The Off Topic Topic

[HVC]

Aka Russian pop

[Jacob]

The view that preserving nature reserves and heritage buildings is worthwhile is alien to you?

Yes that was my reaction also, which is why I'm asking.

[grumbler]

The view that preserving nature reserves and heritage buildings is worthwhile is alien to you?

Yes that was my reaction also, which is why I'm asking.

Since garbon's response was to a bolded part of Sheilbh's post, maybe you should ask him about that, rather than creating a strawman argument to ask questions about.

Sheilbh claimed that PDOs are the same as preserving nature reserves and heritage buildings, which is what I think garbon found alien.  I think he's got a point, given that PDOs are pretty clearly just the outcome of successful pressure by special interest groups.  There seems to be no special reason why some cheapskate winemaker in Champagne gets to exploit the cache of the name, while a superior wine maker just across the border does not.

I agree with The Brain, though, that PDOs are not anything to get excited about.  I'm with Lt Bromhead on this one.

[crazy canuck]

Weren't you 13 when you left?

That is why he could not always afford the good stuff.

[Jacob]

For the same reason we list some buildings or we make Areas of Natural Beaty or conservation ares - that's for our built and natural environment. This is cultural and also sensory.

This is a view so alien to me that I doubt there is much worth discussing here.

So I interpreted this to mean the reasons for listing buildings and areas of natural beauty or conservation areas as being alien to you. That being the bolded text, and your response being "that it's alien to you." In fact, I reread it several times and reached that same conclusion each time.

On maybe my fourth reading I realize that you probably meant that putting heritage buildings and natural conservation areas in the same category as food heritage as being alien to you. Which makes more sense.

[celedhring]

The Catalan regional police has located a "slave plantation" of cannabis in central Catalonia, which employed ethnic Chinese that had fallen prey to a human trafficking ring. They lived in such isolation that apparently didn't even know about the Covid pandemic.

We are having an insane rise of cannabis-derived crime in Catalonia. Our laws are laxer than in the rest of Spain and it has attracted a lot of criminal rings, turning us into the pot-basket of Europe 

Just stop with the half-measures and legalize the stuff.

[garbon]

For the same reason we list some buildings or we make Areas of Natural Beaty or conservation ares - that's for our built and natural environment. This is cultural and also sensory.

This is a view so alien to me that I doubt there is much worth discussing here.

So I interpreted this to mean the reasons for listing buildings and areas of natural beauty or conservation areas as being alien to you. That being the bolded text, and your response being "that it's alien to you." In fact, I reread it several times and reached that same conclusion each time.

On maybe my fourth reading I realize that you probably meant that putting heritage buildings and natural conservation areas in the same category as food heritage as being alien to you. Which makes more sense.

I guess I'm glad you got there in the end?

[Josquius]

On local trademarks- one place where they go too far and needs slackening off is in humorous parodies.
Champaign should be reserved for real Champaign.
California growers feel free to have a crack with Calpaign.
And yes. I spectacularly failed to think of a funny and likely example.
Have at it punsters.

[Maladict]

On local trademarks- one place where they go too far and needs slackening off is in humorous parodies.
Champaign should be reserved for real Champaign.
California growers feel free to have a crack with Calpaign.
And yes. I spectacularly failed to think of a funny and likely example.
Have at it punsters.

Agnac, a brandy for men.

[Sheilbh]

The Catalan regional police has located a "slave plantation" of cannabis in central Catalonia, which employed ethnic Chinese that had fallen prey to a human trafficking ring. They lived in such isolation that apparently didn't even know about the Covid pandemic.

We are having an insane rise of cannabis-derived crime in Catalonia. Our laws are laxer than in the rest of Spain and it has attracted a lot of criminal rings, turning us into the pot-basket of Europe 

Just stop with the half-measures and legalize the stuff.

There was an extraordinary case in the UK like this - Vietnamese people (including children) who'd been trafficked and were working in modern slavery. It was in an old nuclear bunker:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/24/huge-cannabis-farm-staffed-trafficked-vietnamese-teenagers

The Guardian did a long piece on it and it's incredibly grim:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jul/26/vietnamese-cannabis-farms-children-enslaved

I totally agree on legalising - so many states in the US have done it - and I remember feeling a lot more dubious about pot when I read these articles because, in the UK at least, it doesn't have the reputation of being linked to loads of violence or an extremely dodgy supply chain. And then you read a piece about children being exploited to produce it. It's really bad.

[The Brain]

I stumbled across a YouTube video on the Citicorp building scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2YQnT6pSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

Did this stuff really happen? They decided to keep operating a deathtrap building without telling anyone instead of evacuating it until emergency repairs were done? Risking the lives of thousands to protect that sweet bottom line of the companies involved? Jesus Christ.

[DGuller]

I stumbled across a YouTube video on the Citicorp building scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2YQnT6pSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

Did this stuff really happen? They decided to keep operating a deathtrap building without telling anyone instead of evacuating it until emergency repairs were done? Risking the lives of thousands to protect that sweet bottom line of the companies involved? Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine the panic that evacuating such a building would cause?  Besides, the subsequent lack of collapse proved that this was the right decision.

[The Brain]

I stumbled across a YouTube video on the Citicorp building scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2YQnT6pSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

Did this stuff really happen? They decided to keep operating a deathtrap building without telling anyone instead of evacuating it until emergency repairs were done? Risking the lives of thousands to protect that sweet bottom line of the companies involved? Jesus Christ.

Can you imagine the panic that evacuating such a building would cause?  Besides, the subsequent lack of collapse proved that this was the right decision.

[grumbler]

I stumbled across a YouTube video on the Citicorp building scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2YQnT6pSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

Did this stuff really happen? They decided to keep operating a deathtrap building without telling anyone instead of evacuating it until emergency repairs were done? Risking the lives of thousands to protect that sweet bottom line of the companies involved? Jesus Christ.

The building wasn't a deathtrap, though.  Even flawed, it was safe except in near-hurricane winds, which don't come out of a clear blue sky.

[The Brain]

I stumbled across a YouTube video on the Citicorp building scandal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv2YQnT6pSo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center#Engineering_crisis_of_1978

Did this stuff really happen? They decided to keep operating a deathtrap building without telling anyone instead of evacuating it until emergency repairs were done? Risking the lives of thousands to protect that sweet bottom line of the companies involved? Jesus Christ.

The building wasn't a deathtrap, though.  Even flawed, it was safe except in near-hurricane winds, which don't come out of a clear blue sky.

Yeah that's why they didn't tell people.