JESUS CHRIST, FENTON!!





I'll probably just be stuck here cleaning house.

>>460955
Just looked it up, we're about a fortnight away from the twelfth anniversary of the Fenton video. FEEL OLD YET?

Lads, it's Poppymas.

Just decided to play lotto for the first time in years.

£10M in the jackpot this weekend.

You never know.

>>460962
You promised me you would share if you won.

>>460962>>460964
I'd be happy with a Lidl Stilton and fig bake. They're nice, but I can't justify the cost.

>>460964

Whelp... didn't win. Not even a quid.

I played five lines with lucky dips and all I got was one match each in two of those lines. Wide miss.

The jackpot is now up at £12.7M. Maybe I'll play again next time.

>>460970
>The jackpot is now up at £12.7M. Maybe I'll play again next time.
That £12.7m represents 12.7m times that people thought they would win, and were wrong. So surely you can pick better numbers than those losers.

>>460974

I actually won almost 200 quid one time a few years ago. But that was after many weeks of playing, so you couldn't really call it a profit.

The odds aren't great any way you look at it. It's several billion to one that you'll have all six matching numbers in any given draw.

>>460974
They don't give nearly that proportion of sales to the jackpot winner.

>>460975
It's 1 in 45 million. How do you reason it's regularly won if it's 1 in several billion?

Chandler is dead.
https://people.com/matthew-perry-dead-at-54-7501992

>>460977

>It's 1 in 45 million

Fine. Or that.

In any case, most people never win the jackpot. Not even after a lifetime of playing.

>>460978
First celebrity death in a while that's made me go "fucking hell".

I'm guessing it'll be like Paul from S Club where years of substance abuse fucked up his heart.

I stayed up till 2am, and now it's 1am. Remember to change your clocks when you wake up, the rest of you.

>>460978
I'm in a Facebook group for celebrity deaths and this had already been posted four times when I went to post your link. Maybe everyone else is awake now too.

>>460981
Excellent, an hour extra awake.

>>460981

I've noticed that the clock radio and the microwave's clock in the kitchen diverge wildly after some time. I set them to the correct time every six months, but tonight they were three to four minutes apart. One was slower than my radio controlled watch, the other one faster. But I guess that's alright. Some two minutes off in 180 days equals just over half a second per day. Loads of quartz wristwatches don't do better.

I've booked a week off for my birthday but I don't have much of a idea of what I'll do with my time. I'm going to go see a play on my own, get a flu jab but that's about as exciting as my life will get.

In the event of boredom I got Fallout 4 on the sale and might just playthrough that (with a day or two to get mods working). Maybe I'll spend a lot of time at the gym and working on moving up in my career. Still feels quite uneventful though when others will go on holiday or do something to talk about.

>>460983
This is /101/ worthy for me. I'll set my oven and microwave clocks with precision but give it a week or two and they'll both be out. It's annoying as they're both in the same room and for some reason these appliances makers like the clocks to be visible despite them being so obviously defective.

>>460990

>but give it a week or two and they'll both be out.

That's a bit extreme. The cheapest Chinese quartz wristwatch movements don't drift by more than about a second a day. Most appliances with built-in quartz clocks are in the 0.5 second range unless you're buying really cheap brands. Even if your two clocks drift in opposite directions, it'll be a month before they'll be a minute apart.

Which is why I love radio controlled clocks and watches. No drift, ever. They really satisfy your OCD needs.

I'm having this kind of day.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

Haven't changed the clocks in the house. Tricked the kids into going to bed an hour early. Result.

I've had KFC for tea for the first time in ages. Maybe it's just because I haven't had it in forever, but I think they might just retake the crown as best shitty fast food place.

They've started using seasoning on their chips which is a game changer, you can get a little pot of spicy pepper rice as your side instead of just gravy or sweetcorn; and perhaps most importantly their prices, which seemed expensive compared to the competition two or three years ago, are now pretty much on par with the competition and thus in comparison feel like better value overall.

Shame they only do Pepsi Max and not proper Coke, like. But nothing is ever perfect is it.

>>461011
I swear their chicken burgers have got smaller - still best value though, as you say.

>>461012
Cost of living is making chickens smaller?

>>461013
Yeah, farmers can't afford the grain, so they feed the chickens less.

Rocky caramel > Rocky > Club > KitKat > Penguin.

>>461011
You convinced me to check it out and yeah I was surprised actually. It's a lot less greasy than I remember and came in at lower calories for a 'large mighty bucket for one' than what I'd get from Maccies. If they did proper mash and some greens you'd actually be able to have an okay meal. Veg costs nothing, throw it in as a compulsory for the cattle.

It's still got the problem all KFCs have though that the backend and general management is poor. I ordered from a screen and it didn't give me a receipt and then had to wait around for longer than I would at McDonald's despite KFC being basically chicken and chips on a conveyor belt. I'd still sooner get Wendy's because of the chili side.

>>461011
Have you had the Gourmet Kings burgers and Chimichurri Loaded King Fries at Burger King?

Where can I get a decent multipack of t-shirts from? I got 7 Burton shirts for about £13 a couple of years ago and they could do with replacing. Muji doesn't do multipacks and their website is shit for filtering by size. Neither do Uniqlo and they seem to have weird proportions. I think John Lewis ones tend to have several white or faded blue ones, which I'll never wear because I tend to go for dark and earthy colours.

>>461141
Amazon do five Fruit of the Loom shirts from £11.

Visited my family, told my dad I got diagnosed with ADHD. He was very dismissive, "yet another label to add to the collection", and went on a rant about Big Pharma and how I should stop taking all my medication and go for a run every morning and I'll be "normal" within six months. He gets all his knowledge of the world from Joe Rogan guests, it's very embarassing. If an expert from the world of academia says something, he criticises them for being establishment stooges. If an "expert" is some crank that most academics in their field label as unreliable, then they must be right because they were on an episode of Joe Rogan and they're sticking it to the establishment.

Christmas songs playing in Asda. Didn't realise we're that close to the end of the year already. It gave me a profound sense of melancholy for some reason.

Made me think back to last Christmas, which was really pretty miserable, I was working and then after I finished work I ended up having a big row with the (then) girlfriend because she had drunk my beers. She bought me some more in the end, but only after I kicked off at her, and the point is I had asked her to save them specifically because I was looking forward to them when I got home from work. What even was she hoping to achieve with that?

She's going to get the fuck beaten out of her one day. I reckon it's because her dad used to beat her when she was a kid, so now she has to try provoke all the men in her life as some kind of test; she just doesn't realise one day she's going to bait the wrong bloke and end up in hospital.

So I might be lonely this Christmas, but I think I'll still be better off than tangled up with a mentalist like her.

>>461274
>she has to try provoke all the men in her life as some kind of test; she just doesn't realise one day she's going to bait the wrong bloke and end up in hospital.

Gave me a strange sense of warmth knowing that somebody else (of course it had to one of you two) has shared my pain.

I hope you have a good one this Christmas, lad. It's still a way off yet but get some beer in and order a festive Chinese. Do something for yourself without anyone else around to fuck it up for you. I'll raise a glass on the day to you and everyone else whose lives have been touched by the indomitable force of mental slags. Cheers.

The fuck off kind of bad cold I got earlier this week has now turned out to be full on covid. Positive tests and all.

First time since the start of the pandemic that I know for a fact that I've got it. All the other times, either the test was negative or I was handling it on a don't know, don't care basis.

>>461278

My sense of smell is also completely gone. I just cleaned the bathroom sink with some chlorine bleach and couldn't smell a thing.

What's the legal sitch on overtime? At my job, if we start a task or take a call, we can't leave until it's finish. Yesterday my colleague did not finish until 17:08. She asked if she could leave early the next day due to working an extra 8 minutes, but the manager said if she cares so much about working an extra 8 minutes, then all her breaks and lunches will be scrutinised and if she's even just 30 seconds late back from lunch she will be punished. I worked an extra 20 minutes yesterday to finish a task but I'm scared to ask for that time back because the management don't seem generous with that sort of thing.

