I don't want to sound like a queer or nothin', but how can you tell if a cute Asian femboy is gay or is just pursuing an effeminate K-pop aesthetic? Very relevant question on the tail end of a Friday because one just smiled at me and by the time I realised I might want to bang him, and turned around to talk to him fuelled by Dutch courage, he was already gone. I'm starting to think that having a propriety filter is far more of a curse than a blessing. Not even booze can get rid of it.

No homo of course.

>>450330
What is it with this place and pursuing Orientals?

If it's not fat lasses it's Chinese lasses, now even Chinese femboys.

I'm starting to think I'm the only person here who isn't a massive weeb.

I've been watching old episodes of Taskmaster. Sian Gibson is just lovely, the kind of girl you wished was your mate's older sister. Joe Thomas is very socially awkward and it's kind of surprising he has no real rapport with Greg Davies considering they'll have worked together on The Inbetweeners for years.

>>450333

Greg Davies is an overbearing actual ex-teacher, and Joe Thomas is the sort of whelp that he would have belted on the back of the hand with a sturdy wooden ruler for spacing out during lessons about Dickens.

Finally won on the premium bonds. £50. The Milky Bars are on me.

Looking at my finances I actually have a couple hundred quid more than I thought. Nice.

>>450330
I hate to break it to you but Koreans are love it either way. Better luck next time.

>>450331
Join us, lad. Fat Asian lasses are the softest things known to man.

Had a quite cringeworthy "date" last night with a bird who turned out to be autistic as all fuck. I don't want to sound too mean about it, but like... Not even in a cute way, just in a borderline special bus kind of way. Made me feel very wierd about the dirty texts and so on beforehand, and gave me a bit of an awkward climb down from the expectation of getting laid.

Had a laugh and made the best of it all the same, she was a nice girl underneath of course, but still. Not sure what I'm getting at here, it was just a quite uncomfortable feeling, I'm not used to meeting someone and thinking "actually, no, definitely not" by even my own fairly relaxed standards.

I suppose you know people are going to be different in person than how they appear when you're messaging, but it's not often it's such a night and day difference you're immediately thrown off like that.

>>450343
It's not in Derby is it? That sounds very much like my first girlfriend.

>>450343

I can't honestly say that it would have stopped me.

>>450344

Nit the guy you're replying to, but what was her name? I once had an encounter and very awkward date with a girl in Derby who fits this description.

How the pissing hell does anyone eat a kipper? They're nothing but bones. Really, genuinely, just a skeleton with minuscule bits of edible fish hidden away irretrievably. I'm the same poster who asked how to eat a fish with a skeleton in it a few months ago, and the resident chef poster said you can basically pull out the whole skeleton in one go. You can't do that on a kipper, or at least not the one I ate earlier. Are you even meant to avoid eating the bones? Are they only for feeding to cats? The tiny pieces of fish I managed to extract with my fingers were very delicious, so I'm all ears for a solution to this.

By the way, I really like the OP picture for this thread. It's wonderful.

>>450348

I think they're some kind of masochist torture food honestly. A dichotomy of deliciousness and pain.

Just get the little tinned ones, it's the only way of avoiding the bones. Fuck knows how they do it though, they must have genetically engineered theirs to grow without bones in the first place.

>>450348
>By the way, I really like the OP picture for this thread. It's wonderful.

She looks a bit young for me to be honest.

I’m working, in a severely understaffed and poorly managed unit, again. Coaching Muay Thai on Sunday morning with some extra time for a lad who will be very famous in the next two years.

>>450348
Aren't you meant to just gently suck off the fish from the bone? I'm sure it can't be that complicated. Unless they're like the artichokes of the sea.

>>450352
>Aren't you meant to just gently suck off the fish

>>450351
>Coaching Muay Thai on Sunday morning with some extra time for a lad who will be very famous in the next two years.
How can you tell?

>>450354
I knows what I likes and I likes fried fish cum.

My first GF from 22 years ago, who I've kept in on off touch with all the way through has just been told she has about 10 at best years as her organs are failing. Her fella of a few years left her a couple of months ago as he couldn't handle it. She's a wonderful lass who has had a lifetime of horror stories and just does not deserve the awful hand of cards she's been played.

>>450357
The only people I knew personally who died of coronavirus were almost the entire family of the kindest and most loving person I have ever met. The whole family has all sort of health issues, and these horror stories have a tendency to snowball and almost clump around people who already have sad lives. I think my friend might have some sort of autism; she's very hyperemotional and I remember I was with her once and she just burst into tears because a song by Adele was playing. In the end, I stopped asking her how she was because she was absolutely never fine. More than once, she mentioned her own health issues and said how when she was last in hospital, she made friends with a small child in the same ward as her, and she'd found that the child had just died and she was sad about that. My friend is genuinely cursed.

I don't really know where I'm going with any of this.

>>450358
The best people never get the lives they deserve.

>>450355

Being involved in the sport since the mid 90s, having been trained by legends and training with legends. The lad has incredible work ethic, talent and humility. Also his training videos were popular with elite trainers in Thailand.

When did dissociative identity disorder become cool?

>>450375

When theatre kids on TikTok realised it was a fantastic way to show off.

>>450375
There's a large section of society, possibly even most of society, which would rather be diseased than different. Some people really love being diagnosed with stuff to explain their personalities.

>>450375
Taking a different angle: I think part of it is just that it's a helpful mask to put up when our ideas about people's identities (that they're basically fixed, like a TV character) run up against the reality that we're often practically 'different people' to pretty different groups. Especially when we're aware of all of our own internal contradictions and weird habits, but everyone else appears to present a single unified personality to you. (Even if your perception of that singular personality might change when you learn something unexpected.)
Once you're putting everything online on the same profile, it's nice to have a way to explain away the contradictions. "I'm only human" won't wash, people don't believe that for a second - but people are more understanding when it's a medical matter. So if you say "I've got a disorder..." they might give you some understanding.

