Is there any part of modern society that ISN’T hopelessly corrupt to the core?

That’s nothing, quarks have a fucking flavor

The UK really has become an unmitigated shithole ever since the conservatives managed to make Brexit a reality. Nowadays I appreciate the island for having the decency not to touch us, and to serve as both a warning and an example to Europeans about what could happen on the mainland if we let it.

Fuck the UK (gov) and fuck the Tories.

Boss won’t give you a raise? Give yourself one by slowing production to less than 50٪ and find something fun or interesting to do with the time saved.

Is it any good?

Most flightless birds compensate by being badass at fighting on ground level. If you’ve ever seen a rooster fuck up a jackdaw you’ll know what I mean.

Fuck prions and the horse they rode in on. They’re not even alive, so you can’t kill them. No vaccine, no cure, and thoroughly cooking your food is still no guaranteed way to get rid of them.

Nature’s silent assassins, and they take their sweet time doing it too. By the time you first notice it’s already far too late.

And the wife?

Too late, already played through the game (not paid luckily) after the summer, what a waste of ~80 hours. Not really excited about adding more to the pile.

I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.

Pluto will always be a planet to me, and you’ll pry that definition from my cold, dead hands!

+1 for the cats

Block KB5036980 in windows update, got it.

Well, I do still have the pieces, and you can clearly see the silver has crystallized inside (which is both a sign of authenticity and an explanation for its brittleness) so I’m keeping it as a metallurgical curiosity rather than a piece of history.

Yeah, I hated myself for that. Still do. It kinda stopped my interest in ancient coin collecting altogether because now I feel like an unworthy loser who shouldn’t be near any such artifacts in the first place.

If I was my own boss I’d have fired me.

Not a fossil but I managed to drop and shatter a denarius of Tiberius (tribute penny) and I’m pretty sure I went through all the same facial expressions. Fuck.

Here it’s still DUI even if the keys aren’t in the ignition, as long as you’re in the driver’s seat.

Besides, most modern cars don’t have an ignition that requires you to physically insert any keys. Usually it’s enough that the key fob is present in the car.

Source: a workmate did this thinking it would keep him out of trouble vs actually driving drunk. It did not. He still lost his license as if he’d been driving.

I feel like the turnaround was somewhere around 2008-2010. Before that they seemed a lot more amicable.

One is hydroculture, the other earth-grown.

AMAROK by Mike Oldfield. Not just the music itself (it’s quite a trip), but the story of its development:

He was under contract for Virgin to produce another long form album, but he and Branson had a falling out. Regardless, Branson threatened legal trouble if Oldfield didn’t go through with it. He was hoping for a record with radio-friendly hits like “Shadow on the Wall” and “Moonlight Shadow” that could be peddled to radio stations.

So Oldfield composed AMAROK. It contains one single track, spanning the entire length of the 60+ minute album. That way, Branson couldn’t simply lift any tracks and use them as singles.

But wait, there’s more! Since Oldfield knew that if he did this, Branson would simply make a selection of excerpts from the album and use those as singles. This had been done before while they still got along or even before he signed with Virgin, so they knew it could work, cfr the “Incantations”, “Ommadawn”, “Hergest Ridge”, …

The “Amarok” track is… a special kind of composition. It’s by no means bad - it’s actually pretty great from a technical standpoint. But what you decidedly cannot do, is attribute it to any specific genre, nor easily mark the beginnings and endings of the different “tracks” comprising the record.

Thus, Oldfield won this battle and Amarok was pretty much impossible to use for radioplay. I still enjoy it to this day though.