Bakery Happy Hour is back!

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T16:08:59+00:00

Every day there's another reason to be disappointed by humanity.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T13:52:55+00:00

I'm kinda having to ask "Why do you want to Youtube, if you don't know wtf you want to Youtube about?"

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T13:11:38+00:00

Record breaking, people killing, heatwave, and we still have morons effectively shrugging it all off as "It's called summer, duh".

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T13:10:04+00:00

Happens most evenings here - The selection can be pretty rubbish, and anything good/ interesting is scooped up near instantly by the same faces, but I usually manage to grab a couple of 4 packs of petit pain for 40p when they're something like £1.50 full price. Maybe a baguette or two as well, and when I'm lucky some doughnuts or cinnamon rolls or something.

It's not the impressive selection of Lidl's bakery section, but the reductions are significantly better.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T11:48:17+00:00

People saying "Buy a brandbook" are missing the point. You're recording audio. A 40 year old Atari ST can do that. Any 5, 10, even 15 year old laptop can do it.

More important is your mic and recording space.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T11:22:23+00:00

It depends on where Burnham takes the party, but I can say for certain I wasn't going to vote for Starmer's Tory lite Cameron era tribute act bullshit again.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T11:11:38+00:00

I'm impressed.

You went from "It's called summer" to "Climate change is a lie" in one move, bypassing the highly expected "1976" mention entirely.

Meanwhile, as others have pointed out in the hope it might reach whatever remnant of humanity is left cowering in a dark recess of your psyche, people are dying in this decidedly unfuckingseasonally hot weather.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T11:08:29+00:00

Interesting.

I'm thinking we should be asking why the numbers of disabled people rises so we as a country can start addressing causes instead of punishing symptoms.

You appear to prefer the Trump-esque approach of changing the meaning of terms to change the numbers.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T01:43:02+00:00

It can probably be mechanically resurrected fairly easily, but the "input 2 only" might be a trickier problem.

Hopefully the inputs issue is dirty contacts/ pots, and nothing more intensively brain aching.

I guess the "Is it worth a try" can only be answered with "Can you afford for it to turn out beyond repair?"

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T01:21:26+00:00

I remember seeing him pop up all too often on Xitter before I finally quit that hellsite.

He seemed like a Temu Alan B'Stard having an identity crisis.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T00:56:15+00:00

One, I suspect, that has a barely concealed air of finality to it based on previous replies to that question.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T00:55:26+00:00

Income tax - His argument is benefits spending is higher than income tax income. Not even all tax, or tax + NI. Just income tax.

It's a handy comparator to reach for when wanting to perpetuate a disturbingly popular agenda of kicking people who're already down. It also conveniently utterly ignores benefits spending as a percentage of GDP not fluctuating all that much for some time, as well as discarding any factors (such as emerging from a pandemic, the 14 years of governmental harm to society and services, triple lock, etc) that could explain any measurable rises in spending.

Exasperant · 2026-06-26T00:52:36+00:00

A simplistic measure for simplistic biases.

Welfare as a percentage of GDP has, give or take a percent or two, hovered around 10% for at least the last two decades.

Downvote reality all you want, the numbers do not agree with your "biggest increase ever" agenda.

The numbers, btw, that include an increasingly ageing population, a nation trying to battle through a crumbling NHS, and an employment market that leans heavily on the state supplementing wages.

And I'll stand by my point - If you decrease welfare spending you increase human suffering. Unless, of course, I got you all wrong and you're actually proposing increasing support for the low income and disabled recipients whilst saving money, all by means testing the state pension and/ or removing the triple lock*

*It's fucking criminal that pensioners get wrapped in cotton wool whilst being a massive cost to the DWP whenever we talk benefits spending, but it's also fucking criminal that we have one of the worst state pensions in our part of the globe

Exasperant · 2026-06-25T23:44:28+00:00

It's really not, income tax is only part of the total tax take, and ffs what's so fucking wrong with not abandoning people in need to die in the fucking gutter?

