Q. “what did you do at work today daddy?”

Is your answer

1. I had to kill someone and every time I close my eyes I replay the event and I can’t stop wondering if I could have done something different.

Or

2. I blew away some terrorist scum and saved democracy. **** Yeah!

but all the arseholes voted to Leave.

I dunno, try scrolling through this thread.

Yeah, it would – my experience of my place in London is that everyone gets it when it goes around. Let’s say, 30 percent get it though

I imagine they say they get flu because a cold doesn’t sound band enough to stay off work (even though it is).

I’ve had real flu twice and I knew somebody who died of it (although with an underlying medical condition) so I do know the difference!

Basically, if they were comparable and you worked in an office of 100 people, each year two of your colleagues would drop dead from the flu. Which they don’t.

But that would assume that every person in the office caught flu every year?

If I tell my boss a Chinese looking bloke on the train sneezed over me and I need to self quarantine, do you think he’ll let me take two weeks off?

Oooh goody.

Will there be lots about football and sexual conquests?

1. EU migrants return to the EU

2. Subsequent lack of health care professionals cause a massive dieback in boomer generation.

3. 1&2 result in housing surplus and subsequent property crash

4. Millennials stop whinging about being unable to get on the property ladder.

What could possibly go wrong?

I see that article has been up for about 2 hours and generated over 2000 comments. Probably some gems buried in there somewhere.

eg.

Completely agree with Ms Francke here. As a man I am so unevolved that I cannot hear the word ‘football’ without objectifying my female colleagues and trying to predict their cup size. It’s so bad that I often end the day making photocopies of my backside and leaving them on everyone’s desks.

how does the cost of full time residential nursing care compare to an interest in bikes?

Best to have spent it all by the time you need full time nursing care.

I’m disappointed.

Why are we still bothering with all that decimal crap?

50p isn’t half of the Great British Pound ™ – we should have a commemorative 10 bob note.

Litter isn’t really a little thing. Its a great big thing that makes me sad.

The end of quill stems is a little thing that make me sad.

I kept my last blue* passport as a souvenir of empire. I shall keep the expired burgundy as a reminder of a more civilized age.

If the replacement isn’t identical to my old black blue passport, right down to the very substantial (and probably very expensive) rigid cover, I shall write a strongly worded letter to the Daily Express.

*well, so dark I always thought it was black.

A friend has a pair of crossed kukri’s on his forearm.

Had it done in the late 60s in the far east when serving with the Gurkhas.

He says he regrets doing it – he was pissed and in his teens and was talked into it. Caused him bother in later life but never tried to have it removed.

Its old and faded, but its probably the coolest tattoo I’ve seen.

“dressder”

As in “I am more dressed than you are”

Faffon (said in a French accent)

Does anybody else use “faffige”? As in

“Do you want to go for a ride with x&y?”
“Nah, there’ll be too much faffage”

Now used as a general term for spending too long preparing to start something.

Can’t just be me that looks on these with horror?

No more than any other lethal weapon. The BBC article states that the weapon will be fired by a human operator as AI isn’t that good. So its just a logical development in stand-off weapons. There not that much difference between one human killing another with an arrow at 300 yards, a rifle at half a mile, or a machine gun from half a world away – you still need to aim at your target and pull the trigger.

That little machine gun thing looks a lot more discriminating than, say, nuking from orbit.

When they start relying on the AI to make life or death decision is where it might get worrying.

My bet is this is so they can use anti terrorist legislation against protesters more easily.

Might also be an issue if you are in a job that requires some level of security vetting.

Would making a donation to, say, Greenpeace turn you into a security risk?

Ie, “Shepherd’s Pie” is the full name of a dish that is not actually a pie, in the same way that an Eccles cake is not actually a cake. See also, beef wellington.

But is a Bakewell pudding a pudding or a tart?

My experience is that the statin that I’ve been on for circa 2.5 years has progressively:
*Made me stupid
*Killed my ambition
*Capped my fitness, which I’m now finding very difficult to regain
*Obliterated my T/libido

That doesn’t sound like the side effects of Statins, more like the side effects of ageing. It happens to us all.

Hasn’t the validity (or otherwise) of the 2016 referendum been made irrelevant by the recent general election?

A vote for the Tories was a vote to leave.

Arguably the Great British Public are more informed now about the problems of leaving than they were in 2016. And yet Boris still won.

Space X could in theory slow itself down in space before re-entry. Not sure if they plan to do this with it mind.