>>461280
>the manager said if she cares so much about working an extra 8 minutes, then all her breaks and lunches will be scrutinised and if she's even just 30 seconds late back from lunch she will be punished
I don't know what your post was asking because I blacked out with rage reading that.

>>461280

It's a difficult one because legally, they can't force you to stay past your contracted hours- Unless you don't actually have contracted hours and instead you are just salaried on a variable time basis, like a lot of office folks seem to be.

You are well within your rights to just put tools down and fuck off a 1700 exactly, and they would be unable to punish you for it, legally. But as you are aware already, that doesn't mean they can't play the game in reverse by going full malicious compliance on you and timing your breaks and timekeeping etc to the second.

It's one of those things where in a decent workplace, both sides know it's best not to start a fight over it, and managers turn a blind eye to longer breaks or occasionally showing up late, in return for the employees don't kick off about it if they have to stay late every now and again.

There's not much you can do about it either way really, I just wouldn't put up with working somewhere like that.

Are things ever going to seem normal again? I remember the olden times, when the biggest political story of the week could be something as mundane as William Hague wearing a bad hat on a log flume. We had whole years when basically nothing seemed to happen. I'd love a bit of boredom right now.

>>461283
I'm going to suggest that your definition of "normal" is really "how things were from ~1990 to ~2007", and in that case, no, we're not going to go back to that. The sense that even if you do nothing at all, your quality of life will nevertheless increase over time, has gone and even if it comes back, we're all going to remember the gloomy generation, which we're in right now. Life might go back to that in a decade or two, but I think that for that to happen, we would first need something catastrophically exciting to excise the grimness of modern life. A world war would do it; that's what most people think of because World War II ended the Great Depression. While modern life is nowhere as bad as the Great Depression, it does feel similar in some ways, so I guess a less destructive war might be enough to reset society.

It's also worth thinking about what would need to happen to make life boring again. Climate change would need to stop being a concern. Technology is bringing this about, but not fast enough, so I think we would just need 15-20% of the human race to just die in order to save the planet, and that, I'm afraid, would be pretty exciting. People would need to go outside and talk to each other again, and I can't even imagine the sort of apocalypse that would be needed to make me talk to my neighbours. The economy would need to be on a reliably continuous upward trajectory, and maybe AI will make that happen but I doubt it, and it would still take years even if we all figured out the answer tomorrow.

Your best bet to make life seem normal, I would suggest, is to just stop watching the news. Most of it doesn't affect you. You don't need to care about the war in Ukraine any more than you cared about the Gulf War or Yugoslavia. And get off the Internet; we poison your mind and the people who are not terminally online always seem so happy and normal to me. I am confident you would be happier if you were one of them although please stay here because we need your enjoyable posts.

>>461285

The answer to all of it is in that graph where you see productivity and wages rise in lock step with each other from roughly the late 50s to the late 70s, and ever since then wages have flatlined while productivity has continued to reliably increase (albeit slower than before) year on year.

The question is what did we do to end up in that situation between the 50s and the 70s, and how do we get back there? Practically the entire first half of the 20th century had been nothing but devastation and death in the world wars, with the Great Depression sandwhiched between the two. So where did the sudden boom come from?

I have my theories of course. I am hopeful we don't have to go through another world war just to get back there, but we definitely need to move away from the unipolar geopolitical situation we've been in the last 30 years. I'm not rooting for China or Russia because I'm a hardcore Maoist or Putin stooge, but because competition is the only thing that will kick our elites out of their complacency and start developing the Western economy again.

I don't get the scene in Goldfinger where the dead girl on the bed is covered in gold paint. I mean, what for. Even if we accept that Goldfinger is a whimsical enough character who would do something like it. It's not like Connery was going to say, shod thish sod this, I'm out.

>>461289
It was an artistic choice you numpty.

>>461277

Cheers lad, likewise it's nice to know someone out there understands. In fact knowing this place I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be the very same lass. I'll pour out a toast of port irresponsibly early in the day for you mate.

>>461290

So, not a metaphor for having the old Yellow Pages logo done to her muff, then?

>>461290

Maybe it was difficult to know before there was wikipedia, but covering somebody in any kind of paint will not have the desired effect mentioned in the film. QI did a whole bit about that one time. The skin only absorbs about 1% of the body's total oxygen intake. Otherwise, even putting on a full body wetsuit could be life threatening.

A fully painted body could mess with your skin's thermal regulation, but even then, it's probably not going to kill you.

Artistic choice or not, I guess urban legends and old wives tales probably had an easier time being commonly believed fact than they do now.

>>461293
>Artistic choice or not

Maybe James Bond is a bit stupid. I mean, he's a spy not a medical professional. Just because he says in the film she died from paint suffocation doesn't mean that's how the character actually died.

>>461294

True, but with Bond's encyclopaedic knowledge in many areas of life, it's unfortunate that he would have missed that.

I'm sure fact checkers for films have their work cut out these days, because there'll always be an army of geeks on rudgwicksteamshow.co.uk who'll go "Ackhtchually...". This was obviously not the case in the early 60s.

The Internet and then especially smartphones have kind of killed off old-style pub debates where somebody would make outrageous factual claims about something after four pints and then you'd spend the rest of the night debating the veracity, and half of you would swear they'd check on their computer at home first thing. Or call their uncle or grandad who "knew about that stuff".

>>461293

I sort of assumed it was paint with some sort of heavy metals in it that would cause poisoning. I don't even know if slapping that much lead on someone would cause them to die, though.

>>461298
>The Internet and then especially smartphones have kind of killed off old-style pub debates where somebody would make outrageous factual claims about something after four pints and then you'd spend the rest of the night debating the veracity, and half of you would swear they'd check on their computer at home first thing. Or call their uncle or grandad who "knew about that stuff".

Isn't that how the Guinness book of records came about?

>>461300

I distinctly remember a time where they had a number on the beer mats you could text a question to, then presumably someone on the other end in a call centre would google (or perhaps Lycos) the answer for you.

I know I shouldn't over think Pokemon, but if Bill invented the technology to digitally store Pokemon what did they do before then?

>>461302

Intensive farming.

>>461302
Pokemon daycare and breeding, init.

>>461304
So you'd just rock up with a sack full of about 50 caught Pokemon and drop them off at the daycare?

>>461298

>The Internet and then especially smartphones have kind of killed off old-style pub debates where somebody would make outrageous factual claims about something after four pints and then you'd spend the rest of the night debating the veracity

And that's a good thing, actually. It's forced punters to up their game and move into much more abstract, philosophical debates which can't so easily be solved by a simple Google search. Pub conversation these days frequently delves into intellectual examinations of the works of Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Nietzsche, instead of just tediously going back and forth about whether the bird from Moonraker had braces or not.

>>461305
If you got the PokéDollars, sure.

>>461306

>Pub conversation these days frequently delves into intellectual examinations of the works of Dostoyevsky, Kafka and Nietzsche

I don't care about any of that after four pints.

I was trying to find some fingerless gloves, made of natural materials and in red. Anyway, that specific combination appears to be impossible don't you dare show me a maroon pair, I know what I want and I got distracted by an Etsy listing for latex gauntlets and ended up having a wank.

There's a new girl working in the chip shop. She's only a younglass, but she must be at least 6'2" and 18 stone. Every fibre of my being wanted to ask her "If I gave you everything I own, would you smother me to death with your arse?".

>>461311
I'm not good at visualising weight. Can you please post a picture of a woman with a similar frame?

>>461312
18 stone sounds like a lot, but Johnny Vegas is only 5'7" so she'll be thinner than he is here.

Going back to the productivity discussion that took place earlier in the thread, how is it the case that our inflation adjusted earnings have not improved since 2005? That seems mad to me.

