People care too much about debate (both improving it or "winning" it by any means necessary) and far too little about substantive policy or even articulating a specific philosophy. Having realised that not only will my preferred policies never be implemented, but my preferred framework for democracy itself (representative democracy as described on the box.) is pure fantasy I've long since resigned myself to viewing politics as team sport for people too weird to get into football. It's quite good to be open with your friends that your approach is to go "Yeah, they've got no idea what they're doing but I still support [colour] team, nobody has a clue what they're doing" without any pretence, or even to admit that other teams have better ideas in small areas but miss the big idea so don't deserve support. It's a great way of working through factionalism too: You're an idiot who should read a fucking book and you'll doom the party if they listen to you, but I still want you to win a seat because you're on our team.

The only thing that surprises me about politics anymore is how little cynicism there is, or how misguided the cynicism is. People would rather believe they were lead by villains than by idiots.

>>85827

Listen mate, most of us haven't got time to be a bloody anorak about the intricacies of legislating cattle feed additives or the width of railway cabling specifications or whatever shite it is you spend your evenings reading about. We've got better things to do than be a policy wonk, and for that matter so have politicians we vote to wonk on our behalf- Hence why it falls on the shoulders of beleaguered civil servants and everything goes tits up.

In today's fractured, apathetic world of Twitter meltdowns and TV debates, the only thing that matters, fundamentally, is getting the reds or the blues in. You can't draw parallels with the past because we didn't have this set of circumstances. We've never been in this political situation, with this radical change in information and media at the same time. The last three, maybe four elections are the only ones that are relevant to our new and poorly understood cultural era, and if those ones are to go by we're going to live in a bitter stalemate for many years to come, with the only constant being the electorate throwing the shit at the fan whenever somebody is stupid enough to give them the chance.

I strongly suspect none of our discussion here will matter a bit in ten years time. I'd like to say I was right ten years ago when I tried to tell people making fun of the Gay Racists won't make them go away; and here we are. S Club 7 are poised to take over the EU. But it doesn't matter- Ten years ago we didn't have the alt right, we didn't have twitter, we didn't have flashmobs milkshaking people. The very worst we had was a few gimps in Guy Fawkes masks, and they were the good guys then.

Bloody minded tribalism seems like something we're going to have to get used to. The centrist has been thoroughly rejected.

>>85829
You don't need to care about those intricacies. Those are by and large administration problems, not political problems. A failure to adequately distinguish between the two is one of the reasons we deserve our current mess. Politics became dormant the moment we decided that big (often philosophical, irreducible to 'evidence based policy') questions of "Who gets what, when and how?" weren't really up for debate, let alone letting the public have any agency over them at the ballot box. There were perfectly moderate ways to avoid the mess we've been careering towards since the 90s but nobody took them. They had a duty to lead and they failed us. Call that wonkery if you want, but it's better than the freak who wants to help with the legislative process of changing cattle feed additives.

Wonks who obsess over minutiae signify the death of politics, not the worship of it. Say what you will about now versus 10 years ago, at least wonkocracy is collapsing. Sure, it might collapse back into feudalism and the black death but even that can't be as tedious as a politician handing you a pledge card less inspiring than the average supermarket discount coupon. Maybe if our old so-called politics had anything worth preserving, it wouldn't be coming to this. I mean the changing media landscale has a big role (though really, i doubt the electorate are worse informed than they were in 2007. perhaps worse than 1987.) and the public are terrible as always but it's a woeful failure of leadership that we've allowed our public life to decay so far. Why have our leaders not lead? Why has the country that produced so many good leaders started sticking itself with Mays and Corbyns? Perfectly nice people I'm sure, but I doubt they'd have made PPS 40 years ago.

You can say it's inevitable due to technological change if you want, but plenty of other countries haven't fucked themselves up the way we have, even in the same global economic circumstances, even with the same cowardice, even with the same public loss of faith in politics, even with a different order and number of wins for red or blue team. Even the USA looks like it has more opportunities for a bright future than we do.

