@northwind “Because the actual point is to use the term that the individual would like you to use?”

Am I allowed not to care? If gender neutral isn’t sufficient then what point are you actually trying to make.
If you want to say something important about yourself then maybe have an interesting name instead?

But that doesn’t answer what I said above.

Why aren’t they asking people to use a single gender neutral pronoun for everyone?

A single pronoun makes sense and I could genuinely get behind that as an idea.

Having a fluid series of changable n plus 1 pronouns, just looks like a pointless, virtue signalling bun fight.

Unless virtue signalling is the entire point of the whole enterprise?

If you go down the road of adding more and more for every subdivision you have no argument against the people who want to identify as apache attack helicopters, tampons (Hey Charlie!) or plants.

You might think other peoples proclivities are silly or trivial or not deserving of the respect you demand for yourself. But giving legal force to your own demands for recognition might just come back at you in unexpected ways.

Neutrality in language (and before the law) should be the aim, not subdivision and singling out.

I respect peoples views about their own sex and sexuality. Its frankly none of my business.

Excessive interest about what others do in their own time with other consenting adults is the root of all kinds of evil.

So maybe on that basis the perfect future would be no-one giving a crap about anyone elses identity at all?

That being the case, is 70 (or n plus 1) pronouns a step forward or a step back?

Maybe choosing a single neutral pronoun would be the best way forward?

To put it another way, does setting up a system of 70 pigeon holes really help if the consequences of choosing from 2 or 3 and getting it wrong are so potentially serious?

The “show trial” aspects of the film are apparently complete fiction and show the NTSB investigators in an undeservedly bad light.

I guess maybe they decided to do that to make the script more interesting in some way, but I have no idea why?

Personally I enjoyed it enormously except for the portrayal of the NTSB types who were played like petty, vindictive idiots.

Anything by M. Night Shyamalan after The Sixth Sense. Everything since suggests that the first one was a fluke.

…Was Braveheart not a documentary? :O)

I’m in favour of remaining in Europe, but if leaving Europe makes no sense, Scotland leaving the UK makes less.

Scotland makes £11.6Bn exports to EU and £48.5Bn to rest of UK annually. Which would you keep?

Before you say:
“But an independent Scotland would still be able to export to the rest of the UK”.
Remind yourself that your economic argument rests on the “fact” that leaving Europe will cut us off from trading with them.

If leaving Europe will cut off trade with EU and lead to hard borders, why would cutting off rest of UK lead to anything less?

So pick a consistent attitude and try to hold on to it.

In summary .. Every time someone says
“If we leave EU we must become independent for economic reasons”
They are either a liar or a fool.

@joolsburger as mentioned previously .. get an aga (disclaimer: other lumps of flat hot metal are available).
Just make sure the plate hasn’t cooled too much through the use of the kettle beforehand.

If the hot plate has cooled too much, toast directly on the simmering plate [with a silicon cover on the plate] (also good for toasties).

If both top plates have insufficient heat, use a baking tray in the top of the roasting oven.

…. It occurs to me for the first time that with fast hands I could probably make 16 rounds of toast at once :O)

Thats dinner sorted…

Wow…
Can you proindy/snp chappies genuinely not offer or accept the slightest criticism of the SNP?

Any suggestion that the SNP should be responsible for negative results of any decisions they have made in government over the last 10 years is greeted with cries of “well you would say that, you big meanie!”

I live in Scotland and I’m against Scottish independence, but I could also easily list a series of past and present issues I have with the “unionist” parties in the UK.

Why do people find it so hard to accept valid criticism the SNP?

re corbyn and co.
I used to think (for some reason I can’t now recall, most likely stupidity) that “left wing” and “liberal” meant much the same thing.

But I was painfully and obviously wrong.

People prepared to sacrifice the privacy and freedom of others “for security” “for the children” or whatever, should first make their own internet and phone history public (and possibly get rid of their curtains).

VPNs, tor etc do make you stand out like a sore thumb, but at least if “they” suspect you of nefarious dealings they’ll have to put a bit of effort in, and try to find some evidence (Edit: As cougar just said 🙂

Of course, the more they continue with this stuff, the more people will go down that road, until everything is encrypted and nothing is accessible (except for the logs jamba will record of his own activities and send unsolicited to Theresa every month).

Meanwhile, the actual terrorists will be passing each other messages in clear text using stolen phones, or by mail using sd cards, or maybe postcards, or maybe [insert simple secure idea here]..

