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jacksbrat posted:Oh they still have these! Both the trains and the travellers who don't know wtf to do (I can personally attest). I was travelling up to Montrose to visit an ex years ago and I very nearly accidently left her standing at the station while I carried on off to Aberdeen because it took me an uncomfortably long time to work out that I had to open the bloody window and open the door using the external handle. It's the single only time before or since that I've been on a train with that kind of door and I've spent a hell of a lot of time on trains over the years.
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Sep 2, 2020 12:44
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Bobby Deluxe posted:^^^ There was an article shared last thread (medium, I think) about a middle class person having to apply for welfare and repeatedly having their fears assuaged because they're 'one of the good ones.' Can confirm that the on the occasions I've been on JSA/UC their tone has completely changed when they see my education history and realise I can go through all the motions of middle class etiquette. They often then were openly rude about other claiments but implied I was somehow not like them. They barely even tried to hide their contempt for what they saw as the 'undeserving' poor. The whole system seems designed to hurt those who earnestly try to follow the rules, while perhaps more savvy (and yes, usually more middle class!) people who know what the real point of the system is can get out of most of the real work involved with lies and bluster. For example you don't have to actually apply to x number of jobs, you just need to convincingly say you did. None of this is an accident.
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Sep 2, 2020 16:01
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communism bitch posted:Here's something I love about being a manager. There are two girls working in my office. They loving gossip non stop and do no work when I'm out of the office. what happened to you
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Sep 11, 2020 15:44
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Camrath's fudge saved my from hypoglycemia earlier, thanks Camrath. Chocolate orange is my current favourite, russian revolution was also 10/10 but I liked the white chocolate a bit more than the raspberry and it made me feel like a reactionary.
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Sep 12, 2020 18:46
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tbh the idea of the government formally 'opting out of' human rights law doesn't really fill me with a huge amount of dread because they do that all the time anyway whenever it's convenient and no one cares or does anything so really not much is changingDogatron posted:When the consequences of your laziness means somebody has to wait longer for fast food- loving go for it. Less so when you are dealing with people's health and well being. chicken nuggets are a significant part of my subjective well-being ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Sep 12, 2020 |
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Sep 12, 2020 22:53
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I'd like to think that bringing back hanging would cause enough public outcry that even bojo wouldn't be dumb enough to try it but honestly a solid 40% of the country would probably be thrilled so who the gently caress even knows anymore.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:21
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Tarnop posted:Opt out of ECHR, wait for a white middle class child to go missing, name law after child For some reason this made me think of those 'paedo hunter' groups you see bad quality videos from on social media occasionally, where they're going all Chris Hansen on some guy by the side of the road who apparently planned to meet up with a kid, and jfc they make me so uncomfortable even though they're going after some pretty disturbed people, real fashy Britain First vibe. Tellingly most of the people they catch seem to be really mentally unwell types too which definitely adds to that feeling.
