>>448866
I was going to make a weekend thread but now that's out the bloody window.

I'm going to the shops to buy credit for my phone, because it's 2007 apparently.

>>448868
You snooze, you lose.

Playing lad2 all afternoon probably. Then Going out for a bit of a pub crawl.

>>448871
> lad2
That's sounds very carpet-baggery. I meant lad2 (Left 4 Dead 2)

>>448872
Oh, I see what's happened there.

A friend of mine is DJing at a retro indie night, and I said I'd go. He's part of the social group where absolutely all of them have visible autism, and a few of the social ringleaders don't like this sort of music and refuse to go anywhere except the same places they go every week, so they might not be there. I invited a friend I haven't seen for several years, and she's in a different social group, but I haven't heard back yet because she has issues of her own. I am man enough to go out on my own, so if it happens, it happens, but there's a lot of retro indie music I don't like either, so I guess we'll see.

Drink, play some board games, drink some more, play DnD, then more board games.

>>448875
What counts as retro indie music?

>>448877
Erm, lots of bands I haven't heard of, but also The Smiths, The Clash, the Waterboys, and a load of heavy metal. It's basically whatever he has on vinyl. No New Model Army, I don't think.

I had to drive up and down a substantial chunk of the A1 today.

The A1 is a particularly grim road at the best of times, it always feels like it exists in a sort of pocket dimension that's perpetually stuck in 1963, exclusively joining up the most forgettable, least scenic, semi-rural shitholes the country has to offer. It's like the spartan concrete service corridors in a shopping centre or airport, as opposed to the nice welcoming main thoroughfare of the M1.

Anyway that would be enough to make me miserable about it, but it was pissing it down so thoroughly most of the way that visibility was almost entirely obscured, and traffic was forced to slow to 40-50 at the most daring. So that's three and a bit hours of my life I'll never get back.

>>448879
>The A1 is a particularly grim road at the best of times, it always feels like it exists in a sort of pocket dimension that's perpetually stuck in 1963, exclusively joining up the most forgettable, least scenic, semi-rural shitholes the country has to offer.

The A1 is parallel to what was the Great North Road, which was the main route from Edinburgh to London from Roman times until the 20th century.

>>448879

>The A1 is a particularly grim road at the best of times, it always feels like it exists in a sort of pocket dimension that's perpetually stuck in 1963

That's exactly why I love the A1. It's the backbone of Britain, for better and for worse. Britain is supposed to be shit. Drizzle, melancholy and pervasive greyness are a fundamental part of our national character.

I messed up my sleep cycle with all the time off and now I need to stay up for the next 24 hours to put it right. This is not just because I have work on Monday but I'm also supposed to be going out for dinner afterwards that a bird has booked.

I've been trying to sort it for the past few days but I find it gets harder and harder as you get old and once day breaks. Any tips?

>>448879
Surely this is confirmation that the entire country is like that, given the length of the A1? It's not like skirting around Manchester and driving over Birmingham would change the impression you'd get very much. Though I was a little awe struck when I saw Manchester while up in the Penines, looked unbelievably small from up there.

>>448875
I went. It was very good, but I wouldn't recommend doing what I did. My friend the DJ did all his DJing, and as it turns out, the post-punk he played didn't really need the "post-". I have nothing against music I've never heard before, but I do need to like it. I recognised this song, and noticed that all the other songs he played basically sounded the same, if anyone would like to pretend they were there with me:

Of all our other friends who went, there was literally one. She's very cool and the least autistic one, but she thought nobody else would go so she brought some Tinder date with her. Meaning that I had two people there that I knew, both of whom I avoided so as not to get in their way. Because I'm nice. Have you ever been on a night out by yourself, to a nightclub that mostly plays music you hate? It's a challenge. The music got more normal as the night went on (Rock Lobster by the B-52s!!!!!!!!), but by that point the feeling that I was just in the way and depressing everyone was wearing on me, and I went home. Now I'm here to tell you about it. A gay guy chatted me up, despite me being profoundly un-gay, so I guess that's something at least. I'm not completely alone because I'm worthless, or repellent, or lacking in charm; I'm just utterly and irredeemably cursed.

But like I say. Rock Lobster. What a fucking banger.

