I was surprised that two thirds of folk here think to be fair.
I gave up thinking years ago. I got bored of the smell of burning.
Chatting to a friend or a group is nice, but sitting alone is amazing.
On my days off I quite enjoy going into town and getting a corner table; either reading; studying; catching up on text messages or group chats; or generally just staring out the window thinking about sweet fuck all.
My other half thinks it's a waste of money - and whereas it's true that coffee at a retailer is ludicrously expensive for what it is; I'm paying for the chance to sit somewhere else and just do my own thing. The caffeine juice is just a nice bonus.
One of my guilty pleasures is going into the local city centre in the week running up to Christmas; sitting in a coffee shop in a shopping centre atrium or near a window overlooking a concourse or walkway; and just peoplewatch. It's interesting to watch someone walk for thirty or forty seconds and try to figure out their life story leading up to that moment.
I suppose in that moment, I'm not alone at all, I'm in company with everyone.
Really?
My seed ratio is going to be OVER 9000!!!!!!!11
It also sounds like the sorts of character names Sandy would use in their games - looks like an endless pool of NPC names for the future!
What a shame. I've been working with different branches of the public sector pretty much my entire career, and the NHS is one of the more frustrating ones to tweak and change.
First and foremost: the frontline workers such as the paramedics; GPs, nurses; and domestic staff are absolute world-beaters. Constantly squeezing conditions and low pay for the amount of work they actually do, and constant battering from the press makes it a really hostile environment for people to do their very best in, but fair play they don't half put a shift in every day. Good on them.
As for the ambulance service - the last couple of times I've worked with them has told me that the two most likely places you'll find an ambulance is outside a hospital waiting to handover patients; or at an ambo depot because there's not enough folk to staff them.
Whatever's left are pulled between dozens of competing calls, a fair chunk of them absolute bollocks too - either self-inflicted (entirely frustrating as the mental health root cause should be tackled before it becomes a paramedic problem), or overdosing (alleged or genuine) which again is either an addiction or a mental health issue.
The resources that remain are thrown to people in cardiac arrest; catastrophic bleeding; or infants. People like the older person in the headline or the footballer in the article aren't actively dying, so they get pushed to the bottom of the queue.
I'm going to get on my soapbox here and say if I were PM, I'd create a whole new ambulance service for mental health emergencies. It would take the weight off the ambulance service to deal with issues requiring a bit more than battlefield medicine; it would reduce the workload of the police service who frequently get lumbered with mental health calls (and as great as the cops can be at finding solutions to most problems, they're not mental health practitioners and aren't the right folk for the job); and it would probably mean the ambo service can work within their current means with such a massive chunk of workload taken off them.
Man I feel better after writing that.
That would make a banging remix to Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy .
Oh my word, that was a beautiful but incredibly tough read.
edit: sharing my experience below, the length got a bit out of hand!
I live about four or five hundred miles from where I grew up with family, and I got wind of my dad being in hospital. I gave him a call like I did every short while, and the opening lines were a bit of a comedy:
"Hi dad, how are you?"
"Aye I'm alright thanks"
"Anything exciting happening? Any news with you?"
"no not really"
"... you're in the hospital, aren't you dad?"
"...yeah" 😂
We had a good chat - I offered to fly down and see him but it all seemed very positive and I'd already had plans to pop down the following month.
Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance - a couple of weeks later I got the dreaded phone call that he'd died as a complication of his illness. I was obviously gutted, but I consider myself very very very fortunate that in that phonecall, I had the opportunity to have a good chat with him and was able to tell him everything I wanted to, there was nothing left unsaid.
Anyway...
The part of our brain that does evaluation, desire, and choice has been completely overrun; when someone asks “I’m gonna grab sushi, do you want any” we stare at them in confusion.
Absolutely. The day after my old man died, I was due to cover a night duty at my old workplace. It's a straightforward role to deal with stuff that comes up, most of which is safety-critical in the industry so drinks, drugs, poor behaviour or low mental health are things to declare beforehand so you don't put yourself or colleagues at risk of clouded decision making.
My other half was away on a family visit, so a dear friend of mine invited me round for a few days to avoid the workplace - I politely declined thinking I was gutted but otherwise okay. I relented on going out to the local town for the afternoon - the Coca Cola truck was doing a promo thing so it would have been a good laugh before work.
And it was - I had a good half hour. He invited me round to his place for a quick BBQ before work, and it sounded like a good idea. Went to Tesco, and we were stood in the meats aisle. He asked me:
"Do you fancy burgers or hotdogs?"
I wasn't arsed either way. I just said "I'm not bothered mate, whatever you fancy". He wasn't having it.
"Do you want the burgers, or a hotdog?"
I wasn't moved one way or another, I'm usually happy enough to eat most things so I just said "i don't mind mate, you choose". Nope. Wasn't having it.
"No fella, I'm asking you. Do you want burgers, or a hotdog?"
