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History Comes Inside! posted:What makes it safer Better training and conditions for lineworkers. e: 221B Baker St was the place to go if you had a problem only Sherlock Holmes could solve. Albinator fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 01:14
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I'm miles late for insurance chat, but it's my industry and oh god I actually have opinions on it: 1) third party motor insurance should definitely be nationalised, or at least heavily subsidised, because it's massively weighted against people in low income areas (and thus is indirectly racist and classist) 2) don't tweak your quotes too much, otherwise you get flagged as a fraud risk on various national databases and a lot of providers will boost your price or just stop quoting altogether
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Aug 13, 2023 01:37
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Cheapos are moulded in such a way that the bridge normally stands away from my skin which is far more comfortable, but I do put a folded piece of tissue between my nose and the bridge when I'm alone and just occasionally on a work zoom call I have to (they're used to me now LOL) if my nose is really suffering. (My dad was the same and stuck plasters round the bridge on all his glasses). Hmm this is really helpful, I just remembered that I don't wear sunnies because any pressure on the bridge of my nose is really irritating. Another thing to look out for!
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Aug 13, 2023 05:24
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Was talking with a group of non-UK-natives the other night and someone asked us all, what's one thing we've noticed about the UK that's different to our home countries (Canada in my case). I said, many more people here appear to be bitterly unhappy, and there is an utter refusal to believe that any sort of better future or improvement in society in any way is possible. Not just the have-nots, either. I've met people who live in million pound homes in gorgeous areas, who have faces like slapped arses and moan about their neighbours not mowing their lawns. Felt and feels like an accurate summation.
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Aug 13, 2023 06:29
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I'm currently in Ireland for the week and after about 10 second it was incredibly noticeable how much better the roads are and how much cleaner everything is. Obviously I know the Irish economy suffers from a lot of the same gently caress ups as us (overly important capital city, parasitic landlords, et al) but it is nice to be in a country that isn't visibly decaying.
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Aug 13, 2023 07:21
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:The closest thing I can think of in the US is when we did 'internet competition' in the 90s. There were dozens of Internet Service Providers available for most people for a while. The UK has regulation built in for that in the electricity market, so suppliers' retail arms are only allowed to compete on price in areas they don't supply electricity to. For broadband, when BT was privatised the wholesaler that managed the infrastructure was separated from the retailer and every retailer using the national network buys from the same place. To get actual competition a supplier needs to install their own infrastructure. Fibre optic cable got monopolized in the early 00's by what is now virgin but many smaller local providers are cropping up because openreach can't be arsed.
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Aug 13, 2023 07:36
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a pipe smoking dog posted:I'm currently in Ireland for the week and after about 10 second it was incredibly noticeable how much better the roads are and how much cleaner everything is. And how the table turns. 
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Aug 13, 2023 07:49
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If you have access to the iPlayer I highly recommend looking in the sports section. The Quarter Finals of the men's cycle ball is on right now and it is absolutely fascinating. Football on bikes basically, they hit the ball with their wheels. The control they have is remarkable. 7 minute halves and I don't think the riders feet touch the ground at all. I might have a new favourite sport
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Aug 13, 2023 09:01
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Mourning Due posted:Was talking with a group of non-UK-natives the other night and someone asked us all, what's one thing we've noticed about the UK that's different to our home countries (Canada in my case). This is so true, in my experience. In 2019 when my freelancing 'career' left me with a lot of spare hours, I used to go for walks around town in the middle of the day to get my daily steps in and just get out into the fresh air. And every day, for weeks on end, whatever the weather, the Great British Public seemed either miserable or angry. As you say, default slapped arse facial expressions. Snatches of conversation caught in passing all either moaning to their friend/partner/whatever or yelling into their phone. Just being thin-skinned and confrontational or needlessly lovely to people working in shops or serving in cafes and so on. And all against a background hum of whining and batching and a landscape of sour faces. Of course, you could say that a lot of people have a lot to be angry about and much about the public environment and civic space in your average British doesn't exactly foster a sunny disposition. But I really don't get the "it's poo poo and we like it that way" mindset that seems so pervasive. Is it some sort of population-scale sunk cost fallacy? Is that why when someone comes along and proposing making things better the reaction is like when you step on an ant nest? That if you acknowledge that things could be better then you have to face up to them being poo poo now and before? Is it the British psyche's perverse love of suffering? A distorted take on the myth of Blitz Spirit where we Just Get On With It and a weird love of people who just grumble but graft on? A lack of meaningful outlet for the gripes and grumbles? I dunno what it is, but it was starkly shown by the reactions to Labour's manifestos in 2017 and 2019 where the very idea of suggesting improvements was seen not so much as idealism or even fantasy but almost existential threat.