I really don’t get (all of) the problems people have with this.

It looks to me that theres the moral issue of who gets it (for being on the other side), and what their legal status might be (are we “at war”) but thats really a legal question, and that remains the case even if you don’t like the answers.

The other problem seems to center around the fact that the risk for the drone pilot (or whomever) is less than the risk for the target.

Thats the bit I don’t really get, its like people are complaining that its suddenly not “fair”, when the whole point of advancing military technology from the beginning of time has been to try and make things as unfair as possible.
Who wants a fair war, certainly no-one who has ever had the option of massive superiority?

@tjagain “even now the powers the scottish government have over taxes are so limited and can raise so little money ( cos the costs would be enormous in relation to the amounts raised) and that the actions the SNP would really like to take are not within their remit then I for one do not believe they should be used.”

Really? despite the fact that they refused to sign off on the powers offered until they were sure that Barnett would continue and the block grant would not be cut as a result of changes north of the border. Remarkable.

@tjagain again “cautious and competent government”

Is that a buffed up reference to the fact that they have brought forward no new legislation since the Scottish elections?

Or the fact that their unchanging (actually “written in stone”) further education policies have dramatically cut access for poorer students.

Or the fact that they are in the process of no longer carrying out the school tests which have embarassed them recently instead of trying to improve standards so that the results are not embarassing?

They have an impressive record of supressing dissent in their own ranks, and blaming others for their shortcomings, making pointed remarks at and about press organisations and journalists that would make Erdogan blush.

But competent? Pulease.

They are still playing the “radical” “anti-establishment” “we need change” tune despite the fact that they:
-reject every opportunity to be radical,
-forget that they ARE now the establishment, and
-the changes they have made have often made things worse.

They have a fanatical devotion to one thing, they think about it all the time and ignore or spin every fact to make that thing look like the ultimate solution.

They probably even go to sleep stroking it (which is fine in the privacy of your own home), but thankfully it looks like people are getting tired of them waving it in our faces.

@seosamh77
So as you don’t seem to be arguing with the fact that the 15(ish)Bn of annual defecit exists and that it would take a long time to grow out of and therefore cause massive austerity which (as always) would disproportionately affect the poorest in society.

a) Do you think its a price worth paying? (in order to acheive FREEDOM®)

b) Do you think that the SNP should be up front about the immediate financial position during a future Indyref II in the same way that they really really were not during Indyref I?

Re: “Give it a bit of time ffs, the powers are just there and are only partial, you can judge that in 10 years, not now. No government can just raise tax all at once, if those powers are used, it’s better that they are used slowly over a longer period.”

I’m not sure if thats a “Yay for careful government”, or just an indicator that maybe the light is dawning that the SNP aren’t really as radical a leftist party as many of their supporters once thought?

We may have passed peak SNP, as the green but oil loving, leftie but corporation friendly, nationalist but inclusive! shine begins to tarnish a bit (I hope).

If you look at everything thats happened in the UK over the last few years its hard to imagine the political cards falling more in the SNPs favour than they already have.

But the Scottish people don’t want another referendum, and if they had one they would still vote to be part of the UK.

Yay for democracy! (and one of the few bright spots after the brexit numptytude* had their say).

* A voting block of numpties

The death statistics comparisons are meaningless if you (as most do) include suicides in gun deaths.

But even leaving statistics aside, the idea that there are a lot of guns around and that the police are too far away to protect you IF something happens is frankly a strong motivator. So its really hard to imagine a situation where the law abiding would give up their guns knowing that the criminals would not.

It’s not quite so hard to imagine a situation where there are greater checks on people getting some types of guns in the first place. But even that comes up against the idea that even small changes now will lead to more and more restrictions in the future until “they come and take all your guns away”.

Its unhelpful to the “anti gun” side that there is a shedload of historical evidence from europe (and the UK) where, over many years, thats exactly what happened.

We may think (with hindsight) that thats a good thing? But some might suggest that the situation in the UK, where a law abiding person can be arrested and convicted for having a small swiss army knife in their pocket, or threatened with jail for attacking a burglar, is an example of exactly the sort of society that people in the US dont want to end up living in?

Even in threads on here about self defence and the law in the UK, its obvious that many “average” people feel the law (and its interpretation by the authorities) is considerably more restrictive than fairness and good sense should make it. We voted ourselves over many years into a position where the people to whom we’ve given power over our lives and freedom are often seen as too ignorant and careless of our own rights, and have taken away our ability to defend ourselves (with even non lethal weapons), and then not kept up the side of the bargain where they are meant to keep us and our property safe.

