Sampson

I'm not a big fan of Kumar or Jones either but they're obviously popular and sell tickets, so people obviously like them as comedians and not just because they're disabled or an ethnic minority. Oddie I just think was of his time.

I do think there is still a bit of snobbery towards the service sector too though. The reality is, we are a service oriented economy and most of Britain's jobs are in things like retail, hospitality, customer service/call centres or other service jobs like hairdressers or taxi drivers. I still often hear politicians/political punters trying to appeal to "working classes" by going on about the traditional trades or "what does that mean to your brickie or plumber?" and vocational training or the old BTEC programmes and apprenticeships are often about these goods-creation or physical labour and traditional trades like builders, plumbers, electricians, plasterers, carpenters, engineers etc. and that is a good thing but the reality is nowadays the traditional trades actually tend to have decent unions, are well paid and if you go it alone you can make good money from it and many service jobs do not and I think culturally are still not given the same level of cudos. The reality is especially among people in their twenties and thirties the majority of "working class" labour is actually in shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, hotels, call centres and the like, but these are often exactly the kind of jobs and training that are ignored in education despite the fact they are bedrocks of our communities and we all probably use these services and require the help of these staff more than most other sectors - and I still think that there are cultural stereotypes that being a great and helpful barman, barista. hotel receptionist or call centre agent is not a "real" career and is still almost looked down on culturally.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c0rd1rvlx1vt Nice to see Burnham sticking to his word that he wants more cross-party discussions and not just bickering. I'm still not sure it'll last but its refreshing to see a government even try to basics of it rather than that schoolboy bad faith arguing and "banter" between parties at pmqs which I think a lot of us find a bit baffling to see adults behaving that way.

One thing they'd have done differently is got Britain to join the Iran war and have sent British men and woman in the RAF off to their deaths for a pointless war that as we've seen time and time again with these wars in the middle east, dont even change the philosophy of these countries (and if anything only make them more hard-line) and only hurts resource flow into Europe and creates a massive amount of refugees trying to get into Europe, Reform and Farage to me are an extremely American-ised party not a British or European one, they just bootlick Trump and the US and would just follow America into any old nonsense.

Latest opinion polls: Yougov - Labour and Reform tied Survation - Labour 2pt lead over Reform More in Common - Labour 4pt lead over Reform Does feel like Reform have properly lost their steam now.

Yes but then Einstein refined our working theory to gravity being a warp in spacetime. Best explanation I heard is imagine space is a bedsheet stretched across 2 chairs, if you put a big football in the middle, it will "sag" under the weight of the ball and other objects are kinda drawn towards it. Also I think gravity is more of a pushing force than a pulling force if memory serves me wrong but may be wrong on that one.

I enjoyed it, its not as good as DCC, but it was a fun concept and a great final stetch. Like you say has similar themes as DCC around AI and tech-based capitalism, but done in a different enough way that it doesnt just feel like DCCunder another name. He's definitely one of the best at creatively satirising modern gaming and internet culture without looking down his nose at it, and probably one of those authors ill read almost anything of in the future. . Not really interested in his older stuff as his writing was clearly a bit rough still in the first DCC book but came on along way as tje series went on. Saw an interview recently where he's currently writing another standalone set in a petting zoo alongside DCC book 9.

Burnham mentions it but picked onion monster munch are up there, the chemical acidic taste that burns holes into the roof of your mouth is bizarrely satisfying. Otherwise flame grilled steak McCoy's for me

I don't really care about the social media stuff, but I do agree it's nice to have someone in charge who is neither an emotionless robot who feels devoid of personality like Starmer nor an end-of-days doomonger who goes on and on about how the country is supposedly burning and its the hunger games on the streets like Farage.

Yeah, reading fiction has pretty much completely replaced previous tv and computer time for me now, which has been grear for my mental health. Still want to the do Mistborn, the Expanse, Children of Time and the Green Bone saga at some point too. As well as a few other standalones and continue with the Hyperion Cantos and the Greatcoats series I started.

No I haven't but Abercrombie is high up on my list. One of my friends is reading the Devils right now and was just telling me about it on Wednesday. I only properly got back into reading towards the end of last year so have so many sci-fi/fantasy series and standalone to catch up on. Slowly making my way through my local library's entire sci-fi/fantasy section haha.

