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Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Zalakwe posted:

I didn't know that to be fair but ten years ago I was working for the Lib Dems. poo poo changes. For example I very much enjoyed Frank leading the singalong to Thatcher hosed the Kids in Dundee a few weeks ago while that Gaudian article says he regrets writing it.

Frank is a complicated guy, will happily and readily admit he has hosed up a lot, and has spent his whole career with his heart on his sleeve working through what his childhood did to him. He would just be starting to realise the impact all the coke and booze was having in his life round the time of that Guardian interview as well. Not sure if he was off it.

What you don't get from him is performative politics or lies and I think it's good to have people like that around. The world simply isn't as black and white as words on the internet makes it seem. Here is a more recent interview of his and while it doesn't go full gay luxury communism or anything like that it gives a flavour of how his views have shifted and I think the quote for the headline says a lot about his growth. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/frank-turner-interview-addiction-dad-b2004119.html

He has a tune on his latest album about how Eton was child abuse.

He produces Grace Petrie as well I believe.

My own feelings on Frank Turner are.. complicated. My little brother got to know him personally while he was living in New York and introduced me to his music with Photosynthesis, which I loved (I still consider Love, Ire and Song one of my fave albums); my wife and I had our first dance at our wedding to ‘The Way I Tend To Be’ (that I still can’t listen to without bawling like a baby) and he’s one of the very few artists that i’ve seen multiple times live since 2010. However the ‘Be More Kind’ album from 2018 burned away a huge amount of the good will I had- at a time post brexit and when there was still hope alive in this country it was basically an ode to centrism, in straight up text as well as subtext. Left a real sour taste in my mouth.

Oh yeah, and he refused to do a charity gig my bro organised back in 2011 because he wouldn’t get a big enough cut- gently caress him for that. We still had The Correspondents, Mr B and a load of other great acts that night and raised a shitload of money. :p

Still though, as someone the same age and from a similar class who was also hosed up by public school (in fact we grew up living less than a mile apart at times- his mum’s place was on my walk to school) I can’t help but feel some empathy with him. I’m glad to hear that his political stances are improving- and tbf if you’d asked me in 2010 my politics I’d have given the exact same answer.

And yeah, his support of Grace Petrie does a lot to redeem him in my eyes. Love her to bits, even if the 2019 ‘Lefty Scum’ tour she played on was… slightly missold lol.

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Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Ataxerxes posted:

I was one of these people way back in the early 2000's. Lived in Aberdeen for 5 years, did my history degree there, left and never looked back. The people were lovely, the city was nice and the education great, but absolutely everything was worse than Finland one way or another. Student food was worse and more expensive, the flats had no internet, things were moldy etc. No reason to return aside from tourism.

Huh, we would have been students there at the same time (and I took a lot of history classes). Reasonably high chance we’ve met in passing.

(If you were enough of a nerd to be involved with AURA then we almost definitely have)

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Ataxerxes posted:

Hah, small world indeed. I was there 2002 - 2007 and active in AURA at the time, though less so in the last year.

Huh, no poo poo? That was when I was most active there. Wonder if we knew each other? I mostly played in David-the-giant or Fat-Tony’s games. Was a big loud guy with long blond hair and generally wearing too much leather lol.

Actually now I come to think of it I’m pretty sure there was a Finnish dude in David’s Arcana Unearthed game in about 2003.. is the world really /really/ small?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Ataxerxes posted:

Yea, that was very likely me. Played some sort of lion humanoid fighter, if memory serves. David was and still is a nice fellow but I never much cared for Tony.

The University of Aberdeen, for some reason, sent people to advertise at Finnish student fairs in the early 2000's which is how I ended up there. It was much easier to get into a History Bachelor's program than in Finnish university and due to the way things were with the SAAS and the EU you didn't need to pay tuition fees as an EU citizen. A far few Finns ended up studying in Aberdeen and Scotland in general.

Well holy poo poo, I’ve had people I know turn out to be non-posting goons, but first time I’ve had a goon turn out to be someone I used to know.

Tony was.. weird af and frankly often gross as hell, but was always a good friend to me. Sadly he died unexpectedly back in 2015.

Kind of scary tbh how long ago our time there was now. Getting old sucks.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Jedit posted:

Would you care to sample one of our fine selection of gently caress offs? I was there years before you. :smith:

E: is this the Tony who used to hang out in the Asylum? I remember him.

Fat, grey skinned, dark haired, worked as a kitchen porter, had absolutely no idea what was or wasn’t appropriate.. (not that that really narrows down things in the nerd community..) but also had a heart of gold, buried very deeply. Ran a lot of games over the years and was known as ‘Kate Adie’ for breathlessly giving reports to people about what was happening in games they didn’t play in.

I do in fact genuinely miss him.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


happyhippy posted:

Theres a billion or so years of dead things, how come most ghosts are kids and young women from the last 200 years.