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Sep 12, 2020 23:38
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bornbytheriver posted:Dear UKMT goons, I would be grateful for your advice on the landlord's notice requesting to vacate the property. IANAL but I do have some personal experience in dealing with poo poo landlords legally, and the takeaway is they're all arseholes who will absolutely gently caress you with a broomhandle if you let them. As Guvanaut says you should definitely contact your nearest Citizens Advice Bureau, Shelter, and a Tenants Union if you have one locally. Without seeing your exact contract, it's difficult to say anything authoritative because they all vary slightly, but I'd start from here as I understand it: - An Assured Shorthold Tenancy (which you have) initially stipulates a fixed term - 12 months in your case - then automatically converts to a periodic (month by month) arrangement after that. You can't break the lease within that 12 months or you're still liable for the period unless your contact contains a break clause etc, but none of that is relevant to you because we're well past July 2013. - Once it has become periodic, you can choose to leave giving notice of usually a month or so. - However, the contract is still an AST unless you've signed a new document converting it to a new tenancy that starts off a new periodic tenancy (as opposed to the AST converting to one in practice automatically). - As you say you've not signed anything new and the contract hasn't been changed since you signed it in 2012, you're still likely in that contract unless it contains some sneaky clause (go through the wording with a fine tooth comb to check for anything like this). - If you're confident that you're still on the AST and the contract doesn't have any weird clauses that give you pause, then you legally have 6 months to vacate the property from the date notice was given assuming they're using a section 21 order. If it was given on 11th September 2020, they cannot obligate you to leave before 11th March 2021. (The only other eviction option is a section 8, which only applies if you're behind in rent or you're being an antisocial prick, so I'll assume that's not relevant) - Telling them this probably won't stop them lying to your face and telling you you're wrong. Be prepared to fight it through the courts, though often they will realise very quickly that it's going to be cheaper for them to just let you stay the 6 months if they realise you're serious. - They can't legally force you out without taking it through the courts themselves at any point if you refuse to go. - If they're the sketchy kind of landlord that will try to strongarm you this will not be an easy process and they might well try to intimidate you. If this is the case I am very sorry, but tenants unions often have people who can be present if and when they try to evict you to back you up legally, provide a witness, and generally dissuade any underhanded poo poo. Again, IANAL, and I may have some of this wrong, but it sounds like they're trying it on just hoping you're going to roll over, because that's how landlords operate. e: Definitely worth contacting these guys https://londonrentersunion.org/member-solidarity/ ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Sep 13, 2020 |
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Sep 13, 2020 02:38
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God I hate landlords so much!!!
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Sep 13, 2020 03:05
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Guavanaut posted:
Check back in 2 weeks lol
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Sep 14, 2020 14:15
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thespaceinvader posted:And they're noever going to formally acknowledge why, they're just going to parade them out every time, have them make vaguely socialist allusions like they're bad, and go WINK know what I mean WINK WINK it's going to be this 'joke', repeated ad nauseum, hth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ9myHhpS9s
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Sep 14, 2020 14:56
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Gonzo McFee posted:I've been watching TV news god help my soul and it was amazing to me how this never came up. Like zero discussion of how kids can still be carriers even if they don't get sick and barely a fleeting mention of how teachers/cleaners/office staff were all going into these environments. I think I've said this several times before but moving back in with boomers who get all of their info from the BBC news bulletin has been an extremely educational and genuinely depressing experience, and the idea that they're probably more representative of the average citizen than I am is not comforting.
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Sep 14, 2020 18:22
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I used to know a guy who got the train from York to London every day for work, which seems insane
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Sep 14, 2020 19:31
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The absolute worst commute I ever had was working a job I took out of pure desperation on one of the islands in the Forth, where 3/4 days a week I had to leave my flat in Glasgow at like 4.30/5am, catch the megabus to Edinburgh so I got in for about 6.30, get the bus along to Granton where I had a boat to catch between 7 and 7.30, so we'd be on the island for between 8 and 8.30 and set up for visitors from 9. Usually I'd get home for maybe 8.30/9pm if I was lucky but once the boss decided to spring on us that we had a wedding party coming and I didn't get back that night till almost 11. Tbh for what I was getting paid I'd have laughed at them and walked but that's hard to do when you're literally surrounded by water and their boat is the only way home. Thankfully I was only doing that a month or so before I found something better because jesus loving christ. e: One of the benefits of this job is it taught me how to fake megabus codes very convincingly and I basically stopped paying to get between glasgow and edinburgh for years and wasn't caught out once.
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Sep 14, 2020 20:22
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happyhippy posted:GFA Stuff I agree completely that the government is playing fast and loose with an incredibly important and potentially explosive (lol) thing here, but in reality aren't the number of IRA/UVF guys who genuinely want a return to firefights in the streets limited to a few bitter old men in the back of third rate belfast boozers?