>>448897

Nah, there's something quite specific about the A1. The main stretch of it of it south of Leeds and north of London, anyway- The bits above the are proper modern motorway and actually quite nice, because it goes up alongside the Moors, and then beyond Newcastle it's a really very scenic coastal drive in places.

But that main stretch along Britain's neglected interior... Maybe it's because of how it sits in relation to my own personal internal sense of geography and concept of home (I'm one of the resident Beestonlads so I grew up nestled between the M1 and M62, access north south east and west lay at my doorstep which gave me a big sense of freedom as a younger lad when I first started driving), but it feels like it's really uniquely desolate, like it's in the middle of nowhere despite connecting a lot of places. It's straddled by phone masts, electricity pylons, dotted by really tatty old brutalist concrete bridges from the 60s, it's got all these really dodgy little petrol stations and cafes just right at the side of the road...

It's just weird.

>>448899

That stretch of the A1 has three sex shops in former branches of Little Chef. Could anything be more emblematic of Shit Britain?

Parents have asked me to sit their dog whilst they go away for a couple of days. They left the house at 7.30 and it has done nothing but scream and wail since then. Horrible thing; it's a whippet so it's not even cute or cuddly -- it's just a skeleton with anxiety. And now I've got to pick up its shit.

>>448900
It must be a business model for them. There were two Little Chefs on the A63 near Hull; the westbound one is now a sex shop but the eastbound one has been empty for about 10 years.

>>448901

I hope you got the dog to calm down. If you can, take it out somewhere and exercise it. Distraction can help with separation anxiety.

Also show a bit more compassion, as far as that dog is concerned the points on which every aspect of its existence hinge just wandered off and might never be seen again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEs-BiVSG30

Judi Love again. She's everywhere.

>>448903
Nah, sod that. Same thing happened to me and it's a fucking bollock.

It's the owners fault - in our case this was the second time in a year the dog had been at our flat, and the owner didn't even leave & come back a couple of times to show it was okay, she didn't leave us any sentimental dog items, she just dropped the dog off and pissed off. And we've spent a lot of time at her flat with this dog and she knows us well, but she was still a fucking wreck and shat everywhere. It's her owner's fault but we can still vent at, or about, the dog because it's just a dog and it can't hear you, or read your chatlogs.

That lad's well within his rights to be fucked off about this. It's bloody annoying.

>>448902
There's also a sex shop former little chef on the A38 before Burton

>>448904

She's represented by Off The Kerb, who also represent deep breath:

Alan Carr, Andy Parsons, Angela Barnes, Dara O'Briain, Jack Dee, Jessica Knappett, Jo Brand, Jon Richardson, Jonathan Ross, Josh Widdicombe, Kerry Godliman, Kevin Bridges, Marcus Brigstocke, Michael McIntyre, Phill Jupitus, Rob Beckett, Romesh Ranganathan, Rosie Jones, Russell Kane, Sean Lock (RIP), Simon Evans, Suzi Ruffell and Tom Allen.

IMO Judi Love is being prepared for an attempt to break America. Gina Yashere struggled a bit over here, but she's absolutely massive in the US. Judi Love is a bit brash and annoying for British tastes, but I think she could do well in the US. Shoehorning her onto our telly is just a warm-up, like a promising young striker going on loan to a Championship club for a couple of seasons.

>>448907
>Rosie Jones

Is she the disabled one? I've no idea who she is but my girlfriend had a right rant about her the other day, saying she isn't funny and people in the audience aren't laughing because they think she's funny but because they're patronising her and thinking "aww, isn't she going well for a disabled person!" like when you see basic white girls telling someone horribly disfigured how beautiful they are in order to stroke their own ego about how lovely they are. Apparently she was very good in the Joe Lycett thing checking out disability friendly gyms but I have absolutely no idea who she is so can't say.

>>448905
>It's her owner's fault but we can still vent at, or about, the dog because it's just a dog and it can't hear you, or read your chatlogs.

Dogs are pretty good at sensing human moods through facial expressions and tone of voice. They might pick up on the unease or annoyance.

I agree it's the owner's fault and they could have done more, but the dog shouldn't have to take the brunt of this if the dogsitter can help it.

Maybe it's just because I love dogs and see their vulnerabilities, but I do everything I can for them if I'm asked to take care of them.

