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#61

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by crazy canuck - June 02, 2024, 05:12:55 PM

I saw a lot of Europeans wearing masks when I was in Sardinia.

Must be a UK thing

Possibly an Italian thing.

I've recently been to France, Germany, Poland, Greece, Turkey and Spain and didn't really see any mask wearing. An odd one or two people maybe.

But I was also surprised, given my expectation, that not everyone was masked in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Very mixed which wasn't my expectation, I thought it'd be more or less universal.

Edit: Also incidentally the UK had the highest rate of people in polls during the pandemic saying they intended to carry on wearing masks - something like 40-50%. Needless to say, good intentions etc. (Or it might just be like the 30% who want lockdown restrictions imposed permanently And I feel like I see more masking outside of London than in it - which again reflects those demographics on vaccines.).

Edit:

Oh, and by the way, the pandemic is not over. It's just that a lot of people are vaccinated now,  and the consequences of getting it have been lessened because of the vaccination.

I think the pandemic is over.

There's two ways they end - one is you end them medically by eliminating the disease or risk to zero, which we haven't done. It's now endemic.

The other is social. That society kind of moves on and no longer perceives x disease as an emergency. There's a treatment or a vaccine that makes it safe enough that socially it is no longer a pandemic.  I think we're very much in that category.

I saw a lot of Europeans wearing masks when I was in Sardinia.

Must be a UK thing

Possibly an Italian thing.

I've recently been to France, Germany, Poland, Greece, Turkey and Spain and didn't really see any mask wearing. An odd one or two people maybe.

But I was also surprised, given my expectation, that not everyone was masked in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Very mixed which wasn't my expectation, I thought it'd be more or less universal.

Edit: Also incidentally the UK had the highest rate of people in polls during the pandemic saying they intended to carry on wearing masks - something like 40-50%. Needless to say, good intentions etc. (Or it might just be like the 30% who want lockdown restrictions imposed permanently And I feel like I see more masking outside of London than in it - which again reflects those demographics on vaccines.).

Edit:

Oh, and by the way, the pandemic is not over. It's just that a lot of people are vaccinated now,  and the consequences of getting it have been lessened because of the vaccination.

I think the pandemic is over.

There's two ways they end - one is you end them medically by eliminating the disease or risk to zero, which we haven't done. It's now endemic.

The other is social. That society kind of moves on and no longer perceives x disease as an emergency. There's a treatment or a vaccine that makes it safe enough that socially it is no longer a pandemic.  I think we're very much in that category.

See that's the thing about science, it doesn't depend on some guys personal opinion of what a scientific term should mean.

I was just in Milan and Naples the other week. I saw fewer masks than I do in London.

Ah, do it turns out people in the UK do wear masks. 

Sheilbh's personal observations are 0-2

#62

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by HVC - June 02, 2024, 04:40:11 PM

To be fair Josq ran so far away he crossed continents

#63

Gaming HQ / Re: The Miscellaneous PC & vid...

Last post by Grey Fox - June 02, 2024, 04:10:04 PM

Sony seems to be inching towards having a console costs where they will make a profit.

Microsoft is still a loss leader.

#64

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - June 02, 2024, 04:04:46 PM

I think a key difference between us is that I generally think running away to the big city is a good thing to be encouraged

#65

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Josquius - June 02, 2024, 03:44:31 PM

Yeah, I found out about it as I met my mam today and she brought up the ex MP quitting. First I'd heard of it.
She didn't know who they'd got to replace him yet and I mentioned it'll probably be an expert in something or other, a technocrat, who would be good to have in a junior cabinet position.
I gave it a quick Google and stumbled on this guy. I've not had a chance to do much digging beyond skimming his Wikipeida but about all he seems to have going for him is he's really hard for zionism.
Which... Yeah. Do not want. I'd be surprised if we have triple figure Jewish people round our way never mind any connection to Palestine whatsoever.
Maybe it's to help with the red-brown vote? - but then that was a problem next door*. We remained loyal.

No he's a long-standing councillor, I think in Hackney, who has on the Labour NEC for years and years. He's normally the lead on the centrist slate (so I feel like he was one of the resistance NEC during the Corbyn years). He's on the ultra-Blairite right of the party. He's been very involved in the disciplinary cases against the left and in shepherding rule changes through conference that are believed to help the right/hurt the left.

During the Corbyn he founded or ran a think tank, I think Labour First, which was about fighting for the Labour right pov/fighting to win.

It's rewarding an ultra-loyalist for Starmer who, in the internal party politics of committee rooms and rulebooks has done a lot of useful work. As well as the reward you can see the appeal in having that sort of MP (that sort of figure, historically made up about half the Scottish Labour MPs ).S%

As you describe it that sounds even worse then.

Laura Pidcock? I'd always thought she was a bit like Richard Burgon to be honest She has a sterling record of turning historic Labour strongholds Tory both at council and constituency level which suggests she might not be that good.

I don't think we can blame many individual MPs for 2019 with the whole Corbophobia, brekshit, populist drum banging going on.
Notable her seat was fairly close too.

This is all second and third hand but I have heard from her old constituents she was a really good local MP. Responsive to local issues, always showing up to things and seeming actually interested and nice, and generally a decent lass.

But... We've huge fascist issues in the area. Zero media attention letting them get away with anything.
The core of consett is a textbook old industrial town left to rot, where anyone doing anything with their life escapes ASAP, and then it also had tacked on a huge amount of rural west Durham so even in a normal election would have seen a bigger tory vote than it traditionally did.

