on other days as required if there's something better done in person).
I actually work longer on the home days - I more or less split the time gained 50-50 between work and more leisure time. On the 'in' day I work shorter hours. If forced to attend every day I would certainly do fewer hours in the week, while still staying at or above contracted.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I have had office days in the past where my only conversation with anyone else in the office has been "Can I have the milk after you".
That sort of conversation is hardly pour encourager les autres.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Its why you can't have hyrbid work where people choose their days.
We have team days. Two each week. We recently made the radical change of swapping from Mondays to Wednesdays. The whole team agreed to the change - both of us.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I have had office days in the past where my only conversation with anyone else in the office has been "Can I have the milk after you".
That sort of conversation is hardly pour encourager les autres.
I used to have my own office (and minibar) which was lovely. Then I got moved into a giant warehouse of identical desks, where nobody talked.
And if anybody did talk, my reply would usually be "do you think I'm wearing a pair of noise-cancelling headphones this size as an invitation to start a random chat?" etc
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
A few days ago I had a Labour canvass team round. They just smile nicely, are not interested in any sort of negative or questioning response, then smile politely and go. I actually said I was going to vote Labour in this marginal seat but was being prevented by the VAT policy towards private education. I do not think she knew what I was talking about!!!
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
Chris Williamson is an interesting guy, from pre-pandemic Love Island / nightclub promoter to a sort of the British Joe Rogan (minus the conspiracy theory end of things). I think the problem he has now is he has done so many podcasts since start of COVID he is running out of interesting people to talk to.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I have had office days in the past where my only conversation with anyone else in the office has been "Can I have the milk after you".
That would be better - I just get people sitting next to me on different calls (or worse on the same call with a slight lag / or and echo that requires us to turn our mikes on and off all the time)
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
I bet it isn’t in all cases. My opinion on Palestine is it’s genocide but the other opinions are way more right wing
When Williamson made that statement, he wasn't talking about Israel / Palestine. It was aimed at the polarisation in US politics (as that is where he is based now).
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I work in a team of 7 - we all go in the office on the same 2 days and work from home on the other 3.
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
Many moons ago I used to work for them. They were a fantastic company to work for.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
I have had office days in the past where my only conversation with anyone else in the office has been "Can I have the milk after you".
That would be better - I just get people sitting next to me on different calls (or worse on the same call with a slight lag / or and echo that requires us to turn our mikes on and off all the time)
I like being on the same call as the person sat beside me. In "relaxed" company, you can play the trick of popping up on each other's cameras.
🚨New Voting Intention🚨 Labour lead widens to twenty-two points in our latest results. Con 23% (-4) Lab 45% (-) Lib Dem 10% (+2) Reform 12% (+2) SNP 3% (+1) Green 5% (-1) Other 3% (+1) Fieldwork: 17th-20th May 2024 Sample: 1,968 GB adults (Changes from 10th-13th May 2024)
🚨New Voting Intention🚨 Labour lead widens to twenty-two points in our latest results. Con 23% (-4) Lab 45% (-) Lib Dem 10% (+2) Reform 12% (+2) SNP 3% (+1) Green 5% (-1) Other 3% (+1) Fieldwork: 17th-20th May 2024 Sample: 1,968 GB adults (Changes from 10th-13th May 2024)
Deltasplat with deltapoll
ELPHICKE
RAYNER
CURRY
Mornington Crescent.
You've missed a word beginning with T and ending with S.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
🚨New Voting Intention🚨 Labour lead widens to twenty-two points in our latest results. Con 23% (-4) Lab 45% (-) Lib Dem 10% (+2) Reform 12% (+2) SNP 3% (+1) Green 5% (-1) Other 3% (+1) Fieldwork: 17th-20th May 2024 Sample: 1,968 GB adults (Changes from 10th-13th May 2024)
Deltasplat with deltapoll
ELPHICKE
RAYNER
CURRY
Mornington Crescent.
