I hate it when people only pay 50 percent attention when you're talking to them on the phone and you know they're really busy doing something else, like for example when you can hear the keys on their computer keyboard clicking, and they are just reacting to every third or fourth word you tell them and then say things that are neither here nor there. Kind of like a shit AI prompt.

You're doing neither of us a favour. I'm obviously wasting your time because you'd rather be doing something else that you think is more important, and you are wasting my time by not listening, and making yourself look like a cunt because you don't care enough to give me five or ten minutes of your undivided attention. Just tell me to call you back when you're less busy doing other things. Problem solved.

>>36443
I know a few people who like to leave an open line to their family, usually skype or whatever, then call one another from the next room as though they still lived in the same house. It's nice, really, but I couldn't do it myself.
Instead I take calls in the kitchen, where I will usually do something alongside the conversation. It's a lot more productive and inducing of a conversational atmosphere (like how some people congregate around a kitchen), instead of leaning over the counter waiting for the caller to get to the point so I can go sit down again (teathered phone).

Undivided attention that doesn't go anywhere when you're already busy, especially when demanded of me and often with a request of favor, is my /101/. It's worse than finding a string of 6 messages, all below 20 characters, to filter through on your phone.

>>36444

>Instead I take calls in the kitchen, where I will usually do something alongside the conversation. It's a lot more productive and inducing of a conversational atmosphere

I guess we'll agree to disagree. If I'm just calling you to ask how you are today, then that's fine I guess. But if I really need to tell you something and maybe even want your advice, then it's just bad manners. And you can tell if somebody is paying attention or not, even on the phone.

>>36444

>I know a few people who like to leave an open line to their family, usually skype or whatever, then call one another from the next room as though they still lived in the same house.

Good grief. It's not as though I hate my family, but I certainly moved out for a reason. People utterly perplex me sometimes.

>>36446
Surveilence culture is everywhere. I don't just mean CCTV outside your house or whatever, I mean people monitoring people all of the time for whatever reason. This piece in The Guardian made my head spin when I read it: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/may/08/you-be-the-judge-my-dad-wants-to-track-my-location-on-his-phone-should-he-leave-me-alone

>Martha makes out that I look at it obsessively, but I don’t. I’d never message her to ask what she’s doing. When I did that before, it was just a joke. But it is quite nice to know she is alive, because she’s not good at keeping in touch.

Everyone's sitting alone, keeping track of everyone else.

>>36443
Isn't that how people usually communicate in real life? You might be on a walk, drinking a coffee, fishing or having a fag - but you'll be standing sideways to each other and doing something else but the conversation flows fine and a lot of times maybe even better.

Although if I'm honest I'd rather you didn't call.

>>36448

You can be paying full attention to a conversation while on a walk or drinking a coffee. Or having a fag. And as a passionate angler, I can attest that you can have some of the best conversations while you and your fishing buddy are dipping your rods in the water. That's all not mutually exclusive. It's when you're doing something else at the same time which consumes so much of your attention that you have to fake attention to the person talking to you and expecting you to actually listen. I guess that's what really annoys me about it. The way people then fake attention and think you won't notice. Like I said, just tell me it's not a good time, and I'll try again when you're less busy. Even if I've got pressing problems that I really need to talk to somebody about, it's a million times less rude and dishonest than faking it.

Yeah, nah. The fuck is the government thinking?

>>36452
There's no alternative given to uploading my face and passport scan to this system and the feedback to provide this involve calling and emailing.

>>36452
I needed to confirm my identity once on my desktop computer with a picture of my passport. I have a scanned copy on my computer for exactly this reason, but I wasn't allowed to upload it. I had to restart the entire procedure on my phone, which is undeniably more cumbersome, because I was only allowed to use my phone's camera to take a photo of my passport. I know this isn't quite the same as your story, but it made me so angry. Society has somehow forgotten how to design interfaces for anything.

>>36452
The front-facing camera is now called a 'selfie camera' is it. Jesus.

Is this about blocking porn sites? They can't stop me wanking, they've got Carry On Girls on ITVX

>>36457
They want you to demonstrate you have the document in your possession, which uploading an old file decidedly doesn't do. It may not be bulletproof, but that's definitely not a case of careless design.

>>36457

You can see from the screenshot that they're using much more than just a scan of your passport to verify your identity. It's using the data listed (plus a whole bunch of other stuff in the background) to establish with the greatest possible level of confidence that the person holding that phone is in fact the person named on that passport.