Maybe Americans think that price is too high? Maybe they look at us and think that thats not where they want to end up?

@aracer
“To be fair, a few people have explained why those Scottish Government figures are wrong, made up, or inaccurate because they’re all pro-rataed from UK figures. That or explained that the gap will be closed by not paying for things which total a fraction of that 15Bn.”

The figures are “wrong, made up, or inaccurate” despite being from the Scottish Governments own statisticians (Under the authority of an SNP government)? Tee Hee 🙂

They haven’t “explained” anything on either front.
They haven’t produced any figures at all.
They have a) guessed, b) surmised or possibly c) fabricated, but not explained.

Even Alex Salmonds recent claims ( a) b) or c) I wonder? ) of “£35Bn of spending saved by an independent Scotland” have been looked into and amount to a (generous) 0.5Bn saving per year.

So only 14.5 Bn of cuts then.

The question is (still) where from?

@seosamh77
“What 69 billion is the uk government going to cut next year?”

I have 2 answers:

a) UK cuts of any size would be irrelevant to an independent Scotland (which would be suffering a massively larger proportional cuts).

b) If only we lived in a part of the UK where the Notional Government had the option to live up to their rhetoric raise taxes and offset the cuts?
But wait! We do live in such a place! So its not options they lack. Just balls.

If you voted SNP or Tory in Scotland I’m afraid you may have diminished your right to complain about benefits cuts getting ‘passed on’.

P.S. I’m glad the SNP has deplored the terrible Torys threats to use European citizens from outside the UK as political pawns to get concessions from the EU.

That does make a change from the pre-indyref 2014 attitude though…
Sturgeon warns Europeans could lose right to stay

Wow .. 7 pages , and still no-one in favour of independence has had a stab at answering my question about what 15Bn should be cut from Scottish Gov spending in year 1 of independence (and following).

Just some mentions about avoiding the disaster of brexit.
Personally I’m completely against Brexit, but I don’t see it causing as many issues for the UK as Scoxit would for Scotland.

In other news ..
-Announcement of new navy building on the Clyde leads to huge number of apologies from SNH commenters for “broken promises” comments . [tumbleweed sounds]
-SNP voters suddenly grasp that there has been _no_ new legislation from the scottish government since the Scottish election and begin to wonder what they actually voted for (apart from obviously passing on tory benefit cuts to scotland and blaming ‘westmonster’ for it when they have the power to raise taxes and prevent it). [if only]

Its nice that some people have looked at my question about the bits of government spending that wont happen under independence, but I don’t really get some of the answers?

Hinckley is a red herring as the annual cost is relatively small.
Defence is £3Bn.
Any more?

Bear in mind again that these are the Scottish Governments own figures.

If you think making Scotland into Greece is worth it for independence then make and defend that position, but don’t try and pull the wool over peoples eyes with lies like those in 2014.

More economic sense here on this blog[/url]

PS Its probably worth adding that the SNP said that the startup costs of a whole independent Scotland could be about £200million, about a year before claiming that just setting up a separate tax system for their new post referendum powers would cost about £1.6 billion.

I’m going to have to start keeping my new irony meter switched off when listening to political news in Scotland. Its getting expensive.

There are people who will accuse anyone who criticises Israel of anti semitism, but equally there are those who will defend any accusation of antisemitism by saying “I was merely talking about Israel”.

There are extremists on both sides, but in this case Jamba is right (cough).

If you know that a group of people has a hair trigger on a particular subject, then you can:
a) avoid it, be careful what you say, measure your words and be careful to state clearly that your opposition to e.g. the Israeli government is not a reflection on the racial identity of people who voted them in (and even more so people with the same identity who don’t even live there).
or
b) turn up at a meeting on antisemitism and start questioning the definition of anti-semitism, the inclusivity of holocaust memorial day and the need for security around jewish schools.

Pick one.

If you choose the wrong one by accident maybe politics is not your forte?
If you pick the wrong one deliberately, maybe you have some underlying issues you need to talk about.

If in doubt, remember:
c) Tell people that jews were involved in the slave trade. This is merely a factual statement and no-one should be offended by facts surely?

Any questions about why you mention these particular “facts” should be deflected with talk about how everyone was involved and on no account explain why, that being the case, only Jewish involvement was thought worthy of being mentioned.

