>>93050
Pretty much every major supermarket has their own caterpillar cake. They just don't usually look almost identical to each other.

>>93062
Well, Charlie and Clyde have the same face...

>>93074
Wiggles and Cecil have the same face, they just use different eyes.

>>93062
I reckon Sainsbury's looks the best but I'll have to get back to you on taste. All-in-all I can't help but feel this is a cynical ploy to get the names out with kids parties on the horizon.

Aldi seems to certainly be playing it that way on twitter.

>>93078

>Aldi seems to certainly be playing it that way on twitter.

I think they've played a blinder here by tweeting stupid stuff about it. No matter how the case goes, they've won, I reckon. If they lose all they have to do is disfigure colin a bit and people will still buy him.

>>443392
Army recruitment must be getting bad, they'd let any old tit join the SAS these days.

>>443386
I didn't see it on TV, but how's this for a sad picture?

>>443392
I should have watched it if they were on it. What are they protesting? Why aren't they protesting somewhere else? A-are they still there now? Can I go there?

>>443397
Sorry, those are photos from last year.

>>443392

I've always wanted to lock a woman to a fence by the neck and fuck them.

>>24891
They even did a little logo of someone squatting to do a poo. Glorious.

>>24890
There were plenty of shite games back in the 90s and early 2000s but the average quality of what was on sale definitely seemed better.

I think it's mainly down to online distribution and ubiquitous fast internet. Back in the 90s and early 2000s when everything was sold on physical media it took much more money and effort publish and distribute a title so only the better stuff from legit publishers made it to the shelves.
Also studios couldn't get away with selling what are effectively public betas as finished games when a good chunk of their customer base wouldn't be able to download the inevitable massive patch to make it playable.

Almost everything big had a playable demo too, so there was much less risk of buying something only to find out it was garbage after you'd spent money on it.

>>24891
EA have always been money grabbing cunts. Just look at all the DLC packs for The Sims 4 https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/pc/store It's the same old shite, just without a shiny disc and a DVD case.

This is a message to all Travis and Travis affiliates: 1. Fuck you 2. Eva is mine.
http://emilyisaway.com/3/youtoob/rzJ21OpFnZ0/

Just a shame the nostalgia gets broken because I have two girls wanting to 'rawr XD' with me.

>>24911
My fucking god, it really pulled me in. I'm in a happy relationship with this girl and all is well in 2008 but then there's this fucking dickhead who is clearly trying to fuck her and the game keeps pushing my buttons over it.

I shrug it off and trust her or at least accept she can leave me if she wants but no, we're on a "break" because she doesn't feel the same butterflies anymore. Obviously that dickhead goes right in as soon as we break it off on facebook. I frankly don't like this one bit.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I've just had a blue raspberry Jubbly, they've got to be the best flavour for ice pops.

>>14308
It's barely about 10C in the shade. What a terrible day to bump this thread.

>>14309
It's t-shirt weather, it's Jubbly time.

Still got a few polaretti in the freezer from last year, but time to lay in a few crates of the adorable bastards.
Although Amazon are now listing Polaretti for girls. What the fuck?
(Still shilling for Polaretti, though, until someone finds a better ice pop.)

>>68570

>>63038

No muff fluff on display, but if you squint you can just about see the outline of her flaps.

>>68571
Don't you have anything better to do? Take out the bins?

>>68572
>TAKE OUT THE BINS

These euphemisms are getting out of hand.

>>68573
Honestly I'm sick of it.

>>68572

Who the hell gets their bins collected on a Sunday?

>>93069
Vaccine bounce for the Tories, Lib Dems, Greens, and Reform UK. Starmer will start making ground soon.

>>93070
Seems to have been on a bounce for a while now.

>>93069
Yet Labour will retain London*, SNP will continue to rule unopposed in Scotland and Wales won't have a big enough abacus to count the votes. It feels like a myopia has taken hold in the British political establishment that even as an Englishman I can see where parties are focused on winning the wrong elections.