Making the mistake of answering this seriously, but…

I’m not sure of the earliest still-active ghost, but there are multiple reports of ghosts from Roman times in the UK- infamously in York where people working in the cellars of the Treasurer’s house had a detachment of Roman soldiers (including a mounted commander) appear through one wall and vanish through the other. There’s many other accounts from throughout the country of Roman or even pre-Roman hauntings.

I don’t know if a serious survey of reported hauntings has ever been conducted (frankly in a world where I didn’t drop out of uni I would have probably made it my life’s work), but there’s a huge variety of different archetypes reported. Now the interesting question to me is what defines the type of haunting an area develops..

(For the record, as I’m sure I’ve stated before, I’m pretty sure ghosts are a natural phenomenon that we just haven’t figured out the mechanism for yet. They’ve been common to every human culture and society across the planet going back to prehistoric times.)

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Skulker posted:

Nearby woods are apparently haunted by a ghostly horseman. Some local minor lord who was out riding and fell and broke his neck. On a foggy night you can hear him clip-clopping along etc etc.

Which never fails to annoy me, because why is the ghost of his horse there? It would've died someplace else at a later date, surely?

Google the stone tape theory.

Interestingly the road between my village and market Drayton is haunted by a pair of legs crossing the road. Just a pair of legs.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


jaete posted:

the mechanism is human brains op

the way they work, they make humans imagine ghosts

The exact same thing, multiple times, by multiple witnesses, in the same place over the course of many years?

Sorry, but while a lot of occurrences can indeed be debunked as down to infrasound, tricks of light etc there’s also more than enough which /can’t/ be, and to refuse to recognise that is just as dogmatic as a religious belief.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Brendan Rodgers posted:

You say that like it's up to jaete to prove ghosts don't exist, but it's the other way around. Even if there are cases where there is no answer, that answer doesn't default to ghosts. Where would the energy come from? Doing all that spooky stuff would take energy.

e: ghost cat tax:



Call it what you will- there’s a certain set of phenomena that have been reported throughout history, experienced by many many people (hell, including myself) that we don’t currently have a model to explain. Nothing spooky about it, it’s just a question of figuring out the mechanism for a natural phenomenon. Which I do believe will be done one day.

As for proof, well- for a simple example prove to someone that hasn’t experienced it that thunder exists. What we’re discussing is a transient phenomenon; I know that I’ve seen the ghost of a former housekeeper at my place in France, I know that I’ve heard footsteps going along the upstairs passageway when nobody was there (and indeed passing through a physically blocked area too). A lot of other people have too; family members, guests and people who rent the place for their holidays, previous owners going back generations (we only found out about this after we started getting worried calls from visitors and hearing them ourselves). But there’s no way to give a tangible record of that all. There are noises or images, they are witnessed, they pass on. Sure if we kept audio recordings running constantly we /might/ capture something. Or might not- we don’t know whether the things we see and here are actually there or whether it’s something that our mind produces/picks up on.

Sorry to go on, but this is a particular hobby-horse of mine. Just because something can’t be explained yet or isn’t fully understood doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Scientastic posted:

This is a bad example, because the existence of thunder fits with everything else we know about science. The existence of ghosts would mean vast swathes of physics and biology were not only wrong, but so wrong as to mean our models for how everything else works were wrong too.

How exactly would this disprove anything we know about biology or physics? Figuring out the mechanism would /add/ to the sum of our knowledge but wouldn’t necessarily disprove anything. It depends what model you’re thinking of.

Mega Comrade posted:

You have a creaky house dude. I've got one too. Knocking sounds when the heating comes on in the morning, it's the wood expanding.
My sister was adamant we had a ghost at my old nans house! Until my dad fixed a tiny hole in the roof that the wind was coming into, then the ghost left by pure coincidence.

And the five foot seven ‘shadow’ of a man cast on thin air, seen by myself and others? Furthermore I know what a house settling or expanding sounds like- I also know what heavy booted footsteps sound like. They ain’t the same.

Aphex- posted:

People want to make themselves more interesting than they are so they say they've seen a ghost.

I can be rude too, if that’s the way you want to play it? Seriously, this is just ignorant as well as insulting.

kemikalkadet posted:

(Cool story snipped)
I didn't, and still don't, believe in ghosts but that was the most hosed up terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. I don't really have any idea what a rational explanation for it would be.

So what you’re describing here is pretty much a prototypical haunting experience, that terrified you and you have no rational explanation for. Without knowing the particulars of the location or its history I can’t say more, but literally going through something like that and then saying you don’t believe that other people have experienced similar just seems wrong on an intellectual level. What makes your experience real while others aren’t?

(For the record one of the first times I experienced anything at my place it took a very similar form to what you described- heavy footsteps stomping around upstairs and up and down the stairs off and on for a period of over an hour. My brother and I (12 and 10 at the time) were home alone and so freaked out we broke open the gun cabinet and searched through the house with loaded air rifles- dead silence while we checked the place, then the footsteps started up again once we were back downstairs.)

Kin posted:


You'll never hear of a "ghost" of some loving viking or French soldier or whoever the gently caress from less popular or unknown points in history because people are ignorant of that information and don't subsequently personify the odd mix of physics they've just seen to those things.