>>450383
I'd say society doesn't help itself. I often find it interesting how important having a label is. If you go around with ADHD or Autism or Dyslexia, you're just a badly behaved, weird, or stupid until you've got the label, then it's clear that there's actually something going on and it's not your own fault, so people and especially institutions suddenly become more sympathetic and more willing to help even though you're still the same person you were before. I don't like how bleeding heart it sounds, but who can blame people for chasing labels when it's the only way to get some compassion, or at least a remotely socially acceptable way of explaining your less desirable behaviours to others?

I just spent 40+ minutes more than I had to walking home because some dude had too much too drink. I called an ambulance for him since I thought it was something more serious because he was said he couldn't breathe, he had no memory of how he had got there, and he flat out said he didn't drink too much or take any drugs before he collapsed on the pavement.

The fuck is with natives in these isles who can't handle their booze? If I've had too much to drink I'd just be like "nah, I'll be fine, I'll just sleep it off". This dude thought it was the end of his entire world.

>>450376
I've been watching compilations of TikTok "mental illness" videos and it's really fascinating. One of them has an alternate personality who is Markiplier. Imagine having a popular internet personality living in your head and sometimes he takes control of your body. Insane.

Also a lot of them act like being mentally ill is cool and mysterious. I don't think I was this naive and stupid when I was 16, the zoomer generation are really something else.

>>450395
>Also a lot of them act like being mentally ill is cool and mysterious. I don't think I was this naive and stupid when I was 16, the zoomer generation are really something else.

Self-diagnosed mental illnesses have been a mainstay of acrobat for years.

>>450395
>I don't think I was this naive and stupid when I was 16, the zoomer generation are really something else.

In the good old days we just had anxiety and depression, with a bit of bipolar thrown in if you wanted to stick out. None of this multi personality bollocks.

May have used too much piss. Apparently last hot chocolate tasted like dishwater.

I swear 1/3 articles on Vice are just ads now.

>>450540
How much longer do you intend to keep this up?

>>450548
Dunno.

I'm watching Pointless Celebrities on BBC1. It turns out that Ripon, in Yorkshire, is a city. This is absolutely astounding to me, because the place I've been to is absolutely not a city. Maybe I actually went to Thirsk.

>>450554

It's got a cathedral innit. Hence why Wakey is a city but Huddersfield isn't, despite being about three times the size.

Apparently they tried to straighten all this out a few years ago, but a lot of places kicked off so they essentially let towns and cities self-identity as they please now.

Put £38 in my car and it didn't even fill half the tank. Broken Britain.

>>450562
Should have spent it on fuel mate.

Went to get some petrol earlier and there was a big diesel spill on the ground next to the pump. Somebody had put sand on it, but I still got some of it on the bottom of my shoes. Had to put my shoes on the balcony when I got home because they were stinking up the whole flat.

>>450556

The smallest city in the UK (St Davids, Wales) had a population at the last census of 1,841. The cathedral is pretty poxy, but it's technically a cathedral.

Why's Ian Wright dressed like a Maoist?

>>450566

What's the difference between a cathedral and a regular church? Why is the one in York a "minster"? Does anywhere else have a minster?

>>450556
You need royal approval, although technically it is selected by the government of the day. Northampton has a cathedral and a population that dwarfs many cities but is never selected for city status for reasons not disclosed.
https://www.northantslive.news/news/northamptonshire-news/northampton-town-not-city-4349996

>>450569
>Does anywhere else have a minster?
Beverley has a minster which is absolutely stunning, arguably just as nice as York Minster despite being slightly smaller.

Hull Trinity Church was redesignated Hull Minster as part of the 2017 City of Culture events, but honestly I don't know what that means. Trinity Church is nice and everything, but it doesn't hold a candle to Beverley Minster aesthetically.

Reading the Wikipedia page for "minster" doesn't make it much clearer, either, though it sort of affirms my own understanding that a minster is just a good/important church:
>By the tenth century, a gradual distinction between a "church" and a "mynster" began to emerge. For instance, in the Leechdoms, the sixteenth day was propitious for establishing a mynster, and the sixth day of the moon for founding a church. This suggests that by the tenth and eleventh centuries, mynster was being used to refer to a "superior church" which was regarded as long-established and to which people paid their dues.

>>450569
We're all Beestonlads here. Dewsbury has a monster.

>>450572
Fucking autocorrect. Minster.

Just watched the original Matrix movie again for the first time in over 20 years. I can see why it was such a seminal movie and pop culture phenomenon back then, and also why I was a huge fan when it came out, but with the distance of more than two decades, it's kind of overly full of itself, sometimes to the point of complete pretension. Or maybe the overuse of its tropes in popular culture just makes it impossible nowadays to enjoy it for what it is.

As a glib sci-fi noir flick with some flaws, it still holds its own against many other movies that came after it. But I'm actually a bit disappointed because it was so much more in my fond memories of it than it turned out to be while I was rewatching it tonight. And I really don't feel compelled in anyway to watch the reboot.

>>450574
I never saw the appeal of it. "Dude, it's like, what if society is, like, not as we perceive it, man? No film has ever suggested such a thing before!" Yes they bloody had, even in 1999. I couldn't see why people were so dazzled by this premise.

I bet if I watched it now, I'd absolutely love it and think it was much better than I remember.

>>450574
>>450575
It's very 1999, which is pretty enjoyable to watch.