I know this is about the Seppos, but I'd have thought part of the issue stems from going from quite a lot of common ground and overlap between their two main parties to drifting to the extremes.

>>85831
Parties drifting to the extremes is a symptom rather than a cause of our problems. Brexit didn't come about because Cameron was an extreme brexiteer hell-bent on dragging the country right, it came about because he was complacent that the rules of the games were fixed within a narrow centre ground, that being an inch off it would doom you (Hi Ed!), that you could accurately predict the behaviour of the electorate and that people were basically inherently small-c conservative. Only after those assumptions were proved to be nonsense did the Conservatives begin to move sharply right. Equally, Corbyn was only nominated by the leadership because a few Labour MPs who didn't actually want him to win nominated him to broaden the debate confident that he couldn't win. Ridiculous, ridiculous complacency.

The common ground between the parties during the 90s-2000s is illusory. It represented an artificial consensus brought about by circumstance and electoral tactics which didn't really satisfy people (or metaphorically, parties.) in the long term. Just as the 1945-76 consensus was fine until it was broken, the 1987-2007ish consensus was dominant until it was doomed by the circumstances it created for itself. It's just shambled on for longer because the circumstances it created equally make it harder to think beyond it even though both major parties acclimatised to it pretty poorly. Blair and Cameron were both perfectly happy to portray themselves in opposition to their parties at large, is it any wonder their parties would come to see them as an outside force and reject their legacy?
If you want my prediction: Things will get worse, but in 10-20 years the parties will have converged again and it will all seem perfectly sensible and normal, except to a few people who object to elements of the new consensus. There is the possibility they converge on political style rather than substance, though.

>>19305

Everyone knows that scuba divers are just moist racists. Aquatic pursuits are a classic alt-right dog-whistle, because of the connotations of the transatlantic slave trade and the historical legacy of segregation depriving African-Americans of the opportunity to swim. Scuba divers spend thousands of pounds on equipment and travel around the world to go to the one place that they know black people can't follow them - under the water. Every scuba tank is like a burning cross. It's despicable.

>>19312

> to go to the one place that they know black people can't follow them - under the water.

Not for a lack of trying, it seems.

(although the lad in the picture could also be a Pacific Islander. Not entirely clear.)

I guess you're not allowed to wear black shirts. There was a big fuss about the Proud Boys wearing Fred Perry about a year ago too.

>>19357
>There was a big fuss about the Proud Boys wearing Fred Perry about a year ago too.

Nothing will top Are Andy and his penchant for Lacoste.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/21/over-1351-climate-strikes-110-countries-planned-friday-global-revolt-escalates
>Over 1,351 Climate Strikes in 110 Countries Planned for Friday as Global Revolt Escalates
You going to work tomorrow? Pub after?

>>85857
Arguably that's also just "gibber-gabber".

I think you can find elements of what he does comical without being the type of person who pretends to be racist to get a rise out of others. There was that thread "Is anyone else enjoying Tommy Robinson's journalism?" with a screenshot from his Ascot fight. His social media was a beautiful train wreck.

There was a huge thread about him here when he'd just quit the EDL. I wish I would have read it now but I never clicked through.

>>85860
When was that, 2014? Just check pages three through five.

https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/free-milkshakes-polling-stations-across-2898714

>>427008
I was nearly convinced to attend my local Mormon church when I was stopped in the street by two stunning Mormon girls. One was Asian American, the other a blonde Australian. We swapped phone numbers, and they texted me to ask me to come to church, but my autism got the better of me and I ignored them because I am socially inept and feel I would have humiliated myself at Mormon church.

There's a racist furry who comments on a YouTuber's videos I watch and I was mean to him the other day, I haven't seen him post a comment since and even though he's a racist furry I still feel bad. No bugger becomes defined by their desire to shag anthropomorphic antelope in SS get up because everything's going swimmingly for them, do they?

I really envy our pre-historic ancestors. My monkey brain just hasn't developed for this kind of quandary.