For what it's worth I reckon SDP might be our party this year. The one where I'm nodding my head yet thinking in the back of my mind "hang on I might get called a fascist for this".
https://sdp.org.uk/new-declaration/

>>93073
It occurred to me recently that I'm going to struggle to find someone to vote for. I am your typical "Liberal Democrat / Green" metropolitan elitist champagne socialist, but any good thing achieved by the Liberal Democrats when they were in power has turned into a bad thing now, and my work is having a minor conflict with a Green councillor so I want to stick it to him. I would honestly vote for saville if Reform UK were actually about electoral reform, as they said they would be, rather than whatever coronaspiracy bollocks they have now espoused.

>>93076
I reckon you can pick any third party you want for electoral reform in England. Although if we're talking local councillors then they might as well be promising a trip to the Moon for cheese for all the relevance it has.

This time I'm tempted to vote Tory for my local councillor purely on grounds that he seems to be the most qualified as a urban planner. My other two votes are going for Lib Dem as they seem to have a forward thinking policy of using a corporation to turn empty London offices into housing although how that is going to work in practice is anyone's guess given those building won't be selling for nothing.

>>443357

I can easily do about ten if you leave them unguarded. I can't put my finger on what it is but the KitKat is honestly the undisputed king of workhorse everyday biscuit snacks.

>>443358

Four fingers haven't gone anywhere, I have one every time I'm in work out of the vendy.

>>443360
Just had mine and could barely remember what I ask for. Now I don't like it, going from a shaggy mullet to a bloke's cut messes with your self-image and unlike in my teenage years I was doing a reasonable job looking after my hair. Not missing my fucking hair going in my eyes though.

I think if we go into lockdown again I might leave it long but I have no idea on what you're supposed to ask for at the hairdressers to tidy it.

>>443387
I usually just say short back and sides, usually a number two or three, and a little bit longer on the top.

God I hope it's a quiet night at work tonight. I'd rather like to sit on my arse and do nothing for twelve hours. Saturday night into Sunday morning gives the most lucrative pay enhancement so it always feels nice to do very little for it.

>>443388
I usually get a skinfade with 1/2-1/3 off the top and finish by thinning it out. Then I spend a week looking like a pineapple but it means I only need to get it cut every other month at most.

It's not a bad manifesto but I still want them to do badly at this election. The worst page of all in the actual document is the "our record" page. Almost nothing on it was achieved by Nicola Sturgeon: Some were filler, The vast majority were achieved under Salmond, and a few of the remaining ones were opposition legislation that they're now stealing credit for. The 2016-2021 Scottish Parliament was essentially a complete and utter waste of time lead by a government that was bereft of vision. Charting the SNP's legislative achievements over time is like watching the declining achievements of Jesus... or the Labour party.

>>93054
The UK government is presently spending vast amounts of money without tax rises. Ultimately the SNP's plans are just passing that on with the money distributed in more politically savvy ways, since the bulk of their budget is determined as a percentage of what gets spent in England.
The Scottish parliament lacks much by way of meaningful borrowing powers and their tax powers are also mostly crap with the big one being income tax, devolved because it's also the one people hate the most and so the hardest to use.

I'm not convinced the EU would actually care about Scottish borrowing either: Scotland will never be a Eurozone country (even if it does the Swedish thing of pretending it might be one day) so whatever other problems a large deficit causes, it isn't going to affect the Eurozone and "Europe will be upset" seems like a misguided fear. Particularly compared to the much bigger problem of "What if Europe wants a border?"

>>93040
I'm an SNP party member and I might abstain this time purely off the back of their draconian policing and justice legislation.

I want to live in an independent Scotland that is free for everyone, not one that is run by neo-fascists. They are going down a road I don't think I can in good conscience follow.

I don't think I'll post in this thread again, as even thinking about the state of the party makes me depressed but I don't have the hubris of labourlad to keep arguing about it when my hearts not in it.

>>93063
Vote for Alba for shits and giggles?

