>>13658
Where'd you work in China? Enjoy it? Would you go back?

>>13666
Shanghai.
Enjoyed it more than being hikikomori living with my parents.
I don't imagine I will ever set foot in mainland China again.

I didnt hate it at the time, but I look at friends who have worked consistently in a single company in the UK for a decade and feel like my time has been spent suboptimally.

I'm also pretty sure I have complex PTSD from all the job precarity, and international relocation (five countries in five years), and such.

>>13667
Would you recommend it as an experience? I guess it's pretty difficult to put down any kind of roots in China, but I know a few friends who seem to like it enough that they go back.

>>13670

There's definitely a lot of opportunity there, but I wouldn't have wanted to settle. Generally Westerners will fall into 3 categories: Staying less than a year because they can't adapt to the BS, Marrying and staying forever, or staying 2 years and then moving on to the next thing.

It seemed like the govt was becoming increasingly hostile to foreigners when I left in 2018, and I don't imagine things have improved since COVID. I know a married couple that left in Feb and then just never returned.

Definitely a good thing to do for a while if you're youngish and have nothing more engaging going on.

How much notice did you have?

Trick is to slowly start moving money out of your accounts so they don't know what you had. My dad thought he was being made redundant and had a few months to think about it; ended up with £40K stashed up the attic so he could still claim. Thankfully, his job was fine, but it's a good tactic.

Rules are made to be broken mate.

Pretty much every place I've worked at have always had the hump with me leaving on time.
Cunts.

>>13719

The one job I had with an actual clock/in out system, I got hunted down by the HR woman and chastised for being at work 15 minutes early.

>>13719
Most places I've worked at say you're being paid for your contracted hours, you are at your desk ready to work at nine and can only stop working at five and not a second sooner.

My current place, they are getting ready to leave at ten minutes to, and can't get out the fucking door fast enough when it hits five o'clock. If I'm still busily working up to five I'll look up from my desk and wonder where everyone has vanished to.

>>13721
I work for a team in California. Nobody gives a fuck as long as I show up for the occasional call.

I've been on flexi for a while as have the rest of my team and my manager. As long as the work gets done and gets done, no one cares. WFH is even better, answer a few emails/Team messages via my phone whilst in bed, have a slow start and sit down at my desk for about 11:30am, do things around the house as I get bits of work done, eat and then finish about 7:30ish with everything done (including housework and dinner), drink, read and write into the evening, watch a film and fall asleep. Pretty comfy life. Can't remember the last time I wore more than a t-shirt and boxer shorts. I do not miss my old 'proper' job, having to wear shirt and trousers everyday, 9 - 5 - fuck that. Works for some, not for me.

>>92145

FINALLY, THE BRITISH PEOPLE HAVE SECURED THEIR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO BE RIPPED OFF BY MASTERCARD!

>>92145
VISA have apparently not yet got any plans to increase their fees yet, but wouldnt be surprising if they did the same next financial year.

https://twitter.com/cstross/status/1356960430699257856

Boris Making the case for being in the EU today.

Oh goodie, it looks like Brexiters are pushing to bring back brexit.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-restart-boris-johnson-conservative-b1803583.html
>Talks to rebuild security cooperation with the EU must restart now after the Brexit deal left the UK “less safe and less secure”, a Conservative group says.

>>92338
By 'the Brexiters', are you referring to the parliamentary group of Europhilic Conservatives?

>>30218
>took months before finding a male therapist willing to take my case.
>The other therapist either told me that they were not dealing with cases like mine

What kind of thing are we talking here?
Do you eat your own poop? do you eat other peoples?

>>30220

Much worse than that. Lots of child sexual abuse involved.

>>30221
Have you considered talking to the police about it? I imagine once the burden of secrecy is lifted you could begin processing the guilt, whichever position you're in. Ofcourse that burden would be replaced by another but it might be bearable with the knowledge that you're doing what's right.

https://www.stopitnow.org.uk/ exists, with a free anonymous helpline and valuable resources.

>>30222

Thanks for your kind words, but it happened decades ago, in a shithole country far away from UK. The police won't care (they did not care back then), and all people involved are either dead, in a retirement home with dementia, or have moved on with their lives. People prefer to deal with those issues in private.

>>30213
There 2 sides to that
1 side he wants you to keep paying him so he probably would just say shit for you to think he is helping but really isn't
2 side that sounds like that would actually help. Like did you think anybody though thar waving a clock in front of somebody, but it did.