The Gov.uk ID Check app is being used for an extremely silly reason in this instance, but it's designed as the key identity verification tool for all sorts of government services, including HMRC and the Pensions Service.

I don't mean to sound like a prick, but Government Digital Service is the only bit of the British government that's competently led and staffed by properly smart people. All those people could be earning vastly more in the private sector, but they're slogging their guts out to try and fix government from the inside. It's the sole aspect in which we're actually the envy of the world. Americans are stunned by the fact that you can renew a British driving license in a few minutes online, because they have to go to the DMV and queue for hours.

>>36462

Just get a VPN m8, they're practically free if you sign up through Quidco or Topcashback.

I've accidentally interacted with Microsoft OneDrive, and would you believe it? It's fucking shite.

>>36468
The best way to use it is through Microsoft Teams, which is completely unusable for anything else so you might as well give it a go.

You should avoid living in the first flat of a building because every delivery driver will just press your buzzer to be let in which can be distracting or worse still get you up and downstairs only to discover that there's nothing for you. I get why they do it though because they're in a rush and they have multiple packages to deliver to the same building.

The second flat is also dicey as my neighbour gets the buzz if I'm not in I don't answer in time.

>>36464
If they're so smart, why can't I SORN a car online between the hours of 7pm and 7am? The website for HM Passport Office closes for the evening too and I can't imagine I've ran into all the ones that do.

Cheap perfume is absolutely pointless. Cologne if you're insecure. Either way, whatever horrid chemical makes the scent remain for more than five minutes is only in the expensive stuff. As a tight bastard I'm not happy about this, but it's a reality I'm forced to reckon with.

>>36478

A friend always wore Old Spice. Fine, it was less than half the price of most designer eau de toilettes. But I always thought it lacked refinement and just made him smell like his grandad.

If you're not prepared to spend £30 to £40 on your perfume, just don't bother. Of course that's a snob opinion. But everything good has its price.

>>36478
I use knock-offs. I paid £55 for 10 knock-off 100ml bottles from The Essence Vault when they had a sale and a buy one get one free promo at the same time.

https://www.theessencevault.co.uk/products/5x-100ml-perfume-set

I'm currently wearing knock-off Vetiver, which I sprayed on my wrists about 12 hours ago and can still smell now.

https://www.creedfragrances.co.uk/products/original-vetiver

>>36478

One bottle of nice aftershave lasts me a year or two easily. You only put it on for things like interviews, nights out and special occasions, right? You're not going into the office every day smelling like you are on the pull for single mums at your cousin's wedding, I hope?

People deride Lynx or Sure or whatever brand of cheap bodysprays, but they firmly have their purpose. They are what you wear to mask bodily odour in a much more modest, everyday context. I've always felt as if smelling too nice for a given social situation is, while not quite not quite rude, as such, just very inappropriate.

>>36481

>You're not going into the office every day smelling like you are on the pull for single mums at your cousin's wedding, I hope?

I always wore a bit of cologne to the office. You just have to make sure it's the right kind. Anything that makes you smell like a Mideastern bazaar vendor should be taboo. I would suggest classic aquatic or citric scents. Like CK One or Azzaro Chrome. Or Davidoff. Maybe Lanvin L'Homme if you want to go a bit niche and like lavender. But more musky scents are usually a bit much when you've got three coworkers sitting within a 20 ft radius all day.

To me most men's fragrances just smell like a shirt at the end of the day, I don't get it at all.

>>36481
This has been my experiance with it too and I'm honestly a bit annoyed that my dad let me continue wearing cheap Joop when I was younger. The bottle of subtle woody Boss I got 2 years back is only down about a third but women love it when I have it on and it only gives me a mild headache from wearing it.

>People deride Lynx or Sure or whatever brand of cheap bodysprays, but they firmly have their purpose.

I'm not sure how I feel about Lynx. It seems more expensive than other brands and I've always associated it with chavs or how we used to gas out the changing rooms when we were teenagers. But then I don't think I've ever heard women say a bad word about Lynx and when I found a bottle of shower gel someone left in a gym shower it smelled lovely.

Are respectable men allowed to wear it?

>>36480
How do knock-offs work? I've always assumed it was just watered down room deodoriser but that website seems to suggest that they use the same ingredients.

>>36485
>How do knock-offs work? I've always assumed it was just watered down room deodoriser but that website seems to suggest that they use the same ingredients.

As you say, they use the same ingredients to try and replicate the fragrance. The market is fairly competitive but the quality does vary, e.g. I first got a bottle of FM Pure inspired by Aventus and when I got The Essence Vault's version it was a bit different; I prefer the latter. I get quite a lot of compliments wearing them, especially the knock-off Sauvage and Green Irish Tweed.