You've missed a word beginning with T and ending with S.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
That's got me all of a gibber just thinking about it.
I went up the Strat in Las Vegas and was ok. I was also ok watching people jump off it on bungees. However the two rides at the top, one going straight up and the other over the edge just make me go weak at the knees just thinking about it. I also couldn't look up at the Strat when close by, but can from a distance. It is only when close to a building I can't look up.
I actually can look up at a tall building from close by - but otoh there seem to be things you can handle that I can't. Put us together and I think we have a pretty serviceable unit.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
I'm freelance, which means a day a week of work this year if I'm lucky - it's brutal out there.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
Hm.
"the worker had initially suspected he had received a phishing email from the company’s UK office, as it specified the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized."
I've worked for plenty of orgs that have had mandatory ethics courses which specifically covered stuff like 'secret transactions'. Exactly the sort of course that the Tories are against when they harrumph about woke HR practices...
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
Has the sudden urge to toss yourself off grown more accute with age?
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
Eeriest and spookiest AI story so far. Esp as it's running in parallel with a lot of presumably meat PBers talking about zoom calls.
I don't see how digital proof of authority or ownership continues. My bank makes me record a video if it thinks I am being scammed, but how will that help? Buy physical gold. Bury it at home. Never go away in case a bot persuaded the Land Registry that you have sold.
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
Israel / Palestine aside - I take issue with this sentiment because it essentially says a systemic view of politics is bad. As in if you have an understanding of a political theory that takes account for how and why things happen or how and why they should happen differently - that is a negative. I would argue (and have done) that we can point to many issues in policy and politics and point to how these different issues flow from the same prevailing ideology (typically neoliberal capitalism in the modern era) and how my policy preferences (anywhere from democratic socialism to anarchistic community management) would help alleviate those issues. This could only be considered a "bad thing" by the "enlightened centrist dad" types who view politics through the lens of "pragmatism" (which they believe is not an ideology, but is an ideological position of itself) and what is "common sense" or "real politik".
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
Sounds like you were the same.
I can't stand heights. Even thinking about that footage of John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column makes me feel ill.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Its why you can't have hyrbid work where people choose their days.
We have team days. Two each week. We recently made the radical change of swapping from Mondays to Wednesdays. The whole team agreed to the change - both of us.
We moved our team day meeting to Tuesday for that reason. As I type this , we currently have 6/13 staff andf 0/4 directors in the office.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
HE should do celebrity masterchef.
Given the number of half baked things he comes up with that would be a bad idea.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
Has the sudden urge to toss yourself off grown more accute with age?
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
I'm freelance, which means a day a week of work this year if I'm lucky - it's brutal out there.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
On your third paragraph - I find the reverse. Every so often a recruitment consultant gets in touch with me - sometimes even with a job which sounds interesting - but they are almost always reluctant to talk salary. Basically, I quite like my current job and the level of income, pension and work-life balance it offers, and I'd need the carrot of a fat amount of money to consider leaving it. Unless they're willing to hint up front what sort of salary might be on offer, I'm not going to go through the considerable PITA of drawing up a relevant CV and applying.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
Many of us here at PB are more deeply enveloped in political news and events than the average voter, so a) more likely to have ideological issues with any given politician, b) more likely to see the kinds of gaffs or negative stories in the news and c) more likely to remember what was promised in the past and what is being promised now. The issue I have with SKS's Labour, for instance, is that my understanding of his "project" is to turn the Labour party into the Tory party of Cameron's era - pro austerity, pro PR stunts to seem progressive, whilst actually bringing in policies that overall entrench the inequalities already seen in society. I consider that bad.
If all you know about politics is that your life has gotten worse under the Tories and that Starmer isn't being called a literal former communist spy by the BBC - you think things will probably get better under a Labour government.
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
I bet it isn’t in all cases. My opinion on Palestine is it’s genocide but the other opinions are way more right wing
When Williamson made that statement, he wasn't talking about Israel / Palestine. It was aimed at the polarisation in US politics (as that is where he is based now).