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Sep 14, 2020 23:50
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Are the numbers not near enough there for a border poll atm? I would have thought this would be the perfect time for SF to roll the dice. Reunification would certainly solve a lot of problems!PowerBeard posted:Recently Sinn Féin saw a massive increase in support in the General Election, from both the disenfranchised young and the old bitter people. Plus I'm sure I'm not doing a libel when I say that some prominent members of Sinn Féin had connections to the IRA and it was just. Gerry Adams. Plus, there has been a surge in gangland murders in the Republic, so that may show a willingness for young people to start poo poo for fun. Sinn Fein in 2020 are not the provos op, would that they were.
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Sep 15, 2020 12:39
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crispix posted:lol gently caress up I was obviously being a little flippant. More properly: is the political landscape of NI, particularly given Brexit, currently such that a border poll would return a solid democratic mandate for reunification, if so does this not present a rare, excellent opportunity for republican parties to fulfil their primary objective peacefully and according to the terms of the GFA, and as result might they consider it foolish to pass up on. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 13:13
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Wait I know this was only a small point in your post but surely Ireland has universal healthcare equivalent to the UK even if it's not set up quite the same way?
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Sep 15, 2020 13:37
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I love how the twentieth century history of Ireland is just one gigantic warning about the dangers of assuming anti-colonial movements must by definition be either left-wing or progressive. Yes, I cry about the PIRA/OIRA split to this day.
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Sep 15, 2020 14:04
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In other news, I don't know if this has been posted but I was reading about this guy in the states who has been suspended from his job for using the n-word in class, only he didn't at all do that. He was explaining filler words in different languages, and was using 那个, which is roughly pronounced 'nah-geh' and is directly translated as 'that' or 'that one', but which is often used in Chinese the same way we would say 'um' or 'ah' when we're thinking while speaking. Obviously this does sound very similar to the slur in English and apparently it takes quite a lot of getting used if you go to China, especially if you're black, which is understandable. But it's a different language and it's not even a remotely related one so it's insane to get precious about a word that sounds vaguely similar to an unpleasant one in your own. If anything, it's loving arrogant and kinda imperialist thinking in itself, but yeah. So this guy uses 那个 in class and some people freak out about it. This should have been a non-issue that was laughed out of the room because it's not the same language and sounds mean different things in different languages but inexplicably the university has come down on the tutor and he's no longer teaching this semester with the implication that he is in Big Trouble. They even released a statement apologising profusely for the incident and to anyone affected and reiterating all their zero tolerance policies towards bigotry etc as if that was relevant? I guess it's now racist to speak Chinese! It genuinely feels like the worst kind of terminally online 'so woke we're endorsing ethnostates' garbage but terrifyingly transplanted into real life and it's... unsettling. I dunno, this really got me because it feels like the kind of dumb bullshit reactionaries like to pretend left-wingers are all about and it feeds into all their stupid stereotypes and caricatures. I almost hope it's a false flag and the students complaining were a bunch of alt-right edgelords (though even that wouldn't excuse the uni's response) but American liberals do like the smell of their own farts so who the gently caress knows. e: yeah it's the BBC but just for confirmation that it's a thing that actually did, apparently, happen outside the fevered imaginations of MAGA idiots https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54107329 ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 14:32
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In CK3 I am currently playing the King of Sicily, whose ancestor adopted a heresy called 'Adamitism' from a naked man he met on the road, the basic idea being returning to the innocence of the garden of eden by shedding your clothes and living as one with nature uncorrupted by the burdens of civilisation. Southern Italy is a non-stop party and the Pope is real mad with my gang of feud-prims but I am not stopping until all of Europe lets it all hang out. e: I just looked this up and there is actual historical precedent for these kind of sects lmfao
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Sep 15, 2020 17:45
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Challenge to Camrath: meat flavour fudge that's not gross
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Sep 15, 2020 17:59
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Goldskull posted:What like the previous tenant smashed it to bits? lmao
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Sep 15, 2020 19:37
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Vitamin P posted:The alt-lite, and everyone else too tbh, does a thing where they take any outrider position or specific bad judgement from literally anyone that can be plausibly called liberal/left-wing/SJW/voted for Clinton and present that dumb poo poo as representing everyone in that so-broad-it's-meaningless grouping. And then if some other outrider statement contradicts it then aha! it's all incoherent! Douglas Murrays latest book is literally just doing that it's loving baffling that's it taken seriously it's absolute fake intellectualism. I'm not supporting the right? I think it's a ridiculous decision on the part of the uni. I'm mostly just real mad at the kind of woke liberal ultras who think this is a progressive thing to get indignant about, and there would be some comfort knowing that actually it's just the right being shitlords as usual. It's a far more depressing thought that the people doing it might genuinely think they're taking a principled left wing stand, not only because it hands the reactionaries ammunition but also because it shows quite how loving useless and hollowed out by neoliberalism US radicalism has become.