Extremely untrue. There are reports of ghosts from basically every era imaginable- as an example the main one at our house is apparently related to a manservant from the 1820s in rural northern France; not exactly a super interesting place or time. I could point you to stories of hauntings from pretty much any time you could name, and that’s bearing in mind that those cases that make it into literature/the public domain are a tiny tiny fraction of the total.

OwlFancier posted:

If you have the concept of ghosts in your head, your mind then has "ghost" as an explanation available to it to explain physical events in the world, or experiences which are in your head, and our minds are very good at coming up with frequently untrue but compelling explanations for things we experience based on our pre-existing conceptions of the world, whether we actively subscribe to them or not.

Given that the mind is even capable of generating things entirely based off of pre-existing concepts available to it, I think the idea of ghosts is the reason people see them, not the other way around.

This is a valid point to a degree- you interpret what you see/experience through the model that your mind operates under. So for example let’s take the same occurrence and look at it in different ways- we’ll use Kemikalkadet’s story for ease of reference.

From what’s described in their text it sounds like an absolutely standard auditory haunting to me; were I investigating or present there at the time I’d attempt to eliminate the presence of other people, check the surrounding area for things that might make noises as described, observe at different times to see if the noises (in particular the voices) were noise pollution from elsewhere etc and then once those were eliminated class it as above- an auditory haunting apparition. Effectively a naturally occurring recording. That’s the model I operate under. Someone else might decide it’s the walking spirits or souls of the dead. Someone else might decide it’s God. Or Angels. Or Satan. Or a fold in the space time continuum/a time slip. Or carbon monoxide induced hallucinations.

Basically what you have is a reported unexplainable experience and assuming good faith on the part of the reporter then one needs to eliminate other possible explanations before deciding ‘yes, this is real’. By their own report they could not find any plausible cause for what they experienced, which also terrified them. But because they are operating under the model that ‘ghosts cannot exist’ then they refuse to accept that as an option- but then are left without any possible way to explain what they objectively experienced.

For me, when a set of phenomena occurs which matches a pre-existing model and there appears to be no way to explain what happened outside of said model, then denying its existence due to not matching your worldview is a short sighted approach. Yes, the mechanisms of hauntings are not understood scientifically- my entire point is that they will eventually be. When an effect is observed then there is a cause to it whether we understand it or not. Just as someone from before the development of atomic theory would be mystified as to why a piece of uranium was warm to the touch, or ancient people declared that thunder was Thor’s anvil, or gods shouting at each other or whatever- they may have been ignorant or incorrect but that doesn’t remove the reality of the observed phenomena or the presence of a cause for it.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Isomermaid posted:

They are very well understood, though. We know that human cognition is very good at some tasks and terrible at others, to the point that we developed a bunch of standards and equipment to do repeatable, controlled measurement for us at levels beyond our capabilities to observe and analyze and we have not been able to find evidence for those phenomena.

This isn't pejorative, but trusting the one set of observations we know to be faulty over all the others is just not sensible if we are looking for answers. "why can't all these good calibrated microscopes see what my hosed camera clearly shows" isn't useful enquiry to anybody. "Why and how does the brain do what it does under so many conditions" now that is somewhere where we have a bunch of uncharted land to cover.

And I know it sounds a bit science brain so let me finish by saying that I know, we are way more than just biological machines for capturing data. The fact that we're so fallible isn't a bad thing it's what make us what we are and it's beautiful. The fact that we care about loss, that millions of people across cultures have found ways of talking about what we're honestly experiencing and relating it back to people we've loved, people other people should've loved, means something. Acknowledging our imperfections is a great way to start being kinder to each other and working to mutual benefit.

So what are these repeatable, controllable measurements to investigate hauntings? What evidence are they looking for? I’m pretty well read on the subject of ghosts (not as much as some- I only have one set of bookshelves on the subject) and while to my knowledge there’s been studies conducted around infrasound as a possible cause, about the effects of air quality and such like, and while each explained certain subjective experiences (infrasound producing feelings of dread/‘being watched’ for example), there’s no holistic work that has produced solid disproof for all reported types of phenomena.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I think this is more down to not knowing what ‘questions’ to ask in a research sense. As in, if what you’re looking to study has a mechanism outside of the model you’re approaching it with, then by definition you’re going down a false path.

Unfortunately given what seems to be the most common cause for creations of hauntings (extreme distress, violent or sudden death, other forms of extremely intense emotional experience) there’s no way to ethically attempt to recreate said causes experimentally. However it is a point of interest that for example battlefields, prisons, hospitals and (though this particular one feels super-uneasy to even mention) concentration camps all appear haunted to a much greater frequency than other places. However again we’re not talking about controlled conditions here.

Come to think of it there’s probably a good horror story to be written about some mad parapsychologist attempting to create ghosts under lab conditions.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Microplastics posted:

All ghost experiences can be explained by hallucination, either individual or group.