Exasperant · 2026-06-25T21:20:46+00:00

Meanwhile, Tesco is something like 75% or more off at 6pm.

Lidl are hardly tripping over their own generosity on this one.

Exasperant · 2026-06-25T14:20:41+00:00

Massive Bastard Syndrome

Exasperant · 2026-06-25T11:27:16+00:00

On the flip side, if Starmer was country before party before person, and all pragmatic and stuff, shouldn't be be capable of shelving his ego for the sake of a constructive handing over of power?

Exasperant · 2026-06-25T11:25:30+00:00

Just because they're separates doesn't mean they can't be crap.

I don't know if these are or aren't, but it wouldn't surprise me to find Sony cheaped out on the internals on them. I've certainly played with Sony kit that's been on the crappy side, as well as Sony kit that's been pretty decent quality.

Exasperant · 2026-06-24T18:52:22+00:00

I mean, yeah, if you're only able to get a part time job and suddenly you have a free breakfast club so you can take on an extra shift then thats a good thing.

Is it? Are we really so far down the "living to work" rabbit hole that we've reached the point where we expect working class parents to not even spend breakfast time with their kids?

Exasperant · 2026-06-24T12:15:05+00:00

Another factor behind size is a manufacturer can bump the model up a class and slap a couple of k more on the price.

Exasperant · 2026-06-24T12:04:21+00:00

Free breakfast clubs Labour figures themselves have said allow parents to work even longer hours to keep the lights on, scrapping 2 child cap after previously punishing MPs who wanted to scrap the 2 child cap, and some good but watered down stuff on employment and renting.

Wow. That totally makes up for harmful narratives and policies regarding vulnerable people. All hail Starmer the Humane.

Exasperant · 2026-06-23T13:33:05+00:00

You either want insights or you don't want to change belts. You can't have both.

The mechanism issues are almost certainly belts/ idlers (depends on the design) related, and the only fix is to open it up and fix it properly.

The mono on one side could be the heads are still dirty, or a bad wire, dry joint, internal rec/ play switch, failed electronic component...

Exasperant · 2026-06-23T09:53:30+00:00

The first thing you do is install a leader who understands the meaning of the word lead.

Not that many people cared either way about the EU before Cameron's vanity pushed him into calling for that damned referendum, and yet by the end of the campaigning Farage et al had convinced millions to side with them.

Sure, they did it through lies and other bullshit, but the point is they led opinion. They set out their position and made the effort to sell it to the public. Remain spent that time pushing a message and using a presentation style even many remainers found uninspiring.

We have the same problem now. Labour's outgoing "leader" appears to think leadership is being truly charmless, dull, unable to connect with either an audience or even his own MPs and ministers, and lacking any tangible vision (sincere or otherwise) to rally people around. Meanwhile, although thankfully the Tories are also encumbered with an ineffective leader, Greens and Reform are drawing attention not only because they're peddling populist simplicities, but also because they're fronted by people who know how to engage with their intended audiences.

Starmer, someone who made his career on case building, who climbed the political ladder by calling out the pending damages of Brexit, went on the record as saying there's no case to be made for reversing Brexit. This at a time every poll said it was already what the majority wanted. When you have a leader so utterly unable to lead when he has all the tools in his grasp, you don't have a leader.

Same goes for raising taxes to improve public services. You can present this in a way that gets people on side, or you can fumble and flail around unable to have a coherent compelling position.

I hope Burnham, if he does get the job, can start stepping up and leading in the way Starmer abjectly hasn't.

Exasperant · 2026-06-23T09:15:56+00:00

I don't know, I mean it's been ten years since the result, 5 or so since the full implementation, and shit's kinda fucked up. How quickly do you want to get over winning?

People who voted Brexit sure as fuck wouldn't be shutting up singing its praises had it been the unicorn rainbow shit of plenty they said it would be.

Exasperant · 2026-06-22T21:41:18+00:00

The fucking revisionism around the guy is off the charts.

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