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Sep 15, 2020 22:51
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I love Zizek. Even when I think he gets the occasional point wrong, which I think he does quite often (likely half the time because he's trying to be deliberately provocative in a way that doesn't quite land and is in general just a ridiculously messy thinker), he's still one of the most genuinely insightful and radical mainstream(-ish) thinkers we have and he's basically on point in the broad brush strokes 99% of the time.
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Sep 15, 2020 23:18
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Guavanaut posted:Yeah, I do generally agree with the Big Thoughts that he has in Violence and some of his other works, but the sheer volume of analogies means that there's a bunch that come out as UKIP pub talker "you say baa baa black sheep is racist but support black lives matter" levels of 'huh?' oh yeah, you absolutely have to get used to interpreting his weird eccentricities to get to the meat of what he's saying, and be willing to engage in good faith. One of the reasons he's looked at kinda uneasily by a lot of the mainstream left is that he's extremely easy to misrepresent if you're uncharitable and cherry pick some of his more problematic passages while ignoring the bigger point of his argument. There's definitely a needlessly provocative edgelord buried in there and he clearly has his tongue half in his cheek a lot of the time, so anytime I think 'hold on a minute, what?' I re-read the paragraph while imagining a fat, bearded Slovenian man saying it while giving me a knowing wink, and thinking about it in that tone makes things click for me most of the time. radmonger posted:Given landlords are bad, then fewer landlords are surely less bad/? Bold of you to argue for an absolute monarchy from the left.
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Sep 15, 2020 23:54
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OwlFancier posted:watching people play crazy golf under an iron grey sky in a gale and a pandemic in whitby. 
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Sep 16, 2020 17:53
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the north east is anywhere you can buy stotties in greggs, imo
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Sep 16, 2020 20:18
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I genuinely do sympathise with those bailing on Labour because of Starmer et al, but I can't help but feel it's a shortsighted move because: - Starmer is one leader, who represents a bad wing of the party that should really have been purged thoroughly by a left leadership. Paying money to fund the party as it stands leaves a bitter taste, agreed, but make no mistake they absolutely want us to leave. - Leaving doesn't actually achieve much, but it does consolidate right-control. Your subs are insignificant, unless you happen to be Len McCluskey. Even if tens of thousands were to leave, the material impact would remain something that the party as an institution could easily withstand. Leaving in this context is therefore a matter of ethical principle, but not a meaningful political act in itself. - Starmer will not be leader forever. The energy that sustained Corbyn for so long is still there. Starmer is already buckling under the pressure because he's paralysed by the need to constantly triangulate and is unable to articulate any real belief or ideological position. If he's not ousted first (which a charismatic left MP could feasibly achieve) we'll be shattered in the next general election. That would be awful in the short term (though a Starmer win would offer little) but a great opportunity for an internal counter movement. - If you're not in Labour, you can't be part of that counter movement unless they offer paid supporter votes, which I imagine they have learned their lesson on and won't. It is just silly to throw out what little democratic input you have, and what little power you have to ensure a left resurgence, out of pure bloody minded principle. It's a few quid a month, just look at it as buying a future stake if you insist on taking a consumerist approach to your politics. The Labour right understood this - most did not leave and they kept paying their subs, because they knew that biding their time would eventually net them an opportunity, and so it did. Don't you remember how we laughed at those who did go 'purging themselves'? - Labour is an absolutely poo poo institution in many ways but it has