I guess we need to define "ghost" because much like UFO, a lot of people use that interchangeably with "vehicle driven by intelligent beings from another planet" rather than understanding its true meaning, "unexplained thing"

So, somewhat supporting your view on the matter, we're really talking about UGOs (unless the apparition levitates in which case it will become a UFO)

But if we're considering a ghost to be a being that has some degree of sentience, then that's just complete bollocks. They just don't fit into any existing knowledge of the universe.

Take evolution.

When did evolution come up with ghosts? Presumably the first protocells weren't leaving ghosts everywhere, and presumably single celled organisms aren't doing so today (otherwise the sheer volume of them would be creaking floorboards everywhere and you wouldn't even be able you see a humanoid ghost because of all the e-coli ghosts in the way). So did ghosts come along with sentient brains? Was there a primate that died and left the first ever ghost? Brains are built by genes so is there a ghost gene, and only that ghost-eligible primate left ghost-eligible descendants? The more we build a hypothesis the more bollocks it sounds because that's what it is: complete bollocks from start to finish

Don't even get me started on conservation of energy

Ok, so definition of terms is indeed important.

There are actually multiple types of phenomena that fall under the heading of ‘ghost’, of various types.

You have basically:

1. Hauntings. This is the type I’m most interested in personally. These are images/sounds/occasionally smells or tactile phenomena (touching sensations) that occur multiple times at a fixed location, often over an extended period of time and to many different witnesses but do not actually respond to them or the environment (a common thing with these is changing floor/ground levels, eg the Roman soldiers in a cellar in York). I’ve personally experienced multiple of these throughout my life, and while some people do seem to be more sensitive than others they seem to be more about location, time and sometimes atmospheric conditions than the person/s experiencing them.

2. Sentient apparitions- those that appear to be intelligent, and interact with the observer. These are the type most referred to in fiction/literature, but are rather less supported by actual siting reports. I tend to consider these to be less likely to be ‘real’ but don’t discount that some people earnestly believe they have interacted with them. I don’t really have a theory or model for these tbh.

3. ‘Crisis apparitions’/phantoms of the living. These are actually one of the most common forms of sighting reported- generally a friend/relative sees an apparition of a familiar person when said person is either dying or under extreme duress. There were a lot of these sorts of apparition reported during both world wars, and they’ve again been reported going back to Roman times and probably before. These are generally one-time events.

4. Poltergeists. These should need little explanation to most- objects move without any human interaction, appear, disappear, sometimes catch fire. Often sounds/voices are also reported, occasionally figures as well. These have been very intensively studied and while we don’t know the mechanism there is a /very/ strong correlation with the presence of pubescent adolescents, especially ones who are distressed.

Of these the first and fourth type have received the most study, with poltergeists the closest to being ‘proven’- they happen, it’s loving weird, we don’t fully understand why.

With regards your point on evolution that’s kind of a false premise- there are many known animal ghosts but one theory that flies around is that a certain level of emotional sentience is required to produce the ‘energy’ that creates a haunting- that it’s often tied into extremes of emotional duress might also tie in to crisis apparitions. The theory I have on this I call the ‘human transponder’ theory, but I digress.

I’ll add though that I’m aware of at least one phantom chicken (in Pond Square in Highgate, caused by Sir Francis Bacon making an early experiment with frozen food), so maybe the level of emotional sentience isn’t /that/ high.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

Not sure when you were in your early twenties but did you hear about the Jenny Craig centre (in Newport) weird goings on back in the 90s?

My dad (in his perennial quest for a diet that worked) joined that plan and there were definitely strange goings on in whatever building they occupied at the time- including photographs that when developed showed the room behind the back wall of whatever room they were taken in (and no, photographs of the behind room had NOT been taken on the same film - I am well aware sometimes that traditional photos ie not digital sometimes overlap and give strange 'ghostly' type extra legs or whatever), wiring that continually corroded, would be replaced with new and corrode again really quickly. The centre was later found to have been built over the graveyard associated with children who had died at the adjacent workhouse in the late 19th/early 20th century?

In my opinion ghostly happenings are 'unexplained as yet physics' (though as we know spooky feelings can be induced with magnetic fields, low frequency sounds etc). If the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics is in any sense real, maybe they are overlapping universes? I don't think we can entirely dismiss ghosts as a phenomenon, but I'm much more inclined to think there is a rational explanation for what people believe they have witnessed but we just don't fully understand what it is yet rather than dismiss it as entirely made up in their heads.

Slightly adjacent example: astrology dismissed by many as 'how can a big thing millions of miles away affect humans' - and then you find out big fkr in the sky Jupiter is so massive it makes the Sun wobble, there is correlation (ok not equal causation but... ) between sun's magnetic fields & heart attacks or psychotic episodes and generation of eddy currents in body cells etc. - I did discuss some of this with refs etc in the intro chapter of my PhD but didn't push the point as it's a bit 'edgy'.

The problem with any of this stuff though is that the people with the scientific skills to explore these matters are too scared to do so because it might affect their grants / funding etc*. and the people that 'truly believe' don't want scientific evidence - even if it might support them in some way - because they prefer to believe in 'magic' and having a scientific explanation would ruin it for them.