>>68091

Why are we still even doing names when we could have a code for kids which is like year-area-class-flair. 2012-LON-$-Tarquin is a perfectly cromulent name.

>>68098
If the

flair

attribute is just a name anyway, what would be the point in making a code?

>>68091

Want to watch a 90 minute, two-part documentary on the tragic decline of Bobs in sport? Of course you do.

>>68098

Just allocate everyone a WeChat QR code from birth. It'll save a lot of time when the Chinese finally take over and they can't pronounce our funny foreign names.

>>68095
There is only one way to spell Muhammed in Arabic, and is probably the same in countries using the Arabic script (محمد). The different spellings in English is because of how different cultures pronounce it, but it might all sound the same to you. For instance, people from the Middle East are more likely to spell it Muhammed, while people from South Asia are more likely to spell it Mohammed. Africans tend to spell it with one M, Mohamed.

If you think the different Muhammed variations are weird, you should see all the million different variations that exist for names starting with Abdul, and how different cultures spell it.

Also, names such as Shamanism, eskimo, and even The Great Whale Hunt are very popular names in South Asia, Malaysia, and Indonesia, but funnily enough, not in the Middle East or Africa.

>>8483

I was abroad for years and never told them where I was and figured I had basically disappeared, but the moment I got a legit job in a Commonwealth country they found me again.

Recently there have been changes in repayment policy, like, if you earn less than 2000gbp p/m you don't have to make repayments (which is quite a bit higher than what it was).

I, for one, don't even have a student loan.

'Game changer' in the context of selling novelty food products. Normally in the context of some tat you can pick up at some bargain shop - even M&S is getting in on it now which just shows how far we have fallen as a nation.

SAMSON

POTATO WEDGERS.

>>31407
Is that a mistake people make like calling a drawer a draw, or is just weird Gen Z chonky boi babble? Cheeky burgerino and a side of wedgers, etc.

I can't really describe it, but you will notice it if you hear someone say it.

People saying Caucases instead of Caucasus.

Harmony from The Queen's Nose is now a therapist.

https://welldoing.org/email/victoria-shalet-person-centred-humanistic-psychotherapist-london-w1u

I too am interested in this as I've heard tales of people having to try multiple therapists which I really don't have the cash for, I want to be as sure as possible before biting the bullet.

If it's any help to you OP, so far I've browsed MyOnlineTherapy due to the good reviews and some of the lists of qualifications therapists have on there are extensive. It is £49 for an initial 30 minute meeting and after that £99 per hour session though so it's not anything I can do long term but that's just me, there's also the benefit of being able to do it just through text if you so wish, so you can then revisit conversations and advice they've given you.

I'm not sure where your weird roleplay would be appropriate but it's not /b/.

>>2892
It will be fine.

>>2894

The house was already on fire before replacing the bulb so it would appear that it is in fact fine according to the logic of this comic.

Lamp fitting wattages used to be important in the days of incandescent bulbs which put out a shitton of heat. If you put a 100w bulb in a 60w lamp, it would get very toasty in there and possibly melt or catch fire.

With LEDs its a bit more complicated. If you've got a lamp with a separate transformer putting out 12vdc, going over the W rating could end up burning out the transformer.

But I'm guessing this is probably a mains powered lamp you've got, in which case it's hard to give a good answer as the efficiency and heat output of different types of LED bulbs varies hugely. I would say that as long as the lamp is fairly open with space for air to circulate around the bulb then there should be no problem with it.

>>68049

Mate, 70% of my working memory is pro-baldness talking points.

>>68025
haha, look at his eyes darting round all panicky

>>68050

You sound very insecure about your baldness, honestly. Have you considered just growing some hair?

>>68048

So the tape that Werner Herzog destroyed is just the grizzly bear guy laughing at a baldy? I bet he didn't even see a grizzly bear until he started saying slaphead all the time.

>>68071

Herzog has hair, the guy that was eaten had a full head of hair.

I'm saying he may have been eaten due to negative comments made towards/about bald people in previously unreleased footage.

>>27796

The war of drugs is pointless. But it's easier to shake down the local weed dealer than to get the local oligarch to fork out some readies to pay fair taxes.

>>27797
It's even easier to legalise it all.

>>27798
And let the organised crime groups get away with people trafficking and modern slavery?

>>27799

Human trafficking is more difficult following legalization and regulation. It doesn't go away, but the Sex Workers in Holland have a Trade Union for example, and instead of drug and sex trade being 100% illegal, it becomes mostly illegal and makes things more competitive and less attractive to career criminals.