>>450574

Highly influential things often don't age well, because they seem like cliches in retrospect. All the things that made The Matrix spectacular have been endlessly imitated.

I think that cultural tastes have massively shifted away from sincerity and earnestness. Fight Club looks similarly naff in hindsight, in no small part because we expect things to be a bit ironic and cynical and detached. Unease about unreality and artifice were very zeitgeisty at the time (The Truman Show was released a year previously), but we've all sort of moved on.

Also, it's easy to forget just how culturally distant 1999 is from today. The Matrix was released on laserdisc. The Nokia 3210 was brand new. Shania Twain and The Backstreet Boys were in the charts. Jill Dando was still alive and Gary Glitter was still allowed within 100 metres of a school.

>>450574
>>450575
Agent Smith falls a little flat, but overall I think The Matrix really holds up. It did when I last watched it about six months ago anyway. Themes about rejecting the status quo and self-belief might not be the most revelatory ones in the world, but as a high-concept action film I still think it's one of the best. It's got a very strong cast as well as all that, which as someone who thinks interesting actors (or possibly good "actor's directors") are thin on the ground right now, I really appriciate.

It's also, and I can't state this strong enough, cool as fuck.

The best thing about The Matrix is that I went to college 2004 to 2006 and there were still loads of goffs wearing leather trench coats, sunglasses and slicking their hair back.

>>450575

The plot was quite interesting to me but at the end of the day it is mostly an action film and bits like the lobby scene are excellent. I'm sure that's what drew most people in.

>>450582

>but at the end of the day it is mostly an action film and bits like the lobby scene are excellent. I'm sure that's what drew most people in.

Yes and no. Back in the day, there were entire web forums about the Matrix movie(s), and some people were really committed to it and to the idea that it was loaded with philosphical meaning, to the point that they treated it almost like a religion.

When in reality, the Wachowskis' stroke of genius was to wrap together a bunch of pre-existing zeitgeist ideas and currents into a polished dystopian action sci-fi flick whose graphic novel-style cinematography was a much bigger feat than the actual storytelling. Even the idea of the rolling Matrix source code was nicked. I think it first appeared in the original Independence Day movie on board the alien spaceship.

What The Matrix also heavily fed on was that the World Wide Web was still fairly new in popular culture, and there were all kinds of diffuse ideas and concepts floating around about what the Internet could be like in the near future, where we would somehow all be uploaded into cyberspace and into virtual realities. Also, it was the dawn of the new Millennium, which in its own way stimulated lots of people's imagination about the future.

Maybe cyberspace has just become such an intrinsic part of our lives in the 23 years since the movie came out that the kind of innocent look it takes at that whole brave new world is just something nobody can get excited about anymore or even relate to nowadays. Sadly, with that part of its original appeal now missing, it just feels childish in places. I watched the movie at the cinema on a date when it came out, completely unprepared because up to that evening I'd never even heard of it, and the whole concept of it just left me with my mind blown and slightly unsettled by the time it was over. I just can't see that happening today with somebody who has never seen the movie before.

Based on what we now know about the Wachowski ex-brothers, the real red pill was oestrogen.

>>450586

Another way of looking at it is that it spawned the Manosphere and the Alt Right.

https://screenrant.com/matrix-hugo-weaving-alt-right-red-pill-criticism/


Getting back to my point of the Wachowskis nicking heavily from other tropes and movies, a red pill serves as a plot device in the 1990 movie Total Recall, where Schwarzenegger's character is told that he is inside a computer-generated dream simulation, and that he needs to take a red pill to wake up from it. He is told that it's "a symbol for your desire to return to reality".

I need to get better at totting up my shopping as I go along; I wanted to make sure I spent at least £25 at Farmfoods to qualify for a £2 off voucher, but I ended up spending £40.

>>450587
If it wasn't The Matrix they'd have co-opted another pop culture reference.

They've replaced Paul O'Grady's Sunday afternoon slot with Rob Beckett and it's just, 2ell, a bit shit.

>>450591
Paul O'Grady is still alive?

>>450591
>>450592
Paul O'Grady reminds me of my grandma, they have the same 20 fags a day rasp to their voice. He would fit in at a council estate The North Pole bingo.

>>450592
He's only 66. I think he's one of those people that have just always looked old, like Maggie Smith.

>>450594
>>450595
Would you though?

>>450596

As the token BirkenheadLad here, I would say yeah I'd have a pint with him in Hornblowers

What's everyone up to this weekend?

>>450681
On three separate occasions so far today, I have panicked that maybe I should actually be at work and I just forgot to go.

HottrsHottest day of the year lads. Reaching all the way up into the low 20s. How are you holding up, shirtless beers in the garden? Got your air con sorted before they all sell out? Least you won't have to worry about the heating bill any more eh!

>>450681
No way is a Yorkie in the God tier. Definitely written by an insecure Yorkie consumer.

>>450682
I keep thinking it's Saturday.

>>450681
I forgot to turn my alarms off and then some silly cow started messaging me even after I told her I was still in bed. In the end I just decided to get up for all the peace I was liable to get.

>>450688
The Yorkie egg is great - you get a fair amount of chocolate for the price and the shell is Yorkie chocolate when so many companies tend to just give you a generic egg (all Cadbury should be one tier or at least broken by size).

Lindt egg is the real awful-tier not only for the pretentious cost but because they're utterly stingy with the side-chocolate. And the heritage collection.

>>450688

>insecure Yorkie consumer

I feel like this should be a wordfilter.

>>450681
I don't understand why all the Cadbury's ones are up and down the rankings, aren't they all the same chocolate? Chocolonely's "God Tier" as well, everyone knows that.