Think of all of the efficiencies that offices and workplaces, in all industries, would have experienced since then, yet all of our earnings are the same? Is this CEOs siphoning off more money or something? Is it something to do with all of the non-white immigrants?

>>461312

>Can you please post a picture of a woman with a similar frame?

Not him, but maybe this will help.

I can smell fuck all. Everything smells and tastes of bland nothingness.

My current covid infection has really done a job on me.

>>461315

>Think of all of the efficiencies that offices and workplaces, in all industries, would have experienced since then, yet all of our earnings are the same?

Since 2015, the economic output per hour worked has only increased by 9.5%. The average hours worked by a full-time worker has fallen by nearly an hour per week. The proportion of workers in low-productivity industries has been growing, while the highest-productivity industries have persistent labour and skills shortages.

We have been stuck in a productivity trap since the 2008 recession. We have kept unemployment relatively low (in part due to our incredibly miserly welfare system), but most of the jobs we've created over the last 15 years have been low-skill, low-productivity and low-wage. The textbook example is car washing - the number of automated car washes has fallen, while the number of hand car wash businesses has grown. A huge proportion of the British workforce are in jobs that haven't seen any meaningful productivity increases, which is most of the reason that they haven't seen meaningful wage increases.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/articles/whatistheproductivitypuzzle/2015-07-07

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/timeseries/lzvb/prdy

Crusader Kings III is about £9.40 via CD Keys whereas the Royal Edition is £36; is the additional content worth and extra £26 or so?

The estimated delivery time on my Amazon order is 10pm to midnight.

Would it be pretentious/silly to buy some books just because I've read them in the past and want them to sit on the shelf?

>>461327
It was silly to throw them away after you read them the first time if you like them so much. You might as well buy them again now.

>>461319
Just pirate it grandad/teenlad (both age groups seem equally inept when it comes to technology).

>>461329
I don't think I've pirated anything since the days of Limewire. I'm well out of the loop.

>>461330

https://libgen.rs/

Time for sodding diet. I'm taking on a distinctly Stewart Lee-esque outline and while I might not be able to do much about my hair following a similar trajectory, this I can change. Why I've started dressing a bit like him too is anyone's guess, but one thing at a time, hey.

Is it carpet-baggery to find a 17 year old attractive? There's one at my work who is quite sweet and bubbly, and I feel gross for thinking she's pretty.

>>461367
Yes, please turn yourself in at your nearest police station immediately.

Lads, I need some parenting advice.

I've just asked my son if he wants to come with his sisters to visit my parents tomorrow and he said no because he "has other plans". This is the first time he's actually had plans on the weekend because he's a massive shut in who spends most of his time in his room. What are these plans? It's a sleepover at the only girl in his friend group's house. He wasn't asking for permission, he just assumed he could go. In fact, I don't think he'd have mentioned it until he was planning on setting off tomorrow unless I asked him. There will be at least three other lads going, one of whom has a crush on him, and there will be alcohol. He's never got drunk before. I'm fairly certain he has a crush on this girl.

How do I find the right balance here? My instinctive reaction is to say he can't sleep over, but he's 17 next month and I was doing far worse than this at a younger age. I feel like saying he can hang out, they're meeting early afternoon, but can't sleep over is the right compromise although this is giving me the nagging feeling I'm making him miss out from having fun with his friends.

>>461369

If you stop him from going you are a cunt and he will hate you for it, but more than that you'll just end up making him one of those sheltered, stunted weirdos who never got the vital early experiences with women and booze that form a healthy adult relationship with them.

He's at the age you have to let him start taking adult responsibilities. Showing trust in his judgement is vital, but ensure he's also well aware you're not daft, you've been his age, you know what will likely be going on, and he will be in a world of bollocks if it turns out your trust was misplaced.

>>461370
I've no intention of saying he can't go at all, it's just the sleepover (at a girl's house) part and him not bloody asking when he's known this was planned for well over a week. I think my issue is that he should have given me more time to come round to the idea, nevermind his mum because she's out at the minute and I know she'll be less keen on the idea than I am (so I've been coaching him on how to approach it).

>>461369
If he's never drank alcohol before and is a massive shut in I doubt very much tomorrow night will descend into a bacchanalian expression of unhinged debauchery. Also won't there be adults there or at least in the vicinity, or are girl's parents out of town? If this girl is a teenager and already a homeowner then you should be trying to pair them off if anything, it's not like there are better ways to make money these days. All jokes aside, just let him stay over. What the fuck's going to happen? I guess there being one girl there is a almost a bit weird, but so what? Do you want him to go to uni only knowing the cocktail from The Big Lebowski?

>>461371

You clearly have the best of intentions but I dunno, sounds a bit weird to me because I was definitely out at house parties where all my schoolmates were getting irresponsibly drunk at that age, and I had my first girlfriend over to fingerbang while we watched 3 for £10 DVDs from HMV most weekends.

I don't know if my parents were especially liberal with me but I reckon at 16 going on 17, those really are the sorts of things he should be getting up to, or at least, it's certainly better than being a shut-in right?

>>461372
He's no idea if her parents are there or not. I've looked up the address he's given me and it's in a block of low-rise council flats, so that's all I have to go on. I think his friends have more experience of drinking than he does.

>>461373
I was doing worse from the age of 14/15 so I know he needs these formative experiences. I think I have a bit of whiplash because it feels like going from 0 to 100 moving straight from being a complete shut-in to staying overnight after drinking at a friend's house with nothing in between.

>>461368
>There will be at least three other lads going, one of whom has a crush on him
u wot m8

>>461377
His friend his gay and fancies him. I didn't think that was hard to follow.

I'm stuck after getting six right.

https://hiddenbooks.nationalbooktokens.com/?competition=20#

>>461379

I can't help I'm afraid, because I'm illiterate.

>>461379
I'm stuck on the tables; the left is probably Ben Goldacre's Bad Science but not sure on the other two

>>461381
That one is lessons in Chemistry. The one that has me most stumped is the Morris dancer.

>>461379
I got Lady Chatterley's Lover, and apparently there is a book which I've never heard of called "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow". I got two others then gave up.

>>461382
The English Patient

>>461369
Echoing otherlad, assuming his friends aren't obvious future criminals there will be a lass there and a gay lad so it's not like he's going to go out robbing old ladies.

If there's still time I'd go further and ask him if he wants you to pick up some vodka. You make him come with you and give him sage wisdom about mixing drinks, sticking the voddie in the freezer so he doesn't look a pussy etc. If you're comfortable with that then it opens up keeping an eye on him by getting 5-10 minutes to chat which at that age is really the choice you have - not if he's going to go out and get drunk but how that happens and if other older boys are buying.

I was helping out at a market today and the woman running it looked like Mistress T and it was quite distracting. Like, she properly looked like her, I wasn't just mad with horniness, not the first time I saw her anyway.

>>461386
the fact i know the exact pornstar your on about makes me very sad for the both of us

>>461386

She lives over here, doesn't she? Maybe it was her. She strikes me as someone who makes either jam or bead necklaces in her spare time.

>>461388

IIRC she's Canadian, but she has done a fair bit of work for The English Mansion.

I'm slightly worried that all three of us are familiar with her work.

>>461389

Don't worry, I only jack off to furries.

>>461387
>>461388
>>461389
Idk, she's very attractive and not exactly a run of the mill kind of porn performer, it's not that weird. It's a shame it's all humilation stuff because being called a prick and a dork doesn't really turn me on. A good job too because if it did I'd never be able to leave the house.

>>461390
Finally, some normalcy.

Can you still buy hedgehog bread or has it fallen out of fashion? I can't remember the last time I saw it.

>>461390
>jack off

The one thing worse than a furry is a whatever the fursuit equivalent of a Seppo is. We already have perfectly functional words for things.

>>461391

I've noticed that in general, most of the "normie" kink content has moved toward humiliation and degradation, and things of that nature, over the last few years.

