The idealogical pure label doesn’t really apply to centerists, by their very nature they are compromisers, you also cant appply it to the current right wing Tory loons unless naked personal greed and ego stroking is an idealogy.

Centristism is whatever the right-wing media supports.
And that’s an utterly uncompromising form of British nationalism.
The lack of compromise was demonstrated by their response to Corbyn and some mild, vaguely socialist, policies.

Like the media; centrists love business, Thatercherite individualism, the military, monarchy, Israel, and anything with a union jack – as long as it’s not too obviously racist.
It’s instinctively right-wing and conservative.
This will be the next UK Government, irrespective of party.

what’s the betting for who the special guest is?

AI Diana Spencer.

Candi Station on now, absolutely superb.

Like most people in their 80s, her voice is shot.

Always wondered what that generic, bland ballad/pop is that you hear in taxis.
Turns out, it’s called Dermot Kennedy. He’s an Irish bloke who sings in a mid-west US accent.
Sounds like it’s generated by AI. Yeesh.

…they need to take more risks with headliners

Agree. Main interest around the headliners tends to be whether or not an aged performer can still perform.
It’s difficult because of the way music has changed. Hard for newer bands/performers to build the same kind of “headliner” following as those from pre-digital era. Much more fragmented with loads of smaller niches.

It’s just been pointed out to me how much axl looks like ian Beale..

I have a theory that all men over 50 morph into Ian Beale.

I mean, Morrissey is a colossal tit clearly, but the songs!

Aye, those songs are just so good. The heroism and mundanity of everyday life.
“I was looking for a job and then I found a job,
“And heaven knows I’m miserable now”

Jacob Collier presenting the case against music theory.

Generation Bifocal Specs

Really enjoyed Sudan Archives. New to me.
Great performance that shows you don’t need a load of people/band.
Just violin, beats, talent and creativity.

Midnight Rocker by Horace Andy.
A newish album by a veteran reggae/dub artist that I’d never heard of before but really like.

Discovered Khruangbin and Angelique Kidjo last year from pinging around iPlayer.
Nothing grabbing me yet.

A young Pavarotti sang in a choir at the eisteddfod in 1955. They sure didn’t sing in Welsh, sadly anti English feelings and Welsh nationalism are on the increase but definitely not supported by the majority of the population.

You’re ignorant. You’re talking very confidently about something you know nothing about. And in truth, you have little interest in. There are two completely separate events – a national eisteddfod (takes place in Welsh) and an international eisteddfod (which doesn’t).

I don’t have an anti-English sentiment. I was born in England. But I do have a very strong anti-British sentiment. A Britishness which is often synonymous with Englishness. Which is borne out of the British Empire. Which promotes an arrogant, bigoted and nasty view of the world. And which dominates British life.

The issue is that the ways it comes up with may be unpredictable by the humans in charge. What we need to work on is ‘figure out how to do this whilst obeying the rules 1 to x’ where x is a large number.

I think the fundamental issue is that the people who created ChatGPT aren’t sure exactly what it’s doing. They created the conditions for it to work but they don’t know how it does. How do you apply safety to something you don’t fully understand?

The YouTube channel of Rob Miles has really good analysis of how insanely complex AI safety can be. Here’s an example of something seemingly simple: having a reassuring big red button to switch an AI off if it starts misbehaving: AI Stop Button Problem

As one of the comments points out about the dangers of AI testing: “You haven’t proved it’s safe, you’ve only proved that you can’t figure out how it’s dangerous.”

You think neo-nazis base their idealogy on “British values”?

Yep.

Oh come on, the Labour Party??? I am no fan of the present Labour leadership but it is light years away from the vile hatred of the NF and BNP. That sort of comparison simply gives unwarranted credibility to neo-nazis.

It’s openly trying to tap into the same sentiments as those groups, just doing it with a tad more subtlety.
A Labour Party in which everything is based around British values and immigration.
The only criticism of the Tory ‘send them to Rwanda’ policy being that it doesn’t go far enough.

A Labour Party that has a general loathing and disdain for the left.
Which vehemently supports freemarkets, military and monarchy.
A party that’s moulded itself to be completely in tune with all the raging bile of the British right-wing press.

It’s sobering that this is a party that so many reasonable and decent see as their only political option.

I don’t make the rules of the game. But if I want to make any difference at all, I’d need to gain a little influence.

That’s fair. It’s just depressing that well-meaning and decent people with socialist values see the only realistic political option as being a party that, in its current state, isn’t far from the policies and rhetoric of the NF and BNP 20 years ago. Not saying you’re necessarily wrong in thinking that, just a horrible consequence of that slide to the right.

I’ve been a vocal advocate for social justice, trade union rights and anything that would stop the awful right wing slide for my entire adult life.

Then why are you representing a party that represents none of those things and is utterly complicit in that awful right-wing slide?

It’s a meaningless symbolic role.
And if you’re going to have one, an air fryer, or a lettuce would make a better head of state than what we have. Anything would be preferable to a hereditary aristocrat who acts as a symbol of social inequality that we’re taught to celebrate and worship.

I started this thread because I think it’s important that some people feel disenfranchised by the name of the national park

Aye, they’re people like you. They’re called British nationalists.

Except your own nationalism, that’s obviously good and sensible.

Aye, those are the rules. British nationalism is not nationalism.
It’s a rosy-cheeked and healthy patriotism that’s simply about being proud of your heritage.
It’s about celebrating inherent superiority and all the good things the British Empire has done.
It’s about those shared values of free-markets, militarism and monarchy.

It’s insulting to compare these people to Welsh nationalist crazies using a Welsh place name for a Welsh place.

It was, officially, The Brecon Beacons National Park, established in 1957.

Yes, way back when the mountains were first created.

