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Do you prefer the extended summer thread format? This poll is closed. |
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126 | 44.21% |
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| I'm Scottish |
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120 | 42.11% |
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Crazy how I feel like I have a black hole where part of my life should be, basically zero memories for a year and a half. It's like I went to bed a relatively successful 29 year old and woke up an unemployed 31 year old layabout. Pandemics amirite.
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Jun 1, 2021 13:22
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Guavanaut posted:You can do that with spirits too but it costs more. I did both!
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Jun 1, 2021 13:27
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Same here, though less on the successful. I genuinely feel so bad for people who were late teens/early twenties and had just gone to uni or whatever when this all hit. That's a huge chunk of some of the most important formative years of their life stolen from them. For some almost their entire uni experience has been from their bloody childhood bedrooms on Zoom. It's grim. Not to mention they've spent the whole time being gaslit by a bunch of a boomers who don't give a poo poo about them and wouldn't in a million years have made the same sacrifices had this been a disease that overwhelmingly killed young people and left the old alone. Pistol_Pete posted:Yeah, same. Normal life ground to a halt in March 2020 and it's just been the same repeating day ever since then. Getting up, doing my day's work from home, going on my government-approved walk around the neighbourhood, then dispiritedly browsing the forums until it's time to reset to the morning again. I've been inside some pubs over the last few weeks and it is an incredibly weird thing to feel almost normal again ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 15:20
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OwlFancier posted:That was also my university experience but without the zoom and also it was like 10 years ago. My condolences!
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Jun 1, 2021 16:07
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I sometimes laugh when I remember discussing jobs with my parents because for so long they assumed the world was still like it was when they were my age in the late 70s/80s, where you could more or less turn up to a business with no qualifications and ask for a job and if they liked the look of you a good portion of the time they'd give you a shot. I still cringe remembering when they insisted I march around Newcastle as a 17 year old in the late 2000s with a stack of CVs handing them in to a bunch of very bemused people in their 20s/30s who clearly knew they were going straight in the bin, because obviously. I'm just glad they've seen the error of their ways and mellowed out a bit on the 'lazy millenials!!!  ' poo poo now they're a bit older, but I guess having a kid with a PhD who can't find a job would probably do that. I for one love hearing about how I'd apparently have been able to walk into pretty much any uni and get a decent-paying position of some kind back in their day, it really does make me feel much better.e: My partner's dad is an engineer and has told me at length about how his skills were in such demand when he entered the job market he was able to go back and forth between prospective employers and essentially make them bid on him, so he started off on an absurdly good salary. He's significantly more wealthy than my own parents and still pulls a lot of completely out of touch bullshit and I wonder how connected these things are. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jun 1, 2021 |
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Jun 1, 2021 16:36
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Szmitten posted:They're old and watch the news and live in a nostalgia bubble and don't comprehend the environment unique to even their own under-40s children who still haven't been able to afford their own house yet. This is 100% everywhere. My parents paid like £25k (if that) for a three bed house lmao
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Jun 1, 2021 16:52
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stev posted:I feel like there has to be a huge number of over 70s who just have no contact with anyone and no way of getting to a vaccination centre even if they wanted to. Iirc very elderly people were getting them done at their gp surgery
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Jun 2, 2021 16:04
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Idk how they're working any of this out because a friend of mine who's 34ish hasn't even been contacted yet but someone he knows who lives on the same street is 29 and already had their first dose (neither have any underlying conditions that would get them into a priority group).
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Jun 2, 2021 17:47
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Szmitten posted:To be fair I'm also going to for the place I know supports Pfizer and not some pre-victorian 2 bedroom house looking "clinic" in a village that couldn't fit a fridge through the door. I wonder how geography has actually shaped the vaccine rollout. I would imagine Pfizer in particular is essentially not viable to distribute to small rural communities like the Western Isles because the nearest big hospital is hours away and what village clinic has the facilities to store things at -70c for any length of time?
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Jun 2, 2021 18:17
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Lobster God posted:Had my first Pfizer about an hour ago. Bit nauseous and light headed for 10 mins or so after. Now my arm's a bit tingly and head feels heavy but not much else so far. Unless you're talking serious allergic reactions any side-effect that comes on within 10 mins is probably mostly adrenaline or anxiety (or both) from the shot.