I was getting a bit miffed at him asking me the same shit over and over but I just ran with it, and looked at both things he had in each hand. I could see the prepacked meat in each hand, but I couldn't choose. I knew I could just almost flip a coin in my head and pick left or right, but I couldn't critically evaluate what I wanted in such a basic decision. My mind felt like it was full of treacle, able to look and think and feel, but unable to move itself in a particular direction.
I understood what he was doing. "I'm sorry bruv," I said, "I can't choose". I phoned up and booked my three remaining shifts off.
It was the strangest feeling being unable to make that decision. It wasn't a hard call, just the mind was under so much stress I wasn't aware of that I couldn't just step forward.
As it happens I went home, had a good cry, got changed, and went back to his place for the evening and got hammered with him - lots of beer, Die Hard and Predator, and cracking tunes through to about 6am.
Fucking hell, I thought us Brits had a reputation for being tone deaf inward-looking shitheads... I mean we can be yeah, but this lass takes the biscuit.
It's insane how blinkered she is.
Firstly: fuck the paywall.
Secondly: I can't tell if the data includes buses being stopped at... well, stops - or if it's only measured over the time the bus is in motion. With the increase of stops in developing suburban areas, the average speed would naturally come down.
I'm not saying that bus speeds aren't coming down, but it's hard to read into the data - especially when the speeds are only a few tenths of a mile per hour slower than pre-pandemic levels.
Similarly, the 48 and 94 routes had seen gaps between buses increase from five to 15 minutes.
Off topic; but as a rural dweller, that made me giggle. An hourly bus is a luxury round here, and that's on an A-road on a rural-to-city route.
Man that article is light on detail. It's just the headline with more words.
No details about the how, what, who, when, or why.
I'm quite the fan of Led By Donkeys but the article seems to do nothing but fellate them with no actual substance.
...not that I couldn't live without for a week or two, no. It just seems like a huge waste to have a new world outside your hotel room door, but end up doing things that you could easily do every other night at home.
That said, it's a personal preference. If people want to live British while abroad, then hey it's their holiday. I don't quite understand it myself but I'm happy for them.
I've never quite understood it.
Travel five hundred, fifteen hundred, or five thousand miles - and there's always a contingent of Brits that want to go to a Wetherspoon or get a "full English brekkie" or go down the Liverpool bar for a few pints to watch the footie.
At that point it must be cheaper to just stay at home, put up with the colder climate, and just shell out the bus fare for a ride into town and back.
Not my holiday though - go wild!
I've told this story before but a lad I know was teaching himself French, and got to a natural ceiling where he really had to immerse himself in the culture and environment to really spread his language wings.
He did the odd weekend over the channel into France once or twice a year, but decided to watch French media in the interim - films; series; music etc.
He wanted to formalise his knowledge with a qualification, so booked himself an exam and did his oral exam with a video call to a French native.
She said "I can't fault your French, but you speak like a drug dealer from Paris"
High praise, if you ask me.
Sounds like the basis of a great time.
Most of my best evenings out were when I really couldn't be arsed but my pals dragged me out. Maybe it's because I had such low expectations for a night out that I was pleasantly surprised and easily pleased.
Purely anecdotal, of course.
Looks like Petersen has been biding his time and has decided to go on the offensive. Why, I'm not sure - but good on him.
A few weeks ago he popped up a video on his YouTube Short feed which covers it well.
For those of a particular vintage, Petersen isn't particularly popular because of his... experimental approach to Doom mapping. His YouTube is great through - he sets the record straight on Doom; speaks openly about the gaming industry; and also delves deep into tabletop gaming if that's your thing.
Bloke I know is a funny lad - the sort of guy who is just naturally laugh-a-minute. Has the gift of the gab; can tell a great story; and could make reading the phone book sound hilarious.
A good while back, we went on a Christmas night out to a comedy club in Reading, and between acts, our colleague just came back from the bog, saw the empty stage, and went up for a laugh. Turns out the mic was live.
He stood there for a good few minutes, freestyling a "set", and the audience warmed to him. It was only when the next act was scheduled to come on that the staff clocked that he was just a randomer, that he got shuffled off and sent back to our table.
The balls on the guy. Legend.
Big oof.
It's never good when your leadership staff jump ship in the month before your flagship game's launch; your own staff tell you it's a shit show; and you've still got the balls to say it's dark market forces at play that caused your title to fail.
Oh wow, that lazy college meme guy profile picture brings some nostalgia to the party.
Late 2000s memes were great. Back when rage comics were popular, Something Awful preceded whatever-chan, and "advanced AI" was basically fighting the Half Life grunts.
OldManWavesFistAtCloud.jpg
It is, but they class champagne as it's own class of drink, not to be confused with the ruffians that drink wine.
It's one of those situations that you know is a thorny one, but I just bumbled into it as a typical Brit.
There's a generation or three of British folk that hear that bass solo and can only think of Formula One.