>>448908
Yes, she's the disabled one. I wasn't really a fan until I saw her on The Last Leg during the Paralympics, where she made some impressively offensive jokes because she can obviously get away with them when most other people couldn't. In one episode, she said she was so inspired to see athletes with cerebral palsy that she wished the Paralympics could be only for people with cerebral palsy, and that she wants all other disabled people to be rounded up and killed. She said that! In almost those exact words!

I mean, I assume she did. It all just sounded like bluh-bluh-bluh to me.

>>448910

>Dogs are pretty good at sensing human moods through facial expressions and tone of voice. They might pick up on the unease or annoyance.

Seconded. I greatly dislike dogs, but they only become more annoying if you let it show. If you exude calm and stillness, they'll usually follow suit.

>>448911

Her "the wobbly girl is actually an awful bastard" schtick is consistently amusing and her comic timing is extraordinarily precise. She has really thought about how her particular speech patterns work comedically and uses her slow pace to really hammer a punchline home. She's occasionally a bit hack and could do with more live experience, but she's fundamentally talented. Also she's got a cracking pair of tits.

>>448913
I think she could be funny, she has decent material, but unfortunately her comic timing is, for obvious reasons beyond her control, pants.

>>448913
>Also she's got a cracking pair of tits.

Give it 30 years and she'll start looking like Ruth Goodman.

>>448914
If you watch a slightly longer stand-up set you'll see that a lot of material is subverting the punchline because it takes her so long to get to it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKkMZz1Uxgk

I think she's alright, based on those two clips. Fuck knows what my girlfriend's got against her.

>>448915

>Fuck knows what my girlfriend's got against her.

Did you tell her you'd had a wank to her, by any chance?

>>448902

I wonder if they actually do better business this way than at a more regular central, urbanised location? I would theorise people are more comfortable with the idea of going to a sex shop when it's on a laybay off some godforsaken bit of the A1 near Donny, than when it's on a normal street in town where people will see them going in.

>>448917

>"The [shops] are good for a number of reasons," said Graham Kidd, one of the directors of Pulse & Cocktails, which has been in business for 21 years. "They have good car parking, they are high profile and they are discreet - you're not likely to run into your neighbour inside.

>"We can never get away from the fact that we are British and everyone is frightened to death of being seen going into a local adult store, but if they are 100 miles from home they have the confidence to go in."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48387010

Basically, you're spot on.

>>448916
I haven't bashed one out over her, but it looks like she does have the chin for it.

I don't think women are the best judges of comedy. My friend's girlfriend is a fan of Amy Schumer, not because she thinks she's actually funny but because she's unattractive so feels like she's unthreatening.

I went on a bit of a catch up with YouTubers who I used to watch but whom The Almighty Algorithm has stopped showing me. One of those is Lindsay Ellis; and it turns out she has been cancelled over some incredibly petty twitter bollocks.

I told you, lads. I remember saying it would inevitably happen to her, but you said I was being daft. Well, I was right, wasn't I. I told you so. Nyer nyer, take that.

>>448920
Yeah it's sad. Was the Raya/Avatar comparison the one that cemented her as a racist worthy of being trolled off the internet? Or am I missing another gaffe?

>>448918

Also I'd expect they sell a lot of porn and wank sleeves to truckers.

>>448921

Mainly that from what I can tell, I haven't delved too deeply but it looks like she dug herself pretty deep pretty quickly and ended up pulling a classic DeviantArt style "quitting the internet forever!1!" over it.

She's a smart girl, so presumably she had the sense to realise the smart thing to do is turn the gun on yourself, before the more committed mentalists out there start digging every long forgotten skeleton out of your closet. Everyone has something to hide if you look hard enough.

>>448921
That was the one she responded to with a long video atoning for all her past sins though wasn't it? No I think this was about something else.

>>448921
>>448924

>>448921

In her own words, that "banal" take on a Disney movie "napalmed her life". So, yeah, while there's probably a lot more to it I will never care enough to find out, it looks like she really did throw it all in the shitter over a daft tweet.

It's like I said in the first place.

>One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized.

It's 10:10am on Monday and none of you lazy fuckers have bothered making the new weekday thread you kept saying you would. Honestly, this place would fall apart without me.