>>427014

As I understand it, mormons are strictly forbidden from sex before marriage, to the extent that some churches consider masturbation just as bad. So I suppose it could have gone one of two ways - they would have had their legs closed tighter than a bear trap, or they'd have been horny as fuck and lusting for you to teach them the ways of the secular flesh. It was probably worth the gamble.

The two american mormon girls that showed up to my door were incredibly attractive, too, and so friendly/flirty that I immediately got the sense that I was being primed for a cult. They were truly very pretty though, enough that I still remember them years later.

>>427012

>I've no idea how to flirt with a german anyway so I'm sure I'll never have the chance to find out.

German women are tough to flirt with. On the upside, they will give it to you pretty straight when they are not interested. So there isn't much wavering about and letting you off easy. You will know when you've got no chance.

>>427015

The nazifur lot aren't necessarily racist, in my experience. It's just a wierd uniform fetish, and you have to consider that when you're already into animal dicks it really isn't as big of a jump to make. Then there's the added irony that furries themselves are subject to a considerable degree of discrimination.

I think it's really quite unfortunate that furries are victims of that and yet widely viewed as acceptable targets, when they're completely harmless. They don't actually fuck animals, they're into cartoon porn. They're not deviants in any way comparable to peados or rapists. Who has ever heard of a furry committing a mass shooting or bombing? Why do people feel so comfortable in hate against them?

Anyway he might well have been a racist, for all I know, just felt like putting that out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2qLD9c3Gq4

Cramming for exams and needed a little something to take off the edge. I've got rain noise playing in the background too, it seems fitting.

>>28531
Find the thread in the catalogue. Slimming World is genuinely one of the prime places for meeting women once you've reached the age where your social opportunities dwindle.

>>28533
Fat women, surely?

>>28534

We cover this in the thread.

>>28534
Plenty of women who aren't fat go to slimming clubs. Find the thread and be enlightened.

>>28536

http://britfa.gs/b/res/424490+50.html

For reference.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says 31% of graduates are overeducated for the job they are doing. For those graduating before 1992, the number was only 22%, but this jumped to 34% for those graduating after 2007.

Graduates in arts and humanities were more likely to be under-using their education. The overeducation rate for all workers of about 16% for 2017 is largely unchanged since 2006.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48091971

>>85646

>Graduates in arts and humanities were more likely to be under-using their education

What a revelation. I'm truly shocked.

>>85647

Whereas some science graduates have been using their degree to produce this study.

>>85647
Not enough of a distinction is made between the calibre of the university and the subject studied in this country. I don't think this is fully understood by enough people who are planning to on applying to study. Even that BBC article talks about average graduate earnings in general, which gives people false hope over what they can achieve with a shitty degree from a shitty institution.

>Most families do not choose to send their children to their nearest school, shows the biggest ever study of state secondary school choices in England. More than 60% opt for a school that is further away - usually because it is higher achieving.

>"Contrary to a widely-held belief, only a minority of parents choose their local school as their first option," say researchers.

>It also debunks the idea that richer families are more engaged with choices. Despite any assumptions about the "sharp elbows" of middle-class families, there was no significant difference in behaviour between wealthier and more disadvantaged parents.

>Both were similarly engaged in using choices to seek more desirable school places for their children. Parents in poorer areas were more likely to opt for schools further away - with researchers suggesting this was because richer families were more likely to live close to high-performing schools.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48365204

>>19346

This is something that takeaways have done for a while, so I could see it happening. I feel like people want to imagine their food coming from a real, proper restaurant, but I suppose they never need to know it's actually a warehouse on an industrial estate, and the associated increase in quality and lower price you'd be able to swing from such a venture would work out.

It's hard to say as the public is fickle and buying restaurant food has always been skewed in favour of image over substance. But I reckon calling it a cloud kitchen might be enough to sway them.

