Palacegalleryratio [he/him]

In my experience: Ask questions and remember the answers. Ultimately a lot of people like to talk about themselves and their interests. What hobbies are you into? Sewing. What type of things do you sew? Mostly clothes. Got any current projects ‘under the needle’? Yeah I’m making a babygro for my cousin who is pregnant. Etc

Then the key part is: next time you speak remember what they said and ask relevant follow up questions. How’s that babygro coming along? How’s your cousin doing? how far along is she now? It shows you’re interested and care, it’s how you build rapport with people.

Also Minecraft is old as shit, I remember when it was just creative mode, no crafting as an early beta on a web page back in like 2009. That’s 15 years ago, Minecraft is almost old enough join the British army!!

Behold Plato’s American man.

Their barbaric penal legion, vs our repentant absolution platoon.

Eat beans instead of meat for protein? No trial, no jury, straight to being a Tankie. Not eat a specific brand of beans I.e. Goya? Believe it or not also a Tankie. We have the best diets in the world.

NO

Tankie is a meaningless word. If you point out China has undeniably made progress under communism, you’re a tankie. If you point out Stalin wasn’t the evil dictator westerners make him out to be (even though it’s disproven by the literal CIA itself) you’re a tankie, if you think capitalism is causing problems in the USA you’re a tankie. If you criticise US or NATO foreign policy you’re a tankie. If you criticise the Republicans you’re a Tankie. If you criticise the Dems, guess what also a tankie. If you think that the USSR and the PRC are/were perfect little angels that never made any mistakes or did anything wrong ever then you’re also a Tankie.

It’s just too broad a term for me or anyone to identify with any way. It’s not an ideology. It’s a dumb insult to dismiss the opinions of others you disagree with without having to engage with their point at all or critically analyse your own beliefs in any meaningful way.

My personal favourite is to break from staring after 30 mins, exclaim, “Hang on, we’re going about this completely back to front!” then spend the next hour deriving from first principles, only to arrive back at the original problem, but now with slightly different notation. At which point I realise that all I’ve done is get myself back to my starting point… Then it’s back to the staring.

I mean you’re not wrong, but it’s an oddly pedantic point to make. I think it’s quite clear in that sentence that I’m referring to artificial sweeteners.

Like if I made two batches of yoghurt, one with actual strawberries, and another one with strawberry flavouring agents, would you be telling me that actually they’re both flavoured with chemicals because strawberries are themselves composed of various organic compounds?

As someone who used to enjoy a soft beverage from time to time, however is sensitive to the taste of chemical sweeteners, fuck off.

Let people have normal sugar. Chemicals taste like ass.

This is disgraceful.

I am sure Labour under Keir is doing everything it can to lose my vote.

Not exactly unheard of:

Terminal:

Vim or Neovim, Tmux or Zillij.

Web browser:

Firefox or a fork, but personally I’m fine with the standard Mozilla offering with a couple of extensions.

Photos:

Big fan of darktable as a lightroom replacement.

Not to speak up for this ludicrous inflation of motor vehicle dimensions, but often the shrinking of cabin space on modern cars is often in pursuit of crashworthiness and safety.

Also this is the Med, it’s not the Pacific or the Atlantic or like the Drake Passage. It’s the Mediterranean. It’s not exactly the roughest sea.

Yes I get what your saying, but in this analogy the screws are destroying the planet, and also hallucinate enough to be completely untrustworthy as fastenings.

Chat gpt in his screenshot. What a hack.

Least unhinged ancap

Profit must go up though. It’s the entire systems basis. Unless you want to change the system…

Living here, frankly I’m suprised it isn’t more.

To add onto my previous reply, buying trains isn’t like you or I buying groceries or even the NHS buying pharmaceuticals. If you or I don’t like Tesco’s products or prices we can cross the road and go to Asda (or Morrisons or Aldi or Waitrose etc) with no consequences or interruption of supply at all for us.

Likewise for the NHS if they don’t like the terms for a drug from generic supplier A, they can buy from generic supplier B. And for many drugs produced as generics there are large manufacturers who are kitted out to do this at reasonably short timeframes with shortfalls from switching suppliers that can be covered from strategic supplies.

Trains on the other hand have working lifespans in decades (sometimes too many decades!). We don’t have spares just sat about as they’re hugely expensive assets, so if you want a different one you have to buy a new one. Buying new ones is a lengthy process that takes years for development, manufacturing, testing, driver training and modifications to infrastructure (power requirements, clearances, platforms alterations etc). You can’t be without trains either as the country requires the trains to run reasonably reliably for a huge amount of economic activity. So it isn’t a simple matter of deciding one is leaving of one train supplier and just going to another. So they kind of have you over a barrel in that sense. It’s a very poor negotiating position.