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Jun 2, 2021 21:39
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Dabir posted:Christ alive my phone contract costs £20 a month and that gets me more data than I could possibly use without going out of my way to try. (O2 though, so I bet that won't last long now). What do these cunts think they're going to use "unlimited" on? I get unlimited data with smarty for 20 quid a month and just use my phone as a hotspot so I don't need to bother with WiFi for the flat, it's pretty cost effective
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Jun 3, 2021 14:27
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happyhippy posted:Exactly, have often been the one not taking part as couldn't afford it. Seems a bit of an excessive response! If someone is obviously taking the piss just exclude them from the rounds in future. My pals never really did rounds when I was younger and even going into uni most people just got whatever they wanted themselves. A few of the guys I've made friends with since then have done it, but only usually when they're in smallish groups. If you're only with one or maybe two other people and you're drinking near enough the same thing and at the same pace it's fine but any more than that and it just gets overly complicated and silly. It's not much of an issue for me because I am quite a big drinker, but I can also see how it would be kind uncomfortable for people who aren't, if they're implicitly expected to keep up. I have a couple of friends who are ridiculous boozers - they can easily put away 3+ bottles of wine each over a night of drinking, then usually have spirits too - and they don't do rounds as such, but they always just offer to top you up/buy you another drink when they get one (they're pretty well off and generous with it, really sound people). I'm somethings sitting there thinking christ, steady on, this is all a bit too enthusiastic for me. It's not a big deal to say no and skip one, but I can imagine it might be awkward if I didn't know them so well and felt obligated or whatever. But yeah, the long and short of it is do it if you want, don't if you don't, it's meant as a bonding activity and if you get weird about it you ruin things way worse than just politely declining. Mind, if I was doing rounds and everyone ordered a normal drink but one rear end in a top hat asked for some top shelf whisky or whatever I would laugh in their face and tell them to get it themselves, I genuinely don't know how anyone would just buy it then get all pissy about it later. If you do it's kind of on you. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jun 3, 2021 |
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Jun 3, 2021 15:32
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stev posted:Places that make you order via app post-Covid have done wonders for the group pub experience. More often than not people will just order a drink as and when they want one since it takes seconds to do. otoh a lot of the apps places have rushed out to do this are unwieldy as hell. It took me about 30min fiddling with one of them to order because it did not want to accept my address details (you'd think 'living in a flat rather than a house' wouldn't be an issue, but eh), and of course you needed to make an account to order, there was barely any 4g signal, the pub's wifi was shite, and even after making an account it wouldn't save any card details. I just ordered everyone's drink because gently caress going through that every time anyone wants a beer. If anything we do rounds more now. Spoons is hot garbage but their app is at least efficient. I am not a techie so maybe it is really complicated but seriously how hard is it to just link your app up to google pay.
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Jun 3, 2021 16:38
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stev posted:poo poo like this really makes me feel like this isn't going to end, even if that's obviously not the case. Cases rising is Not Good but there's no reason to imagine we'll get to the same position we were in over last winter because the people driving infections are way less likely to get very ill or die than they were back then, and overwhelming the nhs was always as much the issue as direct virus casualties.
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Jun 3, 2021 20:49
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I'm still not sure 'It's fine if people get infected as long as the hospitals can cope with the number of people getting sick' is that reassuring an argument. There's a difference between saying something is fine and that it won't cause the mass national paralysis it might have
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Jun 3, 2021 22:10
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namesake posted:Well because the vaccinations aren't 100% effective, so while you provide immunity by 90% from previous waves (at best) that 10%+ still gets really large if you just let everyone take their nans out to dinner inside a restaurant. They're not 100% effective at stopping you catching covid but they are near enough 100% effective at stopping you getting seriously ill with it. E:fb
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Jun 3, 2021 22:51
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^^ yes, deaths won't reach what they did but the point is the small number that do happen will have been completely avoidablenamesake posted:Fair enough on the vaccine effectiveness, but the forecasts are still expecting thousands of deaths because the opening up is getting ahead of the vaccination program. Yeah, 100%, even if only a tiny fraction of people in their 20s and 30s die there are going to be enough cases that a few will, and yes this will be totally unnecessary, but  My mum has been weirdly un-boomer about this and genuinely thinks we should have prioritised vaccinating the young while asking the elderly to isolate a bit longer, because transmission is driven by younger people and they're missing far more important and formative chunks of their lives than their grandparents. I'm increasingly agreeing with her tbh.
