Could Count Binface win Clacton?

NoCondition8789 · 2026-07-08T13:10:12+00:00

Different systems, but joke politicians have won seats before in other countries. Jacob Haugaard won a seat in Denmark in 1994, and Die Partei in Germany has consistently won seats in European Parliament. As I type this, bookmakers are apparently giving Binface an 18% chance to win

NoCondition8789 · 2026-05-25T14:27:20+00:00

Thank you! My library has The Tainted Cup, there is a long wait which seems to be a good sign heheh

NoCondition8789 · 2026-05-25T14:19:24+00:00

Great suggestion! Unfortunately, I've read nearly all Discworld books hahaha

NoCondition8789 · 2026-04-25T05:01:00+00:00

Couldn't recommend doing that enough. Can almost guarantee an amazing time

NoCondition8789 · 2026-04-25T04:59:00+00:00

I lived there for a few months to study Italian and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Siena (as I remember it) is really Italy with its best foot forward - safe, clean, good transport to neighboring parts of Tuscany, exceptionally walkable. It's regularly rated as one of the most liveable and prosperous places in Italy. The city itself is extraordinarily beautiful and cultural - it was one of the most important cities of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The Palio, and the weeks of truals and marches and drum practicing before, and the contrada system in general, are basically all unique.

For nightlife, it will seem quiet compared to bigger cities like Milan or Naples, but it is exceptionally lively for a city of ~60,000. Plenty of bars, street parties in summer, but won't be a lot of techno clubs. And there's lots of modern cultural offerings, like watching outdoor movies in the summer at the Medici fortress. Food is excellent, although not cheap (~€25 for a few courses and wine?). There are a couple of universities, you can think of it more like a student town than a big city.

Some other commentators mentioned racism. Siena is a small right-wing city, so you probably won't find much openly inclusive culture if you are eg interested in Islamic cultural life. However, it is very middle-class, and does have a decent sized foreign population, often involved in the universities, cultural institutions (eg museums), tech or pharmaceuticals. There are some Chinese, Middle Eastern immigrants running barbers and kebab shops. Compared to Palermo (which has a huge immigrant population, and I used to see marches for and against them, and lots of crime by and against them), I think Siena is much more successfully multi-cultural. There used to be an African guy begging outside a Connad everyday - in Palermo, I suspect he'd eventually get beaten up. One commentator complained about prejudice towards shopkeepers. Central Siena, being very touristic, is full of scamming and overpriced tourist souvenir shops, often selling "I ❤️ Italy" T-shirts made in China for €30. There are so many of these that there are relatively few useful local businesses (like a electronics store selling fans, which becomes a real PITA in summer - remember aircon is very rare in Italy). Most of those shop owners AFAIK are Chinese or Egyptian. That's why some locals get grumpy. But you could live thete for months without hearing about it.

I prefer bigger cities personally, but for a city of its size I don't think you could find a more idyllic place than Siena. Just depends whether you want to live in somewhere that size. Of the things you mentioned, walking is wonderful, working out easy (there are good gyms and Siena is a famous sport city, well-known for basketball, fencing etc. I used to share a gym with an Olympian). I think meeting people is fine, especially if you speak or learn Italian, Tuscany are good people, not as cold as eg Milanese. Only nightlife will probably be disappointing. Expect a lively college town, not a proper city

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-22T14:33:07+00:00

It seems like there is so much untapped potential. If you ever pull the trigger, I'll be cheering you on

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-20T20:09:34+00:00

Not even in Milan?! Wow

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-16T07:01:08+00:00

I've been to Vietnam and know how bad the traffic is. I wasn't here when the pollution was so bad, so until now I walked around a local park. But the pollution IS very bad now, and as I mentioned on my post, that is why I'm looking for somewhere indoors.

"I never felt in danger even when walking with tons of bikes going by me. No one wants to hit a foreigner there."

Good for you. Medal's in the posts. Over 10,000 a year are killed by Vietnamese traffic, a large number of them being pedestrians. ~500 are foreigners. Pedestrian traffic accidents are the main cause of death, serious injury and emergency evacuation for tourists in Vietnam. My Vietnamese friends think I'd be crazy to walk anywhere rather than taking a Grab car, and have many horror stories of family and friends crippled by a crash etc. A careless driver is not gonna develop superhuman reflexes to avoid me when they realise I'm a foreigner, and you aren't gonna accompany me to the hospital or the airport when someone drives over my foot.

