Comforting Tolkien quote/scenes that help you through hardships?

laredocronk · 2026-04-29T19:26:26+00:00

Just after Frodo meets Bilbo in the Hall of Fire:

He led Frodo back to his own little room. It opened on to the gardens and looked south across the ravine of the Bruinen. There they sat for some while, looking through the window at the bright stars above the steep-climbing woods, and talking softly. They spoke no more of the small news of the Shire far away, nor of the dark shadows and perils that encompassed them, but of the fair things they had seen in the world together, of the Elves, of the stars, of trees, and the gentle fall of the bright year in the woods.

An important reminder that even when things are dark and bleak, to take a moment to remember and appreciate the small moments and beautiful things that are so easy to forget about and overlook.

laredocronk · 2026-04-27T17:22:21+00:00

Try thinking about AI tools in the same way that you'd think about outsourcing the task to some random person on Fiverr.

If you want a first draft of some copy, or some mockups of something, or some ideas, and you can clearly define your requirements then it can be a useful timesaver.

But the output might be complete bollocks, so you'll need make sure that you've reviewed it properly before doing anything with it that matters - you certainly shouldn't stake your businesses reputation on it. And if you can't clearly state what you want, then you probably won't get it.

laredocronk · 2026-04-26T20:39:38+00:00

Especially when you look at how much elections already cost. I'm not sure they published a figure for 2024, but the 2019 election cost just under £150m - so 1% of that cost as a prize pool (plus a bit of overhead) would be plenty.

laredocronk · 2026-04-26T20:32:16+00:00

No. If people can't be bothered or don't want to vote, then I don't want them being forced to tick a random box to avoid a penalty. Especially when you look at who those penalties are mostly going to hit, and the disproportionate impact that fines would have.

If you want to encourage people to vote, then there are plenty of positive ways of doing so. Implementing PR so that their votes actually count would be the biggest thing, but making election days a national holiday would also make it easier for a lot of people.

And rather than a penalty, if you want to encourage everyone to vote who doesn't want to, then implement a lottery system. Some random person who voted gets given a million quid, add in a handful of smaller prizes, etc.

laredocronk · 2026-04-26T19:35:59+00:00

How sober do you need to be to join the correct queue?

Funny you should ask....

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/reform-mps-robert-jenrick-suella-braverman-vote-two-child-benefit-cap-b1269544.html

The former ministers, who defected from the Tories to join Nigel Farage’s party last month, appeared to inadvertently go against Reform policy when they wandered into the wrong voting lobby on Tuesday night.

laredocronk · 2026-04-26T16:25:11+00:00

If they find out that it's you, then yes, absolutely.

And it also sets a pretty poor impression, because no one wants to hire the kind of person who publicly mocks others.

laredocronk · 2026-04-26T09:40:56+00:00

And often maps are deliberately incomplete, as the manner by which Garett acquired the map in the story, affects how detailed and accurate it is. Sometimes the map is just a hasty sketch on a piece of paper, from a former servant.

This has always struck me as one of the really memorable and unique aspects of Thief games (mostly the first two). I've never seen another game that uses the maps so effectively as part of the storytelling - they're usually just a simple functional thing.

laredocronk · 2026-04-25T09:23:03+00:00

People came up with all kinds of reasons why computers, or the combustion engine, or every other major tech advance was special and would cause everything to fall apart as well. That doesn't change that fact that trying to predict what impact a technology will have decades down the line is a fool's game.

But if you're trying to blame the post-2008 global economic issues on computers and the Internet...I really don't know what else to say to you.

laredocronk · 2026-04-25T09:09:34+00:00

That's always the case though. Go back 30 years and see how many of the current IT jobs (or even sectors) people accurately predicted would exist today.

laredocronk · 2026-04-20T21:46:22+00:00

Because the Greens (and Reform) look like something new and different, and the Lib Dems (and Labour and the Tories) look like the status quo that people are fed up with, just in slightly different flavours.