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
Sounds like you were the same.
I can't stand heights. Even thinking about that footage of John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column makes me feel ill.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
Many of us here at PB are more deeply enveloped in political news and events than the average voter, so a) more likely to have ideological issues with any given politician, b) more likely to see the kinds of gaffs or negative stories in the news and c) more likely to remember what was promised in the past and what is being promised now. The issue I have with SKS's Labour, for instance, is that my understanding of his "project" is to turn the Labour party into the Tory party of Cameron's era - pro austerity, pro PR stunts to seem progressive, whilst actually bringing in policies that overall entrench the inequalities already seen in society. I consider that bad.
If all you know about politics is that your life has gotten worse under the Tories and that Starmer isn't being called a literal former communist spy by the BBC - you think things will probably get better under a Labour government.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
Sounds like you were the same.
I can't stand heights. Even thinking about that footage of John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column makes me feel ill.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
The long delayed contaminated blood enquiry just dumped (quite rightly) a huge compensation liability on government. And incidentally utterly trashed Ken Clarke's reputation.
"The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded...
This is why we can't have nice things in the Autumn Statement. Uge liability.
Don't forget there are also the WASPI women as well who are after a similar sum after the Parliamentary Ombudsmans report. The govt may just kick this into the long grass and let Labour deal with it though.
We should not pay the WASPI women a penny. Equality cuts both ways.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
That's got me all of a gibber just thinking about it.
I went up the Strat in Las Vegas and was ok. I was also ok watching people jump off it on bungees. However the two rides at the top, one going straight up and the other over the edge just make me go weak at the knees just thinking about it. I also couldn't look up at the Strat when close by, but can from a distance. It is only when close to a building I can't look up.
I actually can look up at a tall building from close by - but otoh there seem to be things you can handle that I can't. Put us together and I think we have a pretty serviceable unit.
Now there is positive thinking for you. I was thinking if you put us together you might as well have us put down as a pair of quivering jellies.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
I bet it isn’t in all cases. My opinion on Palestine is it’s genocide but the other opinions are way more right wing
When Williamson made that statement, he wasn't talking about Israel / Palestine. It was aimed at the polarisation in US politics (as that is where he is based now).
What’s Brexit got to do with US politics?
That is Janan Ganesh expansion to Brexit, Israel etc, not Williamson.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
Sounds like you were the same.
I can't stand heights. Even thinking about that footage of John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column makes me feel ill.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
HE should do celebrity masterchef.
Given the number of half baked things he comes up with that would be a bad idea.
Ha Ha,
I can imagine Gregg gurning at a half baked cake served up by SKS.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
True, though it was always meant to be part of Boris's appeal- he's the one you'd want to hang out with (as long as your wife and wallet were both safe somewhere else). Starmer's star quality may be of a different form (as was 1992 Major's), but that's not the same as non-existent.
More likely, though, we're just seeing that nothing succeeds like success. Nobody talked of Sunak's tetchiness when he was popular.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
I'm freelance, which means a day a week of work this year if I'm lucky - it's brutal out there.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
On your third paragraph - I find the reverse. Every so often a recruitment consultant gets in touch with me - sometimes even with a job which sounds interesting - but they are almost always reluctant to talk salary. Basically, I quite like my current job and the level of income, pension and work-life balance it offers, and I'd need the carrot of a fat amount of money to consider leaving it. Unless they're willing to hint up front what sort of salary might be on offer, I'm not going to go through the considerable PITA of drawing up a relevant CV and applying.
The market at the moment is brutal, and you have very senior people on 100k or even 150k willing to settle for 50k roles. Because they have mouths to feed.
So the "what are your salary expectations" is a little triage box I have seen popping up more and more over the last year. They want a race to the bottom.
I'd rarely seen that asked before offer stage, before this year. Another sign of how ugly the job market is at the moment.