>>448928
None of us are Monday morning people.

I've just seen an advert for vegan chips. Why have they got to ruin chips by making them vegan?

>>449035
Why are you watching adverts, thicky?

>>449036
I've never bothered with any form of adblock for my phone.

>>449037
Shut up, bitch.

>>449038
Why?

>>449035

How dare they not prepare these vegetables in dirty bacon fat with crumbs of carbon.

>>449040

Wrong thread. FUCK. I'm going back to bed.

>>449041
Which other thread was talking about vegetables?

>>448915

>Ruth Goodman

She's a bit weatherbeaten, but have you seen that woman churn butter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zf0KK4EEw

Cor.

>>449043

Brian, you dopey twat - you've broken my embed and now you won't let me delete the post. Keep on like this and you're going into a home for befuddled imageboard backends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zf0KK4EEw

>>449044

Oh for fuck's sake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zf0KK4EEw

I've recently got into learning about a lot of tech related areas, I've been fully engrossed in linux, python, cloud, raspberry pi, mac os superuser stuff, networking.

What kind of job would encompass these areas? Sounds a bit weird but I've particularly enjoyed my time with linux and diagnosing obscure issues, learning about log files, writing little bash/python scripts to help me automate or monitor things, playing with aws free tier to make fun things and generally just tinkering. I don't really know the tech industry at all, and I'm a late starter clearly, but I'm getting lost in this stuff for hours. I wish I had focused on it when I was younger.

>>449045
Nah you do it like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zf0KK4EEw

Bloody Wolves, dirty cheating bastards.

You embed it like this.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9zf0KK4EEw

>>449046
Sysadmin.

>>449050
Or devops. If you don't already have a good job it's worth having a look at what they're asking for on stackoverflow job adverts and learn those things. You could break into the field professionally.

>>449050
>>449051
Problem is I'm 30 and without any relevant experience. I look at all these kids online with certifications at 20 and think what chance do I have really? From what I gather the A+ certification is a good place to start.

>>449052
DevOps is what you want; it's a fairly new thing that combines being the office IT guy with also doing programming. But you might struggle, because since someone invented a "do everything" job, a lot of those jobs pay a lot, and if you're new you might need to start out doing something more plebeian.

Personally, I got the CompTIA A+, and it helped me absolutely sail into IT support. From there, you will be exposed to more specialised fields (networking? Cloud? Operating systems? Bug testing? Security?) and you can choose which one to get better at. I was probably 27 or 28 when I got my CompTIA A+, and it absolutely is the best place to start, but be warned that it basically just teaches computer repair, so you might get bored. There is no programming at all, but you do get things like DNS, DHCP, different types of IP addresses, and stuff like that.

Do NOT listen to other people online telling you that you need 500 certifications. I don't understand these people, but I think they can't do anything with their lives and have tried to redefine the IT sector as totally impossible to justify their own NEETness to themselves. Were you looking on 4chan's /g/? Leave there immediately. It's a shithole. Nobody there knows anything. People are more likely to pursue programming as a hobby without ever having a job, and lo and behold, /g/ always talks about programming and knows absolutely nothing about, say, web hosting or VMware. I understand I am going off on a bit of a tangent here, but you must never listen to them.

Back to my original point, you do need experience to get a good job anyway, because certifications will only take you so far. Get the A+ and you're fine for starting. You could get another one if you want, but my prediction is you won't want to, at least not yet. Anyone, and I do mean anyone, who says you shouldn't even apply to even the most basic job without a CCNA, CCNP, Security+ and VCP, is a fucking NEET failure who doesn't understand a damn thing. They sit at home and try to discourage you, because they are pathetic themselves. I would happily gas every last one of these fuckers to death and look them in the eyes as I do it.

Go ahead and get started. Worry about more specialised things later on.

>>449052
Also, if you want to check out the CompTIA A+, there's a website called Professor Messer which teaches you it for free. I wouldn't recommend only using that website and nothing else, but it might work.
https://www.professormesser.com

Be warned: it is harder and more boring than you currently expect it to be. This is why others quit.

Cold Domino's pizza with a big tub of garlic mayo dip for breakfast.