And while you’re ranting about nationalists, do you want to play the ‘Am I a nationalist?’ game?

is it Llangollen?

It is.

There’s a long standing tradition (and legal requirement) to name places in both Welsh and English.   Welsh first.

What’s the English name for Llangollen?

Whatever your views on the monarchy, some valuable lessons have been learnt this weekend about the right and wrong ways to protest. The most fundamental rule is obviously, don’t cause a nuisance.

But as these attention-seeking hotheads seem incapable of following such a simple request, we will inevitably have to explore alternatives.

The most sensible solution is the creation of a state-sanction protest zone. A heavily fortified and remote location in which cameras/phones will not be permitted.

Organisers will simply have to obtain a permit and provide a full list of participants prior to the event. This would allow for basic pre-checks, home visits searches etc. Once green-lit, the state will provide full support.

This would uphold Britain’s proud role as a champion of democracy and free speech while gaining an effective new way to gather the biometric data of risk elements.

It’s composer Karl Jenkins

Wales’ greatest ever composer of music for banks ads.

..err, i’d check your history book…

Some nice history for a rainy day. This was the fate of the last Prince of Wales:

“On 30 September, Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, was condemned to death, the first person known to have been tried and executed for what from that time onwards would be described as high treason against the King. Edward ensured that Dafydd’s death was slow and agonising, and also historic; he became the first prominent person in recorded history to have been hanged, drawn and quartered. Dafydd was dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury attached to a horse’s tail, then hanged alive, revived, then disembowelled and his entrails burned before him for “his sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ’s passion”, and then his body cut into four-quarters “for plotting the king’s death”.”

Now is really not the time to be having these discussions.

Whatever your views, anyone with an atom of decency will reserve their thoughts until after the coronation.
It’s only seven months since the death of HRH and the focus needs to be on supporting King Charles and celebrating this magnificent occasion.

Save the discussions for later.

If anyone takes offence, then they need to get out more

Always love this. Usually coming from somebody who devotes their time to ranting about something they claim is utterly unimportant.

…it hasn’t stopped being that in English,

Well, if he’s talking about the national park then it officially has.

ChatGPT just completely made up an explanation and cited several papers some of which exist but don’t mention it, let alone reference it, and some that are again, just entirely imaginary

One of the weird things is that despite its insane sophistication, it seems unable to simply say that it doesn’t know something. It may be a fairly trivial thing to fix or it could be a more fundamental problem, owing to the fact that AI doesn’t really understand what it generates.

@ernielynch

How many languages do you speak?

But not desperately enough to learn how to speak it?
Or is Welsh just too difficult?

It’s complex. I can speak basic Welsh, not through school but through doing online courses etc.
I have enough to understand most Welsh media but not enough confidence to speak it.
It’s the kind of nuance that gets lost in the census results.
Lots of people in Wales are similar; varying degrees of Welsh but don’t classify themselves as Welsh speakers.

@chevychase

It’s a minority of Welsh people who really desparately care, remember. 72%+ of people who live in Powys have “no knowledge of Welsh”. So all of this is to appease the 17%.

Do you have a link for this stat? It’s just not credible. It may apply to people classifying themselves as fluent Welsh speakers, but everyone who’s schooled in Wales has a basic knowledge of Welsh. I can’t speak Welsh but ‘desperately care’.

If they answered “I don’t recognise borders or countries as they represent an outmoded, outdated, primitive level of thinking that is just another route that leads to conflict between humans that are genetically speaking, almost identical” maybe we’d be on the right track, eh?

Is this what you genuinely believe? You’re a one-world government loon.

I would guess that it’s not what you actually believe and that, like everybody, you yourself are a nationalist. Probably a British nationalist. Not that you love Britain and wave union jacks about, but you’re generally happy with the current state of things.

The scrap-all-borders nonsense is a way to deal with the obvious hypocrisy of being a nationalist who derides nationalism.

Seems like the people who don’t like it find it depressing and that’s a big issue for them? It is definitely depressing, not every movie should be happy.

I did find it joyless and depressing but my dislike of it goes beyond that.

It reminds me of Elephant by Alan Clarke which depicts a series of murders in mundane settings during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Very different types of films but similar in many ways.

Both are bleak.
Both present Irish conflicts as a backdrop to senseless violence.
Both strip away any context, particularly Britain’s role in Ireland.
And both are made by artsy English people who are lauded for their work.

The effect is to present the Irish as simple-minded and savage idiots.

In Banshees the Irish civil war allegory is so clumsily tacked on that it’s embarrassing.
The message is that the civil war was a bit like two incredibly thick Irish people falling out.
Brilliant. How profound. Five bags of popcorn.

Read some Irish history, that’s not written by England.

I know the history and this film has nothing of any value to say about it.
It’s dumb and reductive. And it was written by an English man, which explains a lot.

A truly dreadful movie that should have been a five-minute short. And would still have felt too long.

Cliched. Boring. Humourless. Nasty. Relentlessly depressing and dumb.

The daft amount of hype seems driven by people desperate to tell the world that they ‘got’ it.
That, while on the surface it’s a boring film about two idiots, they could see beyond this.
They could understand the complexity, the layers and nuance that makes everything meaningful and profound.

All of this is achieved by chucking in a panto crone and some references to the Irish civil war.

If you’re looking for long battery life, the G31 is really good.
It’s like one of those old Nokias that you don’t have to charge for 2 or 3 days.

So what kind of tasks could an AI do that would seriously affect the workforce ?.

A recent study estimated that around 80% of jobs would be impacted to some extent.
The biggest losses are likely to be any kind of graduate/officey types of jobs.
The least at risk are things like forestry and farm workers.

I have made a living as a content writer but am witnessing that crumble.
Hardly any jobs around and freelance rates are plummeting to such an extent that it’s not viable.