The long delayed contaminated blood enquiry just dumped (quite rightly) a huge compensation liability on government. And incidentally utterly trashed Ken Clarke's reputation.
"The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded...
This is why we can't have nice things in the Autumn Statement. Uge liability.
Don't forget there are also the WASPI women as well who are after a similar sum after the Parliamentary Ombudsmans report. The govt may just kick this into the long grass and let Labour deal with it though.
We should not pay the WASPI women a penny. Equality cuts both ways.
I do not disagree but they have a well organised campaign and seem to have alot of MPs on board saying something must be done.
Once election day is over maybe they will forget their enthusiasm for these people
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I have a fear of heights but not flying. I am drawn to the edge of cliffs. I can't look up at a high sheer cliffs or buildings or being in a boat under a dam. I can't walk out onto a tower if it is open at the top, even with a wall or railings in front of me.
However if I am enclosed I am fine. I have flown gliders many times, I have been in a Pitts Special doing aerobatics. I have now been in the front seat of a helicopter with glass beside me, above me and below me (and in front of course). I have also been involved in both an aborted take off and an emergency landing on commercial flights. None of that phased me, but at the Grand Canyon a sheer cliff I was looking at, but not standing on, so couldn't fall off of, gave me the collywobbles.
The human brain (well mine anyway) is weird.
I'm similar. I suppose being enclosed, even if just by glass, protects you from falling. So perhaps it's more accurate to say fear of falling rather than fear of heights? Being scared to look up is a bit odd.
I don't think it's fear of falling it's the thought, when you're close to the edge of a big drop, or eg to a railway platform with a train coming, that you could just take one step and boom, it's over. The fact you don't want to, and therefore won't, doesn't stop the feeling. The point is you could - just like that, you could. It's a 'terror of free will' thing. It creates fear and nausea, with a touch of exhilaration thrown in. That's the route of my fear of heights anyway, and it's why it disappears if I'm enclosed. Eg the lifts at La Defence in Paris, miles up, glass floor you can look down through, I was not scared at all. Liked it actually. But standing next to a cliff edge, even a yard or so away, can't do it.
I hate building edges and I'm not terribly keen on sea cliff edges either.
But I've walked / climbed on extremely thin ridges, including some snow ridges in the Alps, and that was fine.
I think it helps when you've got some movement or activity to concentrate on. Just standing there you've got nothing else to think about.
Yes, that makes sense. Eg when I was younger, despite having a fear of heights in the way described, I was well-known for climbing things (hence my nickname of Chimp). Trees, telegraph poles, in and out of windows in buildings, scaling from one room to another via the ledge etc etc, I was always at it. I don't do this now but that's mainly due to the physical limitations of age (I'm 63) not to being scared.
I dislike heights as well. I’m sure part of it is for the reasons you eloquently adduce, tho Freud wouid say we all have a death urge - Thanatos - which is at war with the life urge - Eros. And looking at human history I would say Freud is onto something. We are drawn to darkness and death
If you want to terrify the vertigo shit out of yourself I recommend the Iron Age fort - dun aonghasa - on the cliff on inis mor - an island off the west coast of Eire
Omg. Completely sheer. The only way I could look over without soiling myself was by lying face flat on the rock then slowly pulling myself to the edge and peering over. Even then I was horrified
I didn’t feel that ridiculous, however: because every one else was doing exactly the same. Properly scary
Inis mor is also one of only two places I’ve heard Irish Gaelic spoken naturally between people
Yes that's how I'd do it - get down on my belly and inch towards the edge like a turtle. That way I'd know it would take an unnatural, prolonged and concerted effort (rather than just a whim or a muscle spasm) for me to go over.
Sounds like you were the same.
I can't stand heights. Even thinking about that footage of John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column makes me feel ill.
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
True, though it was always meant to be part of Boris's appeal- he's the one you'd want to hang out with (as long as your wife and wallet were both safe somewhere else). Starmer's star quality may be of a different form (as was 1992 Major's), but that's not the same as non-existent.