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Aug 13, 2023 09:23
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Personally, I wouldn't conflate the media telling us that someone with different ideas is something to be feared with general public malaise, but I agree with your overall point. I do think that a large part of it is that we are constantly being told only the worst things that happen, often with a gleeful smirk, by the cunts responsible for making things bad. This, combined with a situation where quality of life is measurably on a slight downward slope, makes people unhappy. And, at the risk of going all Adam Curtis, we are essentially powerless to stop it, since every oval office we vote into office only seems to keep things bad. At the same time, though, there's comfort in knowing how things are going to go and even if that's "downhill, lol" some people might still prefer that to the unpredictable happy possibility. There's also 100% a selection bias in simply listening out for people talking while you're out and about. The easiest people to overhear are going to be the ones yelling at people or frustratedly airing their woes. The person who's having a happy day probably isn't loudly announcing it to the world.
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Aug 13, 2023 09:42
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Let's not forget that nearly half the country did for corbyn and his manifesto. For every 1 gammon who loves being a miserable piece of poo poo, there's almost a whole person who actually wants to improve things
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Aug 13, 2023 10:05
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kingturnip posted:Personally, I wouldn't conflate the media telling us that someone with different ideas is something to be feared with general public malaise, but I agree with your overall point. I would. It's not the root cause of the malaise, but it is the reason for its continuation. If you want some support for this, I can give it to you in five words "Keep Calm and Carry On". The original posters were based on an unused slogan created in June 1939 when war seemed likely. To quote the Imperial War Museum: "Its message was supposed to boost morale and ensure the public could bear the sacrifice and burden required of them." It's pure triple-distilled Blitz Spirit, rendered memetic and put on everything from coffee mugs to bath towels to constantly condition us into thinking that we are suffering but it's all in a good cause and - more importantly - we cannot show weakness by wanting it to stop.
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Aug 13, 2023 10:13
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Jedit posted:I would. It's not the root cause of the malaise, but it is the reason for its continuation. your cheerfulness will bring us victory
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Aug 13, 2023 11:23
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Imagine an alternate timeline where the Keep Calm And Carry On posters were all destroyed and it was the Freedom Is In Peril - Defend It With All Your Might poster that was discovered in that bookshop.
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Aug 13, 2023 11:33
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I'm not sure it would be much different except that lawrence fox would have different merch.
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Aug 13, 2023 11:36
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With the standing charge the way it is I'm honestly wondering if Its cheaper to switch to LPG... Though I guess that'd need a new boiler and at that point I might as well just get a loving air heat exchanger and some solar panels and gently caress it all. Course if I had that kind of cash I wouldn't really give a poo poo about my bills doubling.
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Aug 13, 2023 12:05
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BalloonFish posted:I dunno what it is, but it was starkly shown by the reactions to Labour's manifestos in 2017 and 2019 where the very idea of suggesting improvements was seen not so much as idealism or even fantasy but almost existential threat. I guess New Labour really did have some of the finest minds of advertising working for them, because the slogan ‘things can only get better’ precisely sidesteps this tendency. It’s not asking people to actively choose between hope and gloom . Instead, the better things are inevitable, not merely possible. They are not a promise made by a politician, but a circumstance that needs to be adapted to.
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Aug 13, 2023 12:55
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It helps that they did it during the end of history when you could just set your cruise control and things would get better. The Berlin Wall fell, whites in South Africa decided that segregation wasn't for them, paramilitaries in Ireland wanted to disarm, technology would just cyber the economy down the information superhighway, and the handful of weirdos banging on about the colour of their passports and the shape of bananas these days would eventually get with the program and never cause any problems, and definitely weren't doing it as a proxy for bringing back hanging.
