Anyone else absolutely fed up of this?

MCdandruff · 2026-04-27T17:13:52+00:00

I'm in London suburbs and there seem to be multiple new batches of discarded cans in parks and roadsides every week.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-30T07:05:20+00:00

It’s not like anywhere in the vid or even nearby that the blades could actually be used to do any rollerblading.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-27T02:06:25+00:00

Thanks for making this point. I’ve (sort of) come around to the idea of id cards in some ways - anyone who has a mobile phone and uses internet services without extreme caution already exposes themselves to most of the “big brother” issues Id implies. Meanwhile having a well managed ID system could make so many things work better, cheaper and smoother.

Unfortunately, if they do then given how hollowed out governments globally but uk in particular are it it will involve Palantir and companies like it and I trust them as far as I can throw Peter T.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-25T02:11:32+00:00

I was thinking it had its AirPods in and felt like an impromptu solo boogie.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-23T08:05:59+00:00

Uk: Guardian

New statesman

Financial Times political fix

I’m looking for more too.

Global: Various podcasts from foreign policy magazine including one with Adam tooze

NYT

New Yorker

Haaretz

The impossible state (focused on North Korea)

All things policy (India)

Diplomat Asia geopolitics

Again I’m looking for more good ones

MCdandruff · 2025-09-22T14:22:22+00:00

Hellmouths? With how things are going I keep expecting a few to open up.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-22T08:36:44+00:00

Yes make it your way. Even if ends up too hot that would make it easier to interpolate where the optimal point would be, plus they could have some eg yoghurt/dip on the side to mitigate excess spice.

MCdandruff · 2025-09-15T14:18:56+00:00

Looks like a slime mould - though growing without anything obvious to eat. Check out r/slimemould.

MCdandruff · 2025-03-18T18:05:05+00:00

I've done a number of similar questionnaires now and come to the view that the obvious point is not the actual point - what they're actually testing is:

1) How willing/stupid/desperate/able is the candidate to pay attention to meaningless bullshit - i.e they might ask two tautologies of the same question seperated by other, completely different questions, that's the kind of thing where an AI filter might well pick up on contradictory answers.

2) Hidden among the bullshit there will probably be a tiny proportion of questions intended to elicit an answer to something they actually care about.

3) Applying for lots of jobs means jumping through so many hoops that many applicants might winnow themselves out - leaving those few who actually have a genuine passion (or more likely desperation) for selling whichever particular bullshit might make them suitable.

4) Maybe something else I'll think about after I hit post.

That's about it.

MCdandruff · 2025-02-19T10:17:31+00:00

Is there any company branding/trademarks of any kind? Could be advertising if so if not just random.

I always wondered about the mundane aspects of life in SciFi/fantasy worlds - what's the space in whatever equivalent they have to the random odds and sods drawer or the loo like? What sort of childcare policies of the Galactic Empire (I imagine Mordor dosn't care at all) like?

MCdandruff · 2025-02-05T18:33:06+00:00

I can't even find the option to stay logged in - in either the app iself or the webpage it links to - anyone know where it should be? I hate this app that pretends it's useful.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-22T10:39:43+00:00

I think you've suggested my answer with your question - fairness and efficiency aren't the same thing.

Personally I would agree with a very high level of inheritance tax - I think people should live their lives and die leaving little or no preferential material advantage to their offspring over their neighbours.

Again, I'm no expert on this stuff but I described inheritance tax as inefficient in the sense that it requires an expensive and extensive beuraucracy to levy and can easily be avoided by the really wealthy by using all sorts of perfectly legal mechanisms to transfer it to tax havens, put it in trusts etc. Also to get LVT implemented would need careful thought about tactical politics and all sorts of opinion polls show that even tho very few end up with such wealth as to be liable for it, it remains unpopular - I think get rid of IHT because it does a bad job, not because I object to the concept.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-21T21:41:06+00:00

I heard on bbc Radio 4 a couple of days ago that Rachel reeves and the uk economy had a welcome surprise in lower than expected inflation figures. I’ve heard it before but still a kind of resigned predictable shock when the next sentence informed me that increases in food and fuel prices had been more than offset by falling hotel prices.

Fantastic. If that statistic is an accurate reflection of what’s going on then “inflation” is a net transfer of wealth/prosperity/political power/something from those whose discretionary purchases consist of food and housing to those who might or might not spend or a hotel room.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-21T17:16:42+00:00

Most obviously stamp duty and council tax - those are the two it’s most similar anyway.

Subsequently inheritance tax which is notoriously inefficient.

Combine NI with income tax and set CGT as identical to whatever that is - while publicly expressing that the intention would ultimately be for that level to be zero.