>>27800

Should say 'mostly legal' obviously.

I'm not so sharp these days what with the whole lockdown dementia and all.

>>2881
Watch battery won't run a relay (for very long, or at all). MOSFET or just putting your switch in the right place are sensible options.
That's assuming you're not just copying stuff from t'other place for some demented reason.

If you're the lad from >>2882 then this should work.
But before you go modding the doorbell check the button isn't knackered and that the connections aren't loose or corroded.

Why would you take the switch connection from the low (switched) side of the solenoid? Are you trying to build an oscillator this way, to make the bell ring?
Rule 3 of electronics: Amplifiers oscillate, oscillators don't.
At least be prepared to put a capacitor between B & E , and even then, be prepared for the bastard thing to just fins a bias point and sit there burning power in the transistor until it fails.

>>2889
Because it's less of a pain in the arse to wire it that way when you take into account the physical construction of the doorbell and the existing wiring, and because it's a doorbell not a finely tuned SMPS.
Even if there's enough capacitative coupling in the cable to cause it to oscillate it should act as a charge pump via the B->E junction of Q1 until the base voltage gets pushed far enough below the switch on threshold to kill any oscillations.

sage because the proper answer is to replace the button and/or cable rather than mod the doorbell to work for a bit longer with failing wiring.

>>2890
The joy of electronics is that it doesn't give a damn if you're trying to build something trivial, the same rules still apply.
I think you should reduce R1 (possibly to zero), or you'll be pissing away volts across, and power into, the transistor. You want the transistor on hard. As it turns on, the voltage available through the switch will drop, as more volts appear across L1. No need for a current limiting resistor on the base, by the time the transistor is on enough to pull the bottom of the inductor to 0.6V or so, it'll all self-limit.
Bear in mind also that 9V batteries are shit. Alkalines start out at 10Ohms, end up at 1K. Make sure your doorbell solenoid won't just drain it in a couple of uses. A battery holder with 6 C cells has vastly better performance if you can find the space. (or 4 C cells, given that the pp3 will be wilting pretty much from the start).

Up to the final episode which I will save for later, like the otherlad, I've been finding quite a bit of the series really quite funny with regards to the unintended consequences of the last 200+ years of Western history, and even found it funny with the idea that the language and forms of power themselves are universal and blind - nobody is free from its grip, no matter how much fervour in system x or y they have. It reminded me of his series All Watched Over when it turned out that hippy communes just ended up being cults of personality and the enforcement of one will above everybody else's.

If I didn't laugh, I'd cry etc. etc.

It's like Marx said innit. The more free you believe yourself to be of ideology, the deeper you are ultimately likely to be immersed in it.

Or something like that.

Just finished it all. I don't know, it just felt a bit wondering? I think if it was half the length and a lot tighter-edited it could have a much greater impact.

>>23579

He did repeat a lot of what he's already covered in films like Century of the Self, and All Watched Over as otherlad mentions, but I suppose for someone new coming in, that background context is necessary to set up the rest.

I get the feeling people like us who are familiar with the concepts in his older material might not be the target audience this time, and maybe he was aiming more at was today's highly radicalised Rudgwick/Twitter/Etc politic kids, who often fail to realise they're retreading ground that has been thoroughly trod before. The point seemed largely to be that every time this radical rhetoric comes around, they usually aren't the first, and nor will they be the last, to think they've cracked it, and ultimately only end up assimilated and subverted by the existing structures of power.

But this was an illusion.

I sort of get the idea that this series is considerably more meta than his previous ones - there are a hell of a lot of half-made allusions between the more visible and large-scale looting going on in Russia and China and what's going on in the UK and US where the looting of the economy by a few is more formally legalised and backed up with our states' views on what is acceptable and what is not. Even further, I would like to add, and I'm sure Adam would probably agree with this to some extent - the entire series is just a narrative thread that he has plucked out to help describe how and where things are going, so is he ultimately any better or worse off than a bog standard conspiracy theorist?

>a standard toilet plunger would be too large
Glue a cocktail stick to one of these jumping toy things.

Small dents like that are really tricky to pull, because there's less surface area and more plastic deformation. Your best chance is with a PDR tool (about a tenner from AliExpress). You could try just buying the puller tabs and yanking on it with a pair of pliers, which should only cost you a couple of quid.

Hot melt glue a stick to it. Pull and wiggle.
There's only a 50% chance you'll make it worse.