>>93064
I would second this without irony, pending the release of their manifesto.
They've had a terrible campaign so far but if their manifesto is half-way decent then I want Alba in parliament. Partially for the good faith reason that I think the dynamics of that party lend itself to creating internal pressure for the SNP to deliver more impressive domestic policies or face defections, partially because the way they're hated by the media and other parties reminds me of how the SNP often used to be treated. Alba has given them far more to work with but the way they've all closed ranks against it still disgusts me. Even if I wanted Alba to fail (which, if it was the Wings Over Scotland party for example, I would.) I'd still be disgusted by that style of behaviour. It's a reminder that as a small country with small political circles full of small people, everything is cliquish as all hell.

>>93064
Semi-serious suggestion: If you were previously going to vote SNP on the list ballot, vote Alba instead. Your votes will count for more that way. If you were going to vote Green on the list, do that anyway because Eck is still a cunt.

>>33130

The broader issue is the weird quasi-religious relationship that Americans have with their constitution. Our courts rule on things like fairness and reasonableness, but American courts have to engage in a weird Kabbalistic exercise to guess what the framers might have meant.

>>33131
I heard a thing that one of the founding fathers had proposed a rewritten constitution every 40 or so years.

That would have been quite interesting.

Also I've worked out the problem in life and the solution to it.

There's no more free land. You can no longer just stake out a bit of land with a group of similarly minded individuals and start your own state.

That's it. That's the main problem, and you could solve it with a bit of state sacrifice. If you could get all of the righties and the lefties living in their own areas, and they weren't overtly hostile, everyone would be much happier. You just need states to give up land. lol we're fucked

>>33132

There's always the sea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

>>33133

Somewhat impractical today because you'd have to be outside the twelve-mile zone which most contries now consider their coastal waters and therefore part of their national territory. Coastal small islands and rock formations are also usually included in that, even if they are uninhabited. So you'd have to go out quite a bit into international waters, and in a shallow sea, if you want to implement a design similar to an oil platform, which is usually only doable if you've got 500 metres or less of water under it. That rules out many areas, because the continental shelfs at ocean edges quite often drop off vertically two or three miles down before you're 12 miles out.

And to really be on the safe side, you'd have to be over 200 nautical miles away from any sovereign state's seacoast, because that's a country's exclusive economic zone.

A deeper reading of the Policing bill shows that it makes questioning the legality of a stop and search, illegal. “Obstruction of an SVRO”. So asking questions is illegal now.
Incidentally, yesterday, the Tories all voted against a law that would actually help victims of stalkers and sexual harassment, as if you needed any evidence that their pretence the policing bill was about concern for women, was just that.

Why are there so many 10 second videos (#shorts) popping up? Is Youtube trying to compete with Tiktok?

>>31702
Youtube implemented it as a feature copycatting tiktok, the algorithms give a lot of weight to shorts at the moment so youtubers who are wise to it are gaming the system.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3EyAlFZ-ok

I've got a £15 off UberEats code but it crashes every time I try and place an order.

I was going to google something and I've forgotten what it was.

>>31707
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+was+i+going+to+google&oq=what+was+I+going+&aqs=chrome.0.0l3j69i57j0l6.3551j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

>>93024

>What is the difference between a racist stereotype and a portrayal of cultural differences?

In theory it's about representing people as complex individuals who aren't defined by their ostensible differences from "the norm", but in practice it's just whatever people are touchy about at the moment.

The diversity and inclusion agenda is re-normalising tokenism, because it presupposes that everyone should feel represented by everything; when you're crowbarring "diverse identities" into things, subtlety inevitably goes out of the window and you veer back towards crass stereotypes.

>>93024

It's one of those things we should be able to judge by common sense and assessment of intent, but obviously that's far too complex with the reactionary mob out there hungry for something to be offended by. Somewhere along the line we've lost the distinction between simply portraying a thing, whether it be real, imagined, innocent or satirical; and the concept of endorsement or messaging attached to the thing.