a proven capacity to cultivate and direct left wing politics, and the resources to do so should the will be there. It's true that this happened begrudgingly and in spite of the party machine under Corbyn, but it did happen - even just via the personal networks it created - and huge swathes of the membership remain genuinely left wing. That energy and those resources can be mobilised again under a left wing leader, who could also move against the shits way more aggressively than JC did. No other UK wide party currently offers as much potential, and I don't see one emerging any time soon unless the unions decide to pull some unprecedented maneuvering. - Starmer is playing to a dying breed of centrists and conservatives. They're overwhelmingly boomers. The young are more left wing than they ever have been. Demographic change itself is going to see a left swing assuming we don't all die first, both within labour and in society more generally. I don't buy the argument that they'll keel right with age because none of them have any hope of anything but precarity and environmental collapse. All that said, I do get it - staying in labour is not easy at the moment. But those leaving need to answer a very simple question: what then? Do grassroots stuff, do community organising, but you can do all that while keeping your party voting rights. Hell, we have a secret ballot, vote against them at an election if you want - in some cases this might be absolutely the right thing to do. But is it really worth abandoning an established organisation with recognition and resources and a recent history that clearly shows left wingers can win both the leadership and electoral success, just to feel self satisfied? What is the alternative? The boat has some poo poo rolling around in it but it's still a boat, there are no others, and the alternative is drowning, imho
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Sep 26, 2020 03:43
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oh dear I sure hope no one colonises this dumb island with altruism, I would hate to be forced to have a better life that sounds awful
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Sep 26, 2020 15:03
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Guavanaut posted:Sure, but by the point that you've got someone like Cecil Rhodes who wants to ethnically cleanse the continent Is this true? I always understood European imperialism to be genocidal in a slightly different way to Nazi Germany in that Rhodes et al wanted to establish British (or French or whatever) dominance over an obedient racialised servant class, rather than eradicate them entirely. Displacement of the local powers that be sure, but not wholesale death camp stuff - just state terrorism via good old concentration camp. Like, I picture their overall goal as being one of those lords from racist old films who sit on their golden throne being wafted by impossibly beautiful attendants with big leaf fans. There was always a fetishisation of indigenous culture combined with a big white saviour complex, which strikes me as seeing the native populations as infantilised 'noble savages' requiring civilising and a big appropriative impulse, rather than a desire to see them all dead. Someone needed to waft the fan after all! Africa, India, and China seen distinct from the USA, Canada, and Australia in that regard - the fetishisation of local cultures as part of the process of imperialism appears to have prevented the establishment of things like extremely lovely residential school systems, and you have nothing like the same kind of complete eradication of indigenous traditions - the imperial occupants almost appear to have existed as parasites rather than open predators, probably due to their vast numerical disadvantage. I'm thinking aloud here, so take it all with a pinch of salt, but I feel like there's something worth thinking about in that. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 15:57
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Ha, christ I knew Rhodes was a basket case but I didn't realise he was quite that far gone. Still, I can't help but get a little hot under the collar thinking of the cape to cairo railway.quote:paint as much of the map of Africa 
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Sep 26, 2020 16:52
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I worked as a kitchen porter in one of the catered halls during my undergrad and why the gently caress anyone would pay extra to eat that greasy prison food three times a day is entirely beyond me.
