It's like their trying to please the right-wing and the reform idiots who will always hate them anyway. Totally tone deaf.

Turns out I only have one kidney. Went in for a scan of my bladder (which was fine), and the nurse doing the scan just casually mentioned it. I had no idea. I was 43 at the time.

3 total bastards. Ethnicity isn't really relevant, and being non-white doesn't necessarily prevent you from being a powerful despot.

Yep, same in the UK. We've abandoned our elderly and seemingly can't wait for our kids to leave so that we enjoy maybe 10 years of watching TV and not working before we die.

In other, less 'developed' countries the family is a unit. The elderly help with the infants (which has been proven to be mutually beneficial), while the rest of the family works or helps maintain the household. There's way less likelyhood of abandonment or lonliness in old age, which in my country is endemic.

Now that you mention it...

There was something about it I found obnoxious. It was just kind of lazy and, although the cast did a decent job, the writing was meh.

I was popular in primary school. Then, in High School I hung out with friends who were into Dr Who and nerdy stuff, because I knew and liked them and could never play the social status game by just cutting them off to be cool.

Four years in, when i was about 15, one of the jocks decided that we were gay (which was social death in the early 90s in rural Scotland), so my status plummeted even further.

That summer, at 16, I got drunk and had sex with a girl, which was something we both regretted. The rumour got out and that seemd to elevate me, socially. By this point me and my friends were big into Nirvana and had formed our own little clique of stoners so the jocks left us alone.

I look back on it all with some regret. I wish I'd been more confident. I would have liked to have been involved in team sports and activities that I was drawn to, but my friends derided.

My understanding is that these days kids are less socially segregated and you'll find nerds doing physical stuff and jocks trying to be academic. Dunno if that's true, but it sounds like progress.

It was really university that changed me. I left the small town and found people outside that tiny place to be friendlier, and I grew in confidence.

Looking back, I think the socially harder times in school made me who I am. I'm fairly resilient and find it easier than my colleagues to communicate with others and find common ground. It was a baptism of fire and I was miserable through my teens, but now life is pretty manageable.

In Glasgow if you have 2 guys go for a blue-collar job, where one is Celtic and one is Rangers, then who gets the position would be 100% determined by the team the boss follows, regardless of legislation.

On the phone it just works. I've loads of playlists going back years. The playlist creation features make it super easy, suggesting related songs to what you've got already. I've tonnes of vinyl and CDs and a media server, but for convenience, commonality and variety I have no regrets

Sounds like that plot line in the TV show Silicon Valley

I live in the UK. Tonight we had fresh haddock and chips, caught locally. Yesterday we had lamb curry, made with locally sourced lamb. Local produce is abundant, and high quality. How you cook it is up to you, but we also have some of the best chefs in the world.

Same! Back in the day my new flatmate, who was recently divorced, called me from work to say the delivery guy would be arriving with a new TV for the flat. I ended up having to help him lift it up 4 flights of stairs. It weighed an absolute tonne and my body ached for days. I didn't complain though as he paid for it :-)

Kind of reassuring that, come the inevitable hostile AI takeover, the weather here in Scotland will come to our aid :-)

https://youtu.be/6k0ZMPGFh9w

Thoughts on this?

Sex should always be 100% consensual. If someone says 'no', then you must stop. If you don't then that's rape as far as I'm concerend. But would you acknowledge there's nuance in playful protest?

Also, there's also a growing (and understandable) feeling that consent can't be given under the influence of alcohol. However, where i come from our population would probably be half it's size if that were always true.

Also, if you have sex drunk and regret it later, there's an argument that the person you had sex with has taken advantage. That's a tricky one to navigate.

Too late, I'm already banned

ITT: a lot of folk buying tech. Including me.

Brah's probably not a fan of this clip...

https://youtube.com/shorts/TVfMndcXk8c

The NME (popular British music paper) had a website with a chat room/board that I was active on in the late 90s. I was about 17.

They also gave you free webmail with a @nme.com address, so you felt like a music journalist. Unfortunately, they shut it all down out of the blue in the 00s, with little warning, so I lost my primary email address. Would love to recover all those messages, but they are gone forever.

Going against the trend here, but i wouldn't be without spotify. We use the family sub, so I've got separate accounts for the family and for our smart speakers. My parents also use my account. We listen to a lot of music and podcasts, and it just works.

Beyond that the only other sub i have is Amazon prime, which we're kind of stuck with as all our photos are in the cloud using their service. It works pretty well and the fire TV does a slideshow so we actually look at them from time to time.

The rest of the streaming subs we've had in the past are long gone. IPTV does the lot, which I use through express VPN.

Wow. I was just going to snoop around people's houses...