There's a lot of cognitive dissonance attached to all of it too. We're all basically fine with films and games where the heroes go around violently injuring and killing dozens of people with the flimsiest of justifications, and we know that it's just fantasy with no real social influence or harm. But of course, the racial diversity of our cast of merciless killers will surely come under scrutiny, as will the writer's motivations if a female character isn't portrayed in a positive light, or what have you.

On a tangentially related note, this was a good video that reminded me of the discussion we were having about healthcare outcomes earlier on. He doesn't go into race too much, only briefly touches on it, but I don't think it takes too much to put 1+1 together given the evidence presented.


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

Also I bet he posts here, look at him. Give us a Quiggins reference in the next one if you're out there Georg.

>Of course Idris Elba’s Luther has no black friends. He’s a police officer

>>93065
Do we reckon are Georg posts here?

>>93066
It was written for white guy to be just another generic white detective trope.
They got Idris because he's an internationally famous hollywood actor in the right place at the right time who wanted to do something local.

>>443351
>>443354

There was a gamegear game where you play as a kight or something, birds eye view, and walk around a maze of trees picking up bread and stuff before inevitably dying of hunger. What was it called? Very mystery dungeon about it.
I've browsed wikipedias entire catalog of gamegear games but didn't notice likely cantidiates in any.

Master System is a weird one when you think about it. It was basically the Sega equivalent of the NES, only it had miles better graphics, but it seems to be almost entirely forgotten about. Nobody talks about Master System games. I'm a bit too young to remember their heyday but I knew a couple of kids who had Master Systems (leftover from an older sibling or whatever), whereas I can't think of anyone who had an NES. They can't have done very well here but the internet, if you look into retro gaming circles, is obsessed with it.

MegaDrive was better than Super Nintendo though, and I won't hear otherwise. Sonic, Golden Axe and Streets of Rage on their own were way better alone than anything on the Nintendo (unless you liked RPGs I suppose, but they were all jRPGs, and as an adult I can see that more or less the entire genre of jRPGs is bollocks.)

>>443374

It's the yank influence - the NES totally dominated their gaming market, but it was just one of many players here and in Europe. We bought more Master Systems than NESs, but we also bought Speccies, Amstrads, Amigas and STs. We got hooked on cheap cassette-based games that made cartridges look utterly extortionate, which was never really a thing in the US.

>>443370
Was it Ax Battler: The Legend of Golden Axe? I don't honestly think there were that many Game Gear games in retrospect; I was joking at work maybe a year ago that my favourite game of all time is a Game Gear game that's so obscure I use it as the answer to security questions and things for websites, because nobody will ever know what it is, and someone found it almost immediately.

Fond memories of Bonanza Bros. on my Master System.

>>8186
Same, they're cutting it on everyones.
The fact that the rules of HTBISAs limit how much you can pay in have made it easy for banks to offer high interest in the days when no one had much money in then cut it back as the accounts have matured.
They're closed completely to new customers now anyway as they got replaced by LISAs.

LISAs are good enough, as long as you're going to use them for retirement or buying a house. If you take money out for any other reason, from this financial year onwards you'll actually lose a few percent of what you put in to begin with.
LISAs are probably the best place to put your money for retirement, but only if you've got money left over to save after you've maxed out whatever employer contribution you've been able to get from a workplace pension.
But of course the government is also completely free to change the rules on LISAs at any point in the next 40 years or so if they feel like they've been too generous.

>The amount the government has to spend on state pensions will fall by £1.5bn by 2022, partly because of over-65s dying of Covid, forecasts suggest. The government will also receive an extra £0.9bn from inheritance tax, partly due to Covid-related deaths.

>The majority of coronavirus deaths have been among people aged over 65, many of whom will have been receiving the state pension. The OBR estimates spending on the state pension will fall by £600m in 2020-21 and £900m in 2021-22 compared with forecasts made before the pandemic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56272829

The comedy memecoins I mined over a hungover weekend back in 2013 are now massively outperforming my pension.