Oh, if all else fails remember d) “hitler was a zionist” That’ll help get a reasonable discussion going.

@rkk01 .. Sorry, I see that now 🙂 The power of skim reading! :O)

I’ve only skim read the above, but it looks like no-ones mentioned DCS World (Digital Combat Simulator World).
Free to play with a civilian P-51 mustang (wheeeeeeee!) and a modern russian tankbuster.

Largely clickable cockpits, and you can use “game” or “simulation” modes.
Unlike the MS Flight Simularor, its still in devlopment.
You can then buy more aircraft which is where they make money.

Pays to get a decent hotas setup, but also to get a headtracker, (facetracknoir or opentrack).

@tjagain “As for that 15 billion – its less than that ‘cos of accounting nonsense”

The 14.8 billion is from the GERS figure published by the Scottish Government (not “westmonster” or whatever).

If you want to argue that the figures are manipulated in any significant way to make the scottish economy look bad (and independence economically unviable) you should probably take it up with the Scottish Government statisticians who produce them.

If I seem to be emphasising that the figures are produced by the Scottish Government under the authority of Nicola Sturgeon, then you can assume its deliberate.

The emphasis seems justified because its a fact that seems to get lost in the discussion (particularly by people like Wings over Scotland, Alex Salmond, Pete Wishart and various other SNP MSPs/MPs)

dmorts “In an Indyref2 debate the economic arguments are not going to be that strong on either side, hard times either way.”

Super .. sign me up.
Oh wait;
Heres a picture of scotlands spending on stuff in billions.

Can any of you tell me which 14.8 billion of that we will not fund in year 1 of independence? What about year 2, 3 or 4?

Even assuming massive growth in the Scottish economy, how many years before we get back to where we are now?

Answers including “we can borrow to cover the difference” will win the “Make Edinburgh the Athens of the North” award, and incidentally, also disqualify Scotland from joining the EU.

Believe in independence if you want to but at least look at the Scottish Governments own figures on the economy before assuming that calling something “project fear” means its just make believe (see Brexit).

Drac,
No, they’ve asked people to let them know when their trademark is being abused and to help pass on the information that the kodi team is not responsible if people get shafted by paying for add ons which initially provide illegal services and then stop working.

Maybe they should ask all of the illegal add on makers to call their add ons by names like “naughty1” and then they could block them more easily?

Any useful suggestions?

If anyone’s interested.. here’s a website containing the article’s deleted from the (other) stw website since Jezza became leader of the Labour Party.. link

I thought the (not incredibly subtle) point he was trying to make was that that the “stop the war” lot never march or protest against Russia (or the Syrian regime)?

A point which I recently found surprising but, on investigation, true.

Apparently interference or even outright war is only bad when democracies do it.

They have a series of excuses why not (we only protest against the UK because thats where we are etc.) but these excuses, weirdly, don’t seem to apply to protesting the actions of foreign governments like the USA or Israel.

Who’d a thunk it.

(Boris is still an unspeakable self serving oik, but, you know; even a busted watch etc.)

For star trails, remember to do many short (30 second) exposures rather than a single long exposure (very long exposures lead to massive noise in digital cameras). Then join them using an image stacker.

You’ll probably need an intervalometer (get a cheap one off ebay).

Also take a few frames at the start and end with the lens cap on.

There are many image stackers available (see here for one useful link)[/url], some can use exposures taken with the lens cap on (which contain only noise) to help remove noise from the other pictures.

Edit: for static pictures shutter speed of about 30 seconds will prevent much star movement. Anything over a minute will become streaky.

It a bit off topic and ad hominem (apologies), but is it relevant that a man wanting to be the Prime Minister of the UK asks someone who supports the IRA (from Guido Fawkes[/url] ) to write anyting at all?

But then, I suppose Jezza himself has a bit of history as put here by Nick Cohen[/url].

Apparently if asked about any of this his office refuses to comment on “historical matters”.

From @OwenSmith_MP
“My campaign remains on track. Proud to be genuinely standing up for ordinary people.”

Hes got my vote just for that :O)

Based on the reaction of Jezzas supporters to this one event I’m beginning to think Corbyn is even more of a cult than Sturgeon is up here.

(On that note, you should watch reaction to tomorrows GERS figures to get an object lesson in how to try to spin or ignore inconvenient facts)

EDIT: as Al Murray just put it on twitter: “We can now add CCTV to the list of biased MSM outlets” :O)

Just to correct the assumption that you can “just use a parachute”.