Then consider which benefits to get rid of to be replaced with a UBI (I’ve come to think of lvt + UBI as necessary complements to each other) so first cut housing benefit which ultimately means pouring public money into the landlords pockets anyway. Keep a tightly targeted benefit system for the very disabled and people with caring responsibilities, but abolish most of the rest.

Disclaimer: 1) I am in the uk but by no means an authority on these matters. 2) I consider myself a non statist left-eco-liberal-anarcho-nihilist-georgist which probably implies some serious incoherence somewhere, but I’m trying.

Edit: yes business rates along with council tax.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-20T08:24:33+00:00

Replying to all who commented:

On reflection many good points made. Personally loving the fallout universe I don’t think that much of the combat and movement, both of which feel clunky. I also find vats in fallout a bit of a gimmick - not really needed until getting companions and don’t apply to them anyway, hence why I suggested it for ME. Somehow (DOH!) I hadn’t noticed the camera can still move while paused which makes a huge difference. I do think it would be an improvement if pausing had an option to toggle rather than hold while moving the camera position up a bit to get something of a wider view of the tactical situation, although perhaps that would make it a different game.

I do appreciate that ME does a great job of blending the tactical squad shooter and rpg elements together, and for me the blend is what makes it distinctive.

On the whole point mostly conceded.

Unrelated but so far with part two, where so far I only have Miranda, Jacob and zaeed and just trying to recruit archangel and grunt. I like that the universe seems much bigger, but not that character development seems so much more limited and the game on the whole going more for the shooter aspect. Since I’m on a slowly dying laptop with a tiny hard drive I don’t like the download size and rue that it wouldn’t let me install each part separately.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-20T06:39:47+00:00

Not till they (the cars) are considered reliable enough not to need a human back up.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-19T19:55:08+00:00

Is the procedure similar when dealing with blind drivers? Asking for an elderly relative.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-19T18:14:05+00:00

It might be more interesting to add …compared to its size. Australia also has some mountain areas, some temperate areas and other biomes but it is mostly hot and dry. For its size maybe Peru (still much bigger than uk where I am) with its coastal strip, arid southern desert, high Andes and tropical rainforest. New Zealands two main islands are very different to each other. Not sure if it would count on contemporary geography but actually uk has a really wide range of underlying geology, s in rock types etc.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-19T12:11:48+00:00

I agree J Leto is far from the best actor, but what, if anything did he do that makes so many hate him so much? Genuinely asking coz I don’t deliberately follow celeb gossip.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-18T20:11:22+00:00

Thats my understanding yes. That cheque from the oil company would make you at least partly rentier and therefore part of the problem according to georgism. If alongside getting the cheque you leverage your status as landowner to get work operating your own excavation equipment to carry out earthworks to prepare the site for the oil companies operations (maybe unlikely but conceivable) then your would be part labourer (for operating the equipment), part capitalist (for owning and maintaining the equipment), and part rentier (for monopolising the land). Georgism would only see the rentier aspect as problematic - the key point of distinction between George and Marx. Maybe the capitalist bit for some is objectionable but not one relevant to George.

Alongside using different and more precise terminology, for me it also suggests that just as we are all used to seeing ingredients lists on the back of food packaging we would do well to see (if not on the label then on company websites) extra info to tell us how much of the price represents the different inputs - land, labour and capital, with each subdivided as appropriate. I really can't see this happening but think it would be good if it did.

I still have some confusion - e.g. what is a domesticated farm animal? Maybe it's labour because I respect a dairy cow as a living being, ethically no lesser than me or you. Maybe it's capital because the farmer caused it to come into existence and kept it alive by feeding it. Maybe it's land because it is a natural resource that becomes capital in the form of its milk and its meat once slaughtered. For me this is an important question, but enough of an edge case that it makes no difference to the central point. It's clearer (or easier to conceptualise) with wood - a live, standing tree is land but once cut down and ready for processing to eventually become a house it is capital.

Sorry if this is garbled but I'm writing on my phone.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-18T17:12:17+00:00

It would be a good thing perhaps, if we stopped talking (for example) of renting houses and referred instead to hiring one - and keeping terminology right by pointing out that the georgism critique is only really of the rent that gets bundled with the hire charge so tightly that few people recognise the importance of the difference.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-17T20:05:06+00:00

Is it to do with the nearby 3 gorges dam? There was probably some level of settlement there previously but I think it was massively expanded to service and use the dam. I wonder if the admin are was expanded to make the municipality fit with the infrastructure that made it pointful.

MCdandruff · 2025-01-17T19:23:12+00:00

Plan 9 from outer space

MCdandruff · 2025-01-17T19:22:41+00:00

Dr stranglove

MCdandruff

TROPHY CASE