I'd say the watered down stuff tends to be counterfeit products which try to pretend to be something they're not. The knock-offs are clearly knock-offs.

>>36485
>But then I don't think I've ever heard women say a bad word about Lynx

This has been my experience also. I think it's really just one of those baseless snobbery memes. People have a baked in aversion to it because of the marketing and the association with chavs/teenagers, but they have never engaged their brain to honestly ask if it's a good product or not; and in my experience, it is. It smells nice, and most of the times I have been complimented on my smell, it's when I was wearing Lynx Africa on my pits in combination with a couple of squirts of Boss around my neck.

On a tangent, this is the distinction between snobbery and elitism (or whatever you want to call it), in my book. If you dismiss a lesser product because it is inferior and prefer a superior product, that's all well and good, that's founded on merit. Snobbery is where you dismiss something purely because of its superficial aspects or associations, and not because of a functional lack of quality. Snobbish people have often, when you probe them on it, never even tried the things they reject.

>>36487

>On a tangent, this is the distinction between snobbery and elitism

> Snobbish people have often, when you probe them on it, never even tried the things they reject.

I also believe that snobbism is more a middle class (and self-perceived middle class) phaenomenon. People with actual means will appreciate expensive things most of the time not because they want to show off status, not in this country anyway (at least not unless you're a certain kind of nouveau riche). But because, let's be honest, by and large, expensive versions of a product tend to be superior. A Mercedes or BMW will usually be hands-down a better car than a Dacia. Your £90 Levi's jeans will outlast a pair from Primark for £20. But the difference is that those who are really well off don't have to remind themselves of their class standing all the time. They know they come from generational wealth and status where you simply are part of a certain class, and where it doesn't matter if you're seen with a £90 pair of jeans or a £35 pair. With money less of an object, they will tend to choose the better article, whether it's a pair of pants or a car, but the motive will be different.

It's mostly lower middle class members who feel the need to buy expensive things as status symbols to overcompensate class insecurity. So they, and others, will know that they're middle class, or in any case, not below middle class. And they're then also the ones who will think they're better than others. In that snobbish way. Because they get to spend £200 on a Boss watch. Which will not even get a nod of approval from somebody who can, but may still choose not to spend cash on a genuine Rolex.

>>36488

>by and large, expensive versions of a product tend to be superior. A Mercedes or BMW will usually be hands-down a better car than a Dacia. Your £90 Levi's jeans will outlast a pair from Primark for £20.

I know a few properly posh people. They turn up at meetings wearing threadbare sweaters, carrying a bunch of paperwork in a Lidl bag. I think there's a level of generational wealth where being a complete shambles actively signals how high your status is - they can walk into the swankiest office building in town looking like a tramp, because everyone who matters knows that the town is named after their great-great-great-grandfather.

>>36489

I've got extended family who are proper millionaires. They're descended from peerage going back to the Middle Ages. Their great-granddad married the daughter of a lesser known Duke of so-and-so. As such, they're nowhere near as wealthy as some aristocrats, but you probably wouldn't be far off assuming their combined net worth to be around £10M today. Next to a crop farm, one of their other assets from what they've told me is a 400-acre forest in the Midlands. And they just sold off an entire old farmhouse for three quarters of a million. So that's the kind of wealth we're talking about. Anyway, their son drives a ten year old Mercedes E class, and wears the most ordinary clothes you could think of. No fine tweed or Barbour jacket, just proper jeans and a button shirt or sweatshirt. By most people's standards, they're fucking loaded, but you wouldn't be able to tell him apart next to a person making £30K a year with zero personal wealth who simply couldn't afford a newer car. In my relative's circles, it's much more about keeping a low profile. And perhaps not becoming a target for people with sinister motives. Everybody "in the know" knows they're upper class, and that's what matters.

>>36490

The thing about that sort of wealthy people is that they are basically circling the drain towards skint, and dragging it out for as long as possible. Their family's wealth was based on their holdings going back to the days when being a lord meant everyone had to pay their taxes and tithes directly to you in order to be able to work the land, but that isn't how it works nowadays; capitalism displaced them, and their income is usually only just enough to keep up the repairs and maintenance of their massive old houses and the staff they employ.