Working in finance must be an absolute mindfuck at the moment.

>>8726
This sort of thing has happened before. It's not too dissimilar from other bubbles.

>>8727
TLP coin has been trading for about 3 years now.

This was an enjoyable read, although the mystery and intrigue over the scheming was far more interesting than what actually ended up happening and there wasn't much of a pay-off at the end.

I enjoyed it, but I feel that PKD is much better as a short story writer than a novelist.

Yeah, I think I'll stick with his short stories from now on.

>>7204

I think the VALIS stuff from later on is his finest work. I recommend flicking through the Exegesis personal writings that were released some years ago. He was a bit of a mental.

The first ~30 pages were a little awkward and clunky but after that it picked up and left me with the same feelings of peacefulness and contentment that I get from watching one of my favourite films.

>>2909
I kept some dried polymer clay in water or possibly oil for a few years and it swelled up, went soft, fell apart.

There is an exterior grade of polyfilla that might be worth a try. Waterproof, think its based on cement, or cement+resin.

>>2910

Properly cured polymer clay is basically PVC, which has excellent water resistance but relatively poor resistance to oils. In the uncured or partially-cured state there'll be a lot of filler material and unbound plasticisers that aren't necessarily stable in water.

Thanks lads. I've double checked and my generic brand stuff is actually "plastic putty". It came with a hardening agent and the label claims it's water resistant. It's also hardened like rock, so I'm happy enough.

I'll let you all know if it melts in about two years time.

OP here an update: the plastic putty absolutely did not withstand exposure to regular warm water, and despite hardening like a rock, softened and came away in bits.

I've now been arsed to go to the shop and buy a proper waterproof glue and a caulking gun.

Lesson learned, don't be lazy when it comes to water and heat tolerance.

>>443072

I really like the sound of that though. Stockpile and get loads in and not have to venture anywhere for weeks if you don't want to. Just hang out in your big house and wait for the cold.

Maybe I have a romanticised view of the country though and driving doesn't bother me. My parents are 140 miles away and the closest friend to me is 40 miles so most things aren't around the corner.

>>443081
Just move to somewhere like Roos if you want to be in the middle of nowhere.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/88316449#/

>>443081

I think like this too - I'm mostly a hermit anyway and I will often drive for hours just to relax. A house in the middle of nowhere would suit me just fine. The only thing stopping me at the minute is that I still need to be physically present at work most of the time, so as much as I do like driving a long commute would probably get old. Having said that we have pilots that live three or four hours away from their base even though they're not supposed to.

On the other hand though, there's plenty to like about being ten minutes drive from a burger at all times. I think I'd definitely miss takeaway delivery and same-day amazon. Though maybe those are two vices better left out of my reach.

>>443082

Not cold enough.

I think I'd have encouraged my parents to get me into more after school clubs, ones that would be useful in later life. Martial arts, gymnastics, dancing, things like that.

>>30701

I'm not trying to "doxx" here or anything, but are you the same lad that posts about feeling that they've not exerted enough force when you get into physical confrontations?

I ask because I've known people to become absurdly preoccupied by violence, and looking up videos like this on the internet is only going to reinforce those feelings of fear, aggression, and need to protect yourself.

If that's not you, though, then I would take it as an overwhelmingly positive sign that you are disturbed by the thought of someone senselessly losing their life. I'd urge you to think about a few things that place the video back in reality:

- You probably saw a video between a few seconds to a couple of minutes. This removes all the context, which might help make the events of the video more understandable (e.g. did they pride themselves on being brawlers? What sort of people film themselves fighting? etc.). I'm not saying anyone deserves to die in pain, but these things always have more context worth considering than a snippet of horrible footage allows.