>>19352
Maybe not an industrial estate, you'd still want to be within 10-20 minutes of your resdiential catchment area to keep delivery times short. The rest feels spot on, however. If you could ditch the shop front etc. you forgo the chance at becoming a "happening" place that makes money from walk ins, but who opens Just Eat, Deliveroo or whatever to look for the last place they had a nice sit-down meal and have it delivered? Delivered food is a separate skill. Food needs to be compatible with being delivered, though, potentialy in an insulated hotbox for an hour. Wet things in box plus sauce based thing wins without effort.

>>19353

>Maybe not an industrial estate, you'd still want to be within 10-20 minutes of your resdiential catchment area to keep delivery times short.

There's an industrial estate ten minutes from where I am, surely that's normal for a city.

>>19354
Depends on where you live, I guess. London is vast, Birmingham is big, Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow.

>>19355

Sticking the auxiliary kitchen a bit further out in the suburbs is an advantage, because it extends the delivery range. In a major city like London or Birmingham, you ideally want the second kitchen a few miles from the restaurant to minimise the overlap between the two.

I genuinely can't get The Rains of Castamere out of my head, it's gone full ear worm. Even the pidgeon outside appeared to be hooting the tune just now.

>>22793
He'll be 80 so assuming the Mancunians can keep on top of their air pollution I wouldn't bet against it.

>>22794

I struggle to think of anything more tragic than Stuart Maconie with advanced dementia, desperately trying and failing to remember old TV programmes that someone has just shown him a clip of.

>>22795

Scratch that, it's Andrew Collins in the same scenario.

I'm binging Thrones and have got to Season 6.

Davos: We have to bring back Jon Snow.
(next episode)
Jon: Why have I been brought back?
Davos: I dunno.

What the fuck?

>>22797
Get used to it.

"I personally think..."

"Poop".

>>28464
It really bothers me that Americans call shit "duty".

>>28465

I thought it was "doodie" but just sounds like they're saying duty because their accents are fucked.

SAMWIDGE.

>>14962
POTY

>>14962
I glanced over your post whilst scrolling down the /shed/ and immediately thought about that speech.
Thanks for living up to my expectations.

Fuck's sake. I was just about to post in the workplace annoyances thread on /job/ and it's locked. We don't need a new thread; I doubt someone is going to read the entirety of the dream thread, but the workplace annoyances thread certainly has its moments.

>>14975

It's odd to me that we're locking all the one-topic megathreads yet keeping weekend/weekday megathreads going - surely that is the wrong way around?

>>14976
Exactly. Lock the weekend and weekday threads after, say, four weeks but leave the megathreads alone.

>>28519

This.

Not saying otherlad is, but I've never understood people's reluctance to pull a sickie when they need to- Your boss doesn't have your best interests in mind. He'd have you trapped in your shit kitchen job the rest of his life if he could, purely so he doesn't have to worry about hiring about someone else.

Look after number one, mate. Phone in sick.

>>28520

>Your boss doesn't have your best interests in mind. He'd have you trapped in your shit kitchen job the rest of his life if he could, purely so he doesn't have to worry about hiring about someone else.

True enough. It's easy to get caught up in the camaraderie of a kitchen and adopt the sense that you're letting the entire team down if you don't come in, but at the end of the day, it's only some fucking food, don't knack yourself up just to make sure some cunt can come in and buy a plate of chips, and nobody will know, care, or ever remember that you sacrificed your health or wellbeing for the team.

Not really getting that vibe from otherlad either, to be fair, but I feel it's worth saying anyway.

>>28520

>doesn't have to worry about hiring about someone else

Funny thing, I'm meant to be learning the cooking bit of this place (it's two people, and I'm the porter (it's just fast food so not even difficult)) so the cook can have time off. I literally walked in to the job so I don't know why they can't another chef until one sticks so they have a spare - there are two shops and 148 hours between them both for the cook's positions. and two cooks.

I'm just torn because there are only two people responsible for the entire making of the food. If I don't come in they will be completely fucked.
OTOH I was going to quit in a month and go to somewhere with a proper timetabling system and enough staff that I can just take days off when I want.

>>28522

>OTOH I was going to quit in a month and go to somewhere with a proper timetabling system and enough staff that I can just take days off when I want.