This sort of thing I honestly don't mind at all.
It's the law of the country that to get anywhere in life some time in London is hard to avoid.
If someone is from an area but goes to work in London for a decade before returning the that's great local representation in my book.
Maybe. My read is it's a bunch of twinks who couldn't get out of their suburban hell-hole fast enough, now returning and pretending to like it

Or wanting to fix it so nobody else has to suffer the same fate :p

#66

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - June 02, 2024, 03:07:24 PM

Yeah, I found out about it as I met my mam today and she brought up the ex MP quitting. First I'd heard of it.
She didn't know who they'd got to replace him yet and I mentioned it'll probably be an expert in something or other, a technocrat, who would be good to have in a junior cabinet position.
I gave it a quick Google and stumbled on this guy. I've not had a chance to do much digging beyond skimming his Wikipeida but about all he seems to have going for him is he's really hard for zionism.
Which... Yeah. Do not want. I'd be surprised if we have triple figure Jewish people round our way never mind any connection to Palestine whatsoever.
Maybe it's to help with the red-brown vote? - but then that was a problem next door*. We remained loyal.

No he's a long-standing councillor, I think in Hackney, who has on the Labour NEC for years and years. He's normally the lead on the centrist slate (so I feel like he was one of the resistance NEC during the Corbyn years). He's on the ultra-Blairite right of the party. He's been very involved in the disciplinary cases against the left and in shepherding rule changes through conference that are believed to help the right/hurt the left.

During the Corbyn he founded or ran a think tank, I think Labour First, which was about fighting for the Labour right pov/fighting to win.

It's rewarding an ultra-loyalist for Starmer who, in the internal party politics of committee rooms and rulebooks has done a lot of useful work. As well as the reward you can see the appeal in having that sort of MP (that sort of figure, historically made up about half the Scottish Labour MPs ).

*which I need to do more digging into. My mam also mentioned some stuff on the ex labour MP for nw Durham, a young woman who was apparently a really good mp albeit Corbyn friendly, got some seriously horrific treatment from the local fascists. Which is very believable though never reported.

Laura Pidcock? I'd always thought she was a bit like Richard Burgon to be honest She has a sterling record of turning historic Labour strongholds Tory both at council and constituency level which suggests she might not be that good.

This sort of thing I honestly don't mind at all.
It's the law of the country that to get anywhere in life some time in London is hard to avoid.
If someone is from an area but goes to work in London for a decade before returning the that's great local representation in my book.

Maybe. My read is it's a bunch of twinks who couldn't get out of their suburban hell-hole fast enough, now returning and pretending to like it

#67

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Josquius - June 02, 2024, 02:16:41 PM

But that is pretty crap. Nothing to do with the area either.

I've said before - Labour is far more into parachuting people into very safe constituencies than the Tories. See the very safe seats all over (North-East, South Wales, Birmingham) for NEC members, think tankers, union officials with no connection to the area who, at best, have been a councillor in London.

Yeah, I found out about it as I met my mam today and she brought up the ex MP quitting. First I'd heard of it.
She didn't know who they'd got to replace him yet and I mentioned it'll probably be an expert in something or other, a technocrat, who would be good to have in a junior cabinet position.
I gave it a quick Google and stumbled on this guy. I've not had a chance to do much digging beyond skimming his Wikipeida but about all he seems to have going for him is he's really hard for zionism.
Which... Yeah. Do not want. I'd be surprised if we have triple figure Jewish people round our way never mind any connection to Palestine whatsoever.
Maybe it's to help with the red-brown vote? - but then that was a problem next door*. We remained loyal.

Incidentally the ex guy wasn't local but he was from a similar Midlands mining area. Which is also fine.


*which I need to do more digging into. My mam also mentioned some stuff on the ex labour MP for nw Durham, a young woman who was apparently a really good mp albeit Corbyn friendly, got some seriously horrific treatment from the local fascists. Which is very believable though never reported.

There's also lots of bright young thing councillors from, say, Camden or Hackney returning to run in the seats they were born or raised in making a big deal of being a councillor on their election material, but not clarifying where. You can tell everywhere who the leadership's favoured candidate was because they appear to have had an agency on retainer to produce very similar selection leaflets, social media videos etc.

This sort of thing I honestly don't mind at all.
It's the law of the country that to get anywhere in life some time in London is hard to avoid.
If someone is from an area but goes to work in London for a decade before returning the that's great local representation in my book.

#68

Gaming HQ / Re: The Miscellaneous PC & vid...

Last post by Josquius - June 02, 2024, 01:59:11 PM

Isn't it still the case that basically all consoles bar Nintendos make a loss on hardware?
The profits they'd be missing from releasing all their stuff on steam is from other developers releasing their stuff on PlayStation and the fees/cut they get from that.

Certainly for my part I had been tentatively considering a ps5 at some point - I missed the ps4 so there's a lot of games there I'd want to play too. But it does seem 90% of the interesting games are on steam too.

#69

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by garbon - June 02, 2024, 01:35:45 PM

I was just in Milan and Naples the other week. I saw fewer masks than I do in London.

#70

Gaming HQ / Re: The Miscellaneous PC & vid...

Last post by The Minsky Moment - June 02, 2024, 12:51:58 PM

Shower thought this morning: if Sony really wanted to harvest PC users for their database, they would have released Bloodborne for PC with PSN required for the online component.

This all gets to Sony's in between strategy of dipping their foot in.  The FF7 remakes for example have gotten a rave reception but the sales have been very disappointing; contrast with Helldivers 2 which was a more obscure IP but has been a big hit on the back of Steam sales.  The obvious solution is to send all PS games to PC, but what will that do to hardware sales?  Microsoft seems content to live in a world of slow XBox sales if they can ship lots of product from their owned game studios and keep Gamepass revenue flowing. Sony however, still seems committed to maximizing console hardware sales, and thus is reluctant to give up the concept of console exclusives.