- I don't know what it's like to experience a brain bleed, but it's impossible to know what the person went through. You're putting your own fears of being "destroyed" or killed in a senseless, humiliating, and painful way into that person, and imagining what it would feel like. I'd argue it's difficult to know whether he was even conscious. It also sounds like you're deriving information from one of the commenters in the thread. That's probably additional speculation, and moreover it's speculation from people who are preoccupied with watching the same kind of videos you are, and placing their own fears and/or fixations in the video. Unless they're experienced with traumatic brain injury, I wouldn't take their assessment at face value. Even confirmation of the death won't tell you what the experience was like.

- There's a reason boxing, BJJ, MMA, and other martial arts take place on canvas rather than concrete. If they did, it would be a completely different (and pointlessly dangerous) sport. Competitors would adapt to the new environment and it would become a contest of seeing who can shove, knock over, push, or pull the others head to the much harder surface first. Don't fight on concrete, no matter who you are.

>>/£$€¥/8631 had me thinking about different types of capital, namely; social, cultural and economic.

I'm coming to realise 'social capital' may be exactly what i lack - mainly through choice it seems, though i'm trying to practice earning some through the simulation of a videogame. It's fucking hard.

I've been through a couple of 'social enterprises', which wikipedia defines as "an organization that applies commercial strategies to make a positive difference for social benefit" - that sounds to me like an attempt to increase participants social capital by hooking them up with relevant people. These ended okay, but nothing come of them. I allowed myself to disengage from emergent friendships.

I feel a significant degree of apathy, perhaps aversion, whenever an idea or activity reaches the stage of inviting others to join. I could do it mostly myself, like play football against a wall. Sure I get lonely sometimes but i can just barely talk to some ducks when that happens, plus i have family who'll entertain visits regularly enough.

I guess it's selfishness which discourages me? I want what the group can give me. I'm not sure whether i'd be willing to contribute - i think so, but the times i've done so could be an act. It certainly feels like it when i know damn right i've only be helping so that i may benefit. I mean, you only do social things for social standing, right? To impress other people. It's that whole kindness as a selfish act thing, right now i can't see the zen of it.

I don't fucking get this, nor why it's made an issue in my mind. I don't want fucking friends, i'm apathetic to networking and 'i can do fine by my self' (except on the back of ESA/DLA, ofcourse). So why the fuck do i want recognition?.

>>30705
It definitely has an impact sometimes, think it depends how tired I am. Sometimes it's nice to feel more empathetic when watching TV. I saw Red Turtle stoned and honestly I'm glad I did, because without the increased malleability, I probably would have been a bit disappointed in the ending.

>>30706
Haha, actually it is, that's a bit concerning. I appreciate the intent, I don't think it's related though, I don't seek these things out. When I scroll on reddit I just instinctively open any image/gif links, then glance at the surrounding articles while they're loading. It was basically random, and I didn't dwell on it immediately afterwards. Half an hour afterwards I actually had a minor argument with my girlfriend and was feeling a bit stressed before bed, and my brain was cycling through thoughts. It's something I can easily piece together, and something that didn't keep me up last night. I think actually mentioning it on this thread, which was intended to be an outlet, has resulted in it lasting a bit longer.

Essentially, I was particularly susceptible and that image was particularly compelling, there's not much more to read into it.

While I do clearly have some issues in that area, I can't see any link with my insecurity over my ability to react effectively, but I appreciate the sentiment. Regarding your theories:

I tried to consider the wider framing, that the cameraman would have had people behind them who would likely have stepped in to call for help, and other aspects of the context. But when you wake up at 5am and have existing stress over getting back to sleep, any image or sound can be a bit galling if playing in a loop.

There was a term for it which I would have to revisit the thread to look up. I was about to do that but I do not want to revisit it. It begins with De. It is not pleasant, many people were commenting on it, more were quibbling over the minutiae of it, resulting in sourced arguments being thrown into the mix to prove who knew more. Could have been bullshit, but I think you're reaching a bit hard to deny the strong possibility that it was an excruciating experience, to the extent that it actually makes me reflect on it more since the denial seems intended to reassure than be grounded in reality. It actually makes me feel more anxious, haha.