I encourage you to do this. It sounds like they don't really know what the fuck they're doing over there, if they're not willing/able to hire anyone else or even write a proper rota, then they don't deserve you and your sense of loyalty. Let the boss do some fucking scrubbing.

>>28523

It's my fault really, I was being optimistic about my abilities. And to be fair the boss does cover shifts fairly often (instead of hiring more cooks? I don't ask why).

Still it's a fuckin pita compared to all of my other jobs and the shifts go up to 12 hours to boot, of which at 4 are practically dead sales wise.

>>63345

Looks like she might stab you in your sleep

>>63346

Looks like she might enjoy a day at the Castle Howard traction engine rally

>>63345

Looks like she owns a lizard

>>63346

Looks like she has a keen interest in the Tumuli of the Lizard Peninsula

>>63345

Looks like she hates Jews

>>63346

Looks like she believes they're inner-earth lizard people in disguise

>>63348

I look nothing like her, I'm not even a women or gay, and taken. But if you took me on a date to castle Howard traction engine rally I'd probably put out.

>>63351
Don't know about fully put out, but I would certainly allow my (inappropriate) partner a crafty feel.

>>27119
Holy shit, is that Varg?

>>27121

Yeah, it's him. He likes LARPing as an ancient Viking while sponging off his autistic wife and the French government. It's easy to pretend to be a Viking from 10.000BC while on the dole!

>>27122
Bugger to that. He's just 46 and he looks as if he's well into his sixties on that pic.

>>27122

He's also got 8 kids, and a YouTube channel about freeing your mind and escaping serfdom.

He's clearly been busy since he got out of jail. But then, it was news to me he was even released. Just goes to show how fast time flies- More than a decade has passed since I was a greasy teenlad into Mayhem and Burzum. Varg has had 8 kids and all I've got is a lot of debt.

>>27125
>8 kids
>a lot of debt
Aren't these the same thing?

>>5562
That's actually a really nice monitor stand.

>>7497
>BACS transfers
I don't really want to give strangers my bank details.

I just hate PayPal as a company but it seems like I've no choice.

>>7498

>I just hate PayPal as a company

If you hate them that much I would suggest you also shouldn't be using the platform of the company that has owned and operated them for the last 16 years.

>>7499
No they haven't? Might wanna read some tech news from the last five years. Next year Paypal won't even be their payment processor.

>>7535
Who is replacing it?

>>7538
Adyen.

>>22691
He's the only good thing in this movie.

>>22691

Watched Detective Pikachu tonight; If you are a fan of pokemon (as in you still actively play them as opposed to just nostalgically remember red and blue and tried pokemon go out) There is probably something you'll get out of it.

If you have no real interest in pokemon I don't expect you to find much charm in it as the ridiculous premise isn't taken to the absurd levels you would hope (the best parts of it are all in the trailer), it isn't that the film is dull but if you aren't in the 'know' I could see you getting lost and not picking up on details.

Story and characters feel mostly like they came out of an JRPG, because they did.

>>22773
Thanks for that; I'll avoid it then. I wouldn't have gone into it expecting to know all the latest Pokemon and what they can do but that shouldn't have stopped me from enjoying it if it was written well.

>>22784

There is still fun to be had. And it is hard for me to separate all of my knowledge collected over the years from what someone would be able to pick up fresh, if that makes sense.

I might be being a bit harsh. It probably is a fine film to shovel popcorn into your mouth too. There is nothing wrong with it as such.

It is a detective story, but not a mystery that I think the audience can solve among with the characters. I don't think in 10 years it will be remembered for anything other than its novelty.

>>14618

I've found that YouTube videos embedded the old fashioned way seem to take considerably longer to load on the page.

>>14966

and that ones embedded the new way don't say the video's title on the top left in white writing like they used to.

>>14966>>14970
Then it's settled, from now on we'll only use Vimeo.

>>14971

Excellent idea.

>>14972

Actually, I don't know that I needed to delete that post after screenshotting it.

http://vimeo.com/24191501