Like, there's the actual kink stuff for proper card carrying BDSM people, but then there's the kink for "vanilla" people. Most of it used to be pretty harmless, you know, you'd see threesomes or MILFs or some naughty roleplay scenarios, and so on. But nowadays it's all just continuously getting darker and weirder, and specifically more... Psychological. The top trending stuff you see is all blacked cuckolding chastity humiliation and shit like that. It's like nobody can get off without feeling like a worthless piece of shit any more.

You don't have to be Sigmund Freud, Lacan or Zizek to start wondering what this says about society as a whole, but I don't think it is a big coincidence that all this stuff started gaining momentum along with the ascendancy of idpol brainrot in mainstream media and culture.

>>461394
>Sigmund Freud, Lacan or Zizek

Fuck them, we need to go back to the teachings of misanthropists such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and everyone outside of the Home Counties.

>>461394

I haven't bothered to analyse my own kinks too much, because whether they're a result of brain chemistry or some deep seated repressed trauma, I don't think it matters too much, I'm not going to stop being turned on by it.

But one thing I have noticed is that I only really enjoy my humiliation kink when I'm feeling good and confident in my actual life. When I'm down and feel useless the last thing I want is to be told that by a lass in a pvc catsuit.

>>461392
It's been displaced in its natural environment by tiger bread, a recent immigrant from the continent. I blame the flour power years of our EU membership.

>>461394
Think back to spanking, the kink has probably been a long time coming and comes from the movement away from corporal punishment. I don't think we're old enough yet for equity and all that bollocks to be internalised sexually by adults.

>>461398
>spanking

Someone needs smacking.

>>461399
Smacking and spanking have different meanings you tit.

>>461400

Someone DEFINITELY needs smacking.

>>461401
You wanna go outside for a spanking, do you?

>>461402

You make a good case for bringing back Corporal Punishment (which just about everyone aside from a handful of mongs referred to domestically as "smacking").

>>461401
>>461403
Might want to open up a dictionary.

Spanking = specific punishment to the arse
Smacking = much more general term for hitting to discipline

If done right you can spank people fine without risk of physical injury which is why it became a favourite with school masters.

>>461397

I'm not sure how accurate it is, but there's a stereotype that BDSM people tend to play against type - most doms are actually quite timid and passive in real life, most subs have a lot of responsibilities and obligations in their real life.

>>461397
>>461407

There's certainly an element of that, but I think it is rather overplayed; especially considering that the vast majority of people these days are basically on a similar level of mediocre semi-poverty and work in comparably monotonous jobs. It makes sense when you consider the classic executive banker paying to get his bollocks trampled by a dominatrix in PVCboots; but there just aren't all that many high power businessmen out there to explain the massive rise in popularity of degradation and humiliation as a general trend. I was even listening to a program on Radio 4 a while back where some sort of young academic fisherwoman was exploring the rise of the "trad wife" trend and 1950s lifestyle dom/sub dynamics as a response to the failures of modern fishing and such, and you can kind of see it if you squint, but similarly I don't think it's the real explanation.

To me sex should be very positive and affirmative, even if you are doing cruel and unusual things to each other; it should be because you want to, because you both find each other desirable. I'm not one to kink shame because lord knows I live in a glass house there, but I still can't help but feel with the real harsh degradation and such, it's like something has gone wrong to taint that person's relationship with sex itself. There's playful fantasies, there's a bit of dirty talk, but then there's the sexual dynamic where the entire objective seems to be attacking someone's self esteem, and that doesn't seem at all healthy to me.

When I was first getting into the kink scene there was a lot of stuff people would clue you in on about how to do your kinks "ethically" and so on, so maybe I've just got weird ideas in my head about how to responsibly practice sexual deviancy that other people don't. But I dunno, I just have a feeling in my gut about it. Something just seems different about it nowadays.

>>461404

They don't sell the Collins Abridged Fetish Dictionary in WHSmith's. You definitely need a spank in the gob for using the "educate yourself!" argument, though.

I can't sleep.

Fuck.

Where's the best place to buy a fridge from?

>>461501
ao have been surprisingly competent, if they do what you want.
If it's a replacement, bear in mind the value of someone taking your old one away, especially if it's a big bastard.

S'getting pretty chilly down south, lads.

>>461505
nice moon, though.

>>461506
Aye, you see the great ring around it? Maybe it's my location, must be plenty of ice crystals in the air. 2.1 degrees out about now.

>>461505
It's still been a disaster for me. I bought BP and UKW stocks a few months back expecting us to have hit 0 degree conditions around Halloween but instead I've been getting spanked harder than a camp schoolboy at a religious free school.

I'm such an alpha male*.

*Stood in front of my fridge earlier eating Brie while breathing really heavily (French Tony Soprano?).

>>461505
I've noticed where I live there are some really committed "shorts lads". It might be one degree celsius, but they're still rocking shorts and I just don't get it. They aren't imune to the cold like a fantasy Nord, because they've still got hats, gloves, big coats, etc. on. Whatever, I'm just projecting my own penchant for being under more layers than a Neolithic burial.

Had my first ever gym session today after signing up on Friday. Got there before 8am because the timetable said that's when they run an induction session, the next one I could realistically get to is a Thursday evening because the others are during the working day, but there were no staff about and no induction.

Decided as I didn't really know what I was doing to do cardio today and then I can look at strength training next time I go in. Managed to do just over 11½ miles on the exercise bike, burning 365 calories, followed by 3¾ miles on the treadmill, burning a further 440 calories. At least that's what machine said, based on weighing 10 stone and 10lbs as the default when I'm probably over 13 stone. I think I could have done a bit more, possibly the rowing machine and the stepper, but I'd drunk all my water and I was starving because I didn't eat that much to make sure I got there on time. I spent most of the time on the treadmill walking because it turns out if I do more than ~90 seconds of jogging at a time I may die.

The gym is really fucking boring, so I'm definitely going to have to buy some headphones and then sign up for Spotify or something. What surprised me was that very few people brought a towel, so they were just leaving the machines covered in their arse and back sweat.

RIP ARE TERRY VENABLES.

>>461521
He was my England manager. I think I still have the 1998 commemorative coins you got from Sainsburys.

>>461517
Consider hiring a personal trainer for a while. They can give you a programme, show you correct form, and give you motivation until you get comfortable enough going on your own.

>>461517
Gym without headphones sounds like hell to me, I'm surprised you didn't leave when you heard all the farting. I actually build my workouts around my ears - audiobooks/podcasts for a 1.05hr cardio session and then I'll listen to individual songs to time my strength workouts which also encourages me to do a full-body workout.

For headphones I recently got these and despite being under a tenner at the moment they're better than a lot of the more expensive models you can get:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004913527552.html

For Spotify, if you can afford it I'd get the £99 gift card from Amazon that pays for a whole year which saves about £30.
For Podcasts you can get a load for free on podbean or even youtube. Goalhanger is slowly becoming a monopoly so maybe try one of those the Rest is History podcast on Costa Rica is worth a try:

And while I remember I recently got a big box of cheap whey protein bars off Amazon called Amfit. They'll make you fart the first day or so like all high-protein but a proper post-workout snack is actually a necessity if you want to build muscle or avoid binging once you get home.

>>461523
I'm planning on going late tomorrow/Tuesday and if I still feel a bit clueless with the weights I'll look into hiring a PT. It didn't seem overly busy this morning, but then again I was there roughly from 8am to 10am.

>>461524
I was planning on getting these Anker ones, but for no compelling reason:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/soundcore-Wireless-Bluetooth-Water-Resistant-Customization-Black/dp/B0BTYCRJSS/

I didn't hear any farting, just generic chav music while one TV played Match of the Day on mute and the other Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom. I think if I was nearer the weights I may have had more chance of clocking farts.

Do you do strength and cardio on the same day? I was planning on alternating. I can still feel my thighs now, so I doubt I'd have been able to do squats on top. I'll also look to get some post-workout snacks.