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Aug 13, 2023 13:12
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Guavanaut posted:Imagine an alternate timeline where the Keep Calm And Carry On posters were all destroyed and it was the Freedom Is In Peril - Defend It With All Your Might poster that was discovered in that bookshop. The strange thing is that the poster wasn't lost. There are loads of them. At work we have literally hundreds of original WW2 posters, including that one.
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Aug 13, 2023 13:39
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Should have planted a different one at that bookshop then   Man who appears on camera at any given opportunity to spout the biggest load of poo poo possible: "Camera  "(The camera has been there since 2003)
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Aug 13, 2023 14:02
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LavaTORY tzar - :smdh: When there are actually important things to focus on. How about a 'sewage in our rivers and along our coasts' tzar? And why this obsession with tzars? What do GCs do in the multitude of cafes, shops etc where there is a single, solitary cubicle to serve all comers regardless of sex, gender, mobility and have been for decades? Do they just wear adult diapers the whole day through?
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Aug 13, 2023 14:11
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Convinced at this point that the UK just wants to become Russia.
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Aug 13, 2023 14:19
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Diet Crack posted:Convinced at this point that the UK just wants to become Russia. Ireland is a fake nation, the national identity of which was created in the early 20th century by Britain's enemies.
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Aug 13, 2023 14:25
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Nenonen posted:Ireland is a fake nation, the national identity of which was created in the early 20th century by Britain's enemies. Perkele!!!
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Aug 13, 2023 14:28
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Nenonen posted:Ireland is a fake nation, the national identity of which was created in the early 20th century by Britain's enemies.   
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Aug 13, 2023 14:39
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serious gaylord posted:Get your prescription in hand when you leave regardless of what place you go to. If you have your prescription you can use online sites to get the actual glasses for 30% of the price You will get the PD wrong because you can't measure it yourself, and most opticians won't give you it because it's not part of the prescription and they know what you're doing. Opticians (especially independants) lose money on eye tests and need to make it up on the frames, so if you get the eye test and don't get the glasses, you're not paying the shop staff for their labour (fine if speccers, a poo poo thing to do to an independant). The sites constantly gently caress up astygmatism prescriptions and then make it difficult for you to get a refund on 'specialist lenses', the frames and lenses are both cheap and usually cast-offs that almost failed QC (like poundland stock), and you will give yourself headaches and likely worsen your eyesight and then have to go crawling back to specsavers in a year to fix it all. Go to an independant in a rough area and be nice to the staff, they'll probably be able to do you something cheap and decent quality. History Comes Inside! posted:My wife just gets the results from the test and then orders them from a place called glasses direct for virtually gently caress all, and she’s one of those “all day every day totally loving blind without them and a new prescription every 2 years because one eye is constantly worsening” people so they take about as much wear and tear as you could put a pair of glasses through. E: might have been the rotation which was worsening the astygmatism, but the point is it wouldn't have been sorted if I hadn't had the lens fitting. Bobby Deluxe fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 14:47
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Mourning Due posted:I said, many more people here appear to be bitterly unhappy, and there is an utter refusal to believe that any sort of better future or improvement in society in any way is possible. I think a lot about that idea that Corbyn drove centrists mad because they all thought they were the good guys, and then someone comes along and proposes a world that makes their 'hard choices' and compromises look a bit evil in comparison. So their only response is to attack and pretend that the poo poo world they accepted is good, actually. Someone was asking about trashfuture a few pages ago and it's just Milo's cockney bloke bit about "it's poo poo, it's supposed to be poo poo; and if you don't like it, there's the door."
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Aug 13, 2023 14:56
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My specs weren't cheap (£3-400 with the fancy coatings) but they do literally give me the gift of sight and I've been wearing them like 16 hours a day for 3 years now so I feel they were pretty good value for money. Plus the nice glasses guy spent about half an hour helping me pick ones that don't make me any more like an idiot than necessary and then got them fitted nicely so I basically don't even notice them on my face.
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Aug 13, 2023 15:01
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:LavaTORY tzar - :smdh: 
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Aug 13, 2023 15:10
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Nenonen posted:Ireland is a fake nation, the national identity of which was created in the early 20th century by Britain's enemies. I shouldn't be telling you this, but the secret rule for the last few hundred, and next millennium it looks like, is to do the opposite what the Brits do.
