Thread 19 - TalkLair: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous thread 18)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

In the TalkLair, the fairy lights are festooned on the mantlepiece, the tree is twinkling with baubles, the mince pies are in the oven, the MN legendary chicken is ready to feed the hordes. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

Ha! I didn't learn to drive until my mid-to-late 20s. I hadn't learned as a teenager and then lived in Central London and various forrin parts for some years. And now, well, the last time I drove was in the late 90s. I still have a licence, purely for ID. Obviously this is not for the purpose of getting into pubs. But when, inevitably, I am run over by a drunk driver at least the authorities will know who I am.

This week I’ve been feeling rather like this!

The craft group I go to - maybe 30 members - in a quiet corner of Ireland - includes a woman whose son works in Dubai (teacher I think) and woman with a son in Riyadh (something diplomatic) and a woman with a son in the army who was already getting a bit worried when his last peacekeeping tour with Unifil ended in November. Obviously a lot of his colleagues are still there. And yesterday I learned that one of the priests of our parish cluster is stuck in Doha, on the way back from visiting his father in India.

We are connected in ways that go beyond the price of petrol.

BUT Donald Trump has inspired me to buy some more loo paper. I think I have 9 dozen rolls still in packaging. Thanks Mr POTUS.

My first solo trip was, strangely, a trip home! We were on a week holiday in Anstruther and I needed to be in Kirkcaldy to be an assistant at an amateur American football game (my pal Ben and I were responsible for the chain and posts marking the first down line). So I was entrusted with the hoose keys and jumped on the stagecoach to get home. Being 16 and having an empty house, you can imagine the mayhem.

Went up my pal's house and played games on his amiga then went home to my bed.

The next one was a trip down to Durham on the bus for a uni interview. Stayed in St Aidan's accommodation block and got the bus hyem the next day after a lovely breakfast in the halls dining room served up by the Durham dinner ladies.

There is absolutely nothing amusing about the Glasgow fire. However, Glasgow MSP Paul Sweeney raised a smile with this gem:

"It is important to quickly establish the ownership of the building and the insurance position," says the Labour MSP.
It will then be important to move quickly to establish reconstruction. Sweeney says: "I think that is going to be absolutely critical."

He's quite the deep thinker, isn't he?

A bit like Theresa May, most of his statements failed the test of ridiculous inverse. (if the opposite of what you said is completely stupid, then you didn't need to say the thing and are just blowing air)

Gosh, I had forgotten Theresa May! I have to confess that despite everything, I often felt just s little bit sorry for her. Compare and contrast with Liz Truss. 😂

If Theresa May ever comes to mind, I remember the terrible pictures of her trying to look normal whilst eating chips and failing. They were quite as bad as the one with Ed Milliband eating a bacon sandwich.

Thing about Theresa May is that she now looks like a tower of sense and normality compared to those who came after!

You're no wrong @Kucinghitam

She was a grafter and I can't fault her for the work she put in.

It was several years of
Everyone : "this must be the worst tory prime minister ever"
Tories : "challenge accepted"

A lot of us over here feel that way about George W Bush.

Yes to Dubya as well!

Hang on, wasn't it Theresa May who put forward the idea of self-ID?

As the 'AI overview' 🙄says (I always ignore it, but in this case...)

This proposal aimed to make changing legal gender less medicalized and bureaucratic by allowing individuals to self-define their gender without a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria

With a zee, natch. FOTTFSOFATFOSM.

I have never seen FOTTFSOFATFOSM before and, rather worryingly, immediately worked it out. Perhaps I should Know Shame for that, but I don't.

Was it someone here who recommended Small Prophets? I'd bookmarked it but totally forgotten why and just idly started to watch the first episode. It wasn't until Mackenzie Crook appeared that it dawned. As ever, fabulous music!

It might have been me. It's great, isn't it? Attention to detail, so many felicitous touches.

Yes, his ears must have been white hot with the criticism on GUT alone! Then along came the first Presidency of Lord J. Dampnut and we all got teary eyed at previous rational, intelligent Repub Presidents like Dumbya...

I think Theresa May is a much better ex-PM than she was a PM (possibly the same could be said for Dubya as an ex-POTUS). She’s not in the league of Gordon Brown or John Major but she’s no Boris Johnson or Liz Truss.

Speaking of politicians, the Zack Polanski story gave me a much-needed laugh:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9enygvezeo

So successful is he that the name was totally unfamiliar to me. Bring on Hannah Spencer!

I know who he reminds me of (although I liked the comment that he was like a face painted on a hard-boiled egg): Judd Trump, of course.

This website attempts to show the whole of human history since the end of the last ice age. Fascinating to see it all laid out proportionally, and as DH says, perhaps rather appropriate as some maniacs appear very keen to put an end to human history right now.

https://michaelzrork.github.io/Holocene_Calendar/

That's excellent. And tonight's rabbithole sorted.

I'll try that on the computer, rather than the phone. Daughter was at God dentist yesterday, she wanted to go in alone, bit they said I had to accompany her, shes nearly 13.

She had a fit of thd giggles, which delayed things.

I didn't make anything of it, but she told me afterwards that it was because the radio had Lady Gaga's Pokerface on and that's what the dentist was doing!

😅

Yes, that was fascinating to see, just how much has happened in the last 200 years or so, compared to the previous 12,000 is informative. I had a bit of a gripe, regarding Moses' Exodus and birth and crucifixion of Jesus. There's very, very little evidence for either.

There's plenty of evidence for Jesus, actually - Suetonius, Tacitus, Josephus, Pliny the Younger and the fairly obscure Lucian of Samosata. Given that scholars believe that 97-99% of all ancient works do not survive, that's quite the case of mentionitis! AFAIK it's accepted that he's a historical figure and it's the supernatural aspects that eyebrows are raised at.