More likely, though, we're just seeing that nothing succeeds like success. Nobody talked of Sunak's tetchiness when he was popular.
I'm sure some value it of course. Not for me though. It's irrelevant to voting
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
The group of people with opinions on a large range of matters - from Sudanese politics to cycle paths to assisted dying to the Argentinian leadership is not actually huge; most people (the sort not represented on PB or any opinionative political place) have views that are a mixture of uncertainty, what the last person said, total ignorance, and mutual incoherence. That's because they are people, and normal.
Substantial groups of people have 'packaged' views of the sort Williamson is on about because it affirms a group/friendship/elite membership circle and is quite painful to be outside. In the case of one or two British actors it can drive you mad.
However Williamson's thesis, attractive as it is, needs strong empirical support. Does he have it?
BTW a side issue related to this is here in the Guardian, on the subject of 'thought terminating cliches'. It is interesting to see it there as many of their writers suffer from it in extended and infinitely tedious forms.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
I'm freelance, which means a day a week of work this year if I'm lucky - it's brutal out there.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
On your third paragraph - I find the reverse. Every so often a recruitment consultant gets in touch with me - sometimes even with a job which sounds interesting - but they are almost always reluctant to talk salary. Basically, I quite like my current job and the level of income, pension and work-life balance it offers, and I'd need the carrot of a fat amount of money to consider leaving it. Unless they're willing to hint up front what sort of salary might be on offer, I'm not going to go through the considerable PITA of drawing up a relevant CV and applying.
The market at the moment is brutal, and you have very senior people on 100k or even 150k willing to settle for 50k roles. Because they have mouths to feed.
So the "what are your salary expectations" is a little triage box I have seen popping up more and more over the last year. They want a race to the bottom.
I'd rarely seen that asked before offer stage, before this year. Another sign of how ugly the job market is at the moment.
Whether it’s a god or bad things definitely depends on your current position. If you’re not really looking, you want to know it’s going to be worth your while to even engage, but if you need something next month it comes across as you suggest.
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
The group of people with opinions on a large range of matters - from Sudanese politics to cycle paths to assisted dying to the Argentinian leadership is not actually huge; most people (the sort not represented on PB or any opinionative political place) have views that are a mixture of uncertainty, what the last person said, total ignorance, and mutual incoherence. That's because they are people, and normal.
Substantial groups of people have 'packaged' views of the sort Williamson is on about because it affirms a group/friendship/elite membership circle and is quite painful to be outside. In the case of one or two British actors it can drive you mad.
However Williamson's thesis, attractive as it is, needs strong empirical support. Does he have it?
BTW a side issue related to this is here in the Guardian, on the subject of 'thought terminating cliches'. It is interesting to see it there as many of their writers suffer from it in extended and infinitely tedious forms.
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
Israel / Palestine aside - I take issue with this sentiment because it essentially says a systemic view of politics is bad. As in if you have an understanding of a political theory that takes account for how and why things happen or how and why they should happen differently - that is a negative. I would argue (and have done) that we can point to many issues in policy and politics and point to how these different issues flow from the same prevailing ideology (typically neoliberal capitalism in the modern era) and how my policy preferences (anywhere from democratic socialism to anarchistic community management) would help alleviate those issues. This could only be considered a "bad thing" by the "enlightened centrist dad" types who view politics through the lens of "pragmatism" (which they believe is not an ideology, but is an ideological position of itself) and what is "common sense" or "real politik".
I don't totally agree but that's a good point. It's about striking a balance, I think. You need some ideology to give shape to your views. Without it a person can just flop about mentally. Otoh it's easy, if you are ideologically inclined, to end up contorting reality to fit whatever World View you've settled upon. Indeed this is what usually seems to happen.
Another (related) point I'd make is that it's IMO not necessarily a terrible thing to take a steer on what you ought to think from somebody who both knows more about the subject in question than you and who you tend to be sympatico with on most matters. The opposite applies too. Eg if I discover Michael Fabricant holds the same opinion as me on something, I will give my own opinion a very close look.