*I have a friend who was told in no uncertain terms not to pursue a line of research relating to 'zero point energy' as it would ruin her chances at an academic career for ever even though her supervisor - a senior professor well known in his field - personally thought whatever it was was quite likely. (Don't ask me the ins and outs I really can't remember, it was over 25 years ago now).

Yeah, we pretty much have the same view on this it seems. I’m just more.. invested I guess, due to a combination of my own experiences and my near lifelong passion for the subject

TACD posted:

Years ago I was in a field with some friends and we heard a helicopter fly very low overhead and land a short distance away. It was very loud; we could hardly hear each other speak. It was also completely invisible. So I think it’s important to remember that ghosts also come in helicopter form.

E: I realised this might come across as me aping the “identify as an attack helicopter” thing which I didn’t intend, the story is true but it was probably weird wind instead of ghosts or cloaking spy tech 🚁

I do have a memory of there being a ghost helicopter reported at some point. I know for a fact there are multiple reports of phantom aircraft, boats, cars, buses (look up ‘the ghost bus of Ladbroke Grove) and god knows what else.


Anyway, how about that budget eh?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


grobbo posted:

Highgate is great because you've got the naked chicken ghost, and then you can stroll up to the Cemetery which has its famous vampire story / duelling warlocks writing angry blogs about each other.

But my favourite London legend is Bleeding Heart Yard and the corrupt rich lady who found herself dancing at her mansion's housewarming party with a mysterious and handsome stranger who then ripped out her heart, tossed it on the cobblestones, and whisked the rest of her away to Hell.

You just don't get that extra bite in pub ghost stories about White Ladies.

Grew up in Highgate, can concur. I used to do ghost hunting tours around the village and people loving /loved/ the duelling warlocks.

Incidentally about twenty years ago while doing research I joined a forum run by Sean Manchester, and got interrogated by him at length because he was convinced I was ‘a servant of Satan and his dark prince David Farrant’.

Actually digging into that whole story, it’s basically two super-autistic pagan obsessives carrying on a flame war for literally four decades.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


NotJustANumber99 posted:

What do the other chicken ghosts usually wear?

Chicken was bought by Francis Bacon who had it slaughtered, plucked and drawn then stuffed it with snow to see if it kept it fresh. In the process he caught a cold and died a few days later in a nearby house.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Chubby Henparty posted:

A friend and I broke into Highgate Cemetery on Saturday the 14th (we both worked the night before) to hunt for the :spooky:Highgate Vampire:spooky:. We stumbled about in the dark using the meagre light of our pre-smartphone screens, I think maybe we found Marx's grave and he swore he was accosted by bats but I didn't see em. Eventually we were done and headed back to the wall near the main gate that we'd first climbed over.

I pulled him back before he jumped down directly in front of a parked police van and we walked the other direction looking for another exit. Then the helicopter that we thought was way overhead put its spotlight down on us and we dove into the dirt. No idea if it spotted us or not but we jumped up and ran god knows how far to the nearest wall, scrambled over and to the nearest bus stop.

So we eventually get back to the pub we lived and worked at white as ghosts and covered in poo poo. Everyone there was like 'whoa you saw it' which was brilliant. I can also say I've been chased by the police in the lamest, nerdiest way ever.

If you were in the bit with Marx’s grave you were actually in the wrong cemetery entirely- the vampire stuff was all in the catacombs in the western cemetery. Also which pub?

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


So wrt to workplace ghosts, I used to be head of security at Coutts bank in the west end with responsibility for sites from Westminster to the eastern edge of the city of London. As such I had a few reports of weird stuff cross my desk.

- A senior banker in the vaults of Coutts 188 Fleet Street (now closed iirc) called in in a panic to report that while in said vaults they had encountered a man in a 1940s suit and gas mask, who had ducked behind a set of shelves and disappeared. Said vaults had been used for shelter during the blitz, and I /believe/ (though never bothered to confirm) the building got hit.

- The RBS campus at 250 Bishopsgate had been built on the site of both a Roman cemetery and a plague pit. The security office at said site was in a sub-basement and had one hell of an atmosphere to it- guards did not like being there at night, and people would report seeing fleeting glimpses of people and weird sounds during night shifts when the buildings were almost entirely empty.

- Coutts 440 The Strand (where I was based) had several areas with a weird reputation in spite of being reasonably new. On the top floor are three flats and a boardroom/dining area for use by top level staff and visiting royalty, super high net worth types, that sort of thing. The board room had a weird atmosphere, and in summer 2010 I had an electrician working there walk off site and refuse to return- he was up a ladder in the boardroom working on the lights, and reported footsteps circling around the bottom of his ladder and that his tools kept being moved around.
One thing I literally only found out a few weeks ago was that before my time the same area was apparently so badly haunted that an exorcism was carried out in the mid 90s.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


NotJustANumber99 posted:

lol you were head of security at some big bank and every time someone reported something you just go don't worry mate its a ghost?