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Aug 13, 2023 15:19
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a pipe smoking dog posted:I'm currently in Ireland for the week and after about 10 second it was incredibly noticeable how much better the roads are and how much cleaner everything is. take it you're in the south then because up here the roads are in a sorry state and, well quote:Northern Ireland streetlights could be turned off and roads ungritted, Stormont department warns https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/northern-ireland-streetlights-could-turned-26834715 
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Aug 13, 2023 15:38
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Liz Truss: I saw on the news about the televisions and the phone chargers and I think we could save at least £5 billion a year by switching Northern Ireland off at night.
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Aug 13, 2023 15:44
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the putting up with having to eat poo poo culture some of you are talking about doesn't apply here, where some people even riot recreationally
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Aug 13, 2023 16:00
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instead society atm feels like tinderbox and we're waiting for the spark
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Aug 13, 2023 16:02
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Bobby Deluxe posted:Don't do this. Please for the love of god do not do this. Having worked for one of these chain brand opticians i would not trust them not to gently caress up your prescription anyway, quality checking was poo poo, my manager couldn't use a focimeter to save his life.
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Aug 13, 2023 16:11
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Microplastics posted:Coming up time to renew my energy tarriff. What happened is that a bunch of customers were lucky enough to fix their energy tariffs with suppliers for a couple of years at low prices before everything went tits up. Many of these suppliers had an interesting approach to hedging and risk management, in that they didn't bother with it, and just bought the power and gas their customers were using just before it was supplied on the assumption that prices will fall as the risk premium drops out of the market. This is fine right up until the wholesale market spikes and the supplier collapses. We then have a problem, because electricity generators and gas producers need to be paid or they go under and stop producing, so you need to be moved to a new supplier, through Ofgem's Supplier of Last Resort process. Because voiding customers' tariffs and putting them on a tariff at the marginal cost of supply would be a massive overnight spike in costs, which would lead to an even bigger cost of living crisis, Ofgem make the new supplier continue to honour those massively loss-making tariffs. The new supplier then makes a big loss on their new customers that they didn't expect to have and hadn't hedged the power and gas for. In order to stop this just turning into the entire industry collapsing domino-like thanks to one company offering an unsustainably low tariff, the new supplier is allowed to claim back the losses they make from these new customers. This money comes from the distribution networks, because they've got deep pockets and can finance a couple of billion pounds for a couple of years. The distribution networks are then allowed to increase the standing charges they charge to suppliers a year or so later, and the suppliers then pass on the increased standing charges to customers. These failed suppliers also don't pay for their share of things like subsidies to wind farms and so on, which is then "mutualised", which is a fancy Ofgem term for "passed back onto suppliers that didn't fail and then passed onto consumers in the form of higher bills". Thus, the reason the standing charge is going up is because a bunch of people fixed their energy tariffs with cheap suppliers which exploded and caused a lot of costs in the process of doing so. The blame for this lies at the door of those politicians who decided that the best way to score political points was to encourage switching and drive energy supplier margins negative, instead of investing and encouraging investment in zero/low carbon forms of energy that aren't vulnerable to gas prices going through the roof. As a side note, one of my colleagues had to do the justification for a SoLR claim to Ofgem back when I used to work for a supplier. He was one of the smartest guys I know, it took about three months of fiddling with Excel and our risk management system, and the level of detail drat near drove him insane. I'm very glad that I dodged that particular bullet.
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Aug 13, 2023 16:12
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Mr Phillby posted:On the other hand the heights/pd measurements are part of your test record and gently caress them for trying to withold that information. Those measurements are very useful if you want VR headsets to not give you a really bad day (never used them myself).
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Aug 13, 2023 16:49
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crispix posted:take it you're in the south then because up here the roads are in a sorry state and, well what’s the savings like 10 grand
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Aug 13, 2023 16:56
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I'm out of touch these days, but do people buy takeaway pints from pubs? https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1690747508283068416
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Aug 13, 2023 17:02
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there was some old git on jeremy vine the other morning talking about how the state of the national finances are at their worse since the second world war and we have to tighten our belts in the national interest lol we've been in this spiral since 2010 and there's no effective force in the country to push back against an endless austerity shitey-go-round, is there
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Aug 13, 2023 17:02
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