The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

I still recall my first encounter with aluminum reading a Sci fi book and not having a clue what it was. Thinking it some space age future metal.

You hang out in weird places.

To visit Amsterdam and not walk down De Wallen is like visiting DC and completely ignoring anything government related.

[Sheilbh]

Colleen Rooney wins the Wagatha Christie libel case

Apparently the judge was not impressed with Rebekah Vardy's evidence. They also thought that some of the contemporaneous evidence was deliberately withheld - for some reason they didn't accept that her mobile phone accidentally fell off a boat into the North Sea just days after Rooney's lawyers requested to search it

[Sheilbh]

Probably of interest to literally only Jos - but I loved this
https://chronotrains-eu.vercel.app/

Shows you how far you can get by train in five hours. They've basically combined multiple train stations when there are easy bus/walking/metro connections so Euston and St Pancras and others are all merged into London King's Cross.

Thing that's really striking is the impact of borders. I know there are campaigns on this but in terms of both climate and output legitimacy I think working on better cross-border trains seems like something the EU should definitely look at as a priority. There are some cities where it's less of an issue (and you see the impact of favoured high speek routes, eg in France or Spain). But, as an extreme example, is Lisbon:


But a few of the locations show how national rail travel still is. But really fun little tool - especially if, like me, you like getting around by train when you're on holiday

[Duque de Bragança]

Train network in Portugal has been neglected for decades, with secondary lines (narrow gauge) closed and main lines in a not so good shape.

[Jacob]

Colleen Rooney wins the Wagatha Christie libel case

Apparently the judge was not impressed with Rebekah Vardy's evidence. They also thought that some of the contemporaneous evidence was deliberately withheld - for some reason they didn't accept that her mobile phone accidentally fell off a boat into the North Sea just days after Rooney's lawyers requested to search it

I know nothing about the case. What's the deal here?

[Maladict]

Not too bad.
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[Sheilbh]

I know nothing about the case. What's the deal here?

The Sun published a number of stories about Colleen Rooney (Wayne's wife) in a "Secret WAG" column and gossip pages that seem to have been sourced from her private Instagram account. She realised that someone was leaking from her circle of friends and families, so started restricting who could see posts and using different ones to try and identify who was the rat. After doing this for several months she suspected it was Rebekah Vardy (Jamie's wife). She sent her some DMs but after no response did a post on her public Instagram setting out all the stuff she'd done over months to identify the leak which ended: "It's ..........Rebekah Vardy's account."

In what is to me the most inexplicable bit of all this, Vardy decided to sue for libel - which has been called the most ill-advised libel trial since Oscar Wilde. We've had lots of fun from interim hearings around disclosure because now it's a libel case, Rooney's lawyers can get access to Vardy's devices etc. And there were a series of extraordinary "accidents" over Vardy's data - WhatsApp messages were manually deleted, her agent (who was accused to be the person doing the actual leaking of info from Vardy - and not called as a witness) unfortunately accidentally dropped her phone off a boat in the North Sea and Vardy's own forensics IT expert lost the password to a backup of her WhatsApp account which meant those messages couldn't be recovered.

After three years of pre-trial hearings it finally went to court earlier this year and was quite funny - in part just because as always with these casese there's always something about gossip columns having to be probed formally in court:

Were the lads fuming?

Rooney's barrister pressed Vardy on whether she had leaked a detail about unhappy players at Leicester City football club – where her husband, Jamie, is a star striker.

David Sherborne asked: "Did you or did you not know that the 'lads were fuming'?"

Vardy replied: "Jamie and I never discussed whether 'the lads were fuming'".

Some very evasive responses as well as the series of unfortunate events to Vardy's documentary evidence:

Vardy's problems with WhatsApp backups

Vardy said she accidentally lost all of her WhatsApp images during a dodgy backup that went wrong, while uploading the documents for disclosure to her solicitors: "Something odd happened as I was exporting the files."

She was also asked how nine months of more recent WhatsApp exchanges with her agent had also been lost. Vardy told the court she may have "potentially switched phones" during the period but "I can neither confirm or deny that".

And the great line from one of the non-deleted Vardy WhatsApps: "arguing with Coleen is like arguing with a pigeon. You can tell it that you are right and it is wrong but it's still going to shit in your hair." Plus having to explain to the judge what "FFS" means and the difference between the laughing and crying with laughter emojis.

As I say it's absolutely baffing why Vardy not only started this trial but kept it going. She had a torrid time of being cross-examined for two and a half days - but she was the person suing and could end it by settling. There were also details about other stories being sold to the Sun about other footballers.

Anyway the judge found in favour of Rooney on the basis of her defence that it was true (although there is actually an interesting point for media lawyers on the public interest defence) and was broadly unsympathetic to the repeated accidents destroying all the evidence she held. Obviously it was stressful and unpleasant on an individual level - but that was Rebekah Vardy's decision. And there were some amazing court sketches of Wayne and Jamie sat in court with what seems to be a thousand yard stare

It was going on at the same time as Depp-Heard in the US which just seemed incredibly grim, and this was a very frivolous and silly libel case that basically provided the country with some light relief - as well as a general admiration/fear of Colleen Rooney

[Jacob]

Thanks

[grumbler]

I thought Webster used the "aluminum" spelling...

You are correct.  My bad - I didn't think that they had identified the base element of alumina until later.

[Tamas]

SAINSBURYS ARE SELLING PICK'S WINTER SALAMI!!!

[MadBurgerMaker]

You all ever have one of those "wtf am I even doing" kind of moments?  A guy I worked with and would talk to, hang out with during breaks, etc, every day over the last 8 or 9 years, died just a few hours ago. 59 years old. Last time I saw him he was talking, as usual, about retiring in April.

Now I'm sitting here thinking about maybe who gives a shit about this dumbass job and "normal" life and all that...

[Tamas]

You all ever have one of those "wtf am I even doing" kind of moments?  A guy I worked with and would talk to, hang out with during breaks, etc, every day over the last 8 or 9 years, died just a few hours ago. 59 years old. Last time I saw him he was talking, as usual, about retiring in April.

Now I'm sitting here thinking about maybe who gives a shit about this dumbass job and "normal" life and all that...

I think about that often but I am about 70 years from affording to retire.

[MadBurgerMaker]

I think about that often but I am about 70 years from affording to retire.

As soon as I found out about Eric, I did the retirement math:  23 or so years to go.  Doubt I'll make it, and I'm really thinking I don't want to work until they day I die.  Also, what the hell am I going to even do when I'm that old?

E:  He was grandfathered in under the old retirement plan, so he was able to get out sooner than someone who has started in the last 15ish years or whenever they changed it to the crappy...I dunno how to describe it...it's like a points type deal. Some numbers add up to some other number and voila, you're free.  I can get out earlier if I give them thousands of dollars and buy my federal time.  Val knows about this plan, I'm sure, if he still works for UT (I work for one of the UT medical schools).

 Oh and good to see you, Tamas 

[Tamas]

Good to be talking to you again MBM

I frankly have no idea how retirement will look if I get to live that long. I mean, my wife and I have workplace pension things going so the pittance of state pension will be extended with a private pittance in my case (and a more decent one in my wife's case who bothered to learn some valuable skills).

I recon we may return to Eastern Europe after retirement, unless the world changes drastically around us, British pensions will ought to get you further there.

[Grey Fox]

My Filipino co-workers all plan to return to there for their retirement life. Money goes a lot further there apparently.