The RANT thread (often contains fruity language)

[ElyDave]

No, I believe both are acceptable, but in any case we looked it up in the wordbook and I was OK, but it was disallowed anyway.

[spesh]

Did I miss a memo?  Was I supposed to remove my brain before taking to the roads this evening?  Apparently that's what everyone else did.

Draw up a list of standard commute rants - you an put a tick next to each one.  This includes classics such as "Lady, pushing your pram into the road while you remain on the pavement is not a sensible way to indicate your intention of crossing the street." (But I may have misunderstood, she may just not like her child that much.)  The list also includes one which should not appear so early in the year: "Cyclists: it is still August, before 20:00, and we are not cycling through a storm, so you can take your over-powered, poorly-positioned front lights and shove them  [ connection lost ]

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." ~ Arnaud Amalric (attributed) 

A lovely sentiment, which I can support, but there aren't nearly enough hours in the day to implement it.  Perhaps we could start off with decimation, pour encourager les autres and see if things improve.

"The beatings will continue until Andrij's morale improves," hmmmm?

[Andrij]

Did I miss a memo?  Was I supposed to remove my brain before taking to the roads this evening?  Apparently that's what everyone else did.

Draw up a list of standard commute rants - you an put a tick next to each one.  This includes classics such as "Lady, pushing your pram into the road while you remain on the pavement is not a sensible way to indicate your intention of crossing the street." (But I may have misunderstood, she may just not like her child that much.)  The list also includes one which should not appear so early in the year: "Cyclists: it is still August, before 20:00, and we are not cycling through a storm, so you can take your over-powered, poorly-positioned front lights and shove them  [ connection lost ]

"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." ~ Arnaud Amalric (attributed) 

A lovely sentiment, which I can support, but there aren't nearly enough hours in the day to implement it.  Perhaps we could start off with decimation, pour encourager les autres and see if things improve.

"The beatings will continue until Andrij's morale improves," hmmmm?

 

https://youtu.be/h4emcNAf5lY

[Legs]

We grinked to the CEO of Post Office, who are our ISP, over our lack of broadband for the past nearly-5 weeks.  Copied our MP, who's got a bit more time on his hands now that he's not Minister for Small Business and is no longer sexting his constituents.

Grink appears to be working.  Her PA called back and has got the ball in motion for (a) rectification to be expedited and (b) interim provision made to enable us access in meantime.  Jo is going to break it to her that, as the last bastions of dumbphone Ludditism, we do not have mobile internet devices, so just giving us a load of data credit is not going to help us.

[rr]

DADAISM? My Grandma was the Queen of Scrabble. She knew words that no one else ever dreamt of and when challenged, they were always in the dictionary. She once played DA. What's that? we cried. Da is Dada, she replied. And it was in the dictionary. The irony was that English was not her native language and even after 40 or more years in England, her spoken English... fluent but full of oddities.

I don't think she ever played my other grandmother, although they were really the only people who were keen on Scrabble, but I expect that if she had, dictionary knowledge would have beaten native English.

If I remember correctly many of the world's top players of Scrabble in English are not native speakers.

Sent from my moto x4 using Tapatalk

[citoyen]

If I remember correctly many of the world's top players of Scrabble in English are not native speakers.

This is correct. Being good at English isn't a requirement. Being able to memorise long lists of valid two- and three-letter combinations is more important, as is being able to play tactically to close down the board and make it harder for your opponent to play potentially high-scoring words. And knowing what tiles are left in play.

The top Scrabble players are mathematicians rather than linguists.

[Kim]

"Ken Thompson claims that he started developing UNIX so he could play Space War, but the end product shows he was really much more interested in cheating at Scrabble."

[spesh]

Speaking of which...

"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." ~ Jeremy S. Anderson

[Cudzoziemiec]

I don't recall my grandmother being particularly mathematically minded either, but maybe she never had much occasion to show it. But then she wasn't a top Scrabble player, just top in our family. (And to correct the probable assumption, her non-English native language wasn't Polish.)

Speaking of which...

"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence." ~ Jeremy S. Anderson

Software geeks are all junkies? Not surprising.

[Kim]

Software geeks are all junkies? Not surprising.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/chemicals.html refers.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Non-addictive? Also, are they really implying mainstream culture is intolerant of such things?

[Kim]

Non-addictive?

LSD isn't, is it?  Not so sure about cannabis being on that list.

Also, are they really implying mainstream culture is intolerant of such things?

Mainstream culture (in this context, late-1990s USAnian) has decided these things should be illegal, which isn't particularly tolerant.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Pretty sure cannabis is addictive, though probably less so than tobacco or, say, cheese. ( ) Not sure about LSD in itself, but in a way all pleasurable experiences have addictive qualities. As for mainstream, clearly these things are for the most part illegal, but there's mainstream and mainstream; or to put it another way, there's legal, traditional, conventional, and largely accepted. I'd say that cannabis now falls mostly in the largely tolerated category (and occasionally even into the legal). Maybe less so in the 1990s. I'm pretty sure nitrous oxide is legal, I've no idea whether it's addictive, but the number of cannisters on the street on a Sunday morning show it's very much conventional (among clubber types).

[Kim]

Indeed.  I get the impression that USAnians are on the whole less tolerant of drug use (recreational or otherwise) than BRITONS, but that use of cannabis is considered unremarkable, if not normal and ordinary, by vast swathes of both populations.  I don't think I'm particularly unusual in my main objection to cannabis being the general unpleasantness of second-hand smoke.

Didn't the UK recently do something about nitrous oxide in some 'legal highs' legislation?  Or was that buried under a heap of brexit? 

ETA: Appears that it's legal as long as everyone pretends it's for whipped cream.