The idea that people should come fearlessly to their own view on everything under the sun, always bespoke, never off-the-peg, is for me not a slam dunk 'yeah definitely' at all. In fact I rather distrust such people. It smacks of arrogance and/or attention seeking. I mean, why on earth would a person feel capable of coming to their own opinion on everything? It's a nonsense when you think about it.
The problem with that is the one I get continually - there is no point going into an office unless everyone is there because if I’m doing team / zoom calls I would be better off at home where the equipment and coffee is better and I get 2 more hours (the time I’m not traveling) to do what I want
Yeah, exactly. If I'm just going to be spending most of my time in zoom meetings, I find the office is one of the worst environments I could possibly do that in. Sitting beside people who are noisily participating in completely different meetings is incredibly distracting.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
I'm freelance, which means a day a week of work this year if I'm lucky - it's brutal out there.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
On your third paragraph - I find the reverse. Every so often a recruitment consultant gets in touch with me - sometimes even with a job which sounds interesting - but they are almost always reluctant to talk salary. Basically, I quite like my current job and the level of income, pension and work-life balance it offers, and I'd need the carrot of a fat amount of money to consider leaving it. Unless they're willing to hint up front what sort of salary might be on offer, I'm not going to go through the considerable PITA of drawing up a relevant CV and applying.
The market at the moment is brutal, and you have very senior people on 100k or even 150k willing to settle for 50k roles. Because they have mouths to feed.
So the "what are your salary expectations" is a little triage box I have seen popping up more and more over the last year. They want a race to the bottom.
I'd rarely seen that asked before offer stage, before this year. Another sign of how ugly the job market is at the moment.
Whether it’s a god or bad things definitely depends on your current position. If you’re not really looking, you want to know it’s going to be worth your while to even engage, but if you need something next month it comes across as you suggest.
I've friends who are out of work a year or more now. I'm... surviving. Just. But I don't have a huge mortgage or kids, and many people I know took out mega mortgages when times were good and are about to fall off a cliff edge when remortgaging. Hence people I know being on 125k previously being happy to put "will work for 50k" in the little triage box at the moment.
As I saw on some viral memey linkedin post the other week, it's funny how it's "welcome to our awesome family!" when you join, but "it's not personal, it's just business" when they're letting you go...
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
I've pretty much given upon them. They're reproducing the Blair playbook but it's not the 1990s and the problems aren't the same. We've been running off debt since 2008, made worse by Covid, and that won't work any more. Consider two problems: the die-off of the Boomers over the next 15 years, and the increasing bankruptcy of British cities. Everything I have heard from Labour on this is either irrelevant or (given Streeting's talking hard to the NHS) will actually make things worse. The two major parties are doing Potemkin politics...
The long delayed contaminated blood enquiry just dumped (quite rightly) a huge compensation liability on government. And incidentally utterly trashed Ken Clarke's reputation.
"The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded...
This is why we can't have nice things in the Autumn Statement. Uge liability.
Don't forget there are also the WASPI women as well who are after a similar sum after the Parliamentary Ombudsmans report. The govt may just kick this into the long grass and let Labour deal with it though.
We should not pay the WASPI women a penny. Equality cuts both ways.
Isn't the actual problem that pension age equalisation, announced in 1995, was suddenly brought forward in 2011?
I don't have a problem with equalisation, but can see why those who were relying on receiving a pension at 60 feel aggrieved at having been fucked around so badly, just a couple of years before they expected to retire.
What was the thinking for doing this at the time? Was no money set aside for those who for whatever reason couldn't simply extend their employment until their new retirement age?
Sir Keir popped up on Sunday Brunch on the telly yesterday. Just came across as a genuine, nice bloke. No idea why he gets the opprobrium he gets on PB. Worth a watch.