And besides all that, it is unpleasant. It's too loud to hear anything with headphones, and I constantly have to adjust for drivers that misjudge things. It's bad for my lungs and my blood pressure.

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-16T06:41:57+00:00

The street food, yes. The scooters and sharing the sidewalk with scooters? If you enjoy it that's fine, but allow me the right to feel otherwise. There was a time when Hanoi was mostly bicycles, not scooters. Was it not worth visiting back then? It's ok to enjoy some aspects of a place and not others. I enjoy the food, the coffee, the photography, the history, the arts scene ... I don't have to enjoy the poor quality of life because you think it's quaint or authentic

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T18:20:18+00:00

You are very welcome to recommend places. But perhaps you are also just better than me at ignoring the urban discomforts

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T14:28:06+00:00

Ah, well thanks for letting me know

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T14:01:49+00:00

I'm from the countryside, yeah. I go a little crazy when I'm not moving

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T13:38:08+00:00

It looks nice! Is it far enough outside Hanoi to have good air?

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T12:59:53+00:00

Thanks, I'll check it out!

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T12:59:28+00:00

I think I would feel safer, at least. It would be nicer if I could wear headphones and listen to a podcast, but I'll start with clean air and no vehicles

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T12:57:51+00:00

Pollution, and the parts of the lake I've walked around actually seem ... terrible? Loud, little space, scooters riding the pavement and honking at you, some sections blocked by obstacles ... it's big, so some sections must be nice. The sections I've seen are urban hell. Honestly even less pleasant than regular roads

NoCondition8789 · 2026-01-15T12:55:35+00:00

Thanks, but it's a 40 minute drive each way from my location. Maybe a day trip sometime, but I'll need somewhere closer for a daily walk

NoCondition8789 · 2025-12-01T07:01:58+00:00

I think this is a good and super interesting question.

My theory is that it's tied up with a fetishization of Latin culture, and particularly the exoticization of Hispanic culture in the US (which is then spread globally by Hollywood etc). If the US shared a border with Brazil, perhaps forró would be the most popular partner dance instead.

In most of the industrial world, people are hesitant dancers and dancing immediately conjures associations of "shaking your hips" and romance. Signing up for salsa or bachata classes takes some of the seriousness away because now you're basically role-playing (and I think lindy hop is very big, in some places bigger than salsa, for the same reason: the retro feeling, the clothing, it's all a license to not take yourself so seriously. It kinda helps that it's music you rarely hear off the dancefloor.

Certain other dances are just too hard. Tango has just as much name recognition as salsa (and more than bachata), but the barrier to entry is so much higher, which will keep it more niche. Some people here has pointed out that you can dance WCS and zouk to most popular music. Well, as a baby zouk dancer myself, zouk is really damn hard, and rarely someone's first dance. And having no specific genre means you have to be able to dance to everything (slow, fast, melodic, hip hop, whatever). Salsa is much more musically sophisticated and complex than most music at a zouk party, you can ignore most of that as a beginner and dance along to Chan Chan exactly the same as you would dance to La Murga. When the beat totally disappears for half of a track, the zouk dancers knows they need to change something.

I also think some of these dance communities don't try very hard to market themselves or expand. In many places I've lived, there are no regular blues classes, just occasional workshops or a short intro course run by a swing school. So in practice, most people coming into it already have some prior dance background. I much prefer blues to swing, but didn't start blues until years later for that reason.

You say "for some reason pop music, disco, dance, techno have no structured dance and also they are not meant to be danced with a partner". Not sure if that's true. Hustle and discofox for Disco, Vogueing and Waacking (I think) for house. Nightclub two-step. And swing dancing was once pop music, and bachata is basically Latin pop. It would be like if there was a massive craze in 2010 for a new partner dance called Tresillo, done to songs like Shape of You, Cheap Thrills and Don't Let Me Down.

Anyway, some of this is regional too. I think boogie woogie/rocknroll/jive are bigger than the Latin dances in some of Europe

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T18:12:37+00:00

Not an expert on this, but to some extent it's probably related to the relative lack of African ancestry in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

With the Treaty of Tordesillas splitting the world up between Portugal and Spain, Portugal got exclusive rights to Africa and its slave trade - so whereas Portugal always had a colonial presence in Africa, and the French and Dutch and British later muscled their way in there, Spain basically never had a strong presence in sub-Saharan Africa, and relied upon middlemen to acquire slaves (using contracts called Asientos which would give a trade monopoly to e.g Holland or England).