Polished off the better part of half a bottle of Jack last night, surprisingly don't feel rough at all. I think I've re-learned one of the most fundamental aspects of my body- I don't get hungover on spirits. When I was a younglad I could hardly tolerate lager or ales and I'd be chucking up within a couple of pints; as an adult I've mostly got over that and I tend to go for ales and wine when I drink. But the hangovers are increasingly brutal as I crossed the 30 year old barrier.

Funny how a taste stays with you though, just drinking a bit of crap Yank whiskey mixed with the over-sweet fizz of cola takes me back nearly fifteen years and makes me feel like I'm back in that time.

>>449046
That's called being a Platform Engineer, which is the more modern and grammatically correct version of being called a DevOps Engineer.

Focus on a first-class scripting language, like Python or Go. Download Terraform, or if really advanced, Pulumi and get a free AWS account. You can learn and do everything on a raspberry pi.

Depending on your learning style (I prefer not to learn from video, but lots do) I can recommend educative.io - if you prefer reading/doing as a learning style, I think it's the best one out there.

>>449053
Thanks a lot for the advice, I'll be heading down the A+ route for sure now. And yes, I posted on /g/ because I was told they knew their stuff but I'll avoid, thanks for the heads up. My biggest preference is doing Unix stuff I think, and looking into the workings of the OS - maybe that OS path is one to keep an eye out for.

>>449056
Hmm interesting, thanks a lot, I'll check those websites out and have a read into platform engineering.

My main path of learning right now is this 100 days of Python course I'm doing, (which has been great), and getting lost in a rabbit hole of googling error messages and reading on this website - https://unix.stackexchange.com/

Went Hurricane Rooms last night, and we created a multiplayer pool game which, after some light research, appears to be a variation of 'Cutthroat Pool' mixed with Killer. It seems obvious but I can't find any evidence of its existence.

You can play a max of 7 players, and each player picks a colour which is theirs for the duration. Start with three lives, pot your own and gain a life, pot someone else and they lose a life. Any time you pot a ball, you take it out of pocket and put it back on either the black spot or the white spot alternating. If they're occupied then you just place it a couple of inches off the spot towards the cushion.

We played it as black being an instant death, but no-one potted it over 3 hours so maybe that rule needs altering, IMO we could have come up with something more useful for black, maybe even something boring like a free ball.

Other than that; potting white loses a life, potting either your own ball or opponents ball gives you another shot, so there's a decent skill ceiling rewarding post-shot positioning.

We were only four, so we left 4 balls of the table, but you could make things easier by keeping all 'unallocated' colours on the table and using them as free balls.

It's fun when you ever so slightly miss a shot and set someone up for an easy pot on you, plus since there's nothing to gain from potting someone else other than taking a life off them, you develop some nice little dramas and rivalries, plus it balances the skill gap because the better players may be picked on but can generally survive through skill, and it's quite clear when someone is pulling ahead so they'll become a target.

Really fun game, possibly because we felt we invented it, but we didn't go back to doubles pool for the rest of the night.

I've been on escitalopram for nearly two months now and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I'm happy.

I'm motivated, I'm not as lethargic as I was on regular citalopram, I'm worrying less and I'm overall just a much more pleasant person to be around.

I'm sorting out my money, I'm changing my career, I'm addressing my horrible attention span (reading, exercise), engaging with my hobbies once more, and I feel proud of myself for once. What a difference paying for a psychiatrist to give a shit about you makes.

>>449059

Great news mate. Keep the momentum going and let us know how you get on.

I recently moved back to a place where I have quite a lot of friends, and where the weather is fucking magnificent 365 days a year and everything is open all the time. Prior to this, I'd been living in suburban humdrum (which turned out to be a great place to spend a pandemic, what with the amount of space). Living in a place with more of a hard line between work, life, and specifically home-life, I became a bit of a homebody and got used to enjoying my own and my partner's company. Now I'm back in Fun City, I barely have a fucking second to myself. I understand it's first-world problems, but I'm socially knackered and just want to spend a few days being shit at computer games and drinking tea. Setting up boundaries is more difficult when your work colleagues are also your best mates - it feels like everyone knows what I'm doing, or feels the need to know what I'm doing, at all times.

Apologies for the blogfa.gs post, but it's hard to find people to be sympathetic without the veil of anonymity, since effectively I'm complaining that my social life is good.

