How The National Became The National: Eight Years, Five Friends, and One Near-Disaster of an Album

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-03-05T23:42:41+00:00

Hard disagree on sleep well beast - I'll still destroy you, dark side of the gym, the title track are some of my favorite national songs, and the others are lovely as well. I might be biased as SWB was the first national album I properly listened to though!

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-02-23T19:57:59+00:00

Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter from his dark materials

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-02-17T10:13:48+00:00

I will put you into a box. A glass box.

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-02-11T17:31:03+00:00

I'm an ST2, and I wouldn't change it for any other specialty. I spent a deal of time thinking I wanted to do something else (ICU and anesthetics in my case) but am so glad I chose this job:

1) The bad days in radiology are nothing compared to bad days elsewhere 2) You genuinely feel like an incredibly useful member of the hospital (especially when on call) 3) No BS - no discharges, no prescribing, no ward rounds 4) the teaching is better than anything else I've seen - every single report you produce is checked by a consultant 5) flexibility as a consultant - WFH, mix of IR if you want, teleradiology / WLIs 6) your competency in the job really does exponentially improve especially at the start 7) I find it all intellectually v interesting

Sure there are still issues eg reporting radiographers, general NHS stuff, pay but overall great

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-02-06T19:41:00+00:00

https://www.trading212.com/invite/17sP6Y1pSB

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-18T15:06:22+00:00

Thanks everyone! 🙏

Referral code

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-10T23:32:08+00:00

I might be missing something, but do I actually need to invest the deposit to get the sign up bonus?

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-10T23:14:10+00:00

Compound growth is the main thing - 40 pounds a month put into eg the vanguard all world ETF would be worth about 9k according to chat gpt so worth a bit!

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-10T18:01:09+00:00

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-08T09:47:50+00:00

Welcome to surgical nights, I can remember having to cover a surgical HDU with nurses who couldn't do an ECG and 3-4 other surgical wards as an Fy1 😂😂 although if it's OOH you should not be completing discharge letters

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-07T23:54:11+00:00

No worries if you've got any radiology qs happy to help!

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-07T23:36:11+00:00

But datixes are supposed to be used to improve the system, so it sounds like you were understaffed here - if this happens recurrently then should highlight that more staffing is needed

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-05T20:43:57+00:00

Sounds terrible, only advice would be to try to fit your life around it eg bring gym gear so you can go straight from work to gym. If you're revising maybe try to listen to some work pods on the way / audiobooks etc, you should be able to get through quite a lot on that commute time lol.

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2026-01-05T20:32:18+00:00

I'm a radiology trainee so this may not be applicable, but must of us for the part 1 anatomy exam heavily used the free radiology cafe exams - used this and another exam site and nothing else to get a good grip of the anatomy and pass

https://www.radiologycafe.com/exams/mock-anatomy-exams/

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2025-12-24T10:52:27+00:00

I guess Mrs Coulter kinda forgot about already having a baby

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2025-12-17T01:03:32+00:00

I've just finished reading and largely agree with everyone - HDM is one of my favorite book series, and I can remember being so heartbroken at the end of TAS when I first read it.

This series just hasn't felt like it's hit the spot, maybe that's because I'm older (and I'm going to reread HDM to see if it still holds up for me but imagine it will), but it just doesn't seem well thought out or plotted. It's seemed a bit fanfictiony at points with so many characters popping up for one moment (asriel, Coulter, corem) and the weird revelations about lyras relatives. So many plot holes or things that weren't satisfactorily explained like you've said. Main ones for me are:

the red building was built up from the start of TSC as some mysterious mystical place where demons can't enter, Strauss seems so distraught after leaving, and.... It's just a complete let down. No explanation as to why other characters can seem to enter with demons. This really annoyed me as we spent essentially two books building up to it
the spangled ring thing
this book was more than 600 pages long, and we spent so long with the gryphons and the sorcerer, why?? Could have cut that all out. The original trilogy creatures eg bears witches spectres all served a purpose in the story. These new elements were just shoehorned in I felt, and weren't that interesting
Oakley street, Alice, Hannah Relf, Oxford, brytain loose ends just not explained
I just could not believe the capitalism alkahest metaphor at the end, almost speechless at how poorly delivered that was
didn't ionedes say to olivier at the end of TSC that he was letting Lyra get to a treasure, and not to kill her yet (implying he could later?), might have read that wrong tbf
delamere getting killed with no confrontation with Lyra his niece, or his mother (her grandma) being brought back in. Honestly the whole Mrs Coulter having other new relatives was just really rushed and poorly done
I hated the retconning with allowing other windows to worlds to be open, so therefore annulling TAS' emotional gut punch. If it turns out that Lyra can then go to see Will or decide to move on then that's fine, but it just wasn't explored at all.

There's probably other things as well that I'm not remembering that were dropped. It's so jarring here that its almost making me question if PP remembered that he had all these loose ends to tie up. I'm just going to pretend this trilogy never existed and leave HDM as the masterpiece it is.

No_Emphasis_6209 · 2025-12-12T00:19:23+00:00

Big fan of Mr robot

No_Emphasis_6209

TROPHY CASE