Went to church. Horrible experience. I chose this one because it was Church of England affiliated but also seemed quite modern and progressive. When I got there I chatted with a bloke who described it as an "Anglican church with a Pentecostal feel".

Started with 20 minutes of atrocious Christian rock by a live band. Just dreadful. And there were people in the audience reaching out to the sky, shouting pro-Jesus adlibs alongside the song. It was weird because some of them looked like normal pretty student girls, but they're crying and dancing about and being cringe about Jesus.

Then the preacher read a psalm, and invited people to come in front of the cross and speak their minds. So people went up and said some platitudes about God and Jesus and it was all way too positive. At this point the preacher said to raise your hand if you want to be prayed for, and for people put their hands on the raised hand person to pray for them. At this point I left because it was pretty lame, but I went out the wrong door and got lost and had to reenter the church room to leave properly.

>>461527
That's pretty much what I would have expected from a church. Why on Earth did you go?

>>461528
Every couple of years I get an urge to find meaning in my life, and as I was baptised a Catholic I lean towards Christianity. Then I go to some new age church where everyone is a happy clappy weirdo and that puts me off religion for a while. I'd probably be fine at a more traditional Catholic church, but I get nervous around the holy communion part because I never feel comfortable going up for a blessing (I can't have the wine and wafer because I didn't have the formal holy communion ceremony).

>>461529

Well why don't you just go to an ordinary church, Catholics are a wierdo cult like Mormons or Jovies. The whole point of Christianity is that it's the low commitment option out of the mainstream religions- You don't even have to show up, you just have to ask forgiveness at some point before the end and you're good, Jesus already has you covered.

I think most people who go to normal church are basically just playing along for the sense of community and perhaps the peace of mind they won't go to hell, and that's where you want to be. The kind where it's about 70% old dears who will invite you to coffee mornings and raffles.

I remember going to church with my nan as a kid and it was just a couple of hours of singing hymns, then the vicar reads you a nice bit of a story, you get your bit of bread and sip of wine, then you sing a bit more, and that's about it. You don't want anything more weird and ritualistic than that.

Or you know you could just get a hobby.

>>461527
Last time I went to a church service was about 8 or 9 years ago, for a christening. Can't remember which denomination, but it was one of those fairly modern happy-clappy ones. All I can really remember is that they played a lot of upbeat African hymns and at one point you were meant to go around shaking everyone's hand and telling them something like "God be with you." It wasn't that bad.

One of my friends has gone quite religious, but I think that was because she had three kids and her husband worked away a lot so she went to the church for support.

>>461526
If they perform anything like the over-ear Q45s then I'd absolutely get them, they easily outperform the more expensive headphones on the market.

>Do you do strength and cardio on the same day?

Some people alternate days, it depends on what works for your routine and your targets. I set out from the start for a mixture of endurance and supporting weight maintenance, I'd struggle to get to the gym more than 2-3 times a week so I try to get the most out of it in every session and supplement it with some light free weights I have at home to knock a few sets out while I'm cooking dinner. Similarly I have friends who have young kids who can only manage once a week in the gym who need to be efficient when they can get there.

Last night I did 65 minutes on the stepper and then went into the bench press as my legs recovered before moving back into leg press before doing free weights and so on. When I first started, spending that long on a stepper even on a lower setting would turn me to jelly by the end of it, but before long I could do some free-weights/bench before my arms would start to give out and then I gradually increased what I could handle. I'm still doing sissy weights and one day my goal is to knock out a good half hour on the rowing machine but what there's a strong upwards trajectory.

>I can still feel my thighs now, so I doubt I'd have been able to do squats on top.

It'll be like that for a couple weeks. Take a hot shower or visit a steam room if your gym provides them.

>>461526

>I was planning on getting these Anker ones, but for no compelling reason:

Anker are reliably good value and the warranty is actually worth something. You can get cheaper earbuds, but it's probably a false economy; you can spend more, but you quickly get into diminishing returns.

>Do you do strength and cardio on the same day? I was planning on alternating. I can still feel my thighs now, so I doubt I'd have been able to do squats on top. I'll also look to get some post-workout snacks.

Generally speaking, no. You might want to warm up before strength training with an easy 15 minutes on the treadmill, but you don't want to knacker yourself before you've even started with the weights.

>>461526
>personal trainer
Unless you're rich and you know a good trainer you should save yourself some money by installing boostcamp on your phone then doing Greg Nuckols' Beginner Program or Phrack's Greyskull. Video your sets if you're worried about form.

Second gym session done, been here about 2½ hours. Spent roughly half of that on the treadmill/bike (which felt a lot easier than last time) and the rest on weight machines, but not done free weights here yet. Waiting for my car to de-mist and if my girlfriend is still awake I'm gonna go home and have a shag.

Bought a bag of hardwood logs from Homebase. Not sure what to expect.

https://www.diy.com/departments/homefire-hardwood-logs-grab-bag/246649_BQ.prd

I'm about to light up the fireplace and find out.

>>461600
How can you not know what to expect? Have you got kindling and had a recent chimney inspection?

>>461601

>Have you got kindling and had a recent chimney inspection?

The fireplace was inspected two years ago and has only been used about a dozen times since. I'm using a few dried twigs from the back garden as kindling. I always set some aside every year.

To get the fire as such going, I've found that a handheld gas torch works best. Which probably isn't elf and safety canon, but I have yet to blow myself up using that method.

The fire is picking up readily now, I think this is good wood.

>>461601
>How can you not know what to expect?
One time I burned a whole pallets worth of blue pallet wood, only to stink out the entire house with whatever chemical preservative the wood was infused with. It was absolutely foul, had to air the house will all windows open in the middle of the winter night.
Not him, by the way.

I just broke my tea mug that I've had for years. I don't know how it happened. It was good and thick, had survived many falls in the past and there was very noticeable staining on the inside from years of hard work.

It's a tough one. I've had to cancel my plans and look online for a replacement which is never easy because this will be my mug. I've got a 700ml mug on the way with a fat bottom. But I don't know if I'm a big mug kind of guy. It'll be annoying to clean properly and I'll have to do different measure for coffee and leave the teabag in for longer. I'll probably end up having to shop around and ending up with a load more mugs in my cupboard that are all mismatched now.

Considering how important a good mug is and how long one a good one can last you'd think that we'd have a artisan industry for it with mugs selling for upwards of a hundred pounds. I'd spend a lot of fucking money for a good mug let me tell you.

>>461607

I can't say I share your enthusiasm for mugs either way, but maybe you're just overthinking it. Just go out and spend £3 on a new standard sized mug at Tesco, the first one you see there, and be done with it.

>>461607
There is an artisan industry selling mugs, you just have to visit the pottery galleries or shops or whatever they're called in person. As you should anyway, you'll never correctly judge the hefty, handle and finish of a nice piece of pottery from a photo.

Fuck all won on premium bonds this month, that's nothing at all since May.

>>461607
Teacon update: 700ml is much MUCH too big for a teamug. It's absurd.

I had a mug of coffee for breakfast and then topped it off with another mug of tea to wash down my cheese toastie. As a result I've spent hours making effort posts all over the place for the benefit of no one and not done what I actually set out to do today.

It has me reflecting on my relationship with caffeine and how it shapes my ability to react extremely well in crises or focusing incredibly hard on singular creative tasks but flop when it comes to delivering bigger projects.

>>461647
>700ml is much MUCH too big for a teamug. It's absurd.
It's very nearly one and a quarter pints. I could have warned you it was too big, but I assumed you knew how much 700ml is.

I hot glued probably about 30 metres of speaker cable to the walls, ceilings and skirting boards in my livingroom today.