Came home to a letter from West Yorkshire telling me I have failed to pay a court fine as directed. This is the first I've heard of it, but they have my name and date of birth right, so they've gotten it from somewhere.

I have the urge to pay it immediately, but I also really need to wait until Monday to call and find out what the fuck I've done, I have no idea. I haven't been anywhere near Yorkshire for at least a year. I assume I've committed some sort of traffic offence, I'm not sure how else they could have known my address. I can't imagine it's a mistake. I used to live in Leeds, so unless they've accidentally re-fined me for the speeding ticket I got in 2016, I really can't think what it could be. It's pretty annoying that the scary threat letter doesn't specify whatever crime is worth £308 in fines.

>>449063

A google suggests it might be a historic debt, though the only thing I can think of there was forgetting to cancel a BT contract when I moved, but that was sorted years ago. I have a horrible feeling I'm going to have to pay three hundred quid for no discernible reason, which will ruin my week.

I've had some Boursin open in my fridge for a couple of months, although the use by date was little over a fortnight ago. I've just had some because it wasn't mouldy and there wasn't a funny smell or taste to it, so hopefully I won't be shitting violently in the near future.

>>449065
Gonna be some vivid dreams tonight ladm9.

>>449066
I can't remember all of the details, but at one point I was having a conversation with a sliced lemon and a bottle of water. They'd both grown roots and the lemon was quite insistent about me squeezing it into the water.

I was in a café with my girlfriend, but she went to sit with some other women because she didn't appreciate me taking the piss out of her so they kept muttering about me. At one point a waiter brought over a shaken up bottle of vodka and said it was like me, because it was all messed up or something? I decided to go for a walk to find our kids because we'd seemingly abandoned them to fend for themselves and a woman was trying to show me crumbs which she said my son had got on her top; when she lifted her top up a bit her tit flopped out and she had an extremely purple nip.

Boursin before bedtime, lads. It'll blow your mind.

First creme egg of the year lads.

I've trapped a nerve in my right shoulder blade by simply existing.

>>449069
I woke up early due to cramp in my leg. First time that's happened in yonks.

>>449070
I had similar recently and it was excruciating - I have since been on a mission to find out what causes them, and I've only got as far as perhaps dehydration or iron deficiency.

>>449069>>449070
Christ lads. How old are we getting?

>>449072
Couple more years, it's wetting ourselves and shoplifting.

>>449072
Proper old. Last year I informed you all of my ordeal with a rogue eyebrow hair after a lifetime of perfect zero-maintenance eyebrows. And just this weekend I realised I had nose hair that needed some attention, again after a lifetime of perfect zero-maintenance nose hair. It felt like it needed a good pick, but after a few attempts I realised it wasn't a bogie but a hair. Now I know why people have those little nose scissors.

>>449074 just wait for the ear hairs, they're annoying bastards.

>>449074>>449075
I've seriously thought about one of those ear/nose trimmers, but they look faintly barbaric and I'm scared it's going to end in a lot of blood.

Also, ears are fine, but pulling out nose hairs really really fucking hurts.

>>449074
Did you find a solution for the increasing eyebrow wildness? Mine are getting more and more mental as the years pass, I pluck out the odd one that decides to go full rogue but it doesn't seem sustainable.

I had an ex who used to use some sort of product on them and had a little brush, I don't think she'd appreciate a message asking about eyebrow maintenance though tbh.

>>449077

Turkish barbers m8. They'll sort out the lot - ears, nose and eyebrows.

I looked up why dads were always so sleepy when I was growing up and now wish I hadn't. So it turns out that your ability to sleep declines with your testosterone causing you to sleep lighter with lots of wakeups and times where you can get into bed exhausted yet unable to sleep. The dads falling asleep with the telly on were literally collapsing into it and even the snoring was being driven in part by physiological changes.

I'm not sure if I'll hack getting old, having a good kip is one of my few true pleasures.

>>449120
When you were growing up men ran on nicotine and lager and these days they post twice weekly reviews of their favourite plant based meat alternatives for their imaginary internet friends to read. You ought to have a solid fifteen more years of restful kipping than they did, though your own children will call it "napping", perhaps renderering you too constantly irritated to sleep well anyway.

