Messages

The reason most Tories won't oust Johnson is because they don't believe there's anyone better as a replacement.

Yep. You only have to look at the shower of sycophantic cretins whose pictures appear next to the dictionary definition of "Dunning-Kruger Effect" that comprise the entire Tory front bench to see the fundamental problem here. In the past, even the Tories I'd thought of as fundamentally evil bastards were at least vaguely competent evil bastards... this lot, though...

Is there any possible way Johnson can wriggle out of this?  Can't see how, but sadly I suspect the answer is yes, somehow there will be a way. There always is for him, it seems.

The arbiter on breaches of the ministerial code is... the Prime Minister. He won't go willingly because he has no honour, no sense of decency, duty or responsibility, and he geniunely believes that rules don't apply to him because, well, for his entire life they haven't.

Pretty sure the only way he goes is if the rest of the MPs oust him, and they haven't shown the stomach for it yet.

I read a Twitter thread from a virologist summarising the current state of outbreaks worldwide

Actually, you can find a pretty detailed report of the CDC's summary on monkeypox here.

Pretty much what I said above and, yes, smallpox vaccines are effective.

I wonder if the smallpox vaccine can protect against monkey pox?

I believe it does. I read a Twitter thread from a virologist summarising the current state of outbreaks worldwide (IIRC: concerning, but not alarming in scale or spread thus far. The virus doesn't seem to have 'legs', in as much as each case is only able to infect a very small number of people and infection requires direct physical contact... so we're not looking another Covid, with it's long asymptomatic infectious stage and relatively easy transmission.)

You are not stuck in a time warp: Boris Johnson pictured drinking at No 10 lockdown event

I think it's quite important to keep reiterating this: the thing to remember, above all else, as this rumbles on, is — don't be angry because you followed the rules. It was the right thing to do. There are almost certainly people alive today who wouldn't be, because you followed the rules.

Be angry because THEY DIDN'T. Be angry because HE DIDN'T.

If it's literally going to be a room full of middle aged men with beards

By contrast, I'm practically beardless these days, my beard having gone entirely white whilst my hair, a few grey strands not withstanding, remains more or less the same dark brown that it's always been. Since the beard now looks daft and I really can't be arsed to dye it, I maintain it in a very short stubbly form (because I also can't be arsed to shave).

the company address is a private residence in a very leafy part of Surrey.

Fuck me, you need a few quid to live in that neighbourhood!

I do the same with youtube music - I've trained both spotify and youtube to suggest the kind of music I might like, and sometimes they present things I've never heard of before.  Many lockdown discoveries have been made this way...

Always been a bit 'Old Man Shouts at Cloud' about music streaming services, but I got six months of Apple Music free when I bought some Beats Fit headphones so I thought I'd give it a go. The 'This Artist + Similar' autogenerated playlists are surprisingly good, and led down twin rabbit holes of Dark Country (which I didn't even know was A Thing, Johnny Cash notwithstanding, but I really rather like) and Shouty German Metal (aka NDH) which, it turns out, is absolutely fantastic to work out to.

(I mean, Rammstein has always had a strong showing in my workout playlists, but I've now got a dedicated 150 minute workout playlist full of Eisbrecher, Megaherz, OST+Front, Heldmaschine, Stahlmann and the like... there's about a dozen words of English* in the whole thing, and three of those are "HEAVY FUCKING METAL!")

*I figure I'll probably have learnt German by osmosis before the year's out...

I'm going to get to Season 3,  but man its a lot harder work than the first 12 episodes of Season 1 made it seem like it was going to be!

I didn't care for S2 at all. The main problem, ISTR, is that Matt is such a whiny little twat for most of it. That, plus the lack of Fisk, made it a real slog. S3 is really good, though.

Reminds me of Morten Harket.

ISTR Morrison describing Zenith as specifically as "Nick Kamen with the ability to punch through walls".

(I only discovered just now that Kamen, of the Levi's launderette ad fame, died last year, aged 59.)

Was LOEG creator-owned or would the rights revert to the publisher?

LoEG has moved publishers a couple of times, hasn't it? That would suggest it's creator-owned.

I'll be visiting that stand Jim with both my copies of RoK if you wouldn't mind signing them 😁

Of course — it's always a pleasant surprise when anyone wants me to sign anything! If, for some reason, I'm away from the table when you roll up but you spot me elsewhere, it's fine to ask then, as well.

(Side note: folks looking for a full set of Rok sigs might have to wait until Thought Bubble to snag Abby Bulmer... last I heard she'd managed to double-book herself for the Lawless weekend and can't make it.)

I'm coming on the Sunday - would be nice to put faces to names if any other forum Squaxx are going to be there and would like to say hello / tell me I'm a bellend in person...

I'll be at the Rok of the Reds table for parts of the day, and most likely in the bar for the rest of it... :-)

All in black. Big hat. Bigger boots. I'd call you a [spoiler]REDACTED[/spoiler] but that honour is affectionately reserved for Pete Wells. ;-)

Midnight Surfer remains one of the key texts in the Dredd canon thanks to Cam's art. I will argue to my dying day that Mega-City One never lived and breathed in quite the same way before that story.

Heard so much dissing of this I avoided it, worth a watch?

The first series really, really wasn't. It started out oddly fascinating and pleasingly different, visually, from most mainstream US SF, but the story just meanders around, making progressively less and less sense, until you get to the final episode and just ask yourself "Why the fuck did I sit through all that?"