Enjoyed Fall of Hyperion a lot, not quite as good as Hyperion, but given me a great idea for a D&D campaign. Next up, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin.

It's a weird time in society when you can't even tell if someone is taking the piss or not, because you can actually imagine people unironically saying something like this.

Nevermind

Thats brilliant! Never got into Warhammer although I reckon I'd like it if I had friends into it, but I remember me and my friends getting miniatures fir our D&D characters gadk I'm the dagpy - there was something so relaxing and enjoyable about painting thrm, it's almost a great side hobby of tabletop gaming omotself Thunder Road is great! Really gets the big kid in me going. It's one along with PitchCar and Magical Athlete that I bought for my nephew for his birthday/Christmas, secretly so I could play it with him myself,

All it takes is one rogue AI to get some autistic 14 year old to 3d print a manufactured virus that is as contagious as the flu but it is symptomless for a year or so until it suddenly turns deadly, like a more extreme version of rabies, which once the symptoms shows you're dead - and humanity is pretty much done. I wouldn't be surprised of AI can already code such a virus. But it's supposed to be worth going all out with basic legislation for this most experimental and dangerous rechnology in human history, so we can replace all hard working customer service agents and hotel receptionists with chatbots?

Healey is an interesting appointment I didn't see coming. I assume it's too indicate greater focus on defence, which makes sense in these times.

They're not near to Argentina though. They're 100s of kilometers from the nearest point, about as close as Britain is to Denmark. Look, I'm a progressive person who feels uneasy about a lot of Britain's history, but Argentina's claim to the Falklands are spurious as hell largely built around a treaty between Britain and Spain which specifically even says doesnt take into account other non-signaturies and Argentina were non-signitaries. And neither were they a case of British settlers kicking out thr locals - they were uninhabited islands which there's no record of the native peoples of the Americas ever discovering, abd Spain discovered and laid their post down them after the British even anyway, Meanwhile, the people who live their now are British people who speak in English accents and have voted 99% in favour of wanting to stay British. Personally, I can't understand the Argentinian national pride on this one at all, anymore than I can understand American pride on saying they want Greenland. They're just entirely unrelated islands to Argentina's history and culture which are hundreds of kilometers away from Argentina, which they just said they wanted one day. I don't think many people would be frothing at the mouth if it was the other way tbh - if someone said "oh , the Canaries belongs to Morroco not Spain because its relatively nearer" I think most would just laugh.

Crazy that they had Andy Cole then Les Ferdinand then Shearer as there main striker back to back in about 3 or 4 of the seasons. 3 of the best English strikers of their era. Just seemed to replace one talisman with another.

Kevin Keegan - loved his gung ho Newcastle teams in the 90s.

Voted LibDem in 2024, largely because of PR and wanting to rejoin the European common market, but hope Burnham does well. I want to vote for Labour in 2029, understand these things take time after years of gutting the state, but hopefully there's enough over the next 3 years to get us going in the right direction again. I think taking things like water and railways back under public control is definitely sensible, We got so addicted to the mantra of privatisation under both Thatcher and Blair that we just went too far with stuff like this, especially as the way we do it like just offering railway contracts doesnt even really promote competition to drive proves down. Even the US doesn't have the privatisation of things like water and railways, taking them back under public control is just us becoming a normal country again really, Hope he manages his promise to cut down the endless bickering between parties and working closer eith other parties, although I don't know how practical that is, There definitely are a lot of politicians and media who want to do nothing but put Britain down and try to make out we are a shithole with the hunger games on our streets these days when there clearly isn't.

Eh. That's definitely revisionism. He was and is a class player, but absolutely went missing and looked unfit and disinterested in his final 18 months here. For all the stick they get, Maddison and Barnes absolutely were much better than Tielemans in that final 18 months for example.

Diamond Lights is a genuinely good song. If it were by Tears for Fears or Depeche Mode instead of Hoddle and Waddle it would be an 80s new wave classic rather than a bit of a punchline to a joke.

Tbf the expanded Fosse Park is genuinely well done. One of the best things that's been done in Leicestershire the past decade.

It essentially doubles the city's population overnightvand makes Leicester supposedly bigger than Sheffield or Bristol(?) Is there a date on it yet. Bbc article talks about new Council elections in March 2027 due to tye changes but doesn't say when the city officially changes its borders.