I appreciate where you're coming from. Interesting link you made. Unfortunately it seems a bit more mundane than that, which is quite good for me.

>>30708
>There was a term for it which I would have to revisit the thread to look up. I was about to do that but I do not want to revisit it. It begins with De.
Deindividuation? I think that's what the bystander effect is, so it might be what you were reading about.

>>30709
No, descapulation or something, and then another word. It renders an effect such as mentioned in my initial post.

>>443366

Just get some spider plants mate.

>>443367
Too many bad memories.


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

>>443366
Dehumidifiers can lower the relative humidity in a room, so in that sense they work. At room temperature you need to remove about 2g/m³ of water to lower humidity by 10% (e.g. in a 4x4x2.5m room that's about 80g) which a proper powered one will do no problem. I'd avoid "passive" chemical dehumidifiers, on the other hand, are only useful in small spaces like cupboards unless you fancy changing them every few days. Fortunately, tools for measuring humidity are cheap so it's easy to verify their effectiveness.

Air purifiers on the other hand are tricky, there are a lot of products making all kinds of wild claims about their effectiveness, but measuring their results is more expensive and requires more specialist equipment. There are of course things you can do to improve air quality, if your hoover has a HEPA filter it's effectively doing that for example, but its harder to quantify what exactly makes air "more pure".

>>443366
Dehumidifiers are good if you have a damp house, basically if you have a problem with condensation on walls and windows or mould patches. They're good if you often have to hang laundry up indoors to dry.
Don't bother with cheap ones, in this country you really need to pay a bit more for a powered desiccant dehumidifier as other types are virtually useless in cold-damp conditions.

Air purifiers as in ionisers/ion-generators are 95% snake oil. They do help eliminate smells and make a room more "fresh" feeling, but as they generate some ozone which is bad for your health it's best to leave one running on a timer when you're out of the house for a while.

Air purifiers with a physical HEPA filter are amazing if you buy a big enough one for the size of the house. They reduce build up of visible dust, get rid of viruses bacteria and mould spores that are in the air, and pollen which is good if you suffer allergies, as well as particulate pollution. They usually also have carbon filters included which get rid of VOCs, formaldehydes and other things like that. You might not notice the benefits of a HEPA filter day to day, but they should have at least a slight improvement on your general well being and health.

>>443371

Pollens and spores are (relatively) large particles that don't actually require HEPA filtration. A G4 filter will catch more than 90% of those particles and an F7 filter will catch basically everything, plus substantial filtration of smoke and fine soot. Airflow is at least as important as filter effectiveness, because the filter can only work on the air being passed through it - it's no good filtering 99.999% of everything if the purifier unit has a piss-weak fan that barely moves any air.

If you're serious about indoor air quality, I'd suggest building your own. It really isn't difficult or expensive, you just need to strap a panel filter to a big fan. Industrial panel filters are cheaper and longer-lasting than the filters in domestic air purifiers, which are basically toys by comparison.

I can't say whether they make a meaningful difference in a typical domestic environment, but they work miracles in a workshop.

https://www.addfiltration.co.uk/

The potless Pot Noodles must really have flopped because shops are practically giving them away now.

>>14300
I tried them once. They were nothing like actual pot noodles, and the flavouring was very weak.

>>14301
The chicken one is kind of alright, at least if you're paying a maximum of 20p for them, but the curry and sweet chilli ones are dire.

>>14300
Not surprising. As instant noodles go, the major selling point for pot noodles are the pot. The competition for plain bagged ones is immense and they've never been more accessible with every larger supermarket seemingly having at least a small collection beyond their own-brand ones.

These were 99p in my local Lidl, I think reduced to clear after Veganuary. They're not bad, not too far off Quorn escalopes.

>>33111
>Vaccine doses cost about two quid each. The international community should manage to scrape together £16bn to buy doses for everyone - that's about the same cost as nine days of the UK lockdown. Get most of those doses into someone's arm and you're halfway there.

