The Off Topic Topic

[Grey Fox]

I make my kids friends go home when it's diner time. In today's allergic world unless it's prearranged I'm not taking on the responsibility of feeding your kid.

I do not remember how it was when I was young.

[Barrister]

The weird part of the Sweden anecdotes is the "stay in the room/hall while we eat".

It's dinner time so it's time to go home?  Absolutely.

But you can stay as long as you hide while we eat?  What kind of madness is that?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I think that's the odd bit.

And I feel like there were at least a few times when I was playing at a friend's house (admittedly - Scotland) and their parents would phone mine to check if I could/should eat dinner there.

[Barrister]

Yeah, as a parent, just one of my kids somewhat routinely goes over to his friend's house after school.  So we call over to see if we should pick him up around suppertime.  Either he stays for supper or he comes home.

[The Larch]

Agree on the weird part being the "wait somewhere else while we eat", and I don't find that weird not giving dinner to an unexpected guest, but there were weirder stories being told, like one guy who stayed overnight at a Swedish friend's for a sleepover who was not offered breakfast, for instance.

[The Larch]

There's also a side debate about the necessity or not of asking a guest for payment if they are offered food.

[Jacob]

Sanjay Shah has been arrested in Dubai and is apparently being extradited to Denmark.

Shah is a British financier (but Dubai resident of many years) who is accused of personally defrauding US$1.8 billion from the Danish state via means of fraudulent dividend tax refund claims.

Shah and his company - Cumex - was apparently the driver of a network of bankers based in London and Frankfurt who've defrauded European states to the tune of ~US$60 billion via these fraudulent dividend tax refund claims.

EDIT: okay, Dubai is going to decide if he is going to be extradited to Denmark. So maybe not.

[Eddie Teach]

1.8 billion can grease a lot of pockets.

[Admiral Yi]

I think I may have had my first Karen(tm) experience.

I was in Subway, three autistic guys and their minder come in, then me, then a woman and her daughter.  One of the autistic guys is older, say 40 (though it can be hard to tell their age).  He turns around and looks at the daughter.  What  else he does I don't see.  The mother says "go about your business."  The minder turns around and says something like "we have a right to be here, if you don't like it you can leave."  Mother says something like "I don't want this man looking at my daughter and moving like he's going to touch her."  Back and forth a bit.  "You can leave."  "No, you can leave."

I had always felt a bit deprived because Youtube makes it seem every third woman in America is a Karen (and the same ratio are people who spazz out on airplanes and get pulled off).  So no longer deprived.

[Syt]

You may recall that a couple years ago Playmobil had a series of Roman playsets. Legionnaires, gladiators, Cleopatra, Caesar, all the good stuff.

Currently, they have a series of Greek mythology - the twelve Olympians, plus some extra sets like the Deadalus & Icarus, Ulysses and Circe, or Achilles/Patroclus on a chariot.

https://www.playmobil.de/online-shop/playmobil-plus?prefn1=subCategory&prefv1=gods&srule=Topseller&content=false

[Razgovory]

At first I thought that was Leda and the Swan.  It's Aphrodite.  

[celedhring]

Ooooh the Argonaut ship is mighty tempting, but I'm already running out of room to display Lego/Playmobil crap.

[Sheilbh]

Let it never be said we've stopped innovating - Glasgow's just invented the Mars bar pakora

[Sheilbh]

They roped Paddington into the jubilee stuff:
https://twitter.com/mrmikecowan/status/1533164454057332736?s=20&t=HfYcMfSZsUiz9zFu9aTB9w

I do kind of love the idea that presumably to film this there was someone (probably Andy Serkis) in the green lycra and tennis ball outfit

Edit: Also massive drone corgi over Buckingham palace

[garbon]

"And now, a heart-rending performance of Climb Every Mountain set to a drone display of a postage stamp and a goose and a horse. Iconic."