>>450697
I don't think anyone is going to trust Tony's Chocolonely that after his calendar stunt. Imagine it, you finish eating the egg but then notice a hidden note inside:

>This egg has been laced with a powerful laxative, let this serves as a reminder that some lives are shittier than others. Do not even try and run to the toilet, you won't make it.

>>450700
> Do not even try and run to the toilet, you won't make it.
What if you were eating your egg on the bog?

>>450701
No time to open your sphincter. You'll shit your own arsehole.

>>450701
Then that was very inconsiderate of you to ignore the plight of Congolese cocoa farmers like that.

>>450706
Perhaps they need to employ Roland the Thompson Gunner.

Does anyone here use Letterboxd? How awful is it? Can you have a hermetically sealed account no one else ever sees? Or does it force you to reconnect with people you had double maths with centuries ago? I just want somewhere to jot down my thoughts on films I’ve watched. I guess I could use a pen and paper like a Neanderthal if I have to.

Happy choccy egg day, lads. My mum has bought me a mint Aero one, hopefully it has a minty egg like the After Eight one usually does.

I am going to start the 'we will give you more bank holidays if you vote for us' party.

>>450763

Do it on here in the .gs Film Club thread.

>>450766
The idea is that this is for my own use. I want to have a big tick list of films I've seen, not have a discussion about them or, more likely, commit my thoughts to the imageboard void and watch them drift away into obscurity. I'm not necessarily going to have interesting or enlightening ideas about the films I've seen either, so it's not as though they're all going to be worth sharing in the first place.

>>450771

Well, copy and paste them here anyway, it's not like this place is exactly a bastion of quality and well thought out analysis these days.

I just like hearing other people's opinions on things (who are not shill journos or pretentious YouTubers.)

>>450771
Just use justwatch

>>450771
Just watch Flash Gordon over and over again. You don't need any other films.

What the fuck do I get my dad for his birthday? He generally doesn't do much beyond watching TV or going to the horse racing, so usually I'll just get him something like a Toblerone and a DVD but he's 70 this year so I feel like I should be making much of an effort. What do you buy for the man who wants fuck all?

>>450796
Socks?

>>450796

Not to be glib, but have you thought about just asking him? I know some people are very precious about this, but if your dad is a straight-forward bloke he might just come out and tell you "I need new tools", "I've run out of special booze X", or "there's a series on Amazon prime I want to watch, buy me a gift membership".

>>450800
I've asked my mum, which is as good as asking him direct, and he can't think of anything he wants. She's suggested tickets for gigs by tribute bands for either Pink Floyd or The Eagles.

>>450796
He sounds like my dad. My dad likes photography and steam trains, and I usually buy him a photography book or a book on steam trains. He also likes Stewart Lee, so I bought him a Stewart Lee DVD because that's something we both like and can watch together, and buying something related to a shared interest is the best present you can get someone, because it makes it definitely from you.

GitHub Copilot is fucking scary lads. I've barely written a line of my own in hours. It's like it's reading my mind.

>>450806

The really scary part is that they just trained GPT-3 on a load of source code. It seems like every problem can be solved by just giving GPT-3 a big enough corpus. I live in fear that someone will feed it all of Piers Morgan's tweets and create a superintelligent AI twat.

>>450806

So you fuckers don't even have to google the code you get paid to pretend to write anymore?

I definitely picked the wrong career.

>>450816
I’d wager the abundance of real twats precludes the need for AI counterparts.

>>450826
Conversely it’s surely only a matter of time before employers realise every code monkey is “working” three jobs and subcontracting to a GitHub AI. For the record I say more power to them.

>>450827

>For the record I say more power to them.

Oh, I agree. It's not quite the same but when I took on my current role, I inherited a load of time consuming reports that I spent about three days turning almost completely automated in Excel. I have not told anyone this, and if I ever leave or someone covers for me, I will hide all evidence of this.

Happy St. George's Day, lads.

Went to view a flat this morning. Apparently it's already under offer but I'm going to put an offer in anyway, because you might as well in case the other one ghosts.

There was a couple turned up right after I viewed it who were clearly retired boomers looking for their next buy to let investment. Sort of wanted to key their big daft land rover.

>>450947
You never know, they could be downsizing. There's a lot of people in their 60s with interest-only mortgages that they won't be able to pay off at the end of term because they've spend all the money they've had coming in and maxed out their credit doing things like getting a flash car on finance, so they've got little choice other than to sell their home and use the equity to get somewhere smaller.

>>450948

Well fuck them, they've already had a home for however long, I want this one.

>>450949
Plenty of affordable housing in Beeston.

>>450950

Never mind Beeston, this one's WF1. Thus you can understand the desirability.

>>450951
Belle Vue or Eastmoor?

>>450948

My grandma doesn't need a smaller place because she has no money, she needs it because she's old and can't do stairs anymore.

>>450953
If I were a betting man I'd say she's not in her sixties.

>>450952
>Belle Vue

I saw this and thought of Knowsley; the Awld Girl could be alright there for the autumn life.

What's the deal with those "retirement-only" houses you see? You can buy a house for like 40 grand but only if you're over 55. Are they leasehold? Are you not really buying them? It looks like the most blindingly offensive discrimination on the planet otherwise, and I certainly don't see any downsides included in places where those houses are listed.

>>450957
><strike>

Laaaaaad.

>>450959
<marquee>Relax m9</marquee>

>>450956

They're usually leasehold and they usually come with high service fees. Some just have a warden to keep tabs on people, others are practically a residential care home and offer 24/7 care staff, communal dining and leisure facilities. They're often difficult to sell due to dodgy clauses in the leasehold agreement that entitle the freeholder to a share of the proceeds if the property is sold or sub-letted.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/nov/16/flat-retirement-builder-value-mccarthy-stone

>>450959

I fuckin reported it for deletion, don't piss up my bum.