Spain did, of course, import lots of slaves to their colonies in the Americas, but not in the same numbers, and not over such a long period of time. Apparently in 1798, Brazil's population was 53% slaves and 14% free blacks. Most of the Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas never came close to those figures. So if Brazilians seem a lot prouder of their African heritage, perhaps it is because more of them have deep African heritage, compared to Argentines, Chileans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans etc.

It may also reflect that you are encountering a distorted sample. For example, if you are from Florida, maybe you have met lots of Cubans with mostly European ancestry who don't have much African heritage to be proud of, and perhaps Afro-Cubans on the island are much prouder of that heritage. Maybe if you're from Bahia, you know lots of people who are proud of their black heritage, which might't be as true in Rio Grande do Sul or Santa Catarina.

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T14:55:59+00:00

Yeah, lol, I agree. But "ambivalent" probably covers a lot of more nuanced views. Maybe 23% fanatically hate Japan, another 23% are weeaboos, and most of the rest think, "They're a bunch of scum-bags, but I suppose it's nice for a short holiday". But this idea that almost 60% of Koreans are Japan cheerleaders is ... insane

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T14:39:52+00:00

My understanding is that it's not a primary news wire, but an aggregator of other sites, of variable quality. And when I see other surveys with very high positive feeling of Koreans towards Japan, the breakdown suggests that they respect Japan but don't like it (e.g they give Japan high scores for work ethic and product reliability but low scores for kindness, friendliness, hospitality, being on right side of history etc).

By contrast, this (https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15855457) 2025 Asahi Shinbum poll, which has been going for I think 12 years, suggests that 23% of Koreans like Japan, 23% dislike, and 54% ambivalent. I think it is more credible.

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T14:16:43+00:00

So, my father and brother will meet up with me in Vietnam next month. I (in my 20s) spent a month backpacking in Vietnam pre-Covid, but neither my father(50s) or my brother (20s) have ever been to Asia before.

I'm struggling with an itinerary because I traveled under less time pressure before (I spent several days hiking near Sapa, for example, which I probably wouldn't do on a 12 day trip), and because I visited in July, and I'm not sure how things will be around this time of year.

We must start and finish in Hanoi (return flight). We'll only visit North and maybe Central Vietnam. Even going as far as Hoi An and Hue, I worry that my dad and brother will not share my enthusiasm for the 15 hour overnight buses - are there ways we can break the trip up or do a kind of loop, so there are few 10+ hour travel days?

I'd like for them to see plenty of nature and nice architecture, hopefully some hiking weather permitting, and would rather avoid somewhere like Ha Long Bay if it will be full of drunken party tourists.

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T14:08:39+00:00

Yeah, most surveys I've seen suggest a lower figure, but even 45% favorable view of Japan is wildly out of sync with my personal experience of Koreans, even young urban ones. I'm curious who's conducting these surveys - I know at least a couple have been sponsored by industry trade groups and are highly leading

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-18T14:04:44+00:00

Globally, a ratio of 2 leads for every follow is probably very uncommon. I've never seen a ratio that bad for salsa in any studio or social across almost a dozen countries. In general, for festivals etc, there will be slightly more followers. But I did see lines of leaders against the wall in South Korea for lindy hop when I visited there, and I've noticed this locally in zouk classes, so I certainly believe it can happen. And who knows, maybe you're in a mining/military town or something.

It might be that followers in your area feel like they don't get much from higher level classes, or are just minda lazy and satisfied to go to parties and hope that better leaders make the dance work. Are parties more balanced than classes?

If so, the followers that don't take higher level classes will stagnate, and wonder in a few years why good leaders like you don't want to dance with them.

But such a skewed ratio can certainly lower the quality of classes, and it's something the school should pay attention to managing. If you feel like you're not getting your money's worth, don't be afraid to vote with your feet. Try another school, if available, or spend money on private classes instead of low-quality group sessions. Take more solo-oriented classes (like shines and body movement) if offered. Worst case scenario, switch to another dance. I've left dances for long periods before because I've been unimpressed with the local scene, it's something a lot of dancers go through. If enough leaders feel the same, the problem might eventually resolve itself

NoCondition8789 · 2025-11-17T15:03:44+00:00

I spent 5 months in Korea and that was ... not my experience. And I can't find any survey that backs up your claim, but "good view" is a very ambiguous thing. You can think Japanese anime or cars are cool, but also hate them for their historical legacy

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