No, every time someone reported something going ‘I think I’ve seen a ghost’ I’d go ‘Yeah, probably. It happens. I’ll have some men check the place to make sure though’.

If you want to know about weird poo poo /anywhere/, ask the site security team- especially the night shift.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


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* Veganoffee


All fudge is available at https://www.fudjit.co.uk and costs £3.50 a bar plus P&P. And as always, remember to use the goon code 'Roastbeefisbest' at checkout to get 5-for-4!

Get fudged!

Edit: I’m an MSC (master of sugary creations)

Camrath fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Mar 20, 2023

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Diet Crack posted:

I don't know what he's on about, there are no homes in Holborn, just broken dreams.

Seriously though, no one lives in Holborn, it's all offices.

Untrue, my folks live there. And there are actually several pretty big estates too- I used to work with a security guard who had a council flat there.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Seconding Stu on the Dynavap. It’s staggering how efficient they are, and the form factor is close enough to a joint or cig that they scratch that mental itch too.

The one downside- heating a metal cigarette with a torch lighter can make you look a bit crack-heady, but you can get induction heaters (like the one in Stu’s pic there) to make the whole thing totally flameless and silent.

…really should pick one of them up at some point actually.

And yeah, if you’re white and can speak well pigs don’t give a poo poo. Almost exactly a year ago my friend and I had the cops roll up on us on a back road in forestry commission land (somehow!) while we were not only finishing a joint but also both dressed as cowboys and carrying guns. Had absolutely zero problems whatsoever after I employed my best public school accent, told them I was the one smoking and wasn’t driving, etc etc etc.

Though tbf I am known amongst my friends as a pig-whisperer in general. Had similar things happen multiple times throughout my life.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Nothingtoseehere posted:

This might be wrong but aren't cannaboloids only fat-soluble, unlike nicotine which is water soluble. And putting anything other than flavoured water in your vape is how you end up with popcorn lung and vaping which is actually dangerous to your health.

Weed vapes either use extracted cannabis oils or dry herb. While you /can/ get thc vape juice you generally will use a different attachment than the standard tank.

Oops doublepost.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Sanford posted:

Cartridges for weed vapes, really? I’ve never seen such a thing. The instructions often talk about “dabs” and I have no idea what that is either. I fill mine with bits of an actual plant one of my neighbours grows in a suspiciously whitewashed greenhouse on the allotments.

Edit: or buy it from the madman who lives in the woods of course. The normal ways of getting weed.

The cartridges just screw onto standard 510 threaded connectors. Tend to be very low wattage, so basically any 510 battery or mod from the past decade will work with them. They’re not a huge thing over here yet that i’ve seen, with most being imported from the states.

Personally I really like them for discretion or when you need something on the go- as they’re sealed units they don’t smell unless you hit them (and even then it’s not a very strong weed smell) and the small form factor is very handy.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Tesseraction posted:

There is definitely some weed smells that are gross as all hell. Personally I just keep walking until the smell goes away.

Do like the idea of Rude Teens going into some posh district of London and lighting up in someone's front garden and fanning the smoke towards the first floor bedrooms 'harm' the kids.

Speaking as someone who grew up in a very posh part of London, I was pretty much the only person my age I knew who /didn’t/ smoke up in their parent’s garden/shed/greenhouse/kitchen/whatever on the reg. I came to weed in my early 20s with all the passion of a late convert.

Of course this also meant I started out smoking insanely good named strain stuff from my brother’s friends. Took me years to find a source that equalled the quality after I moved out.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Got to admit, I really really wish my school had offered courses on cooking and the like- might have discovered my metier for candy making thirty years ago and be a Captain Of Industry like we were told we would all inevitably be.

Though admittedly my absolute favourite subject was chemistry taught by the great Dr Szydlo. Which if you think about it is just cooking on a very small scale..

Also got taught enough about making explosives to start a pretty good insurgency should the need arise lol

E: Our history education at least was pretty good, though during our a-level course on the 3rd Reich I (as the only non Jewish kid in the class, also 6’2” with a blond buzz cut) could have done without being made to stand at the front as a demonstration of what Nazi propaganda defines as a ‘perfect aryan’.

E2: in my gcse CDT class I literally made a working firearm from first principles, with the full support of the school. Which was bloody awesome (at the time I wanted to be a gunsmith), but now does raise a slight element of ‘wtf were they thinking’. Had a collection of fascinated teachers come to watch me test fire it in the school rifle range, using gunpowder cooked up in the chemistry labs.

Camrath fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Apr 4, 2023

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Red Oktober posted:

:what:

That is.... something.

Did wonders for my already fairly low popularity, and was one of the reasons I completely checked out of my school socially by the Upper VI. :/

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Tesseraction posted:

lmao

I hope your classmates also appreciated how weird that was for you.

It loving sucked. They did not.

Edit: once again I find myself doing the ‘phrasing what was a pretty traumatising experience as a funny story’ thing. Should really try and stop doing that.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


forkboy84 posted:

Camrath went to a private school, got to train the next generation of officers for the Empire

We also had a literal room full of machine guns for the CCF.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Z the IVth posted:

Was there every a high school chemistry class that didn't immediately devolve into attempts to make explosives.