I gave myself a particularly nasty paper cut at work on Friday, you know one of those where it's not exactly painful but rather just a really toe curling cringe inducing nasty sensation.

Ever since then, I keep having intrusive thoughts about getting a paper cut down the slit of my jap's eye, and I can't seem to dislodge it.

>>450993
I always find if I get a song stuck in my head, actually listening to it helps.

Very quiet tonight, even by our standards.

>>451155
4chan always says that VTubers are massive, but I have never seen them mentioned anywhere outside of 4chan and their own YouTube channels. Was there really one on BBC News? When?

>>451156
I had no idea, as I have almost no knowledge of them and I only saved the image as I found it funny. I used this thing called a "search engine" and uncovered shocking evidence that the image is indeed real.

>>451157
One day, we will all wake up in our beds, and it will be 2009. We will tell people what we witnessed at times like this, and they will be incredulous that we never realised we were dreaming. Because this reality cannot possibly be real.

>>451157
I'm surprised vtubers are popular because I thought one of the attractions of 2d girls was their detachment to actual women. There seem to be a lot of women hating anime fans - at least on the chans, and seeing women profit off 'simps' seems to be a thing that they get particularly riled up about.

>>451159
Unfortunately parasocial relationships are a thing and people will throw insane amounts of money at a talking face they can pretend is their friend.

I'm off to the shops, do you want owt?

>>451167

Mum says we need some Persil tabs. I'll have a cola flavour Calippo.

Reckon I might wash the car and have a few beers in't garden anyway, what are you lot up to?

>>451168
cutting the grass, building a shed, usual manly stuff.

Sun's gone in hasn't it. Cunt. Can't have owt.

Shitposting on the internet all afternoon it is then I guess.

I'm going camping in the polar this weekend, it'll be great fun.

Facebook is broken for me. I logged in and didn't see a single post from a human. I had two "People You May Know" things, five "Suggested For You" posts in a row, and then I gave up because it's clearly broken. I even checked to make sure I still actually have Facebook friends, and I do, so it must be the algorithm doing something barmy. How will I be reminded to play Wordle, Quordle, Octordle, Sedecordle and Heardle now? I'll have to look them up myself like a bloody savage.

Is it just me, or has Martine Croxall put on quite a bit of weight? Not complaining, obviously.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001719h/bbc-weekend-news-evening-news-30042022

>>451167
Some of that chocolate that makes a popping sound in your ears.

>>451177
Where else would it make sound?

>>451179
Someone else's ears.

>>451176
When did you last see her? She's been maternally rotund for a couple of years now. But Karin Giannone's hardly on the news any more, so I'm not complaining either whenever Martine Croxall is on.

Mino Raiola being dead is like one of those really impressive GoT twists.

Is there any reason not to go for a leasehold?

>>451183

Aside the obvious that you don't own the land you live on, and have to pay someone else. I'm sure someone much more intelligent than me will be along shortly to explain the actual reasons.

>>451184
It is cheaper than renting, and I can't secure a mortgage because my wages are not that good enough.

>>451183

Depends on the leasehold. I suspect you're in exactly the same position as me.

In general it's not always a terrible idea, there are just a few caveats to be aware of. Freehold is obviously better if you can get it, but if it's a decent leasehold (you get ones where it's for like a thousand years or summat daft) it's as good as the same thing.

Steer clear of ones with under 80 years left on them, because not only does it become harder to sell without taking a loss when you want to move on, and it enters the kind of territory where you might plausibly still be living there when it expires and end up getting shafted as a 90 year old pensioner.

My hope is that I'll find a rich (or simply spoiled) girlfriend, move in with her, then rent the place out and become a landlord, which as we all know is the only way for peasants like me to achieve social mobility nowadays.

>>451189

I forgot to say, the main issue is the ground rent, but that varies from "peppercorn" ground rent of a quid a year, to a few hundred a year, to a few hundred a month.

The catch is it depends on the terms of the contract if a new person can come along to buy the building, then decide they want to charge you loads more than the previous guy, and then you're stuck there because you own the place and have to go through all the hassle of selling if you want to leave.

The flat I'm looking at getting is a local council building so I at least know I wouldn't get shafted that way. That being said there's new legislation coming in from June that should change a lot of this bullshit:

https://www.holdensmith.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-leasehold-reform-ground-rent-act-2022-and-what-does-it-mean-for-freeholders-and-leaseholders

(Disclaimer, first google result, haven't read it)

In general I'd say it's still going to be a wiser decision to buy a flat on a leasehold with a mortgage of 400 a month, than spending a grand a month in rent for the same place.

>>451192
The leasehold reform, at least initially, means there won't be any ground rent for new builds where the lease is set up after this June. Existing leasehold properties will still be shafted.

>>451183
You give money in what is essentially upfront rent to some rich prick. In return you lose the ability to quickly move for the return of it being slightly cheaper and you never really owning the property.

Just move up to Scotland where at least the feuhold system isn't actively fucking over anyone whose ancestor didn't win 1066.

>>451200

There's future legislation coming through which will address existing leaseholder.

You might wonder why a Conservative government is doing this, but the answer is of course that it isn't for the benefit of homeowners, it's to make BTL investor's margins wider.

>>451204

>slightly cheaper

It's a lot more than slight m8

When did boxers become so expensive? 12 pack of socks is like a tenner on Amazon, but the boxers are all 30 quid for a 5 pack.