I've inherited a 5-channel surround sound hi fi system from a family menber. It's about 25 years old, probably one of the earliest surround sound systems, with an Onkyo TX-DS 474 amp and three JBL satellites, as well as a pair of Canton speakers with 6.5'' bass drivers, a Denon CD player and a mid-range Onkyo tape deck. Not meant as a flex. It's a pretty nice setup, I think the person who owned it spent somewhere around £2,500 on it back in the day. It already has a dedicated multi-channel DVD input.

Technology has moved on a bit since 1998, but who can say no to a free surround system. But now I may have to upgrade my Panasonic smart TV, because its only line out is a stereo headphone jack.

>>461649
Honestly, thats likely better quality than a lot of the shit around today.

>>461649 Technology has moved on a bit since 1998

Enjoy your amp without blinding blue LEDs and a cloudy app interface that links to an abandoned website.
On the other hand, it may well burn more power than a modern amp, especially when it's idling.

>>461649
>>461650
>>461651
My grandfather moved out of a large house a few years ago, and the one thing he regrets was not being able to keep his stack of separates. Mostly Pioneer Blue Line from the early 1980s. Those things were built to last.

>>461652

>Pioneer Blue Line

Looks like they go for a pretty penny still today.

The late 70s to late 90s were the golden age of hi-fi equipment. If you're in the market for vintage separate components from that era, then you can't go wrong with any of the well known brands.

Most stuff from the last 20 years and especially the last 10 years is no longer up to that standard unless you want to spend £1500 on an amp alone. There just isn't a big market anymore for reasonable mid-priced components. Just look at the shite they sell. And now with the phasing out of physical media, forget about finding a good modern CD player or tape deck. A well serviced Technics or Yamaha deck from 1990-93 will outperform anything newer that's been on the market the last 15 years.

The Denon CD player I got with the system isn't working properly. The tray doesn't open or close. I opened it and had a look inside it yesterday, it looks like the belt that drives the tray slips and needs replacing. The motor seems fine. I'll have to measure the belt and see if there's one on eBay.

>>461657
>And now with the phasing out of physical media, forget about finding a good modern CD player or tape deck

I heard that the PS1 has great quality sound as long as you have a decent amp and set of speakers to plug it in to. I'm thinking a Sony amp from the 1990s.

>>461718
The PlayStation consoles have historically had very good optical drives. The PS1 had a great CD drive, the PS2 a great DVD drive, and the PS3 a great Blu-ray drive.

All of which reminds me: is there any particular reason standalone BD drives are so expensive? CD and DVD drives, internal or external, even recorders, can be had for less than dinner for two at Wetherspoons, but even non-recording BD drives have a good chance pushing £100.

Nobody says minger these days.

>>461720

I find myself saying munter much more often instead, it describes the more precise kind of ugly I am used to seeing. You know, those types of washed up ex-chav with a fat distressed mum body and a face permanently stuck in a scowl like they just sniffed a rank fart. The kind of girl who's diet is 90% crisps, but has a distinct overconfidence about their appearance because they still get attention from chubby bald blokes.

Minger more describes a girl who could be attractive, but she's unpleasant, implied to have poor personal hygiene and cares little about it, and you don't want to shag her because you'll catch some kind of obscure knobrot from her unwashed fanny. Mingers loose relevance as an adult I reckon- It's more of a playground insult directed at the particularly poor girls or the shy/nerdy ones.

I took a parcel in for a house further down the street around 9 o'clock this morning and they haven't been round to collect it, even though their car has been on their driveway all day. Are they expecting me to go round and give it to them? Not sure why DPD decided to give it to me rather than one of the houses much nearer to them.

I just spent over £30 on four Osram branded dimmable E27 light bulbs on the B&Q website. Thirty quid.

I tried ordering cheap LED bulbs from Amazon, but the low-budget generic ones I got at £15 for a pack of five were complete shite, and weren't dimmable at all. So I sent them back. They were flickering as I turned the dimmer, just like regular non-dimmable LED bulbs do. Either this was a scam from the go or the manufacturer is overly optimistic about their dimmability.

>>461730

Cheap LED bulbs are just shite. Good bulbs are painfully expensive, but unless you put them in a fixture with no airflow, you won't have to think about them again for another decade.

>>461739

I needed them for a battery of 80s style top mounted cylindrical ceiling spotlights here in the livingroom. So there's going to be good ventilation.

For a bit more than 30 quid I probably could've got all new LED light fixtures to replace them, but I would like to preserve the distinct 80s flair of the room.

Happy thirtieth birthday, Doom.

Hull is the obese capital of England. 39% of people are obese and 72% are overweight.

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/kTMmN

>>461743

Fat lasses and the sexiest accent in Britain? Truly, Hull is the promised land.

My guts are in absolute turmoil today and I've got no idea why. No boozing, no dodgy takeaways, no curries, nothing. Is this one of those things that just happens in middle age? I feel cheated.

>>461744
The ~28% of the population who aren't overweight are mostly chubby chasers.

>>461743
It always confuses me when I read about how fat this country is. The lowest is Kensington and Chelsea at 45.5% overweight where you have to envision rich kids having too many cucumber sandwiches and champagne and too little cigarettes and cocaine.

Imagine how different a society would have to be for Britain to boast a healthy waistline.

Four weeks after covid, spag bol still tastes more shit than usual.

>>461747
According to The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, in England in 2021/22 the population was roughly 2% underweight, 34% a healthy weight, 38% overweight and 26% obese.

In the early/mid nineties around 55% of the population were overweight (c. 40%) or obese (c. 15%) so over the past three decades the number of overweight people has remained fairly constant while there's been a decrease in people of a healthy weight and a corresponding increase in obese people.

>>461749
I'd be careful when comparing the numbers, they've changed the bands since the nineties as they've got new population data. The equivalent of losing weight by changing the scales.

But yeah, I find it scary as a fatlad who has been losing weight for over a year now because I know that being a fat-fuck is sticky, takes work and I'm definately feeling that with it being Christmas everyone around me is trying to lead me astray. And the shops take the piss as well, there is no option to mark that I have a healthy lifestyle on my Lidl app because their business model is based on selling poor people bollocks they don't need.

And the thing is I've even met birds now who, at least tell me, they prefer men with a bit of meat on them. Something common with Eastern European women especially which makes me wonder if long-term social attitudes will also change. Elvis really was ahead of his time.

Why are my feet warmer when I take my socks off than when I'm wearing them? It feels like my socks are somehow causing my feet to sweat, or just somehow causing moisture to condense on my feet (maybe from walking on the cold lino in the kitchen or something), and my feet get progressively colder until I just decide to take my socks off altogether, then my feet dry out and suddenly feel toasty warm.

>>461754

Cotton socks will trap moisture, keeping your feet slightly damp and increasing the rate of heat loss. The expensive answer is merino wool socks. The cheap but smelly answer is synthetic socks.

I had crispy onions on cheesy broccoli pasta earlier and it really elevated it to another level. What else works well with pasta? Rocket always goes nice with pesto pasta.

When I bought my house, there was a safe in the kitchen. It has a battery-powered digital code, but the batteries were flat and there wasn't a key. I didn't want to throw it away in case it was full of money or a girlfriend or a cool treasure map. Over the past couple of weeks, I have got more serious about opening it, and was about two-thirds of the way through hacksawing a corner off so I could see inside and release my waifu. It took hours to saw that far.

Then I saw this video, of a safe that is almost identical to mine:

That worked right away, possibly faster for me even than the man in the video. For fuck's sake. And no, it was empty, apart from the little carpet at the bottom, some screws to attach it to a wall, and of course the master key that I no longer have any use for.

>>461766

I once got a safe for Christmas. Smaller than that one , and with just a key lock. But what the fuck was I going to do with a safe in a rented bedsit, at a time when I didn't own anything valuable at all. And any burglar could've just taken the safe tucked under their arm whole, because what landlord allows you to do the kind of builder's work needed to install a safe theft proof.

>>461754

Have you considered putting your feet on the radiator?