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Sep 26, 2020 19:00
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Now that's what I call a ratio! https://twitter.com/itvpeston/status/1310574807705157635?s=20
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Sep 28, 2020 16:58
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radmonger posted:Zero times, because that is not true. Ownership of wealth does not cause emissions, economic activity does. If the rich literally stole literally all of that produced by the poor, that makes no first order difference to environmental impact. And economic activity, production and consumption is not really dominated by small group. it’s more that there is a small group who are doing no great harm. Quite a take! Soviet Communism was very environmentally destructive because it was desperately speedrunning an industrial revolution with existential stakes in a period where the climate science wasn't quite where it is today. The rich acquire their money by promoting an economy based on infinite growth via investments, largely, and the best value on those investments is achieved by cutting corners and half arsing everything that can be half arsed. It's cheaper to pull coal out of the ground than it is to invest in renewables, but without the need to produce constant profit far more labour could be devoted to doing that research and development. Even in non-energy industries, it's often easier and cheaper to ignore environmental issues and, for example, just dump your chemical runoff in the nearest river. The rich aren't directly burning down trees, but the pattern of their investments ensures that trees will be burned down. They're not some neutral group of wealthy people totally disconnected from the systems that produce that wealth, jesus. It's a little more complicated than in the Victorian days when you could identify x industrialist as the owner of y factory, but diversification is hardly absolution, is it? And that's before we even get onto the fact that the wealthy consume ridiculous amounts of energy just by being alive, on account of taking long haul flights everywhere multiple times a month and having ten cars and demanding whatever the hell they want is made available at any time regardless of the cost. The Earth could support way more people than it does now if we didn't have any of these shits. We produce enough to feed and house and care for the global population multiple times over, but then toss most of it in the bin to ensure profits for the shareholders. Malthusian poo poo was discredited years ago, jfc.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:14
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Answers Me posted:On Peston, he's one of the more difficult ones to figure out on the 'malicious bad actor or actually just thick as poo poo and easily manipulated' scale. I'm erring towards the latter I think it's actually more complex than that - I doubt he's either a deliberately bad actor or, in himself, a particularly stupid person. He just exists within an ideological framework that he's unable to comprehend because he doesn't have the tools or the will. It's very common, and it's why some of the smartest people in the world also regularly appear the most loving dumb.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:22
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Student cooking fiascos not including my own: - Guy who spent his entire first year cooking nothing but a rustlers burger every day, only variety he got was from the kebab shop - Inexplicably skinny guy who just grated cheddar and melted it with pasta 90% of the time. Had the worst farts imaginable. I foolishly as it turned out went on a date to pizza express once and he mocked me as this was 'fine dining'. - Singaporean guy who found the entire concept of egg cups so funny he was near enough rolling around on the floor when I made a soft boiled egg. He also used to make otherwise ok looking noodle heavy meals but would just chop up tesco value ham and toss it in? - Lady I'm somehow still in a relationship with a decade later coming into the kitchen while I'm cooking, after I've just emptied a jar of pasta sauce into a pan, complaining that I'm 'wasting' the remaining dregs left in the jar, and proceeding to fill it with tap water, shake it up, and pour the whole thing in completely off her own back. - Impossibly glamourous French woman who had never had porridge, got right into it and was eating 3+ bowls a day, nearly had a heart attack when she discovered the calorie content. - Guy who had never cooked before in his life who just tossed a whole potato in the oven with zero prep and caused a minor explosion. Somehow became the best chef in the house within a few months. I guess it's kind of cooking???: - Mystery pooper who pranked his entire corridor by making GBS threads on a baking tray, throwing it in the oven, then vanishing. I wasn't there but apparently a bunch of them came home after the pub to find the aromas of a very burnt turd wafting around the whole floor. - some tory maniac bit the head off a live pigeon for some reason but honestly at this point that just seems par for the course
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Sep 29, 2020 18:24
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I learned the hard way that semi-skimmed milk is not a viable substitute for cream in the vast majority of cooking situations
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Sep 29, 2020 18:40
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Guavanaut posted:Sounds like you both made good decisions. Always do this with pasta sauce. I wasn't trying to make soup!
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Sep 29, 2020 18:48
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NotJustANumber99 posted:You don't fill the jar up, just a bit of water and shake it around then pour it in. Ok but this is not what happened!
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Sep 29, 2020 19:16
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