I could look somewhere else but that's a pain in the arse, I just want to get everything in one place frankly.

>>451211

Do people really still wear boxer shorts?

>>451211
Oh dear, not again, doesn'tknowhowtouseAmazonlad.

>>451212

Not when I'm at home, but you need a layer of insurance against the perfidious devil's drip when you're in polite company.

>>451213

Please, enlighten me. I try to avoid it as much as possible, but I can't possibly face going out to buy clothes in real life.

>>451212
Oh yes.

>>451211
I used to have a similar approach to underwear, but I recently started buying Expensive Socks and strongly recommend a different approach - good underwear is good. Girls (mostly) appreciate this, but Boys tend not to, perhaps. I'm now looking for Expensive Pants, but haven't found them yet. Sageru for /poof/.

>>451214

Trunks offer you cockdrip protection and testicular support. It's like having your plums gently cupped all day. Get into it m8.

>>451217

Boxers, boxer briefs, trunks, same thing. Enter the term into a search engine and all you get is those anyway, very few pairs of natural loose boxers.

Personally I can't help but feel the classic loose boxers are healthier- The testicles are meant to ascend and descend freely, keeping them bunched up can't be good for your swimmers.

Also I'm quite convinced that wearing tighty whities when I was a kid is what gave my cock a noticable curvature when it's hard.

>>451218
> wearing tighty whities when I was a kid is what gave my cock a noticable curvature when it's hard.
Nope. I did the same and my cock is straight as an arrow. Or, more accurately, a blowdart. A syringe needle. Fuck you; leave me alone.

I think boxer shorts are expensive because they're all the fancy pretentious shite kind. I have gone into House of Fraser in search of fancy clothes, and once I spent about an hour looking at just boxer shorts, trying to find just basic and non-outrageous ones. The most expensive ones I saw were £40 for a single pair. And they didn't even have the dick flap. I use the dick flap; I'm not pulling my underpants all the way down just to piss out of them. In the end, I think I bought 3x Ralph Lauren boxer shorts for £30. And even then, the flap had buttons, which will get in the way. I still have a pair of underpants from probably 15-20 years ago, which have a flap and never had a button. My dick never fell out and they are still lovely to wear. The button is not necessary. But designers insist that there must always be a whole line of buttons. It's like they don't want me to use the flap.

It was on that specific trip to House of Fraser when I realised that I do actually spend quite a bit of money on clothes for someone who dresses like a tramp. I bought some jeans for £60 too. Meanwhile, five days a week I just wear the T-shirts my work gave me for free, and my jumpers are either very old, or they were Christmas presents recently, or they came from Sports Direct. I can spend £100 in one go on dressing my bottom half, while attempting to dress my top half for free. If you're wondering: no, women do not approach me to compliment my sexy designer jeans ever.

>>451211
You can get 4 Sihohan boxer briefs for £16 on Amazon. I use these for work and exercise, usually last about 2 years of heavy use and feel like I'm wearing nothing at all. Pair them with some hipsters/trunks so your Mrs doesn't think you've gone odd.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DLW5PGB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1&psc=1

If that's still not good enough for you then Primark do packs of 2-3 underpants for £7 including this little set that will be perfect for our resident fetishists but I can't speak to the quality:
https://www.primark.com/en-gb/p/2pk-greggs-sausage-roll-briefs-991017330935

>>451215
I think there is some leeway on this, breathable underwear isn't all that expensive these days thanks to the invention of China.

>>451221

I have never used the dick flap.

>>451222

Will those Sihohan kecks give me weird nipples? Is it some Chinese chemical thing?

>>451224
Next you'll be asking if he's got a bit of a semi on.

This is always the oddest part of clothes shopping for me. When I'm buying online the one thing on my mind is whether they will look shit on me, for suits and ladies frillys then maybe it's nice to have a fantasy but this just seems like porn for women who buy their blokes clothes.

>>451176
I am onto you.

https://twitter.com/newsladies1/status/1521832782808461313

Watching the Women's Challenge Cup final. Some absolutely tremendous arses on show.

>>451323

I am going to order a tailor made leather jacket, so that it fits perfectly to my figure instead of hanging off me like a robe. It shall have decently sized inner pockets and a nice paisley lining.

If you were getting a custom made coat, what feature would you add? I'm asking because it's probably the only time I'll ever get clothes tailored, and I bet I'll think of something I should have asked for two weeks after I get it.

>>451326
Make sure you don't have buttons on any chest pockets.

>>451327

I wasn't going to have chest pockets, but go on, why?

>>451326
An inner pocket that my wallet will fit in and with a velcro closure.

Once nearly lost my wallet after hanging my coat over the back of a chair so it's an absolute must for me to at least have a zip or button closed pocket for my wallet, but velcro is the most convenient so I don't look like a cock stood at the til in a shop when I can't get my wallet out to pay.

My leather jacket has a removeable waistcoat liner which adds a bit extra warmth in winter which is a nice touch, but doesn't have quite the same luxury feel of a silk/faux silk liner.

>>451326
> If you were getting a custom made coat, what feature would you add?
Lasers?

>>451328
The button imprints show on the outside and look like nipples.

Added pineapple chunks to my enchiladas. Not convinced it worked.

>>451326

Maybe some sort of non-flexible hook so I can hang it up on the cubicle door in toilets where there isn't a place to hang your coat provided. A pocket that holds just a credit card at the end of one sleeve, to pay contactless without getting a card out. And a selection of shims, master keys and/or lockpicks built into it for the same reason as the lasers really.

>>451334
>A pocket that holds just a credit card at the end of one sleeve, to pay contactless without getting a card out.
I've actually got a jacket with a credit card sized pocket on the shoulder. This has given me the idea to start paying by leaning down over the counter.

