Thread 20 - TalkLair: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous Thread 19)

Britain swelters in yet another heatwave.

In the TalkLair, all the curtains are closed against the blazing sun as the denizens lurk like creatures of the night... or maybe we are creatures of the night. But rest assured, despite our scary fangs, 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…

That's lovely.

I was fascinated to learn that the Irish Guards had actually been sent to Northern Ireland. He said it felt weird. They were mostly deployed on border control in Fermanagh, presumably because sending a bunch of Ulster prods to Derry might have caused even more carnage.

Ooooh gonners! What did you say???

It was something to do with the NI "troubles". I shrug in MNHQ's general direction.

Ah, I see it's been restored. I suspect the problem may have been the p-word abbreviation, which he (an Ulster p-word) used. Or it may have been the suggestion that not 100% of soldiers are entirely neutral. Anyway, I apologise to anyone who was offended.

Did anyone get a good view of the aurora on Saturday night? I was quite thrilled to see, for maybe 10-20 minutes, the faintest hint of pink and green here in light-polluted Leeds.

Anyway. Here is Mochi in a slipper.

It's important to keep the paws warm.

We're between an army barracks and a school playing field, both permanently floodlit. To the north are the docks, ditto. I've only once managed the tiniest glimpse of aurora.

I missed it! But I was in Hertfordshire, also light-polluted. Currently in north Wales.

I missed it too, which was a shame because it was glorious on the North Kent coast. This is about 6 miles from us ...

It's been grey and damp here today, but at about 5 this evening (sunset was at 6) it cleared for a bit and I went out of the back door to find a skyfull of swifts (new collective noun?) circling around like maniacs. This went on for about half an hour, with other smaller groups joining them until there was a really impressive crowd which headed off in the general direction of Northern France (about 50km away).

They should have been gone a couple of months ago, but maybe they were deceived by the weather? And they were unusually quiet. Perhaps the realisation that they'd screwed up the migration schedule made them focus on the job at hand?

Lovely thing to watch.

Some bird of similar type scooted past the studio window during my pilates class tonight. My guess from the brief glimpse was house Martin, so that one's also leaving it to the last minute.

While I’ve been in the UK I’ve been enjoying seeing magpies - I’m sure they must exist in the US but there just aren’t any in our area.

Wikipedia claims Eurasian magpies (Pica pica) are present in the western North America. However, it also claims they are 'known for their songs', so I put no store whatsoever in their other information. We have a lot in our garden and they are certainly notable for their noise, but it absolutely cannot be described as 'song'. They're probably mixing it up with Pica hudsonia.

Cornell's bird lab shows no Pica pica in the Americas at all. I'd trust that far more.

Bloody magpies are everywhere here, they're one of the most common birds. But I did see someone took a wonderful shot yesterday of a kingfisher by the water-side, less than a mile down the road.

Does anyone else not skim through FWR and think, why the fucking fuck do people continue to interact with these 24/7 trolls? And yes, I know all the arguments for, but I just don't buy it any more. I just see useful thread after useful thread, fubar-ed completely. Which is their objective, after all. Most of those doing the replying are top posters whose actions I hesitate to question, but it does bug me. IIJM?

I rarely venture into FWR, and can't remember when I last posted there - or even if I ever did. This is chiefly because I've decided at 75 that life is too short to read their nonsense ... though at least it makes time drag, I suppose, which might be a plus?

<on edit> It's a bit like that in the H&M PR Disasters threads on the royal family board, with people popping up to say how absolutely marvellous Mr & Mrs Markle are, but that at least is entertaining.

Heh! I steer clear of Royal Fam threads, so I wouldn't know!

They're currently on page 36 of thread #51 on the topic. By the time I post this, they'll probably be on thread #52. I only found it about 15 threads ago because it kept popping up at the top of "Trending", but there are some quite entertaining comments from time to time.

I'm a sporadic poster on the H&M threads. I stopped listening to The Archers, so I needed a soap opera to replace it....

The tribunal threads absolutely don't make the time drag. Not when there's a clown witness in full flow.

I agree about the serial troll disruptions. I wish we had the ignore poster function here, because I admit I do sometimes get sucked in when something particularly egregious is posted.

I avoid the Royals threads but I do follow a few on FWR. I agree it’s a pain when a good thread gets disrupted but I do find tha marshalling of responses useful for myself.

Someone reported the latest Strictly thread because the OP wrote the time of the programme as 18:15 instead of "6.15 pm" and the mods took it down to edit it. As the former is how the BBC website writes it, one has to wonder why.

I think but cannot prove that most of the wide-eyed ingenue posters are repeat offenders, well practised at the faux-innocent time-wasting and rage-baiting. Others might have launched from other parts, egged on and informed by their peers. It's too repetitive and formulaic to be random, in my view.

I have my own tactics such as ignoring all the posts and replies and instead quoting and replying to the most recent authentic/serious post.Or just making an on-topic post without referring to the derail at all.

Twenty-four hour clock is quite clearly against The Will Of The People and up with this we shall not put!

Some prolific clown-dancing word-salady goalpost-moving posters remind me of another place, another time (there's clearly an archetype).