Computers were still exciting. And hadn't been enshitified.

£20.

I was in Chess Club at school (I know, I know, quite the jock!). We played chess. Then we got bored of chess and played backgammon. And backgammon without a bet is dull, so we started gambling. Then gambling became the point of playing. Then we moved on to poker.

I remember one poker hand. The deck was made up of about five different packs of cards. Jokers, black twos, one-eyed jacks, bedside queens, and suicide kings were all wild. I ended up with a hand of five aces. Two were real aces, three were wild cards. I had to raise. I mean, how can you not raise with five aces? What is the point of playing poker if you don’t raise with five aces?

Sadly, two other people also had five aces and one of them had three real aces and only two wild cards so they won the hand.

I lost £20 on that single hand and hated every single moment of playing it because somehow I knew, deep down, that I was going to lose. This was in the mid-1980s, and that was a lot of money for me back then and there were other, far better things I could have dropped it on - LPs were about £5 back then, video games £10 (or £2 for a budget game).

But, it was a great early lesson on the ‘gotta keep going’ mindset of the gambler combined with the certainty that I was going to lose my money. I’m glad it happened, despite the short term remorse I felt immediately afterwards.

No, they look just about perfect to me, I don't like too much sauce on my slice.

How many Mahattens to one Wales?

These comments, lol. He’d have the face made to look like his own face.

He’s seen things, nudes, he’s seen things.

Dunno but the hands would be very bigly.

If there’s a boy pair of scissors there, and a girl pair of scissors there, then it’s a brace of pairs of scissors.

Obv.

English is very straightforward.

Surely no one else had that scoop!

You mean capital punishment. Corporal punishment could be a literal slap on the wrist.

Yes. And 'to death' elevates it to capital punishment.

You might think the decision is dumb. But for them the decision to reduce staff headcount probably improved the company's bottom line at a crucial moment when their performance-related bonus was being calculated. And it also opens the door to sideways promotion.

e.g. Twatty McBallbag Ltd:
profit with loss prevention staff = 10 million
profit the first month after all loss prevention staff were fired = 12 million
profit the sixth month after all loss prevention staff were fired = 6 million

After the first month, they claim responsibility for the increased profit of 2 million (as a result of reducing staff costs) and get their performance related bonus. They also get to write "While CEO at Twatty McBallbag Ltd, I increased profit by 20%", on their CV/resume and move on to a new, bigger company with profits in the 100s of millions.

Sausage, fried egg, and Reggae Reggae Sauce sarnie. The name of it is also the recipe.

Confidence is 99% of the solution!

Ski jump, obv.

I've worked with some of these guys and it's absolutely all about them, their targets, their bonuses.

One of the Goldman Sachs bosses once came up with the term 'long term greedy', and had his staff apply it as a principle. Basically it means 'do the right thing by your clients and don't screw them over'. Better to have a 20 million dollar a year client for 10 years than to screw them out of 50 million in the first year and lose them. That sounds great, but then he could afford to think that way because he knew he'd still be there, with his stock/share options, in 10 years, profiting from that long term greed.

The younger guys are absolutely, 100% motivated to make as much as possible on day one and not give a shit about the long term view. How else are they going to afford the Porsche, Rolex, summer house in the Hamptons, etc. So they're much more interested in screwing a client over for a fast buck, or shitting on the company's long term well-being for this year's bonus.

“Some of you will remember my jokes from last time, please don’t spoil them for the first timers.”

I’m from a different generation, I guess. I just don’t find the bolt-on titties and filler duck-pout look at all attractive.

Edit to add: I don’t find the Bentley Bentayga at all attractive either.

My two main hobbies are amassing wealth and being bad at finance so it probably gets me about 500€.

Musk also told staff that he would ask for the resignation of any executive "who retains more than three people who don't obviously pass the excellent, necessary and trustworthy test."

Pssst. Elon. You're not any of those three things.