Not coming back from the moon it couldn’t. Unless Elon Musk has invented an anti-gravity drive.

I think I’ll book my trip on the Lockheed Martin Orion – that’s the direct successor to Apollo.

Yesterday I watched a kestrel trying to raid a nest in the tree opposite my house. The nest was full of chicks. Don’t know what they were (small brown jobbies) but it seems very early to have chicks hatching.

Weather-wise it feels more like early march rather than January.

Soyuz, Space-x or Boeing are all a bit meh. They’ll get you to low earth orbit and back with re-entry speeds of about 7.8km/s. If you want to go anywhere interesting (like the moon) you’ll need an Apollo. That’ll keep you alive for a couple of weeks and cope with re-entry speeds of over 11km/s.

You do know that SpaceX and Boeing abandoned the rocket engine technology of the Shuttle (60’s) and moved back to the tried and tested Apollo rocket engines designed in the 50’s?

NASA are using the shuttle main engines (RocketDyne?) on the first stage of their big dumb booster. They are very reliable – I believe there was never a main engine failure on a shuttle launch and they were used in excess of their original design parameters (Shuttle main engine throttle went up to 110%)

Funny you should mention Russia.

One of the most selfless acts you’ll ever come across, by someone most will never have heard of:

Only, if you read the follow up in that link, it may not have happened that way at all.

Money where their mouths are… go get a 9 to 5 job and earn it like eveyone else.

There may be some jobs going at Pizza Express

Do you think she’s at home telling her friends that the diving holiday was great, apart from this weird old guy who kept staring into her eyes all the time?

Maybe cutting random holes in fences at ground level bordering common land is quite normal in the area of the country that you’re from?

I’ve done exactly that. Its to let hedgehogs in and out. I imagine a small dog could fit through them.

I wasn’t aware it would offend the great dog owning public.

Frequently go into Santander to pay in loads of cheques. Sometimes the machine won’t accept them so you have to speak to a pleasant human being. Oh the horror!

There was a queue outside our polling station before it opened at 7 this morning.

At least people are getting off their arses for this one.

ook the narrowest route past me yet still shouted ‘****’ as we bumped into each other.
If I’d had a gun I might have shot him. Probably only in the leg though.

The correct repose would be to shout “Why don’t you ring your bell?” :-D

I almost turned it off when they made George state the bleeding obvious parallel between the British empire and the Martians half way through

But that parallel is explicitly made in the book, so why should it be left out?

It should be (and was) in there – that was the point of the book. It was the cack-handed way that particular scene was done. They might has well have got George to turn to camera and quote directly from a copy of York notes, or whatever it is kids use these days.

Mind you, it did result in the only interesting exchange in the whole episode – when George’s brother told him to grow a pair.

I thought episode two was quite promising, despite all the overly long shots of people staring at each other or at some unspecified in thing in the distance.

Then it all fell apart in episode 3. I almost turned it off when they made George state the bleeding obvious parallel between the British empire and the Martians half way through – I though the program was supposed to be for adults, not a year 5 English class. I stuck it out to the end and was even more disappointed than I thought I would be.

And the wishy-washy romance thing was so rubbish – you shouldn’t not care what happens to the characters, but I didn’t. Wells wrote some quite good romances (IMO) dealing with relationships and the difficulties of class, money and morals in Edwardian society. Can’t recall him ever writing something so bad as that.

Calibre is great; also means you can run it in aircraft mode as not reliant on over-the-air updates so battery lasts for weeks.

Can you not run newer Kindles in aircraft mode without special software? My first generation kindle is rarely connected to the internet – just to download books very occasionally – are the newer ones different?

I still use the old button one. I think its coming up 10 years old and still works fine. The plastic case has developed an interesting patina, so I’m reluctant to “upgrade”.

There is a Family Guy skit where “scot” is used as a racial slur

If you want to offend a Scotsman, don’t you call him “scotch”?

Not have a cock fight about who’s right.

Did Molgrips just assume hodgynd’s gender?

Daft idea, you’d only have really wealthy people running the country as was the case before 1911 when MPs first received a salary.

Not necessarily “really wealthy”, just people who don’t need to work for a living and aren’t interested in getting any richer. People with a public service ethos perhaps?

Although why is being really wealthy such a bad thing in itself?

Or don’t pay MPs at all.

Then they wouldn’t be in it for the money and its no longer a career option. We might get a better bunch then.

Not the brightest pair. As the article says – had they declared the finds properly they would be rich by now.

Should have stuck to the bat advice line.