>>449120

Getting old is shit, but it's better than the alternative.

The thought of being elderly scares me. I don't want to lose my marbles and end up in a care home, nor do I want to be frail and have carers on minimum wage come to my house for a couple of hours a day tucking me in bed at 5pm because it's the only slot they have for me.

>>449124

I do feel like the need for care homes will decrease as time goes on. More of us take better care of ourselves these days, even povvos, and even the lowliest plebs are engaged with technology and doing more reading via the internet etc in ways that are thought to stimulate the mind and stave off mental degradation through ageing.

Of course genuine degenerative diseases like alzheimers (how the fuck do you spell that) or parkinsons will still present an obstacle, but if we're very lucky, those will be much more treatable by the time we're that age too.

Really today's old people are in a pretty unique situation, as the generation brought up after the wartime "greatest generation". They're all crippled because they spend their whole life living off chip butties, their careers began just as wide scale automation and office work started to come in, and if they weren't sat knocking back pints in the pub, they were sat on their fat arse staring at the tube in their spare time. They've had the worst of all worlds, shit diet, little mental exercise, as well as a sedentary lifestyle.

>>449125
Swings and roundabouts.

People in the 40s and 50s didn't grow up with McDonald's or turkey dinosaurs, they actually played outside as children rather than being glued to a games console, TV or smartphone, jobs are more sedentary now and people are a lot more isolated these days; communicating with people online or via text is nowhere near as good for your mental health as physically spending time with someone.

>>449127

Not really m8. Mental health is not the same as mental exercise. Talking to folk keeps you happy, but it doesn't keep your faculties sharp like reading and learning new things does.

You're getting things a generation behind anyway, people who were children in the 70s are retirement age now. They had TV, they had videogames. People who were kids in the 40s are well into their 80s and mostly dying off.

>>449127

The prevalence of dementia is in quite steep decline. We have more people with dementia because of our ageing society, but the proportion of people with dementia at any given age is falling.

Part of that is explained by the reduction in environmental neurotoxins (we took the lead out of petrol and paint, coal smoke and dust contains a surprisingly high level of heavy metals) but part of it is unexplained and probably related to the Flynn effect - people have been getting cleverer over time, which leaves more people with a reserve to cope with cognitive decline.

I realise this is strictly "back in my day" territory but I've had Challenge on in the background this morning, showing gameshows from ~20 years ago like Wheel of Fortune and Bruce's Price is Right and they seem much better than gameshows these days. I know ITV bring some of them back now and then, but they're inevitably hosted by Stephen Mulhern with extremely minor celebrities as the contestants.

I want Fort Boyard back.

>>449143
Those are the good ones that are still worth watching 35 years later (in the case of early Catchphrase, I think). The shit ones don't get repeated. Wheel of Fortune was amazing, but I never liked Bruce's Price Is Right. I watched it by mistake a couple of times when I was expecting Play Your Cards Right.

Pointless and The Chase are probably the two biggest and most popular game shows right now, and they're already repeating the early episodes on Challenge. Meanwhile, Vernon Kay's 1000 Heartbeats, which was obviously rigged, and the BBC one where you had to snip virtual threads to make sums of money drop (also clearly rigged to be unwinnable) are not being repeated on Challenge, because they were awful, and designed to be unwinnable, and they can fuck off and I'm glad they're dead. Hopefully they will never repeat Tipping Point either.

>>449143
>>449144

I forgot Challenge is a thing. Is it on Freeview? I might actually bother connecting my TV aerial if so. I could sit and watch Takeshi's Castle and Crystal Maze all day long.

I seem to remember back in the day if we were playing out on a Saturday and our parents had gone out to do the Big Shop, we'd go back to one of our houses to take advantage of being able to watch what we wanted on TV. It seemed like there was always one of those two or Brainiac on.

>>449145
Comedy Central now have Takeshi's Castle, but I don't think they're aired it in a couple of years and any version without Craig Charles doing the voice over is a bit shit.

Challenge nowadays is 70% repeats of The Chase, 28% repeats of Family Fortunes, Bullseye and gameshows with Bruce Forsyth or Michael Barrymore and 2% reminding you that the channel is sponsored by Spam.

The only thing I find worthwhile on the 'shit' Freeview channels is Wheeler Dealers.