People who don't use their phones for contactless are weird and ought not to be trusted.

>>451442

People who hold up a queue by standing gormlessly at the train station barriers while they fumble around with their e-ticketing app / nfc settings on their phone should be knocked over and trampled.

>>451443

These days I find using the app and scanning the QR is far more reliable at the barriers than physical tickets ever have been.

>>451442
Whenever someone in front of me in a queue is trying to use a phone for payment, it doesn't work and they hold everyone up. Because they're too fucking self-important to use a card, or even, dig this, money. Remember money?

If some poseur twat saw me walking down a street and smugly declared that walking is the habit of imbeciles who haven't awoken to the utter superiority of hopping everywhere, as they hop past me, I would think that person was a bellend. If said bellend kept falling over, but insisted every time he got up out of the gutter that hopping everywhere really is better than walking normally, I would despise that cock with the exact same fury that I feel from reading your post.

>>451445
You probably just don't notice the competent people. I'm definitely faster with my phone than anyone using a wallet.

>>451450

What do you do with the few extra seconds you save? Have a wank?

>>451450
Lol, this dingbat keeps his card in a wallet.

I've seen the light. 3 ply toilet roll is the way forward.

>>451452
I keep them at home where they belong.

The Rasmus are Finland's entry for Eurovision, didn't even know they were still going.

Anyway, Darius Danesh for Romania is my leader so far.

Wrap it up, mountain man.

Probably wrong, but I'm going to assume the "June 22nd" was a tasteless allusion to the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941.

I know Ukraine are going to win, but that was bollocks.

>>451460
Yeah, honestly I've not really enjoyed much so far. But I missed the first four songs and Spain might have been good, but I blacked out.

Are you actually watching Eurovision, you fucking women?

>>451462
Stop doing a bad impersonation of your annoying dad, daft cunt. I'm suprised there wasn't a thread up when I got back from walking the dogs.

Fuck, why don't we have an accordian? Do we have an accordian? Is it too late to get one?

>>451462
It's Britfa.gs tradition.

>>451464
I think we'd only get away with an accordion if we went full on morris dancing and nobody wants that.

Boycotting the Aussies, get some toast.

>>451465
I think we could pull in a remarkable numbers from Eastern Europe, no doubt.

>>451465
Nobody ever goes on full Morris.

>>451466
Based purely on watching the morris dancers at Beeston beercat, I belt they're into all sorts of sordid muck.

I actually really liked the Dutch song. It's stuck with me.

Fucking hell, lads. We might actually win this.

EUROVISION'S COMING HOME.

>>451470
Those NLAWs were worth every penny.

If Spain keeps getting 12s I might pass out again.

>>451470
Can we not? Boris will claim it as an achievement and we all know he must not be allowed even one of those if mankind is to survive.

>>451472
He's not really even the PM anymore, we're just slowly passing him through our system like a an especially stupid kidney stone.

Game over. Thanks, Putin.

Fucking bastards. Not another pair of socks for any cunt, no more hand outs.

The UK public vote gave 12 points to Ukraine. Well done, everyone, you played yourselves.

So Ukraine won? Christ I am shocked. Shocked!

Almost as surprising as Putin invading in the first pace.

>>451469
I liked it too, while simultaneously expecting it not to get a single point from anywhere. I nearly voted for it, but then I had to ask myself if I'd be willing to sit through next year's contest if the Dutch lady won and there were a bunch of copies of her next year singing duller versions of the same song. In the end, I voted for Iceland, who were also boring (it was the cowboy ladies) but I really liked their song anyway.

Imagine voting in the Eurovision Song Contest.

There's a wasp trying to get in through the closed window that's so big I can hear it buzz through the double glazing.

>>451450
I, for one, get my card out and ready when I approach the barriers and question whether it has even logged me given there's no action from the barrier at all as I walk through. Not least as I get a discount which you can only have on Oysters for some reason.

The real problem is the gits who aren't ready no matter the method, and the gaggles of slow moving untermenschen who block the walkways. People in general. Someone should share around some slow-acting sarin to put a little pep in everyone's step. Tag me all you want GCHQ-lad, it only needs to happen once.

So are we going to have to host Eurovision as runners up because the winners are too busy getting shelled?

>>451483
Ukraine has said they will "do their best" to host it. In theory, we could, because when Australia were first invited, there were questions about if they'd host the next one if they won, and Australia said they would nominate whoever came second to host it instead. So if you really want to host the next Eurovision Song Contest, you will need to start supporting Russia. I'm sure they would happily accept you into their own foreign legion.

Sod's law that the first time we get a decent act in years, Ukraine decides to get invaded and get flooded with pity points. We was robbed.

>>451493

We only put in a decent song because we knew we wouldn't win.

I've promised myself I will start dieting, calorie counting and exercising again tomorrow after stopping caring completely when I got Covid in February, and having put on a stone since. So of course today I am scoffing all sorts of shite as a final blowout.

>>451501

Aye me an' all. Let's keep each other motivated eh?

I'm off on a long walk in the Peak District tomorrow (even though the weather says it'll piss down) so that'll get the exercise off to a good start. I'm getting back on with cooking my own meals and will deny myself takeaways even when I properly can't be arsed.

I could do with recommendations on bodyweight exercise routines, I don't have any room for equipment until I get into my new place and fuck the gym.

>>451501
>>451502
That's me 'n'all. Gym every morning before work and only restaurant food once a week.