LSD though, that went out of fashion well before I was born.  Except where needed to explain particularly unconventional design decisions...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Certainly nitrous oxide is still available from the firework shop up the road. Banning "legal highs" is oxymoronic anyway. 

[chrisbainbridge]

USA is amazing in its attitude to drugs. There are now more people killed per day by prescription opiates than heroin. This was all started by a company aggressively selling a highly addictive opiate called oxycodone. The number one killer of young people in The states is prescription opiates.

I do wonder how much the drug cartels spend lobbying for the war on drugs. Legalising drugs would immediately kill the illegal trade as is being seen with the legalisation of marijuana in many states.

Personally I would vote for the total decriminalisation of personal possession of all drugs, state prescription,  better counselling and much stronger sentences for dealing. The results from up near Liverpool I the 90’s and currently in Portugal are really outstanding.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've read a bit about the legalisation (decriminalisation?) of all(?) drugs in Portugal. I think it's also amazing (in a good way) how Portugal and Spain have managed to convert themselves from the deeply conservative autocratic cultures they had till the 70s or 80s into what seem to be among the most progressive, enterprising ones today. Mind you, they've had three decades or more to do it!

[Kim]

USA is amazing in its attitude to drugs. There are now more people killed per day by prescription opiates than heroin. This was all started by a company aggressively selling a highly addictive opiate called oxycodone. The number one killer of young people in The states is prescription opiates.

AIUI a substantial number of those deaths are due to paracetamol overdose from co-codamol or similar.  The USAnians record them all as opiate deaths, presumably due to the afore-mentioned attitude.

There's also a healthcare system that's practically designed to cultivate unhealthy behaviour with prescription medication.  Getting a prescription?  Make it a really big one to minimise the co-pay.  Don't need to finish the course?  Hoard them for when you or your friends can't afford to see a doctor...

[chrisbainbridge]

Kim, all of those are real.  I have many american surgeons as acquaintances who despair of the health care system but continue to vote republican!!  there is also a very different attitude to pain in the States where pain is bad and to be totally removed rather than accepted as a reality of life. The concept that pain is not dangerous but can often be lived with and accepted especially short term acute pain is rare in the UA compared with elsewhere in the world.  So they demand opiates for operations which patients in this country will generally only take 1 paracetamol for.

[ian]

Oxycodone and her merry-making friends make US daytime TV bearable. Not sure if they work on British TV. I think there may be ethical issues with any study to investigate this.

Anyway, I saw some great new drugs advertised on the TV, so I'm going to ask my doctor if I need them.

[ian]

Virgin Atlantic, who seem to be in a contest with BA to make for the worst flying experience. Sorry sir, you didn't pay for actual wings. Stiffed me £45 for a bag because apparently my-not-very-cheap-ticket didn't include a bag, something that wasn't made even a teeny bit clear when I booked via Expedia (who admit it, they're working on it apparently). Apparently Virgin have a stupid new pricing schema. I wouldn't fucking mind if it was someone like Norwegian who offer an actual cheap ticket and make it clear what is and isn't included, it's paying full whack and then getting stiffed by the Michael O'Leary School of Customer Service. You can guess what happens when you call Expedia. Call Virgin they say. You call Virgin, call Expedia, they say. You call Expedia back, no, no, that's Virgin. You call Virgin back, oh wait, it's not us, you need to call Delta. Delta says call Expedia. Good god, I've not even left the ground yet. Possibly I won't, I never did pay the wings upgrade fee. It's probably just a fucking bus. And I'll still have to pay £45 for each bag.

[Mr Larrington]

Did I mention getting 90% of the way through Air Canuckistan's booking system before discovering that the price quoted on the Interthings does not include a fucking seat?  And then the Canuckistanis stiff you for another 7CAD for the privet hedge of arriving in their country by air, though at least it lasts for the lifetime of your passport.

[Torslanda]

The limit of my air travel experience is AirO'Leary to Limoges. I don't feel so hard done to and, after reading that, suspect I won't ever be crossing the pond...

[rogerzilla]

Bastard eBay joybidders.  Fifth this year, and I don't sell much.  I always go through the unpaids process now - fed up of the spurious excuses.

[ian]

Did I mention getting 90% of the way through Air Canuckistan's booking system before discovering that the price quoted on the Interthings does not include a fucking seat?  And then the Canuckistanis stiff you for another 7CAD for the privet hedge of arriving in their country by air, though at least it lasts for the lifetime of your passport.

Reminds me of many years ago, Vancouver international airport used to levy an 'airport improvement fee' of CAN$10 which you had to pay on departure. I asked what happened if I declined to pay and she said 'we don't let you leave!' The cheery O Canada! fashion in which she said it made it sound all the more sinister. Odds on she had a basement full of hungry bears and a lot of duct tape.

Anyway, I'm writing a snotty email to Expedia, they sold the tickets. Had anywhere actually stated the price didn't include bags then I would have added that to my calculation, how I was supposed to know that clueless clodfuckers at Virgin had an exciting new ticket pricing wheeze (which they reassure me is to give me, the passenger, 'more choice in my pricing options'). Honestly this information is imparted like they're doing me a favour and I should be grateful. It's like being given the choice of the method of my own death. Why not pay extra for a less painful death sir, or you can opt to save some money and stick with the scorpions.

OK, it's a small fee in the scheme of things, it's just the fucking cheek of charging us full whack for a pair of tickets and then telling us it doesn't actually include the stuff we might expect a pair of full whack tickets to include (and which would have been included if we'd booked on A. N. Other Airline for much the same price) and general run-a-round of customer service unhelpfulness. It's a common MLIR theme, like Southern train cheerily declaring they're improving the reliability of their train service by simply re-timetabling all the trains so late is the new on-time.