Not sure how I feel about this. I mean, Monster Energy, really, Steam? Where's the line?

At my workplace you can send other colleagues a message to thank or celebrate something they did, and all the staff can see it. Today my colleague sent one praising me for my hard work. And today when we all gathered for a team meeting thing, other staff members were pleasant to me. I'm not sure if it's some big gaslighting campaign and they're going to pour pigs' blood on me, or if I have actually settled into the workplace.

>>461868
See you Monday.

>>461869
I do hate the grind and culture of work, I find it somewhat tragic when staff members spend a chunk of their own money to decorate for Christmas and Halloween, and I hate my job. But of the 13 jobs I have had, this one feels the most acceptable. Absolutely not what I want to do long term, but it pays enough to live on and I don't feel like offing myself too much during work.

>>461870

>I don't feel like offing myself too much during work

That's honestly the best I've ever been able to say about any job. All the money in the world means nothing if there's some kind of ravenous depression demon sucking my soul out through my arse every moment I spend there.

I wasn't cut out for modern working life, and I don't just mean in the "I'd rather stay at home playing videogames" kind of way. I feel like I'm misplaced in time, there's some place hundreds of years ago where my skills and strengths had some sort of niche but invaluable use to the community; but when it comes to spending 8 hours a day in front of a desk I'm less than worthless, because I'd rather do almost literally anything else.

Really I think finding a job you don't hate is something you have to count yourself extremely, extremely lucky for in today's society.

What's the difference between OLED, QLED amd 4K?

>>461887

4K is a resolution of 3840x2160, compared to "Full HD" which is 1920x1080. 4K is noticeably sharper than HD, but most content is still broadcast or streamed in HD resolution, so 4K is mostly a future-proofing thing. Aside from the very cheapest budget TVs, nearly all new TVs over 40" will be 4K.

OLED and QLED are display panel technologies.

OLED is the most expensive panel technology and is broadly the best. It has properly jet-black blacks, as opposed to the slight grey glow that you get in black areas on LCD panels. The colours are richer and motion is sharper. OLED displays aren't always as bright as LCDs at maximum brightness, which can be an issue in rooms with a lot of daylight. There have been some concerns over the long-term reliability of OLED, but these issues have mostly been addressed.

QLED is Samsung's name for their improved LCD technology. IMO it's mostly a marketing thing to create confusion. LCD TVs just aren't as good as OLED, but they are good value and they're still a sensible choice for most people.

TVs are something I'd recommend buying in an actual shop - preferably Richer Sounds or John Lewis. You can see the picture quality for yourself, decide whether you actually care about better colours or deeper blacks and (crucially) have a go with the remote control and the menu system to see if it's incredibly annoying. A TV with a marginally better picture isn't much of an upgrade if you're pissed off with it every time you try and change the channel.

While I'm at it, buy a soundbar. Built-in TV speakers are always absolute dogshit, because modern TVs are just physically too thin to accommodate decent speakers. Surround sound systems are nice, but you get 90% of the benefit by just getting a basic soundbar-and-subwoofer package.

>>461887
OLED means the screen uses organic LEDs; they're made from some kind of fungus or something and they provide really rich colours, but they die after a couple of years and you have to buy a new TV. Never buy an OLED TV.

QLED, I have no idea. I thought it was a proprietary brand name but they're actually "Quantum Dot LEDs" and are just an extra-fancy version of regular LEDs: https://www.whathifi.com/advice/oled-vs-qled-which-best-tv-technology

4K refers to the screen resolution. Old analogue TVs used to have 625 lines of pixels; really old black-and-white ones had even fewer, possibly 425. HD now is 1080p (sometimes people will also claim 720p is HD), so that's obviously 1080 lines of pixels. 4K is four times as many as that, or it should be but I just looked and it's more commonly 3840 lines. You only get that resolution if both the screen and whatever you're watching support it, though. If you watch a 4K (or 8K) YouTube video on a 1080p monitor or TV, you will see 1080p because each pixel can only show one line of colour.

>>461888
>OLED is the most expensive panel technology and is broadly the best.

>>461889
>Never buy an OLED TV.

Thanks lads.

>>461868
I'm happy to dish these out but it always makes me uncomfortable being on the receiving end. Like you there's a twinge of paranoia and I can feel like I'm being patronised at times by someone looking to social engineer me. Partly it's obviously because deep-down everyone is their own worst critic and we all tend not to appreciate that it doesn't matter if we deliver perfection, it matters if we deliver - cutting corners and making small mistakes is fine.

Anyway, to turn this into a rant I remember going into my current career and making a joke that everyone was so nice and enthusiastic it felt like they were all scared I was going to bring a gun in. But in reality I'd spent my working life being treated like scum by management and suffering cultures dominated by a clique of cunts.

There's an inter-generational mental health crisis in this country that began during the First Industrial Revolution to the present day. One driven purely by a majority of work places being toxic and that creating a self-perpetuating culture for workers and managers. It's got nothing to do with needing to deliver productivity because we do see that people will work incredibly hard for little reward if they actually enjoy the work, identify with it, feel they're getting personal growth or just show up to support their mates. The problem is that there's no easy blueprint for creating that in the science of management and it ultimately requires exceptional organisational leaders that are in short supply. And a sizeable portion of the 'working class heroes' are just horrible people who will break everything, do the minimum out of spite and complain like it's their job so nothing ever changes.

>I'm not sure if it's some big gaslighting campaign and they're going to pour pigs' blood on me, or if I have actually settled into the workplace.

If you're energy-lad then I can say that everyone I've met in that sector is incredibly pleasant. Extremely overburdened by work if they have a specialism but pleasant. I'd say you want to look into a career in the sector now you've got a foot in the door. So long as you don't mind having an incredibly motivated demographic hating your guts for it and will just accept that keeping the lights on isn't going to get any easier and will be outright chaotic in the near-term.

>>461890

OLED screens used to have very real problems with dimming over time and screen burn-in. These issues have basically been fixed with improved panel technology and software. Unless you do something very unusual like display the same static graphic on your TV 24/7, you aren't going to see any noticeable degradation within the normal lifespan of your set.

https://www.tomsguide.com/features/oled-burn-in-heres-why-older-tvs-get-it-but-newer-ones-dont

Don't believe either of us - RTings provide incredibly detailed and comprehensive reviews of TVs.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/tvs-on-the-market

>>461891

It probably makes me pathologically British, but I get very uncomfortable when I receive praise more effusive than "not bad".

Tea mug update: It is absolutely impossible to find a good mug these days. Even in stores the market is dominated by absurd mug sizes, poor manufacturing standards and awful designs.

It's rage inducing. I thought I'd found a good one last night but then I noticed some wanker had written 'happy in love' with a tacky heart and some stars on it for no reason. Like those shirts you see that ruin the product by obnoxiously sticking a logo on on the chest. And then I looked online again and thought I'd found one only to see that they'd increased the size dramatically because all the reviews were people whinging about the former size. The size was fine, people were complaining because it was over £15 and so felt like they were owed a saucepan.

Tolkien warned us about this. I bet nobody ever had this problem in mythical Britain, they had a few quality mugs without the taint of corruption and a noble and just King would personally intervene to ensure appropriate sizes and thickness.

>>461888
>While I'm at it, buy a soundbar. Built-in TV speakers are always absolute dogshit, because modern TVs are just physically too thin to accommodate decent speakers. Surround sound systems are nice, but you get 90% of the benefit by just getting a basic soundbar-and-subwoofer package.

I can absolutely confirm this. I bought a basic soundbar and subwoofer over the summer and it really has been a solid investment. You can probably get better quality for cheaper if you really look but I went with one off Amazon because I don't know what I'm doing:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08BLRPVB5

>>461894

https://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/product-page/not-piss-pint-size-mug

>>461894
>Like those shirts you see that ruin the product by obnoxiously sticking a logo on on the chest.
Now that I really do hate. I won't be turned into a billboard.