>>2875

Thanks, I picked up a PDR tool and might try a bit of heating and cooling first for a wiggle, as well. I'll report back the result if I remember.

I'll take >>2876 as an emergency backup option, and >>2874 as something to do if I ever find myself bored and on a desert island with these exact items and a sheet of dented steel.

>>2874
for what it's worth, don't stick these to your forehead unless you want a perfectly round hickey. Same goes for halved tennis balls. Younger me was daft.

>>66961
> I'VE NEVER SEEN THE APPEAL OF HAVING A BATH IN THE GARDEN.

A bath that everyone shares where the water is hardly ever changed. It's spunk soup, or worse. Hot tubs are disgusting things in any context, let alone your own back garden.

>>66960
It's fucking weird. Just about everything east of Hull, barring possibly roos, feels incredibly backwater.

>>68041
Would it be any different to Harrods?

>>68042
Not really. Birmingham Primark is the harrods of the North.

>>441490
My favourite part of her statement is saying she doesn't have the authority to cancel it, when she decided she had the authority to bring it back in the first place despite no demand for it whatsoever.

>>442223
Is this post what the young 'uns would call "based" and "sissifyed"?

>>442224
they've never had it so easy as they have during this pandemic

>>441488

Everything about this post makes me sick. The self importance, the persistent implication that she's in the right, the idea that "We're just trying to show our appreciation" through a fucking *clap*, it's all shit, all bollocks, she doesn't deserve to be getting threats but something tells me she's not gotten no more abuse than being called 'cunt' in a variety of ways.

Why do people who use "I'm just trying to do something nice" get in my arse so much? There's something so insidious about it, like because it seems like a nice thing it *must* be good. But it's not, it's a fucking distraction and a waste!

>>442226

Because it’s a true example of the shipping forecast. The cause is always irrelevant to these people and they’re not there to provide meaningful support, rather just the public appearance of support for the purpose of their own self satisfaction and/or gratification from the people too stupid to recognise what is actually going on.

Rage 2 will be free on Spic Store from the 19th.

>>24796
Racist.

>>24797

Eh, Forget about it.

>>24796

Nice, I almost bought that a bit ago when I was desperate for something to play.

The only thing that stopped me is that I only seem to pay for games where you get to make your own character these days. It should be a standard feature.

>>24796

I'd be more excited about Infinite Drift, the other free game next week. It doesn't look particularly impressive, but the sequel Art of Rally was the best thing I played last year.

>>92272

We're definitely going to get on top of COVID within the next couple of years, so we should be enjoying crisp refreshing pints in a sunny beer garden by 2023 at the latest. Massive advances in genomics and deep learning will lead to an unprecedented boom in medical technology. Affordable VR headsets with near-perfect visual clarity are in the pipeline and should become mainstream within a few years. When the Chinese finally take over the world, at least we'll have a competent government. WE'RE GOING TO MARS! Weed is inevitably going to get legalised because we desperately need the tax revenues. BoJo is going to die of mega-chlamydia from all the unprotected knobbing.

>>92277

That really hasn't convinced me not to kill myself.

>>92277
>unprecedented boom in medical technology

I'm still half-hoping that we get biological immortality in our lifetimes. Even if it takes 200 years.
I'll settle for a few decades being young again before dronelad drops the ISS on me in a poorly executed plot to close Gatwick.

>>92279
A more likely scenario is kids bombing their school from orbit using a hacked satellite because their homework was late.

>>92274

Interestingly, someone hacked (a system on) the ISS using AX.25 and a fucking bash command injection bug and posted it on twitter so I'm fairly sure that properly weaponised autism is fully capable of hijacking a satellite or two.

>>92280
This is exactly why I should have got a commodore amiga instead of a SNES when I was nine.

>>8466

Well, quite. But as the average age of a pilot is about 50, we might soon see a shortage of them regardless.

>>8467

I think that the airline industry is facing real problems in the medium- to long-term. We'll see a big surge of pent-up demand for leisure travel when restrictions start to be lifted, but I think there will be a sustained reduction in business travel now that people have got used to Zoom and WFH. Some people will be itching to get back to their jetsetting lifestyle, but corporate finance departments have seen that a huge amount of their travel budget doesn't really add anything to the bottom line.