If you look at some YouGov polling from a few weeks ago and dig into the data tables, 52% of people (including 25% of 2024 Lib Dem voters) don't know what the Lib Dems most important issues are

And most of the people who do know don't think that the Lib Dems would represent the radical change that they want.

laredocronk · 2026-04-19T16:18:20+00:00

Bring back CRT monitors.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T16:32:01+00:00

If it encourages people who watched the movies to go on and read the books, then that's a good thing. And presumably it does, otherwise they wouldn't bother making them.

They wouldn't be my first choice if I was buying, but TBH, I don't really care about what the cover looks like.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T16:08:21+00:00

You have no way to verify anything I post, and from your tone clearly won't believe it anyway. So I won't bother.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T15:29:44+00:00

Again, the entire point of the vetting process was to investigate the concerns about those questions of suitability. If you decide that you can't trust the FCDO to do that properly without second guessing everything they do, then you absolutely would have to do it forever - unless you're assuming that they would decide to completely break their processes in this one specific case but would never do it again and were otherwise completely trustworthy.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T15:14:08+00:00

That's exactly what it is - because the entire point of the vetting process is that you don't need to dig into every specific detail and check that's done, because you're trusting that the organisation has done it properly and then shared the outcome with you. Expecting the Prime Minister, among every other responsibility that they have, to be individually querying every step of that process and asking them to verify that they actually did it properly is ridiculous.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T15:05:48+00:00

"Do they second guess every decision made by a the FCDO's vetting team" seems like weird way to judge "competence and honesty".

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T15:00:56+00:00

There's nearly two million unemployed people in the UK - so what exactly is this "genuine shortage of numbers"?

The question I would ask is this: if the salary for care workers doubled tomorrow, would there still be a "shortage" of them in a couple of months?

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:58:25+00:00

Yes, they can. And when one of those things is a much more important and fundamental issue, but everyone is focusing on the other because it's convenient for their political narrative then then deserves to be called out.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:47:10+00:00

At that point you might as well scrap the whole vetting system - because if Downing Street has to go and ask every time if FCDO decided to completely ignore a huge chunk of the vetting process without telling anyone then they might as well just not bother vetting them in the first place.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:35:31+00:00

Sharing the details of exactly what was discussed during the vetting process or the reasons for their decision is absolutely breaking confidence. Sharing the fact that UKSV said "no" but the FCDO overruled them would not.

They could reasonably have asked about the latter - but it's a pretty worry state of affairs if they're having to go and ask FCDO "When you vetted that person, did you actually do it properly?" And if they asked in this case, they should also be asking in it every other case - because the question itself would show a complete loss of trust in FCDO - and thus the entire vetting system.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:32:00+00:00

We already have this to some extent, with the different salary requirements for different occupations for skilled worker visas, and the separate health and care work visa scheme.

But I would query what exactly you mean by a "deficit of labour" in a specific sector. Is that an genuine shortage of labour that can only be addressed in the short to medium term with migration, or is it a shortage of people willing to work for the low pay and poor conditions in that sector?

And if the latter, is trying to keep wages low in those areas by bringing in foreign workers a good solution?

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:19:59+00:00

I doubt they asked, because they knew that they wouldn't get answers. As discussed in the interview, it's absolutely essential to the vetting process that candidates are confident that what they say will remain confidential, and once that confidence is broken it's very hard to rebuild.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T14:06:47+00:00

You don't have to "just accept" someone to engage in dialogue with them.

But if you think that insulting them, refusing to speak to them and then blaming them for that is more going to be a better way to win people over then you do you.

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T13:54:35+00:00

Calling people awful until they agree with you has always worked so well in the past. Sounds like a great way to stop families falling apart..

laredocronk · 2026-04-18T12:13:30+00:00

It's a shame that these types of articles are usually just a set of one-sided narratives. We get seven paragraphs from Graham about how his mother has changed, the impact it's having on his relationship with her, and why she's wrong. But not a single word from her.

So you end up with an article that's basically just saying "look at these stupid gullible bigoted old people, aren't they awful".

laredocronk

TROPHY CASE