You can use one but not on its own, the atmosphere is just not thick enough.

Which is why probes have used various combinations of heat shields, parachutes, rockets, inflatable bouncy balls etc. etc.

See 7 minutes of terror for the curiosity probe, and then imagine a vehicle with 10 or 20 (?) times the mass and with people on board.

@pjm1974
My point was that you (seemingly because your race and heritage and culture) appeared to be withholding judgement on one point of view because of your lack of suitable genetic credentials, and simultaneously judging another pov despite your lack of genetic credentials.

Just seems a bit contradictory to me?

also can you explain why an unoffended black persons opinion is just one man’s opinion and should not be taken as a general guide on what is racist; but an offended black persons opinion is a reason for.. Well.. all of this?

jamj1974 …
So the only way to avoid racism is to evaluate the validity of peoples opinions on the basis of their race?

gottit .. I hope someone drops Mr Bolt a wee message explaining how he should be offended, so that he can join in the groupthink.

For the record I do think that women should be listened to on misogyny, and people of color should be listened to on matters of racism.

But noone should have the right to have their views remain unchallenged because of the colour of their skin (or the skin colour of the people who disagree).

Thats racism.

PJM1974 and IHN et al..

As middle aged white men you seem remarkably comfortable evaluating and criticising the the intentions of a female American lesbian.

You’re also kinda ignoring the fact that Mr Bolt (who is both the subject of the joke and a black man) thought it was funny and retweeted it.

Maybe you should give his opinion more weight before choosing a team in the Offence Olympics™?

Check your privilege :0)

If you’re not sure raw and jpg is the way forward.

For me my basic lightroom process is as follows
(Below copied from a previous thread)
“After much faffing over the years most of my post processing is:
Select many similar images in lightroom,
auto-sync on,
change colour temp if necessary,
fix exposure, white and black point (make histogram go all the way across.. generalisation but works for most images),
maybe poke vibrance and noise,
crop if required, and
done.
(Revisit best images later for tweaking, Sharpen later for export).”

Other useful things I wish I’d learned earlier:
0. Use “Ctrl-apostrophe” to create virtual copies, and try different edits on the same picture.
1. Learn how to use “compare” and arrow keys to compare similar images quickly and choose the best.
2. Ctrl-Alt-V pastes settings from previous picture to the current one.
3. Sync as mentioned above (can be used after the fact as well as while editing)
4. Lightroom noise removal is brilliant.
5. Now that I’ve started, theres so much, but even if you don’t do a lot of editing, lightroom is worth it for the keywording and organisation tools.

Much talk of toasters but no-ones mentioned aga toast yet?

Toast your bread over a big block of hot metal. The toasting rack even leaves a nice pattern.

No thickness limits like your shameful so-called “toasters”.

Also no worries about where to warm your plate as an aga is half a ton of hot metal that will warm anything in the vicinity (to a painful degree if you approach it with your dressing gown thoughtlessly akimbo).

In case it becomes relevant later ..
I had real issues with a BT hub (probably 4?) allowing a usb drive to be plugged in but access for reading and writing being _really_ slow.

It turned out to be nearly an order of magnitude faster to plug a raspberry pi (loaded with raspbian) into a free router network port and mount the usb drive on that as a backup destination.

Apparently Corbyn has decided that hezbollah are not his friends because they ARE anti-semitic.

Allegedly what changed his mind was that someone from the PLP actually got out the hezbollah constitution and read him the relevant sections.

But its a perfectly reasonable mistake to make .. for years .. despite being told over and over again .. something that hezbollah are really proud of .. so much that they wrote it down for everyone to see.

Its been pointed out before that in the UK police are trained to start delivering first aid as soon as someone is no longer a threat (e.g. see the video of the police saving the lives of the [expletive deleted] who stabbed Lee Rigby in London).

The Americans seem to prefer to stand there and watch you bleed out.

I really don’t think that the woman who made that video would be alive today if she’d reached over to try and stop her boyfriend bleeding.

cheekymonkey888 – you’re sounding a bit like those people who say that certain kinds of terrorism “nothing to do with religion”

It would be wonderful to live in a world where you could be “colorblind” and look only at guilt or innocence, but statistically in the case of “police involved shootings” of innocent people colour is clearly a factor (as religion is in my example above).

An interesting fact to watch for whether the NRA kick up a fuss (or make any comment at all) about how this man had a legal right to carry a gun and that law enforcement shouldn’t have killed him for it.

tick tock …