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Jun 3, 2021 23:11
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Yeah, vaccines only work against future potential infections, they won't do poo poo for long covid symptoms you already have. It's a proper pet peeve of mine when in movies and stuff someone is dying of an illness and there's a desperate search for a 'vaccine' to save them
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Jun 3, 2021 23:17
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blunt posted:There's actually reports that Vaccination may help long covid symptoms. Further studies needed etc. well poo poo, that's very cool if true
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Jun 4, 2021 01:35
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Anyway, aren't unions supposed to be politically active? 'Labour Party MP furious at being held to account by UK's largest trade union' would have been an utterly laughable headline in Hardie's day, I would imagine
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Jun 4, 2021 02:29
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OwlFancier posted:Why are so many famous smart people also sex weirds? Because it doesn't work the other way around I know that for sure Check out James Joyce lol
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Jun 4, 2021 15:00
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I'm about 2/3 of the way through Ulysses and some chapters are genuinely cool, especially once you get into a rhythm with the stream of consciousness style. Others bits (particularly the Stephen Dedalus POV sections, and yes yes I know that's the point and he's making fun of himself) are quite clearly just Joyce showing off though, because every single bloody line is some cryptic reference to a classical author or philosophical concept or some other niche topic, and you really need to kind of understand each bit to make the rest make sense. Unless you're some absurd polymath you're going to be looking up references every few lines, and that's even before you get to the fact large parts of it require you to have a working knowledge of latin and greek and half a dozen other languages and most of the chapters are extremely long. It's 100% worth reading but I would definitely recommend doing it alongside a companion book that summarises and explains each passage for you to avoid a heap of pain. I guess some people probably enjoy the challenge, but ugh I have other things I could be doing. I think the people who say Joyce just was just an arrogant self-declared big-brain rear end in a top hat who did a deliberately obtuse fart on a page and called it literature are being kinda uncharitable, but I sympathise with the frustration.
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Jun 4, 2021 16:37
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smellmycheese posted:It’s impossible to take Joyce seriously once you’ve read his pervy sex letters about sniffing Nora Barnacle’s farts 10/10 username/post combo
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Jun 4, 2021 16:47
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Guavanaut posted:A battle diagram that they copied from elsewhere, I think. We really do live in the stupidest country don't we
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Jun 5, 2021 11:48
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academic twitter is currently having a meltdown about this loving dumbass (and rightfully so) https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1402114261229477889?s=20 the responses are mostly just people very reasonably saying 'we're not saying don't have a pint at a conference we're just saying if you're 53 year old senior professor please don't invite me, a 26 year old woman, alone to a private dinner, get blasted, and try to have sex with me, thanks' he seems completely unable to understand why this might be a poor take ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 17:12
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Miftan posted:I went drinking with one of my lecturers once and our TAs came out with us a bunch of times, but it helps that I did philosophy and that's perfect getting drunk talk. It is kinda a tricky one because I absolutely see the value in being able to informally socialise and even get drunk with people of varying seniority, but then I am a dude and I can see why hanging out with a bunch of horny old possibly predatory dudes in positions of authority might be very much not how a young lady would want to spend her evening! I actually have no idea how you square the circle here between keeping the good things you get by allowing personal friendships and preventing harassment and abuse, from a policy perspective.
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Jun 9, 2021 17:27
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Guavanaut posted:Take inspiration from Imperial China and have an elevated academic caste of eunuchs. Not actually the worst idea
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Jun 9, 2021 17:33
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Tbqh even as a PhD student I didn't really socialise much with faculty except maybe for a few pints at conferences. The idea of going out on the lash with them regularly as an undergrad seems very weird to me.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:41
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It'll be interesting to see the centrists in Labour arguing that after Keith continues to have all the presence of a wet teatowel and leads the party to a more crushing defeat than Corbyn could have dreamed of, the answer will be to elect an even more triangulating, focus-grouped empty suit nerd. How do you even spin something when you've been proved wrong so many times? Things change and shitheads though they are they will have to adapt and stop cargo culting Blair eventually, because there'll come a point where their own cushy jobs are actually at risk. Probably not for a good while yet though. I really hope the unions withdraw funding and put their money towards a new party. A properly resourced actual left party doing organising and grassroots stuff alongside a decent media strategy could begin to make real inroads today, if it accepted that it wouldn't be winning and elections for a while. E: the absolute worst long term outcome next election would be an unconvincing win by labour under Starmer (or similar) due to the tories making GBS threads the bed, but I doubt that will happen because with the pandemic rhetoric and him claiming the successful nhs vaccine rollout happened because of rather than in spite of the government, I can see bojo locking things down for at least another round. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jun 9, 2021 |
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Jun 9, 2021 22:33
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I wonder if the brewdog guys believe their own bullshit, because it would take some cognitive dissonance to earnestly think you're a cool, ethical, rebellious, anti-establishment, no suits here company while using phrases like 'growth journey' (and every other type of management doublespeak you can imagine)
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Jun 10, 2021 13:17
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Also I hate this because most brewdogs are quite nice places to drink, but I guess I sometimes go to spoons too so 
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Jun 10, 2021 13:20
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Guavanaut posted:Let me guess, mid 2010s, around the peak of all that "Enjoy the Decline" and "Curse of the High IQ" poo poo where being an abrasive rear end in a top hat went from being a Tucker Max/Maddox style gimmick to actual career advice by people who bought into the surface uncritically, before the world saw that that just gets you Donald Trump? I used to love Maddox then realised quite a few of my pals weren't enjoying it quite as ironically as they thought they were and yeah...