>>8468

The majority of UK (and Irish) airlines, and travel agents, and particularly those companies that are both combined, are already, to be blunt, completely fucked. Most of these companies operate on an expand-every-summer plan, meaning they've already spent all your holiday money on planes, staff, and handling contracts long before you've ever gone on holiday. This works great, unless something happens that stops literally everyone going on holiday, and everyone wants their money back.

Companies like TUI are using recently booked holiday deposits to try to refund customers who couldn't fly a year ago, and it's all going to collapse on them like a house of cards. They don't own planes, they only lease them - so as soon as they look like they're fucked, they'll be forced to bankrupt and their only hope of clawing back income will disappear. This happened to Flybe the very second a corona quarantine was even considered. This will also likely impact the huge companies that lease these aircraft, because any surviving airline will not be thinking about expansion for years. Same goes for ground handling companies, who were already struggling. Very few airlines do their own baggage handling, towing etc, because the equipment and staffing involved is very expensive. You can board, service and fly a plane with about 5 ground staff, but it takes about 10 or 15 to handle bags, refuel, operate steps, tow the plane off stand, etc.

The big holiday airlines are burning through customer money, government bailouts, aircraft parking fees, continuous maintenance (you can't just leave a plane mothballed for months without stacking up very expensive liabilities, and they need to fly every few weeks to remain certified)

There is exactly ONE airline in the UK that has been recognised by the CAA as being competent and prompt with refunds. Literally just one - Jet2. They also happen to own all of their planes, and their holiday business and airline business are technically separate, though both operated under one PLC; even if all holidays are cancelled for the next five years they still own 90 odd planes. They haven't touched a penny of the government money the other airlines have eaten up, and since they're one of the only airlines that does their own ground handling, they do not need to worry about someone like Swissport collapsing and leaving them grounded.
However, they're not a cheap airline. Their tagline used to be 'friendly low fares' but they're pretty much at flag carrier prices now. I think the customer service they'd displayed over the last year will still drive a lot of people to them, because it looks like you can trust your money with them no matter what happens, but there's a huge chunk of punters that can't and won't pay £400 for a flight to the canaries and back when Ryanair does it for £15.
Jet2 are probably an airline you've never heard of unless you're northern, but I expect them to be making big plays as soon as they can, because they're in such a massively good position compared to anyone else. The industry rumour at the start of the pandemic was they could operate for an entire year with zero flights and still be net positive in cash, which is a bit mental for any company, but 1000x so for an airline.

BA will also be fine, because their domestic flights will not ever lose momentum, and they don't really lease aircraft, with the exception of having to wet lease to replace their dodgy 787s a while back, but that's priced in to a BA ticket.

I don't think we'll see any of the big tourist airlines disappear completely within the next few years, as they have investors with deep pockets who will keep them afloat, but ticket prices will be up and flight frequency and certainly expansion will hit the floor. TUI has their fingers in cruiseliners too, and a strong Dreamliner fleet that basically print money, but they're still the shakiest in my opinion. Easyjet have very strong slots and serve the majority of northern irish tourism travel and short domestic, so they'll take a hit but I can't see them bankrupting. If they own planes (I don't know and can't be arsed to look) they will sell or lease a portion of them, or else just pare down the fleet. Ryanair fly too many internal spanish flights to be in real trouble, but pre pandemic their plan was to move their bases to smaller, cheaper airports to cut even more costs, so I can imagine doing that more quickly and more dramatically than they were. A Ryanair pilot also pointed out to be that they could double the price of every single ticket and still more than likely be the cheapest possible flight to any given destination, so there's that too.

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>>8468

I completely forgot to address your point about business travel - I think you're right, I can't see how anyone can justify business travel again after this. I'm firmly on the tourism side of the industry though, so can't offer perfect insight into this, but I will say that a lot of the business flights I've dealt with are either lucrative charters or otherwise key personnel who need to be in a specific place to do a specific thing - I wouldn't be surprised if the "meet in person to talk business" type of ticket was only a small slice of the pie in the first place. I will try and get solid numbers.

>>8470
> I completely forgot to address your point about business travel - I think you're right, I can't see how anyone can justify business travel again after this.

I work in what is probably one of the few industries that absolutely cannot do away with business travel completely so I'm probably biased the other way. I know for a fact that the company I work for has a lot of clients with massive contracts just waiting until we can get people travelling again.

I do agree that the majority of business travel is just people just going on a jolly while using a sales pitch or update meeting as an excuse for an expensive lunch and taking the missus to a nice hotel if you can wing it. I definitely feel that with any luck a lot of that kind of thing will finally be moved online.