Bellend Sebastian

Give the PM a golden shower? Well nobody told ME

I dunno! I know GPS tells you where YOU are, but I've no idea if it tells anybody else of your location

They crashed into Mount Erebus didn't they? I had to look it up to remind myself of why it happened, and it's fairly incredible - the flight plan was altered without the air crew being told, so when the pilot descended to allow the passengers a better look at the stunning Antarctic vistas, they flew straight into a ruddy great volcano that as far as they were concerned, wasn't meant to be there. Awful

No, it doesn't imply that it was deliberate - it's when an aircraft is not out of control, and hits the ground because those flying it weren't aware of the danger until it was too late to do anything about it, or at all. I'm too lazy to look to see if there's any data on this but before the days of GPS and other navigation aids it was a really common cause of accidents as it was difficult to pinpoint your location if visibility was less than perfect

If you've got time on your hands - and even if you haven't - look up pretty much any aircraft type, especially anything that entered service more than a couple of decades ago, and go straight to "notable accidents and incidents" and you'll wonder how the industry ever "took off" (laughs at own joke). Some models have so many they get a separate page dedicated to it It does sort of explain why being scared of flying is a thing; it's incredibly safe now but you don't have to go back that far in time and there'd be some horrific crash in Croydon or somewhere every few weeks

"Controlled descent into terrain" is the crash investigation terminology, I believe. If there's one thing that many, many hours spent reading about air crashes on Wikipedia has taught me, not just crashing into bits of high ground in the dark/bad weather is an excitingly modern concept and until about the 1970s occurred with alarming frequency

I'm not sure what's more depressing - that this was said in the first place, or that there's an audience that will hear this analogy and say yes this is correct and makes sense

I came in here just to post this: I agree, his stuff is wonderfully bizarre and creative

I bet none of them claimed to have solved the mystery by eating crisps like I did, why am I not a social media star?

That's what I believed but my exhaustive and thorough research suggests that although they lived in Germany they were originally from London. I couldn't be bothered to find out why they ended up in Germany, perhaps they just enjoyed the German sense of order

My brother woke me up to tell me about Princess Diana, and the other waking-me-up-with-bad-news-unnecessarily-as-it-doesn't-really-affect-me that I remember was my Dad waking me up to tell me about the Kegworth air disaster, which is a grand way to see in your birthday

Can't believe your attitude, this is OUR song, so callous

I mentioned this in another thread a few days ago, but crikey, Jon Ronson's "Things Fell Apart" is a wild ride to say the least. It will probably make you even more scared of America than you are already, but I'd say as close to essential listening as you can get

Get some electrolyte tablets, and ridiculous though it sounds, if you've not got any, eat some crisps. When you really sweat it's the electrolyte/salt loss that does you, and it makes you feel very, very bad. I discovered this by accident once when I went for a run years ago when it was stupid hot, felt absolutely horrendous the next morning - like, truly awful, rough as - and just taking on more fluid wasn't making me feel any better at all. Had some crisps (because I thought I should eat something, not because I thought they'd help) - felt better almost immediately

Just done 10k and it already feels too bloody warm for it

For fans of outdated cultural references like me (I mean I'm a fan of them, I've never been a cultural reference) there's lots of fun Day of The Triffids stuff going round. I did love that book though

Didn't want to see them and definitely didn't forget to look (cries)

So when were you getting round to telling me that the London Boys were both killed in a car accident in 1996? F**k's sake

I credit the AstraZeneca vaccine for the great vibes I give off to this day

You seem oddly disinterested in our vision for a better Britain, Madam, but can I tell you what I've learned about the Avro Anson?

Who wants detail? I've got enough detail in these Wikipedia entries on obscure inter war military aircraft thank you VERY much. I can quite understand why it might be tempting - and very, very satisfying - to sit and watch the Tories implode and why that might be part of the strategy if indeed it is. I do worry though, and this is purely based on talking to people that I want to shake, that this "all politicians are the same/none of them do anything/why bother" attitude is quite entrenched at the moment and although a shiny manifesto might yank folk out of their torpor shouldn't there be a bit more build up to that?

I assume that at some point Labour will come up with some policies or do something to generate interest beyond simply not being the Tories, which seems to be enough for a lot of folk at the moment

I dunno, I think it's still too easily avoided. If you don't like facing up to the reality of things, there are places you can go media wise that provide a pretty good safe haven from it. My worry is how big the population you've referred to is

"We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' DOWN!" Ha ha, wheeeee etc I do wonder what would happen if the sort of coverage above and the stuff in The Guardian today was published prominently everywhere, would more people start to crap themselves?

No worries. I've only know one real person who is heavily invested in this sort of stuff, and whilst I haven't got a clue as to what exactly has made them go down this path, there are a few things about their life history and some of the choices they've made that do make them somewhat unusual and I imagine that's not a coincidence. My psychologist missus would no doubt think this is a grotesque over-simplification but I'm often very cynical about people with very strong views about pretty much anything. Seems to me a lot of the time having these extreme positions is less about any conviction or actual belief and more about how taking them gives you entry to a club that you like the look of full of people that you relate to. It's the community and sense of belonging that draws people in a lot of the time, I suspect