I never understand this 'he comes across as a nice bloke' stuff. I'm not voting for someone I want to hang out with. I'm voting based on what they'll do, or say they'll do, what they've done in politics and outside and to achieve a desired political goal. I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
I've pretty much given upon them. They're reproducing the Blair playbook but it's not the 1990s and the problems aren't the same. We've been running off debt since 2008, made worse by Covid, and that won't work any more. Consider two problems: the die-off of the Boomers over the next 15 years, and the increasing bankruptcy of British cities. Everything I have heard from Labour on this is either irrelevant or (given Streeting's talking hard to the NHS) will actually make things worse. The two major parties are doing Potemkin politics...
Streeting being honest about the NHS might, long term, break the spell. Whether his actual reforms help or hinder.
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
Eeriest and spookiest AI story so far. Esp as it's running in parallel with a lot of presumably meat PBers talking about zoom calls.
I don't see how digital proof of authority or ownership continues. My bank makes me record a video if it thinks I am being scammed, but how will that help? Buy physical gold. Bury it at home. Never go away in case a bot persuaded the Land Registry that you have sold.
There was that recent story about the massive number of fake ecommerce websites recently too. Does make you wonder whether the whole online world could simply suddenly collapse under a tsunami of fakery.
The long delayed contaminated blood enquiry just dumped (quite rightly) a huge compensation liability on government. And incidentally utterly trashed Ken Clarke's reputation.
"The scandal that caused thousands of people in the UK to become infected or die from contaminated blood was avoidable and inflamed by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up by the NHS and government, a scathing report has concluded...
This is why we can't have nice things in the Autumn Statement. Uge liability.
Don't forget there are also the WASPI women as well who are after a similar sum after the Parliamentary Ombudsmans report. The govt may just kick this into the long grass and let Labour deal with it though.
We should not pay the WASPI women a penny. Equality cuts both ways.
Isn't the actual problem that pension age equalisation, announced in 1995, was suddenly brought forward in 2011?
I don't have a problem with equalisation, but can see why those who were relying on receiving a pension at 60 feel aggrieved at having been fucked around so badly, just a couple of years before they expected to retire.
What was the thinking for doing this at the time? Was no money set aside for those who for whatever reason couldn't simply extend their employment until their new retirement age?
No, it is nothing to do with 2011.
No one was fucked around. They had plenty of notice.
Comments
I actually work longer on the home days - I more or less split the time gained 50-50 between work and more leisure time. On the 'in' day I work shorter hours. If forced to attend every day I would certainly do fewer hours in the week, while still staying at or above contracted.
No-one else from my team is based in the UK, and we've restricted non-essential travel for cost reasons. Of the people I regularly work with, I've seen none of them in person for over a year. We're meant to do two days a week in the office. I tend to go in most Fridays, but get very little work done when I do - to the point that it feels unpleasantly like a form of malicious compliance.
It's now got to the point where I've flipped the "I'm open to offers" flag on Linkedin, and I'll only be considering WFH / remote-first roles from now on.
And if anybody did talk, my reply would usually be "do you think I'm wearing a pair of noise-cancelling headphones this size as an invitation to start a random chat?" etc
"The podcaster Chris Williamson has an almost-great line. “If I know one of your views, and from it, I can accurately predict everything else that you believe, then you’re not a serious thinker.” As a quote, it needs some Wildean polishing. But it captures the single oddest thing about politics. From someone’s view on, say, Israel-Palestine, it is too easy to anticipate their opinion on public spending, on abortion, on Brexit, on net zero. A lot of people, even or above all the most educated, take their views from their peers as a kind of bundled software. This is what we might call irrational coherence."
https://www.ft.com/content/6f59d545-8201-4fe6-b280-3e96cc245dc4
"British engineering giant Arup revealed as $25 million deepfake scam victim":
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/16/tech/arup-deepfake-scam-loss-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html
"Hong Kong police said in February that during the elaborate scam the employee, a finance worker, was duped into attending a video call with people he believed were the chief financial officer and other members of staff, but all of whom turned out to be deepfake re-creations. The authorities did not name the company or parties involved at the time."