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Jun 10, 2021 13:40
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goddamnedtwisto posted:About half of this thread voted Lib Dem in 2010, lol Tbf for a lot of us it was out first GE and we were very young and naive. Clegg did say all the right things at the time, and for me in particular all the lovely things about the country I could remember had happened under new labour. In retrospect I should have voted TUSC or something but eh, you live and learn.
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Jun 10, 2021 16:04
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Pistol_Pete posted:https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/clifton-protesters-against-pedestrianisation-block-5501515 mediaphage posted:Nelson residents fight to overturn Pendle Council tree plantation Seeing the kind of stupid bullshit that middle class resident association weirdos get indignant about is honestly one of the strongest arguments against anarchism, imo. Any kind of localised direct democracy decisionmaking would just be arguing about this dumb nonsense day in and day out. Someone needs to be able to tell these clowns to shut up because the trees are getting planted and the road's getting pedestrianised and if they don't like it they're welcome to submit their objections in writing to the ministry of development, where they will be considered with the utmost urgency.
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Jun 11, 2021 16:27
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As someone who was pretty anxious about it last year I really am beginning to get the point where I think the mental health outcomes of further lockdowns might well outweigh the damage done by another modest spike amongst a mostly vaccinated population. If we'd gone full strict shutdown with no exceptions for a bit like China did in wuhan, that would have been fair enough, and we'd have been through it and back to normal by now like they are. Our approach of intermittent confused, half arsed lockdowns with a million exceptions is basically pointless as long term strategy. You simply cannot put an entire country in house arrest for years on end without serious consequences, especially for people who live alone or in lovely situations, and that does need to be considered and weighed up.
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Jun 11, 2021 23:32
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namesake posted:As annoying and inherently obvious it is when people are abusing or ignoring the rules due to the selective enforcement generally lots of people did try. They just weren't able to stop doing things like travelling to work or living in cramped shared housing. A lot of people did, but vast numbers didn't. Some of them didn't give a poo poo, others weren't able to because of work or other responsibilities. Enforcement seemed to be limited to shaming a few ramblers because they'd driven to some countryside beauty spot rather than go for a walk from the front door down Rochdale high street, and there was virtually no support for people in precarious employment living in private rentals. So you end up in the worst possible situation where you still have people mixing enough to maintain the pandemic while well-intentioned people trying to do their best uselessly hide in their houses and go stir-crazy because that's what they've been told they need to do. In reality, you just end up with spiralling mental health issues while doing very little to meaningfully stop the spread of covid. You can either go full zero exceptions lockdown for a few months and put the resources in place to make sure that happens, or you can ignore it and let the virus run rampant while keeping everything open and acknowledge a bunch of people will die. There are arguments for and against both, but they're at least distinct strategies on how to deal with the pandemic. We managed the most perfectly poo poo non-compromise between the two, where we shut everything and asked everyone very nicely to stay indoors, but did it in a way that meant it would never create the hard firebreak more authoritarian countries achieved, and we absolutely destroyed a bunch of people's social lives and mental health for a year and a half (so far) as a result, and we still had one of the highest death tolls in the world. So what, exactly, was the point? If we were going to have more civilian casualties than WW2 anyway we might as well have at least been able to have a pint with our mates while it happened, rather than sitting at home stewing. Private Speech posted:I got a lecture from the landlords wife that I can't leave the window open when I leave my room "for security reasons". ime landlords almost always don't really know most of the legalities of renting, assume their tenants don't know their rights, or probably more often both. They get scared very fast if they think you know your stuff. I wrote an angry email to my letting agents a while back after they booked an electrician to come do PAT testing right in the middle of the pandemic without consulting me, saying absolutely loving not, we would not be allowing access, and in future we insist that they contact us in advance to arrange a mutually agreeable date and time in future. They emailed back acting all aggrieved but they didn't send the guy and I haven't heard from them in months about anything, which suits me perfectly. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jun 12, 2021 |
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Jun 12, 2021 14:41
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My partner used to live in an HMO and apparently her landlord also used to just turn up unannounced to loiter around the kitchen/living room. Seems sketchy as hell that they can do that without good reason.
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Jun 12, 2021 16:00
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:Doesn't the 'quiet enjoyment' rule have something to say here? In an HMO iirc you only have that right to your own room, because that's what you're renting, not the full flat.
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Jun 12, 2021 18:01
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Marxists are good, except for the ones who aren't
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Jun 13, 2021 16:44
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 21:12 |
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I'm a Marxist, btw, and am extremely poo poo
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Jun 13, 2021 16:47
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