Have you considered a glass mug? That's what I use, but I'm also a coffee drinker so I understand that my opinion is worth less than dirt around here.

Can we talk about Israel-Palestine yet?

>>461895
Wow that was an excellent post! We're really glad to have you as a member of the .gs family.

>>461896
If you mean those ones where there's a glass inner and outer then I'm a little suspicious. It seems all too easy for the inner to have a small invisible crack that leads to liquid getting between the two skins and once that happens the entire thing needs immediate chucking.

>>461897
Is there anything to talk about?

>>461899
I've been using a cheap and wonky glass mug for about two years that I picked up from a TK Maxx. I haven't had any issues with cracking despite this clearly not being a premium example of the concept, what with the rim undulating by a centimetre and being twice as thick on one side as compared to the other. I can't say I've stress tested it beyond hitting the sides as I stir it's contents with a teaspoon, but as that's the limit of what I intend to do with it I don't see a problem.

The horrible truth is both those posts were mine. Probably nothing, but I had a strong impulse to use the phrase "Israeli Einsatzgruppen" earlier. The stories coming out of Gaza have put me in a darker mood than any news I can recall.

>>461898
That sort of attitude is exactly why you need to correctly label your piss/not piss containers.

>>461894

Try your local catering supplier. They'll be happy to sell you a normal mug at a fair price, although you'll probably have to buy a pack of 6 or 12.

https://www.nisbets.co.uk/tableware-and-bar-supplies/crockery/mugs/_/a33-2.f8-1?

>>461888
>>461894

Complaining that built in TV speakers are shite and then saying "get a soundbar" really perplexes me, because sound bars are usually fucking shite too. You just do not get good sound out of tiny little flat speakers like that, so manufacturers compensate with brute force volume and aggressively amplifying the bass, and overall it just ends up a mess.

I suppose they caught on because with super flat TVs everyone wants an equally sleek, tidy solution for the speakers too, but frankly you get miles better money's worth if you just buy a cheap set of desktop 2.1 speakers and plug them into the TV's headphone jack. Mine cost about £40 ten years ago and they provide miles better sound than any sound bar I've heard so far purely because they are actual speakers with decently sized drivers.

Not having a go at you two personally but this is one of those things that annoys me, where technology moves in a certain direction because of some trend, even though it just pretty much objectively makes the end result worse.See also: Phones, and everything about them.

I discovered that there was a sale at a local posh shop and got myself a nice looking mug for £3! This is quite the discount as it is just the right size and shape for a proper tea mug with some tastefully silly penguins on it so that everyone knows how I like to have fun.

And just to be sure I got a second mug on sale for £5. And then I got a couple of extra teaspoons. Followed by a souvenir mug of the road I live on because it might bring back memories one day. And then I spent £30 on a toastie maker with some additional grill patterns I'll never use. Of course this then meant I needed to buy some fancy cheese because I'll now spend the next two weeks living on cheese toasties and tea.

Life is okay.

>>461903

Soundbars aren't as good as proper hifi speakers, but the good ones are perfectly competent and a vast upgrade over built-in TV speakers. A cheap soundbar is just a pair of cheap speakers stuck together in a plastic tube, but better soundbars are remarkably sophisticated.

I've tried drafting this post twice, but it just descended into excessively technical waffle about balanced mode radiators and line arrays and acoustic impedance matching. I'll just say that the guts of a half-decent soundbar are vastly more complex than you might imagine, and that soundbars as a category have only become possible due to some fairly dramatic advances in amplifier technology, digital signal processing and acoustic modelling over the last 15 or so years. The form factor of a standard hi-fi speaker has remained basically the same since the 1950s because they're dictated by the laws of physics; while you can't break the laws of physics, you can bend them quite substantially if you throw enough computation at the problem.

>TV sports quiz show Question of Sport has been shelved after more than 50 years on air, the BBC has confirmed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67731546

Get woke, go broke.

>>461906

I am glad you didn't spend the effort to go into depth about it all because I am afraid I would have likely disagreed with most of it anyway. Frankly for me it boils down to over-engineering a problem that didn't need solving, and after all of that time and effort arriving at a solution that's about 75% as the simpler option of putting a pair of plain old square speakers at each end of your TV stand.

And I don't want to make it sound like a pissing contest of credentials thing but I know a thing or two about sound, I've done plenty of recording, mixing and production over the years. On the one hand that's partially why it irritates me, because I know exactly what sub-par reproduction sounds like and it viscerally annoys me; but on the other I know it doesn't bother the average person who just wants it to sound better than the built in speakers and is happy with that.

I just see it as reinventing the wheel, only worse, even with all the fancy DSP tech they chuck at it.

>>461907
You should slit your wrists.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>461907
It has been utterly shit for years.

>>461909

Go wring out your tampon, wokelad.

(A good day to you Sir!)

>>461910
It averaged about 4 to 5 million viewers under Sue Barker, Matt Dawson and Phil Tufnell before the BBC got rid of them for the crime of being old and white. The first episode of the new format got about 2 million, but averaged about 850k and that's why they've pulled the plug.

You'd have thought the BBC would have learned by now. Every time they've done this it's been unpopular.

>>461908

I genuinely don't mean to be rude, but I'm guessing that you're single? Soundbars are one of those things that we have to tolerate to indulge women, like cushions you aren't allowed to sit on, twigs in jars, "wall art" with inspirational phrases and putting the toilet seat down.

I can hear things scuttling around the room at night but I never see them. Are they going to be under the floorboards? How do I get in there to lay traps without breaking them?

I just don't get why people go to things they know will be a scam.

I'm seeing endless moans about Christmas markets, Winter Wonderland, all these types of things.

I know beforehand I will get scammed for entry, for drinks, for food, and then shuffle round and not really enjoy it so I just don't go and use the money for a nice meal out instead.

If more people did this they'd be less scammy and the problem goes away. I don't get why people do it.

Found a new contender for the britfa.gs crown, lads

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

>>461904
Toastie makers are a load of shite. There's only a limited amount of cheese you can use before it doesn't close properly or the molten cheese dribbles out everywhere making a huge mess. And you're also limited in the size of bread you can use.

I don't see how this is supposed to be any more convenient than a frying pan. Especially as you have to wash the plates anyway.

>>461922

Pulling up floorboards isn't particularly difficult - you just prise them up and nail them back down - but it isn't usually necessary. Your unwanted guests need food and water, so they need routes in and out of their hiding place. Look for holes or cracks big enough to fit a pencil through. Check the outside of your house for things like air bricks and gaps under sills. Stuff them with steel wool or wire mesh, which is one of the few materials that rats can't chew through.

They're drawn to your kitchen, because even if the cabinets are secure they're going to find crumbs. You can try dusting a fine powder like bicarb or flour on your kitchen floor overnight. If rodents have been out, there'll be footprints in the morning. Have a look under your cabinets and appliances for droppings. If you've got a loft, check there too.

If you set spring traps, you'll want to put them along the skirting boards or in quiet corners. Rodents are naturally cautious and tend to sidle the margins like a shy kid at a party. Cheese isn't particularly good bait - you want peanut butter or bits of sausage.

Poisoned bait blocks are very effective, but rodents tend to crawl off to a quiet corner to die, which will stink out your house. Unless they're causing serious problems, it's a definite last resort.

>>461927

I'd make her think of England IYKWIM, but she's too posh to be our queen.

>>461922
>>461934
An interesting thing about floorboard nails, seeing as you didn't ask, is that they're specifically designed with a flat tip and edges, making them much less likely to split the wood compared to regular round nails. You can even use them very close to the edge without risking damage to the boards.
Seeing as the flat edges cut into the wood rather than compress it outward, I like to think flooring nails push a squared section of waste wood out from underneath, but I've not bothered to try it.

Trying to persuade a butch lesbian that smashing my back doors in with a strapon would be an empowering attack on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

>>462053

You're living the life.