It didn’t devolve so much as straight out start that way. Each friday evening chemistry club I managed a literal production line of fourteen to sixteen year olds making nitrocellulose (aka guncotton).

Syzdlo knew how to make teenaged boys interested in his subject. Also well worth checking out his lectures on YouTube- he’s a great public speaker. Used to be his assistant for those throughout my late teens (though before the age of easy video).

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Pesky Splinter posted:

My chemistry teacher was a civil war reenactor, and said he had a licence to legally make a certain amount of black powder for their reenactions.

So we just made gunpowder. A pile we lit in the lab, and the whole bloc had to be evacuated because of all the smoke (that was brilliant), and then another time we stole clay from the art department and made small bombs, and detonated them on the school sports fields. Kinda hosed up thinking about it now, because we were lighting the fuse and running away from little bits of clay shrapnel.

When I was 15-16 my friends and I, when other kids were doing sad poo poo like drinking and meeting girls and stuff, would amuse ourselves by hitting up the local chemists for supplies then heading onto Hampstead Heath to experiment with extra-curricular bomb making.

To pretty good results actually- we eventually iterated designs for self-igniting Molotovs and thermite grenades. And yes, we did test them out successfully- frankly it amazes me that we made it to adulthood with all our fingers and no criminal records.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Pesky Splinter posted:

Sadly we just stopped at the clay bombs. Our first batch was a fizzle because the clay was too damp. So making sure it was nice and dry was the only iterating we did.

The only thermite we ever used when when another one of our teachers managed to break the sink with one demonstrating it's sheer heat.

He put it in the sink (on some kind of stand IIRC), had one of those flimsy plastic safety screen, and ignited it with a long stick. The plastic screen melted, his eyebrows got seared off as he was too close, and the sink literally cracked down the middle. It was fun as gently caress.

"Chemistry" comes from the word "Al-chemia" meaning, "let's see if we can make some cool poo poo explode".

The thermite grenades tbh were the point where I was like ‘ok, we’ve figured out how to do this and proven it works.. we should now stop because these are some serious poo poo’. Thermite does not gently caress around.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


keep punching joe posted:

Good day for the GCHQ guy that reads this thread to update his xlsm doc.

I am well aware that what is ‘fun, educational hijinks’ for public school boys in the 90s would be ‘disappeared into Guantanamo or equivalent’ for anyone today without that level of privilege.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


feedmegin posted:

I went to a private school and didn't have access to a frigging firing range, I think Camrath went to a public school :P

Yeah. You can literally figure out which from info dropped in the past couple of pages. :p

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Just made hot cross bun French toast, and will be spending the rest of the afternoon shooting holes in targets at the end of my garden. Frankly I quite like Easter- it’s an excuse to pig out and be lazy without all the family bullshit attached to Christmas. Also the weather is a bit better!

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


New fudge released! Also important announcement!

Howdy fudge fans!

We've got a lovely collection available on the website for you this month, including a couple of particularly tasty and popular Easter specials. However, I'm afraid there's some slightly bad news. Since 2020 our costs have more than doubled- we've done our best to keep our prices at the same point as when we started, but it's just no longer sustainable anymore. :(

Therefore, as of the 1st of May all fudge bars will be charged at £4 each, rather than the current £3.50. Currently all our coupon codes and other offers will remain as they are- so 'roastbeefisbest' will still get you 5-for-4 at checkout! We're going to see how these interact with our new prices, so that may be subject to change in the future. In short- get while the getting's good! This will be the last fudge-drop at the current price, so fill your fists with delicious sugar!

Current Flavours

Original Vanilla
Unicorn Barf
Rum and Raisin
Irish Cream
Chocolate Orange
Oranges and Lemons
Lemon Meringue Pie
Cafe Americano
Whisky and Ginger
Chai Latte
Chocolate Honeycomb
Cheesecake
Cookies and Cream
Most Eggscellent!
- Easter special! Milk chocolate fudge full of Cadbury's Mini-Eggs.
Lind-Awesome - Easter special! Milk Chocolate fudge studded with melt-in-your-mouth Lindor eggs


All fudge is now live at https://www.fudjit.co.uk at £3.50 + P&P per bar (until the end of the month!) and is sent via Royal Mail first-class signed for. . And as always, use the UKMT code 'Roastbeefisbest' to get 5-for-4 at checkout.

Get fudged!

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


smellmycheese posted:

No Coronation Fudge?

I have pride and self-respect.

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


G1mby posted:

Interested in a few bars - are you likely to be at Empire this weekend?

Afraid I don’t do Empire- find the whole thing rather intimidating tbh

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Gravitas Shortfall posted:

It's pretty chill if you treat it as a fantasy themed holiday and sit around drinking real booze bought with fake money. You're never in any danger of being fake-stabbed while popping to the toilets either.