Re: bodyweight stuff, I'd say start with planking for a minute, press-ups, crunches, leg-raises or flutterkicks if your lower core is already strong enough for the latter, back extensions, and maybe a squat if doing those without weight would benefit you. Consider a 20 quid set of resistance bands as well, the kind that come with clips so you can hook them onto hold points in your house, they're a decent replacement for the gym.

>>451501
>>451502
>>451503
I must have amnesia because I'm in the same boat. Currently failing at eating right because there is always an excuse.

Burpees are excellent whole body movements which can be performed with limited space.

There's good Tabata timers on yt. Tabata is scientifically proven to improve VO2max by a good amount.

Kettlebells are currently on sale at Argos. You can do a lot for your body with a single 16kg kettlebell and it takes up minimal space.

Hello Fresh is a real swizz. Great, the mushrooms are pre-sliced, shame there's only three mushrooms worth of slices to serve two people.

>>451508

So when the Aussie woman said "Is Hello Fresh worth the price? Absolutely!" in the ad, she wasn't being entirely honest?

I am shook.

Also this has made me realise that somehow, I haven't seen an ad on YouTube at work in months. I remember making a post here complaining that IT won't let us install an adblocker but the ads seem to have vanished on their own. What's up with that? Have Alphabet decided I'm clearly a lost cause and just stopped showing me them?

>>451501
Got off my arse and did a 4 mile walk, not a bad start.

>>451509
Using my 'at home' set of extensions tends to break websites on my work laptop so I ended up just adding fuck all to my chrome on my work laptop, but ended up getting sick of the constant soundcloud/youtube adverts.

Tried Adblocker and Adblock plus I thought they would be the least invasive most basic and still, ads. Ublock origin was my next step up and that cut out all the shit, and has yet to break any of my work webpages, so maybe they went with that.

And I'm not being precious right, but I think it's genuinely mentally harmful to have adverts injected into these audio experiences, even if you're not a sperg. It can completely ruin a good mood to anticipate a particular chord coming, or the opening of a track, and then LOUD MAN TALKING ABOUT EASTBOURNE'S SHIT INTERNET REPEATING THE SAME WORDS LOUDLY. It's just fucking rude, I'm obviously going to block the adverts instead of pay premium so what's the fucking point?

>>451515
I completely agree with you about how awful adverts are when you're listening to music. I stopped using the SoundCloud app a few years ago because it became unbearable how every other song would be followed by ads for car insurance or some shite.

Not to sound too "I, for one, don't even, etc", but I don't understand how people use the internet without an ad blocker of some kind. TV adverts annoy me enough to where I switch on BBC News or mute it and do something else, but the internet is different. The internet's active, I'm clicking x to make y happen, but then some advert for a F2P mobile game or a 45 minute video about how to trick women pops up, or the general nightmare clutter of your common website, and I'm just having a worse time. Even if it's a YouTube video almost no one on that bloody website makes allowances for adverts in their edit, meaning they'll be halfway through saying something and then BAM, "are you one of nine million EasyJet customers...". Maybe it's not their fault, maybe it's a YouTube problem.

>>451516

When did that business of adverts before youtube videos start anyway. I seem to remember that about 10 to 15 years ago, you could DJ a party for half the evening with music clips right off youtube that would play instantly without ads.

I've noticed that Twitter have started putting ads before videos now.

>>451517
I think video ads started late 2007 and prerolls in late 2008.

If you see ads on YouTube - regardless of platform - you're doing it wrong. And if your player doesn't skip creator's sponsor reads you should do better.

>>451534

Enlighten us.

>>451552
Not him but browser-based adblock worked on Youtube until well into the late 2010s. DNS-based blocking was always a bit more hit and miss, when it works it purrs but when it doesn't you're sitting there watching ads like a mug except you've made effort to avoid doing so and you felt stupid. Crazy as it may sound, you could be the one nerdy guy at a party who knew to set up your laptop properly and get a couple of snogs on tech-saviness alone.

It's really only since the pandemic, if that long even, that Google have really put the hammer down regarding this kind of shit. I think maybe it's a power thing. If you were banned from Google in 2007 you had to set up yahoo mail and they would never track you to a new account. Today a Google ban is a death sentence and everyone knows it, someone somewhere is getting off on having that kind of power. And people are getting them because they logged in on an IP that had been used earlier by someone who was actually blocking their stuff (i.e anyone at all who is using a VPN for any reason).

>>451509
Maybe your work VPN is cutting the ads. Now you'll have to explain to me why you're browsing youtube on your work computer.

>>451552
Not him but a combination of uBlock and Sponserblock extensions works fine. I'm actually surprised with how quickly and accurately Sponserblock operates given it works by users marking time.

>>451555

>Now you'll have to explain to me why you're browsing youtube on your work computer.

Because I'll do what I like in between single handedly holding up the smooth operation of the entire bloody hospital, thanks. Now stop deleting the fucking ICE and SPINE desktop shortcuts you bald cunt.

>>451557
>you bald cunt

Why are you sexually harassing that lad?

>>451553
As soon as I boot my PC up and run Chrome, I get ads before YouTube vids. After about 5 minutes, no ads. Weird.

>>451557

Maybe you actually have a good IT service. I have gotten away with adding uBlock to my Chrome installation (and it works reet nice), but based on the amount of ads that my thick-as-a-welshman's-cock colleague gets when queuing up SUPER HITS OF THE SEVENTIES, there appears to be no router-level blocking. She won't even let me set up uBlock for her, because she thinks it'll "break" her computer.

>>451562

ADDENDUM: Have a nosey in uBlock's settings and make sure you've subscribed to just about every filter list that seems relevant to your browsing habits, even if it seems insane to add that many. I don't get YT ads at home or at work.

Does anyone else not trust Richard Burgon?