That's why they have to keep selling off land, and why they essentially live like someone who'd on the dole. They can afford to splash out, obviously, but any time they do takes another little chip out of the family fortune, bit by bit, piece by piece, until there's fuck all left and they have to sell the ancestral home to English Heritage. They have the kind of money that they could invest or use to start up some kind of business and keep their dynasty in the upper echelons, but that's just as risky for them as it is for any of us, and nobody wants to be the one remembered for bankrupting the dynasty and dooming their descendants to an ordinary upper middle class life where they have to work for a living.

Meanwhile, the trainee in my team at work will only have Grey Goose vodka when he's out drinking because he thinks it makes him look cool.

>>36491

My relative went into banking. That's his main source of income. Not one of those high flying overpaid investment bankers who spend lavishly on luxury cars and cocaine, just somebody who has a decent desk job at a bank. He will let his sister and her husband who is also a farmer in his own right run the farm when their parents retire. They've all got regular jobs. The forest is mostly leased out, which means they collect income from the lease but aren't really involved in managing it.

They are definitely money smart and know that money needs to be constantly generated to keep everything they have, so they're not like many other people who grew up with generational wealth but then pissed it all up the wall.

Like the old saying, staying rich is often harder than getting rich. And even if you're not descended from nobility, any mug can win a few million in the lottery, but most of them burn through it within a few short years. Families who stay rich over generations are usually the ones who lead quite normal lives. Even most billionaires today have very rigid daily work schedules that earn them steady incomes instead of just living off their fortune.

My local Pizza Hut have removed all the pork from their menu and I wanted a ham and mushroom pizza tonight. I consider this to be a violation of the NAP and will now vote Reform at the next election to kick out the filthy icicle dodgers.

>>36502
Stuff like this (and all the rape and misogyny) is why I'll be fedora donning, street preacher harassing, Reddit atheist until God botherers of all stripes unite to push me into the nearest canal and end me once and for all (because there's no afterlife).

>>36503

You sound like somebody I myself wouldn't mind pushing down a canal, and I'm no god botherer at all.

>>36505
Well, enjoy your mushroom pizza and having to listen to the worst soundsystem in the world announce that you're going to Hell for half your work day.

Met a sixteen year old yesterday who told me his favourite bands were Maroon 5 and Imagine Dragons and now I see the world like pic related.

Fresh fruit you buy at the moment is very hit and miss. After my bland mango the other day, I've switched to peaches as part of my five a day. Asda has had some pretty good ones lately, they were ripe and soft and juicy, but today I had some from Tesco and they are quite sour and flavourless.

>>36528
I think you get the best fruit and veg from a grocer. Might be more expensive but it's worth it for a great peach or mango.

>>36529

You're not wrong. There's an Iranian grocer not far from here. It's the usual Mideastern family business. They've got cracking watermelons every summer, and I asked him once where he gets them, because I'd never seen them in that kind of quality in any of the regular supermarkets. And if I understood him correctly, he told me he's got personal contacts to a wholesaler in the Mideast and gets them straight from there. They're a bit more expensive, but not outrageously so, and the sheer quality more than makes up for it.

Wil lthe new system update for my phone solve the issue where it takes at leas 4-5 seconds after unlocking the screen, before I can pull down the notification bar? Because that shit is seriously winding me up.

Will it fuck, actually I am certain it will make it worse. I am certain it is deliberate, in fact, and that it would not have happened had I never updated the thing at all. Because otherwise there would be absolutely no compelling reason for me to upgrade this perfectly adequate and functional phone.

Oh but you neeeeeeeeed updates for suecuuuuritttyyyyy. Yeah. Sure. Course. Security. Definitely.

Just got a funeral invitation card that's in Comic Sans from top to bottom. Who the fuck honestly does that. And it's for an elderly person too, who was friends with my parents. All you had to do was go to to some place online and get one of their templates for funeral cards. This looks like somebody made it with Microsoft Word in less than five minutes. Either that person is borderline computer illiterate, or they just don't care.

>>36536
No one on Earth except us three knows how computers work. Not even the kids, because all that stuff about teaching them to code was utter bollocks.

What the fuck is this authoratarian nightmare. Just gone to 3 sites that I usually browse AND Discord and all of them are telling me to verify ID for 18+ content. Did I wake up in China? It's not even porn and these are US companies too, so fuck them they're not getting my data.

>>36537

But Copperplate Gothic Bold is just a few flicks of the mousewheel below it. There's simply no excuse, man!

>>36539

I don't know, but that font feels a bit overused. You see it on every second upmarket wine bottle or estate agent business card.

>>36541

That's why it's perfect for a funeral, since only old people can afford wine and houses nowadays.

>>36543

>since only old people can afford wine and houses nowadays.


Après nous, le déluge.