See I keep telling myself I’ll try it out, then go onto one of the faction fb groups and see people being like ‘well, that hood is too late-14th century when the brief is early’ and lose all interest and desire. :p

…as if I haven’t literally today dropped 300 quid on an accurate custom tailored 95th rifles uniform for a Sharpe Larp at the end of may. Tbh I’m not sure how well I’d do at a fest larp these days- I mostly just do Eyelarp filmsim and one sci-fi system (Orion Sphere, which is awesome and everyone should come).

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Green Wing posted:

Oh poo poo i almlst missed larpchat.

You get what you put into Empire -I used to go religiously, and Marlstrom prior to that, but if you want to get ahead in the political game there is so much exegetical effort it gets exhausting imo. Much easier to treat it as a fun social fest eith beer in a field. I was a cardinal for a little bit many years ago and it was rough.

People are weird about kit in all games, I find myself more and more these days wanting games I can just show up to not having crafted or done loads of IC correspondence beforehand. Again I have so little free time these days and as I get older I realise a lot of the very comfortable oxbridge larpers I became friends with do just have a lot of free time and money, and it doesn't matter to them if a weekend destroys them physically and emotionally for weeks afterwards because they are very secure.

I now just occasionally go to a 40k serial game or whatever sci-fi obe-shots take my eye, where I can just pull an archetype off the shelf and look good in mostly milsurp

Oh, if you do Death Unto Darkness we definitely know some of the same people. Though tbh I don’t think I’m more than one degree removed from any goons who’ve been in a larp field.

If you like sci fi you should totally try out Orion Sphere- it’s a cool game, about 100-120 players at the moment with a really rich background and (most importantly to me!) spaceship bridge simulators as a major game mechanic.

I play in the space-fash faction, which naturally consists almost entirely of leftist LGBT types lol.

Doctor_Fruitbat posted:

Yay, larp chat. Curious Pastimes in a couple of weeks, I am going to spend most of it hiding in bushes and jumping out at people, because that's just the kind of game I like to play.

I am currently in the middle of buying my first home and am less stressed about moving than I am about still being stuck in a rat infested shithole with no insulation and too many people and also it's the reason I decided to buy in the first place, so it's been really hard to get in the mood for spending a weekend hauling around the absolutely stupid amount of gear my character has, but I really need a solid weekend away from this place.

I may well try one of the summer events at CP this year as I do have a vague hankering for fantasy stuff- all I do these days is either real world themed (western, pirate, an amazing golden age of Hollywood/pulp adventure game last year, the aforementioned up-coming Shlarpe) or sci-fi.

I also may turn up peddling fudge at a few games. People want me to trade IC at several systems..

Josef bugman posted:

I went to empire once and did not have a lot of fun at it. For starters I was expecting less mud, more available food, less expenses and a bit of a better intro to a character rather than "heres a field, have fun".

That and the fact that politics, field stuff and everything else seems like a distant second to a lot of folks. If I had a character that I needed to play as, or could have fun with, sure but the entire idea of a lot of it was very much not my cup of tea.

I want to do a Glorantha Larp at some point, at least that I'd know the lore for!

Tbh aside from the kit nazis you’ve hit a lot of things that also turn me off from Empire.

All of us should decide on a system, turn up and rock some sort of monster-munch themed cult or something of similar cringe levels.

Edit: Oh yeah, also if any of you go to Uk Gaming Expo this year I’ll be helping to run the spaceship bridge sim there. You should totally try it out. :)

Camrath fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Apr 17, 2023

Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Bought an account in 2004 when a furry acquaintance of mine had their LJ featured as the ALotD. Not really sure /why/ exactly, but I found a lot of interesting stuff to read and almost entirely lurked throughout the noughties. Christ, it’ll be 20 years on this site next march and that’s terrifying.

I’ve told this story before, but I only started going into the politics threads (Laissez Faire back then) when I was working in security management for RBS/G4S and was asked to keep a casual eye on this part of the web by Group Risk in the run up to the 2009 and 2010 protests in London. I just ended up sticking around and (to use a phrase that’s really not aged well, but which I lack an alternative to) ‘went native’ after being a horrible right-wing libertarian my whole life, in as much as I had any concept of ideology.

I think one of my very first posts in the UKMT was an essay about my best friend (who is trans), prompted by some particularly hateful screed from one of the guardian transphobes; people actually responded well and I started to actually take in the politics stuff rather than dismissing it out of hand. And now look at me: the socialist fudge baron of Shropshire, again thanks mostly to this thread.

Funny where life takes you.

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Camrath
Mar 19, 2004

The UKMT Fudge Baron


Danger - Octopus! posted:

I meant to mention this ages ago when I realised, but while I've not been in a larp field, I'm pretty sure we're only a degree removed because you're friends with my ex of some years ago. She's a larper and I saw your irl name (which I only know from buying fudge, not stalking you although if it got me fudge I might put in the effort I guess) in her facebook comments at some point lmao.

Lol, Mandy right? We were playing Werewolf: The Apocalypse one night and she mentioned you’d had a vague ‘wtf’ when I posted fudge advice at her on FB.

Edit: Catte tax

Camrath fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Apr 18, 2023

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