If you happen to know someone who has 15 billion spare covid vaccines (for we'll need two at a minimum) then I'm sure the everyone would love to hear about it. Just don't tip our new supplier off because they can effectively hold the world to ransom.

Anyway that's always the problem. It's all well and good saying we can just spend a bit of money but it's nowhere near that simple when getting covid vaccines into conflict zones is going to be nightmare for the same reason people can starve in 21st century.

>>33113
I think history shows you're misguided in your cynicism. We consistently get better at dealing with problems after every disaster and the institutions we're relying on now show this dating back to at least the International Sanitary Conferences.

In the immediate term pandemic monitoring is going to be the new black. The problem will be 10-20 years down the line and the inevitable US-China cunt-offs rendering us forgetful.

>>33111
>>33114
Do we know for sure if the AZ vaccine (the one that only costs a couple of quid and can be kept at regular fridge temperatures) is actually effective enough to provide herd immunity on it's own?
Depending on who you ask anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of the population need to be immune to hit the herd immunity threshold, but the AZ vaccine is only somewhere around 75% effective against regular covid and almost useless at preventing symptomatic infection (and therefore transmission) for at least one variant.

>>33113
We might not eradicate it completely but infection rates will drop as more people are vaccinated, which means less chances for it to mutate, which means more time to adjust vaccines and vaccinate more people before the next partial escape variant pops up.
Hopefully this should result in a positive feedback loop wich ends with covid being something like measles or polio, where it's not a significant problem in countries with developed healthcare even if we can't completely get rid of it.

>>33117

>Hopefully this should result in a positive feedback loop wich ends with covid being something like measles or polio, where it's not a significant problem in countries with developed healthcare even if we can't completely get rid of it.

It could end up being something you go through in infancy or childhood, when it's not very likely you'll develop severe symptoms, and then you're more or less immune.

The big unknown is still how long your immunisation will last, either from contact with the actual virus or from getting a vaccine. Most studies I'm aware of say that you'll have over five months of very good immunity against covid-19 either way, but it's not fully known or understood yet if your body will still be immune on its own on a more long-term timescale, or if we're all going to need another jab once every year or something.

>>33117

>We might not eradicate it completely but infection rates will drop as more people are vaccinated, which means less chances for it to mutate, which means more time to adjust vaccines and vaccinate more people before the next partial escape variant pops up.

This, plus the fact that small numbers of cases are much easier to track and isolate. Eradication isn't a realistic aim at this stage, but we can achieve a level of control that prevents major outbreaks without onerous lockdown measures.

>>33115

>If you happen to know someone who has 15 billion spare covid vaccines (for we'll need two at a minimum) then I'm sure the everyone would love to hear about it.

We can't do it overnight, but we can do it. AZ expect to produce 3bn doses this year. Sinopharm and Sinovac are targeting 1.5bn doses this year, plus another 700m from Bharat Biotech. Add the also-rans and we're expecting 6-7bn doses by the end of this year. The real gamechanger for the developing world is the J&J/Janssen vaccine, which only requires a single dose and can be stored at ordinary fridge temperatures; we should be chucking money at them to ramp up production.

If we really knuckle down, it's a realistic goal to have 70-80% of the global population vaccinated by next summer. That won't provide true herd immunity, but it will slow the spread of the virus enough to make it manageable.

>>33111
>Vaccine doses cost about two quid each.
AZ doses cost about 2 quid each and are being sold at cost, and every man and his dog is arguing the toss first about whether it should be banned from use because it might only be 70% effective instead of 90% effective, next about whether the EU should get more doses first because the EU is more important, and now the EU still wants more doses even though they've decided to ban it from use again because of 1 in a million people having serious side effects.

The Chinese vaccines also cost a few quid each but it's starting to look like they're closer to 50% effective against the first variant and next to useless against the newer mutations.
The Russian vaccines are cheap but the only solid data that western scientists have had access to looks sort of tampered.
And then there's the US/German vaccines which are probably the most effective, but they're being sold at extortionate mark-ups because they can.