RAYNER
CURRY
Mornington Crescent.
Sounds like you were the same.
So I've been applying for lots of full time jobs.
Many of them ask you what your salary expectations are. Which is a bit of a shitter to begin with, tbh. Can we not look at experience and then negotiate rather than a game of "the price is right" before we even start?
But when a job role says "9-5 office 5 days a week" I immediately look in the "what are your salary expectations?" and add 20% to the figure due to the arsehole tax. I don't actually mind working in an office, but anyone demanding presenteeism in 2024 is going to be a micromanaging little c-word and you charge accordingly.
"the worker had initially suspected he had received a phishing email from the company’s UK office, as it specified the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized."
I've worked for plenty of orgs that have had mandatory ethics courses which specifically covered stuff like 'secret transactions'. Exactly the sort of course that the Tories are against when they harrumph about woke HR practices...
I don't see how digital proof of authority or ownership continues. My bank makes me record a video if it thinks I am being scammed, but how will that help? Buy physical gold. Bury it at home. Never go away in case a bot persuaded the Land Registry that you have sold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGZ-h70IK9s
I wasn't expecting him to twat Simon Rimmer with a frying pan and scream '****' at him, its the bare minimum to come across as ok on a soft soap magazine show
If all you know about politics is that your life has gotten worse under the Tories and that Starmer isn't being called a literal former communist spy by the BBC - you think things will probably get better under a Labour government.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7775622/?ref_=tt_urv
Nuts doesn't cover it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F04dGK1_wYA
ETA: Or, indeed, the film, Fall
I can imagine Gregg gurning at a half baked cake served up by SKS.
More likely, though, we're just seeing that nothing succeeds like success. Nobody talked of Sunak's tetchiness when he was popular.
So the "what are your salary expectations" is a little triage box I have seen popping up more and more over the last year. They want a race to the bottom.
I'd rarely seen that asked before offer stage, before this year. Another sign of how ugly the job market is at the moment.
Once election day is over maybe they will forget their enthusiasm for these people
NEW THREAD
Substantial groups of people have 'packaged' views of the sort Williamson is on about because it affirms a group/friendship/elite membership circle and is quite painful to be outside. In the case of one or two British actors it can drive you mad.
However Williamson's thesis, attractive as it is, needs strong empirical support. Does he have it?
BTW a side issue related to this is here in the Guardian, on the subject of 'thought terminating cliches'. It is interesting to see it there as many of their writers suffer from it in extended and infinitely tedious forms.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/20/the-big-idea-the-simple-trick-that-can-sabotage-your-critical-thinking
Usually it’s either in the context of wokery being a religion, or of Donald Trump leading a cult.
Another (related) point I'd make is that it's IMO not necessarily a terrible thing to take a steer on what you ought to think from somebody who both knows more about the subject in question than you and who you tend to be sympatico with on most matters. The opposite applies too. Eg if I discover Michael Fabricant holds the same opinion as me on something, I will give my own opinion a very close look.
The idea that people should come fearlessly to their own view on everything under the sun, always bespoke, never off-the-peg, is for me not a slam dunk 'yeah definitely' at all. In fact I rather distrust such people. It smacks of arrogance and/or attention seeking. I mean, why on earth would a person feel capable of coming to their own opinion on everything? It's a nonsense when you think about it.
As I saw on some viral memey linkedin post the other week, it's funny how it's "welcome to our awesome family!" when you join, but "it's not personal, it's just business" when they're letting you go...
I don't have a problem with equalisation, but can see why those who were relying on receiving a pension at 60 feel aggrieved at having been fucked around so badly, just a couple of years before they expected to retire.
What was the thinking for doing this at the time? Was no money set aside for those who for whatever reason couldn't simply extend their employment until their new retirement age?
No one was fucked around. They had plenty of notice.
This thread details the facts.
https://x.com/frances_coppola/status/1790353069907075416?s=61